On ‘They will fry themselves with their own fat’

‘Watajikaanga na mafuta yao’ (They will fry themselves with their own fat) was a daily slogan spoken by the former Kenyan president Daniel Toroitich arap Moi for many years whenever he addressed a crowd of Kenyans. President Moi stopped relaying the above message to Kenyans in 1989. What Moi meant with that clause has remained a puzzle to many Kenyans up to this day.

To a few Kenyans who became inquisitive from the beginning, the puzzle started to unravel in 1985 when thousands of Kikuyus who worked and lived in many forest stations along Mau forest were unceremoniously evicted. The brutal and the arrogant manner through which the exercise was carried out sent shivering messages to the few observant Kenyans. Those who worked as employees of the government in the forest were laid off and were among thousands of desperate Kenyans who lined up along the Njoro Nakuru Road in makeshift tents. Many of them died of disease and cold. Those fortunate and who had some money applied for licences to erect kiosks in nearby towns.

From year to year after they erected and stalked their kiosks, government agents, accompanied by the ‘Jeshi la Mzee’, stole all that was in those kiosks and demolished them in the late hours of the night. Fearing the worst in the continued destruction of their licensed kiosks, some of them joined in the sale of vegetables, pencils, pens and other small items on the streets of the cities while others went to become touts. The Kenya police descended on the touts and all those who were on the streets selling different items, beating them and throwing teargas at them.

The number of unemployed and desperate Kikuyus increased when attacks and evictions of the community from the Rift Valley started. Since 1985 to 1991–92 when those attacks and evictions started, thousands of the members of the Kikuyu community joined others on the streets, at the bus stations as touts. Soon after the police were busy chasing and beating them. But the number continued to swell for the next 14 years because of the continued attacks, killings and evictions.

Every time they tried to earn an honest living, the Kenya government forcefully went to deny them all means of livelihood. It was after those unemployed Kikuyu youth were denied all means of their livelihood when they turned on their own community for survival. The turn of the Kikuyu youth on their community, and their subsequent illegal demands of money, often resulted to deaths of innocent people. That was what Moi referred to as ‘Watajikaanga na mafuta yao’. It is therefore evident that President Moi tried as hard as he could to make sure that the Kikuyus became desperate enough in life and killed one another after he denied them every venue from which they would earn a honest living. So, when the Kikuyu youth started killing their own people, in search of money for survival, it was ‘Wanajikaanga na mafuta yao’ (‘they were frying themselves with their own fat’), just as President Moi had planned.

What became perplexing was the behaviour of President Mwai Kibaki and Honourable John Michuki towards their own Kikuyu youth. If they lacked the wisdom to understand the Moi slogan ’Watajikaanga na mafuta yao’, they should have consulted with the wise Kikuyu men in order to avoid the deaths of their daughters and sons who were ruthlessly killed in thousands in the name of destroying Mungiki. Who are the Mungiki youth? Are they not the sons of President Kibaki and Honourable Michuki and the sons of the Kikuyu community? Next time, President Mwai Kibaki and Honourable John Michuki have doubts in their decisions, they should seek the advice of the wise men and women in their community before making certain sensitive decisions which touch on the welfare, lives and survival of their community instead of giving orders which may result in their death.

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* Isaac Newton Kinity is the former secretary general of the Kenya Civil Servants Union and the chair of the Kikimo Foundation for Corruption and Poverty Eradication.
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