By Patrick Wachira
Long before Orie Rogo Manduli electrified Nairobi as the ultimate drama queen, Nakuru had a similar version of a flamboyant, straight-shooting politician.
Mrs Rahab Wanjiru Evans, popularly known as Mama Steel in political and social circles in Nakuru and beyond, was the ultimate drama mama, both on and off the podium.
Former President Moi and the late Rahab Wanjiru Evans at a past function. Photo: Courtesy |
And the cocktail nature of her personality was aptly reflected in her approach to business, for she dabbled in anything and everything — from a bar and restaurant business, farming and real estate to selling scrap metal. It was from the scrap metal enterprise that she earned her all time popular name — Mama Steel.
Freedom fighter
Some politicians who felt sufficiently familiar with her in the late 1980s and early 1990s when Nakuru politics was searing hot such as former MP Amos Kabiru Kimemia and former Nakuru DC Jonah Anguka called her ‘Mama Chuma’.
It did not help her reputation that one of the buildings she owned right in the middle of Nakuru town, along Kenyatta Avenue, was said to be haunted, with tenants complaining of their furniture being moved around while they were away.
Other tales had it that the building remained unoccupied for a long time because tenants living alone would leave the place for the day, only to find cooked food in the house in the evening. Even passing near the building gave one an eerie, woozy feeling.
Little is known about Mama Steel’s early years, save that she was a freedom fighter. She was a dancer in the Nyakinyua Group, which was famous as the entertainment group of choice for the late Mzee Jomo Kenyatta.
She was at some point married to a white man, only known to locals as Evans. But it was on the political platform that Mama Steel was in her true element, never mind that her powers of expression were something of a cartoon strip.
At the height of Kanu’s waning popularity, some officials of the Democratic Party in Nakuru referred to it as ‘bogus’ and were seen on TV by Mama Steel.
She promptly called a press conference and waxed indignant: "Nasikia iko watu naita Kanu boga (I hear some people have called Kanu vegetables)".
When this clip was aired on television, she became an instant hit, perhaps more for the comical relief she brought into people’s homes when national news was all politics and divisions.
Earlier, she had leapt into the limelight when former Subukia MP Koigi wa Wamwere went into self-exile in Norway and former President Moi was not amused that Norway had granted him asylum.
Mama Steel jumped into the fray, calling for Koigi’s stoning along with his cronies.
Alternatively, she opined, they should be burned alive for what she termed "heinous crimes". It mattered little that she was unaware why he fled in the first place.
This incident is captured in Koigi’s book, I Refuse to Die: My Journey for Freedom.
On another occasion, Mama Steel was introducing local leaders at some gala or other, just months after the infamous queue-voting elections of 1988. When it was the turn of former Nakuru North MP Mburu Gichua (now deceased), Mama Steel told the gathering: "Na huyu munamunjua sana...ni kiogosi wa maana sana na arishaguo na kura ya mukorongo. (You know this one, he was elected in the mlolongo system of voting).
She was to dominate pages in the press when a bull belonging to her neighbour, a man nicknamed Mkarafuu, jumped over a fence and mounted her cow, prompting her to have the man arrested.
Mkarafuu’s presence in court was in itself a spectacle, for, though moneyed, he was unkempt, untidy and malnourished, sporting mismatched shoes.
In what came to be called the ‘randy bull saga’, the court case raged, with Mama Steel transforming the courtroom into a theatre of the absurd.
Not even Senior Resident Magistrate Charles Rinjeu could suppress peals of laughter when lawyer Ochieng’ Odhiambo cross-examined Mama Steel.
Asked if she knew not that bulls only mount cows when they are on heat, Mama Steel promptly retorted: "Kama ng’ombe ni mhalifu kama mwenyewe, inaweza kupanda wakati yote, si unaona hii ya huyu mutu ilipanda tu! (If a bull is owned by a ruffian, such as this man, it can mount a cow any time, just like it did)."
Asked if she witnessed the incident, she asked him: "Wewe unaweza kukaa hapo kuona hayo maneno? (Would you sit there and watch that kind of thing?)"
As the case dragged, huge crowds would turn up to witness firsthand the altercations.
On another occasion, the political arena was awash with dissidents shortly after the introduction of multi-party politics in 1992 and it was just like Mama Steel to question what security agencies were doing about it. "Na hata hii watu ya fureshi bradi, kwani hawa iko wapi wakati hii yote? (Where is the Special Branch doing about it?)
Special Branch was the precursor of the National Security Intelligence Service, NSIS and were feared, for, unlike the NSIS, they could arrest and even torture suspects. She died in 2000 after a short illness at Pine Breeze Hospital, Nakuru.
