No August passes without Kenyans remembering how the country irrevocably changed that Sunday morning on August 1, 1982, after misguided junior officers of the Kenya Air Force executed an abortive coup against the government of retired President Daniel arap Moi.
More than 100 soldiers and 200 civilians died, including two (West) Germans, an Englishwoman, and a Japanese male tourist and his child. Two Asian women committed suicide after being raped. In just 12 hours of madness, the economic damage pecked Sh500 million, not chicken feed in 1982.
The coup’s mastermind, 29-year-old Senior Private Hezekiah Ochuka Rabala, and his henchmen were from the Kenya Air Force, Eastleigh and the Embakasi Airbase. The tipsy coup plotters were smoked out by 30 crack shot officers from Kahawa Garisson led by Major General Mahmoud Mohammed, later Chief of General Staff. But it wasn’t until Lt Gen John Sawe, then Army Commander and Deputy Chief of General Staff, ordered the communication facilities at the Eastleigh Airbase destroyed using choppers, did the coup totally collapse.
Without communication lines, Ochuka’s coup bid came to monumental grief. Ochuka and co-conspirator, 33-year-old Pancras Oteyo Okumu commandeered Nick Leshan, then the Air Transport Major, to fly them in a Buffalo aircraft to Tanzania. Leshan later retired as Vice-Chief of the Defence Forces.
After the abortive coup, the Kenya Air Force was disbanded and renamed ‘82 Air Force. Eastleigh Airbase became Moi Airbase on August 22, 1982. Nanyuki Airbase, home of the fighter wing, became Laikipia Airbase. The Air Force uniform and flag also changed as did the motto, from ‘Twatumika Tukiwa Angani’ to ‘Tuko Imara Angani.’
READ MORE
Safety is the implicit licence to operate in aviation
Trump call for nuclear tests sows confusion
Two Air Force officers die after military aircraft crashes in Kwale
While Kenya Air Force was formed by an Act of Parliament on June 1, 1964, the ‘82 Air Force was formed on political whims and ensuring military circumstances and with repercussions that will become clear at the tail end of this piece.
In the commemorative book, Kenya Air Force Story 1964-2014, published in 2014 to commemorate the 50 year anniversary, we are informed that the ‘82 Air Force reverted to Kenya Air Force after a case of ‘theft by servant.’
Captain Geoffrey Murugi had been charged with stealing over Sh500,000 as paymaster at Moi Airbase between 1991 and 1992.
But the Court Marshal trying him became a cropper after his lawyers, Kauma Mussilli and Milton Imanyara, argued that a Court Marshal in Kenya only tried soldiers belonging to the Kenya Air Force, Kenya Navy and the Kenya Army under the Armed Forces Act. Captain Murugi belonged to ‘82 Air Force which under law, did not exist. The Court Marshall, after a lot of back and forth, still found the lawyer’s argument over Kenya Air Force and ‘82 Air Force ‘frivolous’ and Captain Murugi thus ‘guilty.’
The matter went to the High Court where Justice Akilano Akiwumi ruled that the Court Marshal was illegal on April 6, 1993.
To avoid such future cases, and to skirt round a convoluted parliamentary process of re-enacting ‘82 Air Force (which soldiers hated) into law, it reverted back to Kenya Air Force complete with its beloved blue uniform.
Captain Murugi died mysteriously in prison after Justice Samuel Bosire sentenced him to three years in the slammer, but his name will go down the annals of Kenya’s military history.
