Late Chelagat was a rebel with a cause

By David Ohito

They were the daredevils in the Jomo Kenyatta and Daniel arap Moi regimes in the 1970s and 1980s.

Outspoken, fearless and fiery. Yet among the pack she stood out as the only female voice of dissent.

Philemon Mutai Chelagat was a rebel with a cause. She is dead but her story and history is captured by both historians and archivists.

Historian Charles Hornsby in his book Kenya: A history Since Independence recounts how during the 1974 elections Kenyatta’s cell mate who saved his life in Turkana Paul Ngei was facing trouble.

At a rally, Ngei was quoted saying: “If I am opposed at the polls we as a tribe will have a very bad position in the Government and if I am returned unopposed I will have a better say. Local police advised Ngei’s opponent to stand down as they could not guarantee his security.

His opponent petitioned against the results.

To Ngei’s surprise, the High Court led by Chief Justice James Wicks nullified his election and he was barred from contesting for five years.

This was to be part of Mutai Chelagat’s early problems with the Kenyatta regime as an MP. Kenyatta summoned Attorney General Charles Njonjo to find some way through which Ngei could be pardoned. Within two days, Hornsby says, Njonjo pushed the 15th amendment through the House and permitted the President to pardon election offenders. There were only two dissenting voices in Parliament, George Anyona and Mutai Chelagat. And within days Ngei won the by-election occasioned by his barring from polls. He was reappointed to the Cabinet.

Today, some of the surviving members of the Seven Bearded sisters Senator James Orengo, Abuya Abuya and Koigi Wamere have nostalgic memories of their fallen heroine. They paid tribute to her in style and eulogised one of Kenya’s greatest reform stalwarts of all time.

Literature student

Says Orengo: “I met her at the University of Nairobi (UoN). She was in the Literature Department and I was doing law. Chelagat was very active in literary circles. Alongside authors Taban Lo Lyong and Okot P’Bitek, she was a very voracious reader throughout her life and she would not leave a book and most of the time stayed in house to read books and all kinds history biographies.

“When I was students’ chair at UoN, she became the editor of the University Platform, the university magazine that was sold on the streets of Nairobi. She edited an award-winning edition on police brutality and the way police were behaving at the time. She brought fear out of a lot of people.

From the issue, local press picked up headlines. And there we ran into trouble. We took cover in Dar es Salaam as we monitored the situation back home.”

The University Platform was a hot cake selling for Sh100 in 1972 clandestinely. It was a political moment for the country and as students we were clamoring for change.

Chelagat was later hauled before court and charged with trumped up charges and she was unable to continue serving her electorate effectively. She did her first term as MP and served a prison term too. In 1978 she got re-elected, reaffirming the faith her electorate had in her.

She had been arrested following a meeting of Kanu MPs on October 16, 1975, summoned by Kenyatta and where dissenting MPs were warned to lie low or be crushed. But the MPs addressed the International Press, which published their remarks, and the threats of crushing dissidents by Kenyatta were circulated.

The key suspect according to the State was Chelagat and she was jailed for incitement to violence after calling for the uprooting of sisal plantations. While in jail she was denied visits as was the norm then.

Chelagat had in her politics teamed up with among others Martin Shikuku, Abuya, Abuya, Jean Marie Seroney, Waruru Kanja, Chibule wa Tsuma, Lawrence Sifuna and Mashengu wa Mwachofi. Abuya Abuya recounts how Chelagat mentored them when they were elected in 1978, as first term MPs while she served a second term.

“Chelegat fought against corruption fearlessly during the Kenyatta and Moi regimes. She often took a stand even where many feared. She insisted that things be done the right way, from land to the rights of the poor,” Abuya Abuya says.