The ‘renegade’ minister who took on tyrannies of a one-party state

Ford Asili officials Kenneth Matiba, Charles Rubia, Martin Shikuku and Kihara Waithaka in February 1994. [Standard]

Veteran politician Charles Wanyoike Rubia, who died yesterday, was the first African mayor of Nairobi.

In the span of his career as a public servant, he rose to become an MP, assistant minister and Cabinet minister before he joined the opposition movement that agitated for multipartyism in the 1990s.