Former President Jomo Kenyatta’s son kept off limelight

By  MWANIKI MUNUHE

NAIROBI, KENYA: President Uhuru Kenyatta’s early life is perhaps what remains  a puzzle to many people who have interacted with him to date.

Although he is no ordinary person, being the son of founding President Jomo Kenyatta and having had absolute access to sophisticated life, he preferred to lead an ordinary life.

The Standard on Sunday spoke to different people who interacted with President Uhuru in his early life before and after he joined  politics.

One such person is William Osewe, popularly known as Kosewe because of his association with a prominent Nairobi restaurant called Ronalo Kosewe.

Osewe told The Standard on Sunday that when he started the hotel business in Kaloleni in the mid-1980s, Uhuru, then a youthful and upcoming politician, was one of the frequent visitors to his joint.

According to him, Uhuru would come in a group of young men and that he did not like a lot of attention.

Special attention

“I remember when I started my business, it was housed in a humble place. Uhuru would come with friends to my place like any other customer. The only thing we noted with him was that he did not want special attention. He preferred to be treated like everybody else and he was certainly a very easy going customer,” he said.

Osewe restaurant has since grown to be a prominent joint and has since moved its location from Kaloleni to the City Centre. Similarly, it took several weeks for Mama Njeri, a meat market operator at Kariakor market in in the mid 80s to know that one of her frequent customers then was a son to the founding President Jomo Kenyatta.

He would come over lunch hour in a group of two or three young men and they would take their seats waiting to be served like everybody else. Often, she said, he would pay the bills of other people.

For Mama Njeri, who has since left the restaurant to be run by her daughters, it was his generosity that that drove her to wanting to find out who this person was and what his interest was, only to find that he was Uhuru Kenyatta, the son of the former President.

“I would have expected a man of Uhuru’s status to enjoy tight security. At that time, we knew sons and daughters from rich families did not hang out in ordinary places. But Uhuru was one of our customers. He would get offended if you attempted according him special treatment. He wanted to be treated like everybody else,” she said while speaking to The Standard on Sunday.

One of the people who accompanied Uhuru to Kariakor market was his political strategist James Magana-Muigai.

Mingled with crowds

Muigai, who today serves as a business consultant for the Kenyatta family business interest told The Standard on Sunday: “We would drive straight to Mama Kamande’s meat joint, join the queue and sit waiting for our turn to be served. We would sit on the wooden benches just like all the other customers, expecting no special attention. Many times very few people would recognise Uhuru, and he wanted it to be like that, to mingle with the crowds. If he found the place full he would place an order and sit in the car to eat his portion of nyama choma,” he said.

Other people who interacted with the young Kenyatta were his employees when he used to run Wilham Company Limited, which was situated in Nairobi’s Corner House.

Wilham was a French beans export company although it had interest in other horticultural products, among other things. Joseph Wanakeya, then 23 years said he met Uhuru in Kaloleni in 1986 while he was presiding over a Harambee in aid of Kaloleni football club.

After a short interaction with him, he asked Uhuru whether he could find him a job because had an ailing father he needed to support yet he did not have a source of income. Uhuru offered him a job in Wilham Company Limited.

Wanakeya narrated how they would drive with Uhuru to Meru to purchase French beans for export and would also give farmers and some of his workers small loans to support their farming businesses.