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He bust into national limelight as the defence lawyer for a fire-spitting MP accused of attempting to overthrow the government of Mzee Jomo Kenyatta on April 8, 1971.
Samuel Mutua Kivuitu, then a dashing lawyer and MP for Parklands (now Westlands), represented Yatta MP Gideon Mutiso who pleaded guilty before acting senior resident magistrate, SK Sachdeva, after one day of hearing.
Mutiso was accused together with 13 others, including Chief Justice Kitili Mwendwa and Chief of Defence Staff and Major General JM Ndolo who held 12 goat-eating sessions to plot the coup in which Uhuru Kenyatta’s father was to be hanged for corruption and political assassinations.
The plotters were charged with sedition (not treason), which is a capital offence. The Deputy Public Prosecutor James Karugu (later Attorney-General) described Mutiso as “the pivot around which the whole conspiracy to overthrow the Kenya government revolved.”
Mwendwa and Ndolo were fired from their jobs while Mutiso, who pleaded to the president, “I have come to you Mzee as your lost son,” was jailed for nine years.
Kivuitu, an alumnus of Machakos Boys, Makerere and the University of Dar-es-Salaam, had been a State counsel and a resident magistrate after independence, on his way to being one of two non-Kikuyu MPs in Nairobi. The other was Yunis Ali, the MP for Lang’ata and the only Nubian legislator to date.
Kivuitu lost to Wachira Waweru with five votes in the acrimonious 1974 elections in which three quarters of lawmakers lost their seats.
He lost again in the snap elections in 1983 and the 1988 mlolongo elections — and retreated to his struggling private practice and fish and chips outlet in the city.
He was plucked from obscurity by retired President Daniel arap Moi who appointed him deputy head of the defunct Electoral Commission headed by the Zacchaeus Chesoni for the 1992 General Election.
Kivuitu replaced Chesoni to head the Commission that oversaw the 1997 elections, the 2005 Constitutional Referendum and the fiasco that was the infamous 2007 General Election when retired President Mwai Kibaki re-appointed him.
Bungling that election was blamed on Kivuitu’s nonchalant disposition and reckless utterances, including confessing that, “I don’t know who won the elections,” even after declaring Kibaki the winner over challenger Raila Odinga.
This was at the height of political tensions, precipitating the ensuing post-election violence that resulted in the death of 1,300 Kenyans and displacement of over 600,000 people.
For the unrepentant but divorced father of seven, it was the ignominious end to a public career before succumbing to throat cancer at Nairobi’s MP Shah hospital on February 25, 2013, at the age of 74.
