When the government organised its demonstration

Police gather during demonstrations on July 12, 2023. [Edward Kiplimo, Standard]

There comes a time when the tail wags the dog and the government has to organise its own demonstrations to counter popular dissent from a citizenry, boiling for a revolution.

Such was the situation in Kenya in March 1975 when popular Nyandarua North MP JM Kariuki was assassinated. Parliament was in revolt as hotheaded politicians took the government head-on.

In the streets, Kenyans were demonstrating. And at a time when beleaguered President Jomo Kenyatta needed all the support and strength of steering the country which was on the brink of an abyss, he was bedridden in his home.

Fearing the aftereffects of a revolution that was brewing in Nairobi, Kenyatta’s Cabinet ministers quietly removed their flags from their posh ministerial limousines and retreated to their rural areas.

Government business came to a standstill as Secretary to the Cabinet, G K Kariithi could not contact the ministers for a meeting. It is at this point that he called Gatundu, only to be told Kenyatta was incoherent as he was heavily sedated to reduce pain.

Kariithi told the doctors to neutralise the sedatives so that Kenyatta could be lucid. When the head of state was strong enough, Kariithi informed him; “Your ministers have fled their offices and removed flags from their vehicles, meaning you have no government at the moment.”

Kenyatta ordered the Cabinet meeting be fixed for the following morning at 10am. A limping Kenyatta arrived on time and held the shortest meeting ever.

He confronted the ministers thus: “I am informed you have quit government, vacated your offices and removed flags from your vehicles. Now I want to hear it for myself that you are no longer in government.”

In the next 10 minutes starting with his Vice President, Daniel Arap Moi, Kenyatta posed: “Are you in the government or not?” When all answered in the affirmative, he dismissed the meeting.

Then the government organised its own demonstration in Nairobi. Recruits from the Armed Forces Training School were hastily rounded for a pass-out parade at State House Nairobi before they were unleashed on the streets where they marched around the city before they ultimately congregated along present-day Moi Avenue from where Kenyatta took their salute from the balcony of the Kenya Cinema building.

It was quite a cinema as the president witnessed a flypast by the Kenya Air Force. But even as Kenyatta was demonstrating his stranglehold of the security apparatus, in Parliament his government was under a serious onslaught.

Kamukunji MP Maina Wanjigi denigrated Kenyatta’s as a government of thugs and killers while Butere MP Martin Shikuku saw JM’s killing as a case of the hyenas which had initially eaten Pio Gama Pinto and later Tom Mboya now eating one of their own.