Of politics and the health of presidents

Late President Daniel Moi shakes hands with founding President Mzee Jomo Kenyatta. [File, Standard]

The lashes cut through my tiny back. I cringed with each rise and fall of the whip. Several teachers had pinned me down, squeezing my head on to the floor. Mr Kamiti, the school’s official sadist, yelped a loud devilish laughter as he brutally assaulted me. I tried kicking with my tiny feet in vain. It is my screams that must have attracted other teachers who rushed into the staffroom to save me from my tormentors. 

The day had started well. We all gathered inside the classroom ready for the first lesson of the day, mathematics. After waiting for what seemed like eternity, there was consensus that the dreaded mathematics teacher had finally fallen ill or been involved in some accident. He wasn’t coming. I jumped on top of the desk and led the class in a joyous dance.

I froze when my eyes fell at the door and there stood, not just the math’s teacher, but Mr Kamiti. I knew I was dead. 

“I knew we will one day catch this rascal in the act. Today, you will know why they call me Kamiti.” He grabbed me by the neck and led me to the staffroom. Three other teachers pounced on me with blows and kicks. By the time I was rescued , I was a bloodied mess. I have never understood the extreme evil displayed by those teachers at Nakuru’s Bondeni Primary School. However, the brutal encounter with Kamiti and company taught me one lesson, never to celebrate the illness of others. 

Many years later, as a senior reporter, I covered a public rally addressed by Kenya’s second President, Daniel arap Moi. Beautiful songs and traditional dances stirred the crowed into an electric mood. After provincial administrators and politicians had addressed the rally, Moi stood up. He cleared his throat. An eerie silence engulfed the grounds. The President was furious. Then he spoke;

“Some of you are busy peddling lies about my health. Some of you have been dancing, not to entertain me but to celebrate my coming death. Oooh, he has cancer of the throat…oooh he is dying. Are you God? I tell you, you will all die and leave me here.” I had never seen the president in such a foul mood. 

A few days earlier, his head of press Lee Njiru had put the president on phone to talk to me. “Bwana Atemi, here is the President to say jambo to you and confirm that he is well.” Moi laughed and told me: “Hamuwezi niacha nipumzike hata wiki moja jameni?” I responded; “Mtukufu Rais unajua wewe ni mtu wa nguvu na bidii. Wananchi wasipokuona kwa siku nyingi wanakua na wasiwasi.”

“Haya andika uambie dunia yote Moi ako hai na ni mzima. Mungu ananilinda,” he said. 

Before I placed my call to Lee Njiru, my bosses at the Nation Media Group had given me grief. They demanded that I use my sources as a News Editor to “produce the President”. Moi, had ‘gone missing’ for several weeks. The tall, powerful and physically fit president, had never before been out of the public limelight. Since August 1978, when Moi ascended to power, he rarely took a break.

Moi had a function almost every single day. He never missed a church service on Sundays. He remains the most physically fit president Kenya has ever had. Former Vice President Kalonzo Musyoka recalls that Moi was such a heath freak, if you coughed or sneezed violently during cabinet meetings, “he could request you to take leave and return once fully recovered”. 

So, when he went out of public radar for weeks, rumours started circulating about his health and whereabouts. The Moi story came to mind when memes began doing rounds about the health of Dr. William Ruto, Kenya’s fifth president. Despite Ruto telling the media that he had entered into a tough regime of physical workouts and strict diet to stay alert with the difficult job of President, many have, like happened to Moi, continued to wish him the worst. Ruto, like Moi, never partakes of alcohol and never smokes. He also works out regularly. 

Moi’s predecessor, Mzee Jomo Kenyatta, had struggled with many health challenges. However, if I had placed a call to State House and questioned Jomo’s health and whereabouts, I would have been charged with treason. It was then a crime to; “think, imagine, encompass or envisage the death of the president”. Like the kings of yore, the president was a god. He was omnipotent. So, as Jomo silently suffered with his health challenges, Kenyans remained in the dark. 

Jomo preferred wearing open shoes. With swollen feet, he struggled with the excruciating pain that comes from gout attacks. He also lived with heart problems that at one time required open surgery which he declined. However, Jomo remains the most powerful orator in Kenya. His roaring voice and creative use of Kiswahili, always assured Kenyans of his ever-healthy status.  

After the March 1975 murder of politician J.M Kariuki, panicky Cabinet Ministers hurriedly removed flags from their vehicles and fled to the safety of their homes. Since Geoffrey Kareithi, the head of civil service and secretary to the cabinet couldn’t reach any of them, he decided to call the president. The president was unwell and under sedation in Gatundu. “After several days with no improvement in the situation, I asked the doctors who were taking care of him to remove the sedation and report to me when he was able to take my call. I then telephoned the President at Gatundu to tell him he had no government.” 

Kareithi says in his soon to be published memoir ‘Cool under fire’ that at one time, Jomo came to terms with his health challenges.

With his inner circle, Jomo decided to address the issue of his potential successor. Says Kareithi: “We took our best chance for addressing the succession problem that now griped our every waking moment. Two years previously, I had led a small delegation of leaders close to Kenyatta to see Njonjo. I spent two hours explaining to Njonjo why it might be necessary to reconsider the choice of Moi as successor to Kenyatta. Njonjo refused to entertain any such idea. With a similar group, I posed the question to Kenyatta, asking “Who will you leave us with?” We were unable to state who we wanted, because we knew like several others before him, if his name was known as possibility, his life expectancy would be shortened.” 

A week before Jomo died, Kareithi flew to Mombasa for the usual weekly briefing. Over the years, he had formed a routine where he would brief Jomo wherever he was – mostly Mombasa, Nakuru or Gatundu. The briefings would take place once a week unless there was a hot item that could not wait.

“On this day in Mombasa, I could tell the President was not in the best shape to discuss the files I had carried with me. Having worked for the old man for the last 11 years, immediately we exchanged greetings, the President volunteered: “Geoffrey, can’t any of those matters you have wait until the next meeting?” “Of course, they can, Mzee”, was my reply.

“As fate had it, I would be returning to Mombasa the following Tuesday, August 22, 1978, to organise how his body would be flown to Nairobi. This is the one day I had psychologically prepared for the last 10 years.” 

Kareithi goes on to say: “Sometimes in 1968, President Kenyatta had suffered a stroke while in Mombasa and was in a coma for three days. The close shave that year had made me get prepared for the worst as far as Kenyatta was concerned.

Not known to many, as we held our breath and the President lay unconscious at his private residence at the Coast in 1968, we had put in contingency measures for his burial and smooth transition. It is the same contingency measures we would dust up and implement a decade later.” 

After the 1968 incident, Jomo would frequently be indisposed. Whenever he was taken ill, only those required to know got to know about it. “However, for those of us with their hands on the pulse of the nation, we stayed prepared just in case….”

To a small group of us was known the code to use to communicate news of Kenyatta’s death when it happened. “Kenya has closed its eyes”, was the code.” 

By 1977, it was clear that the old man was on his last leg. The government flew in world renowned heart surgeon, Dr Christiaan Barnard, to examine him. His verdict was that the president’s heart was so frail that he needed a pacesetter inserted right away. Jomo vehemently declined. His handlers had previously had a rough time convincing him to use reading glasses. “The idea of a pacesetter would be unthinkable. We never even tried to talk him into it. Quietly, Dr. Barnard told us he doubted Kenyatta would live for another six months.” 

As a precaution, Kareithi instructed two doctors to always be in the president’s convoy whenever he was travelling. The doctors would be dressed in DOs uniform to remain disguised. He also instructed that two nurses be put on night shifts wherever the president was. He further, deployed the Permanent Secretary in the ministry of Health, Dr. Eric Mngola, to personally be the doctor on call at State House. 

Jomo Kenyatta held a luncheon for the country’s ambassadors and High Commissioners abroad who were in the country for their annual briefing. After lunch, Jomo took his guests for a tour of south coast where they were entertained by traditional dancers at Msambweni primary school in Kwale County. Those in attendance would later recall that, Kenyatta had made his trademark call of Harambee! in the loudest voice they had heard. It would be his last Harambee!   

The tiredness Kareithi had noticed in Jomo at State House turned into illness. He advised that the president take an early bed rest. “But the doctor was not unusually alarmed as he had become used to even worse situations when the President would relapse into a coma but still pull through. At about three o’clock in the morning, the two nurses watching on the President were alarmed by his unusual snoring. They woke up the First Lady, Mama Ngina, who instructed them to alert Dr. Mngola and asked for the Coast PC, Mahihu, who lived near State House. Mahihu on his part asked two other Mombasa doctors used to State House emergencies to come by.” 

“One of the doctors embarked on administering First Aid to the President with assistance of the nurses. When the second doctor arrived at about 3.30 am, he went straight for the President’s pulse and then looked up in resignation: “What is it, doctor?” Mahihu asked. “I am sorry the President is no more” was the reply.

There was a brief moment of disorientation for those around the deathbed as they struggled to cope with the enormous reality. When some composure returned, Mahihu asked the two doctors to give him a written note to certify that Kenyatta was indeed, dead. There was a good reason for that: the two nurses assigned to the President as well as Mama Ngina were still hopeful that Kenyatta had simply gone into the usual “blackout” and would come back to life.

As such, Mahihu did not want a situation where he would inform his superiors that Kenyatta was “dead” only for him to ‘resurrect’ after some time. But with a written confirmation from the two professionals, Mahihu felt sufficiently confident to communicate the sad news,” says Kareithi. Eliud Mahihu was the Coast Provincial Commissioner. 

It is not only in Kenya where the health of the president is a serious matter. For presidents all over the world, health can be a medical and political issue. In the US, several presidents have wrestled with nasty health complications. Andrew Jackson, the seventh president of the US took office at 62. He suffered from emotional and physical ailments. During his inauguration, he was awfully thin. His wife had just died of heart attack. Jackson had rotten teeth and failing eyesight. He was also recovering from bullet wounds 

Grover Cleveland, (1893-1897); struggled throughout his life with obesity and gout. He lived with nephritis, inflammation of the kidneys. Grover, underwent surgery to remove tumour in his mouth but ended up losing part of his jaw. Then there was Franklin D. Roosevelt (1933-1945), who at 39, suffered severe polio attack, leading to total paralysis of both legs. The Secret Service did an amazing job of keeping his condition a secret. His wife Eleanor said that the disease was a blessing in disguise because it “gave him strength and courage he had not had before”. Roosevelt invested heavily in polio research. His efforts gave birth to the polio vaccine. 

Mwai Kibaki took over while seated on a wheel chair. Kibaki had survived a nasty road accident in Machakos during the election campaigns. He remained frail and sickly throughout his 10-year tenure. However, Kibaki, unlike Moi, didn’t have a good health record. In 1976, Kibaki’s handlers went into shock when he collapsed in his office. 

Kareithi recalls in his memoir: “One morning, I received the news that the then minister of finance, Mwai Kibaki, had collapsed in his office and been rushed to hospital having suffered a stroke. We consulted amongst ourselves and decided that the risk of him remaining in Nairobi hospital was too great. There were several “Medical agents” there who we knew were capable of anything”. I reached the decision to fly him immediately on an air ambulance to the UK for treatment.” 

After the hospitalisation following the December 2002 road accident, Kibaki took on life slowly. He however suffered a mild stroke once again, necessitating second hospitalisation. Many say that some greedy men close to him took advantage of his frailty to make decisions that almost plunged Kenya into civil war. During his second hospitalisation, The Standard assigned Maina Muiruri and I, to write the story on Treating the President. We spent days combing through records, interviewing experts and then toured the VVIP ward that hosted him as patient number one at the Nairobi Hospital.  

Uhuru Kenyatta became president in 2013. He was ridiculed for his love of the bottle. With a voice almost as powerful as his father’s, he walked through his presidency without a day in official hospitalisation. 

Njiru told a televised session in February 2020, soon after Moi’s demise, that: “Since 1983, I have been counting and he has died 14 times according to the ill will of people.” The media, stands guilty of trying to kill Moi before his time. 

I have refused to speculate over any leader’s health. The best I can do, after my encounter with Kamiti and Moi, is to wish our fifth president, good health, and wisdom to steer the country through murky economic and political waters.