Unsung hero: Walking to fight corruption

Jaffer Isaak Sora’s climb from poverty to a successful businessman to a presidential candidate and now a peace ambassador is the stuff good tales are made of

BY Kiundu Waweru

He comes from a minority community and has no roots in riches or royalty, but Jaffer Isaak Sora dines with the mighty. His ambition has driven him from humble beginnings to soaring heights.

In fact, two years ago, Jaffer sought to become the fourth president of Kenya. Never mind that he has never held a position of authority in this country, nor has he done anything exemplary to make him popular.

But Jaffer’s climb from poverty to a successful businessman to a presidential candidate and now a peace ambassador is the stuff good tales are made of.

Military camp

The tale kicks off when the then 14-year-old sneaked into a military camp. He had just graduated from primary school in the dusty pastoral Moyale District, and his young heart told him he needed to seek greener pastures.

At the Moyale military camp, Jaffer got a job as a waiter. Later, he repeated this stunt, this time hiding in sacks in a lorry that landed him in the Garissa military camp. He once again got a job as a waiter.

Jaffer’s confident nature and dare-devil-attitude must have endeared him to military authorities because, he tells us, a Major Muthendu recommended him to the Recruits Training School in Eldoret. After the training he was posted to the Embakasi Garrison in Nairobi.

To those of his age mates who were still herding goats in Moyale, Jaffer seemed to have broken the glass ceiling. But had he?

Taxi driver

“I had this urge to make it bigger in life. It did not help that the Embakasi Garrison neighboured the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport (JKIA). How I wanted to travel in those jets,” he says.

But he was a Standard Eight dropout. So he decided to improve his CV. He enrolled as a private secondary school student and a few years later, sat for his Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education exams, scoring an impressive ‘B’ aggregate grade.

In the army, Jaffer served in Kenya as well as Yugoslavia, in one of the United Nations peace-keeping missions. He quit after ten years of service.

He became a taxi driver at the JKIA, before getting a chance to finally fly, not on an army mission, but on a plane to ‘greener pastures’ in London, where, in a few years. he would make a fortune.

He worked at several jobs, including, once again, as cab driver in London. As part of his mission to prove that it does not matter where you come from, he soon started his own company, J&Z Executive Travel. He also dabbled in the real estate business, later starting a clearing and forwarding company in Mombasa.

“But even while in Europe, I had a soft spot for my country Kenya. I always felt we could do better,” the entrepreneur says.

In 2011, aged 38, Jaffer believed that this country needed a revolutionary ideology, an answer he felt he would provide if Kenyans gave him the ticket to the highest office in the land. He decided to run for president as an independent candidate.

In August 2011, he told the London Evening Standard, “When they ask me if I can be Obama. I say I can be an even better one. I want to lead a revolution that will lead to an evolution. I am not a tribal guy. The tribalism will not end as long as politicians are benefiting from it.”

Having lived in Europe for ten years, Jaffer says he was not aware of the deep-seated tribalism and corruption that was still rampant in Kenya. He blames the moral decay on the leadership: “In Kenya, we do not have leaders but tribal chiefs.”

An incident that occurred in December 2011 seemed to prove his take on tribalism in Kenya: Violence, believed to be politically instigated and tied to the then forthcoming general elections, erupted in Jaffer’s home area of Moyale, killing scores of people.

Presidency

“After the violence, I decided to drop my bid for the presidency,” Jaffer told a room full of dignitaries last weekend at the Nairobi Serena Hotel.

“I realised that Kenya has no ideology, that our leaders are not concerned about uniting the people, but only serving self-interest.”

In January 2012, he founded the Pillar of Hope, a vehicle that he would use to reach and educate Kenyans on the need of living together in peace and harmony despite their ethnicity. Pillar of Hope seeks to raise funds to build schools and health centres in rural backwaters. Top of the list would be rebuilding the Funanyatta Primary School burnt down during the Moyale tribal crashes.

Five months later, in May 2012, when the other presidential candidates hit the campaign trail proper, Jaffer embarked on a more gruelling journey, but whose destination would not be State House.

“As part of my efforts to educate Kenyans on the dangers of tribalism and corruption, I vowed to walk for about 1,400 kilometres, from Mombasa to Moyale.”

He would dub the mission “Walk of my life,” and he has already completed the first leg, having walked from Mombasa to Nairobi, covering almost 500 kilometres. Along the way, Jaffer would divert from the main road, and visit villages.

“I spoke with the people on the road and in the villages about my mission. I was touched by the poverty I experienced on the way, as well as the optimism of Kenyans,” he says.

At Serena, Jaffer showed a documentary of the walk, showing the challenges he had faced, including an accident and the threats facing wildlife in the Tsavo National Park.

He hosted ambassadors, and former Deputy Speaker of the National Assembly Farah Maalim among other dignitaries in a fundraiser to raise money for the second leg.

He raised 9.2 million, and is planning another fundraiser in Dubai in August, and another in October in London. He will start the second leg of his walk in November, and hopes to raise 100 million to build a state-of-the-art school for the “orphans of war” in the North Eastern region.

“My call is to educate Kenyans, and after I achieve this goal, then maybe I will run for president again. But we must first do away with tribalism; only then will Kenya and Africa develop.”

Jaffer lives in Mombasa with his wife and three children.