Remembering John Maina Kamangara, Nakuru's firebrand politician who rubbed Moi the wrong way

The late Nakuru politician John Maina Kamangara- the man once accused of harvesting retired president Moi's wheat. The late Kamangara died in 2001 aged 51 and was buried at the Nakuru North Cemetery on September 11 that year. In his palmy days, Kamangara was not afraid of ruffling feathers with the powers that be during the single-party days in the 1980s and early 1990s when his frequent brusque brushes with law enforcers, arrests, prosecutions, and detentions left many mouths gaping and wondering whether he was an 'enemy of the State'.

Kamangara, who had studied theology in Tanzania, had joined politics on the back of chairing the Rongai Kimangu Farmers Company in the mid-1970s when he became a Kanu youth winger.