Chapter Nine.
Nairobi, 1990; Arusha, Tanzania; 1991-1992.
“Ha, ha, Petey, you wicked boy!” she gasped, as we dipped and whirled to the scratchy 45 on my record player. We were “partying” in my basement flat in Chiromo. The music was benga, Kenyan city music with rural antecedents. By 1990, benga was still popular, but old-fashioned. The catchy tune to which we were dancing was by a band known as Kapere Jazz.
What was remarkable about this scene was that, whereas the music was of Luo origin, my partner was an ethnic Kalenjin. The dazzling Alfreda arap Kipsang, was as tall as myself, about 1.8 metres, but with the round face and slender wrists and ankles of her own nationality.
When the record ended, “Freddie” replaced it in its jacket and turned off the record player. When she saw my look of disappointment, she made a moue, and said, “Don’t pout, Petey! Why don’t we do the horizontal dance for a while?” Which we did.
As you may have anticipated, Reader, it was Freddie Kipsang who introduced me not only to hitherto half-known pleasures, but to dangerous politics. During those months, in 1990 and 1991, she brought me along to clandestine meetings of several Kenyan insurrectionist groups, all of them involved in violent protests over the election fraud of 1991. One such group, led by traditional healer, Swaleh Salim bin Alfan, can be regarded as latter-day Mau Mau. For instance, the oathing rituals of bin Alfan’s group included cutting with razors, and they were conducted beneath a sacred baobab tree.
Freddie also introduced me to the “Saba Saba,” which, as I later learned, was part of a network that extended across east and central Africa (including Ngongo’s MPLN), and of which Mr. Eliyahu Josephai was a leading supporter. On July 7, 1990, she brought me to a stirring mass pro-democracy rally that later became the basis of the Kenyan national holiday, Saba Saba Day. Amidst the speechifying and the milling crowds that day, I had a glimpse of the beating and arrest of Luo leader, Raila Odinga. The impression this rally made upon me would be reinforced by the mass demonstrations I witnessed in South Africa a few years later.
The previous month, in June of 1990, with the coveted degree in hand (B.A. Global Studies, Hons.), I had been planning to return to Ngongo, where my uncle, the hotelier, had secured a job interview for me with the ministere des Affaires etrangeres [“Ministry of Foreign Affairs”], for a position as translator. However, since Mr. J.’s largesse had enabled me to accumulate some small savings, I changed my mind, deciding instead to spend a couple of months (which turned into four years!) traveling. To stretch my small store of money, whenever possible I intended to use inexpensive public conveyances, such as matatus [passenger vans] and mammy wagons [trucks converted to buses].
Alfreda (“Freddie”) arap Kipsang (1)
I can only hope that, unlike those Greek goddesses who are said to have lured heroes to their doom, I have not lured this fine boy to his! Even by bringing him to Saba Saba, I may have stoked the fires of insurrection in Pierre.
As for my own path in life, it was set before my birth. In the course of a 1964 land dispute, two of my paternal uncles, having belonged to the Kenya African Democratic Union (KADU), were both murdered. Born three years later, I grew up in a home that was wracked by bitterness. I was nine years old when our own group, the Kalenjin, came to power, in the person of Daniel Arap Moi, who succeeded to the Presidency after the death of Jomo Kenyatta. Even then, the Kipsang habit of defiance precluded us from enjoying our turn at the trough. While I was yet a teenager, and Moi had evolved into a dictator, my participation in the failed coup of 1982 led me to join the exiled Mwakenya. In the eighteen ensuing years, I have remained a revolutionary Socialist.
And now I have lured –- yes, lured -- this Acholi boy from backward Ngongo to follow in my footsteps. I have just sent him on his way, under full sails, to meet up with our affiliate, the Tanzania Youth Democratic Movement (TYDM). In my defense, I can only say that Petey has been the one who fanye uke mtamu: he makes my vagina sweet. Oh, that I had kept him with me for a little longer! May we meet again! And if ever I decide to take a husband…
My first intended stops would be a pair of neighbouring east African nations. My third-year studies had included a course called “Contemporary African Economic History,” which added to what I had previously learned in my Land and Politics (LAP) class and from Emmanuel Juma, the cartoonist, about Julius Nyerere and Tanzanian land ownership. The Instructor mentioned, in passing, the existence of groups in Tanzania that were resistant to mandatory collectivization. A visit to this country would allow me to meet some of these people, and to witness, first-hand, the benefits and drawbacks of Ujamaa.
Contemporary African Economic History had also familiarized me with the work of Nyerere’s Zambian counterpart, Kenneth Kaunda. We studied Kaunda’s land policies, which seemed somewhat more nuanced than Nyerere’s. By observing conditions in both countries, I could now “compare and contrast,” a methodological mantra at U. of N.
A second reason Zambia drew me (theoretically, at least) was its continued reliance on copper, which, of course, had personal meaning. I was curious as to whether Kaunda’s nationalization of that industry meant that the lives of miners (like my dad) had improved since the bad old days of the concessionaires. In the event, however, I never set foot in this country.
In Tanzania, I suppose I saw what I had expected to see. In the year, or so, that I wound up spending there, I traveled from town to town and district to district, making many local stops. One such stop will be worth stopping for, at this juncture in my narrative. In a manner of speaking, the stop involved the well-known practice of lobbyists across the globe, of “wining and dining.”
Prior to this, the political pattern I had observed in Tanzania was that educated, urban dissidents were dissatisfied with the pace of change since Independence, whereas the peasants were more hopeful, although they were also backward in their thinking. As mentioned, I had already begun to believe that the backwardness of people like my own family and age mates back in Ngongo represented a serious obstacle to radical change.
Tanzania added complications to this question. As Nyerere and other progressive leaders had articulated, one basis for optimism was that traditional land ownership among many African ethnicities was already communal. On the other hand, many of the underlying concepts of classic Socialism, such as the class struggle, and the expectation of the “withering away of the State,” were totally alien to hidebound sections of the African populace.
The complex question of what makes insurrectionist movements viable is one that I have never fully answered. For example, the Mau Mau, who enlisted the services of mungo mugo wa ita [“witch doctors”], and whose oathing rituals included animal sacrifice and the drinking of blood, were ultimately successful, were they not? And the same group made an impression that has lingered well into our new century. For the leader of Mungiki, a contemporary insurrectionist group in Kibera, in Nairobi, one Ibrahim Ndura Waruinge, is none other than the grandson of a famed Mau Mau leader. In June 2000, several Mungiki leaders publicly converted to Islam, apparently for reasons of strategy, rather than of belief. Has Islam replaced Marxism as sub-Saharan Africa’s imported ideology of choice?
Of course, throughout his life, Julius Nyerere was, himself, a devout Catholic. This, despite the fact that “the schoolmaster” could not have been ignorant of a particularly fraught episode in east African church history, which is also relevant to my point about clashing belief systems. Kenya’s “clitorectomy crisis” of 1929 pitted Christian churches and missions against traditional Kikuyu and Maasai religious and cultural authorities. The latter were attempting to uphold the custom of what is today referred to (correctly) as “female genital mutilation.” The outcome of that conflict was the growth -- with the consent of colonial authorities -- of independent Christian churches in Kenya, which countenanced the continuation of this morally repugnant and life-endangering traditional custom. To be fair, Nyerere’s own Catholic sect was, in this case, on the side of the angels. But still… Ah, progress! Ah, syncretism!
As hinted, among my Tanzanian destinations was Arusha. Three years before my birth (1967), that city had been the site of the eponymous Declaration that laid down the basic tenets of the Tanzanian variant of African Socialism –- of Ujamaa. Twenty-five years later, in September 1992, when I visited Arusha, my itinerary would also, of course, include that nearby celebrated tourist destination, the fabled Mount Kilimanjaro.
The main purpose of my visit to Arusha was to make contact with members of the Tanzania Youth Democratic Movement (TYDM), a banned militant group currently based in U.K., which Freddy Kipsang had suggested I contact. The TYDM was of special interest to me, because they were said to combine Zanzibari irredentism with cries for land reform, and with militant Islam. As such, TYDM militancy might represent another important footnote, at least, in my understanding of what made insurrectionist amalgams viable.
TYDM had among its antecedents the drolly named “Hehe Wars” and the Maji-Maji uprising. Both were turn-of-the- century insurrections against German colonizers. The issues included taxation and forced labor, and the methods of resistance included traditional “war medicines.” Their descendant, the TYDM, was concerned with similar issues, but without the juju.
Thus far, my efforts to make contact with them had been fruitless, but Freddie had given me an Arusha phone number to try. When I reached the city (by mammy wagon), as soon as I checked into my student hostel, and before I even went upstairs to my room, I used the public phone in the lobby to dial the number. My call was connected on the first ring.
“Ujamaa,” said a strong contralto voice. “Who is calling, please?” I stated my name and said I was calling at the suggestion of “Professor Thomas Kiprotich.” (Freddie had asked me not to use her real name on the telephone.) The fib seemed to work or, at least, my interlocutor’s voice immediately softened. “Yes, please, Mr. Tshombe. (No relation, I presume?) What can I do for you today, ndugu?”
Understanding that she had called me “comrade,” or “brother-in-arms,” I replied in kind, using the female form of the Kiswahili term. “Many thanks, dada.” I proceeded to tell her more about myself, and what I hoped to learn from her and her comrades. I also told her that, if possible, I wished to combine education with a bit of tourism, a visit to the famous mountain.
“Very interesting. Can you meet me at the bus depot in Moshi tomorrow morning at ten? If you leave Arusha by eight, you should easily arrive in time. I will be there before you, so look for a small red car near the entrance gate.” Then, she laughed in a way that sounded satirical. “Your itinerary sounds ambitious, Mr. Tshombe. I assume that, like an American traveler, you have allocated but half a day to complete your political education and to ascend Africa’s tallest mountain.”
I laughed, and replied in the same vein. “Oh, no, Miss Bila Kujulikana [“Miss Anonymous”]. “My time tomorrow is completely open, but if you, yourself, anticipate a busy day, we can limit ourselves to a stroll at the base of the mountain, and you can, perhaps, tell me one or two salient facts about Tanzania’s political situation.”
She laughed again. “Tomorrow at ten, then, Pierre?”
“Yes, ten, Bila.”
Climbing the stairs to my small room, I unpacked, used the communal shower down the hall, and ate some of my provisions. I spent the remainder of the day wandering around the pleasant town and anticipating the morrow. Would this charming TYDM person try to seduce or, perhaps, to kidnap me? And why had she directed me to travel to Moshi by public transport, instead of offering me a lift? Oh, well, mine not to reason why.
The Piker Press moderates all comments.
Click here for the commenting policy.