Folks, my conscience is clear; crystal clear.
I won’t stoop low like most would want me to, bow to pressure and poetically eulogize former President Daniel Toroitich Arap Moi using those flattering words and phrases I am seeing all over.
Mr Chronicles Alvan Kinyua, CGP won’t make even the slightest attempt to sugarcoat a story we all know too well. I refuse to join that defeatist bandwagon in the name of giving respect to the dead.
Even in the true African doctrine, which some people are trying to invoke, in their attempts to cleanse Moi, a man is supposed to bury himself while still alive, literary, through his words and actions.
A man is supposed to write his own eulogy while still alive by living a righteous, pious and generally acceptable life so that no one needs to struggle trying to fix their story when they finally die. Moi never did that. He did not even care.
Truth be told, Moi did not live the life we are all trying to cook up.
Yes, Moi was bright. Moi was hardworking and resilient. Moi was a smart politician. Moi gave our school children milk. Moi was generous in many ways (including generosity in leaving his biological footprints all over).
However, all the above few positive traits get easily drowned by his other side. Moi was a great pretender. Moi propagated top notch corruption. Moi robbed this country ruthlessly. Moi plundered our economy. Moi was a mega enemy of democracy. Moi was a master tribalist.
You don’t need to be an eulogies expert to know that, its fruitless to try and sanitize a man who, for quarter a decade, bestrode this country like the proverbial colossus, cementing his imperial rule with an iron fist, meting unfathomable pain and suffering on his critics, at times even death, stifling democracy, fanning ethnic animosity and overseeing the most blatant and shameless economic plunder ever witnessed in independent Kenya. We are still struggling to recover from the vagaries of his rule, decades later.
For a barefooted goat herding son of a peasant, who rose from rags to become the President of Kenya, Daniel Toroitich Arap Moi ought to have done better.
He did not.
Luckily, as is nature, even he who has never submitted to anything, will one day submit to his burial mat; Moi has finally submitted to his. It’s the great equalizing mystery of life.
May The Almighty consider his soul.