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Anyona's Chequered Political Career

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Published on Tuesday, 12 June 2007 09:51

He was a consistently independent politician and a fierce critic of the establishment. Early in 1997, Kitutu Masaba MP George Anyona called the Press to the crumbling Matigari House at Nairobi's Dagoretti Corner for the launch of a monthly newsletter, the Citizen. He also announced that henceforth, the building would serve as the headquarters of his Kenya Social Congress.

It was at the unpretentious Mutugi's Bar and Restaurant in the same building that in July 1990, Mr Anyona and three associates - university dons Prof Walter Oyugi and Mr Ngotho wa Kariuki and a little-known political activist and former Embu Kanu branch official Augustine Njeru Kathangu - were picked up by Special Branch officers while having an extended sundowner, and arraigned on the most ridiculous accusations of plotting to overthrow the government.

At the end of one of Kenya's most intensely watched political cases ever - a marathon trial lasting six months - the four were jailed for seven years each by Nairobi senior resident magistrate Francis Mabele on charges of holding a meeting with seditious intentions and possessing seditious and proscribed publications.

The "Anyona Four" served less than a year of their terms before being released on bail pending appeal. When the appeals eventually came up, the State did not offer opposition and Mr Anyona and his co-accused remained free.When he first stepped out of Kamiti Maximum Security Prison, Mr Anyona was driven straight to his fourth-floor flat at the Nairobi's Madaraka Estate where he would stay cooped up for days receiving well-wishers and political strategists of the nascent opposition keen to have him on board.

Among those who visited him was the "father" of the Opposition and Ford Kenya chairman, Jaramogi Oginga Odinga. Mr Odinga, the octogenarian, could not manage the four flights of stairs and Mr Anyona refused to walk down to meet him.He had come out of jail to find himself elected in absentia as the Kisii branch chairman of Ford Kenya. But he rejected the post, forming his one-man Kenya Social Congress on which he would launch his presidential bid.It was a lone crusade that would get nowhere, but it exemplified the fierce independence noted ever since Mr Anyona distinguished himself as the "one-man backbench" during his first stint in Parliament from 1974 to his first stint in detention in 1977.

By the time Mr Anyona died in a car accident on Tuesday night, he was not just a loner, as he had always been, but a lonely man.Little had been heard of him since, in ailing health, he lost the Kitutu Masaba Parliamentary seat at the 2002 elections. He had also drifted away from many of the political associates he had gained over the years, including his jailhouse colleagues from that fateful night at Mutugi's bar.

Mr Anyona was an enigma that few could understand. He was a fierce critic of the establishment during the Kenyatta years, when he was first detained after an altercation in Parliament with Attorney-General Charles Njonjo. He was freed when President Moi came to power, but remained a political pariah, earning himself a second stint in detention without trial in 1982 after linking up with Mr Odinga to explore the formation of an opposition party.

One result of the abortive move was that Mr Moi moved with alacrity to ram through Section 2A of the constitution making Kanu the sole legal political party.Kenya had been just a de facto one-party state since Mr Odinga's Kenya People's Union was proscribed by Kenyatta in 1969.

Released from detention in 1984, he found himself expelled from Kanu and all avenues to political participation sealed. Even attempts to join trade union politics were blocked, as was a 1988 attempt to vie for Speaker of the National Assembly. At the same time, Mr Anyona firmly rebuffed entreaties to join the nascent opposition starting to sprout from radical University of Nairobi lecturers and student activists.

When that opposition took the form of clandestine underground movements and the spread of critical anti-government pamphlets, he kept his distance. In the late 1980s when outspoken churchmen like the late Bishop Alexander Muge, the late Bishop Henry Okullu, Rev Timothy Njoya and others took the overt cudgels against excesses of the one-party regime, Mr Anyona preferred not to join in.

And neither did he join in when the growing agitation took the form of political organisation once former Cabinet ministers Kenneth Matiba and Charles Rubia openly took up the struggle for a multiparty system. Hence the irony that when Mr Anyona was arrested in the July 1990 crackdown on multiparty advocates, he was outside the growing circle of politicians, activists and lawyers (Matiba, Rubia, Odinga, Raila Odinga, Paul Muite, James Orengo, Gitobu Imanyara, Gibson Kamau Kuria, et al) planning Saba Saba - a public rally for July 7 set for the Kamukunji grounds to formally take the campaign to the public.

Nevertheless, he was keeping a close watch on unfolding events and evidently plotting his options. One of the "seditious" documents he was accused of possessing was a draft manifesto for a political party, the Kenya National Congress. When he came out of jail, he tried to register the KNC, only to find that the name had been taken by another political party. Hence the Kenya Social Congress.

Having spurned entreaties from the mainstream Opposition, he ran on the KSC ticket in 1992, and easily regained the parliamentary seat he last occupied on his first detention in 1977, although a presidential bid on the fringe ticket was a non-starter. On his first day in the Seventh Parliament in January 1993, Mr Anyona displayed that he had lost none of the spark of old. He held up the election of the Speaker with numerous objections to the presence in the Chamber of "strangers".

Eager to beef up its numbers, the government had overlooked the fact that a few Kanu MPs whose unopposed election had been challenged in court, were yet to be gazetted. Technically, Mr Francis Lotodo, Mr Willy Kamuren and others were not yet MPs. Until the court injunction barring their gazettement was lifted, they could not be sworn in as MPs and could therefore not participate in the election of a Speaker. When his objections were overruled by superior Kanu numbers, Mr Anyona stalked out of Chambers. The next time he appeared, he was challenged by Speaker Francis ole Kaparo on his "unparliamentary" attire - a Mao-style collarless tunic instead of a suit, shirt and tie as prescribed.

Mr Anyona put on a formidable argument and, finally, the Speaker agreed with his argument that the Standing Orders do allow for "acceptable" traditional dress.

In November 1996, Mr Raila Odinga walked into the Chambers in a collarless Jonas Savimbi-style tunic he favoured. On being alerted by Mr Sumbeiywo, the Speaker ordered Mr Odinga out for being improperly dressed. Shortly afterwards, Mr Anyona walked in, and another MP, Mr Awino Acholla, questioned the double standards. When Mr Anyona protested on being sent out, pointing out that he had dressed in that fashion for the past four years, Mr Kaparo said that he had never spotted the breach of dress rules. The following week, however, Mr Anyona and many other members appeared in what they considered "acceptable traditional dress", basically Mao-style tunics or Kaunda suits, and Mr Kaparo preferred never again to spot the breach.

Mr Anyona's contribution to the Kenyan Parliament, however, is not just in the unofficial relaxation of the dress code. In his first stint, he distinguished himself as a fearless crusader for the rule of law and against corruption. On his second stint with the comeback of multipartyism, he was the acknowledged expert in the House on parliamentary procedures. But it was also in that Seventh Parliament that Mr Anyona started progressively mellowing. While he stood head and shoulders above most of his Opposition colleagues in understanding how to exploit rules and procedures to the maximum, he also tended to operate like a one-man band.

He treated Opposition initiatives with disdain, and progressively started using his considerable skills and talents to the advantage of the Kanu side. Mr Anyona's crowning moment came towards the end of 1997 when the country seemed on the verge of a melt-down. A year earlier, a group of lawyers, academics, clergy and other activists led by the likes of Prof Kivutha Kibwana, Dr Willy Mutunga, Mr Davinder Lamba, Dr Gibson Kamau Kuria and the Rev Timothy Njoya had started an initiative to force through constitutional reforms.

They started with the publication of an alternative constitution, followed by a series of forums which were to evolve into an "independent" Constitutional Assembly. As the initiative gathered momentum, the mainstream Opposition leaders, Mr Mwai Kibaki, Mr Michael Wamalwa, Mr Raila Odinga, Mr James Orengo and others joined in. Then the campaign moved from the Limuru Conference Centre and Ufungamano House to the streets of Nairobi in the form of what came to be popularly known as mass action.

When the demonstrations and brutal clashes with police threatened general disorder, President Moi moved in. He sought dialogue with religious leaders to calm things down down, and then moved Parliament to "take over" the reform agenda. The result was the formation of the Inter-Parties Parliamentary Group, with Mr Anyona as secretary. In quickstep as the 1997 elections approached, Parliament enacted many of the constitutional and legislative measures being demanded by the activists.

The man at the core of it all was Mr Anyona, who took full advantage of his position as IPPG secretary and his mastery of parliamentary procedure to push through amendments even Moi would not have envisaged. After the "minimal" constitutional reforms of 1997 followed by peaceful elections, in which Mr Anyona easily retained his seat but flopped at the presidential elections, he went into a steep decline. Whereas with the IPPG he was seen as an honest broker, continuing wrangling over the reform package in the Eighth Parliament saw him firmly on the Kanu side.

He was also slowly losing all his old allies. Already, he had badly fallen out with the rest of the "Anyona Four" particularly Mr Kathangu who had just been elected the MP for Runyenjes and was striving to establish himself as a firebrand parliamentarian. The battery of lawyers led by Mr Muite, who had volunteered their services in his 1990-91 defence, had long given up on him. He had also fallen out badly with Nyaribari Chache MP Simeon Nyachae, who was believed to have played a key rule in securing his release from jail as part of the bargain for remaining with Kanu at the 1992 elections. Mr Anyona was also not seeing eye-to-eye with most of the Kisii MPs who were lining up behind Mr Nyachae.

By the time of the 2002 elections, Mr Anyona was a lonely figure. Hampered by ill-health, politically isolated and leading a one-man party at a time when alliances were all the rage, he had no chance of retaining his parliamentary seat. Save for occasional statements - in March he harshly criticised the salary rise for MPs and last month he came out critical of a Kisii leaders' forum convened by Mr Nyachae, little has been heard of him since. Yet few would doubt that in is heyday, Mr Anyona made a solid mark.