Uhuru Kenyatta owes a lot to his name. Less than a year after entering politics, the 42-year-old son of Kenya’s founding father will fight the presidential election next month for the party that has ruled for almost 40 years.
Sharing Kenyatta’s car on the campaign trail through central Kenya, his family’s tribal homeland, gives an opportunity to see the palpaple power of the name.
This is staunch opposition country yet the villagers chant it passionately, many of the elderly with tears in their eyes.
Uhuru, which means freedom in Swahili, was the rallying cry of Jomo Kenyatta, Kenya’s revered independence leader. Kenyatta Jnr has taken the longer version uhuru na kazi (freedom and work) — as his slogan.
But if he is popular, his party, the Kenyan Africa National Union (Kanu), is not. In the 24 years of President Daniel arap Moi’s rule Kenya has become one of the world’s most corrupt countries, according to the watchdog Transparency International, and Kenyans have grown much poorer.
Moi is constitutionally obliged to step aside on December 27, but many Kenyans believe he is planning to rule on through Kenyatta and say the fact that two of his sons are standing for the first time proves it.
A recent opinion poll gave Kenyatta less than 30% of the vote in a straight fight with the main opposition candidate, Mwai Kibaki.
He is trying to change minds, speaking at more than a dozen small rallies a day: from his open-top car at cross-roads, from rickety platforms on village greens.
He is earnest and entertaining, skillful in the use of Swahili’s rhetorical pauses and stutters, and equally fluent in English, his preferred language, and Kikuyu, that of his tribe.
”How can a house be ruled by two husbands?” he asks, dismissing the suggestion that he will become Moi’s pawn. ”Two men cannot sit together on one chair.”
Despite their invariably rousing welcome, the crowds do not seem convinced. When he refers to Moi by name — even to dissociate himself from the president — they often fall silent, apparently too respectful of Kenyatta to jeer.
He is similarly burdened by the past when outlining his policies. ”We need fundamental change to the way we do business, something completely new, to get Kenya out of its present state,” he says, though it is his party that has put it there.
Kenyatta says he wants devolution, ”to remove the power of decision-making on contracts and numerous other things from the hands of one or two senior government officials”.
He promises to rebuild the ruined infrastructure by enticing back the donors driven off by corruption, and to revive the economy with direct foreign investment.
He says he will dismantle the patronage system that has landed Kenya with tens of thousands of unqualified, or non-existent, civil servants.
”Those who do not measure up will face the sack.” He promises to get two anti-corruption measures designed by donors, and long delayed by the government, adopted. He says he will declare his considerable wealth (another legacy of his father’s political career), as one of the Bills requires.
Kenyatta asserts that there have been ”no guarantees whatsoever” that the economic crimes of Moi’s regime will go unpunished: ”I’m not a believer in this issue of amnesty.”
But press him on these statements and he hedges.
On amnesty: ”Future crimes will be prosecuted without mercy … I’m not so concerned about the past.”
On the civil service: ”Retrenchment is not necessarily the key … I’m looking to redeploy our resources.”
On the government: ”We need to return to issue-based politics and put an end to this …”
After one speech he says: ”You know, what I don’t enjoy is that boardroom, backroom Nairobi crap: 99% of those [people] are conmen as far as I’m concerned.”
Is he talking about his colleagues here? ”Not just my colleagues but on the [opposition] side as well.”
Kenyans seem to like Kenyatta’s freshness. He discusses problems with them instead of simply blaming them on other ethnic groups, as more seasoned politicians tend to do.
Though tired and rheumy-eyed, he joins in every dance of welcome with gusto. Driving through villages, he lunges from side to side of the car, laughing and waving.
Although he seems young for his age, he is not callow. He has the reputation of a successful ruthless, businessman and foreign diplomats say he well understands Kenya’s treacherous political terrain.
But Kenyans may not want him for their president this time. As the last rally of the day begins — at the foot of the Aberdare hills, where Jomo Kenyatta’s followers, the Mau Mau, once fought for freedom — an eight-year-old boy leads the prayers.
When he asks a blessing for Kenyatta, there are rousing cheers. When he prays for ”his excellency the president”, the silence is almost embarrassing. — (c) Guardian Newspapers 2002