I am told, by some who know these things, that Uhuru (Freedom) Kenyatta is the good son of Mzee Jomo ÂKenyatta, our first president. His younger brother, a businessman, is said to be bad tempered and mean. It is said that the Gikuyu council of elders have anointed Uhuru Kenyatta to be their anointed candidate to replace Mwai Kibaki.
If you watched the The Godfather you will know that there is always the good son, who marries a good woman, and who reluctantly takes over his towering father’s empire.
In the mythology of towering ÂCarpetbaggers, Taipans and ÂShoguns, sons cannot inherit their whole father.
One son usually has the father’s testosterone — sometimes manifested in something as basic as a very large penis or a black belt in jujitsu. Usually this son is good at sports and his father’s favourite. He usually fails to inherit his father’s brains. So the hairy, jocky beast of a son usually implodes at some point, or ends up as the governor of Florida.
The other son, often the second born, according to the Wilbur Smith philosophy, has his mother’s innate gentility. The father was a wild Âbarreling man, of no useful lineage, of broad shoulders, limited height and square head. Still, he is good at accumulating assets and political power quickly. His thuggishness was softened when he met the Âbeautiful chief’s daughter — when he was on his way to break the man’s kneecaps. She stood in front of her whimpering daddy and said, kill me first! He knelt, broken by love and kissed her sapphire ring. He married her, and moved in to her father’s 700-year-old residence.
The good son is seen as being wimpish by daddy. He was born in a house in the better surburbs, his mother swanning about in a taffeta gown, his father — a painting on a wall with a fly whisk and leopard skin. He has his father’s brains and his mother’s vulnerable eyes. So he goes to good schools, reads Latin, goes to Amherst College and learns about Human Rights and ends up doing an MBA somewhere where he learns tactics more brutal than any Mafioso knows.
The bad son spent too much of his early years sitting among hanging carcasses in the Meat Packing District of New York, listening to his father plot. He was babysat by his father’s enforcers — who became his role models.
In Zanzibar, some years ago, I met a young man who told me that his mother was a Zanzibari artistocrat of Omani origin. After the revolution, his father, one of the leaders, forcibly married her. Years later they lived separately, his father vaguely proud of his soft-haired and pretty son. His mother was territorial about her children and became their primary role model.
The son became a brutal businessman, able to speak the language of egalitarian Ujamaa progress — quite cynically, as his father’s whole life was a perfect example of a corrupted ideal. He was equally able to maintain a feudal household. I watched, one night, as his giant bouncers beat up a young man outside the doors of his nightclub, as he watched.
I was in Dakar last year, mostly stuck in traffic. The price of rice was up, and people were starving in the countryside. A mini city was being built, of concrete and highways and Dubai glamour, for the Organisation of the Islamic Conference, which Senegal hosted last month.
Idrissa Seck was once Senegal’s prime minister and the President Wade’s chosen one. Wade — now 83, often called him his son, and claimed he had educated him. But Seck ended up in prison for six months for corruption — it was said he had stolen £80-million for a road. In 2007, after being released, he ran against Wade, and lost.
The rumour mills of Dakar claim that Karim Wade — Wade’s son and heir, had a fight with Seck, and this was the beginning of the troubles. Wade has spent the past few years building large and egotistical monuments to himself. His son, Karim, is the guy in charge of building all the freeways and glitzy citylets; new ports and tacky marinas. Everybody says he is using this as a platform to take over from his father. He has a new youth movement, ironically called The Generation of Concrete.
Meanwhile the Islamic conference continued. The Saudi king and the Egyptian president (both too busy grooming sons) gave the conference a miss. The big trump card of the conference, the signing of a non-aggression pact between Chad and Sudan, was delayed. Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir called up President Wade and told him he had a headache and could not make it to the signing.