Election 2002 
Sunday, December 8, 2002 

At the stroke of midnight on Saturday, August 1, 1982, a detachment of soldiers from the Kenya Air Force took over the then Voice of Kenya and announced that they had overthrown President Moi's government. In that instant, Kenya and President Moi changed mostly for the worse. Some observers turn to this coup attempt to explain the tight grip he continues to hold on Kenya.

While other African and Third World countries crumbled to military coups, Kenya had remained an island of peace. President Moi, who had come to power on a populist note, embracing religion and charity as his strong points began to tighten his hold on power, beginning with a purge in all sectors.

"It was after the coup that Moi began to use coercion and pay-offs to stay in power," says a former Provincial Commissioner who asked not to be named.

"After the coup," the retired official says, "Moi extended his hands and influence into everything. He controlled the business community. He needed money to buy support and power to intimidate opponents. I think Moi began to fear wealth in the hands of private citizens, wealth that he could not control. Such wealthy people would owe him nothing and would not fear him. That is why he penetrated the business community."

Another source says President Moi started regarding wealth he could not control as dissent.

Former Cabinet minister Dr Adhu Awiti says that insecurity after the coup forced the President to start pursuing "imaginary enemies" from around 1985. The immediate former Karachuonyo MP says President Moi spent "a lot of energy pursuing what he saw as social and political misfits being misled by foreign masters to perpetuate foreign ideologies. "

The former minister, himself a victim of the many detentions without trial, which followed the coup attempt, says: "The President even claimed that the Ku Klux Klan planned to overthrow him."

Dr Awiti says sycophancy became "something of a national culture" during and after the crackdown on perceived dissidents.

"No speech was complete without government officials and politicians praising Moi's wisdom. Everyone began to sing of his sound economic policies and his love for children. Now see where it landed us," Awiti recalls.

A Nairobi businessman long associated with the Kanu says "Kenya's descent into greed" began in earnest after the coup attempt.

"Every important institution got to be headed by some man or woman asking for bribes. Such a person would be very well connected in the system."

The coup scare made President Moi extend his hold beyond politics and administration. Repression of intellectuals began. Some were detained without trial, or arrested and charged with possession of subversive literature.

The University of Nairobi was closed and the Air Force disbanded. The two institutions never looked the same again when they re-opened.

"It was loyalists everywhere," recalls Dr Awiti. "Everything else was put aside, professionalism and all that. Only loyalty to Moi mattered. The university is yet to recover." Even something as modest as Harambee changed after the attempted coup, recalls former minister John Keen. Harambee began modestly in the colonial period as a means of raising funds to build facilities in schools, beyond those that Christian missions and the government provided.

The sums raised then were modest and there were large numbers of small contributions, all voluntary.

At independence, founding President Mzee Jomo Kenyatta turned it into an ideology and asked communities to help themselves if they wanted the government to help them. He asked politicians to show that they had value by mobilising harambee efforts.

After the coup attempt, Mr Keen says: "Harambee became a tool for patronage. Coercion set in, with chiefs arresting those who had not contributed or confiscating their property to be sold to make up for the required money. Nyayo's presence was being felt in everything."

A former civil servant says most Kenyans can't remember a time when President Moi was not in power. Since he succeeded Mzee Kenyatta in 1978, President Moi has shaped the nation with his image and name dominating every facet of society. 

Even the art of shaping the nation in President Moi's image, the former government official adds, began in earnest after the coup attempt.

"The Kenya Broadcasting Corporation always began its evening news begins with 'His Excellency President Daniel arap Moi today said...' But things like the national holiday called Moi Day, dozens of schools, hospitals and roads named after Moi took a strange twist after the coup. Every business was required by law to hang his framed photograph. But it almost became illegal to hang it alongside Mzee Kenyatta's."

The immediate former Democratic Party MP for Kerugoya/Kutus, Mr Matere Keriri, who served in the Ministry of Finance, says 1982 was a turning point in the running of Kenya.

"The coup attempt provided an excuse for a purge in the public sector. Individuals deemed to be anti-government were removed from key positions. The idea was to lay ground for individuals to loot. People got jobs on the basis of loyalty, not ability. Such people recognise only one man, President Moi, even today."

At was at this time when political appointees began to take over positions formerly held by professionals. The most senior civil service positions went to sycophants. 

Immediate former Mathira MP Matu Wamae adds: "Witch-hunting followed and only Moi's loyalists survived." Mr Wamae, one of the top technocrats of the Kenyatta era, says: "Some of those people are still in charge fighting hard for Moi and Kanu."

In his book African Successes, David Leonard says the coup attempt was "a piece of good luck for Moi.

"The attempt legitimated Moi's reorganising of the command structure of the Armed Forces and the police. Once the attempt had been made and suppressed..., he was able to remove leaders from positions that were most threatening. The Armed Forces and the police were neutralised."

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