During the Kenyatta and Moi eras, chiefs became not only the “ears and eyes” of the regime at the village level, they also ruthlessly enforced its despotic wishes. PHOTO | FILE | NMG
"Return of Moi-era chiefs”, screamed the headline of last week’s Saturday Nation. The headline fronted a report about government’s intention to bring back the all-powerful chiefs who terrorised citizens during colonial rule and the administrations of Jomo Kenyatta and Daniel Arap Moi. During the State of Emergency in the 1950s, a chief’s word could send one to a detention camp or to the gallows. Because of these life and death powers, the villages which they controlled became their personal fiefdoms. They forced themselves on women. They sent innocent people to detention so that they could steal their lands or their livestock. They lorded it over terror- stricken impoverished villagers.
Both the Kenyatta and Moi administrations increased their powers. The older generation will remember those unforgiving days. When the president had a harambee meeting, ostensibly in support of some project, the chiefs made rounds of business establishments in the villages, collecting money for the harambee. Because these functions were held every other month, struggling shopkeepers had to dig deeper and deeper into their pockets. And since there was little accounting for harambee money, the millions collected at the presidential harambee and across the villages ended up in private pockets. In similar fashion to ‘Covid billionaires’, we had “harambee billionaires”.
