It is hard to forgive Moi, says former detainee Mwandawiro Mghanga
As the nation mourns former President Daniel Moi, former Wundanyi MP Mwandawiro Mghanga is still a bitter man.
The former chair of the giant Student Organisation of Nairobi University (Sonu) was arrested and tortured by the Moi regime which linked him to Mwakenya activities tailored to remove the former President from power.
“It is difficult to forgive the former president for his dictatorial rule,” he said, though he condoled with the family.
Mwandawiro is currently the Lands executive in Taita Taveta county.
He recalls how he was offered a job by Moi administration only to resign three weeks later, citing autocratic leadership.
The firebrand politician accuses Moi of using his position to loot the country, amass ill-gotten wealth, create an empire of super billionaires and pushing the country into inflation throughout the 24 years of his rule.
Change of constitution
“I am shocked by the way Kenyans and the media have continued to heap praise on Moi in his death, painting him as an angel while we know very well his leadership was nothing short of absolute dictatorship and widespread corruption.
Everybody knows that Moi was firmly against changes of the constitution and frustrated every attempt to change it.
Were it not for him, we could have gotten the new constitution decades ago,” he said.
The former MP says the Moi regime was a symbol of dictatorship, corruption, tribalism and violation of human rights. He asked Kenyans to embrace the “glaring truth” and call a spade a spade.
He recalls his gruelling encounters with the former president’s administration in the 1980s when he was at the university.
“I joined the University of Nairobi in 1980. I immediately joined campus politics to fight for democracy.
We were perturbed by the political situation in the country where politicians the likes of Jaramogi Oginga Odinga, George Anyona and others were being barred from vying for political positions by the Moi government.
So we were against that because it was a violation of democracy,” he recalls.
At the same time, Mwandawiro says the push for multi-party system to unlock the country’s political space had gone full throttle culminating in the attempted coup in 1982.
When tension engulfed the country following an attempted coup, a first-year University of Nairobi (UoN) student was arrested on claims of having a hand in the treasonous act against the State.
At the time, security forces had placed Mwandawiro’s university activism sharply into focus.
The former Wundanyi legislator was visiting an uncle in Karen when he was arrested by police and detained at GSU training school in Embakasi for six months.
This would mark the beginning of Mwandawiro’s troubled pursuit for higher education.
He was later allowed back to the campus amidst close monitoring by the special branch, now the National Intelligence Service (NIS).
“Moi would go ahead to announce that Kenya would be a single party state under the then ruling party Kanu.
Remember initially it was not in the Constitution but he changed the Constitution to declare Kenya a single party state meaning there would be no room for opposition.
It, therefore, meant that forming another party would be a criminal offence,” he says.
At that point Mwandawiro and his group were forced to go underground.
They went on to establish the Muungano wa Wazalendo wa Kenya (Union of Patriotic Kenyans) famously as Mwakenya Movement, an underground socialist movement to fight for multi-party democracy.
This became a vehicle for advocating for the repeal of Section 2A of the Constitution which had made Kenya a single party state.
Movements monitored
But the price they had to pay for establishing the movement, he says, was too heavy as it extended to his family back in his rural home in Kese Werugha.
“At one time, contingent of police in a lorry was sent to brutalise me and my family. They broke the door, ransacked the house, arrested my brothers and victimised them for nothing. People started avoiding me because they were afraid if they came home they could face the same brutality,” he says.
One of his brothers, Jezrel Ndawiro who died in 2006, he says, had to change his name to Salim Ndawiro to escape victimisation as he was blacklisted and could not get a job in any public office.
Mwandawiro says plain clothes police officers and even university students were recruited by the government to monitor what was taught in classrooms.
“The main focus was on university lecturers who taught Marxist-Lenninist theories — a subject the government believed was being advocated by Mwakenya members,” he says.
Those arrested were tortured and subjected to various human rights violations until they accepted that they were Mwakenya members and gave information to the authorities on other members.
“This kind of torture was corroborated by Moi…Most of this torture took place at Nyayo House and Nyati House in Nairobi,” he says he was detained alongside other prominent leaders such as Wanyiri Kihoro, Kiongo Maina, the late Prof Katama Mkangi, the late Wahome Mutahi, Lumumba Odenda and Oduor Ong’wen.
He was forced to seek asylum in Sweden after he was expelled from UoN while taking his Masters degree.
