There’s an untold story of one James Erastus Mungai who once did the unthinkable and lived to tell the story.
Mungai’s case was not just that of absolute power but also a story of hubris. His story, Kenyans.co.ke notes, is the perfect lesson for those who forget that pride comes before a fall.
During the last days of Mzee Jomo Kenyatta’s presidency – his death that is, Mungai was an untouchable force, a Police Commandant who was in charge of the Rift Valley Province.
Not only was he from the then president’s tribe but word had it he was related to the late Kenyatta.
During that time, Daniel Toroitich Arap Moi was a toothless Vice President so to speak, who was contemptuously regarded as an outsider in Kenyatta’s exclusively Kikuyu inner circle or the Kiambu Mafia.
Although Moi was Mungai’s senior in the pecking order, the police commandant – like other powerful Kikuyu government officials – always looked for an opportunity to humiliate him.
Some of the instances are clearly captured in Moi’s authorised biography Moi: The Making of An African Statesman authored by Andrew Morton.
According to Morton, there’s an incident in 1975, when the then veepee Moi had returned from an OAU meeting in Kampala, only for Mungai to accuse him of bringing guns as part of a conspiracy to dethrone Kenyatta.
Mungai reportedly conducted a vigorous search for the weapons, ordering his men to examine Moi’s offices at the Nakuru Oil and Flour Mills.
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Mungai’s search is said to have been so thorough and humiliating that it involved a strip-search on Moi.
But that was not it, there are two other occasions, Morton notes, that Mungai slapped Moi in the face in front of President Kenyatta at State House Nakuru.
After the incident where Mungai forced Moi to strip, the then VP reportedly complained directly to President Kenyatta.
The ageing Kenyatta responded by asking a rhetorical question. “Who is the minister in charge of the police?” (At the time Moi had the home affairs docket and the police was under that ministry – technically Mungai was his subordinate!).
Morton wrote: “Moi was a very scared man. Each night he prayed, knowing that he could be assassinated any time. Even so, he was troubled as he was holding on to his job by the skin of his teeth.”
But as fate would have it, Kenyatta passed on before the constitution could be amended – effectively making Moi the automatic successor.
It is said Moi was so scared of the Kikuyu mafia even during his swearing in. “Hawa wa-Kikuyu wataniua (these Kikuyus will kill me)”, Moi told then Attorney General and confidant Charles Njonjo.
Shortly after Moi assumed power, Mungai is said to have taken a long and rough road trip from Nakuru to Lokitaung where he fled to Sudan and later flew to exile in Switzerland.
To cut the long story short, the now elderly Mungai retired quietly. He now lives in a farm in Nakuru where he does commercial farming – breeding horses and rearing dairy cows.
