But the seed of mistrust had already been
sawn and the newly independent Kenya
side lined the Mau Mau and in due
course Kenyatta fell out with the other
Kapenguria five as they tried to remove
a man they neither trusted nor respected.
The repercussion of their dissent was swift
as they were systematically eliminated
from public limelight and slowly eased
out of the political mainstream. The victor
always writes the history and our original
heroes were cast as rogues and forgotten.
One needs to remember that to the
colonialist the jailed people were
troublemakers bent on destabilizing the
country and as they very aptly put it
Kenyatta was a leader into darkness for
Kenya and these villains needed to be
removed from the quotidian life of the
colony.
To the oppressed Africans in Kenya trying
to be rid of the yoke of colonialism, the
jailed people became a rallying point of
expression. Demanding the release of the
jailed people galvanized those outside as
the jailing become just another example
of oppression.
A new trend was being set where jail was
no longer the place for miscreants and
scoundrels but a place that those fighting
for justice and independence would
expect to find themselves. The stigma of
jail had been removed by the political
incarcerations.
Straight after independence the fallout
that we referred to earlier started to play
out and those that had been friends of
convenience saw no reason to continue
with the façade once the colonialist had
departed and the ‘not yet Uhuru’ chant
began to reverberate.
Ironically we would soon be throwing our
own Kenyans into the same jails that the
colonialist had thrown the previous squad
of protesters and the terms of incarceration
were the same as those under the colonial
rule, detention without trial.
So many Kenyans have since transitioned
from jail to high echelons of leadership
that it began to seem that a prerequisite to
a political career was a stint in detention or
at least a harrowing visit to the infamous
Nyayo house that dealt with political
agitators.
Since in Kenya the route to wealth is either
a political position or a close connection
to the political power centre it soon
was fashionable to find businessmen of
questionable reputation and practices get
jailed as a result of various misdemeanours.
The one case that set a new standard for
Kenya was that of Kamlesh Patni who
was supposedly in jail as a result of the
Goldenberg Scandal that nearly brought
the country to its knees. With Patni the
era of the open jails had been born.
On record Patni was being held at the
Kamiti Maximum Prison but we began to
wonder what the meaning of maximum
was? One would assume that maximum
referred to security but in the case of
Patni it may as well have meant maximum
comfort.
He seemed to have access to anything he
needed and even the ability to call the press
to brief them on the latest development
of the case and to proffer his opinion on
the evidence that was being adduced to
against him, the ‘sub judice’ rule had been
thrown to the dogs.
If he contracted a cold he was rushed to
a private hospital as if prisons don’t have
clinics and many have averred that Patni
may have been a ‘day scholar’ at Kamiti
and that he went home to his confortable