A PERSONAL TRIBUTE TO THE GEORGE ANYONA WE ALL KNEW A LONG TIME AGO.

By Kamoji Wachiira, Nov 7, 2003

"GEORGE WHY DID YOU SUDDENLY DETOUR SO FAR OFF-RIGHT AT THE VERY MOMENT
OF OUR FIRST SMALL VICTORY?

George Anyona, why did you do it? What poor timing? I asked in loud shock, on reading the news Wednesday morning.  What incredibly rotten timing you chose to go?  Just like that, without so much as a hint, publicly, what it was you were up to this last decade. You left at the very moment when the people who once adored you madly were asking "how could he take that big detour?" in a life of otherwise such blazing brilliance.

We mourn a fearless fighter, we mourn a genius, we mourn a champion of the down-and-out. We mourn a man few really knew or quite understood. But we do not mourn a flawless person. Anyona, like all of us, was no angel as he would himself quickly admit. He would say - tell of me the truth - raw and bloody - alive or dead. Let us view the entire complex man and not jump, especially the younger folk, to cut him down because of the last 10 misguided years. Nor hero-worship him excessively because of the previous man that we all loved so much.

The full-stop in Anyona's life did not come this week. It crept on him slowly. First with the devastating diagnosis. Subsequently the slow, physical decline he considered a betrayal by his own body. The truly final full-stop, the stop that matters most to his core being, came on December 27th 2002. A betrayal by his social base, he thought, ever the infallible George. Then he knew full well that the train of history had left him behind standing on the platform with the wrong crowd. The very crowd he used to war against. And now his own body was also leaving him. But losing his seat was absolutely the final, unkindest cut. He had now chosen to become a recluse. Much like a monk in penitence, he believed. Because the George Anyona he himself knew had already left if not died late last year. Some thought that this self-exile was because of illness.

Not true, I can bear witness. I had the joy of spending a day with George early this past August at Madaraka. I was one of the very, very few allowed that privilege. I had not talked to George since we were both released from detention in 1984. Inside prison, he was our guardian angel. Our mentor in Shimo-la-Tewa Maximum on how to cheat the cruelty of detention and come out sane. "Come-on, let's all have our wives sue these buggers for illegally detaining us. Moi has no power to detain
anybody. Parliament has not debated regulations since Kenyatta died". We sued government from within prison making history in the process. He used to regale us with the infamy and perverse humour of KANU's betrayals and his wars with the "dogs" as he privately called them.

That was not the man I found this past August. True, still vigorous despite rumours to the contrary. Ever sharp-witted. Full of fire in the belly still. He for example would not stop talking passionately about the colonial treachery of the Parliamentary dress code and his merits as a designer of better outfits!  In his mind he was convinced this was his last monumental fight in a long series. But clearly 21 years in and out of prison and living just at the edge, with a family to keep from want, afya mbaya na umri had all taken their toll.

I had known George in the fullest prime of his tremendous mind and health. More than anybody else I know, he allowed no one to know the deep core of his private self. He cultivated an invincible public persona. His inner self was the purest of enigmas and he protected it with a swirl of knowledge and social energy, clouds of erudite words, political commitment and passion. It was impossible to discern what lay below that outer shell of self-protection. No sooner you thought you now finally know what drives him than bingo he would surprise you again as if to say - "fool, dream on". He would come up with a new tack and a new bout of brilliance and cover the small window you thought you had glimpsed. This is the stuff of genius and strategy to dominate others and forever win. His famous temper was unleashed if anyone pried that window too wide or questioned his sincerity as he kept it shut.

This was all pre-1992. Post 1992 was all contradiction and so my pointed question straight to his face in August were:  George, what the hell could possibly have driven you to this betrayal - so damn out of character? Was it merely in order to spite pluralist leaders whom you despised as unworthy? And finally I asked, can we now document, before it is too late, the prolific output of thought and material you produced ceaselessly in the 70s and 80s?  He had always respected my judgment and did not mind my questions and requests. He resisted then eventually agreed to arrange a series of interviews with certified individuals whom I would carefully pick and link with him. The civic contents of those talks and others will perhaps come out in good time. We will, however, protect the inner core of self he hid so well. He agreed to start the process of documentation and actually seemed keen to do it, regretful that so much material was unaccounted for or lost.

I met this man by chance in the late 60's. I had heard of him from my then-colleagues at the Ministry of Natural Resources in 1968-9 – Abuya Abuya and Abuga Abuga - both from Kitutu East. We all quickly became good friends. We were hoping he would win the seat to Parliament then. He lost but on finally getting to Parliament in19 74, when I myself was then lecturing at the University College, he was glad to learn that we had now progressed in advocacy and mobilization of various incipient
fronts. Before him we had worked with JM Kariuki as key Parliamentary link. JM was not in any conceivable of the way in the same leagues as Anyona, so we were pleased along came Anyona just in time. JM was to be eliminated soon by Kanu.

George agreed to help with the parliamentary front and later with journalists' support as he had a coterie of media admirers then. He immediately set about working on progressive-leaning members to support democracy, university and student causes. For example, Chelagat Mutai had just left University after the famous 1972 crisis. He brought Jean-Marie Seroney, Deputy Speaker. We had rowdy debates and ideas bubbled for fighting the gathering tyranny and for democratization, civil liberties and the role of a free Parliament. Many of us involved in activist work would recall the ensuing very productive links with lawmakers and free-thinkers who by March 2nd 1975 were ready to move the movement to the next stage. This was during the very dark days of pre-Moi autocracy preparing to get darker. He helped us keep the small fire burning in the wet night.

He was ever young and restless, hyper-energetic, always impatient. He never saw why change must take so long. He sometimes had "an add-hot-water-and-stir instant Nescafe" view of social change. Protracted, participatory stuff was a cop-out he thought. Lead well with self-less passion and clarity of vision and the rest will follow. "We real politicians know politics." was a common refrain. To this extent he was an elitist. Difficult to work with anyone for long nor brook any ignorance on any topic. He was not socialist in the true sense at all. He did not have the basic ideological grounding nor the inclination to ever persist long enough on that grueling route.

But he loved the aura of it, especially if the mere mention of it scared the ruling class. In debates he abhorred fundamental elements of socialism. He was at best a super-committed social-democratic rogue warrior allying only temporarily with whoever to make a point then move on. He never appreciated that social movements evolve and degenerate and he failed to see that between 1974 and 1992 the world and especially Kenya had changed fundamentally - partly thanks to his prior contributions. Tragically he still believed in the idea of leadership almost by a special born-caste: "only us politicians." can lead change. He never adapted to a new reality and new actors and stayed too long with the enemies he thought he understood.

This one flaw of an attribute may hold the key to explain the Anyona who lost Kenyans and whom Kenyans lost in 1992. He believed to the end that the opposition which had evolved before and after his Mutugi incarceration was illicit. He alone deserved that role. He became more convinced of this as that opposition proliferated, split back and forth and incorporated old KANUist waste. Then like a renewed Kanu in new clothes, that opposition finally engulfed Moi and washed him away. And George along with it, still rather dismayed. His detour since the mid-nineties was perhaps not so much for love of Moi but a failure or reluctance to understand the profound changes that had occurred in his absence. He had always believed that only politicians can lead these matters and was therefore delighted at the chance to hijack constitutional reform from the mass-base onto conniving politicians in Parliament. The  IPPG sell-out was a natural end for that phase of an Anyona on a detour or more like a u-turn. I think the best people to describe the Anyona who emerged after 1992 would include Edward Oyugi, Ngotho Kariuki and Mtumishi Kathangu- these three plus the late Kitutu East MP are better known as the "Anyona  Four" in reference to the fact that they were all framed together by the police after being arrested at the Mutugi Bar.

We must understand the pain of his last 10 years and seek to forgive his detour (though he would shout I ask no such). In pain and alone, impoverished and left alone on that platform, even by his last bunch of buddies, he still remained a great man of original thought and immense daring who had given us for a moment in the 70s and 80s the most flattering reflection of ourselves heretofore. Indigenously educated, self taught philosopher-activist, Parliamentarian par excellence, who erred briefly at the end as history shifted about and never had a chance to recover his .

This is the best memory to sustain of George Anyona, our old dear friend. To his children Bosibori, Kwame, Nyanduku, Ombega (who arranged my last visit, my thanks) and to ever gentle and spiritual wife Esther, pillar of family strength for so, so unbelievably long - our deepest sympathies. Rest assured that the country will never forget what your family sacrifice was all about. This is not exactly the way we desired or envisioned George ending his tenure on earth but .he did things his way to the very last detail as he hinted openly he would.

We are left to now reconstruct and document the huge contributions by this complex genius of an activist. I ask all friends and admirers who may know of writings published or otherwise by him or on him, even scraps of paper he produce to contact by email kwachiira@rogers.com and thus avoid the amnesia that plagues Kenya's history. All submissions will be properly attributed.

Kamoji Wachiira  (Anyona's fellow detainee, 1982-3 at Shimo-la-Tewa Maximum Sec)
Ottawa.
Canada