Day a furious Kenyatta blasted Gen Nkaissery at State House

When General arrived in Lanet he still had in his pocket the key for his room at Kenyatta College. He never got a chance to return it because things unfolded fast. He had his Form Four certificate and when he was asked, “Eh, wee Maasai, you want to join the Army?” His answer was a firm, “Yes.”

“You look fit. Wewe ni Murrani (Are you a moran)?”

“Yes. Mimi ni olmurrani.”

And once he proved that his seeming physical fitness – 6ft 2in tall and without an ounce of excess flesh – was backed by a body that could endure exertion and stamina, he was enlisted as a cadet on April 3, 1972.

Back in his Maparasha village, General had no mentor, no guide. He was swimming in an ocean and learning to trust his gut.

In his cadet class, there was no other Maasai and as he would come to learn, he was amongst the first Maasai from Kajiado to join the Armed Forces, as it was called then.

From Narok, there was Nick Leshan. There had been one other man from Narok, but he didn’t stay long in the forces.

So here was Nkaissery, scoring another first in his community in Kajiado. It was unheard of for olmurrran to join the military.

When his relatives learnt about it, they feared they had now lost him for good.

Need for diversity

It is possible that Nkaissery’s entry into the military fulfilled an urgent need for diversity. The previous year, in 1971, an inept plot by some soldiers to overthrow Jomo Kenyatta’s government had been driven by the military leadership’s concerns over tribal appointments. Specifically, Major-General Ndolo, then the Chief of Defence Staff as the position was known then, was accused of plotting the takeover and was to be president once the coup succeeded.

What was especially ironic about Ndolo’s involvement in this inept conspiracy was his earlier role in the aftermath of the 1964 revolt at Lanet. He had chaired the military tribunal that tried the 1964 mutineers. Seven years later, he joined forces with Joseph Daniel Owino—someone his own military tribunal had found guilty in 1964 and discharged dishonourably.

Declassified files from America’s intelligence agency, the CIA, list Ndolo’s chief grievances with the Kenyatta administration as “oathing in the armed forces, ammunition being given to civilians … rampant tribalism in public life… the fast-tracking of an unnamed officer from the president’s tribe up the ranks to succeed him even though a Kamba (Jackson Mulinge) was next in line”.

While his concerns were not invalid, the unfortunate Ndolo would soon discover that a good reason and a good plan are not the same thing. An American diplomat described the shabby plot as being “‘of a barroom three-drink variety’ rather than a credible threat to the government.” It lacked financing, it lacked coordination, it lacked strategy.

Attempts to get support from Tanzania were quickly thwarted by President Julius Nyerere who ordered the arrest of a group of Kenyans.

They represented a group of disgruntled, mainly Luo rank-and-file that had first begun meeting the previous September, though it had now expanded to include about 40 non-Kikuyu soldiers.

The conspirators had identified April 1971 as the day of the coup. It would, they hoped, begin with a successful assassination attempt on Kenyatta. According to the plot, the president was to be blown up as he waved the starting flag for the annual East African Safari Rally.

The coup plotters included Yatta Member of Parliament Gideon Mutiso, who would have been chairman of the planned “revolutionary council” had they succeeded.

At Mutiso’s trial, Prosecutor James Karugu said Nyerere might have considered aiding a coup, but the plotters had picked the wrong country. Karugu quoted Nyerere as saying, “If it was Malawi I might think about it, but not with Kenya and definitely not while Mzee is alive.”

The fallout from the 1971 coup attempt was varied. Mutiso was jailed for nine-and-a-half years; Ndolo was forced to resign and so was Chief Justice Kitili Mwendwa because the plotters had identified him as the man who would swear in Ndolo as president.

Even back then, there was no question as to the distinctly apolitical character of the Kenyan military, but the idea that it required ethnic diversity from top to bottom had become quite clear.

In addition, Boinett points out, the disciplined but illiterate soldiers who had managed the Shifta Campaign (1963–67) were no longer a match for the sophisticated weaponry, logistics, helicopters and other considerations that were now critical to the defence force.

It is this newly diversity-conscious Armed Forces, eager for a professional class of intellectual soldiers, that young Nkaissery joined in April 1972.

To the court of Jomo Kenyatta

I heard this story of the travails of two cadets in India and back home many times, both in private and in public, from the man who became my husband. I have also heard it told by his colleague turned lifelong friend Kung’u. Let me yield to Captain (Rtd) Kung’u so that he can narrate it in his uniquely witty style.

General Nkaissery and I joined the Armed Forces in 1972, with some other young men called Arakan Platoon. And that time, the military training used to take some nine months – three months basic training; you go for a break, then you come back for the advanced training.

And that time the British government used to give scholarships for one to go and study at Sandhurst Military College. But for the first time, in 1972, the Indian government – as you have noticed, he trained in India – offered a scholarship of two people and me and my friend JK, as I call him – or Ero! – we were chosen to go to India. On merit, and in the military you do not argue.

So we went to India after our basic training, and when we got there, it was tough. We had to do a crash programme in Hindi, because some of the instructions were in KiHindi. But we got along pretty well, until later on that year the mad man of Uganda – Idi Amin Dada – decided to chase all Indians away from Uganda.

Most of them wanted to go to Britain, but Britain closed their doors and they decided to come to India. And they came in droves, many of them! And, of course, they kept giving stories, horrid stories – how their properties were taken; how their women were mistreated, and the emotions ran very high in India.

In fact, about five people were killed in the streets and in the academy where we were, the Tanzanian government, the Zambian government and the Nigerian government withdrew their cadets, for fear.

My friend and I became like prisoners. We couldn’t leave the college. We couldn’t walk on the streets. So after some time we consulted – I mean, between me and him we consulted – and we decided it was no longer tenable for us to stay there. We wrote many letters to our commanders in Kenya and they didn’t reply.

And we really didn’t know what to do. So after consultations we decided to make the decision, we skip college. Haya tu ndio ilikuwa makosa yetu. Kutoka bila ruhusa. Inaitwa (This was our only crime. Leaving without permission which is called) AWOL in military jargon - Absent Without Official Leave.

We boarded a train at midnight and landed in Delhi; went to see the ambassador – an honourable man, Shadrack Kimalel. And he was very sympathetic. But he told us, “There is nothing I can do. You belong to the military. I can’t make decisions on behalf of the military. So you wait. I will contact the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. They will contact the Ministry of Defence.”

So you see what happens: we were booked in a nice hotel, Five Star, Oberoi, with a full per diem. But after three days, the ambassador said, “You see, I don’t have a vote for you. I can’t sustain you here. You can’t stay in that hotel; so your people haven’t replied, so what do we do?”

And he said, “the Ministry of Defence doesn’t reply; the Ministry of Foreign Affairs doesn’t talk. The only person who can talk is the President himself.” And, of course, he knew who I was. So he told me, “If I give you my line, my diplomatic line, can you talk to the President?”

And, I said, “Yes.”

I was very anxious because in the first place, I didn’t want to join the Army, but he bullied me into it, so I was scared he would think I am just pushing the agenda of refusing to work. But I was pleasantly surprised. He was very receptive. He asked me, “What is it?”

I told him everything and he told me, “No. no. You can’t die in a foreign country; you must come back.” And I felt… but he disconnected the phone. He didn’t talk to the ambassador; he didn’t talk to anybody. So, it’s only me who knew what he had said. And I think he forgot about it because for three weeks we stayed in the hotel with our per diem and the ambassador was comfortable because he said, “Now it’s clear, I can accommodate you people for as long as they don’t come for you.”

But in the third week we were called to the embassy. We found our tickets there and we came back, landed at the airport; went to Army Headquarters; found General Mulinge. He was the Army Commander and the senior most officer by then. So he told us to go on leave – it’s called Disembarkation Leave in the military. “You go for seven days, come back next Monday.”

Now because of all that free time we had in India, we consulted further between ourselves. Nkaissery had come from Kenyatta University, and we decided we didn’t want that job anymore. We are not going to the military again! So even as Mulinge was talking, we knew we are not coming back. So we went for our leave – seven days. We were supposed to come back on a certain Monday.

In the meantime, we said, now what are we going to do? We said, Nkaisserry will go back to Bissil, talk to his father and his friends and convince them to be giving us cows to take to KMC. They tell us their price, we go to KMC, whatever is on top is our profit. And we thought it was a very good business plan.

So during that week, he went to Bissil to do his negotiation. I went to Gatundu because we knew if we disappear without Mzee knowing, he will send Mulinge to come for us. So I went to Gatundu, I went to him, told him, “We are back.”

“Ehe? So what are you going to do now?”

I said, “tunataka kufanya biashara. (We want to do business)”

“Biashara gani (What business)?”

“Ya kuuza mifugo (Selling livestock)?”

“Nyinyi muko na mifugo ama munataka kuwa wezi wa mifugo? (Do you have livestock or you are going to become cattle thieves)?”

And I thought, now where did that come from? So I explained the business plan to him. He didn’t say anything. He just asked me, “Have you been to see your mother?”

I said, “No.”

He said, “Go and say hallo to your mother. When are you going back to…”

I told him, “Tomorrow.”

He said, “Fine.”

So I went back home to say hallo to my father. I came back to Nairobi, my friend came back from Bissil and he told me even that side, things didn’t go very well. The old man was not very convinced. So we said, let’s wait till tomorrow. So the next day we went to Army Headquarters; found General Mulinge there. He said, “Put on your uniform.”

And we said, now this guy wants to take us back to Lanet by force! Lanet is the military training college. We had three months left to train, when we left India, so we had not commissioned. But now the idea of going back to Lanet! Those guys who stood up, the ones we trained together, by then they had already finished their training and they were officers. The idea now of saluting them and calling them, “Sir!” We couldn’t stand it so we decided we are not going there.

But as we left Army Headquarters, after two turns, I told my friend, “I think we are headed to State House.”

He said, “What?”

I said, “Yeah.”

Another corner, this is the gate. And my friend froze.

He said, “What is it now?”

I said, “I also don’t know. Let’s wait.”

So we went to State House. Now in the military jargon, when you are going for disciplinary action before your commander it is called, Orders. You are going for Orders. And a Sergeant Major, that is the highest rank in the non-commissioned officers, is the one who will march you in. And another guy called an Adjutant, a Captain, he will read your charges.

That is when you are going before your Commanding Officer. Now, it dawned on us that General Mulinge is the one who is going to march us in, like a Sergeant Major. And Mr Jeremiah Kiereini, the PS, is the one carrying our charges, as the Adjutant. Things were elephant!

So we went. We were marched in, what, salute. And we found the grand old man there. He kept quiet for about five minutes. Us we knew him. It was intimidation and bullying. He was just looking down. And then he looked up, and faced Nkaisserry. And I tell you his eyes! And he asked Nkaissery, “Ati wewe kijana umekataa kazi (Young man, you have refused to work)?”

We know, we were standing at attention. Nkaissery did another five attentions. And he said, “No, Sir. No Sir”.

And Mzee told him, “Don’t call me “Sir”, mimi si kaburu (I am not a Boer)!” So Nkaissery went quiet.

“Utafanya kazi (Will you resume your duties)? He kept quiet.

Then Mulinge told him, “Say yes Sir”.

So Nkaissery was confused. Mzee is telling him “Don’t call me Sir”, Mulinge is telling him to call him “Sir”.

And from that time, he didn’t talk again. He just kept quiet.

Mzee looked at me and said, “Na wewe, utafanya kazi (What about you, will you resume your duties)?”

I told him, “Unajua tuliongea jana (You remember we talked yesterday)”

Hee! Heee!

He told me, “You know I am the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces and the President of this Republic? If you refuse my orders, where are you going to go?”

And I thought this was getting serious. So he looked at Mulinge.

“Mulinge, hii vijana warudi kazi Lanet. Yule atakataa, umuache Kamiti Prison (These young men should get back to work. Jail whoever refuses to do so at Kamiti Prison).”

And our goose was cooked. That afternoon we went back to Lanet. The rest is history. We trained with the people we found. On the passing out day, he came. He usually takes photographs with the people who have graduated. As soon as the photograph was over, he turned around and said, “Wapi ile vijana yangu? Kung’u uko wapi? (Where are those lads of mine? Kung’u, where are you?)”

So I told him, “I am here”. That time we were not very good friends. So he said hallo. He said hallo to my friends and Nkaissery was right at the end. For those who know military formation, he is very tall so he would be at the end of the parade as the right marker. So, he said, “Yule rafiki yako alitoroka (Did you friend abscond)?”

I told him, “No. He is right at the end.”

So, he called him. He said, “Bring these boys.”

We went to the Officer’s Mess and Mzee was not known for giving people anything more than a hundred bob, but he gave us one thousand bob each, that day. And then he talked to Nkaissery in Kimaasai. So, I don’t know what he told him. So as soon as we got out, I asked him, “What was he telling you in Maasai?”

He said, “No. He told me to be steadfast, niaache mchezo mingi (to stop fooling around) and I am going to be a great leader.”

What both Kung’u and Nkaissery often omitted whenever they told this story was the part where they were held under “open arrest”. When they appeared to defy their Commander-in-Chief, he gave the order for them to be locked up in what is known as “open arrest”. Boinett explains that “this kind of detention is for Officers 82 under investigation. They are not allowed to communicate with the outside world, and they are fed from their rooms until their cases are determined.” Nkaissery and Kung’u were held at the mess at 7KR, Lang’ata Barracks, for one month. Boinett, who had already passed out with the rest of 1972 class and been commissioned to Second Lieutenant, was the deputy to the Adjutant of the unit in charge of discipline so he was put in charge of that open arrest, to make sure the two did not leave the Officers’ Mess.

This was some strange twist of fate. About a year before, just a few weeks into their cadet training, Boinett had confided in Kung’u and Nkaissery who were roommates, that he was going to run away from Lanet. He didn’t want to be a soldier; he wanted to go to university. Nkaissery, “who always stood for truth and didn’t encourage waywardness snitched on me. Then in the evening he told me, ‘T_o_r_o_k_a_ _s_a_s_a_’ _(You can escape now). And right there at the gate I was arrested and thrown in to cool off until I accepted to remain in training.” Flashforward to 1973 and Boinett kept watch over Kung’u and Nkaissery under “open arrest” until they too accepted to return to Lanet where they lost their seniority and started over with a new group of cadet-trainees that included James Mulinge.

Operation Nyundo

The scene of this incident was another oft-forgotten corner of Kenya – West Pokot. Nkaissery had risen to the rank of Major in February 1980 and in October of the same year he was sent to AFTC as Officer Commanding Weapon.

In February 1984, he was sent to West Pokot with his troops to man operations to quell what had turned into two years of strife between warring communities some of whom, it was believed, were getting arms from neighbouring Uganda.

He remained there for three months. Operation Nyundo was a disarmament exercise. The Kenya government was determined to recover arms and restore order between warring communities.

“The battalion commander was Walter Avuvi … working with five majors and an artillery battalion, armoury battalion.”

Years later, Reverend Simon Alew described the events those days known as the Kacheliba Massacre and the Lotiriri Military Operation of 1984:

“The operation of 1982/84 was the major one, where the Government of Kenya declared that the Pokot community should be disarmed. The disarmament turned into kind of a communal punishment. I am calling it a communal punishment because everybody, even if you were a peacemaker, a bishop or a professor was treated equally. So, if it was beating, you were all beaten.”

In Parliament there were those who never forgot about Operation Nyundo. Like Samuel Moroto, the Assistant Minister for Health and Ekwe David Ethuro the Member of Parliament for Turkana Central. Rival politicians were not the only ones with long memories.

Upon his nomination in 2014 to serve as Cabinet Secretary, the Commission for the Implementation of the Constitution (CIC) said General was unfit for the position as he had been adversely mentioned in the report of the Truth, Justice and Reconciliation Commission (TJRC).

At his confirmation hearing, General’s defence outlined the military code of service. He said, “I was a young major in the Army and the Army was assigned to go and perform a national duty.” The Armed Forces, as General had learnt painfully on the day he faced his Commander-in-Chief at State House, Nairobi, is not an institution where you exercise free will or escape orders. You do as you are told. And so he did.

Cattle allegation

The committee raised the question of 10,000 head of cattle the Pokot community alleged it lost to Nkaissery during Operation Nyundo. General disputed it using the logic: If a lorry can take 20 cows, that is 500 lorries. How could 500 lorries ferry animals “from Kacheliba past Kapenguria, past Kitale, past Eldoret, past Nakuru, past Nairobi.

And that particular time there is Special Branch? Where are the policemen? Where are the other Majors? Where are the COs? So Major Nkaissery all alone, taking all the animals, 10,000? I mean, surely. Can you believe that kind of a story?”

Though the heat did pass in Parliament, the misunderstanding simmered, prompted by a comment General made about Operation Nyundo in a televised interview:

“Ng’ombe na mbuzi yote ikakusanywa (We confiscated the cows and goats) ...We were not brought here kuchungia nyinyi ng’ombe (to herd your cows) ... So bring the guns and we’ll give you back your cows...So one week, they refused to bring the guns, tukakula ng’ombe tu (We feasted on cows). Sisi tukachinja ng’ombe mbili (we slaughtered two per day) per day, police wakakula ng’ombe moja… (the police ate one).”

As trying as these moments of interrogation were for General in his later life, in its immediate aftermath, the government hailed Operation Nyundo as a success. He took his Grade Two Staff Course at the Defence Staff College between 1985 and 1986 and in June 1986 he was sent to Army Headquarters in Nairobi as Staff Officer 2 Operation/Training.

The Grade Two course had prepared him for operational planning and staff work at Battalion and Brigade levels. In July 1986, he was sent to Eldoret, as Battalion 2nd in Command 9KR, and then in February 1987 when he was promoted to the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel he became Military Assistant to the CGS who was his old Company Commander in Nanyuki, General Mahmoud Mohamed.

From his time as an instructor at Lanet, Nkaissery had experienced a dramatic seven years full of movement from Pokot to Eldoret and back to Lanet. But Lanet was the launching pad for his professional growth. It was also in Lanet that he grew into other important roles – husband and father.

 Also Read the second instalment: The tense phone call that reassured me of Nkaissery's love for me

Also Read the third instalment: The General and I: Day grave seller sent me on a frenzied drive across America

Also Read the fourth instalment: When Nkaissery turned down Kibaki's appointment

©Helen Nkaisserry / Santuri Media, 2022