DP Ruto’s Hustler Nation vs JM’s Maskini Movement

Let me begin with a recollection of something I watched on television in April 2008. It was the burial of pioneer nationalist Jeremiah Nyagah in Mbeere, in now Embu County, attended by the then President Mwai Kibaki.

When the time came for offerings, President Kibaki looked the other way as the basket was passed around.

Embarrassed that his boss had no money to give, the then Head of the Public Service Francis Muthaura quickly gave some money to the President’s aide-de-camp Lt-Col JL Mrashui, who put it in the basket as Kibaki watched with indifference.

Amused by the drama, I related the incident to my friend, retired policeman Essau Kioni, who once served as a security consultant in Kibaki’s State House. He laughed and told me that for all the time he knew Kibaki, he never saw him give money to anybody and doubted that the man ever carried a wallet in his life.

I also shared the story with another friend, former Treasury permanent secretary Charles Mbindyo, who worked with Kibaki when he was Finance minister and was also his economics lecturer at Makerere University.

He told me that in college, Kibaki taught them a theory he practises in life: never give cash to anybody for no work done because that is to spread poverty and encourage a beggar mentality (I guess that is what Kibaki would call a “hustler nation”). Instead, Kibaki told his students in Makerere, “enable people to earn money for themselves, which creates wealth”.

Kibaki presidency

I guess those who earned a salary in the early years of the Kibaki presidency will understand what he meant. When he ascended to power, there was so much money around that local banks literally hawked loans in the streets, as long as you had a payslip or proof of steady income. And, before you paid the loan, the bank would plead with you to “top up” – that is, take an extra amount on the loan.

What Kibaki did was simple economics. The government stopped borrowing from the domestic market and instead embarked on prudent planning, efficient collection of taxes, and minimised the looting of public coffers. So, all of a sudden, banks found themselves with so much “idle” cash that they wanted us to borrow.

I remember some farmers from Nyeri visiting Kibaki at the Sagana State Lodge expecting “hand-outs,” only for the president to tell them that if anybody wanted money, the banks had so much to loan out. But he advised them to make good use of borrowed money and pay back.

So a colleague at Nation Media, revise editor Francis Mwaniki and I took advantage of the Kibaki “boom” to buy plots in Runda area. Our immediate neighbours were Dr Bitange Ndemo, later appointed permanent secretary, and Dr Fred Matiang’i. Yes, that big man of the “Deep State” was once my neighbour.

Sorry for digressing. The story today is about Hustler Ruto and Maskini JM.

JM Kariuki was assistant minister and MP for Nyandarua North Constituency in the days of President Jomo Kenyatta. He had been in colonial detention with my father at Manyani Prison. Actually, I first knew about him when, as a little boy, my father asked me to read his book titled “Mau Mau Detainee”. The tattered copy is still at my rural home in Nyahururu.

At independence, Mzee Kenyatta engaged JM as his private assistant. Soon, JM became a rich man. Years later, my former MP and JM’s friend, GG Kariuki, told me that Mzee Kenyatta had to remove JM from his office when he received a security dossier on how JM had used his name (Kenyatta’s) to illegally acquire wealth.

As a soft landing, Mzee Kenyatta appointed JM the head of the newly created National Youth Service (NYS). GG was to tell me that President Kenyatta inadvertently handed JM another “goldmine”. He made so much money and, perhaps, the hairdressers and slay queens accused of carting away NYS cash in gunny bags at night learnt a thing or two from him.

Secret dossier

Mzee fired JM from the NYS, again on the strength of a secret dossier on how he had used it to line his pockets. Then JM joined politics and was appointed assistant minister for Tourism and Mining. He became filthy rich and even bought a private helicopter - which even the President didn’t have. A confidential dossier filed with the Truth, Justice and Reconciliation Commission in 2009 (I have a copy of it, but won’t tell you how I got it) details how JM amassed riches through illegal trade in ivory and gemstones when he was an assistant minister.

It is then that JM began to criticise the Kenyatta government, which he accused of creating a nation of “ten millionaires and ten million beggars”. Next, he went on a cash-dishing spree and distributed hoes and mattocks to the “Maskini Nation”. There was even talk that he secretly founded an organisation, Maskini Liberation Movement.

Sadly, he suddenly went missing and his body was retrieved in Ngong Forest – a very unfortunate affair. He should have just been allowed to live and dish out all the cash he had. The “maskini” needed it. After all, he had allegedly looted it from the same “maskini,” so why not let him give it back piecemeal through “handouts”!

In DP Ruto’s “hustler” narrative, one finds several parallels with JM’s “Maskini” nation.

Like JM, Dr Ruto began as a poor man. In his own words, he was a hustler hawking kienyenji chicken at a place called Turbo near Eldoret town. Then President Moi “discovered” him and put him in a “hustler” outfit called Youth for Kanu 1992 (YK‘92).

Overnight, Ruto, then in late 20s, became a rich man. At that tender age, he could “afford” a top-of-the-deck Range Rover and was rumoured to own pieces of prime land. Some jealous people said he had acquired the property through dubious means but they had no evidence. Wacheni wivu! Dr Ruto is a blessed man.

Like JM, Dr Ruto is big-hearted and generously gives to the needy. Just as JM was giving hoes and mattocks, Dr Ruto is giving out wheelbarrows and pangas.

Postscript: Methinks we should profusely thank DP Ruto for sparking a national conversation. This week I saw Baba and Ruto’s “big brother,” who addresses him as William, bonding with boda boda riders.

But at least, like Kibaki would have done, they told the boda boda people that their way out of “hustling” isn’t “handouts” but forming a savings co-operative society from where they can borrow money and build wealth.

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