Kindikis: Family of five professors and siblings’ passion for Jubilee, Nasa

When President Uhuru Kenyatta visited Meru today, he was fighting to keep one of his key support bastions that has in recent weeks played warm host to his main challenger in the August 8 General Election, Mr Raila Odinga.

Mr Odinga returned from his recent visit to the region with a spring in his step, confident that he was penetrating the larger Mount Kenya East.

The perceived success of the National Super Alliance (Nasa) foray into the region is attributable in part to the campaigns of Prof Isaiah Iguna Kindiki, an elder brother of Prof Kithure Kindiki, Jubilee’s senior-most leader from the area and Tharaka-Nithi Senator.

MAJORITY LEADER
The elder Kindiki is the Nasa luminary in Mt Kenya East, while the younger professor and senate majority leader, is the Jubilee marksman, a role that he shares with his more seasoned Meru counterpart Kiraitu Murungi, who has his own duel, as he seeks to unseat Meru Governor Peter Munya.

Soon after the 2013 General Election, the country was jolted into listening to a young professor who was elected Leader of the Majority in the Senate, a position that he soon fit in beautifully.

He used it to casually dismiss any criticism of government as disgruntled whimpering of an opposition still smarting from what he loved to consider a resounding defeat.

This was music to President Kenyatta’s ears, and possibly to Mr Murungi’s, too.

POLITICAL CAMPS
Unknown to both, however, their political bogeyman, Mr Odinga, was also watching Tharaka where he saw another Kindiki, also an eloquent and brave professor, and decided to do business with them and the larger Tharaka Nithi nation.

Hence the Jubilee-Nasa tussle for the larger Meru vote bears the hallmarks of an epic duel featuring two brothers of stellar academic titles facing each other at the ballot warfront.

How the two brothers and formidable scholars came to represent two diametrically opposed political camps is a story that will take you to the parched Irunduni village of Mukothima in Tharaka where the Kindiki family is famed for being one of the most learned in the region.

FAMILY OF SCHOLARS
Here visitors are warned not to call out the title ‘Prof’ anyhow at the dinner table as five heads would turn at once.

Five siblings in this family are professors.

Four other siblings are on their way to professorial status – they all have Master’s degrees, and are at different stages of work on their PhDs.

The eldest is Jonah Nyagah Kindiki, a professor of International Education and Policy, currently serving as the Dean of the Faculty of Education at Moi University.

DIVISIVE REGIME
Jonah had political ambitions of his own, having campaigned briefly for the Tharaka National Assembly seat before retreating to the university.

“I was running for MP Tharaka, but I stepped down for my younger brother, the majority leader. That is why the current MP for Tharaka went in on Jubilee ticket unopposed,” Nyagah Kindiki says.

He has since put his political ambitions on ice, choosing to act as the arbiter between his two younger brothers, Kithure and Isaiah, for Jubilee and Nasa respectively, who both nurse boiling ambitions.

The differences in perspective between Kithure and Isaiah are legion.

While Kithure composes poetry in praise of Jubilee government, Isaiah is disdainfully dismissive of a regime that he considers divisive.

“In the ongoing annexation and empire creation, they have even come up with such terms as Mount Kenya and this should be Mt Kenya East.

"They have annexed even the Tharaka desert. This is all in an attempt to expand the Kikuyu hegemony while diluting the former Eastern Province to now mean only the Kamba occupied counties.

"It is a colonial hangover of the tribe,” Isaiah, a professor of Soil Physics, who speaks in a booming classroom tone of a sage, says.

RELIGIOUS DIFFERENCES
The soil scientist traces the political differences between him and his younger brother to 1997. Then Kithure was the odd man out.

“At that time when all of us were in DP, he told me he would be voting for Kijana Wamalwa.

"That year in the whole of Tharaka, Wamalwa had one vote. That was Kithure’s vote. So there is nothing new about our principled positions now.”

But are things still at ease at the family dinner table, seeing as campaigns have reached a fever pitch point and everyone is under pressure to deliver?

The senator could not be drawn into commenting on the story, but the Nasa man picked the gauntlet.

“A family unit is a natural organic institution, you don’t subscribe to it through a voter’s card or a political party.

"The advantage with us is that we have made a distinction between family and other institutions. For instance, I am a lay pastor at the Methodist Church while he (Kithure) goes to the Pentecostal Church.”

FAILED START
Isaiah, nevertheless stresses that as far as politics goes, Kithure is his nemesis just as President Kenyatta, William Ruto and Aden Duale are.

The Nasa-affiliated Kindiki is a Professor Extraordinaire at the University of South Africa and a research professor at the University of Venda, both of them in South Africa.

He unsuccessfully contested for the Tharaka parliamentary seat in 2007 and thereafter left the country for South Africa where he immersed himself in books and labs for 10 years.

Another of their siblings is Stephen Kithinji Kindiki, a professor of linguistics at Daystar University.

DEMOCRATIC FAMILY

Yet another of the Kindiki professors is Moses Mpuria Kindiki, who teaches political economy at Maasai Mara University.

The graduate of the University of London also doubles up as an adviser to his brother, the senator.

On the state of this democratic family, all siblings choose to accept each other’s decisions.

Nyagah says he is a supporter of Jubilee, but respects Isaiah’s decision.

“He never consulted us. But he is entitled to his own desires. He gets an opportunity to serve his country.

"We are looking for an opportunity at policy levels. Above self-actualisation and family glory is service to the country,” he says of their stellar achievement.

“We give each other an opportunity to reach self-actualisation. Going to Nasa is like going to different schools...Our parents are happy. It is also in the interest of this country. What do you do with all this knowledge?”

FAMILY'S HOBBY
The other siblings are Ruth, a community worker, Sarah, a microbiologist who teaches at Masinde Muliro University, Margaret, a PhD candidate in parasitology, and Mary, a food technologist.

In all, seven out of the nine have affiliations with universities.

Yet Nyagah, the Moi University professor, believes that politics is in the family.

“Politics is our hobby. It is not forced on us. A doctor of philosophy is always searching for truth and knowledge. We are not contented with the present situation.”

MISSIONARY LIFE
Isaiah traces the go-getter streak in the family to a life of hardship and triumph that his father led, a spirit that runs up to the third generation.

Rev (rtd) Daniel Kindiki, the patriarch, rose from abject poverty to a respected cleric and elder in the region.

“My father became a breadwinner at age six when my grandfather died. As a teenager he joined the Methodist missionaries, becoming one of the first African converts in the region.”

“Those days the difference between Church and school was narrow. We don’t know anything else out of school. Our mother, Hannah, is also very prayerful.”

DISPLAY OF WEALTH
On why he spurned Jubilee for Nasa, the Methodist Church lay pastor says he is at odds with the administration ideologically.

“Our problem really started at independence when freedom fighters lost the fight for the new republic to the home guards.

"This has never been exemplified more than it has been now when MCAs campaign in choppers when their constituencies are tiny.

"This display of wealth in places like Tharaka, where to buy a bicycle is a problem, is a mockery of the highest order.”

BALKANISATION

He is against the conglomeration of communities into such groupings as Meru and Kalenjin, saying it is perpetuated by the elite to raise value in the political wholesale market.

“I support Raila because he symbolises the hope of a united Kenya. We want every Kenyan to feel that they can achieve their dreams, whatever their background.

"A Raila government will give back the country to the citizens. As it is, no public servants are really government servants. We shall restore public service.”

The senate majority leader, on his part, has set his sights on the presidency come 2022.

But first he has to deliver Tharaka Nithi and the larger Meru to President Kenyatta this year.

Will Kithure’s brother muddy the waters for him, or will he merge the stronger, if he vanquishes him? Time will tell.