Stanley Livondo during an interview in Kilimani,Nairobi, on September 7, 2023.
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Stanley Livondo: ‘I have no regrets but let’s allow Ruto to work’
On September 13, President William Ruto will clock a year since he lifted a Bible in front of a jubilant crowd at Kasarani to take the reins of power as Kenya’s fifth president. For many who had rooted for Dr Ruto’s rival, Raila Odinga of Azimio la Umoja that electrifying Tuesday was not worth celebrating.
Among those opposed to Dr Ruto’s candidacy was the effervescent politician Stanley Livondo. From filing a case in 2020 seeking to bar a deputy president from vying for the presidency after serving two terms to making explosive remarks about a plot to assassinate former president Uhuru Kenyatta days to the General Election, Mr Livondo never left any doubts as to whom he was backing.
Never mind that Mr Livondo and Dr Ruto cut their teeth on the YK ’92 movement as upstarts in the political arena, supporting President Daniel arap Moi. Or that Mr Livondo was backing Mr Odinga, a man he vigorously campaigned against as he unsuccessfully ran for Lang’ata MP in 2007.
Mr Livondo’s 2007 bid was a campaign that saw cash splashed as he – a candidate of President Mwai Kibaki’s party PNU – sought to embarrass Mr Odinga, a presidential candidate who couldn’t become president if he lost the parliamentary seat. He was then known as Kenya’s Mr Moneybags.
One year after the new government came into power, Mr Livondo says he is a man who never casts things in stone and is now asking everyone to give Dr Ruto time to govern. He recommends two and a half years before the administration’s performance can be properly assessed.
“Let us give him his time. We should not harass him because even you, if you are doing work and are being harassed, you know you can’t perform 100 per cent.”
The last time Mr Livondo was in the headlines, he was speaking in front of the Directorate of Criminal Investigations headquarters after being quizzed regarding his claims about an assassination plot.
“Whatever I said, that’s how it was supposed to be. And I’m not ashamed of anything,” he says. “I speak my mind, and I will always say the truth. I have nothing to hide.” He adds that the DCI never summoned him again after he was quizzed.
He is still the animated Mr Livondo, though you can tell he has calculatedly removed Dr Ruto from the bull’s eye as he throws his darts. His case about a deputy president being barred from vying, he says, is still in court. He says it keeps getting adjourned. However, he still believes a deputy president is part of the presidency.
“If you have been the deputy, why should you want to be the president?” he poses, noting that the Deputy President and the Cabinet are involved in virtually all decisions that the presidency makes.
“I think, wherever Ruto is, in fact he’s supporting my views. Ask him one day, he will support me and say ‘this man has a point’,” says Mr Livondo.
Cagey answers
Mr Livondo has never won an election campaign, but it is not for lack of trying. After losing to Mr Odinga in 2007 (he says he succeeded in busting the myth that Mr Odinga had special powers through which he would gesture at someone and he dies), he ran unsuccessfully for Kamukunji MP in 2013 and Kakamega senator in 2017. He sat it out last year, but now he says he has his papers in order and he will gun for something in 2027 and “Wakenya wataimba wimbo wangu (Kenyans will sing my song).”
There are things Mr Livondo won’t give a straight answer to. One of them is his family: “As a politician, you can’t say much, but everything is okay.”
The other is where he stays: “I’m in Africa, anywhere in Africa. You can get me anywhere… There is no city [where] I stay for more than a week. Even in Kenya, I don’t stay for more than a week. It’s very hard.”
He, however, says that these days he spends most of his time in Zambia despite travelling across the continent.
Describing himself as someone who is 80 per cent a businessman and 20 per cent a politician, Mr Livondo gets more winded when explaining his income sources, though he rejects any links to drug dealings and any sort of crime.
“I’m a farmer,” he says. “If you go to western Kenya, I’m a sugarcane farmer. I’m a corn farmer. I’m in cereals.”
He adds that he is also into construction and energy, among other fields.
“When you make money in Kenya, first you are asked where you are from. Either you are a devil worshipper – Illuminati – or you are a drug dealer, or they have brought another thing — wash-wash. They’ll say all sorts of things,” he says.
He is, however, more forthcoming when discussing Dr Ruto’s one year in power. As the hurdles against the Finance Act 2023 continue to be cleared by the courts, a new deduction by the name of Housing Levy will be sitting smugly in every employed Kenyan’s payslip for the second month running this September.
Mr Livondo, who reckons he has never been employed all his life, says Kenyans should embrace the levy and that whoever feels uncomfortable should challenge it in court.
“You can go to court and say, ‘I, as an individual, my money shouldn’t be deducted. Before I surrender this money, let them bring it here; I’m ready to sign here in court, and I will surrender the money. And the sum being deducted, be it Sh100 or Sh1,000, it will be deducted. And they tell me that after two years, I will have a house. So, if I won’t get a house, I’ll return to the court.’ But no Kenyan has done that,” he says.
He is also supportive of Dr Ruto’s bid to revive the sugar industry in his native Western region. Mr Livondo believes there are too many millers in Kenya’s sugar belt. He would prefer only two in Western and another two in Nyanza.
‘Mambo ni matatu’
Back to 2022, how did he feel when Dr Ruto beat Mr Odinga? He says it didn’t hurt him.
“The truth is, I was not supporting Ruto. I was supporting Baba (Mr Odinga),” he says.
However, he is all for backing Ruto throughout his term but he says the administration should be ready to answer questions ahead of the 2027 elections.
Just as with Dr Ruto’s “mambo ni matatu”, Mr Livondo says he also knows three outcomes for people who join politics.
“There is a time I told Kenyans that when you are joining politics, there are three things: you must prepare to die, to go to prison and to be poor...If you fear those three things, take care of children at home,” he says.
So, did he “go poor” at some point after posing as Mr Moneybags in the political arena?
He says a vehement no: “I’ve left, I’m abroad, you don’t see me around anymore. Does that mean my money has reduced?”
The moody rain-drenched night is getting moodier itself as we leave Mr Livondo to attend to tens of other things before he flies to South Africa the next morning.
