Ng’ethe Njoroge: ‘Tiny’ Rowland’s insider in Jomo Kenyatta’s circles

A day after Bruce Mckenzie died in 1978, British buccaneer Tiny Rowland met in London with Ng’ethe Njoroge, the Kenyan High Commissioner. It was a lunch meeting.

“There is no reason to welcome anyone’s death,” he told Ng’ethe. However, according to Tom Bower, Rowland’s biographer, the British businessman “was understandably not grieving the departure of an unpleasant competitor”.

Ng’ethe was an essential bridge into the bowels of the Kenyatta government. He was always entertained at Rowland’s family home at Hedsor Wharf or at the Dorchester. His brother, Dr Njoroge Mungai, had positioned himself as the president’s physician and occupied some top positions: Minister for Defence and later Minister for Foreign Affairs.

“I felt sympathy for Tiny, because he was the underdog against the City and the Establishment,” Ng’ethe told Bower in the book, Rebel Tycoon.

When he died last week, Ng’ethe went with some of the secrets of the Kenyatta era when he positioned himself as an insider.

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The Magana family was powerful. That is why Rowland had recruited one of Ng’ethe’s nephews, Udi Gecaga, to head Lonhro in East Africa. But getting the deals he desired was always an uphill task since McKenzie, described by Lonhro insiders as “an able but unscrupulous buccaneer loyal only to his self-interest”, had positioned himself as the chief broker.

McKenzie had Charles Njonjo, the attorney-general, as his prime contact. Moreover, Njonjo and McKenzie had no time for Ng’ethe’s powerful brother—Mungai—which sums up why Rowland had a lunch date with Ng’ethe after McKenzie’s death.

McKenzie died following a crash after a bomb exploded as they flew back from meeting President Idi Amin in Kampala.  Rowland, according to Bower, was constantly questioning why his employee, Gavin Whitelaw, the director of Lonhro Exports, “was onboard the aeroplane of his sworn enemy.”

The competition for space within Kenyatta’s government by British entrepreneurs was refereed by McKenzie, Kenyatta’s minister for Agriculture, until 1969. He later became a political broker and a critical contact t between London and Kenyatta’s State House.

Rowland trusted Ng’ethe. At one point, when Rowland had trouble with some of the shareholders, Udi saved him during the famous London coup.

Powerful position

Some people, perhaps unaware of Ng’ethe’s credentials, always attributed his appointment as High Commissioner to his brother’s powerful position. The link was vital, nay, important. His sister, Jemimah Gecaga, was a nominated MP, while his brother, Nyoike, headed Kenya Film Corporation (KFC), Kenya’s sole film distribution agency. Nyoike is credited for crafting the policy that led to the setting up of KFC in 1967 under the Matu Wamae-led Industrial Development Corporation (ICDC). No family held such top positions at the same time.

Born in 1928, Ng’ethe attended Central State College in Wilberforce, Ohio, United States, before graduating with a degree in journalism from Boston University.

In 1963, he joined the Ministry of Lands and Settlement and was later transferred to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and attached to the African and Middle East Division. From 1964 to 1966, Ng’ethe was in the Kenyan Delegation to the United Nations General Assembly, an indicator of his central role in Kenya’s early diplomacy.

Then, in 1968, Ng’ethe was posted to Bonn, Germany, as a Counsellor and before being posted to London as High Commissioner to replace Dr Josephat Karanja, who was returning to Nairobi to head the University of Nairobi.

However, recent studies on Kenya’s early diplomacy with the UK suggest that High Commissioners played a minimal role. It is argued that Kenyatta preferred to work through individuals rather than institutions in his interaction with Britain. The appointment of Karanja, a historian with no diplomatic experience, as the first Kenyan High Commissioner, supports this view.

Read: Secret deals that took Moi to State House against all odds

When Ngethe was appointed to replace Dr Karanja, British Counsellor James Arthur of the British High Commission in Nairobi commented: He “was friendly enough in his relations with us, although he never cut a very impressive figure, and I am afraid my first impression on hearing of the appointment was one of disappointment that the Kenyans should not have proposed someone of greater stature”.

As Kenya-British diplomacy scholar Poppy Curren notes in his book Kenya and Britain after Independence: Beyond Neo-Colonialism, “the Kenyan High Commission in London was not the site of much Anglo-Kenyan interaction. Most communication occurred either with the British High Commission or through Kenyan ministers and intermediaries being sent to Britain and meeting British ministers—Kenyatta’s favoured route of policymaking”.

But Ng’ethe took to his position with gusto. In 1975, when Kenyatta was under attack by the British press, Ng’ethe authored an aide-memoire to then Foreign Secretary James Callaghan warning that if such “defamatory” articles continued, the Anglo-Kenyan relations would be imperilled and British economic interests jeopardised.

By then, the Sunday Times had carried articles linking Kenyatta and his aides to the death of populist politician JM Kariuki. The article also suggested that the First Family was involved in the exploitation of Kenya’s minerals.

The death of Kenyatta saw a significant shift as Njonjo managed the transition and took charge. Ng’ethe was not to survive the purge as Moi started removing those aligned to Mungai. Some pundits say that Njonjo was trying to position his men.

The first to fall in the purge was Ng’ethe, who was recalled from London. He was succeeded by the first Kalenjin graduate Shadrack Kimalel, Moi’s classmate and African Inland Church adherent.

The Americans interpreted Ng’ethe’s removal as “Moi’s determination to rid himself of those whom he feels are of questionable loyalty” and as a “crackdown on those he suspects of trying to undermine his regime” according to Wilbert Le Melle, the US Ambassador, in a cable.

Ng’ethe settled back to a non-political life. Few people could pick him out in a crowd.

His 335-acre Gathoni Park Farm in Tigoni is splendid and has a deep history. It was once partly owned by Major Clarence Buxton, a descendant of Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton, who, together with William Wilberforce, petitioned for the end of the slave trade in Britain.

Historical injustice

The descendants of Ng’ang’a Muirikia also claim the land under the historical injustice clause and have petitioned the Kenya Land Commission to settle them back.

 Tigoni was one of the areas Africans were ordered to vacate to give room to white farmers. It has ever since been a contested site between those demanding restoration of their land rights.

There is also another story about Buxton and this Limuru land, where Ng’ethe was buried on Thursday, December 28.

As a district commissioner, Buxton was considered a future governor. As a great supporter of indigenous involvement in sports, he is credited with setting up the Narok stadium, where he hoped to interest the Maasai in playing cricket, and polo using donkeys.

His end came after he was named as a respondent in a divorce suit by his junior, government analyst Maurice Fox, who claimed that the DC had “intimacy” with his wife at the Nairobi Game Park. Though Buxton denied the claim—his defence was that the park was full of ticks—he lost the case, was divorced, and was transferred to the British colony of Palestine.

Two years later, he resigned from the colonial government, married his erstwhile mistress, Mavin Jean Fox, and retired to the Limuru land, then known as “Ithanji Farm”. In October 1944, in a Kenya gazette notice, Mavin renounced the surname Fox and became Mavin Jean Buxton.

Ng’ethe was initially married to Mary Morello, an American activist, and they had a son—the famous US guitarist Tom Morello. Mary turned 100 years in October. He later married Dr Florence Njeri and has three children.

Before his death, Ng’ethe had settled down as a farmer, and his Gathoni Farm showcases what he believed in: openness. He was also tidy, to a fault.

[email protected] @johnkamau1