Happy 98th, Charles Njonjo!

Today is Charles Mugane Njonjo's 98th birthday. Njonjo is sui generis in Kenya's history. There have been enormously powerful people since. There have been distinct dressers since. There have been charming, ruthless and eloquent people since. There have been kingmakers and king whisperers since. But there has been no one who combined all those elements in the one person, and carried it off with such style, panache and distinctiveness.

Mr. Njonjo was once one of the most powerful men in Kenya's history (he was, almost literally, a kingmaker, albeit one who was defenestrated when his job was done, in the best traditions of Machiavelli). He was ruthless in his exercise of that power, riding roughshod over rivals and enemies, charming those he needed to, and using all the levers of power available to him. He placed himself at the nexus of the path of those who needed to deal with Kenya, and built himself a fortune while at it. He was amoral in his politics, caring little for the reputation of apartheid South Africa (where he had gone to university - Fort Hare - in the 1940s) if it served his purposes to deal with them. He was a stickler for the law, unless the law got in his way, and then he dispensed with it with verve.

These two links (http://kenyalaw.org/kl/fileadmin/CommissionReports/Report-of-Judicial-Commission-Appointed-to-Inquire-into-Allegations-Involving.pdf and https://books.google.co.ke/books?id=M3lcBAAAQBAJ&pg=PA76&lpg=PA76&dq=njonjo+neopatrimonialism&source=bl&ots=7DLujXX9qJ&sig=ljz5Af7Hp01SHl0z4ewWFjaoBp0&hl=en&sa=X&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=njonjo%20neopatrimonialism&f=false) explain the man - they are the best I have ever come across. 

The photo accompanying this (courtesy travelinafrica.com) is a perfect snapshot of power in Kenya in the very late 1970s and very early 1980s)

That he has lived to almost celebrate his centenary is a combination of good genes, healthy living and a great deal of luck. What is important to those of us to whom history is a living thing is that he's one of the few who was around when the Kenya Protectorate turned into the Kenya Colony (when Njonjo was five months old) and then attained Independence 43 years later. He dictated the course of its early years, witnessed the disappearance and reappearance of democracy, seen four Presidents inaugurated, seen his reputation soar, shredded and then somewhat rehabilitated, and is still lucid enough to have a (quietly expressed) opinion on the events of this remarkable nation.

Happy 98th.