KENYA’S LONGTIME STRONGMAN DIES AT 95.
Transformed stable state into corrupt nation
Daniel arap Moi, who has died aged 95, was one of the last of Africa’s post-colonial dictators; vice-president of Kenya to Jomo Kenyatta from 1966, and president from 1978 to 2002, he inherited a country with a functioning civil service and infrastructure, and reduced it to a country with one of the world’s greatest wealth disparities.
A member of Kenya’s minority Kalenjin tribe, Moi inherited the mantle of power from Kenyatta, leader of the dominant Kikuyu tribe, on the understanding he not upset an arrangement keeping the elites of two main tribes (the Luo and the Luhya) out of power. But he played many tribes against each other.
Moi won in 1992 and 1997 in elections marked by blatant vote-rigging and state-orchestrated acts of “inter-ethnic” violence. The worst incidents came in 1992 when 1,500 Kikuyu were slaughtered in the Rift Valley by Kalenjin and Masai warriors.
Daniel Toroitich arap Moi was born Sept. 2, 1924, in the Rift Valley. He was a teacher from 1946 to 1955, when he was elected to the legislature for Rift Valley.
When Moi took the oath of office in 1978, his country-boy accessibility provided a welcome change to Kenyatta’s secretive imperial style. He released political prisoners, gave free milk to primary schools, introduced free primary education and declared war on graft.
A turning point came with the defeat of an attempted coup in 1982, after which Moi became bent on destroying Kikuyu control. Subsequent appointments were made on the basis of personal loyalty, and the favoured few were given soft loans from stateowned banks, freedom to circumvent foreign exchange regulations and carte blanche to demand kickbacks.
Within a decade the bankrupt government had to withdraw basic social services — even the free milk. The infrastructure crumbled. Opponents were murdered, imprisoned, tortured.
As the corruption, human rights abuses, rocketing crime wave and economic failure grew, international donors pressured Moi to embrace multi-party democracy.
Moi married Helena Bommet in 1950, but they separated in 1974. He had five sons and three daughters; one son, Jonathan, died in 2019.