Part 3

VOTE ANTONY MOCHAMA “TONY SMITTA”

“Making Nairobi West the Best.”

This is what my posters and hand flyers said, positioned above and below the best photograph I had ever taken. (So good, in fact, I want it to be the picture on my obituary in AD 2055, heh heh).

Behind the 10,000 flyers I had printed—my motto being “a campaign flyer in every hand”—I had laid out my manifesto. But first, there was something “small” that would cost me many votes.

I am known nationally as Tony Mochama and popularly as “Smitta Smitten,” from my now-defunct newspaper column. However, unless one undertakes a legal name change—as politicians like Irungu wa Matangi (“Friar of the Water Tanks”) or Gideon Mbuvi did to include “Mike Sonko,” their popular, notorious monikers, on the ballot—one is stuck with the name on their national identity card.

Think of the name William Jefferson Blythe III on a ballot: I bet you had no idea that is the birth name of Bill Clinton. This was my situation with “Antony Ontita” on the ballot. Bridging the link between Ontita, Mochama, and “Smitta” so that I could benefit from my own name recognition was going to be one hell of a task, even in cosmopolitan Nairobi West.

The manifesto of MCA aspirant Tony “Smitta” Mochama:

i.           For 20 years, he has served with good cheer across the media and will bring city council issues to national attention.

ii.         Will attend and address all Resident Association meetings and investigate issues of security, infrastructure, and social welfare within the ward of Nairobi West.

iii.        As a person with a legal background, Tony will enact sound municipal laws (and not be the chair-flinging, insult-hurling, empty debe in the county chambers).

iv.        Mochama will remove redundant rules and reduce the licences required for real “hustlers” to set up their businesses in order to survive the brutality of our economy.

v.          As a humble Starehian and lifelong Nairobi West Ward member, Mochama will ensure mama mbogas, boda bodas, and hawkers no longer endure savage harassment from “Kanjo” vultures who treat them like sewage.

vi.        Will work to reduce land rates for property owners and push for the repeal of rental tax on housing, provided rents then operate within reasonable regulation, especially for middle-class housing.

My manifesto ended with a plea in a bold red box at the bottom: “In August 2022, let’s choose thinking citizens dedicated to good deeds, and not send mere idlers and noisemakers to City Hall. Choose Antony ‘Tony Smitta’ Ontita to make West the Best Ward in Nai!”

To raise the initial funds for the campaign, I turned to the Starehe Boys’ Centre, my secondary school alumni class of 1993. “Strengthened to Serve” is one of our mottos, and the fourth stanza of the Starehe school song is: “We pledge ourselves, when this our generation, must in its turn, the weight of government bear. To all mankind, through service to our nation… Head, heart, and hand, in justice, zeal and care!”

By the beginning of March 2022, every one of those lines made absolute sense to me. Starehe Boys has produced several politicians for Kenya. There is Peter Kenneth, former MP for Gatanga Constituency, elected in 2002 on a National Rainbow Coalition ticket. In his 10-year tenure, Gatanga was constantly voted the constituency that best utilized its Constituency Development Fund (often a tap for corrupt legislators), and Kenya prospered in the 2003–2013 era when he was Assistant Minister for Finance in the Kibaki government.

There is Raphael Tuju, the journalist-turned-politician who also entered as an MP in 2002, became Foreign Minister of Kenya (2005–2007), and returned in 2017 as a Cabinet Secretary without portfolio and the Secretary General of the Jubilee Party.

Ken Okoth, a schoolmate and friend at Starehe, was one of Kenya’s greatest MPs during his time representing Kibra in Nairobi. Born in poverty in that same slum and rescued by Starehe Boys’ School, he ensured his CDF paid the school fees for slum day scholars from 2013 until his premature death at 40 from colorectal cancer in 2019.

But it is George Magoha, Professor of Urology, who proved to be the best and brightest of the Starehe political lot. Born in 1952 in Kisumu just as the Mau Mau liberation war began, Magoha attended Starehe for his O-levels, went to university in Lagos, and by age 48 became the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Nairobi (UoN). In his decade as Vice-Chancellor, he instituted such order and discipline that staff and student strikes trickled toward zero by AD 2010.

In 2016, with his record as a no-nonsense education administrator (and the Churchillian bulldog features to go with it, as old Griffin had been a great admirer of Sir Winston), Prof. Magoha took the KNEC (Kenya National Examinations Council) by the neck, joining the great work Dr. Fred Matiang’i was doing to dismantle the cartels that had brought dishonesty to the national examination process for decades. On March 1, 2019, he was elevated to serve as the Cabinet Secretary for Education.

He would do a sterling job right until his death on January 24, 2023, shortly after his retirement following the 2022 General Elections—a post his predecessor Fredrick Matiang’i, a formidable fellow, had also held. Professor George Magoha always told the media that his spirit of service, diligence, and insistence on excellence were bestowed on him at Starehe Boys’ Centre under the great educationist Dr. Geoffrey Griffin: “Otherwise I was already an Eastlands oboho (mugger) and club band musician.” (Young George, built like a buffalo and with massive lung capacity, became a trumpet player in the Starehe Boys’ School Band).

Occasionally, his love for Starehe would show in a haughty manner. “If you had gone to a good school like Starehe,” he once told a shallow television reporter, “you would not be asking me such stupid questions.”

It was in the footsteps of these colossi that I intended to follow. The first small step was raising money from the 1993 SBC alumni. There are 133 “Old Boys” in our Starehe class of 1993 WhatsApp group, ably led by architect Samuel Gitau. My ask was Ksh1,993 (see what I did there?) for my campaign. If everyone contributed—which never happens—I would have had Ksh265,069. In the end, 56 Old Boys, beginning with my buddy Bobby Mkangi, contributed a total of Ksh111,608. I was off to the races.

The financial breakthrough I sought arrived at the end of March 2022, when the Standard Group Sacco I had been saving with paid me half my dues—Ksh330,330—after a long struggle. The Standard Group was already entering financial woes, even as its owner, Gideon Moi, took funds from his many inherited enterprises to finance “New KANU,” which he had taken over as chairman upon retired president Daniel arap Moi’s death in February 2020.

Ksh441,946! Throw in the Ksh60,000 I had just received from my first month with The EastAfrican, and I had a war chest of 500k for my fledgling MCA campaign.

The first item on the menu for any politician, big or small, is printing costs: posters, flyers, banners, caps, T-shirts, and even motorcycle reflector jackets for the boda-boda riders so they recognize your name early. I will tell you more about the posters and reflectors—the tortuous processes and the “colourful” characters and low-down weasels who inhabit these spaces—in the next chapter. Suffice it to say that, thanks to a Communist Party comrade, I was able to find a good man called Maxwell deep in the bowels of River Road. In his dusty, third-floor office with a window facing smoggy skies, we bargained for posters, flyers, and banners for Ksh85,046.

With these in hand—but mostly on walls—my MCA campaign hit the ground crawling. My campaign materials went up on Friday, April 1, 2022, certainly not the most auspicious date for an aspirant.

Within three weeks, 80 per cent of my posters had been covered by those of my rivals: most notably, a missing-vehicles racketeer turned leading contender; a nightclub ex-bouncer from Madaraka (whose previous position had been as a “body buddy” to the musician Redsan); and a third fellow whose second name is “Gondi” (which means “thief” in Sheng).

My precious road banners had been ruthlessly ripped apart. As I gave out flyers, I would watch as, a few metres down the road, the chap I had just served would toss it into a “Kanjo” litter bin. Or the smart lady in the short skirt who had taken the flyer with a sweet smile would surreptitiously let it float back onto the street with a flutter of dainty fingers so as not to hurt my feelings. Since then, I always take the trouble to read any flyer I am given on these hard streets—even if it is simply about a new gas service—before I dispose of it in the third-nearest litter bin.

That was Ksh85,000 gone down the drain after three hard weeks on the street. It was time to recuperate and re-strategize. On Saturday, April 23, I took a plane to Lamu. I stayed there, returning 10 days later on the Sunday of Labour Day. I spent my entire time on that quiet donkey island during Ramadan reflecting on my strategy—but in all honesty, I was mostly finishing my COVID-19 collection of short stories. We were running creative workshops with my old mentor Prof. Mikhail Iossel and amigo Josip Novakovich, workshops that have since morphed into the Mara Creative Writing Workshops.

The following week, back in the city, I was swamped with mundane paperwork, but Saturday, May 7, was the big day. Our CPK Secretary General, Bernard Wachira, was to give us, the aspirants, the nomination certificates that would make us official candidates for the Communist Party of Kenya.

We had in our ranks a potential Governor of Taita Taveta in Hon. Andrew Mwadime; two or three Senate aspirants from Isiolo and the northern counties; a few folks aspiring to be Members of Parliament; and 10 of us going for the “lowest-hanging fruit” of ward representative—which I took to grandly calling “Legislator of the Municipal Council” to boost morale and prestige.

When I received my party nomination certificate that Saturday afternoon—having left a literary outing of the Goethe/AMKA space at the arboretum to dash to a hotel in Ngara where the mood bordered on the politico-evangelical—I was literally over the moon. It was the best birthday present I had received in years.

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