DAILY NATIONThursday March 18, 2010 50 GOLDEN YEARS I

T H E G O L D E N Y E A R S

S O U V E N I R I S S U E

DAILY NATIONThursday March 18, 2010II | 50 GOLDEN YEARS

AS THE NATION MEDIA Group (NMG) marks its 50th anniver-sary, it would be too limiting

to perceive this occasion as a mere milestone in a history of a media or-ganization, no matter how successful. The Nation’s path has been closely en-twined with the history of Kenya, East Africa, and the entire continent during a period filled with momentous devel-opments.NMG itself has undergone a remark-able transformation. From two strug-gling Kenyan newspapers, one Kiswa-hili and one English, half a century ago, the group has grown into the larg-

est multi-media enterprise in East and Central Africa. At the same time, the organization has evolved from a small private company into a publicly-traded corporation, one of the largest on the Kenya stock exchange, with a majority of its shares owned by individual East African shareholders.

My own role in the Nation Media Group has also evolved considerably. Seven years ago I gave my personal shares in NMG to the Aga Khan Fund for Economic Development (AKFED) – the economic development arm of the Aga Khan Development Network (AKDN). The move not only gave NMG a new source of corporate strength but it also anchored the company in a broader development philosophy designed to bring excellence and best practices to societies in the developing world. It also allowed NMG to benefit

from the Network’s significant experi-ence in East Africa.

The Aga Khan Fund for Economic Development is neither a charitable foundation nor a vehicle for wealth gen-eration. It is a for-profit, international development agency that, because of its institutional background and social conscience, invests in projects, which will make a positive contribution to the quality of life for those who are impact-ed by their activities.

The broader philosophy of the Aga Khan Development Network is found-ed on the premise that developing soci-eties deserve the best and that settling

for less, though often tempting, is an in-creasingly dangerous option. Our world is competitive: like other AKFED com-panies, the Nation Media Group must strive to meet world-class standards if it is to thrive and grow in the globalized world of the 21st century

Our Network, I should also empha-size, is active in a broad range of de-velopment fields, from environmental, humanitarian and civil society projects to microfinance and infrastructure in-vestments, to cultural, health-related and educational support. East Africa has been an important setting for our work in all of these arenas, including, most recently, major new initiatives in education.

For example, Kenya is the home of the first functioning Aga Khan Acad-emy, located in Mombasa, and one of a network of 18 schools that will even-

tually provide world class primary and secondary education to talented students in 14 countries across three continents. I am pleased that East Af-rica will also host the continent’s first faculty of Arts and Sciences of the Aga Khan University (AKU) as well as the university’s new Graduate School of Media and Communication. It is my sincere hope that the school, which will be initially located in Nairobi and later extended to the new Arusha cam-pus, will help Africa in particular and the developing world in general to de-velop an ever-stronger corps of owners, media managers, public-spirited pro-fessional journalists who will be able to adapt and excel in a rapidly changing media environment.

I believe that the media in general and the Nation Group in particular can play a central role in the shaping of the region and the continent in the years ahead, as part of the growing influence of civil society institutions in an in-creasingly pluralistic environment. Indeed Kofi Annan, arbitrator of the post-election reconciliation agreement in Kenya, acknowledged the Nation’s work in mobilising the forces of civil society in the cause of stability.

Anniversaries tend to lend them-selves to reminiscing about the past—and, most appropriately, to saluting those who have been a part of that past, as I am pleased to join in doing. But commemorative occasions also present an excellent opportunity to look toward the future. NMG has had an impressive record of past achievement , dealing successfully over five decades with a wide variety of challenges and opportu-nities, and emerging as what some have called a journalistic “Mzee” of East Afri-ca. But now, NMG’s future will depend on its continued ability to learn and to adapt, to attract leaders and employees of the highest quality, and, driven by an ethic of responsible service, maintain the confidence of its reading, viewing, advertising and shareholding constitu-ents

The Nation has become a journalistic mzee of East Africa, writes HIS HIGHNESS THE AGA KHAN

Afte≥ 5 decades, the futu≥e depends on ability to adapt

NMG ITSELF HAS UNDERGONE A REMARKABLE TRANSFORMATION. FROM GROWN INTO THE LARGEST MULTI-MEDIA ENTERPRISE IN EAST AND CENTRAL AFRICA.

P U B L I S H E R :

N A T I O N M E D I A G R O U P

E D I T O R I A L D I R E C T O R :

J O S E P H O D I N D O

E D I T O R I A L A D V I S O R :

W A N G E T H I M W A N G I

P R O J E C T E D I T O R :

N I C K W A C H I R A

C O N T R I B U T I N G E D I T O R S :

G E R R Y L O U G H R A N , L U C Y

O R I A N G , K I B E K A M U N Y U ,

R U T H L U B E M B E

C R E A T I V E D I R E C T O R :

K A M A U W A N Y O I K E

P A G E D E S I G N E R S :

D E N N I S M A K O R I , P E T E R

C H E S E R E T , C O N R A D K A R U M E

P H O T O E D I T O R :

J O A N P E R E R U A N

P H O T O R E S E A R C H E R S :

N O O R B E G U M K A N A N I ,

A N N I E L N J O K A , E V A N S

S A S A K A ,

C H A R L E S B E T T , M A R I A

W A M B U A K A N I N I

L E A D W R I T E R S :

G E R R Y L O U G H R A N , J O H N

K A M A U

C O N T R I B U T O R S :

N I C K C H I T T Y , G E R A R D

W I L K I N S O N , P E T E R

C H A D W I C K , P H I L I P O C H I E N G ,

J O H N M C H A F F I E , P A U L

R E D F E R N , J E F F O T I E N O ,

M A R G A R E T T A W A G A C H E R U ,

M A C H A R I A G A I T H O , D I C K

D A W S O N , Y U S U F K . D A W O O D ,

J O H N F O X , D O R O T H Y

K W E Y U , J A I N D I K I S E R O ,

M U T U M A M A T H I U , E R I C

O B I N O . W A N G U I M A I N A ,

G A K I H A W E R U , W A N J I R U

W A I T H A K A , K E N O P A L A ,

C A L E B A T E M I , G A V I N

B E N N E T T , K U I K I N Y A N J U I ,

A M O S N G A I R A , F R A N K

W H A L L E Y , K I B E K A M U N Y U ,

P H I L I P M W A N I K I , S H R A V A N

V I D Y A R T H I , H E Z E K I A H

W E P U K H U L U , D O R O T H Y

C H E B E T , F R E D O L U O C H ,

M U N A W A H O M E , R A C H E L

J O N E S , D A V I D A D U D A , S A M M Y

W A M B U A , L I Z M U T H O N I , F R E D

O M O N D I , N J E R I K I H A N G ’ A ,

C O S M A S B U T U N Y I , F R E D

O L O U C H , J E N I F F E R M U I R U R I ,

W I L L I A M O E R I .

DAILY NATIONThursday March 18, 2010 50 GOLDEN YEARS III

By PHILIP OCHIENG

When I first joined the Nation as a cub reporter in 1966, I never ceased to be intrigued by a mes-sage in large print pinned on the inside walls of the old Nation House in Nairobi’s Tom Mboya Street. Attributed to the propri-etor of a well known chain of London newspapers, it said: “A free newspaper, I suppose, is a NATION talking to itself”.

Whoever chose it as the Na-tion’s motto – probably Michael Curtis (the founding managing director) or John Bierman (the founding editor) or the Aga Khan himself (the investor) -- it was a most appropriate dictum for the circumstances in which the newspaper was being born.

For it was a brilliant play on the word “nation”. It sought to identify their coming publica-tion with the problems and as-pirations of another nation in the last years of gestation -- the Kenyan nation.

By naming itself NATION and giving prominence to the dictum on the walls, the instiga-tors of the Nation were clear that their aim was for the Nation to be born together with the other na-tion, so that, thereafter, the two nations could grow up together in symbiosis.

Would one nation (the peo-

ple and their new state) help the other Nation (the newspa-per group) to make its mission manifest by gathering, editing, commenting on and dissemi-nating information countrywide and internationally – freely and without any fear of retaliation?

One of the more interesting features of the first edition of the Nation (in English) was a cartoon depicting the Nation as a baby boy sleeping in its cot, watched by the redoubtable Tom Mboya and Ronald Ngala among other nationalists. Underneath the cartoon, one commented: “He’s a cute little boy, but will he behave?”

The question could, of course, also have gone the other way. I was there at the place near the Carnivore, Nairobi, and, at midnight on December 12, 1963, watched as the Union flag was lowered for good for Jomo Kenyatta to hoist in its place our new red-green-and-black standard.

Have the newspaper and the state maintained their initial “good looks”? Have they be-haved with admiration? Have they proved of adequate mutual assistance? The probable answer is: Not as much as the two might have hoped for as they celebrated their first anniversaries.

Yet, of course, the answer to

the last question must be a big “Yes”. The two nations have been almost identical-minded on a large number of objective na-tional interests.

However, one nation appears to have progressively lapsed in delivering its promises to the people – in terms of quantity, quality and speed – and the other nation has tried to discharge its duty in the division of labour – by reminding its older twin of this lapse.

This has necessarily created tension between the two na-tions, a tension which has in-creased with age.

Policemen have invaded news-paper offices and confiscated or incapacitated their equipment. They have clobbered journal-ists and destroyed their cameras on public occasions. Merely for doing my duty with a critical hand, I have had to spend har-rowing days in squalid police cells.

Having edited an official news-paper, I know, however, that many statesmen recognise that the state desperately needs an independent press.

The editors, for their part, know that, despite this unre-liability of the political class – nay, probably because of it – it is the political class that prom-ises to provide the newspapers

with the biggest, raciest and most lucrative headlines.

Between our two nations, it might be called rika rivalry or sibling jealousy or – as with the gods of mythology – “fraternal contending”.

The task is to guide the con-tention in such a manner that it

throws more light than heat into the social arena of contention. Let neither of the two nations forget the words of that London newspaper proprie-tor: A newspaper can be free only if it is a Nation talking to itself freely, boldly, knowledgeably and with a clear national purpose.

We can’t go too fa≥ w≥ong when a nation talks to itself

The first Nation pub-lished on March 20, 1960. It sold for 30 cents.

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DAILY NATIONThursday March 18, 2010IV | 50 GOLDEN YEARS

By any measure, 1960 was an epoch-defining year. At a time when the Cold War between

the Kremlin and the West held a fearful world in its grip, Ameri-can spy pilot Gary Powers was shot down over Soviet territory. France tested its first atomic bomb, Fidel Castro nationalised industry in Cuba and Nikita Khrushchev angrily pounded his shoe on a desk at the United Nations.

Africa was in ferment. The Sharpeville massacre in South Af-rica brought demands for nation-al independence to boiling point all over the continent and in French West Africa, colony after colony demanded and secured its sovereignty. British Prime Minis-ter Harold Macmillan signalled that the same course must follow in Anglophone Africa when he declared, first in Accra, then in Cape Town: “The wind of change is blowing through this continent and, whether we like it or not, the growth of national consciousness is a political fact…our national policies must take account of it.”

Africa’s restlessness was mir-rored in the United States, where Afro-American students began a series of sit-ins at lunch counters, demanding an end to segregation and recognition of blacks’ civil rights. But two young Americans hinted at a new era ahead.

At the Rome Olympics, Mu-hammad Ali, then known as Cassius Clay, won a boxing gold medal, and presidential candi-date John F. Kennedy first sug-gested a peace corps be formed to help the less-favoured nations, an idea that came to fruition after his election the following year.

It was into this turbulent world that, on March 20, 1960, The Na-tion was born. Describing itself as “East Africa’s newest, liveli-est Sunday,” a leading article de-clared: “Very briefly, we intend to live up to our name and do eve-rything in our power to help the various communities of East Af-rica to build nations where peo-ple of all races can live freely and peacefully under the rule of law. Beyond this, The Nation accepts the desirability of the transfer of power to African majorities in the three territories of East Africa within the next few years.”

Just as Macmillan’s “wind of

change” statement to South Af-rica’s white lawmakers in Cape Town was met with stony silence, The Nation’s declared support for African majority rule provoked a similarly hostile reaction from many in Kenya’s white, settler community. Although Mau Mau activities had long ended, a state of emergency was still in force, the economy was fragile, land values were plummeting and the talk among farmers was of sell-ing-up and fleeing south.

On the day after The Nation’s birth, a Johannesburg township became an international byword for atrocity and the newspaper’s second issue carried the heading, “Black Monday at Sharpeville.” A spread of smuggled photos showed the scattered bodies of some 69 South African blacks gunned down by Sten-gun-armed police during a demonstration against that country’s draconian pass laws. Ten of the dead were children and eight were women; 180 others were injured.

“There was no warning,” re-ported The Nation’s special cor-respondent, “no shots over the heads of the crowd, not even fir-ing at the feet. It was a concen-trated, cold-blooded burst after burst into the packed crowd.”

The massacre prompted wide-spread outrage and internation-al condemnation and became a turning point in South African history, driving the regime deep into isolation until the fall of apartheid many decades later.

But first, another South Af-rican sensation grabbed head-lines in Kenya. Just two weeks after Sharpeville, a pro-empire, anti-apartheid white farmer shot Prime Minister Hendrik Verwoerd twice in the face. The tough old Afrikaner survived and soon returned to power, but in 1966, he was stabbed to death in the Cape Town parlia-ment building by a messenger who was later declared insane. Few new newspapers could have feasted on such a significant diet of events of immediately relevant import.

The Nation was a Sunday paper, changing its title to Sun-day Nation shortly before the Daily Nation was launched seven months later. It was not the sort of newspaper Kenyans were ac-customed to read. For a start, it

1960-1985: The long journey for Nation from conception to maturity The Nation was born at a time of turbulent world affairs on March 20, 1960, and it described itself as East Africa’s newest, liveliest Sunday newspaper

FROM CONCEPTION TO MATURITYCHRONOLOGY

Jaramogi Oginga Odinga.

After Banda, Jomo“After Banda, Jomo” ran a front page story on April 3, 1960. The release of Dr Hast-ings Kamuzu Banda in Malawi had set off a demand for Kenyatta’s release from restric-tion. Back in London, Colonial Secretary Iain Macleod was weighing all the options al-though the Governor in Nairobi, Sir Patrick Renison, was still hesistant to release Kenyatta, a man he would later describe as a “leader unto darkness and death”. Macleod was of the view that the future of the colonial economy would be solid if “strong men” rose. “Jomo: We Plead no More – Gichuru” was one of the catchy headlines of the mo-ment enough to cause panic within the settler community. By this time it was felt in London that if Kenyatta had solid sup-port it would be better to set him free to assume leadership in Kenya rather than let internal power struggles wreck the country. In a sense, Macleod was happy to have the African nationalists go. On Banda, he had told the Times of London: “He is not an evil man” and honestly desires and works for his people. But Banda was to later emerge, with the help of the British as an example of an astute African dictator. Had we called him a “dynamic forward-looking leader” in our editorial? Yes, we had.

April 1960

DAILY NATIONThursday March 18, 2010 50 GOLDEN YEARS V

1960-1985: The long journey for Nation from conception to maturity

was produced using the then revolutionary web-offset meth-od of printing, a new technology which provided quality far ahead of that available to other publish-ing houses.

Also, unlike the broadsheet East African Standard, which dominated the market, it was what is now known as a com-pact. The shape alone reminded expatriates of the popular British tabloid, Daily Mirror, which they considered sensational and unre-liable. In fact, while it may have been guilty of sensationalism and self-aggrandisement, the Mirror reported aggressively and consci-entiously on issues of importance and had its own network of corre-

spondents around the world.The choice of newspapers in

colonial Kenya was limited. For English speakers, in addition to the Standard, there was the Sun-day Post and a small number of weekly magazines, prominent among them the Kenya Weekly News published in Nakuru. Eth-nic newspapers were available, mainly Asian, but including Baraza and Jicho in Kiswahili. To these had recently been added Taifa Leo, the first Kiswahili daily and the Nation Group’s first pub-lishing effort, which it developed in 1959 from a weekly bought from private interests. There were also publications devoted to specific African community inter-

ests and written in the languages of those communities.

There was no doubt where Kenya’s established English-lan-guage publications stood politi-cally – four-square behind the Governor and the colonial gov-ernment which in turn acknowl-edged the authority of the British government in London. Indeed the East African Standard carried Britain’s coat of arms on its front page until the day before Kenya achieved independence, Decem-ber 12, 1963. Thus The Nation’s support for majority rule “within the next few years” as declared in its launch issue, while proclaim-ing where the group’s sympathies lay, boldly challenged the estab-

lishment’s accepted scenario for the path to independence. This, even among many sympathisers, foresaw that if Africans were ever to rule Kenya, it would be many, many years in the future.

Commercially, however, The Nation’s stance made it a hostage to fortune, since illiteracy among its target African audience was high, while most of those with consumer power found its po-litical stance too radical by far. It was evident that if the new paper were to succeed, it would be a long and punishing journey. It proved to be so. The commit-ment to African majority rule was no accident.

Back in 1957, the Aga Khan, leader of the Shia Imami Ismaili Muslims worldwide, had been talking with young African na-tionalists such as Tom Mboya and Julius Kiano about what lay

ABOVE: Kenyans at the lancaster conference in Lon-don before inde-pendence.

EXTREME LEFT: Jomo Kenyatta holds up signeddocuments ofstate.

LEFT: Presidents Nyerere, Milton Obote and Gen-eral Idi Amin in Nairobi to attend the Uhuru celebra-tions.

CONTINUED ON PAGE 6

The Nation’s support for majority rule as declared in its launch issue, while proclaiming where the group’s sympathies lay, boldly challenged the establishment’s accepted scenario for the path to independence

The formation of Kanu, a coalition of political parties, was a milestone in Kenyan politics. Uniting different politicians who were leading small parties was no mean task. It was no wonder that Kanu faced managerial problems. The stewardship at headquarters was left to Mr Mwai Kibaki, a young economist who had been brought from Makerere to help craft the party manifesto. Kanu received popular support among the Luo, Kikuyu and Kamba and became the majority party. But some of the early problems within the party persisted and the Nation expressed concern that the internal wrangles might blow up in government once Kanu took power.“The Daily Nation asks it publicly because we believe it is in Kanu’s interests that these internal doubts and quarrels should be faced squarely, openly and as quickly as possible. There can no longer be any doubt that something is seriously wrong with the party. Its senior office holders do not act as a team and there still appears to be no proper machinery for ensuring that policy statements are agreed before they are issued to the public and the Press,” wrote the Nation in December 1961. “Kanu has a duty to itself and to Kenya to deal with the trouble-makers swiftly and ruthlessly. In Mr Kenyatta, Mr Gichuru and Mr Mboya, Kanu possesses formidable leaders of calibre and character.

Kanu is born

March 1960

DAILY NATIONThursday March 18, 2010VI | 50 GOLDEN YEARS

A long and punishing journey for the paper

Above: From right, President Jomo Kenyatta, Julius Nyerere of Tanzania and Tom Mboya (dark suit) at the air-port. Far left is Daniel arap Moi.Left: Editor George Githii and manage-ment executives accompany the Aga Khan during an early visit to the Nation House newsroom.NMG ARCHIVES

in Kenya’s future.The Aga Khan assumed leadership

of his community at the age of 20 on the death of his grandfather. Having lived in Kenya as a boy, in a house in a Nairobi suburb, his association with the country was no accident. He was well aware that most newspapers in East Africa tended to be mouthpieces of the colonial governments, denying any platform for the aspirations of up-

coming African politicians. Believing they were entitled to a full say in the independence debate, he determined to start a newspaper that would be open to all voices.

The Aga Khan’s media aide at the time was Michael Curtis, a former edi-tor of the News Chronicle in London, and it was Curtis who became the archi-tect of a group which grew eventually to dominate the East and Central African publishing market. In the straitened circumstances of the time, however,

outside investment proved impossible to secure and so funding of the venture, with all its concomitant risks, came ex-clusively from the Aga Khan. John Bier-man was hired from Fleet Street to be editor and editorial and production staff were recruited, mainly from Brit-ain because of the paucity of trained African journalists and managers. The aim, however, stated and much repeated, was to create a newspaper that would be “written and managed by Africans for Africans.” Curtis rented a former bakery on what was then Vic-toria Street in central Nairobi, it was adapted for newspaper production and the foundations of the group were laid. If Kenya’s conservative readers looked

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 5

Commercially, however, The Nation’s stance made it a hostage to fortune, since illiteracy among its target African audience was high, while most of those with consumer power found its political stance too radical by far CONTINUED ON PAGE 14How Nation echoed

the national storyWILFRED KIBORO: Former Group Chief Executive officer of Nation Media and currently the Group’s chairman.

I came to a small com-pany with turnover of around one billion shillings and profit a

quarter of a billion shillings but our vision was very clear - we wanted to be the leading media house in Kenya, Ugan-da and Tanzania and later, the Media of Africa for Africa. However we were too depend-ent on one product – the Daily Nation – which contributed 95 per cent of our revenues. We decided to diversify into radio, television and digital. We also introduced daily magazine inserts to generate new revenue streams. But those were rough times and in many ways the Nation Media Group story became the national story - the story of how Kenyans struggled against single party dictator-ship and for the expansion of the democratic space.After a long struggle for li-cences and then frequencies, we got into broadcasting with a bang. People loved what we were putting out and advertis-ers flocked to us. With time we expanded our broadcasting reach from Nairobi to other towns such as Mombasa, Nakuru and Kisumu.

With the 2002 election, the people who had been agitat-ing for change came to power and we had to redefine our re-lationship with them to fulfill our mandate of keeping the government on its toesOne of the key goals that kept us focused generally was the dream of joining the billion shilling club in terms of prof-its. We achieved this in 2002 or 2003 and the Group is now on track to hit the two billion shilling mark. When I joined in 1993 adver-tising revenue was something like Sh20 million a month. By the time I left it was around Sh20 million a day.The two defining moments of my tenure were installing a new Sh750 million print-ing press and our entry into broadcasting.Another key time was the 2007 election when we de-liberately tried to maintain balance in our reporting. We worked hard to try to bring the country together. Now Nation must move with the times and we have to reen-gineer ourselves into the dig-ital world to stay relevant. Radio, television and the In-ternet will merge and in ten years time although our core business will still be informing people and linking consum-ers and others, our structure and the way we work will have changed radically.

REFLECTIONS

DAILY NATIONThursday March 18, 2010 50 GOLDEN YEARS VII

DAILY NATIONThursday March 18, 2010VIII | 50 GOLDEN YEARS

By GERRY LOUGHRAN

I cannot be sure when the idea of writing a history of the Nation group first emerged, but I have a

memo in my files dated Octo-ber 1995 stating that there were strong reasons for publishing such an account.

It said: “The proprietor’s vision and strength of will (and invest-ment commitment) have never been properly acknowledged, nor has the courage of our editors and reporters. Finally, the whole thing is a darned good story and if we don’t tell it now, it will be too late.”

We did not tell it immediately, indeed we took nearly 15 years to do so, but that had more to do with bureaucratic and political vicissitudes than with editorial sloth. And when the story was finally set out in a book, Birth of a Nation, it proved, though I say it myself, to be a very good story indeed.

REFLECTIONS

Telling the sto≥y of The Nation f≥om bi≥th to matu≥ity I have known the company from birth to jubilee and can say our performance has been gold standard

That I was commissioned as

author was probably inevi-table, since not only was I avail-able, I had experience with the Nation across the years -- from the earliest days (1960-64 as a sub-editor and assistant editor), again in 1983 (executive editor) and in the era of expansion and maturity (1993-98 as a consult-ant editor). Over many of these years, I contributed a weekly Let-

ter from London to the Sunday Nation, and indeed still do.

Thus tasked with telling a story dating back 50 years, what is the first thing an historian would do? He would race to gath-er the memories of the pioneers – young men and women in the 1960s but now long retired, scat-tered far from Africa, perhaps physically not too well. Written sources could be scanned later.

The search proved long and

arduous but exciting, too, as re-tirees were located one by one and happily committed to tape memories that were wholly truthful and authentic as they remembered them, if occasion-ally roseate and sometimes un-comfortable, too.

Charles Hayes was the ex-colo-nial government officer who sold the weekly Taifa to the Nation, thus starting the company down the publishing road, and became

the group’s first editorial director. I found him in British Columbia, Canada, where he had edited his own local paper for many years along with his wife, Margaret, a one-time Nation stringer in Nakuru and a Kenya memoirist in her own right.

Hayes had owned Taifa jointly with Althea Tebbutt, who became the Nation’s first advertising manager. She lived in New Zea-land, but I caught up with her on a visit back to Britain.

I renewed contacts with Errol Trzebinski, one of Mrs Tebbutt’s original sales team. Still resident in Kenya, she was by then an in-ternational figure known for her writings on colonial-era person-alities like Denys Finch Hatton, Karen Blixen, Beryl Markham and Lord Erroll. Her book, Si-lence Will Speak, was the prime source for the Oscar-winning film, Out of Africa. She lives in a gracious 18th century house on the island of Lamu.

The first managing director, Frank Pattrick, had died in South Africa when my search began, but his successor, Stan Denman, lived in Dorset and invited me over. The hunt for journalists and managers, both with the Na-tion and opposition media, took me to Geneva and Schonried in Switzerland, Galway and Dub-

Author Gerry Loughran and inset his book, Birth of a Nation

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DAILY NATIONThursday March 18, 2010 50 GOLDEN YEARS IX

By GERRY LOUGHRAN

A major fear for authors writing on historical events is of going astray

on subjects outside of their ex-pertise. Writing most areas of the group’s history, “Birth of a Nation,” I felt confident and se-cure because I knew journalism, I knew East Africa and I knew the Nation group. And where I was unsure, there were sources aplenty to confirm or correct the facts.But in arcane matters of nuance, personal history and the effect of public affairs on private lives, I quickly decided I would need guidance and, happily, I was rec-ommended to a retired Kenyan advocate, Mr Anil Ishani. I quick-ly realized I could have found no keener or subtler mind to assist in my work.Anil qualified as a barrister in

London in 1959, spent several years back in Kenya with the family firm, Ishani and Ishani Advocates, returned to the UK in 1972, qualifying as a solicitor with a city firm of solicitors, and became a specialist in commer-cial property matters.At the same time, he enjoyed the confidence of the founder and begetter of the Nation group, His Highness the Aga Khan, and held a variety of leadership positions in the Ismaili community. Mak-ing his home back in Kenya, from 1997 until retirement in 2007, he was Resident Representative of the Aga Khan Development Network.Having served the Aga Khan for 48 years, his guidance was cer-tain and assured.I have stated elsewhere that I wrote “Birth of a Nation” with-out direction or restriction and this is true. But as a rally driver

depends on his co-pilot, so I needed Anil’s assistance in navi-gating esoteric areas beyond my ken. It worked like this: Anil would take away a draft of relevant chapters, peruse them in his meticulous and lawyerly way, then return and set out his argu-ments for change, rephrasing, removal or retention. Some-times I had simply got my facts wrong – titles, dates, forms of address; in other areas, he might support the facts but question my interpretation or use of lan-guage.For instance, though I knew Kenya, I had not worked there for some years, whereas he had. Gently, he questioned whether my indignation over perceived injustices by officialdom was not more of an outsider’s point of view, a failure to acknowledge success in the face of huge dif-

ficulties and to give credit where it was due. In most cases, I have to confess, his judiciousness brought balance to the page, substituting calm level-headed-ness for unbridled rhetoric.It was not without apprehension at our several meetings that I glanced at the many yellow stickers jutting from his draft copy.But happily these were not always queries of fact or inter-

pretation but often reminders of supplementary evidence or addi-tional arguments on a question under discussion.Anil was by no means the only outside source I resorted to in my research for “Birth of a Na-tion,” but it is fair to say that without the depth and breadth of his knowledge and the accu-racy of his perceptions, the book would have been a distinctly lesser achievement.

Keeping the author on the right linesRECOLLECTIONS

Nation newsroom on Tom Mboya Street.

Telling the sto≥y of The Nation f≥om bi≥th to matu≥ity

This is an attempt to render in coherent and sympathetic form the story of a young newspaper struggling to report honestly and accurately on the convulsions, successes and failures of an equally young nation

lin in Ireland, Dubai, Italy, Aus-tralia, and in Britain to London, Cheltenham, Stowmarket, Dover, Newcastle upon Tyne, Nelson Colne, Brighton, Bideford and Devizes.

Recollections arrived by mail and email from Australia, New Zealand, Zimbabwe and South Africa and many interviews were concluded during return visits to Nairobi. There, Nation officers opened the company’s books to me freely and without restriction.

The greatest prize, however, a treasure trove of information, was made available by Michael Curtis, effectively architect and builder of the whole venture. At 34, Michael had been one of Fleet Street’s youngest editors, piloting the News Chronicle through dif-ficult times. But he disagreed with the owners’ militantly pro-government stance over Britain’s invasion of Suez and resigned on principle.

Joining the Aga Khan as a Press advisor (and much more) shortly after the young prince succeeded his grandfather, Curtis accompa-nied him on a world tour of his Ismaili community. Confronted with the self-serving and tenden-tious nature of the colonial-era media, the Aga Khan conceived a vision of an independent Kenya

newspaper which would be open to all races, honest and objec-tive, and dogged in the pursuit of truth. It was Michael Curtis who, in 1959, began to turn this dream into reality.

As chief executive, he piloted the organisation through its test-ing first decade before he relo-cated to France to assist the Aga Khan in a variety of his other in-terests. Even then, as a long-time Nation board member, he main-tained meticulous files, gold to any prospector.

Invited to stay at his lovely country house near historic Sen-lis, I spent endless hours perus-ing minutes, memos, notes and directives about the problems and triumphs of the early years, along with hundreds of letters, telegrams, faxes and old-style “dictabelts” (a distant ancestor of the audio tape) which were exchanged between Michael and the Aga Khan. This infor-mation was supported by files at the Aga Khan’s secretariat at nearby Aiglemont and generous assistance from Gerry Wilkinson, a former managing director who, with almost four decades under his belt dating back to 1971, was the company’s longest serving director.

Very few ex-Nation people de-clined to talk to me, even those

whose memories were not entire-ly positive, though a handful did not respond. Many more politi-cians did not grace my requests with a reply.

Doing the interviews was mostly a personal pleasure. Not only did I meet up with many old friends, but I made the acquaint-ance of others of whom I had heard a great deal but never met.

Mostly the sessions lasted a cou-ple of hours, with the interview-ee talking into my tape recorder. But for some key people, we held several meetings over a number of days.

I always transcribed the tapes in full, though perhaps as little as five per cent might be used. I felt it necessary to get a feel for the conditions of the time and if the

subject wandered off topic, that was fine. How accurate were the recollections? I like to think they were very close to total truth. When possible, I asked other interviewees identical questions and vague memories of dates and times could often be checked in the Nation’s own back copies.

Written information piled up inexorably and I ended up with

The first edi-torial cartoon in 1960.

DAILY NATIONThursday March 18, 2010X | 50 GOLDEN YEARS

By PHILIP OCHIENG

Although George Githii and I later clashed se-riously, I am always grateful to him for

opening the gate of journalism to me. It was Githii, editor-in-chief of the Nation, and Michael Curtis, managing director, who offered me my first job as a re-porter.

George was also the most remarkable editor I have ever served under. Other editorial pontiffs I have worked with in Kenya include Hilary Ng’weno, Boaz Omori, Joe Rodrigues, Peter Mwaura, George Mbugguss and Wangethi Mwangi.

George was clearly the most controversial. Paradoxically, the man who looked like Kenya’s most independent-minded edi-tor was also its most one-sided. Yet I admired George for three reasons. One was that he never allowed any of the (expatriate) non-editorial managers “up-stairs” to bend his editorial line.

Second, he took the trouble to reply personally and under his own by-line to criticisms of both the newspaper and the Kenyatta government. One still remem-bers strongly worded polemics against Jaramogi Odinga, Bil-dad Kaggia and Darius Msaga Mbela.

Later -- as a graduate of England’s Oxford University --

George was fond of transferring into his articles material from a book he had just read to help him floor his interlocutors. Moreover, his newspaper had a predilection for pursuing to their ends certain burning social issues of the day.

I have never seen his equal in the practice of taking a hot topic and charging his investiga-tive reporters to dig down to the taproots.

One day in 1967, after furnish-ing me with all kinds of literature on Jomo Kenyatta, George locked me in a room where I spent many long weeks studying, making phone calls and then writing nu-merous lengthy biographical sto-ries on the Grand Old Man.

The editor never told me why such obituary-focussed writing was necessary. For the President looked perfectly hale and hearty. But George was linked through many tendrils to the Old Man’s closest aides and when he gave me the assignment he knew that Mzee had collapsed in Mombasa and was then unconscious, per-haps indeed dead.

President Kenyatta did later regain consciousness but editor Githii had learned an important lesson. Such an eventuality must never again catch his newspa-pers unprepared, with empty files. Which is why I pursued this assignment for weeks, entirely in the dark about what had hap-pened.

My articles were then locked up in a safe where they under-went the “criticism” of time for a whole 10 years. It was not until 1978 – when the President did die (and long after Githii had left Nation House) – that my articles were retrieved. They were what chief sub-editor John McHaf-fie splashed all over the place (minus my byline) on that fate-ful day.

Unwittingly, my efforts may well have contributed to George’s departure from the Nation. Some Kenyatta sycophants – perhaps allied to Dr Njoroge Mungai – had heard of them and told the Old Man that George Githii had been “scheming” his death. Mun-gai’s partisans had a good reason for hating Githii.

It stemmed from the extreme one-sidedness with which his newspaper reported a perenni-al rivalry between Mungai and Charles Njonjo, the Attorney-General, sometimes known as “Sir Charles.”

The intriguing thing about it was that Githii, Njonjo, Mun-gai and Kenyatta came from the same political parish in Kiambu District. Before joining the Na-tion, George had been Kenyat-ta’s private secretary. Did Githii know something between Njonjo and Mungai which the editor was not sharing with his readers?

But the point is that, while Njonjo was invariably reported in the most brilliant light, what the public read about Mungai was certainly not. That was the problem. Although an editor has the right to take sides on any issue, he is professionally called upon to back up his position with correct facts, accurate figures and cogent argument.

Knowledge of my “canned” ar-ticles may have had something to do with George being arrested and held one day.

But only Githii could have been intrepid enough to sue Bernard Hinga, the police commissioner, for “wrongful confinement.” The court proceedings must have been embarrassing to the gov-ernment. Although the case was withdrawn, only Mzee Kenyatta could have ordered Githii to pack it in.

However, the most probable immediate cause of George’s de-parture from Nation House was that he had been writing and publishing some embarrassingly adventurous, one-sided, almost hysterical articles and editori-als on such controversies as Is-rael, the Soviet Union, Shah Reza Pahlavi’s Iran and the leader of the Bohra community.

Much cooler headed and hard-nosed was Hilary Ng’weno, the Nation’s first indigenous editor-in-chief . It appears that Hilary and the Aga Khan had been at Harvard together. Hilary might have impressed the future Is-maili chief through a series of cy-clostyled newsletters to all Afri-can students in the United States. At any rate, the Aga Khan’s new newspaper in Nairobi latched onto a man still only in his twen-ties when he returned to Kenya in 1964. But, by the time I joined Nation House in 1966, Hilary had resigned to return to Harvard for courses in filming and interna-tional affairs (where, he once told me, Henry Kissinger was one of his lecturers).

Ten years later, however – after he came back from Cambridge,

1978

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The Nation editors I have known, from 1964 to 2009

George locked me in a room where I spent many long weeks studying, mak-ing phone calls and then writing numer-ous lengthy biographical stories on the grand old man

George MbuggussOne of the Nation’s pioneers, he rose from Taifa reporter to Taifa editor and steered the Kiswahili daily along a steady path, fully earning his promotion to the new position of Group Managing Editor. He held the job successfully until his re-tirement in 1991.

Joe RodriguesAcclaimed by many of his staff as the best hands-on editor the Nation ever had, he could report stories, correct copy, write editorials and lay out pages, all apparently at the same time. He led the news opera-tion at a difficult time, even spending time in custody.

Peter MwauraPerceptive, socially conscious and aca-demically gifted, he assumed the editor-ship at a difficult time. State authorities had the Nation group in its sights and there were changes at executive manage-ment level. He resigned in 1983.

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319

83

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91

196

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19

65

Boaz OmoriA steady, quiet, knowledgeable and stabilising editor who took the first steps to introducing a code of practice for journalists. His contacts were wide, his political antennae impeccable and his early death was widely mourned inside and outside the industry.

Hilary Ng’wenoThe first Kenyan editor, appointed when the Nation was little more than three years old, changed the newspa-per’s Eurocentric approach to inter-national news coverage and ensured it reflected the African political and economic concerns.

George GithiiThe Stormy Petrel of Nation newspa-pers, he campaigned courageously against corruption and denounced moves to bring in preventive deten-tion, but his erratic decisions on some political issues embarrassed the com-pany, leading to his departure.

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& 1

972

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7

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72

Wangethi MwangiMwangi succeeded Mbugguss and steered the papers through political turbulence and an era of technological revolution. He was appointed Editorial Director until his retirement and replace-ment by Joseph Odindo.

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CONTINUED ON PAGE 37

DAILY NATIONThursday March 18, 2010 50 GOLDEN YEARS XI

By JOHN FOX

Freda, the taxi driver, picked me up to take me to the air-port.

‘So where are you going this time, Mr John?’ she asked.

‘Vietnam,’ I replied.‘Oh, so you are going to the

war!’ she said.And that was the starter for

my piece on that trip. Especial-ly when, while I was in Hanoi that time, an article appeared in the local paper claiming that Vietnam had become the safest tourist destination in the whole world. There was the connection I was looking for.

I’m a very lucky guy. Over the last 24 years, my consultancy job has taken me to Asia, to many countries in Africa – and to every district in Kenya. When I am not travelling I can always find a new restaurant, an art exhibition, or an event in Nairobi like the Con-cours d’Elegance or the Shaggy Dog Show to write about.

But when I’m writing about somewhere outside Kenya, the challenge is how to make it rel-evant to Kenyan readers. Some-how, there has to be a reference back to home. Just as Freda said.

It was back in the late 1980s that George Mbugguss, then the Nation’s Group Managing Edi-tor, encouraged me to write for the paper. One of the most mem-orable, interviews was with Mr Kenneth Matiba about his plans to climb Mount Everest.

Matiba put his love of moun-tains down to his Outward Bound

climb on Mount Kilimanjaro when he was an Alliance High schoolboy. He also told me about the character assessment given by the expedition leader:

“Kenneth, you are a very strong boy. You were the first to the sum-mit. Well done! But there is one criticism I have to make – you for-got about all those weaker breth-ren struggling up behind you.”

“That was so true,” Matiba said. “And it is still so true. These days when I am discussing with my colleagues, I am thinking, plan-ning – and I realise that they are struggling up miles behind me…” At the time, he was a member of President Moi’s Cabinet.

I was told that, in the months leading up to the first multi-party elections, at an editors’ meeting, George suggested that I should be asked to write some ‘colour pieces’ about the campaigns. ‘But George,’ someone said, ‘I think John would prefer to keep his work permit.’

But George did inveigle me into writing about the Safari Rally – despite my protestations that I knew nothing about rally-ing. Less than a year later, I was amused to see in the by-line of an Indian newspaper that had re-printed one of my Safari stories that I was ‘East Africa’s motor sports expert’.

Nevertheless, when George offered me the choice of being the Motoring or Travel Corre-spondent for the Sunday Nation I quickly deferred to Gavin Ben-nett’s much greater knowledge – and wit – about cars.

My first Going Places pieces were describing a hotel in terms of its facilities, prices and how to get there. Until I got a different kind of encouragement from Ber-nard Nderitu, then the Editor of the Sunday Nation.

One evening, when I was sit-ting having a beer on the terrace of the Castle Hotel in down-town Mombasa, I saw this girl. She was wearing a black buibui. She was walking up and down the pave-ment outside the terrace. I was watching her and wondering what she was doing – until a car drew up, the window was wound down, and the girl leaned inside to negotiate terms.

That was the encounter around which I made an impressionistic piece about how it was to be sit-ting on the terrace of the Castle Hotel and watching the after dark life of Mombasa’s Moi Av-enue.

‘I like that,’ Bernard Nderitu said. ‘That’s how Going Places should be.’ And that’s the advice I’ve tried to follow for all of twen-ty something years.

Going places and makingthe right connections

My first Going Places pieces were describing a hotel in terms of its facilities, prices and how to get there. Until I got a different kind of encouragement from Bernard Nderitu, then the Editor of the Sunday Nation

When I am not travelling, I write on sub-jects such as the Concours d’Elegance.

JOAN PERERUAN

REFLECTIONS

The Nation was founded by His Highness the Aga Khan as a voice for

the majority of Kenyans who clamoured for independence. After Uhuru, the Nation be-came an effective voice of the people. I must pay tribute to the founder, and equally im-portant to successive man-agements for steering the company to become the un-disputed media organization in East Africa.

Indeed, the story of the Na-tion has become synonymous with the story of Kenya being agemates as Kenya attained independence three years after our first newspaper rolled of the presses.

Today, though media free-dom is perennially under threat, the situation is much better than it was in the six-ties, and certainly better than most African countries. As we celebrate 50 years, the biggest factor in the Nations success is that the founders were gen-uine in their desire to have an independent media group. Over the years, the group has established and maintained very high ethical and govern-ance standards. As we march into the future, one promise I would like to make on behalf of all staff of the company is that we shall stay true to our founding mission of public service journalism, and en-sure that those who will be managing the cerebrations 50 years from now, will have an even better story.

To do this, we shall contin-ue to live by our core values of integrity, transparency and balance in our reporting and ensure that the Nation Media

Group will remain core to positively transforming the Africa society to take its pride of place in the world stage on social, economic and politi-cal areas.

To achieve this, we shall continue to rely on the dedi-cation and commitment of our staff that I take this op-portunity to salute. The same goes for past members of staff who remain extended mem-bers of the NMG family.

As we match forth to real-ize our dream of being the media of Africa for Africa, we shall remain focused on what is important for Africa. It is with this in mind that as part of our cerebrations, we de-cided to sponsor and host the Pan Africa Media Conference so that we could get the mem-bers of the fourth estate in one room and reflect on our past performance even as we make promises for the future. I would hope that this could become a regular initiative around Africa.

This future will however not be handed to any media on a silver platter. The media landscape is changing rap-idly and it is only those who evolve faster than the change who will succeed. To this end, we shall continue to evalu-ate our traditional media platforms and ensure they remain relevant to an even more demanding needs of our readers and readers even as we invest aggressively in new media and new geographies.

Finally I would like to thank everyone who has helped Nation Media Group to be what it is today.

Asanteni Sana!

Pride of place on the world stage

DAILY NATIONThursday March 18, 2010XII | 50 GOLDEN YEARS

MUTUMA MATHIUManaging Editor Daily Nation

I have edited many newspa-pers; none is like the Daily Na-tion. We do it with a fine blend of love and violence. Love be-cause this newspaper is our life, our life’s work. Mario Garcia, the newspaper designer, told us once that modern editors are just undertakers, washing and preparing for burial the bodies of their dead newspapers. But we are not. We are guardians, custodians of great institutions. The Daily Nation will be there for many years to come, we shall hand it over to the next genera-tion, and the one after, in good shape.

Violence because we are such a brutally efficient news opera-tion. Our capacity to mobilize coverage of a breaking story,

even for those of us who have done it many times, is a marve-lous spectacle. I only wish we could work with the same ef-ficiency in covering the small story.

I edited my first newspaper, a now-dead periodical called the Nairobi Law Monthly, when I was all of 25 years old. That, and many other newspapers that I have seen since, lacked the Na-tion’s clarity of values. When I am confronted with a big news decision, there is never an iota of conflict in my soul, what my duty is, what the Daily Nation stands for, what I should do.

The Daily Nation stands for the truth. Our methods might not always be efficient and our findings might not always be ac-curate. But there is no conflict, at all, about our purpose and motivation.

The Daily Nation stands with

JAINDI KISEROManaging Editor Investiga-tions and Economic affairs.

My job involves investigating and developing mostly business, economic, enterprise issue-ori-ented stories. As a managing editor, I get to oversee those sto-ries as well as writing opinion pieces. The biggest challenge is lack of space for the stories. It’s harder to sell a business story, but it is certainly better now than a few years back.

The fact that we even have a full business publication on a daily basis, is a great achieve-ment for the group.

In the investigative reporting that I do, you get to rub a lot of people the wrong way. Stepping on a few toes is part of the job really.

In this business, some of your best sources end up being dis-gruntled contractors who when denied a tender, manage to find information that leads you to something.

ERIC OBINOManaging Editor Sunday Nation

Sunday Nation is Nation’s high-est circulation Newspaper and has been for a while. Taking up this position, as the paper’s managing editor comes with a lot of expectation; my own ex-pectation to keep the product at its best and also that of the team.

Sunday Nation has over the years thrived on analyses on the week’s stories and one of the challenges is that an issue deserving to be the main story could be preempted by the other publications on the market.

The task is to second-guess the other publications on their angle.

The best feeling for me is driv-ing on the way to church and see people with a copy, or to find people discussing the news and telling each other,” Its in today’s Sunday Nation.” It is quite a feel-ing.

Meet the editors of Nation papers

Nicholas MuemaManaging Editor Taifa Leo

As the Managing Editor of Taifa, my main task is to select suit-able content for publication and determine the best ways of projecting it in the paper so as to meet circulation targets. It is also my duty to ensure that the paper is consistent in quality and tone, and is consistent with the company’s editorial policy.I was appointed early last year at a time when there was a steady decline in circulation of Taifa, hence the main task has been to reverse the trend. The figures have improved and sta-bilized.For the period I have worked in this position, it has been a daily challenge to go to press without either affecting one’s temper.However, the challenges at-tached to this position give me job satisfaction and justify my pay at the end of the month.

Julius MainaManaging Editor Saturday Nation

It’s just over a year since I took over as editor of the Saturday Nation. It was not long before I realized that Saturday Nation’s main challenge was – and to some extent remains – to pack a bigger punch than just the ground-breaking and highly successful Saturday Magazine insert. The magazine is still a big pull but many will agree that the Saturday Nation is also much more these days – readers have come to expect much more from us after a series of major peo-ple stories and indepth special reports. The most memorable perhaps is the special pullout on the 40th anniversary of Tom Mboya’s assassination last July. Thanks to great team work, we covered an “old story” with re-freshing new facts. The results: A well-received newspaper and even higher expectations.

THE MEN WHO MAKE IT HAPPENREFLECTIONS

NICK WACHIRA*Managing Editor, The East African

The East African targets a re-gional readership with a more sophisticated taste in news that cuts across the boarders and as a publication we are able to capture activity in the various sectors and their implications. It’s the first paper presidents in the region would go for to get all they need to know about what is happening or going to hap-pen. Business can pick it up and be advised on whether to set up shop in the region because we give you the information you need to know. To capture the vast readership in different culture zones, The EastAfrican has to find a common ground that would interest its target in Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda and even Rwanda.

The challenge has however been to find a team from all the represented countries but the progress made so far is good.

DAILY NATIONThursday March 18, 2010 50 GOLDEN YEARS XIII

By FRANK WHALLEY

AS THE FACE OF A GOOD friend alters over the years, so has the face of the Na-

tion changed. But like that same friend, it has remained recognis-able, wearing a warm smile that makes it a welcome guest in so many households.

The key has been to ensure that the newspaper’s appearance signals the quality of its content. Several factors govern that.

First is the paper’s position in the market: a paper for the work-ing man or woman, a paper for top decision makers, or a paper for the family?

Another factor is size -- tradi-tionally broadsheet for upmarket and tabloid for racier stories and faster consumption -- although now boundaries have blurred, with upmarket tabloids and the occasional middle or downmar-ket broadsheet.

Yet another factor is the choice of typefaces. That used to be easy: tabloid and downmarket meant chunky sans faces, broadsheet and upmarket meant elegant serif. That, too, has changed. Now the best guide to market position is story angle (people or issues) and the degree of pro-jection.

The very first Nation pub-lished on March 30, 1960, was unashamedly tabloid, the face

of youth: friendly, urgent and brash.

Its name was reversed in Ital-ic capitals on the top left of the front page with the space next to it, known as the earpiece, used for boxed reports, as the paper’s first editor, former Fleet Street staffer and later award-winning BBC TV reporter John Bierman, adapted what was known as freestyle de-sign with dazzling effect.

Freestyle presents stories as pieces of a jigsaw, offering a strict hierarchy on each page with the text interlocking, and leading the eye from one report to the next.

Bierman’s design, revolution-ary in East Africa, was a winner. One innovation was a cartoon on the leader page (Page 4 in those days) with the paper’s opinion, the leader or editorial, boxed beneath.

The Nation retained the Bier-man look when in October of 1960 the Sunday paper was joined by the Daily Nation, the masthead initially stacked in two lines still within the seal.

Eventually the name of the paper became one line, still as a reverse and it remained that way until the first major revamp of the design, which came in 1978.

The brief to produce a new look for the Daily Nation, more in keeping with the emergence of an African middle class , fell in 1978 to Allen Armstrong, the paper’s chief sub editor. He did

the Nation proud, swapping the loud Futura and Gill Sans headline typefaces for the more upmarket serif face of Century Schoolbook.

The masthead changed as well, to Clarendon, no longer reversed and with what became the trade-mark style of having the word Daily in upper and lower case (like this text) lined up with the top of the much larger word NA-TION in capital letters.

It was a brilliant mix, and the British trade paper for journal-ists, the UK Press Gazette, was quick to admire it, commenting: “It is an offset litho sheet which for clarity, colour and crispness surpasses many of our own offset publications.” It was the friendly face of a friend who was begin-ning to mature.

The next main change came from British designer, Jeannette Collins, whokept the main faces, tightening the Clarendon mast-head and increasing the size of the word Daily. A new slogan was introduced: The newspaper that serves the nation.

The main change was to make the pages modular, a style in which all the headlines, pictures and text of one story are con-tained within rectangles which sit alongside or above and below each other.

The Collins revamp stayed valid until 2001, when the vastly expe-rienced American, Lou Silver-

stein, w h o h a d r e -

shaped the New York Times, took things in hand.

The Silverstein look was launched on June 30, 2001. The main headline face harped back to Armstrong’s design with a ver-sion of Century, this time ITC Century, squeezed to 70 per cent of its normal width to give, as Sil-verstein said, “more pep.”

The titlepiece was, important-ly, still Clarendon although the word Daily became even larger and now sat on the bottom of the line next to NATION, still in caps.

There were further (and con-troversial) changes to the mast-head in the Saturday Nation and the Sunday Nation, where the ti-tles were double-decked with Sat-urday and Sunday on top .

This was a friendly face with the self-confident smile of suc-cessful middle age.

Silverstein’s look for the Nation

lasted four years, until 2006 when, faced by rapidly updated opposition newspapers, another redesign was needed.

This time the experts were the Scottish firm of Palmer Watson, a new but respected team that went on to redesign Le Monde among many other famous ti-tles.

Ally Palmer and Terry Watson took the paper further upmar-ket, dramatically widening the distance in quality between the Nations and any opposition.

Today’s paper might not imme-diately look like the edtion that launched a legend back in March 1960, but the family resemblance is still strong.

Frank Whalley is a former Na-tion training editor, resident in Nairobi and specialising in re-porting on the fine arts.

Changing face of a friend

It was a brilliant mix, and the British trade paper for journalists, the UK Press Gazette, was quick to admire it, commenting: “It is an offset litho sheet which for clarity, colour and crispness surpasses many of our own offset publications

1960s

1970s-1980s1990s

2000s

2000s

FROM CONCEPTION TO MATURITYDESIGN

John Bierman

Allen ArmstrongJeannette Collins

Palmer Watson

Lou Silverstein

www.nation.co.ke NAIROBI, WEDNESDAY, APRIL 1, 2009 KSh35/00 (TSh800/00 : USh1,500/00)

RED MEAT CAUSES CANCER, SAYS STUDYNew survey says it also leads to heart diseases and premature deaths.

∆

No. 16116

BACK PAGE

FAMINELand of the dyingIn Kajiado, a cow sells for a paltry Sh300. In Ijara, there are water wars and in Baringo people live on wild berries

A pictorial mission to little explored pockets of drought-striken Kenya, place of hopelessness, misery and death — a land that has ceased to support lifePages 14,15&16

Ms Adey Sugal, 70, waits for relief food at a distribution point in Atheyley in Dujis, Garissa District on Sunday. Photos/WILLIAM OERI

NEWS 2-9, 31-35, BACK | OPINION 10-11 | LETTERS 12 | INTERNATIONAL 18-23 | BUSINESS 24-30 | SPORT 59-63

She announces her return with dramatic confrontation with Chinedu. PAGE 3

AKINYI IS BACK: FIGHTING AND KICKING AWAY

Tikolo to lead team in race for 2010 World Cup. PAGE 59

KENYA BEGINS CRICKET CONTEST

ON OTHER PAGES

To comment on these and other stories in the Daily Nation go to:www.nation.co.ke

THE HAGUE VOWS TO ACT SWIFTLYSpecial advisor to chief prosecutor warns that they

are ready to move in immediately. PAGE 4

Pay your Electricity Bill at any Equity Bank Branch, ATM, Point of Sale, or our Eazzy 24/7 Mobile Banking Service.

DAILY NATIONThursday March 18, 2010XIV | 50 GOLDEN YEARS

askance at The Nation’s politics, they were quickly seduced by its energy, liveliness and humour and the fresh and aggressive approach it demonstrated to-wards reporting public affairs. The March 20 launch issue sold 17,500 copies and quickly the fig-ure soared to 24,000, reaching

30,000-plus in August.This dizzying success owed

much to coups such as a world exclusive in June, headlined, “The old man who waits at Lod-war.” This was a spread of pho-tographs of Jomo Kenyatta, the man the colonial government vainly hoped had been forgotten, then in detention in the North-ern Frontier town of that name. “He digs his arid little garden,” a

caption said, “he lounges with his books and newspapers, listens to the ever-present radio – and waits for the day of his return.” The coverage electrified Africans, angered the colonial government and infuriated many settlers who blamed Kenyatta for the activi-ties of the Mau Mau.

Exacerbating national resent-ments at the time was a wide-spread drought. The Nation re-ported in July of 1960 that scores of cattle had died and the maize crop had failed. Farmers sold their stock at giveaway prices or paid 50 per cent more for feeding barley. Said one ruined Rift Val-ley farmer, “If you listen to some of the African politicians, every European farmer is sitting on the verandah drinking whisky. If we are not brutal, we are rich. Tell them to come out here and

have a look.” It was not difficult for the ill-intentioned to descry a racial angle in the most mun-dane of happenings and report-ers were warned to be vigilant in their choice of words and use of phraseology. But one event, all but forgotten now though with international dimensions at the time, was unavoidably race-cen-tred. This was the case of British-born Peter Poole, a 28-year-old engineer, sentenced to death for shooting dead his African house servant, Kamawe Musunge. His defence argued that Poole’s wife and two children had been stoned by a group of Africans and he shot Musunge after the Afri-can threw stones at Poole’s dogs.

An appeal was rejected by the Privy Concil in London and a plea for clemency was turned down by Kenya’s Governor,

Sir Patrick Renison. Poole was hanged on August 8, 1960, the only white man executed in colo-nial Kenya for killing an African. The Nation denounced sugges-tions that Poole’s execution was “appeasement towards African nationalist opinion.” It declared in an editorial: “British law holds rightly that the value of a white man’s life is no more than that of a black man. In this respect, the forces of law and order have acted with impartiality.”

If conditions within the East African nations were superficial-ly peaceful, underlying tensions were constantly fuelled by tur-moil beyond their frontiers. Inde-pendence in the former Belgian Congo was followed immediately by rioting, looting, mutiny, rape

The Aga Khan, on a 1961 visit to Nation House, discusses news issues with the Edi-torial team.

The Sunday paper seduced readerswith its verve, but the daily limped

CONTINUED ON PAGE 18

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 6

HUMOUR

The man who made the nation laughBy GAKIHA WERU

Sometime at the beginning of the 1980s, a master’s degree student at the University of Nairobi saw an advertisement in Nation Newspapers, announc-ing vacancies for sub-editors.He applied and was hired. “I was under the impression that a sub-editor was a pretty senior fellow. I was terribly mistaken,’’ the student recalled years later.The student was the late Wa-home Mutahi. Over the next two decades he was to tantalise readers with a rare and unique brand of humour.Through his column, “Whis-pers,” Mutahi became an inte-gral part of the Nation stable and the Sunday Nation was incomplete without an article from “the son of the soil.”So huge was his following that when Mutahi left to join the competition, he was hired right back, the company hav-ing found that when he moved house, thousands of readers moved with him.His satire was unforgiving and his family members were permanent caricatures in his column. There was his mother, Appep, his wife, Thatcher, Whiz Junior aka the domestic thug and daughters Pajero and the Investiment.So much was his family part of

his satire, his wife Ricarda Njoki recalled later, that at Murang’a district hospital where she worked, few people knew her real name. They all called her Thatcher.Mutahi laughed at himself, at those around him and at society in general. In turn, Sunday Na-tion readers laughed with him and loved him too, “I can laugh at anything with the exception of God and disability,” he once said.His satire and did not the spare the political class either. Using analogies, former President Moi became the “main headmaster.”Mutahi’s pen was at its sharp-est at a time when the Moi regime could not countenance any form of criticism. It was therefore not entirely surprising when Mutahi was arrested and jailed on trumped up charges in 1986.He was banging away on his

typewriter at old Nation House in Tom Mboya Street when the Special Branch officers walked in and demanded to see him.After a brief chat at reception, he went back to his desk and collected his jacket. Out in the street he was surrounded by other officers and led away and nobody knew his whereabouts for days on end.Like many other people who were jailed for sedition at that time, Mutahi was to appear in court one day late in the after-noon. With him was his young brother, Njuguna Mutahi. As everybody did in those days,

they pleaded guilty to charges of sedition.It was common knowledge that people who admitted such charges had pleas of guilty beaten out them at Nyayo House. Mutahi’s book, Three Days On The Cross, tells of his experience at the hands of his torturers.Mutahi was a top feature writer who inspired scores of journal-ist and personally mentored many of them including this writer.He was also a great thespian and playwright. He penned many plays, among them Mu-

gathe Mbogothi and Ngoma Cia Aka. He also has several books to his name.When Mutahi died in July 2003, the country was stunned. It was only then that it became clear that through his column, he had touched a generation in a very special way.His death, too, was tragic. He had gone on March 7 to Thika District hospital for what was to be a minor operation. Something went terribly wrong and Mutahi went into a coma from which he never woke up. He died three months later at Kenyatta National Hospital.

Mutahi’s satire was unforgiving, and his fam-ily was the cast in his column.NMG ARCHIVES

DAILY NATIONThursday March 18, 2010 50 GOLDEN YEARS XV

DAILY NATIONThursday March 18, 2010XVI | 50 GOLDEN YEARS

Mr Joseph Odindo, Editorial Director Nation Media Group

For 50 years Nation newspapers have striven to uphold the promise of that very

first issue - to become the most reliable source of accu-rate news and essential infor-mation in the region.And now the challenge has grown to ensure our print, broadcast, internet and mo-bile phone media become the choice of the continent - the media of Africa for Africa.The Press is often thought of as the watchdog that keeps an eye on Government and through its vigilance helps to moderate public affairs.Since before Uhuru the Na-tion has been present at every major event in the country’s proud history, recording, in-forming, explaining the news.Whether the death of a Presi-dent, a major disaster, the passing of vital legislation or a national debate - Nation journalists have been there.Now as the focus of breaking news shifts to the electronic media - radio, TV, the inter-net and our 6667 phone alerts - newspapers are assuming a different role.The accent now is on what we call Day Two, or Back Stories -- expert reports that explain what lies behind the news.These put the day’s events into context and help to pro-vide a greater understand-ing of the bewildering pace of change. Of course, it is not only exemplary news cover-age that has seen the Nation grow from one Sunday news-paper into the largest media house in East and Central Africa. From a wafer thin Kiswahili title beloved of na-tionalist Kenyans, the group runs newspapers and broad-

cast stations in Uganda and Tanzania and might soon venture into Rwanda. In half a century of writing headlines, we have had our share of disgrace and our mo-ments of glory. We stood up for Kenya’s independence, championed the return of multiparty democracy and ex-posed Goldenberg and Anglo Leasing, along with countless other injustices against our nation. Of course, people buy news-papers for many reasons. Sometimes it is to read the pioneering obituary pages, or notices of college admissions and new products. Welcome, too, are advertise-ments for jobs or cars and even pets.All is grist to the mill; part and parcel of a great daily read. Perhaps the greatest challenge yet faced by jour-nalists across all our media was the post election violence that rocked Kenya following the 2007 poll. It tested our courage and impartiality, our ability to stand back from the turmoil and report without bias. We triumphed in the end, but learnt painful les-sons along the way. Any newsroom is a micro-cosm of the society it covers. Just as our countrymen and women were riven by con-flicting loyalties, so divisions crept into our newsrooms.Yet it is immensely to the credit of Nation group jour-nalists that they were, finally, able to put aside any differ-ences and determine that together their primary task - in addition to reporting the news - was somehow to help heal the country; to bring harmony where there was discord.I am proud to have been part of that Nation team, and I am even prouder now to lead it.

Why our newspapers are taking on a different role

REFLECTIONS

It is Pulitzer winner Dough Marlette who once remarked: “Good cartoons are like visual rock and roll. They hit you primitively and emotion-ally, turning you every which way but loose.”

Award winning Nation Cartoonist God-frey Mwampembwa a.k.a Gado has been

rocking our world with good cartoons, albeit controversial at times. But in be-

tween he has emerged as perhaps one of the most outstanding Afri-

can cartoonists in recent years. His editorial cartoons have often rubbed

authorities the wrong way and enter-tained readers with the same zeal. Gado picked the mantle from the likes

of Frank Odoi and Paul Kelemba who had graced the editorial pages in the 80s and has stuck like a permanent outcrop in the op-ed pages of the Nation.

Born in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, Gado joined Nation Editorial in 1992 as

a cartoonist after freelancing with Daily News, Busi-ness Times and the Express, all of Tanzania.

He has won several local awards. In 1996 he was honored by the International Olympic Media Award in Print Media and in 1999 was named Kenya Car-toonist of the Year. He has exhibited his works in Tanzania, Kenya, France, Norway, Finland and Italy. A painter in oils and watercolours, Gado is a mem-ber of Kenya Union of Journalists , the Association of East African cartoonists , Cartoonists and Writers Syndicate (C&W) and a Board Member of Cartoonist Rights Network .

At the moment Gado is the most syndicated political/editorial cartoonist in East and Central Africa. His works have also been published in Le Monde (France), the Washington Times (US), Des Standard (Belgium) and Japan Times. He has pub-lished two books: Abunuswasi (1996) a short story comic book and DEMOCRAZY! , a collection of his editorial cartoons.

Gado: Every which way but loose

By GAVIN BENNETT

Few things in life evoke past eras quite so precisely and powerfully as the car. The

imagery is so strong and clear that movie makers can locate their audience in time and place with a single shot of cars on a street.

So what would strike us most — carwise — if we watched a film clip of Nairobi on the day the first copies of the Nation came rattling off the presses in 1960? It would be a cine film of course. Video bado.

Obviously, all the vehicles would be models from the 1950s, cruising around on almost empty streets between low-rise build-ings (a queue of 10 cars was con-sidered a traffic jam; the terms “parking space” and “open road” were things that actually existed,

rather than just being hoped for). But beyond the most obvious long-distance observations…

There would be no SUV’s, no hatchbacks, and almost no pick-ups or matatus. The only 4WD would be a Series II Land-Rover, with its headlights still mounted in the radiator grille (not out on the wings). The biggest trucks would be what we now call 7-ton-ners. And in these and any other classes, there would not be a sin-gle vehicle from Japan (where today 80 per cent of our road-fill comes from).

Zoom in a little closer and there would be more to surprise today’s memory. All would be running on crossply tyres (though radials were about to arrive as the Miche-lin X, which everybody thought needed to be pumped up more). None would have door mirrors, all the bumper bars would be

chrome plated, with over-riders (and badges), the number plates, fore and aft, were black with sil-ver-grey lettering (mostly start-ing in the KC-KF range). Many would have roofracks, sun visors and mascots. The latest fad was a little perspex gizmo mounted on the front of the bonnet, billed as a “fly deflector.”

To get in, each door would have to be unlocked individually, and once inside even the plushest models would seem Spartan. No seatbelts at all. Radios were op-tional extras. All windows were wound by hand.

There were no buttons and ials were few – speedo (in mph), tem-perature gauge (in Fahrenheit), fuel gauge (in guesswork; the VW Beetle didn’t even have one) and, as an optional extra, a clock (in loud ticks). Full stop. Gear shift levers on the steering wheel were common (so were bench seats)…and often alone. There were no combination lights-and-wipers levers (those were push-pull but-tons scattered randomly around the unpadded dashboard; a two-speed wiper was something to mention in adverts, intermittent options were unheard of, and the washer spray was a completely separate item activated by a one-squirt-per-push manual pump).

The steering column did often have a small second lever to make the “trafficators” blink left or right, and there were still plenty of vehicles that did not have those – instead, a little illuminated pad-dle swung out of the door pillar, at the behest of a toggle switch near the ashtray.

Driving into a past of empty streets . . . and no matatus

1960s vehi-cles cruised on almost empty streets between low rise buildings and 10 cars was consid-ered a jam.NMG ARCHIVES

IN AN ERA GONE BYMOTORING

DAILY NATIONThursday March 18, 2010 50 GOLDEN YEARS XVII

RECOLLECTIONS

We knew we were involved in something specialBy JOHN McHAFFIE

Visitors to today’s Nation Centre cannot fail to be impressed by its gran-

deur, looking as it does every inch the flagship headquarters of a large and dynamic media group.But, whenever I walk through its St Peter’s-like doors and into its marble halls, I allow myself a rueful smile as my mind goes back over three decades to a time when Nation newspapers were put together in far hum-bler surroundings.The old Nation House, opposite the fire station in Tom Mboya Street, was a very different proposition.The long, two-storey building had few of the features of its il-lustrious successor. There was no need for snazzy TV or radio studios, since liberalisation of the airwaves was still years away. No need either for fancy reception areas or elaborate se-curity desks to screen visitors, since terrorism had not yet

visited us and passers-by could, and did, wander onto the edito-rial floor after the most cursory of checks.The newsroom itself exuded a noisy vibrancy, missing now in the almost monastic silence of today’s push-button, cyber journalism. It was an “old school” newsroom, with news agency machines chattering by the windows, reporters pounding manual typewriters, chained to their desks, and all around the shuffling of short typewritten pages known as “takes” as sub-editors on the news, sports and features desks prepared stories for the next day’s paper.But, if our editorial surround-ings were workaday, we still knew that we were pioneers, involved in something special. Our photo-typesetting technol-ogy and web-offset printing process were way ahead of London’s mighty Fleet Street. The ability to print full-colour pictures was one such inno-vation, although (at least at

first) considerable preparation time was required. A full-colour picture tended to appear in the features pages, which were planned days ahead. Our first opportunity to put colour to the test was the crash of a Boe-ing 747 of Lufthansa Airlines in Nairobi. Over time we got better and faster, and colour became a more regular occurrence,

eventually paving the way for a triumphant double-page “Final Farewell” edition for President Kenyatta’s funeral. But newspapers, perhaps more than any other enterprise, are a people business, a team endeav-our, and when I look back, it is the people who spring to mind:µ Joe Rodrigues, editor supreme, the rock around which the Na-

tion swirled – known as “Joe”, because his original European colleagues could not get their tongues around Jawaharlal.µ Irrepressible Joe Kadhi of the booming laugh who now passes on his vast experience to a new generation of journalists as a professor at USIU in Nairobi. µ George Mbugguss and Bob Muthusi, who in the early days steered Taifa Leo, to its pre-emi-nent position in Swahili publish-ing.µ Polymath and resident lexi-cographer Phillip Ochieng, who succeeded me as chief sub, and is still strutting his stuff in the Sunday Nation.And then there were the young lions of the time, who became the grizzled veterans of later times — Wangethi Mwangi, Joseph Odindo, Tom Mshindi. After me, other chief subs were: Phillip Ochieng, Ali Hafidh, Wangethi Mwangi, Joseph Odindo, Kibe Kamunyu, Julius Maina, Pamela Makotsi, Timothy Wanyonyi and presently, Mbu-gua Ng’ang’a.

The newsroom at old Nation House on Tom Mboya Street Nairobi in the early years.

DAILY NATIONThursday March 18, 2010XVIII | 50 GOLDEN YEARS

and death and the country be-came a byword and a caution for those who feared African nations were not yet equipped to handle independence. Kenya’s Elspeth Huxley, a writer and thinker on Africa, said in a Nation interview that democracy would never work on the continent. Predict-ing a series of African dictators, she declared, “It is not possible to have a Western-style democ-racy in a country divided deeply on racial, linguistic, cultural and religious lines.”

The Daily Nation hit the streets on Monday, October 3, 1960, re-peating the company’s promise to “do our utmost to help Kenya and the other East African ter-ritories make the perilous tran-sition to African majority rule and full independence as peace-fully and constructively as possi-ble.” Cautiously, it mentioned no time frame but pledged to act as a watchdog for the common man, “guarding the liberty of the indi-vidual against bureaucracy and totalitarianism, however they may manifest themselves.” In re-peating its commitment to Afri-

can majority rule, the newspaper referred not only to Kenya but to all of East Africa, a regional per-spective which, at the Aga Khan’s behest, the company’s newspa-pers were to maintain through-out their history. For many years, this stance flew in the face of cool if not disdainful attitudes towards regional co-operation by the governments themselves, fired as they were by the euphoria of national sovereignty.

The colonial power had been an enthusiastic proponent of common services, creating such institutions as East African Railways and Harbours and the East African Currency Union. In 1961, an attempt was made to harmonise the economies of Kenya, Uganda and Tanganyika/Tanzania when the East African High Commission became the East African Common Services Organisation, which in turn became the East African Com-munity in 1967. Due to differing political philosophies, this entity effectively stopped functioning in 1972 and collapsed in 1977. It was revived in 2000 with the intention of paving the way to a full-scale federation compris-ing Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania,

FROM CONCEPTION TO MATURITYCHRONOLOGY

Rwanda and Burundi. The five members would effectively be-come a single state within the African Union, hopefully by 2013. Despite a long history of federal failures, the Nation’s faith in a strong regional presence never wavered and year after year it called for new efforts towards integration.

Unlike its Sunday sibling, the Daily Nation’s growth was to prove slow and painful. The choice of a launch date, for ex-ample, was questionable. A Monday paper has to carry news from Sunday and there is often not much happening on the tra-ditional day of rest. So it was to

prove on the weekend of Octo-ber 3, 1960 and the paper’s own launch was promoted to second lead on Page One. The main story told of the return home of the Sultan of Zanzibar after hospital-isation in Europe, describing him as “fit as a fiddle.” He died within weeks. Writing 25 years later for the paper’s silver jubilee souve-nir, editor Bierman recalled, “It was not, let us be frank, a very good issue…and it went down rather like a lead balloon.” The print order for the launch was 15,500 and it sold 13,000. Sales dropped even further when the curiosity factor abated and come November were down to 12,000.

A letter from a reader said, “The mountain has laboured and brought forth a mouse.”

Stung, the newsroom fought back. Through initiative and hard work and driven by Bier-man, reporters brought in a se-ries of exclusive front page sto-ries on widely different topics which kept people talking about the paper, even if not enough were buying it. “It was hard and often heart-breaking work,” Bier-man recalled, but it did finally pay off. Putting sales back at a modest 200 per week, circulation rose slowly to a point of viability. But it took more than five years to cross the 20,000 barrier, which

The Daily Nation hit the streets on Monday, October 3, 1960, repeating the company’s promise to “do our utmost to help Kenya and the other East African territories make the perilous transition to African majority rule and full independence

Above left: Delegates from left, Jean Marie Seroney, Ronald Ngala, and, far right, Ron-ald Ngala. Above: A procession on the way to the Uhuru celebrations. Right: Presi-dent Jomo Kenyatta chairs his first Cabinet meeting. On his right is Vice-Presi-dent Jara-mogi Oginga Odinga.

Briton sentenced to death for killing a KenyanCONTINUED FROM PAGE 14

DAILY NATIONThursday March 18, 2010 50 GOLDEN YEARS XIX

Above: Jomo Kenyatta signs the instruments of independence; Right, Miss Uhuru, Elizabeth Mumbi, in a recent photo, with a picture of herself from 1963. At left, how the Nation carried the story of Ken-ya’s independence celebrations in the Friday edition of December 13, 1963. The paper cost 30 cents.

the Sunday Nation achieved in four months. Inevitably, what mostly filled the new newspa-per’s columns was politics.What disappointed the Nation’s liberal-minded young journal-ists was the critical attitude of the emerging class of African politicians when hardline po-litical in-fighting began to domi-nate the national scene. While not being so starry-eyed as to ex-pect gratitude for their support for independence, they were dis-mayed that such a positive stance seemed to count for nothing and motives of ill-will were imputed to them when they reported con-tentious but valid issues. Bier-man shot back: “It is right and proper that Nation Newspapers should report and comment on these differences (within Kanu).” It would, he warned, continue to do so.

It was the Nation’s stubborn adherence to investigating and reporting all sides of an issue that was to gain it a reputation

from knee-jerk commentators of being an anti-government news-paper. At heart was a failure by politicians to understand the difference between being inde-pendent and being hostile to government. Almost to a man they hewed to the Biblical adju-ration, “He who is not with us is against us.” The price for main-taining its integrity was a deeply uncomfortable life for the Nation and its staff for virtually all of its 50 years to date.

The path to independence was cluttered with problems but in retrospect its achievement was inevitable. In January 1960, some 50 Kenya delegates attended the first constitutional conference at Lancaster House in London. Fly-

ing together on the same airplane were a group of African nation-alists including Mboya, Odinga and Daniel Arap Moi – but not Kenyatta, who was still in deten-tion; moderate Europeans led by Michael Blundell; and a party of settlers headed by Group Captain “Puck” Briggs. A proposed multi-racial constitution was accepted by Blundell and, reluctantly, by the Africans, but rejected by the settlers. Clearly more talks were needed and the Kenyans flew back to Nairobi, where a set-tler threw 30 silver sixpences at Blundell and cried that he was “a Judas.”

When a second round of talks took place in London in 1962, Kenyatta, now freed from all re-

strictions, led the African del-egation. Kanu’s men pressed for centralism while an opposition African group, the Kenya African Democratic Union led by Ronald Ngala, argued for regionalism or majimbo. A framework constitu-tion was eventually mapped out and taken back to Nairobi to be refined. A new Governor, Mal-colm MacDonald, threw out the planned timetable for an elec-tion in the autumn of 1963 and independence by the end of 1964. Kenyans were just too impatient, he said. Elections were set in-stead for May 1963, internal self-rule on June 1 and independence in December. MacDonald organ-ised a grinding series of meetings by African ministers to finalise

the constitution -- three sessions a day, three days a week. A 248-page constitution was finally agreed and tabled as an Order in Council. It met the needs of the day but was to be amended many times in the coming years.

In the election, Kanu won two-thirds of the vote and formed a strong government with Kenyatta as prime minister. The Nation, in a landmark decision, printed the headline, “Kanu for Kenya,” the first and so far the only time it has endorsed a political party.

It argued that Kanu had more talent in its ranks than Kadu and that a centralised form of govern-ment was preferable to regional rule. Typically, it also claimed March, 1960. Kanu would be better at achieving federation in East Africa – an argument that was to be decisively disproved by the party’s lukewarm attitude to federation. Finally on Decem-

At heart was a failure by politicians to understand the difference between being independent and being hostile to government. Almost to a man they hewed to the Biblical adjuration, “He who is not with us is against us.”

CONTINUED ON PAGE 21

Path to Uhuru full of problems

DAILY NATIONThursday March 18, 2010XX | 50 GOLDEN YEARS

Photography has played a major role in Nation journalism. Among key photographers was

YAHYA MOHAMED, who worked for Nation between 1971 and 1992.

An amusing but also tragic assign-ment for him was one of a robbery from the Queensway branch of Bar-clays. After robbers took the money and fled, he recalls, they took refuge in a house at Uhuru estate in the city’s Eastlands.

The police followed them there and after the door to the house was bro-ken down by firemen, a police inspec-tor shot himself in the foot.

“The inspector was drawing a gun from his holster but it went off and a bullet went through his foot. I got the picture, and earned myself an imme-diate promotion,” Yahya recalled. The robbers were caught.

SAM OUMA, worked for Nation between 1981-1988 and then for a sec-ond stint between 1990 and 1998. He

remembers the 1982 coup attempt as one of the most memorable and also traumatic times. He was with a neigh-bour of his near the Nyayo National stadium when a shot rang out. His neighbour fell dead. He had been shot by security forces.

Sam says he had warned him that leaving the house would be danger-ous, but his neighbour did not lis-ten. The 1998 Nairobi bomb blast will touched him in a personal way. He says that five minutes before the bomb went off, he had received a mys-terious call in the office from a man with an Arab accent, who said that “a building in Nairobi will dance today.”

YUSUF WACHIRA worked for Na-tion from 1988 to 2001 and remem-bers the day when Alexander Muge, the Anglican Bishop of Eldoret’s church service in Kirinyaga was dis-rupted by a chief who wanted to slap the bishop. The congregation booed the chief out of the church leading to riots in Kirinyaga town.

Other notable photographers have included Joseph Odiyo, who has since died, and Joseph Thuo.

– Compiled by Kibe Kamunyu

1971

- 1

992

1960

- 1

965

1988

- 2

001

1981

-19

88 &

199

0 -

199

8

The Nations’ photo acesThe police followed them there and after the door to the house was broken down by firemen, a police inspector shot himself in the foot

Sam Ouma

LEFT:Vidyarthi’s famous shot of a fit and lively Kenyatta jumping over a stream in the Maasai Mara. Behind him is his then secreatary, J.M. Kariuki. COURTESY OF A. VID-YARTHI

Vidyarthi: Pioneer photojournalist

RECOLLECTIONS

Members of the Nairobi Press Corps cameramen, line up behind President Kenyatta at the 1966 Limuru Kanu Confer-ence. Directly behind the President is Nation cameraman Anil Vidyarthi. Second from right is Nation photographer Akhtar Hussein. It is not recorded who took this picture.

By SHRAVAN VIDYARTHI

Born in Nairobi in 1944, Anil Vidyarthi began taking pictures with

a Box Brownie camera at the age of 16. Anil’s father, G.L. Vidyarthi, had established Kenya’s first anti-colonial newspaper in 1933 as well as a host of vernacular news-papers.

It was at his father’s pr inting press that Anil would watch his cousin, photo-journalist Priya Ramrakha, processing pictures of lead-ers like Jomo Kenyatta, Tom Mboya and Daniel arap Moi.

Anil bought his first Nikon camera in 1962. He was working then in a dark room on River Road. On the rec-ommendation of reporter Chhotu Karadia, Nation edi-tor John Bierman agreed to bring Vidyarthi on board. There were few photojour-nalists in those days, and most photographers plied their trade in Nairobi’s stu-dios. Caleb Okwera, who worked alongside Vidyarthi, was the only black African photographer at the Nation before independence.

Vidyarthi’s first assign-ment was to photograph a derailed train near Nairobi. He recalls: “We jumped on a plane to get an overhead shot. I started shooting with a camera provided by the Nation and the film ran out after two exposures. To save film, photographers would leave unexposed frames in the camera. I had no idea that was the case when I started, but luckily I still got the shot!”

Vidyarthi became a staff photographer at Nation in 1963 and covered Kenya’s In-dependence celebrations in December of that year. Many Kenyans will remember his photo of Jomo Kenyatta jumping over a stream in the Maasai Mara game reserve on his way to greet Ameri-can astronauts vacationing in Kenya.

“Before the astronauts ar-rived, President Kenyatta and politician JM Kariuki were taking a walk near a small stream,” Vidyarthi says. “Then Kenyatta jumped over it. I had three cameras around my neck and quickly, without focusing, clicked the shutter a few times. There were 30 photographers wait-ing, but I was the only one who got the shot. The pic-ture was on the front page of Nation the next day and Kenyatta ordered hundreds of prints to send to leaders around the world when-ever they inquired about his health.”

Vidyarthi left Nation in 1967 for a brief stint in the printing industry and then joined Derby College of Art in England to pursue a two-year degree in photography in 1969. He moved to New York in 1971 and found casu-al work at Life magazine.

He returned home in Janu-ary1972 and took up work in the printing industry. In the early 1980s, he returned briefly to photography and covered President Moi’s state visit to India for Viva maga-zine. Anil is now the manag-ing director of Colourprint Limited printing press.

Yusuf WachiraJoseph Thuo

Yahya Mohamed

DAILY NATIONThursday March 18, 2010 50 GOLDEN YEARS XXI

ber 12, 1963, the Union Jack was lowered and Kenya’s new flag – a shield and crossed spears on a red, black and green background – was raised in its place. The Na-tion’s front page declared “Kenya Free!”

As the new government strug-gled to find its feet, so the Nation began to flex its muscles, Michael Curtis recalled: “We became the first newspaper to distribute nationwide from our presses in Nairobi. We did what everyone in Nairobi told me was impossi-ble and ran our Land-Rovers the whole of the 300 miles to Mom-

basa on what was then only a murram road infested with wild animals and subject to sudden floods.” The Nation had become a truly national newspaper and it was clear the time was ripe to appoint a Kenyan to lead the edi-torial team.

The Board’s choice was a Har-vard graduate and a journal-ist who had already made his mark as a feature writer, Hi-lary Ng’weno. The new editor brought an African perspective to reporting and writing, clearly demonstrated by the upheaval in the Congo following the murder of Patrice Lumumba. As interna-tional news agencies focussed their reports on the fate of white

missionaries, Ng’weno saw to it that the slaughter of thou-sands of Congolese Africans was brought to the attention of news-hungry Kenyans.

In government circles there were signs of the uncertainty that affected many new nations when its inexperienced politi-cians were suddenly handed power. In the belief that news-papers should act as an arm of development, the Information Ministry tightened its grip on the flow of government news, taking control of the Kenya Broadcast-ing Corporation and changing its name to the Voice of Kenya.

It also deported a number of former colonial government

officers and foreign reporters, the first journalist being Tony Dunn, the Nation’s man in Dar es Salaam. Dunn was originally expelled by the government of Tanzania, and thus automatical-ly under a bilateral agreement, by Kenya, too. His offence was to report too accurately on Afri-can-on-Arab violence which had flared on Zanzibar, and insurrec-tion in the army on mainland Tanzania. Military mutinies soon flared in Kenya and Uganda, too, but these were quelled with Brit-ish military help. Embarrassing as these incidents were for the new nations, they served to il-lustrate the dangers of military takeovers that were afflicting

many other newly independent African nations at that time.

On the first anniversary of independence, Kenya became a Republic and Kenyatta its first President. In a speech mark-ing the occasion, he declared that the independence consti-tution was “too rigid, expensive and unworkable.” Kenyatta Day – October 20 -- had already been established to mark the arrest and detention of Kenyatta and his companions 12 years earlier. The direction in which the coun-try was heading was clearly elu-cidated on November 10, when Ronald Ngala’s Kadu joined the Kanu government and Kenya be-came a one-party state. The Min-istry of Home Affairs was taken from VP Oginga Odinga and given to Daniel Arap Moi.

As the decade moved on, devel-opments emerged which were to become recurring motifs in the Kenya story such as corruption scandals, quarrels about free ex-pression and constant scrapping over political power.

When a maize shortage hit the nation, an inquiry was or-dered into suspected thievery at a high level. There followed scandal at the West Kenya Mar-keting Board, with allegations of a cheque being signed for a Mer-cedes car and outrageous pay-ments to MPs. The entire board was sacked and staff suspended.

Assurances of Press freedom by Attorney-General Charles Njonjo were received with reserve by the Nation and an editorial said, “While newspapers understand the problem which the Govern-ment faces, it is only fair that the Government and politicians should understand the troubled political waters through which newspapers must walk.” When in May 1966 Kenyatta named Joseph Murumbi as Vice-Presi-dent, Odinga resigned and soon afterwards announced formation of the Kenya People’s Union with 28 other dissident legislators. Since MPs joining a new party were required to resign from Parliament, a “little general elec-tion” was held for 30 seats. The result was a major victory for Kanu, which won 21 of the avail-able seats. Said Kanu secretary-general Mboya: “The KPU is dead and the voters buried it.”

The Sixties ended in darkness. On July 5, 1969, Tom Mboya, aged 38, was shot dead coming out of a chemist’s shop barely 100 yards from Nation House. The Nation described it as “the most horrific

Challenge to the constitution1971: Ugan-da’s General Idi Amin Dada comes to power through a mili-tary coup

1978: A front and back spread of Kenyatta’s funeral.

Right: 1980/81: It was a tragic New year’s eve when a power-ful bomb ripped through part of the Norfolk Hotel as guests gathered for a party.

Below Right: 1976: Israeli hostage after their release fol-lowing a com-mando raid on Entebbe.

Extreme Right: 1978: Dan-iel arap Moi is sworn in as Kenya’s second president.

CONTINUED ON PAGE 24

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 19

DAILY NATIONThursday March 18, 2010XXII | 50 GOLDEN YEARS

By JOHN KAMAU

On a Monday morning, October 14, the Court of Appeal for Eastern Africa

delivered its final verdict on the man who shot dead Tom Mboya, Nahashon Isaac Njenga Njoroge. “We are satisfied that in all the circumstances, the trial judge was correct in coming to the con-clusion that the evidence showed beyond reasonable doubt the guilt of the appellant,” said Sir Charles Newbold, after a hearing of the appeal that lasted three-hours and twenty-five minutes.

It was a dramatic end to the case as defence counsel, S M Waruhiu cut his listed six grounds for the appeal to three.

Njenga was arrested on July 21, some 17 days after the murder of Economic Planning and De-velopment minister as he left a chemist on the then Government Road, now Moi Avenue.

A statement from Mr. Bernard Hinga, Comimissioner of Police, issued that night identified Njen-

ga as the suspect. He appeared before a Nairobi magistrate S.K. sachdeva charged with the mur-der of Mboya.

Witnesses who had been with Njenga that day say that he had vowed to finish Mboya. “He will never vie again for the Kamuku-nji seat,” Njoroge was alleged to have said: “Tom-will not live while I live”.

During the investigation, a gun was recovered from his house in Ofafa Jericho.

Mr Nahashon Njenga was born on November 28 , 1936, in Kiambu. He graduated from the High Military School V. Levsk in the People’s Republic of Bulgaria, after taking courses in military techniques, and firing prepara-tions.

Njenga maintained during the trail that a man he knew only as Jimmy bought the revolver, and six rounds of ammunition for him for £25 a day after Mr Mboya was shot.

He had no licence for the weapon.

The trial of Njenga was cov-ered verbatim by the Nation but the final verdict did not end speculation that there was an-other “big man” who was in-volved.

Njenga had during alluded to the collusion of a “big man” whom he did not name.

JULY

196

9

Tom Mboya is gunned down

Mourners wail and weep fol-lowing the death of charismat-ic politician, Tom Mboya in 1969. Inset, the Nation’s special edition of the killing.

GO

OFS

& G

AFF

ES Stories the editors

would prefer to forget

The success story of any media house is inevitably interspersed with the sort of failures and blunders which make

those discreet, bottom-of-the-page “Correc-tions and Clarifications” required reading by journalists and consumers alike.

Nation Media Group has been no excep-tion. Mostly, these blunders just made the newspapers look silly. On the lighter side, Daily Nation librarian ANNIEL NJOKA re-calls two such stories:Driving in reverse claimThis saga started in 1985 when Eric Awori, a scion of East Africa’s well-known Awori family and a Rugby player with Kenya Har-lequins, was reported to have driven a car in reverse all 500kms from Mombasa to Nai-robi. It eventually turned out it was all false. He was arrainged in court on fraud charges and fined.

He did not milk an elephantIn November 1998 a small news item was turned into a full-page feature.

Then the international news agencies picked it up, and an unknown 22-year old Kenyan became a global celebrity for the amazing feat of milking an elephant, a wild one, not a tame creature in a zoo.

Mr Peter Baraza, however, was not im-pressed with all the fame that transformed him into an instant celebrity. On leaving hospital, Mr Baraza filed a lawsuit against the Nation for carrying false reports and was awarded a handsome sum.

MA

RC

H 1

975

By MACHARIA GAITHO

The screaming Daily Na-tion headline that Ken-yans woke up to one

morning in early March 1975 read, “JM in Zambia.”

If the headline was meant to reassure Kenyans that all was well after the popular maverick MP had been reported missing, it turned out to be a cruel joke. For that very day, J.M. Kariuki’s mutilated body was found at the Nairobi City Mortuary, tagged as an “unknown male African”.

As the country struggled to come to grips with the assas-sination of the fiery MP for Nyandarua North and the gov-ernment of President Kenyatta reeled under the public anger, the Nation Group hung its head in shame.

The headline — and the en-tire story that recounted JM’s

friendship with Zambian Cabi-net minister Vernon Mwaanga and even provided details of where he was staying in Lusaka — lacked any shred of truth.

The Nation eventually re-covered the public’s confidence but the JM falsehood remained a stain on the history of the newspaper.

As a high school student and avid newspaper reader at the time, I followed the keenly the aftermath of the brutal murder of Kenya’s most popular politi-cian.

I remember clearly the initial shock and disbelief; the riots in the streets and the open re-bellion in Parliament that shook the hitherto impregna-ble Kenyatta government to the core; the blatant police cover-up; and the hearings and findings of the Parliamentary Select Committee chaired by Elijah Mwangale that remain

unmatched by any other probe by MPs.

As a Nation staffer, I have every JM Anniversary reflect-ed on the disastrous blunder under the supervision of the then editor-in-chief, George Githii.

Politicians of that era pro-vide fascinating insights into the kind of manouevres which were played out at the time and how many senior newspaper

people in those days were al-lied to one or another political faction even in the one-party era where the battle was for the Kenyatta succession.

It remains difficult, however, to decipher the reasons behind the story. If the intention was to buy a beleaguered government some breathing space as part of a coordinated cover-up, it was a massive flop that did incal-culable harm to the Nation. Mr

JM Kariuki’s murder: Reflections on the Nation’s most shameful episodeI remember the initial shock and disbelief; the riots in the streets and the open rebellion in Parliament

Populist politician JM Kariuki, killed in 1975.

DAILY NATIONThursday March 18, 2010 50 GOLDEN YEARS XXIII

Githii was a political animal, but it is puzzling that he might have tried to aid a Kanu faction, the so-called Kiambu Mafia around Kenyatta, that he would probably have preferred to battle.

The Nation editor was seen as close to the Kanu faction grouped around the then Vice President Daniel Arap Moi and Attorney-General Charles Njonjo. The group was involved in a power struggle against the Kiambu Mafia represented by such stal-warts as former Foreign Min-ister Njoroge Mungai, Defence Minister James Gichuru, Lands Minister Jackson Angaine, Hous-ing Minister Paul Ngei and Gema boss Njenga Karume. These made up the core of a group that later came to mount the “Change the Constitution” campaign to prevent Moi from succeeding

Kenyatta. Mr Njonjo was hostile to Dr Mungai, and there found an invaluable ally in the Nation editor.

And one must go back then to the battle for Dagoretti at the 1974 general election. I was in Form 2. I still recall the almost daily reports on the front page of Nation detailing in breathless prose how Dr Johnson Muth-iora, a newcomer and political non-entity straight out of studies in the US, was giving Dr Mungai a run for his money on the cam-paign trail.

Mungai was one of the most powerful figures in the Kenyatta court. He had served as Foreign Minister and Defence Minister and doubled up as the elderly President Kenyatta’s physician.

He was also the favourite can-didate of the Kiambu group to

succeed Kenyatta. Looking back, it becomes almost obvious that were it not for the Nation’s bra-zen campaign for his opponent, Dr Mungai would not have lost the Dagoretti seat.

Dr Mungai still remembers. Many years after that climactic Dagoretti campaign, I was part of a Nation Media Group team that was touching base with all the key political groupings ahead of the 2002 General Election.

In the process we hosted the key campaign strategists and advisors for Kanu presidential candidate Uhuru Kenyatta, son of the late President.

The team was led to Na-tion Centre by nine other than Njoroge Mungai. Even before he took his seat in the boardroom, Dr Mungai remarked that he had never been hosted by the Nation since the paper had beaten him in the battle for Dagoretti in 1974!

It was not a good start to the conversation, especially because the Uhuru team was not comfort-able with the way the Nation was covering the campaign. Dr Mun-gai seemed to think that it might

be a repeat of Dagoretti 74 all over again. It took quite some effort to convince him that this time the campaign he was now heading would get fair treatment.

The Dagoretti campaign cover-age and the JM in Zambia report caused Nation some serious cred-ibility problems.

While it would be convenient to lay all the blame on one maverick editor-in-chief, it might be more accurate to look at the failings of the management and oversight

system, abetted by a culture of the time which seemed to dictate that the editorial desk be under the stewardship of a personality who was tightly embedded in the political system

The headstrong Githii was finally dismissed after he went overboard with personal cam-paigns and openly defied the Board of Directors.

His mercurial reign forced a major re-evaluation of Nation editorial policies.

JM Kariuki’s murder: Reflections on the Nation’s most shameful episode

It was not a good start to the conversation, especially because the Uhuru team was not comfortable with the way the Nation was covering the campaign

Mourners carry the cas-ket ofpopulist politician JM Kariuki. He was buried in his home in Nyandarua.

DAILY NATIONThursday March 18, 2010XXIV | 50 GOLDEN YEARS

event.” that has taken place in the short his-tory of our young republic.”

Changes at Nation House saw Hilary Ng’weno resign in 1965 to go into book publishing. He was followed by the trucu-lent and charismatic George Githii, from the President’s Press team.

With characteristic gusto, Githii at-tacked growing official corruption and led a vigorous campaign against the gov-ernment’s Public Security Bill which he charged would restrict citizens’ freedoms and lead to detention without trial. When students at Nairobi’s University College protested against the measures, waving placards saying “Not Yet Uhuru” – the title of a recent book by Oginga Odinga – the government closed the college. Githii re-signed in 1968 to take up a place at Oxford University and was succeeded by the quiet and subtle Boaz Omori.

The Sixties ended in darkness. On July 5, 1969, Tom Mboya, aged 38, was shot dead coming out of a chemist’s shop barely 100 yards from Nation House.

The Nation described it as “the most horrific event that has taken place in the short history of our young republic.” On September 10, Nahason Isaac Njenga Njoroge was sentenced to hang for the murder. He said, “All I know is that I did not commit this offence.”

When soldiers attempted a coup

Above: Leader of the 1982 coup attempt Hezekiah Ochuka.Kenyans had a rough time going about their business after the mutiny by ele-ments of the Kenya Air Force.

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 21

DAILY NATIONThursday March 18, 2010 50 GOLDEN YEARS XXV

By KIBE KAMUNYU

S M Otieno, a criminal law-yer of no mean repute, died on December 20,

1986. His death sparked a huge controversy over customary and common law in Kenya.

Silvano Melea Otieno was born at Nyalgunga village in Siaya, in Nyanza Province. After his death, Nyalgunga be-came a by-word for village in the popular Kenyan patois.

Otieno had married a Kikuyu, Virginia Wambui Otieno. When he died, she de-clared that he had wanted to be buried at his farm in Ngong on the outskirts of Nairobi. But the lawyer’s Umira Kager clan said their Luo tradition required that he be buried in his ances-tral home. They went to court, setting the stage for a massive legal dispute.

The case went through the High Court, then to the Court of Appeal and on February 13, 1987, the Umira Kager clan re-ceived a ruling in their favour. In the following day’s Nation, the headline read, ‘Song and dance holds up city traffic.’ Reporter

Irungu Ndirangu, wrote: “At 12.15 sharp, Mr Joash Ochieng Ougo, the younger brother of the late criminal lawyer, Mr S. M. Otieno, stepped out of the High Court buildings and thun-dered: ‘Nyalgunga! Nyalgunga! Nyalgunga!’ his hands punch-ing the air.”

His booming voice drowned the voices of about six women intoning solemn Christian tunes in Dholuo and march-ing before him as in a funeral procession.

The crowd responded by whistling, dancing and clap-ping as hundreds of Umira Kager clans-people gathered on City Hall Way and along Wabera Street.

The cry of Nyalgunga! Nyal-gunga, was repeated countless times and Mr Ochieng said, “ I am happy that the Kenyan Gov-ernment has allowed justice to take its course.”

Reactions to the court rul-ing were as controversial as the case.

One Nation reader wrote, “To my mind it was not Mrs Otieno or the Umira Kager clan that were on trial. At the dock was

the very existence of Kenya as nation. What is the future of mixed marriages in Kenya? What protection does the law provide to a nucleus family in the event of the male spouse passing away? The judges, the

High Court and the Court of Appeal failed to address them-selves to these poignant ques-tions. Here was an opportu-nity for the judges to reject ridiculous practices in favour of progress and good taste. But they refused to take it, and in so doing, have spelt disaster for many families. The injuries caused by the Court of Appeal ruling will take a generation to heal.”

Another reader, Kunga wa Rutere, said: “The learned judge’s ruling that Mr Otieno be buried in Nyalgunga should make it clear to every woman who wishes to be married

across the tribal barriers that she should be ready to embrace and identify fully with the ways of her, hope-fully loved husband.

This is not only where inter tribal marriages are concerned. Even where the couples belong to the same tribe, it should be obvious to the wife that she is expected to cuddle most lovingly to the ways of the family of her hus-band because that is where

she now belongs.”

Reactions as controversial as the rulingLawyer SM Otieno in the corri-dors of the High Court in Nairobi. Inset, how the Nation reported the story of his burial.

1986

-19

87

DAILY NATIONThursday March 18, 2010XXVI | 50 GOLDEN YEARS

The important events in a country’s history do not always follow neat-ly year by year or come

handily packaged by the decade. More often, trends and signals will show up coyly on the politi-cal scene, their significance un-recognised; for months or even years, they disappear from view, only to explode at some future point in full historical fury.

This was often the pattern dur-ing the second half of the two na-tions’ story (country and news-paper) as events which impacted volcanically on both the country and the newspaper alternated with fallow years of quiet and progress.

A mature, educated Kenyan, looking back over the last quarter century, would probably identify 1986 and 1987 as the years of the notorious Mwakenya scare, when lots of innocent Kenyans were locked up on dubious grounds of sedition. In the midst of all this, Parliament found time to confer more power on the head of state.

Mention 1988 and the word mlolongo would probably enter

our observer’s mind, for that was the year Kenyans queued up behind large photographs of candidate MPs in what became known as “the selection within the election”.

By any standards, 1989 was one of the volcanic years: Inter-nationally, the collapse of Com-munism, nationally the bloody fight for multi-partyism, Matiba/Rubia/Hempstone/ Saba Saba.

Into the 1990s: Ethnic clashes and the deaths of Robert Ouko and Bishop Alexander Muge. New opposition parties are formed, but do not unite and President Moi and Kanu win the first multiparty election since 1963. The Nation group moves into a new headquarters on Kimathi Street, creates its first new paper for years and builds a state-of-the-art press hall. A new word enters the Kenyan lexicon: Goldenberg.

International terrorism afflicts the region in 1998 as bombs ex-plode at the American embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam. Memories of Mwakenya are aroused by reports of another

1986 - 2010: Troubles and triumphs of two nationsThe 1982 coup attempt blemished Kenya’s hitherto benign image and human rights became a serious issue

FROM CONCEPTION TO MATURITYCHRONOLOGY

dubious enemy of the nation, the February Eighteen Revolutionary Army. It proves as hard to track down as its predecessor.

NMG marks the arrival of the second millennium with a flurry of expansion, going into tel-evision and acquiring print and

broadcast outlets in Tanzania and Uganda.

The opposition to Kanu fi-nally unites and Mwai Kibaki becomes head of state in 2002 in succession to the long-serving President Moi. Promises to end corruption are belied by new

scandals involving government ministers.

Amidst anger and disenchant-ment, voters reject a proposed new constitution in 2005 and after the 2007 election, Kenya is seized by a paroxysm of ethnic violence which kills an estimat-

At least 44 Kenyanswere jailed despitelack of evi-dence thatMwakenya reallyexisted.

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1986 - 2010: Troubles and triumphs of two nations Profession-als, univer-sity lecturers and students appeared in court in ever-rising numbers to face sedi-tion charges.

ed 1,200 people and displaces at least a quarter of a million. Two months of negotiation and the threat of international pariah status lead to peace under a new power-sharing arrangement.

Such is the nature of day-to-day life, it is the negative that catches the attention while incremental progress goes scarcely noticed – in Kenya’s case, the easing of civil oppression, release of politi-cal prisoners, the demystification of the presidency, the willingness of Kenyans to stand up for them-selves, the disappearance of petty party dictators, unprecedented freedom of the media to criticise and complain.

The following articles attempt to address the high points of 1986-2010 in greater detail.

The 1982 coup attempt seri-ously blemished Kenya’s hith-erto benign international image and amidst the uncertainty and tension that followed, human rights emerged as a serious issue for the first time. It was widely known that many students were foremost in supporting the coup rebels and by 1986, graduates, university lecturers and profes-sional people began disappear-ing from the streets in growing numbers.

When they reappeared it was usually for brief court hearings where they were accused of pos-sessing seditious documents and/or belonging to a seditious organisation and/or failing to report the existence of such an organisation. The accused often bore injuries from their cells, in-

variably pleaded guilty and usu-ally drew jail terms.

Between March and Septem-ber of 1986 alone, some 44 Ken-

yans were convicted of sedition.The notorious organisation in

question was Mwakenya (Union of Patriots to Liberate Kenya) which to this day remains a thing of mystery. Kanu supporters de-nounced Mwakenya as a revolu-tionary underground movement operating from London with the aim of overthrowing the govern-ment by violence.

Many MPs reported receiv-ing subversive literature anony-mously and a 1987 statement, purportedly from Mwakenya, denounced Kanu and “the cyni-cal philosophies of Harambee and Nyayoism.” The statement, couched in classic Marxist phra-seology, said: “The basic means

Mention 1988 and the word ‘mlolongo; would probably enter our ob-server’s mind, for that was the year Kenyans queued up behind large photographs of candidate MPs in what became known as ‘the selec-tion within the election’. 1989 was one of the volcanic years

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 26

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DAILY NATIONThursday March 18, 2010XXVIII | 50 GOLDEN YEARS

of production, distribution and exchange are owned by imperial-ist foreigners and transnational corporations… the ruling com-prador class acts as an overseer, supervising the outflow of wealth into Western capitals.”

Security officials claimed that Mwakenya was led by Kenya’s famed writer-dissident (and one-time Nation columnist) Pro-fessor Ngugi wa Thiong’o, while academic studies of the era have named various well-known Ken-yan politicians as members.

But the organisation remained a chimera to the Kenya media.

Parliament bans the NationCONTINUED FROM PAGE 27

Deputy Speak-erKalonzo Musy-okaled MPs indenouncing The Nation, leading to the newspaperbeing banned from covering the House.

Right: 1985: President Moi welcomes Pope John Paul II when he visted Kenya.NMG ARCHIVES Reporters knew no Mwakenya

officials and received no calls, manifestos or Press releases from them.

There were no known office lo-cations or telephone or fax num-bers. Everything that came to the media and appeared as trial evi-dence was from the government.

The seditious documents pro-duced in court were always pho-tocopies, never originals.

It was not only university peo-ple who were victims of the secu-rity dragnet – civil servants and journalists, too, were picked up, including Wahome Mutahi, the author of Whispers, a widely popular Sunday Nation column, who received 15 months in jail on

Mwakenya-related charges.But there seemed little doubt

that the crackdown confronted the universities with the stark reality of state power, undermin-ing the academic capacity for in-dependent thought and explora-tion in the political arena.

In ironic juxtaposition to the unhappy national scene, the Na-tion group itself was doing well at this time, benefiting from a significant increase in capital ex-penditure which had been agreed at the birth of its second quarter-century.

The company invested in a computerised input system for editorial, classified advertising and some production functions.

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DAILY NATIONThursday March 18, 2010 50 GOLDEN YEARS XXIX

Seriously covering the East African region By JAINDI KISERO

I joined The EastAfrican as editor when it was 10 years old. The founding

fathers conceived of it as a business-oriented regional weekly with a hybrid con-tent: investigative reporting, analysis and interpretation of major trends in the political economy of the region.

The landscape of economic and business journalism had changed dramatically be-tween 1994 when the paper was launched and early 2005 when I came in.

In the first place, news-papers in the region gener-ally were beginning to devote much more time and space to economic and business con-tent. In Tanzania, new Eng-lish-language newspapers had emerged, all devoting space and an expanded news hole to public policy issues.

The same thing was hap-pening in Ugan-da. Like their Kenyan counter-parts, the major papers there offered weekly pull-outs devot-ed to business and economic re-porting.

In terms of de-sign, The EastAfrican was po-sitioned a good notch higher than the daily newspapers. The design was more sophis-ticated, in keeping with its predicted core audience of educated readers looking for quality information beyond the reprocessing of Press re-leases, reports of politicians’ public meetings, the repro-duction of unanalysed stock tables and routine reports from central banks and state-owned statistical agencies.

By 2005, all the major daily newspapers in the region had adopted modern, upmarket designs with colour photo-graphs, information-loaded graphics, front-page digests and teasers. The gap between The EastAfrican and the rest of the media world had nar-rowed significantly since 1994.

Against this backdrop, we at The EastAfrican had to re-think our sense of place and re-invent ourselves. The aim was to offer more than East Africa’s dailies were offering and to place ourselves at the head of the new dispensa-tion.

Daily newspapers tend to concentrate on politics. And

the stories are usually so pa-rochial and personality-based that if you are, say, an inves-tor sitting in European trying to follow what is going in East Africa, you will largely be baf-fled. Because such reporting is personality-based, the reader needs special skills to discern the significance in terms of political risk.

The niche left for The Eas-tAfrican was to popularise issue-based economic and business journalism while keeping the focus on regional factors. In terms of business journalism, Kenya led its neighbours. Indeed, the Na-tion Group produced the first daily newspaper in Kenya dedicated to economic news: Business Daily.

But the field remained wide open for presentation of such journalism in Tanzania ,Ugan-da, Rwanda and Burundi.

When The EastAfrican broke sto- ries, there was

always a policy issue -- priva-tisation scan-dals, reform-ing financial systems, re-structuring of parastatals, mergers and

acquisitions and dealing with widespread dis-tress in the region’s banking sectors. The paper established itself as a premium product, especially in Uganda and Tan-zania, concentrating on issues that commanded the atten-tion of influential people in industry and government.

Even the “softer” sections of The EastAfrican offer content likely to be of interest to inter-national audiences: the envi-ronment, museums, books and culture and in sports such areas as horse racing, cricket and golf.

As a weekly, there are oc-casions when it reports on news that is already out there. In such circumstances, the challenge has been to provide background, offer analysis and locate the story in a re-gional context. The EastAfri-can has also been very strong on opinion pieces, showcas-ing powerful opinion writers. It sees itself as the newspaper for thinking East Africans.

Tanzania is a challenging environment for special-ist writing. The country is an economic writer’s gold mine mainly because of the rate at which capitalism and commerce are spreading, the growth of a consumer culture

and the explosion of the prop-erty market.

Today, Dar es Salaam is the fastest growing metropolis in the region. One of my first re-sponsibilities was to travel to Dar to understand and gauge the news environment there.

I had meetings with CEOs of leading commercial banks,

representatives of leading NGOs, the major lobbies and business associations, inter-national financial institutions involved in the economic re-form programme such as the World Bank and the European Union, members of the parlia-mentary opposition and the Speaker of the National As-

sembly.It dawned on me how most

journalists in East Africa knew very little about what was happening in the three countries. I began to appreci-ate how The EastAfrican had played a major role in devel-oping a new cadre of journal-ists, those with the remit of

keeping tabs on major trends in the region.

In the past, Tanzanians looked upon Kenyans as flashy people who liked os-tentatious living. But I found attitudes had changed as Tan-zania society entered a state of ferment. Look at the cars on the city streets, for instance.

DAILY NATIONThursday March 18, 2010XXX | 50 GOLDEN YEARS

On February 22, 1988, Kanu selected its candi-dates for the March 21

General Election by requiring party members to queue behind a large photograph of their pre-ferred leader. Voters quickly real-ised who they were meant to vote for, regardless of their personal preference. Party officials used trucks to bring in people, in-cluding children, and provided them with food and drink. The length of the queue soon made it plain who was the favoured candidate.

Since there was a rule which allowed any candidate who re-ceived more than 70 per cent of the party vote to enter Parlia-ment unopposed, only about two-thirds of the 188 parliamentary seats were contested by secret ballot on March 21. It became known as “the selection within the election” and “I was rigged out” became the widely-heard complaint of the losers.

But the losers, in a sense, be-

came the winners, for this farci-cal charade created a new group of oppositionists, not lawyers, columnists or churchmen, but hardened politicians with street-fighting instincts who became the most serious focus of discon-tent since the coup attempt.

Rigged-out heavyweights such as Charles Rubia and Ken-neth Matiba were wealthy es-tablishment figures who knew the whereabouts of the levers of power. Coming together at a time of growing pressure for multi-partyism and with sympathetic support from much of the West-ern world, they brought about a sea-change in the way Kenya was governed.

When former Nairobi mayor Charles Rubia and wealthy busi-nessman-politician Kenneth Matiba moved to avenge their ejection from power in the 1988 selection process, they went for the jugular – Article 2A of the constitution, a 1982 amendment which had turned Kenya into a

Clockwise from right: Politician JJ Kamotho at the head of a queue in the infamous 1988 queue voting.

Voters queued behind the picture of their prefered candidate.

Anglican Eldoret Bishop Alexander Muge, who died suspi-ciously.

The infamous 1988 queue voting

DAILY NATIONThursday March 18, 2010 50 GOLDEN YEARS XXXI

de jure one-party state.In a joint statement, the two

men called for repeal of 2A, for presidential tenure to be limited to two four-year terms and for a public referendum on Kenya’s political future.

They were ploughing fertile soil. Communism was disinte-grating in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, the Cold War was no more and Western na-tions were reshaping their poli-cies towards the Third World. Aid, they made clear, was no longer necessary to counter Sovi-et might and in future would go to those countries instituting plu-ralist systems and demonstrating respect for human rights.

In Nairobi, US Ambassador Smith Hempstone led the of-fensive. Uneasy at the growing support for this new system, the government restored the secret ballot for election nominations and agreed to restore security of tenure to judges and high state officials. But there was no retreat

on the one-party state and Mati-ba and Rubia announced a rally in Nairobi for July 7, 1990. Days later, both men were arrested and detained.

Thousands gathered at the Kamukunji meeting ground for an event that has gone down in history as Saba Saba (for the sev-enth day of the seventh month). Violence quickly broke out and crowds demanding the release of Rubia and Matiba surged into the city centre where they were met by riot police with tear gas and batons. Shops were looted, properties set on fire and disor-der spread to Central Province towns and Kisumu. The rioting lasted three days.

Matiba and Rubia were re-leased a year later, both in poor health after their detention, to find opposition to one-party rule gathering strength. The Forum for the Restoration of Democra-cy (Ford) was founded, securing support from many of the coun-try’s political heavyweights.

On February 22, 1988, Kanu selected its candidates for the March 21 General Election by requiring party members to queue behind a large photograph of their preferred leader

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DAILY NATIONThursday March 18, 2010XXXII | 50 GOLDEN YEARS

Githongo lifts the lid on Anglo-Leasing

The bill for looting government cof-fers during the Kanu years was commonly set at around $3 bil-

lion, enough to pay for primary schooling for every Kenyan child for 10 years. Thus Kibaki’s inauguration day promise to put an end to this perpetual scourge was re-ceived with delight by indigenous Kenyans and by supporting developed nations.

To wide acclaim, Kibaki appointed John Githongo, a one-time columnist for The EastAfrican and a former head of Trans-parency International, as the first Perma-nent Secretary for Governance and Ethics.

Githongo quickly realised that the leop-ard of officialdom had not changed its spots, however. As he industriously bored into Narc-era deals such as the Anglo-Leasing affair, a multi-million contract for passport equipment, the British High Commissioner handed the government a dossier which he said contained evidence of 20 corrupt procurement deals which had cost the country $526 million.

Details of the Anglo-Leasing scandal were exposed by the Nation.

Githongo conscientiously talked to government officials and cabinet ministers, secretly taping some of them. He con-cluded that the Anglo-Leas-ing deal involved 18 fraudu-lent contracts and impli-cated several senior govern-ment members.

Githongo said anti-cor-ruption chief Aaron Ring-era told him there would be no Anglo- Leasing prosecu-tions before the 2007 elec-tion, if ever. He was also told by senior government people to drop his investi-gation into Anglo-Leasing, that “what I was doing was dangerous to my physical security”. Fearing for his life, Githongo fled to London. Nation editors Wangethi Mwangi and Joseph Odindo met him se-cretly in London and later compiled the first detailed account of the headline “Anglo Leasing: The Truth”

APRIL 22, 2004

For 10 years, the Na-tion’s editorial car-toonist, Godfrey

Mwampembwa (popularly known as Gado), has cari-catured the corrupt and the mighty strutting through Kenyan society.

He has five characters he considers members of his personal “Animal Farm,” re-calling the great George Or-well satire of that name.

They are human but have the mouths of pigs, leopards, hyenas, crocodiles or wild dogs, “animals associated with greed”.

Like Orwell, Gado uses the characters to depict the wickedness, deceit and in-

difference of a sleaze soci-ety where those with power happily steal from and de-fraud their compatriots.

“The five are clearly as-sociated with excessive eat-ing,” he says. “They encom-pass the class that everybody knows. I don’t have to name names.

Rather, I use the charac-ters.” Gado’s work is part of a long NMG tradition to go to battle against the swindlers of the public entrustment. From its earliest days, the Nation has crusaded for an end to corruption and crea-tion of a just society that will

not tolerate fraud.Awareness of the prob-

lem may have peaked with the infamous and devastat-ing Goldenberg scandal, but NMG’s flagship publica-tions, Daily Nation and Sun-day Nation, had worked in the public interest since the early 1960s -- against sus-pected maize board thefts, extravagance in Nairobi City Council, heavy-hand-edness in legislating against freedom of expression.

Years after the multi-million-dollar losses to the economy caused by the Goldenberg fraud, massive frauds were still being per-petrated in numerous offi-cal areas.

The Daily Nation was the first newspaper to high-light the Goldenberg story,

WAR ON GRAFT

Long history of crusades by Nation against corruption

Years after the multi-million-dol-lar losses to the economy caused by the Goldenberg fraud, massive frauds were still being perpetrated in numerous offical areas.

Nation writers exposed the sale of university degrees and the irregular

The ruin that is Mau today: Nation exposed the devastation of the water tower.

on April 13, 1992. Its then Business Editor, Peter Waru-tere, wrote in a lead article on Page One that “a com-pany given exclusive rights by Treasury to export gold and jewellery is involved in a multi-billion shillings deal that observers describe as ‘a scandal of major propor-tions.’”

A year later, writer Sarah Elderkin told all in a Nation serialization that outlined the amazing effrontery of the culprits. It was investigative work of a quality which in a country such as the United States would probably have won her a Pulitzer Prize.

Over many years, Nation writers exposed the sale of university degrees, the grab-bing of public utilities, the theft of land and the irregu-lar excision of forests.

Nation Media Group “has done a lot of good,” says Catherine Wambui of the Kenya Anti-Corruption Commission.

“The Press has an enor-mous role to play in the fight against corruption. People believe in the papers. Reporters can set out the agenda by highlighting cor-rupt cases.”

John Githongo is Ken-ya’s former Permanent Secretary for Ethics

who lifted the lid off Anglo-Leasing, a multi-billion shil-lings swindle that involved high leaders. “The media have been at the forefront,” he said. Over the past seven years in particular, their per-formance has been sterling.”

According to Transpar-ency International, Nation Media Group has been im-pressive in its steadfastness. “Even during emotive times and issues, the group’s faith-fulness to ideals such as de-mocracy, truth, balance and justice seems steadfast,” said TI Kenya executive director Job Oginda.

“We have watched with pride and gratitude as the Nation took enormous polit-ical, legal and financial risks on behalf of the citizens of Kenya. We salute your whis-tle-blowing on issues of gov-ernance and we appreciate your keeping in the fore-front seemingly mundane but pertinent accountability issues.”

In Kenya, fighting cor-ruption can be frustrating. Those implicated blandly deny charges and often are appointed or reappointed to plum jobs. Courts have mostly proven irrelevant in dealing with major scandals, tending to target petty theft instead.

Email: inquiries@pdmkenya.com

Focused, Innovative, IntegratedProperty Business Solutions

DAILY NATIONThursday March 18, 2010 50 GOLDEN YEARS XXXIII

By MUNA WAHOME

In the 1970s, Kenya’s econ-omy was dealt two trade shocks in quick succession

and stubbornly failed to make policy sense out of either.

The first came in October 1973 when Arab members of the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) withheld oil from the rest of the world to protest against US assistance to Israel during the Yom Kippur war. The embargo lasted up to March of 1974 and damaged export-reliant Third World nations like Kenya as other OPEC members took full advantage, sending cost-push inflation and unemployment, as well as trade imbalances, spiralling out of control.

Naturally, Bretton Woods’ pressure mounted on Kenya to devalue its currency and exer-cise fiscal discipline to reflect the real situation. That would wait for another two decades, thanks to the second shock. In short, Kenyans would remain shielded from high prices by a grossly overvalued currency and its inefficient “infant” in-dustries from the world.

On July 17, 1975, a freezing wind blew from Antarctica and the subsequent frost destroyed at least two-thirds of coffee ber-ries in southern Brazil. Coun-tries including Kenya, previ-

ously bemoaning low prices, jumped in delight as the world prices tripled in the New Year.

This trade shock, locally re-ferred to as the “coffee boom”, would last from 1976 to 1979.

Naturally, the Kenyatta re-gime was only too happy to shelve the reforms that would have liberalised the economy and wrought much pain on the increasingly disenchanted masses.

The trade imbalance was overnight rectified and coffee growing areas were soon boom-ing with construction of new concrete houses. The Ugandan

dictator, Idi Amin, would only ice the cake by withholding coffee exports in replication of the Arab boycott, trigger-ing massive smuggling of the Mount Elgon coffee beans into Kenya until the newly installed President Moi put a stop to the lucrative trade.

Kenya miserably failed to take advantage of the new-found wealth for a number rea-son. One, with the revenue it maintained price and currency controls and cocked a snook at anyone who suggested reform. In turn, the private sector had no capacity to absorb the new

cash by for instance swiftly im-porting machinery and inter-mediate goods.

Secondly, the state cranked up expenditure and made ma-chinery too expensive for the private sector. Thirdly, there was no effort at sterilising (de-laying absorption into the con-sumer economy) the inflows and avoiding the sudden de-mand-pushed inflation.

As fiscal discipline was de-stroyed in the 1980s, the world had entered an era of falling commodity prices and Kenya would pay the ultimate price. In 1993, Kenya agreed to float

its currency, ushering in nearly 10 years of hyperinflation, stag-nation and high poverty rates.

At the change of presiden-cies in January 2003, the cof-fee boom was a distant mem-ory. The number one foreign exchange earner was third to tourism and tea with the cof-fee industry in the firm grip of rogue directors straddling all its institutions. The happy generation of ‘coffee children’ had long been superseded by poverty-stricken Mungiki ad-herents in the prime growing of Central Kenya.

The coffee and oil boom: lessons unlearnedWaiting for fuel in eldoret.NMG ARCHIVES

1973

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979

The board of directors, staff and entire membership of Nation Staff Sacco

wishes to congratulate Nation Media Group as they celebrate their 50th anniversary.

We are proud to be associated with you. We thank you for the support you have accorded us for past years.

Long live Nation!We offer the following services to our Sacco members:Loans products

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FOSA products – opening very soon.On behalf of the board of directors, I once more say congratulations for the solid achievements!

Peter Wilson OcholaChairmanNation Staff Sacco

DAILY NATIONThursday March 18, 2010XXXIV | 50 GOLDEN YEARS

By JOHN KAMAU

Government efforts to dominate, intim-idate and control Nation newspapers

in the founding years — to the extent buy a controlling inter-est in the group — are recorded in declassified archival docu-ments from the 1960s.

Nation journalists were spied on under the first Minister for Information, Broadcasting and Tourism in independent Kenya, Achieng’ Oneko, and

some of his successors. Editors were lectured and threatened.

At a Kenya Intelligence Com-mittee briefing, buying shares in Nation Newspapers was floated as a means of control-ling a group that was demon-strating persistent independ-ence. The idea was not pur-sued, presumably because the authorities realised the news-papers’ content would then be seen as evident propaganda.

While the East African Standard was considered ac-ceptable to the Jomo Kenyatta

How government spied on Nation in bid for controlThe idea of buying shares was floated during an intelligence briefing but this was abandoned after some time

RECOLLECTIONS

ABOVE: Peter Gachathi, PS in the Minis-try of Infor-mation, kept watch on the work of sever-al journalists and opened files on them.

1965

government, the Nation group resisted being treated as a semi-official arm of de-velopment and this worried and angered government of-ficials unused to free Press traditions.

Attacks on the Nation also reflected fault lines between the right and left in govern-ment, represented by Tom

Mboya and Oginga Odinga.A brief written by the

strongly left-wing Oneko described the Nation as “re-actionary” and a paper that had “no place in an African state”.

Intelligence officers and the Kiambaa-born Peter Ga-chathi, Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Informa-

tion, kept watch on the work of several journalists, investi-gated their background and opened files on them. Some of the files are now declas-sifed and are available at the Kenya National Archives, the national depository of gov-ernment documents.

In one confidential letter, Gachathi asked the minis-

DAILY NATIONThursday March 18, 2010 50 GOLDEN YEARS XXXV

try’s Senior Press Officer, A.J. (Tony) Hughes, to check the recent writings of John Du-moga, foreign editor of the Nation. The feisty Ghanaian had crossed Kwame Nkru-mah’s regime in Accra and become a hate figure in Kenya government circles. Gachathi wanted him deported.

In his reply dated July 29, 1965, Hughes wrote: “You have asked me to check the recent writings by John Du-moga. In the last month, I have only traced one article appearing under his byline. This was on Saturday, July 17, headed “And the Nation For-eign Editor says Prove It”. This was a criticism by Dumoga of the white minority govern-ment in Rhodesia.”

This was three months be-fore the November 11, 1965, unilateral declaration of in-dependence by Ian Smith, the Rhodesian Prime minis-ter. But Gachathi appeared to suspect that Dumoga had penned an article criticising the Organisation of African Unity, predecessor of the Af-rican Union.

Hughes went on: “I under-stand you have reason to be-lieve that the story on Page 1 of the Nation of July 20 headed “OAU Facing Crash Crisis,” bylined Nation Foreign Edi-tor, was in fact written by him (Dumoga).

“I do not feel that either of these articles warrant action. I do believe that past articles by Dumoga have been object-able (sic). I propose that I keep watch on the Nation from now on and look out for anything objectable by this writer.”

Intelligence, under James Kanyotu, was also keeping an eye on journalists. In one of his files, Kanyotu has a note on Dumoga, who was even-tually deported. Filed under “Miscellaneous (Secret)”, the note summarises Dumoga (wrongly spelled Demuga) as follows: “Anti-government, anti-CPP and anti-Nkrumah. Went to California for train-ing as a journalist. Before pro-ceeding to USA, was on the staff of a reactionary paper known as Ashanti Pioneer. Subsequently, he worked for the Daily Graphic,which at the time belonged to Cecil King, who owns the Daily Mir-

ror in Britain. It was when the Ghana Government bought the Daily Graphic that he was offered the scholarship to the USA.”

Hughes, who was British, was the Standard’s leading political writer in the run-up to independence, gradually becoming more personally associated with Kanu and its bid for power. Last year, back in Britain, he wrote a letter to this writer saying he played his part in uniting the various forces in a Kenyatta govern-ment torn apart by Cold War politics.

The Cold War, in particular American involvement in Vi-etnam, was a polarising issue in Kenya’s power politics in the early 1960s.

In one of his letters to Oneko, Hughes refers to an item headed “Tragedy of Vi-etnam Refugees”. The Nation had apparently used a picture of American soldiers helping refugees. This did not go down well with the left-wingers in the Kenyatta government.

Hughes wrote: “As far as I am aware, our government has not stated its attitude on the overall Vietnam situ-ation nor has it mentioned upon any particular aspects of the war. By the use of such feature articles the Daily Na-tion appears to be attempting to influence public opinion in Kenya in a particular direc-tion, that is to say, in favour of the American position.

“While the Daily Nation has a right according to the freedom of the Press to take what view it wishes of the Vi-etnam situation, it has a duty to bear in mind Kenya’s non-aligned policy in regard to the cold war.

“Moreover, if it wishes to declare support for the Amer-ican position it should come out in the open and do so in-stead of using these under-hand means by planted stories of how nice the Americans are to refugees. Why not balance this report with something from the Viet Cong about the American news of napalm and poison gas?

“I therefore propose that the Editor of the Nation (Hi-lary Ng’weno) be informed of our views on this particular issue,” said the lengthy letter.

A brief written by the strongly left-wing Oneko described the Nation as “reaction-ary” and a paper that had “no place in an African state”.

Kanyotu kept his eye trained on journalistsIt was not the first time that

Ng’weno would hear from Hughes. On February 14, 1964, Hughes wrote to the Na-tion’s first African editor, tell-ing him that the paper’s tone was “completely inappropri-ate to the conditions of Kenya today”.

Hughes wrote: “I think you should try and have our agreed meeting as soon as possible to discuss these matters and per-haps to arrange for you to see (the PS) and the minister,” said the letter. There is no record of Ng’weno’s reply.

Diplomatic complaints were

raised too. In March 1965, Gui-nean diplomat Barry Bocar Biro complained about a Nation arti-cle and Hughes alerted Oneko: “I agree with the substance of the complaint. All too often, newspapers of the Nation se-ries spoil their other attempts to work with the government

by using some article which is completely contrary to the in-terests of Kenya.”

On April 13, senior editors of Nation were summoned be-fore Minister Oneko, who read them the riot act, though his comments were never publicly reported.

DAILY NATIONThursday March 18, 2010XXXVI | 50 GOLDEN YEARS

Telling the story of Dr Robert John Ouko’s disappearance and subsequent death

placed me in the direct path of his unseen assassins.

On February 15, 1990, news Editor Mutegi Njau was on the line: The minister for for-eign affairs had vanished from his Koru home. At 8.30 the fol-lowing morning, sweating and trembling, I was staring at the minister’s smouldering body. I had left for his farm at Got Alila from the Nation’s Kisumu bureau where I was a reporter. Squads of security men were combing the dry grassland

and I wandered away from a group of General Service Unit officials.

Afew minutes later, I found myself paralysed and staring at the smouldering body. Sudden-ly a police truncheon landed on my face. Bleeding profusely, my instincts glued me to the scene. I knew I was the only journalist who had seen the remains and I had to tell the story through the newspaper..

At 6.30 pm, as darkness de-scended on the eerie hillside, a helicopter carrying the Per-manent Secretary in charge of Internal Security, Hezekiah Oyugi, and Commissioner of

Police Phillip Kilonzo landed. With them was the Chief Gov-ernment Pathologist Dr Stanley Ndaka Kaviti.

The trio summoned report-ers to confirm what we had all been waiting for, the identity of the body found at the foot of Got Alila hill. “Yes, this is Ouko’s body. You can now go and write your story,” Oyugi told us.

The pathologist took one look at the burnt body, shook his head and concluded that the minister had committed su-

icide. The other two concurred with smiles.

I had observed the weather and vegetation at Got Alila and it was dry and hot. I knew that if the body had been burned on the spot, the fire would have spread through out the hillside.

I stated in my story to Na-tion that the fire which con-sumed an adult man only burnt a small portion of grass below his trunk. University students quickly spotted the contradic-tions between my reporting

and the official version.On the Sunday that my story, I

started receiving death threats: “You think you are the one who knows how to describe scenes in English? We shall deal with you. Tutakufanya kama Ouko” (We shall deal with you like Ouko).” Violence engulfed Kis-umu for days.

Mr Atemi was a reporter at Na-tion in 1988 to 1999 and is now a communication consultant and biographer.

The terror that surrounded the murder of Ouko

FE

BR

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RY19

91

A Kenya Air Force Puma helicopter is loaded with the charred remains of Doctor Rob-ert Ouko. Inset, the front page of the Nation reporting the story.NMG ARCHIVES

Caleb Atemi recalls the dangers of covering the story of the killing of the foreign affairs minister

DAILY NATIONThursday March 18, 2010 50 GOLDEN YEARS XXXVII

Massachusetts, and had set up The Weekly Review and after I had returned from a three-year tour of duty in Dar es Salaam – Hilary hired me as his assistant editor (The two Nairobi dailies had rejected me because of my “Tanzanian communism.”) Hilary was as engaged by the Cold War as were Githii and Henry Gathi-gira of The East African Standard and I still have the hand-written note in which he banned me from using what he said were “Communist stock phrases,” in-cluding “imperialism.”

It was Joe Rodrigues who enabled me to return to Nation House in 1978. He had taken over a storm-tossed newspaper from Githii after the latter had finally stormed out in acrimony and recrimination. Joe, a long-ago immigrant from India, was the quintessential newspaperman.

An accomplished reporter, a skilled sub-editor, a dab hand at design, he had been the Nation’s backbone as managing editor under all the above editors-in-chief.

He was the man who made the

paper happen. And in the top editorial job, he was different be-cause he never involved himself in petty partisan politics.

He was also the first editor-in-chief who was ready to help out a hard-pressed chief sub-editor. Joe told me that he needed only my skills in English and page layout. I knew the Board was against my hiring because of my supposed left-wing views, so Joe compromised by undertaking not to allow me to do any writing.

It was thus under Joe the work-horse that I moved from editorial copy reviser to become the Daily Nation’s first black chief sub-editor, taking over from John McHaffie. Sadly, Joe died in Nairobi early in the 1980s, soon after he had retired from Nation House.

He was replaced by Peter Mwaura and thus began one of the most tumultuous eras in the company’s history. Peter was probably the most perceptive and socially conscious editorial chief up to that time. His draw-back was that having spent his time in communication theory at the School of Journalism of the University of Nairobi, he

had no experience in newspa-per production. His problems were compounded when Dugal Nisbet-Smith arrived from The Times in London as managing director of the holding company. In 1981, I was among those who resigned amidst the internal con-vulsions thus occasioned.

In 1983, Peter Mwaura was re-placed by George Mbugguss, an-other workhorse who rose from the ranks to become managing editor of the Kiswahili Taifa newspapers.

George it was who in 1984 convinced the board to hire me back, this time as associate editor to write editorials, take charge of the commentary pages, edit the letters and the Op-Ed section.

George Mbugua (aka “Mbug-guss”) was a man of a special intelligence.

With only eight years of for-mal education and having joined the newsroom as a messenger, he picked up enough reporting technique and enough English to pilot the Kiswahili papers quiet-ly through turbulent times when the English-language products were coming frequently under fire.

In 1988, Joe Kadhi (as his deputy) and I (by then manag-ing editor of the daily) became his chief lieutenants. The three of us would lock ourselves up in George’s office for long hours dis-cussing the news, rewriting page-one stories, suggesting the Page One lead headline and designing the page. It was perhaps the hap-piest and most productive period in the Nation’s history.

Unfortunately, it did not last. Later the same year, President Moi invited me to take over from a Briton called Ted Graham as ed-itor-in-chief of The Kenya Times. The challenge was irresistible for a man like me whose career was mostly playing second fiddle in newsrooms.

In 1991, I retired from day-to-day newspaper work.

That same year, Mbugguss and Kadhi retired and their places were taken by Wangethi Mwan-gi and Tom Mshindi. In 2000,

Wangethi invited me to the new Nation Centre in Kimathi Street to take charge of editorial qual-ity control.

Wangethi -- whom I had “poached” from The Standard and who proved an excellent sub-editor, chief sub-editor and man-aging editor -- was now Group Managing Editor, soon to be prommoted to the newly created position of Editorial Director.

Perhaps Wangethi was the shrewdest of them all. As the group’s internal “stabiliser” and external “shock-absorber,” he pre-sided over the company’s most revolutionary period in terms of capital expansion, technological composition and relationship with the political regime.

Throughout most of his Nation leadership, the larger nation itself was in the throes of upheaval, the demand for multi-partyism prov-ing, when it did eventually come, to be almost unmanageable.

Nation editors down the five decades

Joe Rodrigues accomplished reporter, a skilled sub-editor, a dab hand at design, he had been the Nation’s backbone as managing editor under all the above editors-in-chief.

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 10

DAILY NATIONThursday March 18, 2010XXXVIII | 50 GOLDEN YEARS

International terrorism reached East Africa on Au-gust 7, 1998 when truck bomb assassins linked to

Osama Bin Laden simultaneous-ly blew up the American embas-sies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam – precursors to the 2001 Twin Towers outrage in New York and subsequent tube and bus explo-sions in London, and train blasts in Spain.

The Tanzanian bomb killed 11 people and injured 85. In Nairo-bi, some 270 people were killed, at least 5,000 injured and scores buried under masonry. Twelve Americans were killed, including the Nairobi consul-general and his son, but the vast majority of victims were locals. The injured included Kanu secretary-general Joseph Kamotho, who was visit-ing an embassy official when the explosion occurred.

The attacks, attributed to local members of the Egyptian Islam-ic Jihad, brought Bin Laden to American attention for the first time and the FBI placed him on its Ten Most Wanted list.

Investigators reported that the bombs were massive, 2,000-lb de-vices made of 400-500 cylinders of TNT about the size of soda cans. They were detonated by suicide volunteers.

In response to the bombings, President Bill Clinton ordered a series of cruise missile strikes against targets in Sudan and Afghanistan. One of the strikes destroyed a pharmaceutical fac-tory which made many of Sudan’s medications. Apparently unre-liable intelligence had claimed chemical weapons were devel-oped there.

Twenty-one people were indict-ed for various alleged roles in the East African bombings. Four are serving life in prison without pa-role, four were reported killed in Afghanistan or Pakistan and one died of leukaemia while under arrest.

Terrorists strike at the heart of Nairobi and Dar in coordinated bomb attacks

Clockwise from right: The bomb brought down Ufundi Cop-erative Build-ing; the scene of the bomb; President Moi at the site of the blast in August 1988; vehi-cle destroyed and members of the Israe-li Defence Force, who took part in the rescue effort.

The attacks were attributed to local members of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad

DAILY NATIONThursday March 18, 2010 50 GOLDEN YEARS XXXIX

Terrorists strike at the heart of Nairobi and Dar in coordinated bomb attacksUS secra-tary of state Madeline Albright with foreign affairs min-ister Bonaya Godana and US envoy Prudence Bushnell remember victims of the bomb blast.

The pain of loosing a loved one is reflected on the faces of Ken-yans at the August 7th Memo-rial in Nairobi.

DAILY NATIONThursday March 18, 2010XL | 50 GOLDEN YEARS

The Years Between 1990 and 2000 saw dynamic expan-sion in the Nation group: a

new headquarters in downtown Nairobi, a new upmarket weekly, The EastAfrican, a $12 million (Sh750 million) press hall on the city’s outskirts with the latest in printing technology, entry to the internet and, crucially, a move into the broadcast media.

Capital expenditure soared to $12 million (Sh665 million) from $1.6 million (Sh93 million).

The group’s new home was the custom-built, multi-storey Na-tion Centre on Kimathi Street designed by Danish architect Henning Larsen. The new build-ing was owned by Industrial Pro-motion Building Ltd., an affiliate of the Aga Khan Fund for Eco-nomic Development, in which the Nation had a 20 per cent interest. The newspapers took four floors and their neighbours included prestige tenants such as the Nairobi Stock Exchange and Diamond Trust Bank.

Staffers who had spent years in the stuffy, crammed, chaotic confines of Nation House were delighted to move to their new quarters in a light-filled, spa-cious, airy, noise-controlled, no-smoking and air-conditioned ambience.

A major boost to journalistic morale at the time was editor Joseph Odindo’s creation, The EastAfrican, the group’s first sig-nificant new editorial product for many years. Devised to meet growing interest in the East Af-rican region at a time when re-lations between Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania were warmer than they had been for years, the news-

paper presented as handsome and indisputably authoritative.

Little more than a year later, the International Press Institute described it as “one of the best, if not the best, of regional newspa-pers in sub-Saharan Africa”.

It was 1991 when the group took the first step on a long and arduous journey into the elec-tronic media by applying for a licence to broadcast. The govern-ment response was negative, pre-sumably because of the Nation’s independent editorial line, so chief executive Wilfred Kiboro organised the purchase of a con-trolling interest in East Africa Television Network Ltd., (EATN), which already had television and radio licences.

The government promptly cancelled EATN’s licences on grounds there was a dispute about the transfer of shares to the Nation. There ensued a series of court hearings, postponements, statements and objections which Kiboro characterised as “a merry-go-round of delay”.

Seven years after its first appli-cation, the Nation was awarded TV and radio licences, but for Nairobi only, not countrywide. Negotiations ensued about fre-quencies, microwave links, the siting of transmitters and the strength of signals. As the mil-lennium moved to a close, the group restructured, partly to re-flect its entry into broadcasting, and changed its name to Nation Media Group Ltd. A subsidiary company, Africa Broadcasting Ltd., set up to handle TV and radio, was merged into a division-al structure within NMG and Na-tion TV (later NTV) was born.

Nation’s battle for a TV broadcast licence

Dogged pur-suit of licences led to radio and televi-sion stations in Nairobi and Kam-pala. Sheila Mwanyigah presents a programme for EasyFM.

The government response was negative, presumably because of the Nation’s independent editorial line

IT WAS THREE YEARS AFTER THE birth of the Na-tion that Betty Friedan rocked

the world with her book, The Feminine Mystique, which gave birth to the second wave of the women’s liberation movement. Though her little polemic spoke to the politics of gender equality in the mainstream of American society, its message resonated with women worldwide.

According to women journal-ists working for the Nation -- and this can be extrapolated world-wide -- the issues about career advancement and equality that Friedan tackled in The Feminine Mystique remain as relevant in our newsrooms today as they did in the 1960s.

“It’s true what they say, a woman has to work twice as hard to be thought of as half as good as her male counterpart,” says Carole Mandi, who rose from sub-editor at NMG in 1995 to become Pub-lisher with East African Maga-zines. “This pressure to perform, to get that MBA, to work long hours creates conflict in a wom-an’s work-life balance.”

Certainly, there have been vast, attitudinal changes towards women in the African workplace over the last five decades. But Friedan’s struggle to bring women “into the mainstream” remains in contention in our countries.

Nation Media Group struggles with the organisational chal-lenge of promoting and retaining women in substantive positions. The debate is alive and passion-ate in other Kenyan newspapers, much as it is in wider society. The issue is not whether the Nation treats men and women differ-ently. The company has an equal employment policy and boasts of one of the most liberal and con-structive corporate minds in Ken-yan society.

The issue is whether there is a systematic bias that is sympto-matic of our society and our times. Why, historically, have women at Nation newspapers been under-represented in editorial positions of influence -- managing editor level and above?

Granted, many women are senior sub-editors, reporters, col-umnists and photographers. One of them is Dorothy Kweyu, who holds a senior position on the copy desk as a revise editor. She has a 31-year association with the Nation, almost half of those years on active service, and feels strong-ly about the subject.

“Most great women of the Na-tion have been forced to seek sol-ace elsewhere,” she says,. “Some beat a retreat like the proverbial Luhyia woman, who goes look-

ing for another husband, only to return for ‘burial’ because, some-how, Number One was the best.”

The fact that they are welcomed back and allocated other duties proves they were good, after all. The following question arises, she says: “If the Nation has as many good women journalists as men, why are its women not rewarded with the biggest jobs in the news-room? Many of them end up in areas such as women issues and entertainment”.

In all of top management, there is only one woman, the Human Resources director, and there is no

woman on the Board of Directors. Editorial Director Joseph Odindo said: “The idea is to strike a bal-ance between attracting, retaining and promoting the right women journalists and affirmative action. If you look at the Media Lab, there is a very healthy balance between male and female journalists, and that’s the way things ought to go.”Mr Odindo said the com-pany had moved to even things up through the MediaLab, one of Kenya’s most competitive training programmes. It recruits the best university students from graduat-ing classes in Kenya, Uganda, and

One step at a time, women climb the ladder

Name: Rita TininaPosition: Senior Reporter, NTVJoined: October 2000Beat: General with interest in en-vironmental reportingMemorable Stories: “Troubled Waters”, a documentary feature about the Nairobi River that took about three weeks to put together, and shed new light on this topic

Name: Wangui MainaPosition: Business Reporter, Business DailyJoined: September 2006Beat: Tourism and TransportMemorable Stories: Covering the aviation sector, especially the Kenya Airways crash in Doula, Cameroon and its harrowing im-pact on families. The global finan-cial crisis was an eye-opener.

Name: Lucy Oriang’Joined: May 1983Position: Columnist and former Managing Editor (Magazines).Memorable stories: Ms Oriang has been a strong voice in championing women’s rights in the media and is known for writ-ing that pulls no punches when it comes to bad behaviour in the corridors of power.

Name: Njeri RugeneJoined: 1992Position: Parliamentary EditorMemorable story: Exposing corruption in Parliament where legislators were being paid to ask questions. One MP disputed the story and asked that we name the people involved, but the Speaker is yet to deliver a ruling.

DAILY NATIONThursday March 18, 2010 50 GOLDEN YEARS XLI

Tanzania and gives them one year of in-house training and on-the-job experience on full pay. These journalists are then deployed to various outlets throughout NMG. And certainly progress has been made. When the question of women’s promotion was raised in the 1970s and 1980s, someone would always raise the question: “How do you expect a mother to leave her house at midnight to go report on a fire in Mathare?”

The 1990s and this side of the century have brought changes that have been reflected in NMG newsrooms. In Nairobi, Dorothy

Kweyu became the first female news editor, Catherine Gicheru served as an investigative re-porter and later as news editor, Njeri Rugene is parliamentary editor, Lucy Oriang’ rose from copy editor to managing editor, Ruth Lumembe was editor of Living and Rhoda Orengo edits Saturday Magazine.

In Tanzania, Sakina Datoo was managing editor and Usia Mkoma news editor at The Citi-zen, while Betty Dindi was ap-pointed managing editor at NTV Uganda.

Management points out that

these appointments stem from a decision aggressively to re-cruit and mentor young women journalists either through direct hires, internships, or NMG’s an-nual training and general man-agement career rotation pro-gramme.

The papers give major play to stories such as the UN conference on women in 1985. Topics such as poverty, sexual violence, health, education and female circumci-sion continue to drive coverage.

Lucy Oriang introduced the In-ternational Women’s Day special project into the Nation in 2000,

which she registers as one of her main achievements.

Many women join journalism straight from university and start families early in their careers. “It’s doubly challenging to bal-ance journalism with a family since the job can take over your life with its sometimes unholy hours, travel and risk,” observes Kathleen Openda, once a current affairs editor with the Nation.

“Many women grow up and have this ‘I’ll find a rich guy to sort me out’ plan in their heads and therefore do not pursue their careers with the zeal of their male

counterparts, developing net-works, looking for opportunities for self-development.”

Human Resources Director Mwikali Muthiani says she would be happy to see more women tak-ing senior positions. But the rules will not be bent to favour a female candidate.

“ We are an equal opportunity employer but based on merit. I, for one, would feel bad to be picked for a position just because I am a woman, so I extend the same courtesy to others.p

One step at a time, women climb the ladder

Name: Kui KinyanjuiPosition: Business Reporter, Business DailyJoined: September 2006Beat: ICTMemorable Stories: Covering the rise of a new breed of ICT en-trepreneurs. I am pleased the one-off project later drove the devel-opment of BD¹s weekly pullout, called Digital Business.

Name: Joan PereruanPosition: Photo EditorJoined: 2004Beat: Photography for Daily Na-tion, Taifa, Business Daily, Sunday Nation, Saturday Nation and The EastAfricanMemorable Stories: The exhu-mation of a 72-year-old woman killed and buried by her last-born son in a shallow grave.

Name: Sara BakataPosition: Deputy Chief-Sub, The EastAfrican in charge of the MagazineJoined: April 2002Most memorable moment: Every week brings new challeng-es on the sub’s desk and there has never been a shortage of hilarious moments from copy as well as col-leagues!

Name: Dorothy KweyuPosition: Staff writer-Revise Edi-tor, Daily NationJoined: February 1979-Novem-ber 1987; December 2003 to dateMemorable stories: A riveting pullout on the malpractices of a major tobacco firm, and irrespon-sible pharmaceutical firms that were selling to Kenyans drugs that had been banned elsewhere.

Name: Mary WasikePosition: Revise Editor, Daily NationJoined: October 2005Memorable Stories: When First Lady Lucy Kibaki was in the building. It was scary because of all the security people she had come with. While she was still around, a story was being written, which she knew nothing about.

Name: Millicent MwololoPosition: Features writer, Living MagazineJoined: July 2007Beat: FeaturesMemorable Stories: I still hear the cry of this widow and her eight malnourished children at their home in Makuyu, Kam-biti location, Maragua district. I metthem in January 2008 at the height of drought and famine.

Name: Njeri Kihang¹ahPosition: Features correspond-ent, Daily NationJoined: June 2008Beat: Features (entertainment and careers)Memorable Stories: HowUS rapper Jay-Z and others weave Masonic symbolism into their music andmerchandise.

Name: Adhyambo OderaPosition: Buzz Magazine EditorJoined: 2005Memorable moment: When the Nation Media Group launched its culture change programme. The initiative shows what NMG as a company stands for. Ever since its launch the positive energy around the newsroom has been amazing.

Name: Mejumaa MbarukuJoined: March 2003,Position: Editorial graphic de-signerMost memorable story: Design-ing the page of ‘My brother’s keep-er’ by Millicent Mwololo. It ran in Living Magazine about a woman’s experience of having to take care of her brother who suffers from a rare condition.

Name: Ruth LubembeCurrent Position: Editor- Quality desk, Daily NationJoined: August 2004Beat: FeaturesMemorable Stories: As editor of Living magazine, I met child-less couples trying desperately to have children. These stories made me realise that family really is at the heart of everything.

DAILY NATIONThursday March 18, 2010XLII | 50 GOLDEN YEARS

How I got my job at the NationBy DOROTHY KWEYU

My early years at Nation were re-markable in vari-

ous ways. As a staff writer for Sunday Nation, I inves-tigated and wrote stories assigned by managing edi-tor Alfred Araujo, and later Chege Mbitiru, who was foreign editor when I first joined the media group.

Many a time, however, the assignments came directly from the editor-in-chief, Mr Joe Rodrigues, who had hired me in the most unlike-ly manner after a 10-month stint as a trainee feature writer/reporter with an in-house magazine publisher.

A fomer colleague, Seth Musisi, had been nagging me to quit for quite a while after he landed a job at the newly-launched Nairobi Times.

“Dee,” he would say, “why don’t you just call Mr Rod-rigues? I know that if I leave you here, you will continue wasting yourself.”

Fed up with my dithering, Seth called the Nation and after a brief exchange with a person I later learned was Mrs Irene Karanja, he passed the phone to me saying: “Mr Rodrigues’ secretary!”

Caught flatfooted, I asked to talk to the editor-in-chief, and Wairimu, as I was to call her ever after, promptly gave me her boss, who asked brusquely after I had intro-duced myself: “Do you want a job?”

I hadn’t expected him to be so direct and I mumbled: “Not really, but something in that line.”

“When do you want to come?”

“At your convenience, sir,” I replied.

When I showed up at Na-tion House on Tom Mboya Street on that February 21, 1979, I found a panel made up of Mr Rodrigues, Daily Nation managing editor Mr Joe Kadhi, and person-nel manager John Karungu waiting for me.

After a brief and lively in-terview, Mr Rodrigues told me to put in my application in writing. two days later — February 24 — the Nation drafted my first contract.

By MARGARETTA WA GACHERU

Covering culture in Kenya for nearly a quarter centu-ry – almost half the length

of the Daily Nation’s life – was both a privilege and a paradox.

It was a privilege because I interviewed everyone from play-wrights and poets to pop stars, politicians and prime ministers.

Of the playwrights, I recall the late Robert Serumaga and John Ruganda as well as Francis Im-buga, David Mulwa, and even Gunter Grass. Poets included Okot p’Bitek and Grace Ogot, and the pop stars were Mick Jagger, lead singer of the Rolling Stones, and Lauren Hill of Fugees fame, among others. From differing areas of achievement were Prime Minister Gro Brundtlund of Nor-way, paleontologists Richard and Meave Leakey, Mwai Kibaki when he was a government min-ister, and preacher and social ac-tivist the Rev Jesse Jackson.

Indeed, just as celebrity sports star Serena Williams came to Kenya recently, so back then we got used to seeing Hollywood stars Meryl Streep and Robert Redford on a regular basis.

Since culture is all about ideas, I learned early on (while still a student at University of Nairobi studying literature with Ngugi wa Thiong’o) that it is an arena of clash and conflict. Cultural con-troversy provided the grounds for healthy, constructive debate in a democracy.

I covered theatre and the performing arts for the Daily & Sunday Nation and The EastAfri-can; I also wrote for The Nairobi Times and the Kenya Weekly Re-view, publications started by the Nation’s first African Editor, Hi-lary Ng’weno. I wrote for short-

lived Kenya magazines like Men Only and Trend, and I even ed-ited my own magazine for Wom-en’s World Banking.

I came to write about Kenyan theatre through my experience of acting with the University of Nai-robi’s Free Travelling Theatre and

then with the Kenyan contribu-tion to FESTAC in 1976.

I played an unpleasant colonial memsahib in The Trial of Dedan Kimathi co-authored by Ngugi and Micere Mugo. Through those encounters with the stage, I came to appreciate the vital role that theatre can play not only in entertaining people but in rous-ing their awareness of important social issues.

Ever since the late 1960s when Ngugi helped to spearhead a cultural revolution in Nairobi

University, seeing the English Department transformed into a Literature Department with its core curriculum being indig-enous Kenyan oral literature, I was aware that the issue of “de-colonising the mind” would be central in understanding the role of theatre in society.

For if the colonial experience was meant to teach Kenyans their subordinate place in society, decolonising the mind is meant to restore a social equilibrium, self-assurance and sense of self-respect and dignity.

For instance, until the Free Travelling Theatre began staging African scripts and addressing local issues from the early 70s, most Kenyans believed theatre was for the elite, the expatri-ates, the Europeans; it had lit-tle or nothing to do with them. But now local thespians like Imbuga, Mulwa, Ruganda, and even Ngugi and Micere, began examining issues of class, race, ethnicity and Kenyan history which had never been addressed artistically before.

Covering culture in Kenya:A privilege and a paradoxCultural controversy provided the grounds for healthy, constructive debate in a democracy

Most Kenyans believed theatre was for the elite, the expatriates, the Europeans; it had little or nothing to do with them.

RECOLLECTIONS

ABOVE: Charles Fleming (Iam Mbugua) is surprised by Jayne’s (Kiruu Mbugguss) forthright manner as his brother Robert (Steve Muturi) enjoys every moment of it in ‘Don’t Misun-derstand Me’ - Phoenix Players.

LEFT: Cultural activities are fascinating for some, but many others feel they are not a cru-cial issue in their lives.NMG ARCHIVES

DAILY NATIONThursday March 18, 2010 50 GOLDEN YEARS XLIII

How we made ‘The EastAfrican’ a realityBy NICK CHITTY

The first challenge I en-countered during my 10 years with the Na-

tion was to train the systems staff. They were only seen on the editorial or advertising floors if there was a problem, but they became the backbone of the publishing operation.

It is hard to imagine now but in those early years we were right on the cutting edge of high-technology newspaper production. Some of our proc-esses and practices were not even being attempted in Lon-don’s Fleet Street or by British provincial newspapers at that time, either because of restric-tive union practices or lack of investment. Nation had a far-sighted management policy that saw where the technol-ogy was going and decided early on to be part of it.

A huge investments was made in the new Nation Cen-tre and at roughly the same time, a new printing press.

It is pleasing to see, even after my time, that there is still that far-sighted approach. New editorial and advertising systems have been installed and of course the transition has been made to publishing online. I now sit in an arm-chair in London with my lap-top and read about Kenya and

the rest of East Africa merely by logging on!

To my mind, the The EastA-frican was the most adventur-ous, exciting and rewarding project I had the pleasure to be involved with. I had been doing some work on new publications in the UK at the Independent and The Cor-respondent but I had never had to plan from scratch how to launch a new publication from a systems point of view. So, when we learned that a new regional-oriented paper was being researched we had to think fast on how we could achieve this goal.

The most important aspect for any new publication is the design. If people don’t like the look of your new paper they won’t buy it. A great deal of thought was put into this and design consultants were hired. The onus was for the systems team to interpret the various design specimens.

Muumbo Muyanga was as-signed this task and did a he-roic job, spending many long hours with The editor, Joe Od-indo’s editorial team and de-signers, putting the finishing touches to various dummies. Every section of the paper was scrutinised, revised and then done again. Finally, it would go down as an acceptable dummy paper.

Eventually, a mountain of dummies was whittled down to the last dozen or so. These were then laid out on the board-room table for a final choice to be made.

There were a multitude

of other minor problems to overcome in the run-up to the launch. One of the Atex com-puter software programmers was asked to come over and get up the telecommunica-tions link between Dar-es-Sa-

laam, Kampala and Nairobi. Luckily, Malcolm Jarrett had been with us before and man-aged to get it all working.

Nick Chitty was Systems Operations Manager from

1991 to 2001. He now lives in London and runs a prop-erty maintenance business. He is married to Kenya-born Medrine who also worked for the Nation, and they have two boys.

CONTINUED ON PAGE 43

Noorbegum Kana-ni, supervisor of the photo library

at Nation Media Group, has seen it all, at least from the time the Nation was just 10 years old.

Ms Kanani joined the classified advertising de-partment in 1970 and now ranks as the company’s longest serving staff mem-ber. She will celebrate her 40th year with the Nation in October.

From the advertising department she was ap-pointed photo library supervisor. Among the pictures in her custody are many going back 50 years and beyond, some of which have been used in

this souvenir issue.How does it feel to be

with one company for half a lifetime? “I have enjoyed working with the Nation for all those years,” she says. Born in Homa Bay, she has two sons and two grandchildren. Her hus-band died in 1995.

I have enjoyed my work for 40 years

PROFILE

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changes that would promote and facilitate investment, including changes of licensing requirements; • Facilitate and manage investment sites, estates or land together with associated facilities on the sites, • Appoint agents within the country and in any other country to carry out certain functions on KenInvest behalf, as it

may consider necessary; • Appraisal and approval of investments

The Chairman of KenInvest Board of Directors, the Management and entire staff of KenInvest

wish to Congratulate Nation Media Group

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DAILY NATIONThursday March 18, 2010XLIV | 50 GOLDEN YEARS

I held my breath in terror as we lifted a £1m computer

RECOLLECTIONS

By PETER CHADWICK

After 40 years in the British newspaper business it was a major culture shock

to find myself in Nairobi on a three-year contract. In 1990, Nation Centre was just a hole in the ground and democracy was a murky concept to Ken-ya’s political classes, though the Nation – under the re-doubtable George Mbugguss - was doing its level best to hold them to account.The one-time bakery that was our head office on Tom Mboya Street was not the most sa-lubrious of workplaces, but I perceived an energy, a determi-nation to tell the truth – often at great personal risk to the writers – and an overall feeling of wanting to serve the people which were irresistible. Hav-ing chafed at the covert politi-cal bias adopted by most of the

UK media, I found it refreshing to work for newspapers which tried to tell the truth free of po-litical, religious and tribal in-fluences.The big event during my three years was the move to the newly-built Nation Centre on Kimathi Street. I had worked on the building and develop-ment of two newspaper offices in London but nothing on the scale of this project. That eve-rything went like clockwork on the night of the move was a tribute to the planning of Nguchie Gathogo and his de-partment and to the brilliant computer expertise of the team led by Nick Chitty.I remember holding my breath in terror as a £1 million main-frame computer was carried in a tarpaulin down the stairs of the old building by some 20 brawny men -- one slip and the whole paper’s future was in jeopardy. But all went well and

we produced a full Sunday edi-tion of the paper only 20 hours after closing down in Tom Mboya Street.My policy about editorial con-tent was that it was the busi-ness of the editors -- after all, they were Kenyan, they under-stood their country and if they ran the risk of upsetting the authorities without having the option of leaving the country, it was not up to me to advise them.But I will take credit for one innovation, the phenomenon that became The Cutting Edge.

My feeling was that the papers were often too serious and needed a lighter touch here and there and so I suggested to Managing Editor Wangethi Mwangi that we should have a chatty column. The only place available for it, due to advertising require-ments, was the outside column of Page 7 which led me to sug-gest the name Outside Edge. The team did not care for the name but liked the idea and so The Cutting Edge was born.The column took off immedi-ately and quickly developed

into a popular outlet for the ordinary Kenyan to vent his spleen at the inefficiency and corruption of petty officialdom. It still gives me a lift to see the column’s name on the website where I read the Nation.When I knew that I was coming to Nairobi I suggested to a col-league from the Daily Mail, Stu-art Martin, that he should apply for the post of Finance Director and in fact he actually moved to the Group slightly before me.We quickly decided that the Nation’s approach to finance was conservative for a publish-ing house which dominated the marketplace so completely and so, under the guidance of group chief Albert Ekirapa, we insti-tuted a much more aggressive revenue policy.I hope it is not presumptuous to suggest that our efforts were at least partly responsible for funding the growth of NMG into the media giant which it is today.

Peter Chadwick was Managing Director of Nation Newspapers from October 1990 to October 1993. He has been retired for almost 15 years and lives hap-pily in the beautiful Cotswold area of Britain with his wife, tel-evision dramatist Adele Rose.

The modern purpose built newsroom at Nation Centre on Kimathi Street is a far cry from the one-time bakery that was the newspapers’ offices on Tom Mboya Street.

By DICK DAWSON

Few newspapers could have got off to such a good start as the Daily Nation, mainly because

many of the journalists who came out from Britain were ex-tremely talented, young and en-ergetic and very excited about

starting a new paper in Africa. Having people around like man-aging director Michael Curtis, former editor of Britain’s News Chronicle, and John Bierman, an experienced Fleet Street opera-tor who was our first editor, gave us local recruits a great opportu-nity to learn the sort of journal-ism which was then unknown in Kenya.

The strength of the paper was in part its recognition of the im-portance of pictures in a tabloid and our photographers were chosen with care. One of the best was the diminutive Caleb Akwera, who was blessed with a great sense of humour and often returned from assignments with idiosyncratic and witty photo-graphs that nobody else had noticed.

There was a minor rum-pus when Kanu held a march through Nairobi and Caleb no-ticed a cat walking in front of the procession. The picture caused much mirth, but the leaders of the march considered it insult-ing to Kanu and wrote a letter of complaint, which was duly published. I heard later that they wished they had never sent the

letter because people kept mak-ing jokes and asking if the cat was a good leader.

A major error I remember from those pioneer days was a front-page lead, “Man Killed by Lions in Game Park,” only inches away from an advertisement showing a lion’s head and the invitation “Come to East Africa’s glorious game parks”. I seem to remem-ber advertisement contracts were cancelled for some time.

One time, the Mayor of Nakuru invited me to go with him to Molo and interview Mau Mau freedom fighters who had decid-ed to surrender after years in the forest. As the only mzungu, I felt slightly apprehensive and it was quite a dramatic moment when about 30 of them came out from the bush.

One of the men looked at me and put his hand in his pocket and, frankly, I wondered if it would come out with a pistol. But it was a hand-written Press release and he said he would be really pleased if I could put in the paper for him. In fact, I found the ex-freedom fighters rather timid and very pleased to be photo-graphed.

In the early days of the Na-tion, many potential politicians, self-styled leaders and eccentrics flocked to our offices opposite the fire station, in what was then Victoria Street, now Tom Mboya Street. One of the latter arrived one day dressed in flowing white robes, told us he was Jesus Christ and he was going to give us a ser-mon.

He then got up on a desk

and preached in loud tones and at some length. Finally, John Bierman said “Thank you, but please do not come back”. How-ever, Jesus said he could not obey such a request. There followed a lengthy negotiation and it was eventually agreed he could come once a month and preach to a strict time limit of five minutes. This arrangement appeared to

be satisfactory to all parties and, after a while, we got so used to him that we hardly noticed him.

Unluckily one day, in the mid-dle of a tour of the newsroom by a group of VIPs, Jesus arrived for his monthly visit, mounted on a desk and began delivering his usual booming sermon. Bierman was conscientiously explaining how the paper worked when he realised that his listeners were

somewhat distracted. “Er, who is that chap?” asked one. “Is he staff ?” Our editor’s skill with words was seriously taxed to ex-plain this bizarre situation.

But that was the Nation and Nairobi half a century ago.

Dick Dawson worked as a report-er for the Daily Nation from 1960 to 1964.

The day Jesus preached to the newsroom

A major error I remember from those pioneer days was a front-page lead, “Man Killed by Lions in Game Park,” only inches away from an advertisement showing a lion’s head and the invitation “Come to East Africa’s glorious game parks”

John Bier-man, the Nation’s first editor.

DAILY NATIONThursday March 18, 2010 50 GOLDEN YEARS XLV

A rare employee who saw the Nation grow from infancy

in 1961 to its full-fledged adult status is the dimin-utive, bustling, cheerful and energetic Wilma De Souza.

Wilma retired in 2000 aged 60, having worked for the group for 38 years. “If it were not for the age factor, I would have liked to continue,” she said in a recent interview.

Ms De Souza joined the Nation on July 1, 1961 as an administrative assistant. She later joined the photo library, rising to become its first head, responsible for setting up the archival sys-tem from scratch.

Wilma is proud that she organised records in pho-tographic form of some of the great events in Kenya’s history.

She recalled the release of Jomo Kenyatta from de-tention in August 1961, the independence celebrations in December 1963.

She witnessed Nation grow from infancy

PROFILE

Gearing up for the titanic battle of 2002IN MARCH 1999, Presi-

dent Moi confirmed that, in accordance with the

constitution which barred him from a further term, he would step down at the De-cember 27, 2002 election. There ensued a whirlwind of political horse-trading.

Kanu formed an alliance with Raila Odinga’s Nation-al Development Party and Odinga became a cabinet minister in a precedent-set-ting coalition. Subsequently, the NDP was absorbed into Kanu, of which Odinga be-came secretary-general, forcing out the long-serving Joseph Kamotho.

Four months before the election, Moi named Uhuru Kenyatta as the man who should step into his shoes as Kanu’s presidential can-didate. Uhuru, son of the late President Jomo Kenyatta, was just 35 and had minimal ministerial experience. The move angered many Kanu veterans and some 30 MPs boycotted the party confer-ence which endorsed Uhu-ru’s candidacy.

On that same day, October 14, across Nairobi in Uhuru Park, Kanu’s main opponents

finally formed a grand alli-ance, having learned the les-sons of presenting multiple candidates in 1992 and 1997. Combinations of smaller par-ties produced the National Rainbow Coalition (Narc) with Mwai Kibaki at its head as the sole presidential can-didate.

Kenya’s newspapers front-paged an historic photograph of friends and former en-emies all sitting at the same table: Kibaki, Moody Awori, Charity Ngilu, George Sai-toti, Kalonzo Musyoka, Raila Odinga, Simeon Nyachae, Kijana Wamalwa and Farah Maalim.

It was a formidable line-up and Kanu zealots realised they could lose an election for the first time.

In the final weeks before polling day, there was an up-surge of dubious dealings at official level, duly reported by the Nation’s investiga-tions desk, including loot-ing of the NSSF, the National Hospital Insurance Fund and the Kenyatta National Hos-pital. Partly, the cash thus secured was used to make

Mr Mwai Kibaki and Raila Odinga before the 2002 elections.

CONTINUED ON PAGE 49

DAILY NATIONThursday March 18, 2010XLVI | 50 GOLDEN YEARS

In the run-up to the 2007 election, the economy was forging ahead, the media

enjoyed unusual freedom, there were no political prisoners, pri-mary school children were get-ting free education, tourism was booming and Kenya enjoyed a generally good name in interna-tional circles.

But official corruption contin-ued to flourish, there was linger-ing anger over the failure of con-stitutional reform and the spectre of tribalism was inescapably vis-ible in the line-ups for the poll.

Mwai Kibaki, Raila Odinga and

Kalonzo Musyoka were principal candidates for the Presidency while two political groupings dominated the parliamentary scene – Kibaki’s Party of National Unity, backed by the traditional Gema alliance, and Odinga’s Orange Democratic Movement, which brought together Luos, Kalenjins and some Luhyas.

Early returns looked bad for the ruling regime as the ODM outpolled the PNU two-to-one and a raft of heavyweights were rejected, including Vice-President Moody Awori, Njenga Karume, Nicholas Biwott and Gideon,

Jonathan and Raymond Moi.Then when the presidential

result was finally announced – 4,584,721 votes for Kibaki against Odinga’s 4,352,993, violence broke out but what was shock-ing was the extent and depth of the fury.

In the worst convulsion in its independent history, 1,200 Ken-yans were killed with many thou-sands injured, in Western Kenya, the Rift Valley, Nairobi, Momba-sa and elsewhere. Tribal gangs attacked their perceived enemies with pangas, clubs and fiery torches, prompting reprisal raids

2007 polls and the violent aftermath

The Kiambaa fire tragedy: Anger and fear ruled as Kenyans turned on each other in a bloody response to the 2007 poll.

Excited supporters of Raila Odinga at an Orange Democratic Party rally in Nairobi during the 2007 presidential election campaign.

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DAILY NATIONThursday March 18, 2010 50 GOLDEN YEARS XLVII

2007 polls and the violent aftermath of equal ferocity. The torching of a church containing 30 people, many of them women and chil-dren, near Eldoret, was emblem-atic of the unleashed hatred.

As many as 600,000 people were rendered homeless and ref-ugee camps became permanent elements on the national scene. Economic damage was counted in billions of dollars. The Daily Nation declared: “This madness cannot be allowed to go on.”

The international community, in the form of the African Union, the United States and Britain, stepped in and made it plain that the crisis must be resolved without delay. Kibaki and Odinga began fitful peace talks but it was only with the arrival of the former secretary general of the United Nations, Kofi Annan, on January 22 that designated negotiating teams began meeting.

Since it was now crystal clear that power-sharing was the only realistic solution to Kenya’s prob-lems of ethnic division, some form of coalition government became the fundamental objec-tive of the negotiators. But with the two sides finding it difficult to shift from their entrenched posi-tions, Annan moved the talks to a secret location and demanded a news blackout.

Under the National Accord and Reconciliation Act, signed by Kibaki and Odinga on Febru-ary 28, 2008, the parties agreed to form a grand coalition gov-ernment. Kibaki, who had been sworn-in was president and Odinga became prime minister.

The pact was widely wel-comed.

Heading towards its own 50th anniversary in 2013, independent Kenya faced some fundamental, divisive issues which needed to be resolved once and for all if the country was to move safely for-

ward.To this end, two commissions

were established as part of the peace pact: one to assess the con-duct of the election, the other to investigate responsibility for the post-election violence.

The Kriegler Commission con-cluded that Kenyans would never know who won the election be-

cause it was impossible to estab-lish reliable results.

This conclusion satisfied many peace-lovers. The Waki Commis-sion handed a list of alleged per-petrators of the violence to Kofi Annan, who passed it to Luis Moreno-Ocampo, chief prosecu-tor of the International Criminal Court.

As many as 600,000 people were rendered homeless and refugee camps became permanent elements on the national scene. Economic damage was counted in billions of dollars. The Daily Nation declared: “This madness cannot be allowed to go on”

Kenyans experi-enced virtually every painfulemotion known to man as vio-lence threat-ened to tearthe country asunder.

The Interna-tional commu-nity pressed Mr Kibaki and Mr Odinga into a power-sharingarrangementthat brought peace to the nation. Thebrokers includ-ed President John Kufuor of Ghana (below), Mr Kofi Annan and former TanzanianPresident Ben Mkapa.

DAILY NATIONThursday March 18, 2010XLVIII | 50 GOLDEN YEARS

, and the government was urged to set up a tri-bunal to deal with the issue.

(The Kenya Human Rights Commission meanwhile named 219 people, including PNU and ODM cabinet minis-ters, as organisers, facilita-tors or perpetrators of the violence.) When the cabi-

net decided against setting up a special tribunal, US Secretary

of State Hilary Clinton met with the president and the prime min-ister and declared: “We’ve been very clear in our disappointment that action has not been taken (over the violence.)” She urged the powers-that-be to “step up to their responsibilities and remove the question of impunity”.

For his part, Moreno-Ocampo announced that crimes against humanity had been committed and he would seek formal investi-gation of them. He met with Pres-ident Kibaki and Prime Minister Odinga and said they pledged to co-operate.

What emerged from the elec-tion post-mortems as deeply significant was the similarity of

the violence to the ethnic clashes of the 1990s. The 529-page Waki report said: “The fact that armed militias, most of whom devel-oped as a result of the 1990s eth-nic clashes, were never demobi-lised led to the ease with which political and business leaders re-activated them for the 2007 post-election violence.”

Not everything was negative about Kenya’s unresolved is-sues, however. A Committee of Experts unveiled a draft consti-tution which seemed to meet the approval of most Kenyans. Well-wishers expressed the hope that the top leadership would endorse the draft and bring their support-ers with them.

2007 Election and the violent aftermath

KSH50 | TZSH1,000 | UGSH1,400

THURSDAY JANUARY 3, 2008

Unveiling campaign money bags baronsUS presidential aspirants Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clin-ton each surpassed the $100 million fundraising mark for their presidential campaigns by year’s end.Page 6»

Elections hangover slows business Business was sluggish as Nairobi woke up to the first working day of 2008 that was preceded by violent clashes that followed the controversial outcome of last week’s general election.Page 8»

It’s back to the drawing board for PresidentWith 20 ministers losing their parliamentary seats, President Mwai Kibaki will miss the services of key drivers of his government when he forms the new Cabinet in the next few days.Page 9»

Treasury to split position into twoThe proposed position of a gov-ernance-cum-financial advisor was split after a candidate ear-marked for the position failed to meet conditions set out by donors.Page 20»

BRIEFING

Our beloved country, the Repub-lic of Kenya, is a burnt out, smouldering ruin. The econ-omy is at a virtual standstill and the ar-mies of destruction are on the march in the Rift Valley and other places.In the midst of this, leaders — who are the direct cause of this catastro-phe — are issuing half-hearted calls for peace, from the comfort of their hotels and walled homes in Nairobi, whence they are conveyed in bullet-proof limousines.

It is unbelievable foolishness for Kenyans to destroy their economy, their homes and their entire way of life in the name of politics and on behalf of people whose lives of comfort and luxury are going on normally.The media in Kenya today propose to be forthright and united in confront-ing this bloodshed and disunity in the country. There is no cause and no right more valuable than the right to life. Po-litical leaders on both sides must be told in no uncertain terms that they

are currently in great danger of losing their credibility in the eyes of Kenyans and the international community be-cause of the systematic killing of the innocent sweeping Kenya, destruction of the economy and the spread of disaf-fection throughout the land. No grievance and no cause is worth the innocent blood of Kenyan children. The orgies of looting, burning, rape and

wanton, well-orchestrated blood-let-ting are undermining the moral basis of the politicians’ cause.Those in authority must not have more regard for their — tenuous — grip on power than lives and property. It must be a blind and deaf person who does not hear the cries of the 70,000 people, many of them our chil-dren, who are now refugees in their own country.A final opportunity now presents itself for the political leadership to pull

the country back from the brink and help restore the public’s confidence and sense of safety.Tough talk, grandstanding and empty point-scoring is not getting the nation anywhere. The moment has come to isolate the hardliners on both sides and EDITORIAL, Page 14»

Save ou≥ beloved count≥y

NEWS IN DEPTH

World order is changing as old captains give in to new kings Pages 16 - 17»

TOP NEWS

Af≥ican nations t≥y to imp≥ove ai≥ safetyPage 2»

COMPANY & INDUSTRYFamily fi≥ms ≥ely on an invisible CEOPages 10 - 11 »

Investo≥s lose Sh40bn in NSE ove≥ poll c≥isisPage 26»

NO. 208

No g≥ievance is wo≥th the blood of innocent Kenyan child≥en O≥ganised massac≥e, looting negate mo≥al basis of

politicians’ causes G≥andstanding taking nation nowhe≥e Kibaki, Raila should stand down if they can’t face ≥eality

Kenyans flee to safety as ethnic violence spreads to Kikuyu in Kiambu District. More than 75,000 Kenyans have been displaced and hundreds killed as politicians continue to square off over presidential poll results.COMMENT

A MEDIA PLEA FOR SANITY

PETE

RSON

GIT

HAIG

A

There was heartfelt relief all over Kenya when the two giants at the heart of thecrisis signed on the dotted line in a deal brokered by Kofi Annan (above)

Luis Moreno-Ocampo the ICC chief prosecutor pursuing the masterminds of the post elections vio-lence.

DAILY NATIONThursday March 18, 2010 50 GOLDEN YEARS XLIX

By DAVID ADUDA

Nation Media Group has a long history of fostering journalistic talent and

professionalism. From the outset, in 1960, its founder, His Highness the Aga Khan hired seasoned edi-tors and reporters from London and mandated them to design and undertake an aggressive training programme to foster a new cadre of African media pro-fessionals, providing them with the necessary journalistic and managerial skills and offer them ongoing opportunities to excel professionally.

In-house training was institu-tionalised with the appointment of training editors, whose brief was to offer apprenticeships to local journalists; taking them through all elements of journal-ism, ranging from news writing to copy editing and newspaper production. An early benefici-ary was Philip Ochieng’, who was plucked from government serv-ice, where he had served as a protocol officer in the Division of External Affairs, then under the Prime Minister’s office. Ochieng’ rose from a cub reporter to be-come managing editor of the Nation and, later, editor-in-chief of the Kenya Times, which was then owned by the then ruling party, the Kenya African Nation-al Union.

Another early beneficiary was Joe Kadhi, who started his career as a reporter for Taifa Leo, but was later absorbed in the Daily Nation stable after a training stint at the newly opened School of Journalism at the University of Nairobi. The School itself had been established with the collab-oration of the Vienna-based In-ternational Press Institute, which had close links with the Nation. Kadhi rose through the ranks to become Assistant Group Manag-ing Editor of the newspaper di-vision and established himself as a popular social and political commentator with his weekly column in the Daily Nation titled Joe Kadhi asks WHY? Today he mentors and teaches young jour-nalists at the United States Inter-national University in Nairobi.

The appointment of Hillary Ngweno, a Harvard trained physicist, as editor-in-chief only two years after Nation’s incep-tion was the strongest signal of the desire to empower Africans to chart the destiny of the Nation.

He played an instrumental role in initiating training plans for Nation journalists.

Besides in-house training, various programmes helped to mentor and enhance journal-istic skills. Among others, the Nation entered into a twinning partnership with the St. Peters-burg Times newspaper in the US, where Nation journalists would be sent on fellowships to learn best practices abroad. (A simi-lar partnership was cemented in later years with the Kansas City Star of the US) More initiatives followed such as sponsoring jour-nalists for internships and jour-nalism training abroad and at the School of Journalism.

As the Nation Media Group expanded, so too did its training and professional development needs. In particular, the Group’s expansion into Uganda and Tan-zania and diversification into broadcasting and digital media in the 1990s and 2000s exposed the dire shortage of trained jour-nalists in the wider region – as well as critical skill and expe-rience gaps in traditional and

new media formats. A strategic response – namely, creating a pipeline to identify, nurture and retain talent – was imperative.

That response was the Na-tion Media Lab, established in 2007 to incubate talent and de-velop media professionals with the broad range of skills that matched the groups expanding needs. Specifically, the purpose of the Lab was to identify fresh university graduates from differ-ent professions and take them through an intensive hands-on craftsmanship to turn them into journalists.

It was styled a “laboratory” deliberately – both to signal the Group’s purpose of creating a hub for journalistic talent and to distinguish it from other journal-ism training models.

Three years after inception, the Media Lab has admitted and trained 60 recent graduates from universities across East Af-rica. Rather than focus solely on mass communication graduates,

Scaling new heights in the training of young journalists

Media Lab trainees spruce up for gradua-tion.

CONTINUED ON PAGE 52

TRAINING

political payments to swing the election and partly to fat-ten individual bank accounts in a last-chance raid on the Treasury’s coffers before an expected change of regime.

Although Mwai Kibaki was injured in a car crash and sidelined for several weeks, the extraordinary spectacle of a united oppo-sition excited Kenyans as never before. The campaign was unusually free from vio-lence, as if the dirty-tricks specialists had already given up the ghost, and the anti-Kanu forces duly won an emphatic victory in both presidential and parliamen-tary contests, ending nearly four decades of uninterrupt-ed Kanu rule.

Kibaki took the presiden-cy with 62.3 per cent of votes against Uhuru Kenyatta’s 31.3 per cent and Narc won 125 of 210 available parlia-mentary seats. Kanu was reduced to 64 and FORD-People won 14. The election turnout was a high 56.1 per cent.

Though confined to a wheelchair with one leg in plaster, Kibaki presented a formidable figure at his in-

auguration, condemning Kanu’s years of misrule and declaring that “corruption will now cease to be a way of life in Kenya.”

The new government embarked on a whirlwind of change. Its most popular decision was to initiate free primary education for all children, but Kibaki also ap-pointed bodies to investigate Goldenberg and the murder of Robert Ouko, opened de-tention cells in Nyayo House for public viewing, oversaw the start of a constitutional review conference and began moves to rid the judiciary of corrupt magistrates and judges.

Kenyans had seen noth-ing like it and briefly the na-tion seemed united and at one. Democracy was at last achieved. Inevitably, how-ever, the honeymoon did not last.

The bill for looting govern-ment coffers during the Kanu years was commonly set at around $3 billion, enough to pay for primary schooling for every Kenyan child for 10 years. Thus Kibaki’s inaugu-ration day promise to put an end to this perpetual scourge was received with delight by indigenous Kenyans.

Battle for democracy picks up momentum

Professor Wangari Maathai receives the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo. She is the first African woman to receive the prize. Prof Maathai is the founder of the Greenbelt Movement.

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 45

DAILY NATIONThursday March 18, 2010L | 50 GOLDEN YEARS

Just as the Nation in its early days set out to give a voice to African political leaders

ignored by the colonial Press, so it opened its pages to the vibrant indigenous music in a burgeoning entertainment industry.

You can look through the Na-tion and trace the careers of some of today’s most famous musi-cians.

In the early 1960s, Kenya’s white-oriented newspapers con-centrated on dog shows, pony gymkhanas, visiting entertainers at the New Stanley Grill Room (comedian/violinists such as Vic Oliver) and plays and musicals at the Donovan Maule Theatre. The songs and stories that captured the rich depth of African cultural life found no space.

Through Taifa, Taifa Jumapili and the Nation, readers learned of top singers and composers like Fundi Konde, Daudi Kabaka, Paul Mwachupa, Fadhili William, Them Mushrooms, Maroon Com-mandos, comedians Mzee Pembe, Mama Toffi, Othorong’ong’o Dan-ger, Mutiso, Baba Zero, Makan-yanga and Athuman Kaipanga, who dominated the black and white screen of the Voice of Kenya for years. Many Kenyans will remember comedy shows of the late 1960s, 1970s and the later 1980s like Kivunja Mbavu and Vitimbi.

A great musician, whose ca-reer the Nation tracked for years was Fadhili William. He was best known for that great song, Ma-laika. But controversy grew about its genesis following reports in the early 1960s that Grand Charo was in fact the original composer. Fadhili, it was said, simply popu-larised the song in new versions, as did many other international artistes.

Other noted numbers by Fadhili were Taxi Driver and Uwe Wangu. His stints later with the Hodi Boys Band and veteran Juma Toto were also widely reported by Na-tion. Esther John, Fadhili’s sister, will be remembered by readers for the Taita song, Kibilingisho Ngome, which was later redone by veteran Habel Kifoto and the Maroon Commandos band.

Fadhili was born in Taita-Tave-ta and started music in primary

school, joining a choir. In the 1980s, he moved to the United States, but his career did not prosper. He returned home in 1997 and died in February 2001.

With Malaika, Fadhili put Kenya on the international music scene. The song was later redone by Miriam Makeba, Boney M and others.

Fundi Konde, one of Kenya’s greatest composers, was born in Kilifi District in distant 1924. He had strong Kiswahili lyrics and mostly wrote love ballads.

Fundi entertained troops in South Asia during the Second

World War and had many hits, including Mama Sowera, Majen-go Siendi Tena, Kipenzi Waniua Ua, Jambo Sigara and Tausi. He died in 2000. The original “Dreva Kombo” was done by Paul Mwa-chupa.

Eagerly read Nation coverage in those days were pictures of a young and vibrant South African songbird, Miriam Makeba, who took part in Kenya’s 1963 inde-pendence day celebrations, along with the famous American, Harry Belafonte. What a gig that was!

Her first attempt at singing Malaika was at the request of

Tom Mboya. He jotted down the words and she sang them with great aplomb. The Daily Nation recorded the great event and its rapturous reception in words and pictures.

Makeba collapsed and died in November 2008 during a tour of Italy, but she will always be re-membered here for Malaika as much as Pole Mzee, which she dedicated to Mzee Jomo Kenyatta after his release from detention. As for Daudi Kabaka, renowned for his Helule song (picked up and recorded by a British band), Kenyans will probably remember him for his patriotic song, Hara-mbee Harambee, which was used as a newscast signature tune for Voice of Kenya/Kenya Broadcast-ing Corporation.

Kabaka, who performed along-side Fadhili William, Peter Tsotsi and Gabriel Omollo in the Equa-tor Sounds Band, was regularly reported on in Taifa Leo. He was famous for Msichana Mrembo but also took part in recording Pole Musa.

Veterans of the 1960s will re-call David Amunga particularly for Journey from America to Af-rica and Jane is Pretty. Amunga

throughout the years was a keen advocate against piracy through various organisations.

Veteran TV comedians Mzee Pembe, Mama Toffi, Kipanga were amply profiled in both Daily Nation and Taifa Leo, as was veteran actor Joseph Olita who played the starring role of the dictator in the 1981 movie Amin: The Rise and Fall. Most of this movie, directed by Sharad Patel, was shot in Kenya. Olita also played the part of Amin in the 1991 Hollywood movie Mis-sissippi Masala.

The Nation covered the origins of Benga music, from the Lake Victoria region, in which Daniel Owino Misiani, Ochieng Nelly, “Dr” Collela Mazee, George Ramogi and others played major roles. Benga was later to provide an inspiration to world-famous Lingala musicians. The inva-sion from Democratic Republic of Congo through Uganda of musiciansians seeking greener pastures. Others kept moving between Tanzania and Kenya.

Also in the Nation archives is the story of Tanzanian music. There were musicians and pop groups which fled the socialist re-

At the heart of popular culture

ABOVE: Mem-bers of Equa-tor Sounds Band, Nash-il Pitchen, Fadhili Wil-liams, Charles Sonko, Peter Sotsi with an unidenti-fied fan. The band went on to record the classic “Pole Musa” which burst charts in the late 60s.NMG ARCHIVES

RIGHT: Singer Miriam Make-ba (far left) with govern-ment minister James Gichu-ru and other guests at the 1963 Uhuru celebrations. NMG ARCHIVES

Veteran actor Joseph Olita played the starring role of the dictator in the 1981 movie Amin: The Rise and Fall

The Nation covered the origins of Benga music, from the Lake Victoria region

DAILY NATIONThursday March 18, 2010 50 GOLDEN YEARS LI

gime to make money in capitalist Kenya, such as Mbaraka Mwin-shehe and Simba Wanyika.

In 1996 came the huge Nation/House of Manji Benga music ex-travaganza at the Nyayo National Stadium. To get in you needed ei-ther a copy of Taifa Jumapili or a packet of House of Manji biscuits. The show was a platform for ex-posure to leading Benga musi-cians like the late Okach Biggy and Heka Heka Band, Princess Jully , DO Misiani and Sukuma Bin Ongaro.

Veteran broadcaster and music promoter Fred Obachi Machoka praised the entertainment cov-erage of the Daily Nation. “We have been able to keep up to date with most of the happenings on the entertainment scene over the years,” he said. Popular music apart, the Daily Nation has also been involved, since the 1990s, in the sponsorship of schools drama and music festivals.

TOP: Franco Luambo Luan-zo Makiadi of Congo DRC at a concert in Nairobi.

ABOVE: The legendary Fundi Konde NMG ARCHIVES

Veteran TV comedians Mzee Pembe (Omari Suleiman), Mama

Toffi (Fatuma Saleh) and Kipanga (Kipanga Athum-ani) who tickled TV viewers were also profiled in both Daily Nation and Taifa Leo. The trio were popular in the 1960s and the 1970s with programmes such as “Ki-vunja Mbavu”, Cheka na Ki-panga” and “Jamii ya Mzee Pembe

The popularity of the pro-grammes was mainly based on the social themes touch-ing on family issues.

Before independence, they were among the first Africans alongside Mzee Tamaa Bin Tamaa (Peter Lu-koye) and the Frank Sisters

from Tanzania to perform plays when television was launched in Kenya in 1962. One of their first appearanc-es was in the show “Top Life”.

Among other popular programmes were Vioja Mahakamani, Vitimbi, Fed-heha and Kazi Bure and oth-ers. Some leading comedi-ans in these shows include Mzee Ojwang Hatari (Ben-son Wanjau), Mama Kayai (Mary Khavere) and Mgongo Mture. Radio listeners will also remember the hilarious Job Isaac Mwamto who pre-sented the popular “Porojo” radio programme on the then VOK radio.

Many of the older Kenyan listeners will recall his witty humour.

The trio that thrilled us on telly

1973

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979

Mzee Tamaa

Mr Peter Lukoye (above) was active for decades as a radio and television comedian. He will be remembered

as a writer with the Nation Media Group who wrote a popular column in Taifa Leo “Viumbe Vinavyoishi “. The gifted comedian once said: “My greatest challenge as a journalist has been the move from the old typewriter to the com-puter.’’ Between 1966 and 1977, he acted in Korti ya Kiberenge, Kivunja Mbavu and Vioja Mahakamani. All these were covered in the Daily Nation and Taifa Leo.

1973

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979

By PHILIP MWANIKI

Kenyans once looked up to the heroes of yesteryear—the Mau

Mau freedom fighters, the Second Liberation warriors, musicians such as Daudi Kabaka and Fadhili Wil-liams, brilliant footballers like Joe Kadenge and actors like Mzee Ojwang and Mama Kayai.

But, with time, the Kaba-ka generation was brushed aside by new kids on the block —Nameless, Hard-stone, 5 Alive, Redykyulass, Kalamashaka, Prezzo and Nikki.

Nation Media Group, em-braced the new look showbiz and the celebrity culture was in. From the 1990s, the Na-tion has dedicated more and more pages to entertainers.

It started off as two pages, but the fans of celebrities wanted more. They wanted a relationship with their stars.

They wanted to delve into their lives and lifestyle. They wanted to know what their pet peeves were and who they were dating, marrying or divorcing.

Media personalities had their own stage. Hamisi Themo, Nguata Francis, Eliz-abeth Omollo, Ann Wafula and Ken Obachi Machoka were viewed strictly as pro-fessionals. This new breed had star quality.

The Nation grant-ed the new stars more space on its pages. Out were the two pages, in came Young Nation. The fans could now read about their favourite stars’ fears, ambitions and even hitherto well-kept secrets. People could re-late to them better through the pages of the Nation. The stars used those same pages to promote their gigs. They hyped their upcoming al-bums and they saw sales go up.

It was a two-way relation-ship and a generational shift from traditional celebrities whose claim to fame was that they could sing, look good on television or sound nice on radio.

Soon, other entertain-ment magazines arrived

on the scene. But none were really as exclusive to celebri-ties as Buzz, a free magazine that came with the Sunday paper. This was the home of celebrities.

The public loved it and sales climbed. The maga-zine set the standard and the topic. You cannot talk about the Kenyan entertainment industry and fail to mention Buzz, which heralded a new era in “celebville” and cov-ered every detail about the celebrities and their art.

As Buzz concentrated on celebrities, there was still a neglected audience out there and the Nation soon came up with ZuQka, a weekly lifestyle and entertainment magazine. The mature yet still celebrity-hungry group who would rather listen to Eric Wainaina than Jimwat and Mejja found their place here. This generation ush-ered in the celebrity craze in the 1990s and can hardly keep up today with the fast rising young stars.

Through the Nation, Kenya has a vibrant enter-tainment industry and even the corporate world is taking notice. Where it used to be only “real” heroes who were awarded Presidential awards and medals of honour, that list now boasts names such as Eric Wainaina.

pmwaniki@ke.nationmedia.com

Celebrity culture takes root in media

Performing artist Prezzo

DAILY NATIONThursday March 18, 2010LII | 50 GOLDEN YEARS

BACK IN 2003, while or-ganising my first HIV/Aids print reporting

workshop in Accra, Ghana, I could not have predicted the extraordinary impact it would have on my career. I also could not have dreamed the experience would even-tually lead me to East Africa during a time of unparalleled achievement and promise for one of the most vibrant media companies on the Af-rican continent.

At the time, I was a reporter for National Public Radio in Washington, DC, focusing primarily on social policy af-fecting poor Americans. Ironi-cally, what I was doing in the US wound up fuelling my Af-rican journey. As a woman born in poverty in the richest nation in the world, I became a journalist because I wanted to explore and illuminate the reasons why so many Ameri-cans were still struggling. I also wanted to help improve access to the basics of the “American Dream” — educa-tion, health care, employment and so on. It was a lofty goal, but I was determined to help “give voice to the voiceless”.

Fast forward seven years to my tenure as a consultant/trainer for the International Centre for Journalists, based at the Nation Media Group in Nairobi. Through the centre’s fellowship, I am tasked with helping improve the cover-age of health issues in Kenya by mentoring and coaching reporters and working with editors. When I started in July 2008, that goal seemed daunting. Having organised and conducted reporting workshops in four different countries since 2003, I had more than ample training experience. But would it be possible to earn the credibility to influence the coverage of a powerful company like Nation Media Group?

Political reporting is para-mount in Kenyan media, as in many African nations. The Daily Nation holds claim to the most comprehensive, analytical coverage of Ken-ya’s political upheaval, and will continue leading the way. But I was in Kenya to pose an

evocative challenge: Do media companies have a responsibil-ity to increase coverage of health issues as a core public service? Could one woman’s voice in the wilderness really make a difference?

If that woman’s voice nags loud, long and hard enough, I am pleased to report, it can. Through my initial presence at daily news meetings, an on-line all-staff critique and long-term mentoring and training of reporters, I can honestly claim that the Daily Nation has improved and increased its coverage of health-related issues significantly over the past year and a half. From a time when health matters were reported solely through official press releases, journal-ists now take the initiative to develop full-fledged health features. I have been pleased with the strengthened writing and reporting skills of several staff reporters, and have also mentored some promising freelance writers.

There is also more analyti-cal coverage of policy, such as how government utilises — or squanders — health cash. Most importantly, top news-room editors are now vastly more willing to prominently place health-related news. I could give myriad examples, but I am probably proudest of a story about an increase in childhood obesity that was on Page 1.

Rachel Jones is a former radio and print journalist from the US. She reported on social pol-icy for National Public Radio in Washington DC, from 1998 to 2007, and for the St. Peters-burg Times, the Detroit Free Press, and the former Knight Ridder News Service.

Getting home a healthy messageto the media

TRAINING

the Lab deliberately seeks to re-cruit graduates of law, security, social sciences, business and eco-nomics, as well as those originally trained in mass communication.

Underpinning this model is the fact that consumers of media products are increasingly dis-cerning, inquisitive, analytical and sophisticated. They seek in-formation in a form and depth that not only suit their interests but satisfies their intellectual curiosity.

News items that barely scratch above the surface; that do not delve deeper into the sub-text, provide the context or add in-tellectual spice hardly jell with readers, viewers or listeners. The corollary is that news must be well-grounded and contextual-ised, hence the increasing need for subject specialisation and in-vestment in ongoing professional development.

Training at the Media Lab is intense and practical. Trainees are exposed to the art of doing journalism, and for that matter

doing it thoroughly well. New and emerging concepts are test-ed and implemented. Trainers are a blend of practising jour-nalists and journalism experts. In-house staff injects experience and practice.

The trainees routinely go out to the field with seasoned reporters to understudy them; learn how to handle news conferences, ask right questions, conceptualise and develop stories, and estab-lish contacts.

Past Media Lab graduates have demonstrated dynamism, crea-tivity and leadership in their re-spective fields of specialisation of deployment. The investment has not been in vain. Already, one of the pioneer graduates is heading a bureau, at Gulu, one of Ugan-da’s toughest of terrains.

While the Media Lab has prov-en to be an effective means for the Nation Media Group to fos-ter and retain its own in-house talent, its experience has under-scored the wider challenges and capacity gaps that constrain the role and effectiveness of media in East Africa. That experience has also been corroborated by a De-

cember 2009 study by Dr. Peter Mwesige, a former Nation train-ing editor, on university-level journalism, media and communi-cation education in East Africa.

The study identified critical gaps in basic writing and com-munication skills; poor analyti-cal skills; and limited specialised knowledge in key areas such as business and economics, philoso-phy, science and technology, and the arts and culture. As well, few aspiring and practicing journal-ists and media managers have the ability to work across multi-media formats.

And perhaps most troubling, the study identified significant gaps in intellectual curiosity, con-fidence, and ethics and integrity.

As the Nation Media Group commemorates its 50th anniver-sary, the Aga Khan Development Network (AKDN) is planning a new initiative that will build on the Nation’s experience, knowl-edge and resources to provide a broad institutional platform for addressing the challenges facing the media sector in Africa today – with a mission of fostering a vibrant, diverse, ethical and pro-fessional media that contributes more effectively to the develop-ment, good governance and plu-ralism of the societies in which it operates.

Compiled by Gerry Loughran, David Aduda and Carrie LaPorte

Scaling new heightsin training journalists

MEDIA LAB

Past Media Lab graduates have demonstrated dynamism, creativity and leadership. Already, one of the pioneer graduates is heading a bureau, at Gulu, one of Uganda’s toughest of terrains

A class in progress at the Media Lab in NationCentre.

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 49

DAILY NATIONThursday March 18, 2010 50 GOLDEN YEARS LIII

Mugambi KiaiDistrict: NyeriPrimary: Nyeri Primary SchoolSecondary: Alliance

Mugambi supports democracy, human rights and governance in the East African region. He has a law degree and went to Harvard Law School for a Masters in In-ternational Human Rights Law. From Harvard, Mr Kiai went into private consultancy before join-ing the Canadian International Development Agency as a senior programme officer. Currently he is with Open Society Initiative for East Africa in charge of Af-rica governance project.

By WANGUI MAINA

To mark 25 years of Na-tion newspapers, the company offered four-year secondary school

scholarships to the best primary school candidates from the 1985 KCPE exam. Two students, the best boy and the best girl, would be selected from every district in the country.

The following are a selection of some of the beneficiaries and where they are now:

Patrick Onyango Sawa District: SiayaPrimary: Sega Boys High School: Alliance

Patrick Onyango’s father could not have met his fees since his two siblings were also in nation-al schools. After high school, he joined Moi University and studied medicine and then University of London and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medi-cine for a diploma.

Now a father of two, he is a specialist in malaria. His work-ing career began in the Ministry of Health but he left to join the International Centre of Insect Physiology and Ecology on Mbita Campus, South Nyanza.

He has been published in vari-ous peer-reviewed international journals and has his sight on a PhD in the near future.

Florence Neema MturiDistrict: MombasaPrimary: Aga KhanSecondary: Alliance Girls

Neema Mturi received a Bach-elor of Medicine and Surgery in 1997 from University of Nairobi. After her MBA, she began her ca-reer at the Coast Provincial Gen-eral Hospital and worked with Kemri-Wellcome Trust Research Programme in Kilifi as a medi-cal officer.

Caroline BiegonDistrict: Kericho Primary: SirigoiSecondary: Mary Hill

Caroline Biegon is currently at Kabarnet High School in Barin-go, teaching German as a foreign language. She is also an aspiring

Nation scholars making a mark

Alice Waithera Macharia -Njuguna District: NyandaruaPrimary: TumainiSecondary: Limuru

Every month Alice and her col-leagues contribute money to a kitty that goes to help a needy student. They have been doing this for the past six years and help students at KCA University, where she is Dean of the Fac-ulty of Science and Information Technology. She holds a Masters in Science – computer based in-formation systems – from the University of Sunderland, UK. A mother of three, she is currently studying for a PhD in IT.

Mary MadumaduDistrict: EmbuPrimary: Sacred HeartKyeniSecondary: Alliance

Dr Mary Madumadu is a doctor at Gertrude’s Garden Children’s Hospital, and at the Outpatient Centre in the central business district. On completing school, she joined the University of Nai-robi for a degree in medicine. She later mastered in Neurodevelop-ment at the University of Witwa-tersrand in South Africa.Her specialisation in neurodevel-opment has seen her work with children who have autism and cerebral palsy.

Dida RobaDistrict: MarsabitPrimary: St Mary’sSecondary: Mangu

Dida Roba has come a long way from top male student in Marsa-bit to head of systems operations at K-Rep bank, where he oversees IT service and infrastructure se-curity.He is helping set up a commu-nity trust fund to sponsor de-serving Moyale students. Dida has a Bachelor of Science in civil engineering from the University of Nairobi. For a year he served as an assistant engineer in the Min-istry of Public Works .

Adilla N. AnyanzwaDistrict: KisumuPrimary: Kisumu UnionSecondary: Alliance

Adila joined Moi University in 1990 and graduated with a Bachelor of Education degree in home science and technology. She has taught in many second-ary schools in Western Kenya.In 2001, she joined the Univer-sity of East Africa, Baraton, for a Masters degree in education. This year, the mother of two moved to Rift Valley Technical Training Institute as lecturer in the department of institutional management.

Onesmus Kamau KagwanjaDistrict: MurangaPrimary: KihoyaSecondary: Mangu

Murang’a was the only district out of 41 that had three scholars and Onesmus was one of them.After his final primary school exam in Kihoya primary school, he was admitted to Mang’u and later to Moi University, from where he graduated with a de-gree in engineering. However, he has never worked as an engineer. Three years ago, he and some col-leagues started Verviant, which outsources software to small and medium enterprises.

To her father, Caroline Biegon will always be ‘Miss Nation’ following her four-year scholarship

writer who hopes to publish her stories some day.

David Scott OmutimbaDistrict: BungomaPrimary: LuguluguSecondary: Alliance High

He graduated from the Univer-sity of Nairobi with dental sur-gery in 1996 and was employed by the Ministry of Health for 10 years before moving into full time teaching. The father of one lecturers at the school of dentist-ry at his old alma mater, Moi.

Godfrey Allan OtienoDistrict: MombasaPrimary: ZiwaniSecondary: Maseno High

Now a specialist in paediat-rics and child health, he was undaunted by student riots and lecturers’ strikes in the mid 90s that caused a seven-year delay, Godfrey was finally granted his much coveted degree in medicine in 1997. He currently works as a paediatrician and research of-ficer in Kisumu.

Naeem SamnakayDistrict: KisumuPrimary: Aga Khan Secondary: Alliance High

Naeem topped the first KCPE exams in 1985 and four years later, he again topped the 1989 Fourth Form final exams after scoring an average A in 10 sub-jects. He went to the University of Western Australia in Perth to study medicine. The father of three now works as a consult-ant paediatric surgeon and pae-diatirc urologist at the Princess Margaret Hospital for Children in Perth, Australia.

Millicent KavugilaDistrict: SiayaPrimary: Mulaha Secondary: Limuru Girls

Millicent Kavugila works at Techno Brain, an international IT company. She went to Kenyatta University where she graduated with a Bachelor of Education in Science degree.

She went off to teach but switched her career to informa-tion technology.

She became a training consult-ant at the Institute of Advanced Technology. A couple of years later she moved to Izon Future Systems and Techno Brain Lim-ited and worked in Enterprise Resource Panning.

She has worked in a range of organisations in Africa as a con-sultant.

Naeem Samnakay scored 531 points out of 600 in KCPE and scored an average A in the 10 subjects he took in Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education in 1989 and went to the University of Western Australia in Perth to pursue his dream of being a doctor graduating in 1997.

DAILY NATIONThursday March 18, 2010LIV | 50 GOLDEN YEARS

The rapid rise of Kipchoge Keino

Kenya’s sensational athlete Kipchoge Keino knocked six-

and-a-half seconds off the 3,000 metres world record in Halsingborg, Sweden, Keino clocked 7mins 39.5 seconds in the race, aston-ishing a delighted crowd at the Scandinavian meet-ing. East German Sei-gfried Hermann had set the record only a week earlier and no one had ex-pected it to fall so quickly or so definitively. When Keino left Nairobi at the beginning of the week, he told reporters that his main ambition was to break a world record to add to his two gold med-als from the recent All Africa Games; he did just break the record but shat-tered it. Second place run-ner Britain’s Geoff North took over eight minutes to complete the course, a full 20 seconds behind Keino. The policeman’s achieve-ment was particularly spe-cial for, without someone pushing behind you, it is very hard to run at your best. “This implies that he could do even better,” said an Amateur Athlettics As-sociation statement.President Kenyatta sent a message to Sweden, hailing the achievement: “Many congratulations on breaking world record for 3,000,” said the tel-egram “By this great achievement, you have put Kenya on the map of world sport. Government of Kenya is very proud of your record.”

AUGUST 27, 1965

Pele ve≥sus MatibaPele, the world’s greatest football player, left Kenya for Uganda at the end of a tour mired in controversy and recrimination. Kenneth Matiba — the chairman of the Kenya Football Federation — jeopardised the visit by having a spat with one of Pele’s entourage; it almost led to the Brazilian World Cup star cutting short his ground-breaking trip. The incident happened at a reception welcoming Pele to Kenya: Matiba was upset because he had not been consulted about tour arrangements and approached Steve Richards of drinks group Pepsico about the subject. Pepsico was sponsoring the tour.It was understood that Richards, a British former sports reporter, told Matiba that he had not been consulted regarding ar-rangements for Pele’s visit here because Matiba was “just a publicity seeker”. Rich-ards was promptly dismissed and flown back to London, but the sacking did not satisfy Matiba, who announced KFF’s complete withdrawal and dissociation from all arrangements made for Pele. At a press conference, Matiba said: “We place the blame squarely on the organisers of his programme. No doubt they will wish to explain why they chose to have things entirely their own way in complete disre-gard of opinions from Kenyan authorities — both Government and soccer adminis-tration.”

Pele’s opinion was clear. “It is my belief the blame lies squarely on Mr Matiba’s shoulders,”19

68

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972

By HEZ WEPUKHULU

In the half-century since the Nation first saw the light of day, much has happened in

the field of sport. Kenya has en-joyed success not only in athlet-ics, its traditional strength, but also in football, rugby, boxing, basketball, swimming, cycling, cricket, hockey, motor racing, horse racing, tennis, volleyball and netball.

The country owes much of its reputation to its talented runners, including the legendary Kipchoge Keino, Naftalli Temu, Amos Bi-wott, Julius Sang, Charles Asati, Henry Rono, Moses Kiptanui, John Ngugi and Paul Tergat.

Since writing my first story for Taifa in 1961, I have reported on many great sporting events, in-cluding the 1962 Commonwealth Games in Perth, Australia, and the Fifa 1974 World Cup in West Germany.

Back then we relied on cables and teleprinters to file our stories and the delays were unendurable. I remember that one of my dis-

patches from Perth did not reach Nairobi until after I returned home.

It was vastly different in Ger-many 12 years later. Football matches were covered in detail by the international news agen-cies, to which the major Kenyan newspapers subscribed, so my job was to write a personal report on the aftermath, requiring in-depth analysis of the game.

I actually travelled to West Germany as a representative of the then East African Standard (where I worked before joining the Nation) and the Nation it-self was represented by its senior sports writer, Norman da Costa.

Among the games I remem-ber was the closely fought final between West Germany and Hol-land which the hosts won 2-1, to claim the coveted trophy at the Olympic Stadium in Munich.

Back home, I covered local and regional football including the Gossage Cup, precursor to the East and Central Africa Senior Challenge Cup, the Remington Cup and the Kenya National

Fifty yea≥s of cove≥ing spo≥ting exellenceThe country owes much of its reputation to its talented runners— Kipchoge, Temu, Biwott

RECOLLECTIONS

Organised sport in Kenya did not begin in any serious way until after the Sec-ond World War. Today sport is largely about money. No soccer player is ready to change and take to the field unless he is well paid and kitted out

Kenya’s two-time Olympic gold medal-list, Kipchoge Keino, the first Kenyan to break a track world record.

Brazil’s Pele, voted the World Footballer of the Century, shows off some of his daz-zling skills at Jamhuri Park during his tour of Kenya in 1971.

DAILY NATIONThursday March 18, 2010 50 GOLDEN YEARS LV

Football League, which was in-troduced in 1964, the qualifying rounds of the African Nations Cup and the regional inter-club com-petitions which Kenya hosted at different times.

Kenyan track stars, rugby play-ers and women’s volleyball play-ers have subsequently left an in-delible impression on the world stage, though development has been slower in other sporting areas.

That said, it must be remem-bered that organised sport in Kenya did not begin in any seri-ous way until after the Second World War. Today sport is largely about money. No soccer player is ready to change and take to the field unless he is well paid and kitted out. In the past, sports-men and women were happy and proud to wear the national col-ours and play for love of game.

The demand for money and huge allowances seems sadly to be here to stay.

ABOVE: In a span of 81 days in 1978, Henry Rono (353) broke four world records in the 10,000m, 5,000m, 3,000m steeplechase and 3,000m flat!

LEFT: Five times World Cross Country Champion John Ngugi (second left) won Kenya an Olympic gold in the 5,000m in Seoul in 1988.

RIGHT: Dennis Oliech (right) was the first Kenyan to play in one of the “Big Five” Euro-pean football leagues when he signed for Nantes in the French league in 2005.

ABOVE: Charles “Fundi” Onyango (right) led Gor Mahia to their first continental cup victory, the Africa Cup Winners’ Cup, in 1987.

Former world marathon record holder and three-time world half marathon champion Tegla Loroupe was the first African woman to win the New York Marathon in 1994.

Fifty yea≥s of cove≥ing spo≥ting exellence

DAILY NATIONThursday March 18, 2010LVI | 50 GOLDEN YEARS

By DOROTHY JEBET

You can’t do anything about the length of your life, but you can do some-thing about its width

and depth — Shira TehraniThis motivational quote sums

up the width and depth of the past six decades that have seen Edward Gicheeri Gitau churn out his comic strip, Juha Kalulu.

His fans call him Juha Kalulu because they think that is his real name. “Even my own children call me Juha Kalulu,” says the vet-eran cartoonist with a twinkle in his eyes.

Gitau is an ordinary fellow who has done extraordinary work in shaping the cartooning land-scape in East Africa and Kenya in particular.

At 80, he is still drawing. It all started when he fell 25 feet while working as an electrician with the Ministry of Public Works in 1950. The fall broke his arm and it was 10 months before he could use a screw-driver again. “That fall re-ally scared me. I never went back to fixing electrical wires,” he says.

As he lay in what is now Kenyatta National Hospital, he began to think more and more about cartoons. In March 1951. he joined the Fine Art Photo En-gravers Company and made his cartoon debut working for six months for the weekly newspa-per, Jicho.

When Jicho folded, he moved to another weekly, Tazama, and when that went to the wall, Gitau joined Baraza, a Kiswahili week-ly published by the East African

Standard group. In 1960, Baraza followed Tazama into oblivion, but not Juha Kalulu. Another small weekly was on the streets called Taifa, later to become the Nation group’s Kiswahili daily, Taifa Leo, and Gitau and his popular character, Juha Kalulu, pitched tent. It was a partner-ship that has lasted 50 years, and counting. All said and done, Juha Kalulu is himself all of 60 years old.

He has a huge following

among Taifa Leo readers and if for any reason the cartoon strip is not published, there is uproar among readers. “If we fail to pub-lish for a single day, there will be no peace for the newsroom,” said

Taifa Leo’s Deputy Chief Sub, Mr George Migwi.

Mr Gitau’s cartoon has seen him rub shoulders with the mighty of the land. He met Mzee Kenyatta at his home in Gatun-du immediately after his release from detention in 1961 and gave him a symbolic water colour of a Maasai Moran spearing a lion.

The retired Catholic Archbish-op Mwana Nzeki is one of Gitau’s friends, not to mention President Kibaki who wrote the preface for one of Mr Gitau’s three cartoon booklets in 1978 when he was Minister for Finance.

Eight years later, Mr Joseph Kamotho, then Higher Education Minister, prefaced the second cartoon strip. “My third cartoon strip was prefaced by Mr George Muhoho, Minister for Tourism, Science and Technology,” Gitau says. Even with modern infor-mation communication technol-ogies, Gitau has no qualms about his traditional method of manual cartooning.

Gitau is an ordinary fellow who has done extraordinary work in shaping cartooning landscape

Juha Kalulu, 60 yea≥s and counting

Gitau started drawing cartoon when he fell 25 feet while working as an electrician with the Ministry of Public Works in 1950. The fall broke his arm and it was 10 months be-fore he could use a screw-driver again

Edward Gicheeri Gitau, aka Juha Kalu-lu, with his brush and a copy of his work.

LEISURE

By NATION REPORTER

Taifa Leo occupies a special place not only in the NMG stable, but, more importantly, in Kenya as the only remaining Kiswahili language newspaper.

It marked the Nation Group’s arrival in the country in 1959, when the founding company, Na-tion Newspapers Ltd., acquired a weekly paper called Taifa from Charles Hayes and Althea Teb-butt, two former employees of the colonial government’s Infor-mation Department.

After a few months at Nation House in Tom Mboya Street, Nai-robi, Taifa became a daily, Taifa Leo, leading the way to the Eng-lish-language Sunday Nation and then the Daily Nation in 1960.

Taifa Leo, like the English pa-pers, pressed the fight for the release of Jomo Kenyatta and early independence, which was achieved in December 1963.

The daily, eight pages, rising

to 16 and then beyond, became a unifying factor among Ken-yans at a time of rising literacy levels and circulation soared, es-pecially in the rural areas. A Sun-day product was added, Taifa Ju-mapili, and additional sections, including sports news, fattened the product.

In the 1970s, Taifa Leo began to experience competition from the English newspapers, includ-ing its own stablemate, the Daily Nation. The problem was that in the face of commercial and edu-cational imperatives, ever more Kenyans learned to read English, which had already been declared the official language.

The role of the indigenous lin-gua franca as a uniting factor in a country by then secure in its own sovereignty became irrelevant.

Commercially, the purchas-ing power of Kiswahili-speak-ing Kenyans was also less than among the English speakers, with deleterious effects on ad-

vertising revenue. Strong com-petition came from Kiswahili FM radio stations, which mush-roomed over the last 10 years. Because many stations reported and analysed Taifa Leo content over the air, readers began to abandon the newspaper itself.

Loyal readers of Taifa Leo today are mostly above 45, pos-ing an obvious challenge to at-tract new, youthful, progressive (and usually English-speaking) readers.

Questions about the relevance and future of Taifa Leo as a news-paper seem to focus on the con-tinuing strength of Kiswahili and the paper’s niche as the only remaining one in Kiswahili in Kenya.

Its supporters say Taifa Leo has unique content that makes it a viable alternative source of news and entertainment.

Market research has discov-ered loyal readership among Kiswahili-speaking communi-

ties at the Coast and in country’s urban centres.

Investigators have also estab-lished that Taifa Leo is the high-est placed and most respected Kiswahili newspaper in the world, making it key reference material for teachers, students, scholars and researchers, both locally and internationally.

However, industry experts be-lieve that while Taifa Leo’s print version remains relevant, there is a need to take the paper to the next level, that is, online.

The British Broadcasting Cor-poration (BBC) website has an option of news in Kiswahili, which is fast gaining a follow-ing. Five years ago, Google also launched a Kiswahili website under domain KE in order to reach a wider audience.

Kiswahili has been integrated by various international websites including social sites such as Fa-cebook, prompting more people to surf in Kiswahili.

Successes and p≥oblems of Kiswahili newspape≥s‘Nation Man’ titleI wear with prideBy FRED NDUNGU

I was 20 and the Nation group six years old when I joined Taifa as a reporter in 1966. For the next 27 years I pounded away at my Olivetti typewriter, mostly in the smoky, noisy, sauna that was Nation House in those days.

But the Olivettis went the way of all the old technology when the Atex system ar-rived. There was resistance from a few re-porters, but it was soon overcome.

Of the people I worked with, I have fond memories of my immediate boss, friendly George Mbugguss, the serious sub-editor, Harry Sambo, humorous Edwin Omori and mischievous Njoroge wa Karuri, all of whom are now departed.

I also remember the erudite Phillip Ochieng, hawk-eye photographer Joseph Thuo, fearless editor Joe Kadhi, quiet Wainaina Kiganya and born-again editor’s secretary Irene Karanja.

It is 14 years since I retired, but my heart is still with the Nation, which I read every morning. The people in my village of Kinoo, just outside Nairobi, call me, “The Nation man.” It’s a title I wear with pride.

DAILY NATIONThursday March 18, 2010 50 GOLDEN YEARS LVII

DEBT-FREE AND buoy-ant at the end of 2002, the Nation Media Group

took steps to implement a board commitment to pursue “other op-portunities beyond our current area of operations” and turned its attention to its neighbours in Uganda and Tanzania.

Having already acquired a feisty, but hard-up, Kampala tab-loid, The Monitor, NMG launched a radio station, Monitor FM 93.3, to capture the prime Uganda au-dience for news and entertain-ment. It won a starting audience share of 2 per cent against 11 per cent for the top Uganda station, but added to Monitor Publica-tions Ltd’s fiscal burdens.

For its part, the newspaper ex-perienced constant difficulties with a government not used to being questioned and challenged in detail by the media. An irony inherent in the situation was that NMG had been invited into Uganda by President Yoweri Mu-seveni himself.

Similarly in Tanzania, Presi-dent Benjamin Mkapa, dismayed by the quality of existing media, inquired if the Nation group

would be interested in bringing quality journalism to Tanzania. Prolonged negotiations led to the acquisition of rights to Mwa-nanchi Communications Ltd, which published three titles in Kiswahili and held a 51 per cent interest in Radio Uhuru.

Germane to NMG’s moves was the belief that conditions were ripe for a revival of East Afri-can links. The East African Fed-eration had died but it was clear that a new five-nation grouping of Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi, involving 150 million people, could prove a significant force in the continent. The group began to think of itself, in words that were to become an in-house mantra, as “the media of Africa for Africa”.

To facilitate this, the Na-tion group was placed under the umbrella of the Aga Khan Fund for Economic Develop-ment (AKFED), which was re-structured to include a division entitled Media Promotion Serv-ices. Operating widely as a sig-nificant presence in Africa and Central and South Asia, the Fund also had sectors for financial

services, industry, tourism and aviation.

It was felt that the group’s fu-ture would best be assured by institutionalising what was pre-viously the Aga Khan’s personal investment. Thus his 23.9 million shares, representing 44.73 per cent of the group’s ownership, were transferred to AKFED.

By 2005, with 15 media prod-ucts under its wing, NMG ranked number six on the Nairobi Stock Exchange. It had radio, televi-sion, newspaper and magazine products in both Kenya and Uganda and though it had closed Uhuru Radio in Tanzania, it had started a rare English-language newspaper there, The Citizen.

Looking farther afield, ex-ecutives acknowledged that to become the most authoritative media about Africa meant physi-cally operating outside of their current area. A business devel-opment unit was set up and re-search began into target areas such as the English-speaking countries of Africa followed by Francophone and Portuguese-speaking territories. To facilitate quality journalism in these areas in the future, plans were laid for the establishment of a Graduate School of Media and Communi-cations of the Aga Khan Univer-sity in East Africa. The aim was to provide the necessary academic capacity and lead research on media issues.

Nation starts to look beyond the borders

Aquisition of Monitor, Uganda: Despite the fact that NMG was invited to Uganda by President Museveni, NMG soon ran into trouble with a goven-rnment not used to being challenged and ques-tioned

The group began to think of itself, in words that were to become an in-house mantra, as “the media of Africa for Af-rica”.

By PAUL REDFERN

When I spotted an advertisement in The Guardian in

the late 80s for a full-time UK-based correspondent for the Nation, I was intrigued. Working with the develop-ment agency Christian Aid, I already travelled to Kenya periodically.

Thus when an advert was published, I was already in a sense hooked on Kenya. I joined in 1990 and my role in London was swiftly clear: To write the things that were not being said in Kenya.

Scotland Yard was called in when the then Foreign Minister, Dr Robert Ouko, was murdered but the Kenya government failed to publish the report of the investiga-tion by Chief Superintendent John Troon, which remained shrouded in mystery.

It took time, but eventually Troon agreed to meet me. He then spelled out, in a series of interviews for The EastAfri-can, how and why his inquir-ies were thwarted.

The man who led the plu-ralism campaign of that era was Kenneth Matiba, then ill and recovering in Lon-don. When I first met him, he was still having trouble with his speech but his mind was crystal clear. In exclusive interviews he spelled out his vision.

When he eventually flew back to Nairobi, a huge crowd gathered at the air-port to greet him. By then, multi-partyism had become a reality and Matiba entered the battle against President Moi in the 1992 election. But with the opposition unable to agree on a single contender, the anti-Kanu vote was split and Moi was returned to power. It was 2002 before a new era dawned under Presi-dent Mwai Kibaki.

He faced an immediate problem. Vice-President Michael Wamalwa was known to be in London, his return to Kenya constantly postponed. Speculation was rife that he was dying and the Nation newsdesk want-ed me to find out what was happening. Wamalwa’s aides kept promising me an inter-view at his London hospital, but then kept backing down.

I turned up anyway, in time to see a group of solemn Kenyan politicians leaving his room. Had he died? I was told he was resting and would see me in time.

I waited…and waited. I said I had to go and would write what I had seen. They said, Come and see him. Wamala had not died but was unable to speak. He was drifting back to sleep and was clearly seri-ously ill. He died a few days later.

I was glad to convey the truth to Kenyans, though it was hard to rejoice in my privileged access.

In the spring of 2008, Prime Minister Raila Odinga led a ministerial delegation to London for government-to-government meetings.

One scene springs to mind. The delegation was booked into a central London hotel to address UK-based Kenyans and the media. But they had seriously under-estimated the numbers. The result was like the “black hole of Calcutta” with thousands struggling to get into an airless basement conference room designed for a few hundred people.

It has not all been politics. In the early 1990s, an invest-ment conference was held for Kenya in London. The guest speaker was President Moi, who was introduced by the then deputy British Prime Minister, Michael Heseltine.

The briefing by his civil servants was clearly not all it should have been since Heseltine referred to Kenya’s leader throughout as “Presi-dent Mwa”, apparently in the belief Kenya was a French- speaking nation.

Paul Redfern has been the Nation correspondent in the UK for 20 years.

Reporting for Kenya from UK

RECOLLECTIONS

Paul Redfern

DAILY NATIONThursday March 18, 2010LVIII | 50 GOLDEN YEARS

By KEN OPALA

Moving the Daily Nation and Taifa from Nation House in busy, bus-

tling Tom Mboya Street to the ul-tramodern, multi-storey Nation Centre on Kimathi Street, was a logistical nightmare.

It was just a street away, a dis-tance of only 200 metres (which Usain Bolt could demolish in under 20 seconds), but it took days of physical movement. It unleashed a rush of emotions and exposed reporters to a huge technological test.

The date was June 5, 1992. Na-tion, the leading media house in east and central Africa, was mov-ing out of its abode into a new 16-storey architectural marvel. “Turning a Page” is how the Daily Nation captured its own reloca-tion, in its front page.

“It was a great moment, like the Biblical move from Egypt to Canaan,” said Bob Okoth, then deputy managing editor of Taifa Leo. “On that day most of our work got delayed. We couldn’t meet our deadlines.”

Emman Omari, then Political Editor, captured the excitement thus, “It was like moving into a new home, like moving house from Eastleigh to Runda.”

Some Nation staffers took days to accept that they had shifted base. A story goes that the then chief sub-editor of Taifa Leo, Obere Akaranga, went for lunch after Nation moved. On the way back to the office, he found him-self heading automatically for the old Nation House.

The shift from Nation House to Nation Centre wasn’t just about distance, it was about nostalgia, about bridging the technological divide (discarding the typewriter for the new gizmo), about aban-doning a long, low, two-storey building for a massive, self-con-tained, two-towered home. It was a requiem for the Telex machine, whose clacking noise awoke the newsroom (when it sparked into life you knew a new international story had arrived!)

It was nostalgic because “31-odd years cannot be wiped off the slate of a lifetime, forgotten just like that,” as George Mbug-guss, then the Nation’s Group

Nation moves to Kimathi street

Managing Editor, noted. “The new home was not just another building, but a landmark that be-came the talk of the town.”

For some staff, the move was apocalyptic. The new office dis-allowed smoking, so it was tough for those used to puffing on a cigarette while hitting the type-writer keys.

And then there was the Atex computer, a system tailored for Nation’s in-house use which turned around the way the newspaper was produced. With

Atex, the newspapers would be produced centrally (the same machine would be used for fil-ing stories, editing, design and lay-out). It rendered typesetting irrelevant. Soft-spoken Briton Nick Chitty, helped to run Atex and would fret when there was any breakdown in the system, while working with his IT col-leagues on the fourth floor, Mar-tin Muyanga and Dave Orwa.

Yet for many correspond-ents, Atex was difficult. Kibe Kamunyu, chief sub-editor of

the Daily Nation, would spike (kill) our stories as we worked on them. Here was technology that enabled the boss to trash your story even before you were through writing it!

Atex was magic. But there was apprehension, as usual with new technology. For obvious rea-sons, some staff foresaw massive sackings with the advent of the computer. The prediction never came to pass. “To some journal-ists, it was a matter of ‘better the devil you know than the devil you don’t,’” declared a group IT expert who worked at the old office. “Whereas the production department embraced the new technology very quickly the edi-torial department appeared less enthusiastic. There was some fear. It was hardly surprising.”

Plans to move house had been in the pipeline since 1988. The company was in dire need of more space to introduce new products – magazines, more newspapers (such as the The EastAfrican) -- and set up TV and radio space. The old news-room was squeezed and next to the newsroom was a crammed li-brary headed by Charles Mallei.

According to the Daily Na-tion of July 16, 1992, the birth of Nation Centre started in 1988 when the owners of the centre, Industrial Promotion Buildings, decided to build for the city and themselves a modern communi-cations centre that would also house their head offices.

“The 73-metre building is made up of reinforced concrete frame structure to withstand earthquakes in accordance with local conditions,” the statement said. “Columns are used both for structural and aesthetic ef-fect. The total floor area is 21,500 square metres, including the basement. The three basements, well below the foundations of ad-jacent structures, had to be exca-vated with great care to ensure the safety of other buildings in the vicinity. The structural steel mast rises from the third floor to a height of over 81 metres and acts as a focal element for the building,” the write-up shows.

And in another commemo-ration of the relocation, A.H Rashid, the then chairman of Industrial Promotion Buildings, observed: “The Twin Towers sit-ting on top of the podium provide a panoramic view of the city and has a noise-free atmosphere. The building has a comprehensive fire fighting system, including an automatic sprinkler system in the car parking areas.

For some staff, the move was apocalyptic. The new office disallowed smoking, so it was tough for those used to puffing on a cigarette while hitting the typewriter keys at the Tom Mboya Street office

The shift from Nation House to Nation Centre wasn’t just about distance, it was about nostalgia, about bridging the technological divide

Above: The new imposing entrance to Nation Centre just before it was officially opened.

Right: A street view of the old Nation house on Tom Mboya street with the ‘twin towers’ still under con-struction towering in the back-ground.

EXTREME RIGHT:Martin Muumbo Muyanga, Business sys-tems Manag-er, then in IT systems engi-neer and Kibe Kamunyu, Quality con-trol Editor then Chief Sub Editor, Daily Nation

DAILY NATIONThursday March 18, 2010 50 GOLDEN YEARS LIX

Giving back to the community becomes a way of life

Having grown from small beginnings through tough times to great

things, the Nation was keenly aware of the debt to its early, loyal core readership of ordinary Kenyan Africans.

Thus, seeking to give back something to the community, the Nation Media Group adopt-ed a policy of Corporate Social Responsibility, one of whose flagship projects was the Save-A-Life-Fund. Partnering with East African Breweries and Standard Chartered Bank, it was launched in the 1990s. The programme saved the lives of thousands of people faced with hunger. It was re-launched in 2008 to help victims of the post-election violence.

The company’s Corporate So-cial Responsibility policy goes beyond feeding the hungry.

A keynote project was helping to fence off the Aberdares moun-tain range, one of the country’s five water towers, north of the capital city.

The range is the water catch-ment for Sasumua and Ndakaini dams, which provide most of the water for Nairobi. Before NMG came into the picture, joining hands with the charity organi-sation Rhino Ark, the range was rapidly losing its cover to illegal settlers and loggers while human-animal conflict was an-other problem.

The media group and Rhino Ark, with the help of other com-panies and charitable organisa-tions, funded a 400-km fence around the 2,000-sq.km forest.

Mr Wilfred Kiboro, a member of the Rhino Ark Board of Trus-tees and chairman of Nation Media Group, said a fund had been set up that will be man-aged by trustees from the Kenya Wildlife Service, the Kenya For-est Services and Rhino Ark.

After the success of the Aber-dare conservation, the company turned its attention to the Mau, another major water tower fac-ing destruction. Under the lead-ership of NMG’s chief executive officer, Linus Gitahi, the Save the Mau Fund was launched with other environmentally aware

companies such as East African Breweries and Equity Bank.

Experts say its 400,000 hec-tares, the biggest water supply area in Kenya lost 107,000 hec-tares or 25 per cent of its cover due to tree felling. The forest also feeds Lake Victoria and the White Nile, and its destruction

The other project of note was the Save-A- Life-Fund set up in 1999 after the Daily Nation carried an in-depth investiga-tion piece of famine in Turkana District

The picture of a four-year-old Aro Koriang, wracked by hunger and begging for food, appeared on the front page of the Daily Nation publication of November 22, 1999 and revealed the gravity of the problem.

Aro Koriang’s picture became the face of the Nation’s dona-tions hot-line logo. Aro, was airlifted to Nairobi and received treatment at Gertrude’s Garden Children’s Hospital. In a show unity, the hospital waived her Sh325,736 medical bill.

The Nation Media Group and other charitable organisations also offered to educate the young girl, who is now 14.

Clockwise from above: A section of the Mau forest; malnourished Aro Koriang; then Chief Executive Wilfred Kiboro (left) after the helicopter he was in crashed as it was about to land in the Aberd-ares during campaigns to build the park fence in 2006, and a hale an hearty Koriang after being saved from hunger.

After the success of the Aberdare project, the company turned its attention to the Mau

DAILY NATIONThursday March 18, 2010LX | 50 GOLDEN YEARS

Throughout the years under review, catastrophic head-line events were accompa-

nied by instances of economic and social decline and charges of official corruption, both high and low. Accurate as they were, such negative developments did not tell the whole, complex nature of the Kenya story, blurring merit-ed perceptions of the progressive and the positive.

Good news will always take second place to bad – in the gos-sip between politicians and the conversations of ordinary people as much as on the front pages of newspapers.

But this should not disguise the fact that Kenya has consist-ently produced good people doing good things, and that does not always exclude the govern-ment.

Musing on this situation in cy-

berspace recently, a Kenya blog-ger pointed out that “there has been an improvement in our health care system and now you can safely take your sick one to a government dispensary and get medicine for free”. Nurses and teachers had been recruited widely in the public sector, thou-sands of new electricity connec-tions were made through the Rural Electrification Programme and if power and water were pe-riodically rationed, the role of drought and rains failure could not be ignored, he said.

As little as 10 years ago, many children could not afford prima-ry school fees, there was no Con-stituency Development Fund, harambees were the order of the day, and, as the blogger recalled, “We had to beg our MPs for hand-outs.” Today, schools and dispen-saries have been built, there is

some dam-construction and despite motorists’ justified com-plaints, huge efforts are being made to reconstruct many roads. Huge progress is evident in the communications sector.

Whilst honouring such feel-good factors as Wangari Maathai’s Nobel Prize and the continuing successes of Kenyan athletes, a roundup of measur-able advances in the past decade would surely also include the fol-lowing:

µThe value of exports doubled to nearly $5 billion.

µSome 26,000 kilometres of roads built.

µPoverty cut by nearly 10 per cent

µCell-phone subscribers up from 15,000 in 1999 to 16 mil-lion.

µHundreds of kilometres of underseas cable laid.

µMassive investments made in green energy.

µWholesale invasion of public space ended.

µKenya held no political pris-oners.

µThe Office of the President demystified.

The World Economic Forum’s Global Competitiveness Report for 2009-10 placed Kenya 98th among the nations of the world, behind South Africa, Namibia, Botswana, Mauritius and Senegal in sub-Saharan Africa, but ahead of Nigeria and all its East African neighbours.

Aid flows continued generous-ly but the competitiveness of the national character seemed proof

against any relapse into aid de-pendency.

Kenya’s blend of beautiful landscapes and wildlife has made it one of Africa’s top tourist na-tions and also one of the world’s top five bird-watching destina-tions. Whatever turbulence the nation undergoes, it never seems to take long for the tourists from Europe, America and, increas-ingly, East Asia, to return.

Looking to the future with optimism

As little as 10 years ago, many children could not afford primary school fees, there was no Constituency Development Fund, harambees were the order of the day, and, as the blogger recalled, “We had to beg our MPs for handouts.”

A systems engineer at work. IT will drive the fu-ture.

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During your 50th Anniversary celebrations. We are proud to be associated with you