The Mt Kenya Times 
Lawyer Njonjo Mue
By Njonjo Mue
Worth Noting:
- We spoke for a few more minutes as she tried to explain what had happened but I cannot really remember what the rest of our brief conversation was about. I did tell her that I would be flying home as soon as possible.
- My father had suffered a stroke earlier in the year and after some time in the hospital, he had moved in with my sister in Umoja Estate for a period of convalescence.
- I had last seen him in October just as I was leaving for a conference in Accra after spending a few days attending another conference that ARTICLE 19 had organised in Nairobi for judges from East and Southern Africa.
The week starting 14 November 1999 was a highly anticipated one at the Rhema Bible Church in the Randburg suburb of Johannesburg, where I was a member during the four and a half years that I lived in South Africa.
Towards the end of that week, the church was due to host two acclaimed American gospel singers who would minister to us on two consecutive evenings of worship.
Alvin Slaughter was due to share his gift of song on Thursday evening while Don Moen would lead the church in a worship concert on Friday evening.
At the same time, I had been invited to speak at a conference in Mbabane, Swaziland, on Saturday morning.
This conference was part of the fire-fighting that ARTICLE 19 was doing in partnership with the Media Institute of Southern Africa (MISA) to strategise on how to push back against draconian media laws that the government had proposed.
These laws, if allowed to pass, would seriously curtail the right to freedom of expression and of the press.
I had planned to drive to Swaziland with my friend Ann on Friday so as to attend the conference all day Saturday and return home to Johannesburg on Sunday.
Ann and I planned to attend the Alvin Slaughter concert on Thursday evening and then leave Johannesburg on Friday for the four-hour road trip to Mbabane.
Ann had first to attend some meetings at work on that Friday morning. We therefore planned to leave Johannesburg just after lunch.
However, our nicely laid out plans were about to be disrupted in a way that we could not have expected.
On Friday morning, as I was preparing for the trip to Swaziland, I received a call from Nairobi. It was my sister Rosemary.
“Hi Njonjo, how are you doing?” she asked. I was not used to receiving phone calls from home and I could tell from the sound of her voice that something was wrong. “I am sorry to inform you that dad passed away early this morning.”
We spoke for a few more minutes as she tried to explain what had happened but I cannot really remember what the rest of our brief conversation was about. I did tell her that I would be flying home as soon as possible.
My father had suffered a stroke earlier in the year and after some time in the hospital, he had moved in with my sister in Umoja Estate for a period of convalescence.
I had last seen him in October just as I was leaving for a conference in Accra after spending a few days attending another conference that ARTICLE 19 had organised in Nairobi for judges from East and Southern Africa.
My father had lost his speech function and so my conversation with him at that time had been brief and one-sided, ending with me praying with him petitioning God for his speedy and complete recovery. Little did I know that it was the last time I would see him alive.
As soon as I finished speaking to my sister, I called my friend Ann to inform her of the news I had just received and the consequent change of plans.
My immediate reaction upon being informed of my father’s death was to cancel my planned appearance at the Swaziland meeting and get myself on the next flight to Nairobi.
“Do you want me to come over now?” Ann asked as soon as I told her of my dad’s death.
I knew from our conversation the day before just how busy her morning was and so I declined her thoughtful offer but I was touched by her genuine compassion and readiness to drop everything and come to condole with me.
Instead, I suggested that although our planned trip to Swaziland was now off the table, she could come over after she was done with the meetings just to hang out.
As I was preparing to call my travel agent to book myself on the first flight the following day to Nairobi, I found myself wondering what my father would have had me do. I did not think that he would approve of me cancelling my appearance at a meeting where I was expected to deliver the keynote address on his account. This was especially the case because, even if I was to travel to Nairobi the following day, it would still take at least ten days for the funeral to be held since we would have to wait for my sisters to travel home from the United States.
I, therefore, decided that I would still honour the invitation to the conference in Swaziland, after which I would make plans to travel to Nairobi for my dad’s funeral.
As is often the case when one loses a loved one, especially one’s parent, as soon as I received the news of my dad’s passing, memories of the kind of man he was and the relationship we had came flooding into my mind in no particular order.
I thought about how he had modelled love for us by the close relationship he had with my mother from my earliest childhood until she passed on in 1981. They talked all the time in conversations that were often seasoned with jokes and laughter.
My parents worked in the same factory and they would often be seen walking together on their way to work, to church or to the market.
This was during a time when men were rarely seen walking together with their wives or, if they did, the man tended to be so far ahead that a stranger would not recognise them as a couple.
I also found myself reminiscing about my father’s relationship with us, his children. He was the typical old-school father who hardly, if ever, told us that he loved us, but who let his actions speak for him in such a way that we never doubted his love for us.
He worked hard to provide for his family as a forklift operator at the Kenya Canners factory and, later, as a long-distance truck driver until his early retirement a few years before his death at the age of sixty.
Despite the many children that he and my mother had, they somehow managed to develop and maintain a unique relationship with each one of us.
I remembered how, when I was a young boy, even before I started school, my father would often come home from work and would take me to the nearby woods with both of us armed with catapults for a bird-hunting expedition.
He was as great a shot as I was a hopeless one and, thanks to his skill, we would often return home at dusk carrying two or three pigeons, which would become a great addition of protein to my evening meal.
Even though he had little formal education, my father’s curiosity and love for news and current affairs rubbed off on me.
We did not own a TV but he never missed the local daily news on the Voice of Kenya (later Kenya Broadcasting Corporation) radio Kiswahili Service after which he would quickly turn the dial and locate either BBC World News or Radio West Germany, which broadcast reliable news that was not subject to the censorship that the government often imposed on local news.
Every night at 9.30 p.m. when Parliament was in session, VoK would broadcast a half-hour programme in Kiswahili titled ‘ Leo Katika Bunge’ (Today in Parliament) which summarised the day’s parliamentary proceedings and which my father never missed.
Listening in on such programmes was the beginning of my own interest in politics and current affairs that abides to this day.
When my father left Kenya Canners Limited to take up a new job as a truck driver ferrying goods from Nairobi to Nakuru, I often accompanied him on the picturesque old Nairobi – Nakuru highway through Mai Mahiu which has a great view of the Great Rift Valley, Mount Longonot, Lakes Naivasha, Elmentaita and Nakuru which in those days had pretty pink shores as a result of the thousands of flamingos that made the lake their home most of the year.
My trips to Nakuru with my dad during the school holidays are some of the most memorable times of my childhood. He would take the time to answer my endless questions as we drove along the escarpment.
My father never paid any bribes that were solicited by the policemen at any of the police checkpoints along the highway. He always made sure that his lorry was compliant with all the requirements whether licencing or insurance documents, or ensuring the roadworthiness of the truck.
But this did not stop the police from hinting, suggesting or out rightly demanding a bribe, or as it was euphemistically called, some chai (tea).
My father would not entertain such a conversation, demanding that the law should take its course if the officers had found anything wrong with the vehicle.
Observing his numerous altercations with the police and his adamant refusal to pay the bribes, made me develop similar confidence when dealing with authority figures and inherit a similar disdain for corruption.
As I grew older and acquired the habit of topping my class in end-of-term exams, my dad became my biggest cheerleader.
He would look proudly at my report card at the end of the term and say just two words in Kiswahili, “ Umefua dafu. ” (You have excelled!). His smile told the rest of the story and I lived for those moments when I made him so proud.
By the time I was getting ready to sit for my final Certificate of Primary Education (CPE) exams in 1980 and it came to choosing the high schools we would seek to be admitted to, my dad had no hesitation in counselling that my first choice must be the Alliance High School in Kikuyu.
Alliance was arguably the best and most famous public school.
Founded in 1926 by the Alliance of Protestant Missions comprising the Anglicans, the Methodists, the Presbyterians, and the Africa Inland Mission as the first high school for African children, it accepted only the top students nationally and my own teachers at General Kago Primary School doubted the wisdom of choosing Alliance, thinking that the entry bar was too high even for me.
My dad had to intervene and tell them in no uncertain terms that Alliance would be my first choice, and Alliance it was!
When the results of our CPE exams came out, I had scored the required straight A’s and easily secured my place in Alliance much to the delight of my family.
My dad and I agreed on most things but as I prepared to go to university, he advised me to ensure that I never got involved in any student politics or demonstrations.
His logic was that as a child from a poor family, my singular focus should be to keep my head down, spend most of my time in the library and earn my degree.
According to him, only rich kids who would have other options if expelled from the university, had the luxury of engaging in student politics or participating in demonstrations.
I assured him that I would be careful but I could not guarantee him that I would not get involved in student politics since that would have to depend on the importance of the matter at hand.
After I graduated and began my career in human rights, my father would often warn me against taking part in demonstrations that took place throughout the 1990s to demand political reforms.
“Njonjo, you have a very good gift of writing,” he would say, “Why not use that gift to write about the struggle and let others go to the streets?”
He meant well since no parent enjoys seeing his son or daughter being tear-gassed or their skull being cracked by the police rungus, but I could not agree with his proposed division of labour. I quoted to him Franz Fanon’s famous challenge:
“Each generation must, out of relative obscurity, discover its mission, fulfill it or betray it.”
I politely reminded him that the primary mission of his generation had been to fight for independence and that it was now the turn of my generation to discover and fulfill our mission, and I had no intention of sitting out that important quest and thereby contributing to the betrayal of our mission.
Throughout my life, my father had been a gentle pillar of strength to our family and to the community where we lived.
He was not rich in material things, but he had a wealth of wisdom, knowledge, experience and dignity, and through sheer hard work by him and my mother, they managed to bring up and educate all their eleven children.
My dad outlived his dear wife by eighteen years and on the one occasion when we asked him whether he had ever considered remarrying, he quipped that our mother was the only love of his life and she was irreplaceable.
In April 1999, he unexpectedly suffered a stroke. When I flew to Nairobi at that time to see him, I found him in a hospital in Thika where he had been admitted.
Lying on a bed and looking at me with a frustrated gaze since he had been robbed of his speech, he was a pale shadow of his usual robust self.
As I returned to Johannesburg at following that visit, I was reminded of the poem titled ‘Ulysses’ by Alfred, Lord Tennyson, that ends with the memorable verse:
‘Tho’ much is taken, much abides; and tho’
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.’
When I had last seen my father in late October before I departed for Accra, I had left hoping very much that, though he had been made weak by time and fate, he would remain strong in will and would recover to continue striving, seeking, finding and not yielding.
But alas this was not to be.
My sister’s teary voice on the other end of the telephone call that I had received earlier that Friday morning confirmed that he had finished his race and it was now my turn to pick up the baton and keep running my own while at the same time doing my best to safeguard his rich legacy.
My friend Ann arrived at my house shortly after one o’clock in the afternoon. She hugged me in a warm embrace and whispered words of comfort in my ear that I could not quite process, given how overwhelmed I was with my loss and her kindness.
She brought some food for us to share and, although I did not have much of an appetite, she prevailed upon me to try and have some.
After we shared the lunch, I suggested to Ann, “How about we don’t cancel Swaziland altogether, but instead plan to leave early tomorrow morning so as to arrive in time for my speech?”
She accepted the plan, noting only that we would have to leave very early in the morning in order to make the four-hour journey to Mbabane and still arrive there by 9 a.m., the time scheduled for my keynote address.
Our Friday evening having suddenly opened up, we drove to Rhema Church for the concert by Don Moen.
It had not been in our plan but God had arranged it such that on the evening before I received the news of my dad’s passing the following day, Alvin Slaughter had led us in an evening of extravagant praise where we had danced in joyful abandon to his hit songs including ‘ God Can ‘, ‘ Shouts of Joy ‘, and ‘ More Than Enough ‘.
God knew that I would be receiving really sad news the following morning, and this joyful concert seemed to be His advance gift to me to ensure that I would not give in to the temptation to sink into depression and to question God’s love and faithfulness at the news of my dad’s passing when it came the following morning.
Then came Friday evening and, in his inimitable way, Don Moen bathed us with the most beautiful songs of worship including ‘ God Will Make a Way ‘, ‘ Be Magnified’ , ‘ Shout to the Lord ‘, and one of my all-time favourites, ‘ God is the Strength of my Heart ‘:
“Whom have I in heaven but You?” the singer asks.
“There is nothing on earth I desire beside You,” comes the reply.
“My heart and my strength many times they fail
But there is one truth that always will prevail…
“God is the strength of my heart
God is the strength of my heart
God is the strength of my heart
And my portion forever
Forever…”
I am one of those men who don’t cry easily, having been brought up in an era when we were told that boys did not cry.
However, listening to Don Moen’s music in the wake of such great loss so deeply moved me that I had no control over the tears that flowed freely down my cheeks and ended up in a small pool on the floor between my feet.
Suddenly my legs felt weak and I slowly sank to my seat, buried my face in my hands, and freely wept.
The warm tears that flowed were both of sorrow to mourn my father but also of relief at the assurance that I was not alone in coming to terms with this transition, for ‘God is the strength of my heart’.
My friend Ann quietly took her seat beside me, placed her arm around my shoulders, and gently pulled me towards her until my head rested on her shoulder, quickly wetting her jacket with my tears.
We remained in this position and I lost all track of time. I also became oblivious to the other worshippers all around us as I sobbed away, aware only of the warm embrace of a kind friend and enveloped by the worship music that filled the sanctuary led by the angelic voice of Don Moen.
The following day at 5 a.m., I picked Ann up from her house and we drove along the deserted Carolina highway to the Swazi Capital, Mambane, where the conference was taking place.
There was no phone network on the road in those days and so we could not call our hosts to inform them that we were on our way.
We arrived at the entrance of the conference hall at the Ezulwini Sun Hotel just in time to hear the conference Chair announcing that unfortunately the keynote speaker had not made it to the conference and they did not have any information as to the reason for my absence.
“I’m here,” I shouted, waving at her as I made my way to the podium.
The Chair was as surprised as she was relieved to see me. The conference participants welcomed me with a clap as they laughed at my unceremonious self-introduction.
I went ahead to deliver my speech after first apologising for my tardiness and explaining that the reason I had been unable to travel on Friday was that I had received the sad news of my father’s passing, and my decision to nonetheless ensure that I did not let the organisers and participants of such an important conference down.
We returned to Johannesburg on Sunday afternoon. On Monday, I traveled to Nairobi to participate in the planning of my father’s final farewell.
We laid him to rest on 1st December 1999 at Langata Cemetary.
The heavy rain that fell on that Wednesday afternoon was accompanied by thunder and lightning, a sign that though a great tree had fallen, his legacy would continue to illuminate our collective path.
(To be continued…/)
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