The Mt Kenya Times 
Lawyer Njonjo Mue
By Njonjo Mue
[Previously in our on-going series on the life and times of lawyer activist Njonjo Mue:
In Episode One , we sat with Njonjo at Uhuru Park in August 2010 as he joined a multitude of excited Kenyans in celebrating the promulgation of the new Constitution of Kenya. In Episode Two , Njonjo took us to a time before the beginning of his lifelong journey advocating for democracy and social justice, where we met his parents and grandparents, the rocks from which he was hewn.
In Episode Three , we were transported to Njonjo’s hometown of Thika where he enjoyed a magical childhood that laid the foundation of the man he was destined to become. In Episode Four , Njonjo spoke of the early years when he began to hear echoes of injustice that he found impossible to ignore and that would eventually transform him from a curious child into a restless activist.
In Episode Five Njonjo explained that despite his Alma Mater, Alliance High School having a mixed record as far as its contribution to the fortunes and foibles of Kenya is concerned, he was proud to have been counted among a short list of those alumni who have pushed back against dictatorship and oppression, and advocated for democracy, good governance and social justice in independent Kenya. After six years at Alliance, Njonjo joined the University of Nairobi’s Law School for his LL.B degree. In Episode Six, Njonjo took us back to 1989, a momentous year when the world was engulfed in revolutions that toppled autocratic communist rule in Eastern Europe and threatened despotic one-party dictatorships in Africa. It was also a momentous year for Njonjo as he attended an exchange programme with American students, travelled abroad for the first time, and engaged in his own personal act of resistance against empire by working in London without a work permit.
In Episode Seven , Njonjo took us back to February 1990, a time when he took part in the first of many peaceful demonstrations when he joined other university students in condemning the gruesome assassination of Foreign Minister Robert Ouko. In Episode Eight , Njonjo spoke about his upbringing in a Christian home, attending a Christian school and his own journey towards finding faith.
In Episode Nine , as the world marked the thirtieth anniversary of the first assassination of an elected leader in post-colonial Africa, Patrice Lumumba of Congo, and as allied armies gathered for the mother of all battles against Saddam Hussein in the Persian Gulf, Njonjo’s love for music drew him in to a church meeting where, in spite of his best laid out plans for that warm Thursday evening, God finally caught up with him and he surrendered his life to the saving power of Jesus Christ. In Episode Ten Njonjo shared his pilgrimage from a purely personal faith to embracing the wholistic salvation of the true gospel of Jesus Christ who is King and Lord of all and who presides not just over individual lives, but also reigns over everything from galaxies and governments.
In Episode Eleven , after graduating with an LL.B degree from the University of Nairobi, Njonjo is awarded the prestigious Rhodes Scholarship and is full of high expectations of conquering the world as he leaves for Oxford University for his further studies, but his hopes are quickly dashed when he gets there only to realize that, in the opinion of the academic powers that be, he may be good, but not good enough. In Episode Twelve , after one and a half years out of residence, Njonjo returned to Oxford to begin a season that turned out to be as different from his earlier sojourn as day is from night, as he embraced a life of scholarship balanced with co-curricular activities, maintained a busy travel schedule that took him to Israel, Europe, Scandinavia and America, and as he found himself hopelessly drawn to a passionate cross-Atlantic love interest.
In Episode Thirteen , Njonjo zoomed in on the time when he returned to Oxford where in addition to working hard, he decided to seize the day and to suck all the marrow out of the bone of life and narrated how the end of his Oxford years was marked by the anticlimax of failing his final exams in the shadow of battling ill-health.
In This Episode , we accompany Njonjo as he escapes the dullness of his early career in legal practice to join Civil Society and as he seeks to join those who use their training and expertise to help amplify the voice of Wanjiku in the contested process of constitution making. ]
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I glanced at my watch again and realised that only five minutes had passed since I had last checked the time. I was pacing impatiently in the corridor outside the courtroom where I was due to appear that morning to argue a case on behalf of our client.
Although the official time given on the cause list for the court to begin its business was nine o’clock, judges would usually take their time and routinely strolled into the courtroom as late as 11.00 a.m. without explanation or apology.
Advocates and their clients had to hang out in the corridors waiting for the judges to come since they could not risk leaving and having their cases called in their absence because when this happened, the matter would be taken out of the list and one would have to get new dates which might be several months or over one year away. The backlog of cases was simply legendary!
I had returned from Oxford in 1995, and was employed briefly as a legal officer with the law firm of Vohra and Gitau Advocates. My job included interviewing clients, reviewing files, drafting legal opinions and appearing in court to represent our clients.
I found court appearance particularly frustrating not only because of the perpetual tardiness of the judicial officers, but also because the endless adjournments that judges routinely granted litigants made cases drag on seemingly forever.
When the litigation did proceed, the fact that our courts did not have stenographers meant that judges had to record every sentence verbatim by hand for the record. This meant that court proceedings were excruciatingly slow and boring.
This was a far cry from the drama I had enjoyed watching in TV programmes like Crown Court and LA Law or even our local hit comedy, Vioja Mahakamani.
Court proceedings are a key pillar of any legal system but in our case, they called for a level of patience that I just did not possess. I therefore could not wait to get another job.
After about four months of legal practice, I came across an advertisement from the Kenya Section of the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ-K) that was seeking to recruit a programme officer. I promptly submitted my application, sensing that this might be my way of escape from practicing law in our courts.
A few days later, I got a call from Advocate Mwangi Mbuthia who was the Secretary to the Governing Council of ICJ-K, inviting me to attend a job interview the following day.
I had known Mbuthia since our days at Alliance High School. We were both in Sellwood House, though he was three classes ahead of me.
In school, he was an all rounded legend in a class of his own. Of average height, athletic body, and bespectacled, he was a great actor who, during his fourth form, had brought Dedan Kimaathi back to life in a spectacular and unforgettable performance when he acted ‘Kimaathi’, the lead role in that year’s school play, ‘ The Trial of Dedan Kimaathi ,’ by Ngugi wa Thiong’o and Miceere Mugo.
He was also a great dancer and was to be seen performing impromptu stage shows during Saturday evening entertainment programmes. He was a great swimmer that represented both our House and the school in various competitions, and he was also the leader of the 4th Nairobi Scouts Troop.
Unsurprisingly, at the end of Form Five, Mbuthia was named the Entertainment Prefect and Chairman of the Dramatics Society for his final year at Alliance.
Many of us coming behind him watched him in awe and we wanted to be Mwangi Mbuthia when we grew up.
Three years after he left to join university, I followed in his steps. I was appointed the Chairman of the Drama Society.
In Form Five, I acted the lead role of ‘Hlestakov’ in that year’s school play, ‘ _The Government Inspector’ by Nikolai Gogol; I acted the lead part in the play ‘ Betrayed ,’ which we took to the inter-school drama festival where I won the Best Actor (First Runner Up) prize.
I was active in the Scout Troop where I was a patrol leader, and eventually at the end of Form Five, I too was appointed Entertainment Prefect for my final year.
I did not dance, but I think Mwangi Mbuthia would have been proud of how closely I had followed in his legendary footsteps, especially when, like him I ended up joining the legal profession.
The following morning, I received another call from Mbuthia.
“Good morning Njonjo,” he asked in his familiar voice from the other end of the line, reminding me that he was also a great singer who had sang memorable solo performances as well as lent his voice to the school choir. As a lawyer, he was now often to be found performing karaoke and singing his own original compositions in a number of pubs around town. “Are you still planning to attend the interview this afternoon?”
I answered in the affirmative, wondering what may have changed between the previous day and then to warrant this unexpected question.
“I am calling to tell you not to show up,” he said. During the pause that followed, my heart sank with the thought that they might have changed their minds and were not hiring any more.
But he seemed to sense my disappointment as he went on to quickly add, “The Governing Council has decided to give you the job without having to go through an interview. When can you start?” he asked.
We agreed that I would report at the beginning of the following month, which was then only two weeks away.
Having been founded in 1959, ICJ – Kenya was the oldest human rights organisation in Kenya that brought together jurists – lawyers, judges, legal academics and law students. It already had a big reputation earned from the successful programmes that it had implemented in pursuit of its vision of protecting and promoting human rights, democracy and the rule of law.
When I joined the organisation, therefore, I was surprised by how small the secretariat team was.
On my first day at the office, I was met and welcomed by the Executive Director, Connie Ngondi.
A tall, dark-skinned, confident yet unassuming woman whom I estimated to be just two or three years my senior, Connie exuded kindness from the first handshake which was accompanied by a sisterly smile.
She had the kind of firm but friendly demeanour that could have easily been mistaken for that of a high school teacher.
One could not tell by just looking at her that she was already a highly accomplished lawyer who had recently earned her Masters degree from Yale University.
Presently, Connie introduced me to the rest of the team – Mrs Maranga, the executive secretary, was elderly by the standards of everyone else at the secretariat, she seemed dearly loved by all in the team for her motherly demeanour, but she seemed to be preparing for retirement.
Minnie Mang’eli, was a young friendly secretary whose smile often lit up the room as it simultaneously revealed the gap between her upper front teeth. This ultimate sign of beauty in traditional Kikuyu society reminded me of my late grandmother, mother and our eldest sister all of whom also had the signature gap commonly know in gikuyu as njarumi .
Minnie seemed to have joined the organisation not too long before me and appeared to be understudying Mrs Maranga with a view to taking over when the latter eventually called it a day.
Anne Keru was the accountant. Petite, light-skinned and equally light-hearted, she liked to crack jokes and laughed easily and often when others cracked jokes in her presence, even if the joke happened to be on her.
The driver, David Kimani, being the only man in the team seemed to have been lonely in the ranks of an all female crew. He therefore seemed to be only too eager to welcome me among the ranks as a much needed addition to the gender equation.
A few years older than me, Kimani and I hit it off almost from the first moment we met. We would go on to spend a lot of time together as we drove to various parts of the country as we implemented various projects for ICJ especially under the paralegal programme.
Finally, there was Florence, a quiet but friendly woman who performed her work as a messenger, dropping and picking up mail to and from various offices around town not only diligently but also with unusual grace.
Upon joining ICJ, I hit the ground running as the only programme officer on the team.
I took over the editing of our quarterly magazine, The Jurist . I would source articles on contemporary legal issues from members, which was usually the most difficult part of the process.
Often, I would end up writing more than one article myself. I would edit the articles and outsource the print layout and the cover design before going to press.
In addition to editing The Jurist, I started the Paralegal Programme. This involved identifying young people who were not lawyers in communities around the country. We would train them in the basics of law to equip them with the skills necessary to provide legal advice and legal first aid in their communities.
Any cases they found beyond their capacity to handle they would set aside and ask the client to come back at the end of the month to meet with me. As part of the paralegal programme, we reached out to our members and asked them to volunteer to take on cases that needed further attention or litigation, which they would offer pro bono.
Our first paralegal clinic was in Embu. We partnered with the Kieni Catholic Parish in Runyenjes where the local priest, Father Kibariki, was more than happy to let us use part of the parish premises in order to empower his community.
At the same time, we conducted feasibility studies in other parts of the country.
We would work with local influencers such as church leaders to gather key actors in the community to whom we would make a presentation with regard to the importance of paralegal work.
In some places such as Embu and Kitui, we were warmly welcomed. But I remember in Kakamega we received a cool if not hostile reception with the local leadership telling us that they could not eat human rights and demanding instead practical development such as sinking boreholes for the community.
This is often a challenge faced by human rights organisations as they try and sell abstract benefits of their work to communities who are still struggling to meet their basic material needs.
We also began a project, more by necessity than by design, to promote and protect the rights of refugees.
At that time in the early to mid 1990s, Kenya had found itself hosting hundreds of thousands of refugees from Somalia, Ethiopia, Southern Sudan and Rwanda. Most of these refugees were in camps at Kakuma and Dadaab in northern Kenya but quite a number of them had made their way to Nairobi. Several of them frequently visited our offices on Church Road in Westlands seeking assistance, mainly by way of referral to the UNCHR or some Western embassies to apply for asylum. They also sought our intervention to help them counter harassment by the police.
This project started organically in response to an urgent need to respond to the refugee crisis. Indeed, initially, it was not even funded, but we could not turn the refugees away as they kept turning up at our gate.
As the need was great, it became necessary to fundraise to sustain the work. We developed a proposal, which we submitted to Ford Foundation.
Shortly thereafter, after the proposal was approved but before the funds were released, I left Kenya for the UK on a short study leave to sit my exams at Oxford University.
In my absence, when the funds from Ford Foundation were released, ICJ-K banked the money in an account in the then newly established Kenya Finance Bank which shortly thereafter started to experience liquidity problems leading to the Central Bank of Kenya placing it under receivership. Alas, our grant funds for the refugee project were frozen indefinitely!
By the time I returned to Nairobi from Oxford in August 1996, things at work were looking grim. Not only had our grant from Ford Foundation been frozen at the Kenya Finance Bank, but other donors with whom we were in the process of negotiating new funding had put the processing of new grants on the back burner pending their own investigations to establish that the predicament we were facing with regard to the Ford funds was not caused by fraud or negligence on our part.
When I reported back to work, I found out that all but an essential team of skeleton staff had been laid off and the rest had been persuaded to work for a small percentage of their salary until the funding situation was stabilised upon which they would be paid their arrears.
“We really need you,” Connie told me with her usual calm dignity after explaining ICJ’s predicament. “But to be honest, we cannot afford to pay you a salary. I can’t ask you to work for free, and so, much as I am reluctant to do so, I have to release you to find a job elsewhere.”
“I am going to stay,” I told her emphatically. “What we are going through is temporary and we need all hands on deck. When the ship is taking in water, it is not the time to abandon it, it’s time to get a bucket and help ensure that we get safely to shore.”
Between August 1996 and February 1997 when the funding situation started to stabilise, I worked without pay. During that period, I lived with my sister in Umoja Estate and so my room and board was covered. Every once in a while, I would get a consultancy that would pay anything between KSh, 5000 and KSh. 10,000 and this helped tide me over by meeting my other expenses.
During these lean months, ICJ-K operated like the proverbial duck swimming on a pond that appears to float quietly and gracefully on the surface of the water while paddling furiously beneath the surface just to stay afloat.
Despite the financial hardship and insecurity that our skeleton staff team was going through, we were the epitome of grace under fire.
One example of demonstrating grace under fire during this period occurred when ICJ-K received an invitation to a regional conference in Entebbe, Uganda hosted by the Human Rights Network (HURINET) of Uganda.
The invitation letter stated that HURINET would cover the cost of the airfare and accommodation during the conference. However, we were so broke that we could not afford the cost of ground transportation and airport tax of USD 20 which was at the time payable directly by the passenger at check in at the airport.
“Perhaps we should skip the conference,” Connie suggested with an air of resignation as I sat opposite her at her desk to discuss our options given our dire financial straits. “We can’t even afford the taxi fare or even the airport tax.”
At that time, early during the funding crisis, rumours were already doing the rounds in the sector that ICJ-K was on the verge of collapse.
“If we skip such an important conference,” I told Connie, “it will reinforce these rumours and make it more difficult to recover our reputation.”
I therefore volunteered to travel to Entebbe for the conference. I remember borrowing the USD 20 for airport tax and taking public transportation to and from the airport.
True to the rumours, when I arrived in Entebbe, I was asked by more than one surprised colleague the same question, “I thought ICJ had shut down?”
My presence at the conference did a lot to reassure partner organisations in our sector regionally that ICJ-K was alive and well.
I did my best to ensure that what they saw was the duck floating serenely on the surface of the pond and gave nothing away to hint at the furious paddling that was taking place beneath the surface.
In addition to the internal efforts that we were making to survive, as a leader in the human rights sector, ICJ-K was also facing challenges of surviving in the Moi regime that was a well establish autocracy which would not entertain independent voices in opposition to its dominance of every aspect of social, economic and political life.
One major issue on which we did not see eye to eye with the Moi regime was the issue of constitutional reform.
The push for a new Constitution had begun in earnest at the dawn of the decade when in 1990 clerics Henry Okullu and Timothy Njoya had used their pulpits to call for the reintroduction of multiparty politics..
Following the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Cold War in 1989, the Moi dictatorship lost the blind support it had enjoyed from the West on the basis that it was a bulwark against communism.
Shortly thereafter the regime caved in to domestic and international pressure in late 1991 and agreed to reintroduce multiparty politics by repealing Section 2A of the Constitution that had made Kenya a single party state by law.
The first multiparty general election since the repeal of Section 2A was held in December 1992. Moi and his Kanu party won the presidency partly because they used the power of incumbency and the instruments of state to rig themselves back into power, but also because the opposition failed to present a joint candidate to face Moi.
Following the 1992 elections, opposition Members of Parliament realised that the introduction of multiparty politics alone without fundamentally reforming the structure of the state was not sufficient to create the level playing field that they needed to be an effective opposition.
It was necessary to replace the independence Constitution that had over the years been amended multiple times to create an imperial presidency, and give undue advantage to the ruling party.
Progressive MPs therefore joined together with civil society including faith based organisations, the media, and progressive academics with the support, albeit subtle, of some Western diplomats, to push for the adoption of a new Constitution.
When I joined ICJ-K in 1996, I found that it had recently teamed up with the Kenya Human Rights Commission and the Law Society of Kenya in developing and publishing a model new Constitution for Kenya named Kenya Tuitakayo (The Kenya we Want).
I joined the civil society team in popularising this model constitution and using it as a tool to pressure the Moi government to allow for a people-driven constitutional reform process. The government however would hear none of it.
“Wanjiku elected leaders to represent her in parliament,” Moi said dismissively, introducing for the first time the name Wanjiku into the Kenyan political lexicon to refer to the ordinary, unsophisticated, perhaps even illiterate citizen who could not possibly be expected to understand the complexities of constitution making. “They are the only ones with the mandate to reform the Constitution.”
Moi insisted on Parliament leading any process of reviewing the Constitution knowing full well that his ruling party KANU had a majority in Parliament and would dominate the process if we took that route.
We the people, on the other hand, demanded an all-inclusive comprehensive reform of the Constitution.
One of the flaws of the existing constitution was not just that it had been hopelessly mutilated to concentrate power in the hands of one man – the President – it was also the fact that it had been drafted by a handful of politicians at Lancaster House at the dawn of independence with no participation of the people.
We argued forcefully that our nation had since come of age and Kenyans demanded that their voice be heard in the making of their new Constitution.
The battle lines in the contestation for change were now clearly drawn but the jury was still out as to who would prevail, the President or the People.
Would the new Constitution be yet another soulless document, the result of an elite bargain, or would it be the result of the rising Voice of Wanjiku?
Only time would tell.
(To be continued…/)
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