|
Maitha dies in Germany Standard Team Cabinet Minister Emmanuel Karisa Maitha died of a heart attack in Germany yesterday. Mr Maitha, the Tourism and Wildlife minister, collapsed during a press interview with the Kiswahili service of the German station, Radio Deutschewelle. He was taken to Geist Hospital in Frankfurt, where doctors attempted to resuscitate him in vain. The minister was on official duty in Germany. Maitha, 50, has had a history of heart ailment, and was treated in India early this year. He leaves behind three wives and 10 children. He becomes the fourth Cabinet minister to die in office under the Narc government. President Kibaki received news of Maitha's death soon after jetting back from Mombasa, where he had officiated at the opening of this year's Mombasa International Show, according to the Presidential Press Service. In his message of condolence to the minister's family and constituents, the President said he had lost a friend and a comrade. Maitha was also the MP for Kisauni. A registered clinical officer, Maitha was educated at Utange Primary School and Shimo la Tewa Boys High School before enrolling at the Medical Training College in 1970. In 1973, he obtained a certificate in specialised paediatrics. Before his appointment to the Tourism and Wildlife ministry on June 30, Maitha served as the Local Government minister. He was appointed to the Cabinet in January last year, after Narc won the 2002 General Election, and quickly earned the nickname, `Hurricane', for his abrasive approach to Local Government incompetence and inefficiency. Maitha, a populist politician, had previously been elected as a Democratic MP for Kisauni in 1997, and was the shadow Minister for Local Government. He began his political career as an elected councillor in 1979. Before that, he had been a branch youth leader and Kanu chairman in his Mwikirunge area. He sensationally came into the public limelight during the hearings into the conduct of former Constitutional Affairs Minister Charles Njonjo, when he appeared before the judicial commission in 1983. In 1988 and 1992, he unsuccessfully vied for the Kisauni parliamentary seat on a Kanu ticket. He only made it to parliament when he defected to DP, and worked tirelessly to spread the party's wings in Coast Province. For the 20 months he had been in government, Maitha had hewn himself from a rough Kanu youth winger into a can-do minister. Apart from intervening in the management of the Kenya Wildlife Service by getting the board chairman suspended, Maitha has sought to make himself the pivot of Coast politics. In the run-up to the last General Elections, he said his priorities included development in several sectors including land, education, infrastructure and employment. He wanted to ensure that squatters were given land and absentee landlords surrendered theirs. Maitha goes down in Kenyan history as a colourful and controversial, if canny, political operator. His appetite for political triumph is one of his more notable attributes. His aggressiveness in championing the interests of the Coast and his party – and the fact that he has managed to stamp his authority on a whole region – had set him apart as a useful political ally. He was also a master of triumphant symbolism: In one of his houses at Majaoni in Kisauni, Mombasa, a black shoe size number nine used to hung on the wall until recently, among his valued pictures. It was a spoils-of-war trophy he had collected from the political battlefield during the heady days of the introduction of multi- patyism in Kenya early in the last decade, when he was a violent Kanu youth winger in Mombasa. The shoe belonged to Cabinet minister Raila Odinga, then one of the Young Turks who took Kanu head-on to lay the groundwork for a fledgling democracy. Raila had gone to Shanzu Primary School, in Maitha's future Kisauni constituency, to witness voter registration for the 1992 elections. Maitha appeared on the scene, at the head of a large army of armed party youths and in the ensuing melee, Raila's entourage was severely beaten up and lost valuables as they scattered. And into Maitha's possession came the treasure from Raila's foot. Since the Narc wrangles started escalating out of control last year, mainly between the National Alliance (Party) of Kenya (NAK) and the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) factions, he went out with little hesitation to seal his turf for his own faction and for himself. Indeed, those who watched how the he went about bulldozing the Coast ground for his NAK faction saw a man keen to exalt his own and his faction's supremacy. At times, it appeared like in fact it was his supremacy in Coast, and the coerced loyalty of other political leaders, that he craved for more than his NAK faction's victory. Immediately he was appointed minister in the Narc Cabinet last year, it was expected by those who knew him that it was just a matter of time before he sought to emerge the top Coast politician. The reasons are many. He was close to President Kibaki, both having come from the Democratic Party. Former Kanu maestro Shariff Nassir was out of the way and heading towards political oblivion and the only other ministers from Coast (Chirau Ali Mwakwere and Najib Balala) were parliamentary newcomers. But just when Maitha was beginning to shine at his ministry and in his Coastal political turf, he was slowed down by a nasty scandal about a tender at City Hall that he had allegedly forced the council to award to an insurance firm he favoured. The scandal looked, for a while, like it would knock him out but Maitha, in characteristic style, countered storm with storm, posing as the offended party and fighting back viciously. At one time, he appeared to think the battle against him was being perpetrated by the "Mt Kenya Mafia'" and he took the battle to the doorstep of State House, declaring that no other Kikuyu, after Kibaki, would ever be President of Kenya. Maitha appeared to have turned the tables on his enemies and probably with subtle backing from State House. When Kibaki was in Mombasa in August for the Agricultural Show of Kenya last year — and he returned later in December on holiday — Maitha became the most visible figure around the President and that seemed to be all he needed to re-launch himself. It also appeared to be a good time to repackage his usefulness for NAK and the Mt Kenya forces in Coast as the battles within Narc intensified and general utility fighters of Maitha's ilk were an asset to the side they backed. And so Maitha was on the prowl for NAK and for himself in Coast. Nearly the entire Coast region had become split between those for Maitha and were in NAK, and those against him and were in LDP. He liked to be seen as the political King of Coast, and those ministers or MPs who stood in his path could have as well ended up with their shoe hung on the wall. To his side Maitha brought in fellow Cabinet colleague Mwakwere, formerly of LDP but now fully in NAK. The two were the first Narc politicians to organise a controversial grassroots recruitment drive in Matuga, Mwakwere's constituency. Maitha also had to his side Garsen MP Danson Mungatana, an Assistant minister for Provincial Administration. He was a vocal asset especially when wars with LDP intensified, particularly as he was wont to take on the LDP boss, Raila, himself. Others who backed Maitha are Kinango MP Gonzi Rai, Likoni MP Rashid Shakombo (on and off), Kaloleni MP Morris Dzoro, Msambweni MP Abdalla Ngozi while in Mombasa town, he had the crucial support of Mayor Taib Ali Taib and over 20 councillors. Those who had refused to toe his line are Mvita MP and Cabinet minister Najib Balala, Bahari MP Joe Khamisi, Changamwe MP Ramadhan Kajembe and his own nephew, Malindi MP Lucas Maitha. Each opponent, all who were in LDP, faced a different Maitha- instigated problem. Maitha twice went into Khamisi's Bahari Constituency and promised to pay a Sh3.9 million loan for 4,000 squatters. |
