From: Ouko joachim omolo
The News Dispatch with Omolo Beste
WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 23, 2013
On Friday November 1, 2013 will be the Solemnity of all Saints Day, the day on which Catholics celebrate all the saints, known and unknown. The date of November 1 was instituted by Pope Gregory III (731-741), when he consecrated a chapel to all the martyrs in St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome and ordered an annual celebration. All Saints Day is a Holy Day of Obligation.
The first reading is taken from Rv 7:2-4, 9-14, second reading from 1 Jn 3:1-3 and the Gospel from Mt 5:1-12a. When Jesus saw the crowds, he went up the mountain, and after he had sat down, his disciples came to him. He began to teach them, saying:
“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of heaven. Blessed are they who mourn, for they will be comforted. Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the land. Blessed are they who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be satisfied.
Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy. Blessed are the clean of heart, for they will see God. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God. Blessed are they who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness,
for theirs is the Kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are you when they insult you and persecute you and utter every kind of evil against you falsely because of me. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward will be great in heaven.”
If I were to make Saints in Kenya then Anglican Bishop Alexander Muge would be one of them. He was one of the most prominent reformers who lost his life at age forty two. He was among the champions who vigorously campaigned for multiparty democracy in Kenya.
He wanted the government where the president respected the rule of law. He believed that anyone who had been given authority, they should exercise that authority in a just and fair manner. He went on to tell President Daniel arap Moi to his face in public that he would be with him if he did right before men and God but he would not stand by him if he did wrong.
No matter how much he would pray to God to guide Moi in whatever decision he made, he always made a wrong one. He also challenged the church that they had nothing to lecture Kenyans about since it was filled with tribalism nepotism and all forms of isms.
Muge worked hard to alleviate the suffering of the poor and guided his followers to live in harmony as they endured suffering caused by government of Moi. Muge himself lived a humble life. Despite receiving millions from donors he took a loan to build his house and drove the Peugeot he died in.
Muge died on August 14, 1990 in a road accident at Kipkaren, Uasin Gishu County, on his way back from Busia. His death sparked controversy after it was alleged that he had been warned by a former Labour minister Peter Okondo not to set foot in Busia. Muge defied the threat and travelled to but crashed on his way back.
According to former member of Kenya’s Directorate of State Intelligence – the Special Branch, Inspector James Lando Khwatenge, Bishop Muge’s accident was planned by the government of Moi.
Khwatenge told Truth Justice & Reconciliation Commission in March last year that the urder was planned by the security services as “Operation Shika Msumari”.
Prior to his death bishop Muge had urged President Moi to dissolve parliament, convene a national constitutional conference and hold free and fair elections. Large-scale political demonstrations erupted in July 1990 when Moi began detaining most vocal critics, charging them with sedition.
My next Saint is a Mill Hill Missionary Fr John Anthony Kaiser. He had devoted 36 years of his life as a human rights worker and a catalyst for social ministry in Kenya. He advocated for social justice in a country that despite of gaining independence in 1963 poverty was still rampant-Corruption, abuse of power and economic crime.
Father Kaiser did not only live and worked in solidarity with the rural poor, when ethnic unrest in the Rift Valley threatened to fragment the nation during the early 1990s, Father Kaiser openly spoke out against the government for its role in stoking the tensions.
The night he died, Father Kaiser was en route to give sanctuary to another of his flock.
A young girl in his parish had been raped and impregnated by a government official, and he was on his way to get her out of a lodge where she was being forcibly held. Among his most dearly held roles as a pastor was to continually advocate for and work toward safety and respect for women.
Father Kaiser, driving alone through the Rift Valley, was found dead at the side of the road, his body found near his truck and his gun lying nearby. The FBI investigation into his death, released several days after Easter, concluded that Father Kaiser’s death was probably a suicide.
According to FBI report, Fr. Kaiser could have killed himself because of depression which intensified immediately the papal Nucio had summoned him. He met the Nuncio on August 22, 2000.
On August 23, 2000, he bade goodbye to almost all of his friends. When he arrived at the bishop’s residence later that evening, he was informed by Fr. Mwangi Francis that Sister Nuala had telephoned him. In return he told Fr. Mwangi to thank her for the good work she had done.
This looked strange to Fr. Mwangi because he used past tense expressions. Sister Brangan Nuala is a Loreto sister who working for peace and justice for the Association of Religious Women in Nairobi at that time.
He had informed his parishioners that he was going on a long journey and he was not sure he would come back. At this time he had already received the summon to appear before the Nuncio through his regional superior, Fr Cornelius Schilder who later became the Bishop of Ngong.
The report further revealed that he announced to colleagues that he had not slept in three days since he received the sermon to see the nuncio. He appeared solemn, worried and withdrawn. He was observed weeping at a group lunch.
On August 23, 2000, at 8.30 pm, Fr. Kaiser drove from bishop’s residence to Kiambu for unknown reason. Local residence observed him standing on a knoll, holding shotgun in both hands.
On August 23, 2000, at 11.30 pm Fr. Kaiser arrived at Naivasha gas station and did not fuel his car even though he had some money with him. The reported added that Fr. Kaiser was alone in Naivasha and that there was no other vehicle apart from his.
On August 24, 2000, between midnight and 2.00 am, a night watchman in the vicinity of where Fr. Kaiser’s body was found, repeatedly saw and heard a vehicle similar to Fr. Kaiser’s truck, driving on a near by access road.
At about 2.30 am, the same watchman heard a loud noise, similar to a shotgun blast coming from the direction where Fr. Kaiser’s body was later found.
Fr Cornelius Schilder had secretly advised him to leave Kenya. He had seen Fr Kaiser as going astray to his mission by involving himself into human rights, a movement Fr Schilder did not welcome. In 1994 they were working secretly to deport him when his work permit had expired, a move he objected vigorously.
The reason why Fr Kaiser refused to go home was because he so loved the people he worked for so much. For him it was rather to die than leaving his flock, especially the IDPs at at Maela camps.
He was a priest who did not shut his eyes to wrongdoing nor lose his voice in the face of injustice. Fr Kaiser had the “remarkable ability to recognise evil for what it was”. Father Kaiser gained prominence in Kenya as an advocate for thousands of people who had their land and property summarily taken.
In working directly with IDPs he gathered and publicly presented documentation that connected this land grabbing to highly placed government officials. Testifying before a special Kenya government commission, Father Kaiser accused two Cabinet ministers of promoting tribal clashes and seizing land vacated during the fighting.
Father Bill Vos, director of the St. Cloud Catholic Mission Office, was a close personal friend of Father Kaiser’s. “When I received word early Thursday morning of John Kaiser’s death, I was not surprised,” said Father Vos.
“I knew his life was in jeopardy and had shared with him on more than one occasion about the very real possibility that he would be killed. He knew that by implicating some of the most powerful people in Kenya in serious human rights abuses he was putting his life in danger.” Father Vos had served in east Africa for 19 years.
The next Saint in this category is Thomas Joseph Odhiambo Mboya (15 August 1930 – 5 July 1969), a Kenyan politician during Jomo Kenyatta’s government. He was founder of the Nairobi People’s Congress Party, a key figure in the formation of the Kenya African National Union (KANU), and the Minister of Economic Planning and Development at the time of his death.
Mboya was assassinated on 5 July 1969 in Nairobi, Moi Avenue. At the time Mboya was killed he had been widely viewed as the most obvious successor to former President Jomo Kenyatta. He was gunned down by Nahashon Isaac Njenga Njoroge.
Mboya was educated at various Catholic mission schools. In 1942, he joined a Catholic Secondary School in Yala, in Nyanza province, St Mary’s School Yala. In 1946, he went to the Holy Ghost College (later Mang’u High Scholl), where he passed well enough to proceed to do his Cambridge School Certificate.
In 1959 Mboya organized the Airlift Africa project, together with the African-American Students Foundation in the United States, through which 81 Kenyan students were flown to the U.S. to study at U.S. universities. Barrack Obama’s father, Barrack Obama, Sr was among students he airlifted.
The next is Josiah Mwangi Kariuki (March 21, 1929–March 2, 1975), a Kenyan socialist politician during the administration of the Jomo Kenyatta government. He was assassinated in March 2, 1975 by people close to the Kenyatta government.
From the onset of independence in 1963, JM constantly warned those that seemed to have acquired a new disease of ‘grabbing’ thousands of acres of land while the majority of Kenyans remained landless.
“This is greed,” he thundered in Parliament in March 1974, one year before he was assassinated. “It is this greed that will put this country into chaos. Let me state here that this greedy attitude among the leaders is going to ruin this country.”
JM specifically warned privileged elites from Central Province who were taking advantage of their positions to buy up land cheaply from other communities.
“They have even gone as far as Maasailand, saying that they are doing an experiment whereas the whole Masailand has been taken by those greedy people.”
His insight into the creeping inequality in the country acquired a prophetic tone when he warned that if we were not careful, the Kenya would become a country on “ten millionaires and ten million beggars”.
JM indeed was a friend of the poor with his call to the government to create
policies that empowered Kenyans. He used his wealth towards the empowerment of Kenyans.
My last Saint in this category is Prof Wangari Maathai (1940-2011), the founder of the Green Belt Movement and the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate.
Wangari Muta Maathai was born in Nyeri, a rural area of Kenya (Africa), in 1940. She obtained a degree in Biological Sciences from Mount St. Scholastica College in Atchison, Kansas (1964), a Master of Science degree from the University of Pittsburgh (1966), and pursued doctoral studies in Germany and the University of Nairobi, before obtaining a Ph.D. (1971) from the University of Nairobi, where she also taught veterinary anatomy.
The first woman in East and Central Africa to earn a doctorate degree, Professor Maathai became chair of the Department of Veterinary Anatomy and an associate professor in 1976 and 1977 respectively. In both cases, she was the first woman to attain those positions in the region.
Professor Maathai represented the Tetu constituency in Kenya’s parliament (2002–2007), and served as Assistant Minister for Environment and Natural Resources in Kenya’s ninth parliament (2003–2007). In 2005, she was appointed Goodwill Ambassador to the Congo Basin Forest Ecosystem by the eleven Heads of State in the Congo region.
Some Kenyans viewed her move to campaign for Mwai Kibaki’s presidency as tribal. Professor Maathai died on 25 September 2011 at the age of 71 after a battle with ovarian cancer. Memorial ceremonies were held in Kenya, New York, San Francisco, and London.
Maathai and her husband, Mwangi Mathai, separated in 1977. After a lengthy separation, Mwangi filed for divorce in 1979. Mwangi was said to have believed Wangari was “too strong-minded for a woman” and that he was “unable to control her”.
In addition to naming her as “cruel” in court filings, he publicly accused her of adultery with another Member of Parliament, which in turn was thought to cause his high blood pressure and the judge ruled in Mwangi’s favour.
Shortly after the trial, in an interview with Viva magazine, Maathai referred to the judge as either incompetent or corrupt. The interview later led the judge to charge Maathai with contempt of court. She was found guilty and sentenced to six months in jail.
After three days in Lang’ata Women’s Prison in Nairobi, her lawyer formulated a statement which the court found sufficient for her release. Shortly after the divorce, her former husband sent a letter via his lawyer demanding that Maathai drop his surname.
In the latter half of the 1980s, the Kenyan government came down against Maathai and the Green Belt Movement. The single-party democracy opposed many of the positions the movement held regarding democratic rights.
In October 1989, Maathai learned of a plan to construct the 60-story Kenya Times Media Trust Complex in Uhuru Park. The complex was intended to house the headquarters of KANU, the Kenya Times newspaper, a trading centre, offices, an auditorium, galleries, shopping malls, and parking space for two thousand cars.
The plan also included a large statue of President arap Moi. Maathai wrote many letters in protest to, among others, the Kenya Times, the Office of the President, the Nairobi city commission, the provincial commissioner, the minister for environment and natural resources, the executive directors of UNEP and the Environment Liaison Centre International, the executive director of the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), the ministry of public works, and the permanent secretary in the department of international security and administration all received letters.
She wrote to Sir John Johnson, the British high commissioner in Nairobi, urging him to intervene with Robert Maxwell, a major shareholder in the project, equating the construction of a tower in Uhuru Park to such construction in Hyde Park or Central Park and maintaining that it could not be tolerated.
The government refused to respond to her inquiries and protests, instead responding through the media that Maathai was “a crazy woman”; that denying the project in Uhuru Park would take more than a small portion of public park land; and proclaiming the project as a “fine and magnificent work of architecture” opposed by only the “ignorant few.”
On 8 November 1989, Parliament expressed outrage at Maathai’s actions, complaining of her letters to foreign organizations and calling the Green Belt Movement a bogus organization and its members “a bunch of divorcees”. They suggested that if Maathai was so comfortable writing to Europeans, perhaps she should go live in Europe.
Despite Maathai’s protests, as well as popular protest growing throughout the city, ground was broken at Uhuru Park for construction of the complex on 15 November 1989. Maathai sought an injunction in the Kenya High Court to halt construction, but the case was thrown out on 11 December.
In his first public comments pertaining to the project, President Daniel arap Moi stated that those who opposed the project had “insects in their heads”. On 12 December, in Uhuru Park, during a speech celebrating independence from the British, President Moi suggested Maathai be a proper woman in the African tradition and respect men and be quiet.
She was forced by the government to vacate her office, and the Green Belt Movement was moved into her home. The government then audited the Green Belt Movement in an apparent attempt to shut it down. Despite all this, her protests, the government’s response – and the media coverage it garnered – led foreign investors to cancel the project in January 1990.
Fr Joachim Omolo Ouko, AJ
Tel +254 7350 14559/+254 722 623 578
E-mail omolo.ouko@gmail.com
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Real change must come from ordinary people who refuse to be taken hostage by the weapons of politicians in the face of inequality, racism and oppression, but march together towards a clear and unambiguous goal.
-Anne Montgomery, RSCJ
UN Disarmament
Conference, 2002
