Arrested and imprisoned in 1953 along with Kenya’s first president, Jomo Kenyatta, Paul Ngei went on after his country gained independence to have a career as a Cabinet minister in the regime of his erstwhile fellow detainee, and that of Kenyatta’s successor, Daniel arap Moi. His political career was a colourful one, punctuated by intrigues and fisticuffs, and he fell foul of the law on several occasions before finally being declared bankrupt and disqualified from ministerial office.
He had been one of the “Kapenguria Six”, leaders of the Mau Mau rebellion against British colonial rule whose detention earned them an almost mythical status in nationalist eyes. Though eventually defeated, the Mau Mau insurgency and the publicity that accompanied the treatment of detainees under the state of emergency declared by the colonial authorities had their effects in inducing the British Government to institute the political and social reforms that led to Kenya’s independence in 1963. But Ngei and other members of the Kapenguria Six played little part in the core years of the Mau Mau campaign (which actually terrorised and killed many more Africans and Asians than it did white settlers), since they were serving their jail terms during it.
United in their opposition to British rule in Kenya, the Six did not all see eye to eye politically, either before or after independence. But after a period in which his African People’s Party was opposed to Kenyatta’s Kenya African National Union, Ngei served under his former guerrilla boss in a number of ministerial posts.
Paul Ngei was born in 1923 in Machakos, to the south east of Nairobi; he was the grandson of the Akamba Paramount Chief Masuku. He was educated at the Machakos Government African School, and served in the Army during the Second World War.
Afterwards he continued his education, studying by correspondence with the Cape Technical College, before going to Uganda, where he attended Makarere College, Kampala. In his three years there he was elected deputy chairman of the students’ guild, where nationalist sentiment was constantly aired.
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Returning to Kenya in 1950, he worked for a time on the Swahili newspaper Baraza, after which, somewhat bizarrely for a future nationalist leader, he had a role in the quintessentially “colonial” (and mildly improving, ie, natives can be quite good chaps) film about East Africa, Where No Vultures Fly, in which Anthony Steel played a game warden. He next founded the Akamba newspaper Wasya wa Mukamba (Voice of the Akamba) and the Swahili political journal Uhuru wa Mwafrica (African Freedom).
Soon after this he joined the armed struggle against British colonial rule in Kenya, the Mau Mau rebellion which led to the declaration of a state of emergency in 1952. In the following year he and other members of the Mau Mau — Kenyatta, Achieng Oneko, Bildad Kaggia, Kungu Karumba and Fred Kubai — were arrested, tried at Kapenguria, and sentenced to seven years’ imprisonment, which was served in the remote prison at Lodwar in the country’s Northern Province. With Kenyatta and his fellow internees, Ngei was released on licence in 1959, though remaining subject to restriction of movement until August 1961. He put the time to good use in tackling a degree in economics by correspondence from London University.
At the same time he resumed political activity, though of a kind acceptable to Kenya’s British rulers, first in a modest way as president of the Kenya African Farmers and Traders Union of the Akamba Clans Union. He later joined Kenyatta’s Kenya African National Union (Kanu), but soon disagreed with its policies and left to found his own African Peoples Party (APP).
After general elections in May 1963, when Kenya was granted internal self-government, the APP went into opposition against the ruling Kanu party, in conjunction with the larger Kenya African Democratic Union (Kadu). But the relationship with Kadu soon became strained, and when the Kadu leadership deleted his name from the Opposition delegation to the Kenya independence conference in London in October 1963, Ngei rejoined Kanu.
He was given the chairmanship of the maize marketing board, and when full independence came at the end of the year was rewarded by Kenyatta with the portfolio of Co-operatives and Marketing. Over the next 25 years he was to be variously Minister of Housing and Social Services, Local Government, Co-operative Development, Works, Livestock Development, Lands and Settlement, Environment, Water Development, Culture and Employment.
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But there were a number of hiccups on the way. In 1974, while Minister of Local Government, he was fined £130 after admitting to a magistrates’ court that he had threatened to shoot a Nairobi businessman with whose car his had collided. The following year his membership of Parliament was nullified by the High Court, after judges found that he had been elected unopposed only after causing another candidate to withdraw his nomination under threat of death. In December that year Kenyatta pardoned him for the offence and in January 1976 he won back his seat at a by-election. Ngei was a combative politician in more than one sense and it was said of him that he “never hesitated to throw a punch at a rival, anywhere, any time”. He was also celebrated for patronising Nairobi hotels and restaurants and telling the owners: “Charge it to the Government.”
In 1978, in the wake of Kenyatta’s death, Ngei, who disliked the Vice- President, Daniel arap Moi, tried to block his taking over in an acting capacity for 90 days, as the Kenyan Constitution provides. Exploiting a loophole in the Constitution which enabled a majority in Cabinet to refuse to endorse the vice-president as acting head of state, Ngei and two associates lobbied hard in the early morning to try to bring about this state of affairs, while other Cabinet members were still making their way to Nairobi from holidays and far-flung homes.
Even after Moi loyalists delayed a vote until their numbers should be large enough to vote down the conspiracy, Ngei did not give up. As Moi’s caretaker 90 days drew to a close he continued to manoeuvre to stop him becoming President. But all his attempts ended in spectacular failure, and Moi ended up presiding of Kenya until 2002.
Extraordinarily, Moi bore no grudge, even giving Ngei Cabinet posts over the next few years. Ngei’s downfall came in 1991 when the High Court declared him bankrupt. Under the Constitution he was forced to quit both his ministry and his parliamentary seat. This time there was no way back for the man whose political credo had always been: “Slipping is not falling.” By that stage his only worldly goods were said to consist of the Mercedes-Benz he had “acquired” in 1971 and somehow forgotten to pay for. To add to his woes, diabetes took its toll, and this erstwhile keen sportsman had to undergo the amputation of both legs.
As counterpoint to his boisterous political style, Ngei’s colourful love life kept surfacing into the public domain. His intrigues were rumoured to have embraced the daughters of other senior government figures in the past.
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Ngei is survived by several wives and a number of children.
Paul Ngei, Kenyan politician, was born in 1923. He died on August 15, 2004, aged 81.