Bits of ME
December 21, 2019
Just inches from me, separated by a small brown square coffee table atop with a slight bouquet of yellow friendly roses, sat the Deputy President of Kenya at the time.
William Ruto, was president before he knew it!
He wore a comfortable poise but calculative demeanour.
I had received a call earlier from one of my colleagues at work a Greg Busolo who had in the past promised me that for the appreciation of my programs on NBS People and Power, he would one day secure for me an exclusive interview with a top politician in Kenya.
"Can you be available to interview the first Deputy President of Kenya tomorrow at 2PM?" Greg Busolo a colleague at work had worked it out.
“Are you joking?” I asked. Who would turn down such an opportunity?’ I wondered. Ruto still had business to do so in town the interview could not take place on the time it has been scheduled.
Then Ruto stood before me and my camera crew minutes after 9PM and said: "I apologize for arriving late. I know about your interview; my press team briefed me about it but I am so tired and haven’t had any time to rest since I touched down. Please accept that I give you the interview tomorrow after my visit with President Museveni."
That he had the courage and humility to personally deliver my disappointment for one jealously guarded and laced with aides to serve that role, I was baffled. I was about to learn more.
The following day, I was there, prompt, he arrived shortly after 3PM.
A swarm of journalists had been anxiously waiting for him and I was told I would not have more than 10 minutes with him.
There he was, escorted into the room, he greeted all of us then looked at me and asked, “what is your name again?” I responded, ‘Mable Twegumye Zake’ and he said, ‘Mable, where would you like me to sit?’
Like the say, the rest is history!
Bits of YOU
One of the many questions I posed to Ruto is how he had defied the odds to climb to the top of Kenya's political ladder.
"I don’t have that much of a family name to take me anywhere neither do I belong to the largest community in Kenya nor do I have the financial muscle that many people think would get anybody anywhere," he said explaining further, "President Uhuru Kenyatta and I sat down and said that whatever it takes we must reverse the ethnicisation, regionalisation of our politics."
While as President Uhuru Kenyatta had taken the decision to campaign against his first deputy President Ruto in favour of Azimio candidate Raila Odinga, it seems Ruto’s commitment and trust in his friend and boss three years ago had been intact regardless of my probe into the 2018 Uhuru handshake with Odinga that had left millions of Kenyans confused.
"The President has been very clear and Raila has also been clear that the handshake is not about 2022…unless there is another political formation or party, it is a mirage in my opinion," Ruto told me then.
Ruto’s consistency in his statements for a new Kenya then and now, however, open up a conversation and debate on governance especially if he manages to implement his gospel which in 2019 sounded like a prophecy.
"We must refuse and reject our politics being about the spelling of your name or the community you come from or the region you come from. It must be about the quality of the ideas that you have, the agenda that you can assemble that should define the politics of Kenya and our region," he said then.
A few minutes into the interview and his statements were as powerful to Ugandans as they would be to Kenyans.
Ruto admitted that he spoke to Ugandans the way he would speak to Kenyans. He said Uganda must continue to focus the way we are focusing in Kenya on running their politics on national political parties that do not give opportunity to ethnicization and regionalization of our issues.
"You cannot execute a national assignment using ethnic tools. It will not happen. For us to think as Kenyans we must have a national political vehicle. For you Ugandans to execute a Ugandan agenda, you must have a party that has the face of Uganda," he said.
His message on national identity was progressive but his ‘coronation’ as president-elect was perhaps revealed unknowingly:
"I don’t think there is any context where issue of the ‘handshake’ informs matters to do with 2022," he said in reference to President Uhuru Kenyatta and Raila Odinga's famous handshake in 2018 that momentarily pushed Ruto to the political edge.
Indeed, that prophecy came to light when the Uhuru-Raila marriage did not result in a succession.
So, to answer one of my tweeps Dhikusooka Rogers Akiiki, this week who asked: "You once interviewed President-elect @WilliamRuto, then Deputy President. Could you have predicted him emerging as Kenya’s 5th President?"
My answer is simple not even him could have forecasted but may be the angels, none of us saw, did speak through him.
