24 Hours as ‘a State Guest’ – A Journalist’s Notebook.

One of the occupational hazards for reporters and photo-journalists during President Daniel arap Moi’s era was police harassment, breaking of and confiscating cameras and even spending a day and night or two behind bars or two as ‘a State Guest'.

The attack on members of the Fourth Estate was so common that even the Kenya Union of Journalists (KUJ) had a standard press statement condemning the “unwarranted and malicious action” and were on standby ready to update it by changing the date and name of the victim before releasing it. In the newsrooms, those who fell foul of the authorities while on the beat and walked back into the newsrooms were celebrities of some sort, with their colleagues encouraging them to soldier on.

Not all were lucky to survive to tell the tale, one of them was photojournalist Wallace Gichere, who was pushed down the second floor of his apartment in the middle of the night for supporting Matiba. He later filed a successful case against the Kanu regime, he was given a hefty compensation, but it took forever to be paid until he passed on in April 2008.

Very few of their colleagues enjoying their arm chairs bothered to tell them “pole (sorry)” for their injuries, humiliation and mental torture. It was macho (tough) to face the police and live to tell the tale in award-winning news stories and captivating photographs backed by editorials tough-hitting.

The Kenyan President from 1978 to 2002, was literally above the law, and would telephone editors on their direct lines on the landlines anytime, especially in the middle of the night, and warn them that he was unhappy with a big news story that they had edited and were publishing as a splash in the following day’s newspaper.

Even Walls Talked Those Days

At times, Nyayo (his nickname, means footsteps in Kiswahili) would not even talk, but clear his throat in his usual manner during public rallies and roadside meet-the-people rallies, to send the tough message to the elders – publish and be damned. Most would be too intimidated to act otherwise.

One editor once confessed how he was so fed up of the interference of press freedom that he would ensure he gave the go ahead to the circulation department to print, as he took cover out of the office in a hideout where he could not be reached on a land line. But not all editors were so lucky, there were cases of some of their colleagues being harassed for publishing a, “unofficial press statement from State House;” in another case an editor was sacked by the ruling party’s newspaper, Kenya Times, for highlighting a candidate for Maendeleo Ya Wanawake Organisation elections on the eve of a hotly contested elections by giving hear ‘good coverage’ at the expense of the one who was backed by the powers that be.

Indeed, journalists walked a tight rope under the Nyayo era, you were damned if you published and if you did not in the Government’s favour. There was a case of an editor who was sacked in 1982 following the abortive coup-de-tat for having a portrait of Raila Odinga in his office desk!

Earlier, President Moi had ordered editors to: “Stop glorifying the opposition,” led by Jaramogi Oginga Odinga, in the headlines every other day. In reaction, some of the editors became creative and changed the subsequent headlines to read as follows: “Double O says…”

Police harassment intensified after the abortive coup and the controversial 1988 Kanu’s mlolongo (queue-voting) nomination and elections where pro-government politicians won whether the voters “liked it or not.” One of the victims was Vice-President Mwai Kibaki, as MP for Othaya, who had fallen out of favour. He later through tantrums and protested bitterly until the results were overturned.

Fast forward to clamor for reintroduction of multi-party politics in 1990’s, the Kanu regime accused the media of being opposition sympathisers, and went even further to start its own mouth piece, Kenya Times, to counter the so-called negative reports.

It was after the 1992 General Elections, where for the first time since he took over from Jomo Kenyatta, the founder of the nation, Moi faced opposition at the polls by Kibaki, his former VP, former Cabinet Minister Kenneth Matiba and former VP, Oginga Odinga, among others.

As was expected, Moi was declared the winner by the Electoral Commission of Kenya chairman, Kivuitu. Two election petitions were later filed by Matiba and Odinga, separately, but were frustrated at the highest level. The judge, was a foreigner on a work permit, in the first case was sent packing after allowing the case to go on. The second case was compromised by the Kanu chairman who entered into a “cooperation” Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with Oginga Odinga and his Ford Kenya party.

I was a victim of State excesses on August 9, 1994, a few months after I was promoted and transferred to Kisumu Bureau to take over from Caleb Atemi, as Bureau Chief. I was accused of being an opposition sympathiser because my father, Enos Seth Orlale, was the then Homa Bay County Council chairman on a Ford Kenya ticket.

That was the second time to be a State Guest; the first time was when I went to cover a news report at Homa Bay District hospital with our correspondent, John Oywa, and photographer Carl Mandieka.

The prison officers manning the ward where some of the prisoners were being treated chained to their beds were not amused and arrested us, frog-matched us to the prison to face their bosses.

For three agonizing hours sitting on the floor and with handcuffs behind bars, we waited in vain as the prison bosses called their seniors in Nairobi to know what action to take before later freeing us and confiscating the film used by our photographer with a stern warning: “Never ever even try to take photos of prisoners without our authority!”

The major bone of contention was that the prison officials were angry with Nation Media Group team for trying to expose their human rights violations in the manner in which they were de-humanizing and mistreating sick prisoners, some of whom were on their deathbeds.

During our investigations, we were informed by medical staff and some of the prison wardens who sought anonymity for fear of losing their jobs, of a number of prisoners who had died while chained to their beds, while others who had protested loudly forcing the authorities to order the warden to put a human face to their work.

One of the worst cases was of a sick prisoner who was being forced to eat with one hand as the other was chained to her bed. In the earlier case in Kisii District, my accusers, the powerful Nyanza Provincial Commissioner, Joseph Kaguthi, was unhappy with me for failing to pay him a courtesy call in his office, like had been the ritual and tradition, and instead focusing on ‘negative’ news by the opposition.

The PC’s narrative was supported by two powerful Cabinet Ministers at that time from the region, Simeon Nyachae, the Nyaribari Chache MP in Kisi District, and Dalmau’s Otieno, his neighbor in Ronge in Migori district, also in Nyanza province.

I had heard the rumors that they were literally baying for my blood, but did not take them seriously until one morning I walked into my Kisumu office and was told that I was under arrest by five Criminal Investigations Department (CID) officers with strict instructions to block me from proceeding to cover a presidential rally in neighboring Kisi District.

The major born of contention was a headline story I had penned during the president’s tour of Kisi district that week stating: “Opposition MP, Henry Obwocha, tells Moi Off!” That was in reference to a public rally where Nyachae had paraded Kisii Kanu MPs before the President and urged the Ford-Kenya West Mugirango MP to the opposition and to defect.

After my arrest, I had asked my deputy, Pamela Makotsi, to take charge of our Nation Team and proceed to Kisi and cover the opening of the annual Agricultural of Kenya Society (ASK) Show, which had been turned into a political rally.

During the rally, the former PC and Chief Secretary did not mince his words and told the President that he knew who was fermenting trouble in his political backyard: “The media is being used by the opposition, there is this Oraro Oraro who is an opposition sympathiser, and in fact his father is the Ford Kenya Homa Bay County Council chairman!”

With those fiery words and his supporters cheered on, the police in Kisumu swung into action and arrested me in my office at dawn, frog-matched me into their waiting white Peugeot 504 station wagon, sandwiched me on the back seat, and drove me to their headquarters where they demanded that I record a statement on why I incited the doctors to join the then on-going nurses’ strike.

That controversial news story had been written by one of our correspondents, George Kiaye, and published a month earlier. But to my critics, that did not matter, they had to nail me by having me arrested and charged with any offence, “upende usi pende! (At all cost.)”

After their unsuccessful attempts to intimidate me the whole day saying that I must confess, they then ordered me into their car with civilian number plate, and drove me to Kisumu Railway police station where I was booked for the night in a cell room.

That’s when I felt the full impact of the mental torture and of being dehumanised. The officer in charge ordered me to remove my tie, coat, belt, shirt, socks and shoes and then enter the sell. A single lightbulb was switched on the whole night. At 7pm. They brought what they claimed was super, an island of soup with a born with a semblance of meat with semi cooked ugali. I rejected it fearing that it was a bait to poison me!

The following morning at 6am. we were ‘woken up,’ though we never got a wink because of the mental torture, pin drop silence and squad of mosquitoes hovering the whole night. By then my stomach couldn’t allow me to reject the mug of so-called tea and two slices of stale-looking bread. I shared one slice with my fellow ‘State Guests,’ as a test case as my guinea pigs. They were street children who had also fallen foul of the law.

Two hours later, the CID team came for me and ordered me to dress up and enter the Peugeot for a drive into the Kisumu Magistrate, Charles Kanyangi’s court. After three agonising hours in the crowded and poorly ventilated court room in the dock with other suspects, my name was called and I pleaded not guilty to the “publishing an inflammatory statement.

My Managing Editor, Tom Mshindi, stood by me all the way and engaged Menezes Advocates to represent me. Menezes applied and got me released on a Shs100,000 bond. A friend and colleague, Jacob Otieno, of The Standard Newspapers stood surety for me and presented his father’s title deed for a plot in Manyatta Estate, in Kisumu, to have me freed.

For the next year, the case dragged on in court with numerous adjournments and ended when the Magistrate acquitted me on grounds that the charge sheet was faulty; saying: “Orlale is not the publisher of Nation Newspapers, the publisher is Mr Albert Ekirapa, the Chairman of National newspapers Ltd.”

The magistrate also rejected claims by the prosecution that the news source (the nurse) had denied having issued the press statement, saying that was after he had been intimidated by the powers that be to recant.

On the day of my acquittal, I walked out of the court room with a sigh of relief feeling like Nelson Mandela when he walked out of Robben Island after 27 years of detention saying: “Free at last, free at last!”