William Ronkorua ole Ntimama, who died on Thursday night aged 86, was a titan in Maasailand politics for decades. During the 24-year-long Daniel Moi presidency he was also a very big deal indeed on the national political stage as a pillar of that regime and its policy of containing the Mt Kenya communities, particularly the Kikuyu.
He served as National Heritage minister in the Grand Coalition regime of 2008-2013. Although very considerably slowed down by ill health in his final years, Ntimama cast a large shadow over Maasailand right to the end. A fortnight ago at State House, Nairobi, leading a delegation of Maasai leaders, he assured President Uhuru Kenyatta that he would lead the community into the coming Jubilee Party by personally campaigning in Maasailand for him. Coming from Ntimana, for years a diehard supporter of ODM-Cord supremo Raila Odinga, these were significant sentiments indeed and a sign of rapidly changing times.
In the course of a 40-year career in politics, Ntimama championed Maa land rights, and was overwhelmingly popular among members of the community. As a result, he was more or less politically invincible for decades, first as the chairman of the Narok County Council and then as the MP for Narok North.
His loss at the 2013 General Election of the parliamentary seat he had held for a generation was a sign of changing demographics: The numbers of what Ntimama defined as the “settler” communities had so increased in the Narok region that even the “king of the Maasai” needed their support to retain his seat. As his campaign for Maasai land rights had alienated this transplanted demographic, he lost to a relative newcomer.
The octogenarian sent 15 years at the helm of the Narok Council and 25 in politics and the Cabinet. A wealthy man with large investments including in the tourism sector he amassed power under Moi, to the chagrin of the Gikuyu, Embu and Meru communities of the Mt Kenya region that enjoyed hegemony status under the Gema umbrella during the Jomo Kenyatta presidency from 1964 to 1978.
When Vice President Moi ascended to the presidency upon Kenyatta’s death he soon reactivated an old British strategy against the Gema communities, disbanding the wealthy and powerful Association and removing its leaders from State and parastatal top positions. Moi and Attorney General Charles Njonjo thinly veiled their anti-Gema move as an action against all ethnic associations, banning the Luo Union too, among others. That it was a specifically anti-Gema move and a continuation of British colonial containment policy much admired by both men there was never any doubt.
Ntimama rose to the fore in an environment where Gema and Kikuyu power were no longer able to assert themselves, having temporarily lost control of the levers of the state. And he amassed so much power that he could organize for the forcible eviction of the Kikuyu, Kisii and other non-Maa tribes from a settlement like the Enoosupukia area, citing the protection of a water catchment. It was in this period that he warned the once-mighty Kikuyu to “lie low like envelopes” and appreciate the fact that they no longer held the presidency and the forces of the national security edifice.
It was late 1993 and the Narok County Council declared Enoosupukia a water catchment area and ordered all “settlers”, mostly transplanted Kikuyus and Kisiis, to leave at once. The decree had the tacit approval of the all-powerful Moi inner circle. The Kikuyu and Kisii were brutally expelled.
Some sources put the Enoosupukia expulsion deaths at 600, but Ntimama never expressed remorse. In many parts of Central Ntimama is still considered a warmonger and congenitally anti-Kikuyu.
An articulate man and shrewd demagogue, Ntimama would years later explain the Enoosupukia expulsions in the following terms on the floor of the House, where his utterances were aimed much more at the Kikuyu than the Kisii transplanted populace:
“When people read George Orwell’s Animal Farm, they will find that some animals are more equal than others. . . . This was the situation in these areas before we started talking and projecting the rights of other people. Everybody thought they had superlative rights. … They thought that they were the best traders. They thought they were the best civil servants. … This arrogance must be punctured and probably done away with.”
As hardline and apparently fixed in his views as he was, Ntimama had a finely honed instinct for when to jump ship, politically speaking. Just as one of his last grand political gestures was abandoning ODM-Cord for the coming JP juggernaut, back in 2002 he joined in the headlong exodus from Kanu that followed President Moi’s nomination of Uhuru as his preferred successor. Others who left the then long ruling party, at that time in its 39th consecutive year in office, included George Saitoti, Raila and Kalonzo Musyoka.
As a proponent of Maasai rights Ntimama remained unwavering and had more postures than just anti-Kikuyu. When Raila, as PM, organized a forum to discuss the Mau Forest evictions at the KICC, Nairobi, a fuming Ntimama took the microphone and made warlike threats against the Kipsigis community.