Remembering Matiba from Tanzania

Following the passing on of businessman and political figure Kenneth Matiba this April in Kenya, a Nation Media columnist, Charles Onyango-Obbo, couldn’t have captured it better: “Perhaps unknown to him, across the border - and probably further away in the rest of the world - he was an extremely fascinating figure.”

Indeed, it wasn’t lost on me that one of the mourners from the UK at the funeral service for Mr Matiba, the lawyer Laurie Watt, mentioned Mr Matiba as his hero after Nelson Mandela. On a personal level, save for Mandela, a few other leaders that stand out are Julius Nyerere, Barack Obama and Martin Luther King Jr.

And speaking of legends, to my mind, Mwalimu Nyerere has a very interesting connection to Mr Matiba that may come as a surprise to many. It is one primarily may I dare say of ideology.

In his autobiography titled Aiming High, that was in itself one of the very first memoirs to be published by a prominent Kenyan, Mr Matiba, dares to go where very a few public figure would by saying the following in the fourth chapter: “I believed that to be a good socialist you had to be a good and caring capitalist. You had to have resources to enable you to give or offer something to others. At the same time I strongly asserted even among my socialist friends in countries where capitalism was somewhat despised that I was at heart a socialist because what I had could be, and was, shared with others. In other words, I was a better socialist than most socialists who had nothing else to offer other than ideology.”

It is instructive indeed what Nyerere said on Socialism in the early 1960s: “In the individual, as in the society, it is an attitude of mind which distinguishes the socialist from the non-socialist. ...Destitute people can be potential capitalists - exploiters of their fellow human beings. A millionaire can equally be a socialist; he may value his wealth only because it can be used in the service of his fellow men. But the man who uses his wealth for the purpose of dominating any of his fellows is a capitalist. So is the man who would if he could!

“I have said that a millionaire can be a good socialist. But a socialist millionaire is a rare phenomenon. Indeed he is almost a contradiction in terms...While therefore a millionaire could be a good socialist, he could hardly be the product of a socialist society.”

I really wonder just what Nyerere would have made of the self-confessed “socialist at heart”, since as it were, both of them also happened to come from the faculty of Arts and went on to become dedicated teachers albeit briefly.

A critical look at Mr Matiba’s active political life that is the focal point of many reminds me of the adage that “great minds think alike”. In this particular case, I have in mind Mr Matiba and a much respected former Deputy Prime Minister of the UK, Micheal Heseltine, who like Mr Matiba resigned from the cabinet on a point of principle.

In Heseltine’s autobiography published ironically about the same time as Mr Matiba’s and titled ‘Life in the Jungle’ - no doubt more suitable to describe Mr Matiba’s political odyssey, he posits in the preface: “But if there is one lesson I learnt even from those early rugged years, it was the advantage to any politician of not being simply a hothouse Westminster plant. When I arrived in the Commons in 1966, I may have been a political ingenu but I had already had experience of the world outside politics and I knew how tough it could be. In later years I sometimes found myself wishing those who were the most dogmatic and doctrinaire - had faced the same sort of challenges as I had. If they had known more about the world as it is and not how theory says it ought to be, they might have been able to make more temperate and rational contributions to the great economic debate of the 1980s.”

This can be seen very much in Mr Matiba’s situation except that it goes further than Heseltine as Mr Matiba’s entry into the world of politics was as late as 1979.

In my considered opinion, much as Mr Matiba’s role in the second liberation of Kenya is widely documented, an even more important element missing in force is his resignation from the Moi cabinet. To borrow from Heseltine’s words following his resignation as Secretary of State for Defence from Mrs Thatcher’s cabinet in 1986 over the Westland affair: “Of course, all resignations are controversial and usually traumatic, unless they are seen as the gentle ending to a distinguished career by mutual agreement. Otherwise the analysts invariably look for the hidden motive, for the well-judged timing providing the launch-pad for future advance...”

With the above comments coming from a politician in a mature polity, one cannot begin to imagine the trials and tribulations that Mr Matiba had to go through following his resignation in 1988. It was earth-shattering indeed. The effect was seen with his subsequent expulsion from Kanu within a week and harassment of sorts after. But in vintage Matiba style, he drew parallels with ‘coming down a mountain that is the best part of the exercise.’

In summing up, the story of Kenneth Matiba is too extensive and way beyond the ordinary. It is as if he been inspired from his university days by Socrates’ belief that “the unexamined life is not worth living.”

It is incumbent upon the rest of us in East Africa to do whatever we can to keep the flame burning through such measures as reviving the Outward Bound Movement of which he was once chairman and helped mould the youth of the region. Let us also say no to what Mr Matiba had warned about in 1990 of a “material worshipping society” in Kenya that is a feature elsewhere as well.

Andrew Bomani is the Acting Publicity Secretary of the United Democratic Party in Tanzania [email protected]