LATE HON MICHUKI-A DRUM MAJOR FOR EXCELLENCE

MICHUKI: A DRUM MAJOR FOR EXCELLENCE

As naive  graduates straight from the university in 2002, we once paid a visit to our then MP,the late Hon John Njoroge Michuki with a very clear mission: to ask him that he agrees we campaign for him in the forthcoming elections in exchange for Government jobs that were hard to come by those days. In his typical way, he gave us one his characteristic piercing gaze that seemed to read our innermost thoughts and in a firm tone told us: Michuki does not carry jobs in his briefcase to dish out .That was the vintage Michuki: forthright and brutally honest to a fault. By the time we left his office, he had hammered enough sense into our young idealistic minds for us to see the naivety of our demand.

The passing on of Michuki was particularly hard for me, not because he was my MP for more than half of my life, but because he is a man that I admired a lot. For over three decades, be bestrode the political landscape of Kangema like a Colossus, not because of his towering physique but because of his towering moral values. He had this personal magnetism that is characteristic of leaders of men and when he spoke, you had to listen.

Michuki embodied a dying breed of men from the old order when a man’s word was his bond and nothing the less. This is a trait that is particularly very difficult to espouse in the murky world of politics where double speak is away of life. For me Rudyard Kipling’s famous poem ‘If’ which celebrates the value of being a real man could as well have been his manual that he strictly followed to the letter.

Contrary to popular opinion, Michuki had to conquer several odds to get to the pinnacle of his business and political career. This is because, despite having been born into a privileged family of a colonial Senior Chief, he had many siblings and the family’s resources were not sufficient for all of them. However, with sheer hard work and personal excellence, Michuki was able to build a business empire that is the envy of many. Wealth aside he will be remembered for excelling in any job that he undertook, from selling buttons as young boy in the 1940’s to taming  the chaotic Kenyan matatu industry by introducing the e(in)famous Michuki rules. Some wags are pointing out that touts and drivers in heaven have put on their uniforms on hearing that Michuki has arrived at the Pearly Gates!

Hon Michuki was beloved by the people of Kangema, not because he promised them heaven, but because he delivered what he promised. He was beloved by the people of Kenya not because he magical acts, but because he excelled in what he did. But again, I hasten to add, he was loathed equally because as a mortal, he had his own faults.

The late Dr.Martin Luther King Jr,in is Drum Major Instinct speech in which he alluded to his imminent death, asked the world not to list his numerous awards-numbering over three hundred by then- during his funeral. He even told them not to say in his eulogy that he had won the coveted Nobel Peace Prize in 1964 since that was not important. He asked the people to remember him as A Drum Major for peace, justice and righteousness. The rest of the worldly things were shallow and did not matter.

In the same vein, on Michuki was a Drum Major for excellence and the best way to remember him is to pursue excellence in all we do. Through his excellence, to use the words of the poet Henry Longfellow, he was able to leave footprints on the sands of time.

 In the death of Michuki, the people of Kangema and Kenya have lost   a man, whither comes another?

May God rest his soul in eternal peace.

@Gilbert Mwangi

KANGEMA

25^th February, 2012