The narrow, dusty road leading to Mama Zipporah Musengi’s house at Olkeri in Upper Matasia, Ngong, belies the palatial edifice one meets on arrival and is indicative of the journey her son, Prof George Saitoti, has travelled.

In school they called him a moving dictionary because he had mastered the entire dictionary, according to accounts of his classmates.

One of the richest Kenyans, his Ngong home was just one of his properties, which included three other homes in Lavington, Kitengela and Molo South, where he has a ranch.

His immense wealth was said to be in real estate and farming. Read (Saitoti was a 'team player')

He was a towering political figure, a business magnate and an intellectual giant, but his rise to the mercurial status he had acquired at the time of his death last Sunday in an air crash barely 10 kilometres from the home of his childhood was laced with struggle and shrouded in mystery.

Prof Saitoti’s year of birth, 1945, was a year of destiny, a tumultuous moment in world’s history.

The Russian Red Army won the Battle of Berlin and Adolf Hitler allegedly committed suicide; the atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the United Nations was formed, marking an end to the Second World War.

In the words of Winston Churchill, who incidentally left 10 Downing Street, the UK seat of government in 1945, Prof Saitoti had been born into “this world of strife and storm.”

And while Churchill’s words were directed at Prince Philip, who had been born in 1948, the speech could have also been meant for Kenya’s Vice President of 13 years, who despite straddling the country’s political landscape like the colossus for three decades, his background is somewhat obscure.

Also despite being a breath away from the presidency, he suffered humiliation under then President Daniel Moi.

The height of this humiliation came at a meeting in his constituency where Mr Moi explained his reasons for overlooking him in his succession plans.

Speaking in Swahili, Mr Moi said: “Huyu makamu wa rais ni rafiki yangu. Lakini urafiki na siasa ni tofauti...” (The Vice President is my friend. But politics and friendship are two very different things.)”

The two top most politicians in the country’s face-off at Kasarani in March 2002 has been immortalised with the words, “there come (sic) a time when the nation becomes more important than an individual,” uttered by the then Vice President.

While official records gloss over his early life, interviews carried out by Saturday Nation point at the present day Dagoretti Corner as his birth place.

At the onset of the Emergency in the early 1950s, the family is said to have moved to Ngong in Kajiado to escape colonial persecution targeting the Kikuyu, Embu and Meru communities.

A retired senior official, who was one class behind Saitoti, says they lived in a gichagi, a crowded village where families that had moved to escape colonial oppression.

“It was in 1952 at the onset of emergency. Many families from around Nairobi converged at Olkeri, near Ololua outside Ngong. It was natural that we spoke Kiswahili rather than our individual languages,” said a former a senior government official.

Mr Samuel ole Tawuo, 64, who is a retired chief of Olkeri, says he was three classes behind Saitoti at Ololua Primary School where he espoused his academic prowess and leadership.

A former MP has beenLady Justice Kalpana Rawal ruled that the detention of former Alego-Usonga MP Otieno Mak’Onyango for five years without trial was unconstitutional, illegal and unjustified and that he was entitled to payment of damages for the inhuman act committed by state officers.

“No role can be done by state officers without remedy. Mr Mak’Onyango lost five years without friends or family and the violation of his rights he went through cannot be wished away. Sh20 million is therefore a fairer and reasonable amount to compensate him,” ruled judge Rawal.

The judge, however, absolved former president Moi from any liability, ruling that there was no evidence of personal misconduct in the detention of Mr Mak’Onyango and that it is the Attorney General who should carry the burden of illegal acts perpetrated by the government.

She said that the facts that Mr Mak’Onyango was unlawfully held in custody was not in dispute, adding that the AG failed to explain why he was held for 14 days at the GSU headquarters without being told the charges against him and being denied opportunity to talk to his family or his lawyers.

Solely liable

She ruled that the state is solely liable for holding Mr Mak’Onyango in detention without trial even after a chief magistrate directed that he be charged in a court of law.

The judge dismissed the AG's defence that Mr Mak’Onyango’s lawyers had signed a consent to delay his trial for eight months, ruling that an illegality cannot be cured by a consent even if the complainant agreed to it. awarded Sh20m compensation for unlawful detention during the attempted 1982 coup.

She ruled that the state contravened statutory laws by denying the former MP a fair hearing after failing to establish any evidence linking him to the attempted coup.

While discharging the former president from any liability, the judge ruled that the complaints raised by Mr Mak’Onyango were perpetrated by police officers who were under instructions to enforce the law.

“Any court shall not hesitate to hold the former president liable if proved he committed any unlawful act but in this case, it his personal involvement as head of state has not been proved and therefore discharge him from any liability,” ruled the judge.

Mr Mak’Onyango had submitted that Mr Moi should be personally held responsible for his detention because as the head of state, he had the preserve of ordering people to be detained and that the security officers only acted on his behalf to execute his wishes.

Personal honour

Lady Justice Rawal, however, declined to award the former MP claims for exemplary damages for loss of employment, personal honour and dignity.

She ruled that although it was not in dispute that he lost his job as a journalist, it was not right to claim he has been deprived gainful employment since he went on to publish a magazine and was one time a Member of Parliament for five years after being released from detention.

Mr Mak’Onyango sued the AG and the former president for his arrest after the 1882 attempted coup and subsequent four-year detention without trial claiming they should be held responsible for the misconduct and action of torture meted on him by the police.

The former MP was arrested in August 1982 from his place of work at the Standard newspapers without a warrant of arrest and held at the GSU headquarters for 14 days before the AG terminated his case and subsequently released by the High Court.

He was, however, re-arrested soon after the release and detained for four years without trial. He cited the particulars of malice as lack of evidence linking him to the attempted coup, inhuman treatment, torture, cruelty, loss of employment and demanded a total of Sh1.4 billion compensation.

Kenya's efforts to develop its enormous geothermal resources received a boost on Friday when the US Agency for International Development (USAid) announced a move to make American geothermal expertise available to East African countries.

USAid said it will provide an unspecified amount of funds to enable US consultants to assist geothermal development in the Rift Valley.

“Under this win-win situation, East African countries will benefit from US expertise, and US companies will benefit from increased exposure and market reach into East Africa,” said Michael Curtis, a USAid official focused on Africa.

The announcement coincided with a panel on geothermal energy organised as part of the African Growth and Opportunity Act (Agoa) forum taking place in Washington.

Cornel Ofwona, a resource manager for Kenya's Geothermal Development Co, told the Agoa audience that the country is currently tapping only 210 of an estimated reserve of 10,000 megawatts of geothermal power.

Exploitation of the resource has proceeded slowly, Mr Ofwona said. He recalled that “most investors pulled out” during the 1992-2000 period “because we did not have good politics and it was a time of structural adjustment.”

Much of Africa, including Kenya, suffers from “energy poverty,” Mr Curtis said at the Agoa session. And Mr Ofwona noted that only about 20 percent of Kenya's population has access to electricity, with geothermal accounting for a significant portion of the power that is being delivered.

Kenya must increasingly rely on geothermal to meet burgeoning energy demand because the country “has almost exhausted its hydroelectric potential,” said Meseret Teklemariam, an official with the Nairobi-based United Nations Environment Program. Hydro is also “unreliable” due to “climatic fluctuations,” she added.


Geothermal development in Kenya requires huge investments of private capital, noted Chris McCormick, an executive with Reykjavik Geothermal

And “private capital has to look at ease of doing business in deciding where to deploy capital,” Mr McCormick said, adding that “East Africa is well behind schedule for where projects in that region should be at this stage.”