Manu Chandaria: Picking up after 1982 coup and Shikuku's taunts of paper citizenship

In August 1982, a calamity befell Kenya. In its aftermath, Manu was thrown into national leadership.

A coup attempt by elements of the Kenya Air Force and the crushing of it by loyalist forces, not only pitted the airmen against the land forces, but it also shattered the veneer of tranquillity that politicians always boasted about.

Kenya had been seen as an island of peace in the sea of political strife that was the African continent.

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The rebel airmen were driven by politics. They thought it impoverished the populace, marginalised sections of it and promoted tribalism.

A month after the failed coup, the New York Times quoted an Indian trader, who asked that his name be withheld, as saying that at first there was generalised looting in Nairobi’s city centre, but when it spread to the suburbs, it focused on Indians, whose businesses were “singled out and selected” for looting and destruction.

Indian businesses were targeted by looters in the Central Business District, Westlands and Parklands suburbs and beyond for wanton destruction. The owners and their families were subjected to inhuman treatment, verbal, physical and sexual abuse, vilification and taunting.

The soldiers seemed to take pride in using their guns to force doors open and shatter display windows for swarms of looters to empty Asian-owned business premises.

Manu, then 53, was named to the committee that  President Daniel arap Moi set up to rehabilitate businesses that were destroyed during the failed coup.

His team reported that many shops were looted yet each owner was brave enough to restart the business. Manu says although Asians lost substantial amounts of money, “they did not lose confidence in doing business in Kenya”.

He visited each destroyed shop to encourage the owners and tell them to take it as part of life. It was a tough and rough time for most Asian business owners.

Manu, who had been in business for 30 years and was fast establishing himself as a captain of industry, says those affected were thankful for his personal interest in their welfare.

When it mattered most for the victims of wanton looting and destruction, Manu, as one of them and as an emissary of the government, turned up to hold their hands, wipe their tears and offer hope.

 His enduring takehome from the failed coup and the targeting of Asian businesses was that “positive changes cannot be brought about by coups”.

Violence does not pay but it costs dearly in physical, emotional, and financial terms, and adversely affects the national economy. The aftermath of the failed coup remains etched in Manu’s memory.

He hosted many meetings, especially of Asian businesspeople and community leaders at his residence in the hours and days immediately after the failed coup. Everybody, including President Moi, had been shaken by the incidents, and especially by the barbarity visited on the Asian community.

The terror wreaked havoc on the community, coming just 10 years after dictator Idi Amin expelled Asians from Uganda, causing many to flee, fearing for their lives.

It did not help matters that a populist Kenyan politician, Martin Shikuku, had taken to calling his colleague, Krishna Gautama, then the only Asian MP a paper citizen.

Manu and Shikuku were born in 1929 and 1933, respectively, in Nairobi and Magadi in the Rift Valley. That is four years apart and 90 kilometres apart in two neighbouring former provinces of Kenya.

In the 1960s and 1970s, Manu, his brothers and cousins were turning the Chandaria family business into a global empire, employing more than 1,000 people in Kenya and generating revenue for the Exchequer.

Shikuku went into politics pretty early, and was elected the MP for Butere in 1963, at the age of 28.

In 1979, Kenya held its fourth General Election in which Nairobi’s Parklands Constituency, now renamed Westlands, voted in the country’s first Kenyan Asian MP, Mombasa-born lawyer Krishna Chander Gautama.

Shikuku was re-elected in Butere.The populist MP branded himself the people’s watchman, but he did not count the minority Asian community among those whose interests he watched over.

Turning his role of parliamentary representative of the people of Butere into a bully pulpit, Shikuku would brazenly refer to his Parklands counterpart, also now deceased, as a paper citizen and accuse his community, of less than 100,000, of sabotaging the economy.

If by a paper citizen, Shikuku meant naturalisation or adoption, then he was wrong regarding Manu, who was born in Kenya to immigrant Gujarati parents.

Shikuku was again wrong regarding the role of Manu and his community in the development of Kenya’s economy because he equated dominance to sabotage.

In both cases, Shikuku appeared determined to overlook and downplay the role the Asians had played in Kenya’s social, political, and economic development.

Indeed, Shikuku had warned that Africans would one day correct the situation where a minority community dominated Kenya’s economy.

On August 22, 1972, Shikuku, then an Assistant Minister for Home Affairs, and as if in solidarity with Idi Amin, was reported by the New York Times to have warned that non-citizen Asians would have to leave Kenya unless they stopped sabotaging the economy.

Manu says revisiting the matter brings unwanted memories flooding back as if it was only yesterday. But he confirms that he and one or two senior leaders of the Asian community visited President Moi at the State House for discussions. They then held meetings with selected members of the community to deal with the crisis facing their people.

It was also critical for the political establishment of Asian businesses to help return Nairobi and its commercial sector to normality immediately.

This is why former Attorney-General Charles Njonjo, then Minister for Constitutional Affairs, was quick to point out that in just two days the damage had been repaired, and shops were back in business in what, according to the magazine, India Today, he saw as a demonstration of the resilience of a people who have “a stake and faith in Kenya”.

In recognition of Manu’s efforts in helping to bring Kenya back to normality, check capital flight and his leadership in community and business, Moi appointed him to the boards of several State-owned companies, committees, and trusts. There was not a committee or board of national importance or link to the economy, security and cohesion to which Moi failed to appoint him.

Indeed, throughout Moi’s reign, the status of Asians in Kenya remained ambiguous even as Shikuku mocked and intimidated the community.