George Githii: Bold editor who fought for a free press and system

Richard Cushing was the classiest American diplomat to serve in Kenya. As head of the once renowned US Information Agency, he was the Deputy Head of the US Mission and a very relaxed and open friend to journalists, including critics of US foreign policy like me.

It was July 1974, and he invited me (and my wife Patricia) to a Saturday evening dinner at his Riverside Drive residence.

Two months earlier, I had been pushed out of my position as Editor of The Sunday Post, so he began with, “Before we get down to some good talking, I am delighted that your job hunting is over.”

“How I wish that were true, Dick! I am beginning to think my politics make me unemployable in this pre-election season. Which job am I supposed to have gotten?”

“At the Nation. George Githii told me about it yesterday.”

“Oh that! It did not work out.” I explained that George had been over-ruled by a senior government figure even though the position he wanted me for was a professional-technical one, rather than a political one. Dick was utterly mystified, saying George was very clear and excited about my joining the Nation and you are saying you were nixed two weeks ago?”  

As it turned out, Dick had been right! On Monday, George called me to say that he was again preparing a contract for me. He had persuaded the powers that be that I was a professional and would be an asset in the Nation’s evolution. I was absolutely thrilled as it had looked like no one would employ me as journalist, at least not till after the election. 

But lightning strikes twice, they say. A couple of days later, George called me, utterly crestfallen and offering profuse apologies, my joining the Nation had been nixed again!

Conversations and changes like this were sprouting everywhere. Everything was sin flux. The upcoming 1974 election was the most pivotal in our history as it was assumed it was the last one of Mzee Jomo Kenyatta’s rule, as he was quite unwell. The new MPs and ministers would play a crucial role in determining who would succeed Mzee.

The Sunday Post was a small, struggling paper when at age 28, I was hired as its Editor, but I had been able to turn it into a sort of an upstart. Articles with a pro-people leftist bias that attracted fiery young politicians such as Koigi wa Wamwere and Chelagat Mutai and student leaders like Jim Orengo. Such articles were causing concern.

But nothing matched the fury that was unleashed when we published in 1972 an article by the newly-minted journalist Peter Mwaura that asserted Israel’s real aim was to take over all of the Palestinian territories. The Nation and The Standard were staunchly pro-Israel, so many Kenyans then had no idea about Palestinian colonisation and oppression.

But the article that rattled political nerves the most was the one before the election in which Dr Johnstone Muthiora was taking on the powerful Foreign Affairs Minister Dr Njoroge Mungai, the leading heir apparent from within the group around the president, in Dagoretti constituency. 

To silence the Sunday Post, a new company bought out the owners in May 1974, and the new owners asked that I not focus so much on criticizing the system and government, and in The Middle East it was time for a change, we should adopt a pro-Israel stance. I had resigned and was naturally having trouble finding a job.

But there were much more horrendous actions taken by the cabal jockeying for power. Dr Mungai’s election  loss hit like an earthquake and a few months later, Dr Muthiora died in suspicious circumstances. J.M. Kariuki was assassinated. Around the previous election in 1969, a potential president, Tom Mboya had been assassinated and Jaramogi Oginga Odinga’s Kenya People’s Union had been banned, part of an ongoing purge of candidates as the struggle for Mzee’s successor intensified. But as we know, the cabal was outsmarted in the end by Attorney General Charles Njonjo, who helped engineer Daniel arap Moi’s victory.      

To go back to my friendship with George Githii, three years after he tried to hire me in 1974, he again came to help me out of another tight spot. Within the Viva stable, we had started a new magazine along the lines of Transition, called African Perspectives. I had travelled to Nigeria, Ghana and Zimbabwe in 1977 to commission writers from their universities. In its second issue, I wrote an editorial criticising Ngugi wa Thiongo’s detention without trial by the Kenyatta regime.

George called me soon after and took me to lunch at The Mandarin Restaurant on Tom Mboya Street. He said my editorial had infuriated those around an ailing Kenyatta and it was best I close down the magazine. I asked him how could he propose that when he himself had taken on both presidents in condemning detention without trial.

He said this was different and that I had myself told him at another time that as a presidential succession looms, there is severe, no holds barred repression by those who seem set to inherit the reins of power. 

I am not foolhardy but I told George that I did not mind what might befall me. He then asked, what about your two children? I was unbelieving but chilled to the bone. I shut the magazine down.  

I had always been very fond of George. We both left Kenya in 1982 and ended up working for the United Nations, he in Vienna and me in the Secretariat in New York. But I could never reach him once he left Vienna. Some said he become a street preacher in Canada but nobody could tell me where. Now we know he died a peaceful death surrounded by his family.  

I loved his boldness, self confidence and clarity. He had forcefully set standards of press independence at the very outset of our new history. He was a genius of sorts, becoming Editor at 29.

But mostly my affection was due to the kind of person he was, his vibrant chemistry, his nervous energy that was always pushing his mind to greater things. He was full of complexities and had vulnerabilities underneath his tough exterior. “My good friend Anil Vidyarthi, the Nation photographer, would also share fascinating stories whenever he spent time with him.”    

I never quite understood why George thought well of me. We were politically and temperamentally at the opposite ends of the pole. I was on the left and thought our politics was totally out of whack and corruption was being encouraged to build a class of a rich new political elite, which was riding roughshod over the already poor and breaking every promise made to Kenyans in the struggle for freedom.

George, on the other hand, was a creature of the system, having come directly from Mzee Kenyatta’s inner circle and been his first press secretary. He was also was a fierce partisan within that order. He openly politicized news coverage in favour of the side he favoured in a way no major editor came even close. His lowest moment came when The Nation reported that the missing JM Kariuki had been seen in Zambia, when in fact he had been killed and his body left in a part of the Ngong Forest where hyenas would feast on it. Miraculously, a herdsboy discovered the body. It was an outrageous and inexplicably foolish cover-up attempt.

Yet he was fiercely courageous when it came to defending core democratic principles.

But he was nevertheless an uncompromising fighter for core democratic principles, and a compelling, courageous figure who helped establish that early period of one of the continent’s freest and most professional media operations, helping entrench press freedom in the early years of our independence. It could so easily have gone the other way.

Within that frame, his greatest throbbing passion was his opposition to detention without trial. So when a bill to that effect was introduced in 1966, he went to bat against it even though both his prime protectors, President Kenyatta and Njonjo, were pushing for it.

Many years later, in 1982, as editor of the Standard, he again condemned detention without trial under President Moi. He was fired.   

No journalist left a bolder mark on the press than he did.

Despite our differences, George and I got along fabulously and enjoyed many lively discussions. I think he appreciated my pluck in trying to build something of the Sunday Post against the two larger media giants.

He was also impressed that I was the only one of Kenya’s three newspaper editors in 1973 to accept President Idi Amin’s invitation for an interview in Kampala.

A postscript from 1980: I went to Kampala to interview former President Milton Obote for Viva magazine as he prepared to run for the presidency again after Amin’s ouster.

It was the best interview I ever conducted, Obote amazed me with his intelligence and clarity about his vision for Uganda.

One priority he emphasised was neutralizing a powerful Kenyan group that opposed his return, portraying him as anti-Kenya. He also stressed that, as a landlocked country, Uganda could not manage without Kenya.