The Other Barack

by Sally Jacobs

  These young wives also ran headlong into the African tradition of extended families. Now that they were flush with a big job and a Nairobi home, many of the new African elite in Nairobi found a succession of siblings, cousins, and acquaintances showing up at their door, sometimes planning to stay for long periods. So it was in Obama’s various households. His children, then called Roy and Rita, moved in soon after he returned. His sister Zeituni and cousin Ezra would live with the couple periodically while they attended schools in the city. Later, his mother’s son from another marriage would move in. At the same time, a succession of other family members dropped in for shorter durations, many of whom Ruth could not begin to identify.

  Nor were these young wives the only ones who found the situation stressful. For the Kenyan men, the demands of their new lives were also profound. On the one hand, they were urban professionals under pressure to provide for a vast extended network of family members back home who still had very little. But they were also still deeply rooted in the culture and ways of the bush, and what their role was in either locale or exactly how to bridge the gap was not always clear. Were they Kenyan villagers or downtown professionals? With one foot firmly placed in Luoland and another on Harambee Avenue, Obama in particular struggled to find his balance. Of the pressures facing this new and somewhat dislocated class of Kenyans, Andrew Hake, author of African Metropolis: Nairobi’s Self-Help City, wrote, “It is no wonder that there were some, living lives of insecurity and tension, heavily mortgaged and uncertain which of their friends they could trust, who succumbed in one way or another to such intense stress.”12

  In their first few months together Obama and Ruth lived much as they had in Cambridge. Ruth got a job as a secretary at the Nation newspaper while Obama applied his new econometric skills to the job at Shell. After work, they often went dancing at the new Starlight nightclub, the city’s hotspot, featuring Congolese music and an eclectic crowd reflecting Nairobi’s increasingly diverse population. Well aware that his moves were electrifying, Obama could not resist twirling Ruth extravagantly across the center of the dance floor as a small crowd clapped in appreciation. Some nights the couple danced until the early hours of the following morning. So bleary-eyed was Ruth by the time she got to work that her bosses let her go after only three months. “We were out all night so I wasn’t getting any sleep,” sighed Ruth. “I was exhausted. Oh, God, I was in a mess you know. I could not focus on anything.”

  However, Ruth began quite quickly to notice changes in Obama. Some nights he drank so much he could barely make it to the car and Ruth was afraid to let him drive them home. As he worked increasingly long hours, he often did not come home from work until well after midnight, stumbling to the door reeking of whiskey and perfume. At times he shouted at her with rage, calling her slow and stupid. And one night he astonished her with the news that he not only had been married a second time, but had a young son in Hawaii. “He just said he had a little son there and he was very proud of him,” said Ruth. “He had a little picture of him on his tricycle with a hat on his head. And he kept that picture in every house that we lived in. He loved his son. He never mentioned the wife, though. I knew nothing about her. But none of that bothered me. As I said, I was in love with a capital ‘L’ and that was that. I didn’t know anything about anything.”

  Despite Ruth’s growing misgivings and Obama’s own ambivalence, which he shared only with a handful of friends, the couple decided to get married by the end of the year. Propelled by the turbulent currents of their love affair, for either one of them to turn back would have been difficult. Ruth could hardly face returning to America and the failure that would have signified. Nor could Obama easily surrender the wife who had given him such cachet. And, in at least some respects, they still shared the intense passion that had consumed them back in Cambridge. So on Christmas Eve of 1964 they stood before a justice of the peace in the city registrar’s office as two of their friends looked on.13 The service was strictly bare bones. There was no ring, no gifts. As she reached out to take Obama’s hand before the ceremony began, Ruth hesitated for an instant. “I was thinking should I really marry this guy?” recalled Ruth. “I mean, how long was this going to last? I just had a feeling it was risky. But, you know, I went ahead with it.”

  AS THE OBAMAS BEGAN THEIR NEW LIFE together in the opening days of 1965, so Kenya also entered a critical new phase of development. Obama rode roughshod into both experiences. Within months he had thrust himself into the turbulent political debate of the day and assumed a public position that would put him at odds with the prevailing political powers for the better part of his career.

  During the first year of independence Jomo Kenyatta had devoted himself primarily to centralizing his powers and ensuring that any potential political challenge was neutralized. The first Cabinet, dominated by Kikuyus and several of Kenyatta’s own family members, had been put into place, which would color Kenyan politics for generations.14 Although the popular Luo leader Oginga Odinga had been appointed vice president of the new republic, the post had been deliberately defined with severely limited powers that muted his ability to challenge the president or his policies. With the inauguration of the Republic on December 12, 1964, and the appointment of Kenyatta as president, Kenya’s founding father had firmly asserted his personal authority by establishing a centralized executive authority, and this set the stage for his political dominance for years to come.

  Almost as important as the political shape of the new nation was its economic mooring. In his conversations with the departing British administrators during the days leading up to the declaration of the republic, Kenyatta had already committed himself to a mixed economy that would leave many aspects of the European-established infrastructure largely unchanged. Growth rather than redistribution was his priority, as was the maintenance of ties with foreign investors and multinational corporations. 15 The African nationalists had also already endorsed the controversial notion of extending private land titles begun during the colonial era, continuing a shift from the African tradition of communal property holding.16 The ongoing process of Africanization called for the installation of African employees throughout business and government and also the eventual shift in ownership of the nation’s assets into the hands of Africans through a steady process of growth. But the question of exactly whose hands would control those assets was not settled. To resolve some of these issues and to implement the economic program he had in mind, Kenyatta turned to a core group of his highest-ranking deputies under the guidance of a lingering expatriate community.

  The beating heart of the process was the new Ministry for Economic Planning and Development (MEPD) housed in the beige four-story Treasury Building on Harambee Avenue. Development planning—the notion that an infusion of resources paired with a workable program could provide self-sustaining growth—was all the rage in the underdeveloped world and in the West. Kenyatta had appointed Tom Mboya to be the office’s new minister along with Mwai Kibaki as his deputy. Some speculated that Kenyatta, ever wary of Mboya’s widespread political base, had given him the MEPD rather than a more prominent post such as the vice presidency or Ministry of Finance to undercut the power of his potential rival. But Mboya accepted the position with enthusiasm. As he saw it, the job presented an opportunity to shape the country’s economic structure and to deal head on with some of the thorny issues of land allocation and foreign investment that some left-leaning members of the KANU party were beginning to question.17

  In the opinion of many of the young economists fresh back from their overseas training, the MEPD was the place to be. Imbued with Mboya’s intelligence and zeal, the Ministry operated far more efficiently than most other government agencies and attracted a cadre of highly trained economists and planners. Many of them were deeply passionate and committed to their homeland’s potential for development, and they considered themselves a united force. Years later some of that close-knit club of junior economists, who have since gone gray, would fond
ly refer to the tired corridors of the MEPD as “home.” In the final weeks of 1964 that team was being carefully assembled.

  On a warm morning in December a genial Vermonter named Edgar O. Edwards sat in his second-floor office heavily scented by the scarlet bougainvillea just outside his window as he perused the résumé of a young economist he was about to interview for the job of planning officer. A professor at Rice University in Texas under contract with the Ford Foundation, Edwards was one of a number of expatriates who had been hired to provide technical and management expertise in the formative period of the uhuru government. Edwards was a sharp-minded economist, and due to his extremely close relationship with Mboya, he had been granted a wide range of responsibilities, including hiring.

  Edwards liked what he read. The candidate, Barack Obama, had done graduate work at Harvard University and now worked at Shell/BP, just a few doors down the street. One of the outgoing British managers had recommended Obama to Edwards for a planner’s job and, given the Ministry’s sweeping mission, it was precisely the kind of job that Obama had long dreamed about.

  When Obama arrived a few minutes later, Edwards was even more taken in. Not only was Obama well versed in econometrics and economic modeling, both of which the Ministry keenly needed, he was impeccably turned out in an elegantly cut suit and a royal blue silk tie. The only problem was that Edwards already had someone else in mind for the job, another young economist whom he had met at a wedding recently named Philip Ndegwa. A graduate of Alliance High School and Makerere University, Ndegwa was a versatile and soft-spoken Kikuyu who had already been pegged for advancement by Kenyatta’s inner circle. Edwards had no idea that the two men knew one another and decided to offer both of them a job as senior planning officers. In time, he reasoned, one of them would surely rise to the chief planning officer’s job, which would also soon be available. “Obama was an impressive guy, no doubt about it,” Edwards recalled in an interview in his home in Poultney, Vermont. “So I told him he could start as a planning officer and it was possible in six months or so we could make a decision about something more.”

  Obama was miffed. Here he was, up against Ndegwa already, a man he had helped to educate himself. But Obama restrained himself and said nothing about his rival; instead, he argued that he was well qualified for the chief planning officer’s job and asked for that position instead. “He was adamant that he was up to the post,” sighed Edwards. “But I did not feel I knew him well enough to give it to him. I gave him time to think about the planner’s job, but in the end he turned it down.”

  A few days later Obama ran into Francis Masakhalia, his old Maseno School friend who had recently accepted a job with the Ministry himself, and he angrily railed against Edwards’s offer. The specter of Ndegwa was only part of it. The job came with a salary of 2,000 Kenyan shillings. Masakhalia had accepted a position as an economist statistician at the same rate of pay, which he thought very reasonable. But Obama insisted it was not enough. “He said, ‘They are paying peanuts. I am not going to take it,’” recalled Masakhalia. “He said, ‘You bachelors, you don’t know what it’s like.’ And we said, ‘You with your foreign women and children. You always need more money.’”

  Then there was Ndegwa—always Ndegwa—a step and then a mile ahead. The truth was that Ndegwa’s difficulties with math were only part of what galled Obama about his rival’s success. Ndegwa was a circumspect man, ruminative and cautious in his outlook—all things that Obama distinctly was not. He too was married to a white woman. And Obama did not like him. His annoyance turned to outright anger when Ndegwa was eventually given the chief planner’s job, and just three years later he was promoted to Permanent Secretary of the Ministry. Ndegwa was only thirty years old when he was awarded the post, usually reserved for far more senior men. In time Ndegwa would hold some of the most prominent positions in Kenya’s government and business arenas and would advise the nation’s political leadership for generations. With each successive step he took, Obama resented him more deeply.

  Nor was Ndegwa particularly fond of Obama. Several close to Ndegwa felt that for all his success, he was self-conscious about his earlier difficulties with math and the fact that he did not get the Harvard degree he had set out to achieve. When Obama frequently pointed that out and publicly declared his superiority over the other man, this served only to widen the gap between them. “We all knew Obama had tutored Philip. We knew the problems Philip had because he was being pushed by his fellow Kikuyus for these big jobs,” explained Masakhalia. “But Obama could not let it alone. Every chance he got, he would say, ‘Philip knows nothing.’ And Barack was not going to take a job where he might have to work under him.”

  Obama’s encounter with the Ministry darkly presaged what was to come, for he would repeat the same laments time and again in coming years: The money was never enough, he was employed below his abilities, or those above him were out of their league. Among the close community of economists in Nairobi, Obama was well liked and deeply respected for his considerable skills, at least in the early years after independence. Many who started out at the MEPD would rise steadily in government, including Ndegwa, Masakhalia, and Kibaki, and they would all cross paths time and again. But some of the key players in this close-knit group were dismayed to see that Obama’s attitude was causing serious problems in the workplace, and by the decade’s end his troublesome reputation would become widespread. When his effrontery became so flagrant that Kenyatta himself took note, Obama’s predicament became another matter altogether. Some who had worked with him would reach out to try to help him. Others did not.

  Part of Obama’s difficulties clearly stemmed from his own public posturing and brazen disregard for the rules in later years. But it is also true that within the political culture of the time, criticism of or dissent from the ruling powers was increasingly forbidden. In a more forgiving political era, Obama’s bluntness might have been overlooked, thereby allowing his career to span a different arc. But it quickly became clear in the months after independence that critics could expect to be dealt with unsparingly. The first in a succession of political assassinations inscribed in the Kenyan history books was that of Pio Gama Pinto, a journalist and avowed communist who was gunned down in his own driveway in 1965. Pinto was closely aligned to Odinga, the spokesman for the opposition, and many believed his death was directly attributable to Kenyatta’s men.

  Obama’s own collision with the Kenyatta government extended over the course of four years, a simmering confrontation that spiked over several key events. It was triggered by the government’s celebrated blueprint for economic development, called “Sessional Paper No. 10, African Socialism and Its Application to Planning in Kenya.” The document, released by Mboya’s office in May of 1965, was a broad summary of the country’s philosophical underpinnings and specific programmatic plans.

  The paper was intended to address a growing cleavage within the KANU ranks between Kenyatta’s conservative supporters and a more radical group critical of some of his economic plans, rallying around the left-leaning Odinga. Kenyatta had never been an advocate of radical economic change of any kind, and in the early days of the new government’s formation he had swiftly emerged as a friend to both the British political establishment and its financial interests. Alarmed by government strategies that left much of the country’s pre-independence framework untouched, the radicals called for a more public-minded approach to land and economic policy on a number of fronts. They wanted less dependence on foreign capital, a quick end to emerging class divisions, and a redistribution of land that was being amassed in the hands of an emerging propertied elite.

  They also called for more rapid Africanization. But finding Africans qualified for the jobs that needed filling was a more complicated process than had been expected: Most Africans had virtually no business experience other than small-scale shops and even less in the sphere of management. Those Kenyans who had worked in the city in pre-independence days, such as Hussein Onyango, had been
employed largely as house servants for Europeans, and the very idea of a nine-to-five office job or something called credit was novel. Because of this, a substantial expatriate community remained in control of key positions for many years after independence. Of 1,690 of the highest-ranking professional jobs in Nairobi surveyed by the government’s Directorate of Personnel in 1967, Europeans still held two-thirds of them, and Africans occupied virtually all of the jobs at the lower end of the scale.18 Obama and many other Kenyans found the continuation of white control infuriating, and racial tension in the workplace was not uncommon during the several years of the transition.

  But Kenyatta was tired of debate over the country’s direction. Sessional Paper No. 10 was designed to nip it all in the bud. Though declaring the government in favor of neither capitalism nor communism, the paper called for a form of socialism that would draw on the best of African tradition while pursuing a vigorous path of economic growth. Shrouded in a rhetorical embrace of socioeconomic equality, the document nonetheless heartily embraced a free market economy and kept the door open to foreign investment. In a personal note introducing the paper, Kenyatta made crystal clear that far from encouraging discussion of such issues, the paper was intended to close the door on debate once and for all. “When all is said and done we must settle down to the job of building the Kenyan nation,” Kenyatta wrote. “Let this paper be used from now as the unifying voice of our people and let us all settle down to build our nation.”19