Battle for Mt Kenya vote: church, cultural groups revive 2022 wars

The church and traditional cultural groups are emerging as key battle formations in the scramble for the Mt Kenya vote between President William Ruto’s re-election campaign and the united opposition’s “One Term” forces led by former Deputy President Rigathi Gachagua.

The Mt Kenya elite and gatekeepers have split into three camps: clergy with congregations behind them, cultural leaders waving “community interests” banners, and senior public servants waving Cabinet and parastatal offices and titles as evidence of “development”.

The voter has been plunged into a vortex of being required to make a choice between essentially the same leading voices from the same actors, the same clergymen and women, and the same cultural and community leaders, now urging them to vote in the opposite direction from what they preached four short years ago.

With the elite split between the “One Term” and “Two Term” formations, families, congregations and communities have not been spared the tension and emotional turmoil.

This confusion was on display two months ago when police officers used rifles, teargas and hired goons to attack worshippers at an Anglican church in Othaya, Nyeri.

When Kenyans expressed outrage over the incident, top church leadership left it to the local clergy and elders to issue a low-key protest statement that was not commensurate with the enormity of the trauma inflicted on worshippers, infants and the elderly choking on tear gas in a rural church.

The rising tension is a throwback to 2022 during the fierce clash between Azimio and the then “Tangatanga” formations over control of the vote-rich region, with faith and cultural groups pulling their followers towards rival political camps based on personalities rather than issues of common concern.

Major social forces, largely Pentecostal churches and cultural groups and movements, went head to head with each other, each deploying its own tricks that left the community deeply divided.

The clergy opened their pulpits and congregations to partisan politics and partisan pronouncements in support of, or in opposition to, certain candidates.

The cultural groups and traditional movements carried out rituals in Mt Kenya and the Aberdares forests to invoke the intervention of ancestral deities, and to revoke old GEMA oaths binding the region against handing over the presidency to “outsiders”.

One highly publicised ritual involved the public shaving of decades-old dreadlocks worn by veteran Mau Mau legend, Field Marshal Muthoni Kirima, in a bid to pacify the restive spirits of departed freedom fighters, whose grievance of neglect by successive administrations she had been protesting for decades.

The intense recriminations between the church, which largely rooted for candidate William Ruto of the United Democratic Alliance (UDA), and the traditionalist front that rooted for Azimio candidate Raila Odinga, left deep wounds and scars among family members, congregations and communities.

Re-activate 2022 PAK cells

In an apparent effort to pacify the hostile ground ahead of the 2027 election, the “Two-Term” campaign has deployed a double-pronged approach to deal with targeted churches and denominations for the appeasement of their congregations.

In addition to showering friendly churches and their clergy with cash donations, gifts such as high-end motor vehicles, and appointments to State jobs, this camp has deployed charismatic preachers to re-activate the Pentecostal Alliance of Kenya (PAK) lobby to comb the region and stitch together a network of fellow clergy to spread the message of the campaign.

Two televangelists and popular charismatic preachers have been deployed to tour Mt Kenya West and Mt Kenya East, each to organise and activate the PAK campaign cells in preparation for the 2027 vote hunt.

One held a three-day crusade at the Kabiru-ini ASK showground in Nyeri, while his colleague has been touring the Mt Kenya East counties of Embu and Meru, holding crusades.

The PAK was credited with doing the heavy lifting in adopting candidate Ruto as the Pentecostal churches’ preferred choice and mobilising congregations to vote for him in 2022.

The PAK was then patronised by now First Lady Rachel Ruto and Dorcas Rigathi, Gachagua’s wife.

In readiness for the 2027 presidential vote, a draft PAK programme and budget proposal seen by The Standard features plans for a fully equipped co-ordination secretariat, a national launch involving bishops, pastors and church elders, followed by regional caucusing with their counterparts in the counties and down to the village level.

Other items include computers, cameras, Wi-Fi, transport, and youth and women mobilisation budgets.

The clerics are expected to use their positions and church events to generate media messages for media outlets in their localities, including vernacular radio stations.

The PAK mission statement states in part: “To be a present-day prophetic voice for Protestant church denominations in both church matters and in national politics...”

On their part, the united opposition has harnessed the power of cultural groups and historical filial relations between Mt Kenya region groups to reinvent a greater narrative that has roped in Wiper leader Kalonzo Musyoka and the Kamba community into the larger Gema political fold, rebranding Ukambani as Mt Kenya South.

Bringing together high-profile players, among them Gachagua, Kalonzo, Martha Karua, JB Muturi and Mithika Linturi, under the greater GEMA narrative has had the effect of suppressing Deputy President Kithure Kindiki’s profile from forming and gaining traction in the region.

This has diffused the thunder President Ruto had hoped to create to split Mt Kenya East and West in the quest to elevate Kindiki to assume the Mt Kenya spokesperson status by dint of the high office of Deputy President.

The expanded Gema

The expanded Gema was launched in late 2024 at All Saints Cathedral in Nairobi in a ceremony featuring the Kikuyu Council of Elders, the Akamba Council of Elders, the Mt Kenya Foundation, the GEMA Cultural Association, the Mbeere Council of Elders and the Njuri Ncheke Elders of Meru.

It has elevated the Kalonzo–Gachagua alliance and their “cousins” rallying call, forged under fire in the impeachment trenches in Parliament when Kalonzo mobilised Wiper MPs to stand by Gachagua in his hour of need.

However, the apparent snub and failure to extend the same collective kinship courtesies to Kindiki may leave him and his supporters sulking, having been treated like poor cousins who came visiting.

In 2022, Pentecostal church groups appeared to have emerged victorious with Ruto’s win, while the traditionalists lost with Raila.

It remains to be seen which group will win next year’s rematch.