Even as chief secretary, Nyachae was conscious that something was not working with the government's conflict of interest regulations. He did not believe that civil servants should be kept out of business. The civil servants of the previous generation, like his father, Chief Nyandusi, not only had been permitted to have parallel business interests but had been actively encouraged to do so by the British colonial government. But Nyachae did wish that the irregularities could be controlled and the rumors quelled. His solution would have been
a standing committee of well-respected, honest, professional people who would deal with individual investments of people in public office [both elected and appointed]. One should be required to submit to them a report [each year] of all one has and account for every single cent one has invested. They should have a staff to analyze returns and investigate where investment has been very large. That would curtail abuse.
But he was unsuccessful in getting his proposal accepted.
Class and the Next Generation
Most people are concerned to provide not only for themselves but for the future of their children as well. The four subjects of this study had stood on the shoulders of their parents and joined the small percentage of the truly advantaged in Kenya. It would be unnatural if they did not want to help their children achieve a similarly privileged status. As we are about to see, they largely succeeded. Their offspring differ considerably in how well they are doing, but most of them belong in the same broad status group as their parents. In their occupations, friendships, and social orientations they are part of the matajiri (well-to-do), although not yet in terms of their independent wealth. The successful transmission of this group membership to the next generation is one of the clearer indications that class formation is well advanced in Kenya.
All of Charles Karanja's six children went to respected primary and secondary schools in the Nairobi area, and four of them received post—A-level training. Karanja was a strong family man and was usually home to eat with his wife and children each night. He also was a passionate believer in the importance of education and was strict in his insistence on study and good grades. His wife, Philomena, gave up her teaching career to manage their farms and raise the family. This was somewhat
― 243 ―
unusual. Most educated Kenyan women stay in paid employment, as they have servants to run their homes and as they are not required to participate in the social side of their husbands' careers. Philomena put strong pressure on the children to succeed as well. But the traditional formality and discipline of the African father-child relationship did not work well for Karanja in the new affluence in which his family was being raised. He was careful not to spoil his children with too-ready access to money, but as they got into their teenage years they could not attach the same importance to school grades that he did. "He sees your report [card] and tells you off for one hour. It made me feel rebellious. The more he pushed, the less we did. . . . You felt you could never do enough for him." In short, the social setting was more like the one in which American middle-class families find themselves. It was not at all like the one in which Karanja had grown up, where a lapse in effort consigned one to a lifetime of farm work.
At different points rebelliousness undid most of his children. Two sons made it to the University of Nairobi but failed because of alcohol-related problems. Two other children insisted on setting their sights below the university level. One son went to Canada to pursue his B.A. but dropped out after two years to become a lay preacher.
Despite these educational disappointments the children were launched on careers that seemed likely to keep most of them part of the matajiri, at least when they inherited their father's property. One daughter was married to a successful businessman. The other children all eventually joined his businesses in various capacities. Karanja was struggling with learning to delegate enough responsibility to them, and it seemed likely that they would become good enough to at least hold onto their father's gains. Despite Karanja's best efforts, none of his children were yet as successful as he was, but they hadn't dropped out of their father's newly formed class either. All of them had their own cars, and they were quite urban and matajiri in their social lives and orientations.
Harris and Martha Mule have two daughters, Nthenya ("early morning"), born in 1971, and Ndinda ("stayed for too long"), born in 1983. Nthenya was in an elite Catholic girls high school in Nairobi—Loreto Convent, Msongari—when the interviews for this study were conducted. (See plate 30.) Although she was bright, she was doing only moderately well in school at that point. She remarked that with regard to her studies her father was
"cool." You know he wants you to do well, but he never shouts at you when you don't. He says, "I see you had a problem. What was it?" He always goes to parents' days, et cetera. You can talk to him if you need to. Mother is the one who applies more pressure. She's always saying how well she did and how I'm not studying hard enough.
― 244 ―
Her parents were uncertain how to handle Nthenya in the atmosphere of relative affluence in which she was being educated. Harris was pessimistic about the ability of parents like himself to surmount their children's privileged environment. He remarked:
The children of the old chiefs have not done well. (Nyachae is an exception—and is only one of his father's hundred-odd children.) [The] same will happen to the children of today's rich. They don't do well in school and are poorly disciplined, poorly motivated workers.
Nonetheless, the Mules did succeed with Nthenya. Martha had given up her job as a secretary to raise the two daughters. They found the marginal income tax rates on her earnings too great to justify the sacrifice. They regularly took Nthenya with them to work on their farm, hoping to keep her grounded in Kenyan reality by so doing. She also was taught to cook and liked it. She passed her O-level exam in the First Division, did A-levels at Kenya High, and went to Grinnell College in the United States with a scholarship.
Although Ishmael and Martha Muriithi lived right outside Nairobi, their children had a different experience from that of most matajiri offspring. They were raised neither in a housing tract, as were the Mules, nor on a large estate, as were the Karanjas. Instead, they grew up working a small, family farm.
From the start it was manual labor—feeding chickens, milking the cows, grazing the cows before [the farm] was fenced, [helping] to clear the new land [with] father. . . . There is nothing [we] have not done. . . . [He taught us] "The more you do, the more you get."
All four children were sold on farm life and wanted to work their own someday.
The Muriithis went to Hospital Hill Primary School, one of the best of the government schools. The two eldest then boarded at Alliance High School, where their father had gone. They went on to the University of Nairobi, and Ann Wangeci became a dentist and Elijah Waicanguru a medical doctor. These educational institutions gave them a peer group of upwardly mobile rural youth, not the children of the affluent. (Grace had gone to England to take a degree in music, and Munene was in Jamhuri High School when this study was done.)
It seems likely that the environment was more responsible for the success of the four than was their father. He cared about and advised them, but he was away a great deal. "He'd come [home] after you were asleep or be gone before you were up. [You] never knew when he'd be there." To compensate, his wife Martha also quit her job and worked the farm full time. The rearing of the Muriithi offspring took place in a
― 245 ―
setting more like that of their father's than that of the other matajiri children.
Despite his large number of children,[
*] Simeon Nyachae devoted considerable time to them. They obviously mean a great deal to him. "When he works hard he says he is doing it for the children." Even when he was chief secretary he would be home at 7:30 each night and spend an hour playing with the small children. He then would dine with his wife and the older children.
He had observed that children in polygamous marriages usually pull away from their father, identify with their mothers, and are factionalized accordingly. Nyachae was determined that this should not happen to his family, "so he raised us together to give everyone an equal opportunity." Once they were in secondary boarding schools, rather than separating to their mothers' homes, they would spend half their holidays working on their father's farm near Nakuru and the other half with their paternal grandmother on the Sotik farm.
[Nyachae] has always been a disciplinarian [with us children. The farm labor that we did] was for the purpose of making us realize that everything one got had to be worked for. . . . We probably did more work on average than other well-to-do kids.
The discipline was particularly strict around education.
At the end of each school term he would read the [grade] reports in detail in front of all of us and reprimand us where necessary. He followed progress in studies very keenly. He followed Charles's reports closely even when he was in Britain as a graduate student.
Despite his demanding schedule Nyachae visited their many schools for their parent conferences himself. He did have the traditional African formality in his relations with his offspring. "At the same time he made an effort to understand us as individuals" and tailored his careful advice accordingly.
Nyachae's wives devoted full time to the family's affairs. Although educated Kenyan women generally do subordinate their careers to their husbands', it is unusual for them to give them up altogether. The fact that the wives of all of the four men did so speaks to the great strain that the men's workaholic devotion to their senior positions put upon their families.
Most of Nyachae's children went to rural secondary schools, thereby having the same kind of upwardly mobile peer group as the Muriithis.
― 246 ―
Five of them subsequently went overseas to Britain, India, and the United States for university. None of them attended Kenyan universities. They entered professions such as nursing, hotel management, law, business management, and insurance sales. Nyachae was disappointed in the performance of only one of his children, and he was having him trained to enter one of his businesses.