Who fired the shot that Killed JM Kariuki?

Who fired the shots that killed Josiah Mwangi Kariuki (JM) Kariuki? New evidence shows that the first bullet was fired by General Service Unit Commandant Ben Gethi in a Nairobi building and that it was not intended to kill and didn't kill him. The fatal shot was not fired until the fiery Nyandarua North legislator was driven behind Ngong Hills by men assigned by President Kenyatta's bodyguard, Senior Superintendent of Police Arthur Wanyoike Thungu. 

By early 1975, somebody had decided that Josiah Mwangi Kariuki - popularly known as JM - had to be eliminated. 

President Jomo Kenyatta was old and ailing. JM was believed to have his eyes on the presidency. Besides, JM had a dashing style and struck a powerful chord with the masses. It earned him bitter enemies in Kenyatta's State House. 

Not only did the dapper Nyandarua North MP give generously to charity, but his speeches were increasingly populist. He was known to have given the princely sum of KSh 80,000 to a public cause at a time when the President's highest known donation was KSh 3,000 to the Jomo Kenyatta College of Agriculture at Juja. 

His repeated attacks on the establishment did not help matters. On the 10th anniversary of Kenya's independence (1973), Mzee (Jomo Kenyatta) joyfully extolled the country's achievements while JM remarked elsewhere that Kenya had become a country of 10 millionaires and ten million beggars. 

The first danger signal to JM came a few days before Christmas 1974. JM was playing darts over a drink at Nakuru's Stags Head Hotel with Mark Mwithaga, his long-time friend and MP for Nakuru Town, when Assistant Foreign Affairs Minister Peter Muigai Kenyatta and Nakuru Mayor Mburu Gichua walked in. They strode right up to the two and one of them barked at JM: 'You have brought trouble here from Nyandarua. Be warned: This is Nakuru and we can finish you at any time!' 

Mwithaga recalls their deep surprise. 'Muigai and Gichua never even bothered to say hallo to us. They just lectured JM and left. We were very, very shocked'. Muigai, President Kenyatta's eldest son by his first marriage, was a key member of the Kiambu political mafia. 

If JM wished to dismiss the Stags Head encounter as an isolated incident, he was in for a surprise. 

In January 1975, a well-connected Assistant Minister asked JM out for lunch at the Norfolk Hotel to 'discuss a worrying matter'. At the mmeeting, the Assistant Minister spoke of a secret meeting by a politically influential group which had decided that JM must be eliminated. The conspirators, said the Assistant Minister, hoped to convince President Kenyatta that JM was organising a citizens' revolt against the government. They had shown Mzee selective extracts from JM's speeches. And although Kenyatta had not approved their plan, the conspirators believed they had sufficiently poisoned his mind. The friend advised JM to seel audience with the President and give him his side of the story. One hurdle stood in JM's way. The leading anti-JM conspirators also happened to be the gate-keepers of Kenyatta's State House. 

JM's youngest wife, Terry Wanjiru, recalls her husband's fruitless attempts to see the President in his final years. A chance presented itself at the wedding of Attorney-General Charles Njonjo on November 18, 1972. Cutting through the throng of dignataries, JM walked over to Mzee and gave him a warm handshake. An excited Kenyatta replied 'You're so lost JM. These days you don't come to say hallo to me!' To which JM replied, 'Mzee, I have always wanted to come to see you but your men have been blocking me'. 'Is that so?' was Kenyatta's reply and he promised to look into the matter. 

By early 1975 nothing had changed. JM was still unwelcome at State House yet he was increasingly desperate to meet Kenyatta. Driving home to Gilgil in early February 1975, JM came across Njenga Karume, the Nominated MP and inflential chairman of the powerful tribal organisation GEMA (Gikuyu Embu Meru Association), near Naivasha. JM flagged down Karume and the two chatted by the roadside. Karume, now the MP for Kiambaa, recalls: 'JM looked disturbed. He was not the confident man I knew. He began by thanking me for having stood by him in 1974 when a powerful clique wanted GEMA to campaign against him in the 1974 elections. Then he told me of the plot against his life and his difficulties in reaching Kenyatta'. Karume sympathised with JM's predicament and promised to secure him an appointment with the President. 

Time was running out fast. By early February, JM's enemies had laid down a scheme to 'sort out' their problem. They resolved to stage a series of events that would turn the public against JM and at the same time convince Kenyatta that JM was a boil that had to be lanced. A shadowy movement calling itself Maskini Liberation Organisation was formed as part of the propaganda campaign. Since JM presented himself as the 'voice of the poor' the public would readily identify the movement's violent activities with him. Leaflets allegedly issued by the movement were printed and distributed in different towns. They bore the names of JM, Charles Rubia and five others as trustees of the Maskini Liberation Organisation, all of them 'outsiders' to the tight clique around Kenyatta. 

Suddenly a spate of bomb hoaxes hit Nairobi. Anonymous calls would be made to police and newspaper offices that a bomb was about to go off. In the second week of February, a bomb exploded at the Starlight Discotheque on the edges of the city centre. There were no fatalities but the message was clear: Not all bomb alarms were false. Someone called the Central Police Station claiming that Maskini was behind the discotheque blast and there would be another bomb at the Tour Information Office, next to Hilton Hotel. A bomb went off there two hours later. 

In Parliament that week, Embu East MP Njagi Mbarire asked the Vice-President and Minister for Home Affairs Daniel arap Moi to confirm or deny the existence of the Maskini Liberation Organisation. Moi declined to answer the question, citing ongoing investigations. Kamukunji MP Maina Wanjigi ventured that the VP was being non-commital because Maskini Liberation Organisation was the creation of government operatives. The conspirators were growing impatient. They met secretly at Nakuru's Midland Hotel on Wednesday, February 26, 1975, and again at State House, Nakuru, the following day. The JM matter, it was decided, had to be settled that weekend. 

Mzee Kenyatta had travelled to Gatundu for the weekend when the two Nakuru meetings took place. Evidence would later emerge that Kenyatta's chief bodyguard, Wanyoike Thungu, attended the Midland Hotel meeting and arranged the discussion at State House. JM, meanwhile, was becoming apprehensive. His doctor advised him to take a few days rest against stress. A friend called Elizabeth Koinange booked the two of them onto an OTC (Overseas Trading Company) bus bound for Mombasa on Friday, February 28. At the last minute a friend, Isaac Macharia, dissuaded the MP from going to the Coast. He was lucky. A bomb exploded in the bus he would have taken, killing 27 people and injuring 100 others. 

The plotters' February 27 meeting at State House, Nakuru, had resolved that JM be put on a 24-hour surveillance until the 'job' was done. A friend who had borrowed the MP's car noticed that he was being trailed by a well-known police reservist, Patrick Shaw, in a white Volvo. He reported the incident but JM had more pressing matters to think about. The next day GSU Commandant Ben Gethi, who had had been a close friend of JM, had called to alert him of a plan to implicate him in the city bombings and have him jailed without trial. Gethi pressed him to meet the country's security chiefs and explain his innocence. But the MP was adamant that. Witnesses later quoted him as saying: 'Why should I explain my innocence before anybody has openly accused me? I will wait until they arrest me and I'll prove my innocence'. Within two hours, Gethi was on the line again. He told JM that he had thought over the matter and convinced that JM's best option was to informally meet the security team 'in a friendly atmosphere'. Gethi promised to be at the meeting to ensure JM's security. 

JM finally caved in to the GSU chief's pressure when the two men met at the International Casino the next day. The meeting was set for Sunday, March 2. That was the day JM would disappear, later to be found dead murdered in the Ngong Hills forest. That Sunday morning Gethi visited JM at home. It was a rather unusual visit, as the Parliamentary Probe Committee later noted, but Gethi insisted that it 'was just a normal call to a friend's house'. 

Investigations now show that Gethi had taken to JM a pistol he had promised him, to guarantee his safety during the Security Committee meeting. Witnesses testified that Gethi's visit was so secretive that he entered JM's bedroom instead of waiting for his host to be woken up. 

At midday JM went to the Ngong Racecourse, where he and Gethi had a brief chat. Later in the evening he popped in at the Hilton. Gethi would deny before the Parliamentary Probe Committe that the two of them met, but witnesses said they had seen him in the company of reservist Patrick Shaw. 

Witnesses have told the Nation that several things happened at the Hilton while JM was away. At around 5 p.m. Patrick Shaw and a Mr. Young, also a police reservist, chased away all parking boys who usually hang around outside the hotel. Some taxi drivers were also asked to leave. It has also emerged that then CID head Ignatius Nderi and then deputy director of the National Youth Service Waruhiu Itote were seen briefly at the Hilton with the two men. One of them was Pius Kibathi, a trained policeman who never joined the force, and the other Councillor John Mutung'u of Olkejuado County Council. JM arrived at the Hilton's Coffee House at about quarter to seven. He was about to settle down with a friend when Gethi suddenly appeared. He excused himself and walked away with the GSU boss. Apparently Gethi had not to find JM with anybody else. On noting the dilemma on Gethi's face, JM quickly excused himself as he told Macharia: 'By the way, Gethi and I were to meet, let me have some minutes with him'. 

A hotel security man, Mr. Fred Sing'ombe, saw JM and Gethi enter a Peugeot station wagon behind the hotel. JM's white Mercedes Benz, Registration Number KPE 143, was left in front of the Hilton Hotel, where the family found it when the MP disappeared. 

His movements from the hotel have for years been a mystery, even to the House Select Committee. But the Nation has now established that the two men went to the Special Branch headquarters at Kingsway House in Muindi Mbingu Street. Gethi and JM entered the building through a back entrance and headed for the office of a senior Special Branch officer. In the room were the senior officer himself, Kenyatta security chief Wanyoike Thungu, the NYS's Itote, CID director Nderi and reservist Patrick Shaw. JM was apprehensive to see Thungu in the meeting. The two had never had time for each other ever since JM worked as Kenyatta's private secretary in the early 1960s. He also knew of Thungu's roles in the Nakuru meetings which plotted against him. 

At Kingsway House, Gethi left JM to be questioned by Nderi and Shaw on the bombings. The MP, says a senior retired policeman, answered all the allegations raised by Nderi and Shaw until the two appeared satisfied that he had nothing to do with the bombings. Thungu, who remained silent, then took over the questioning. He wanted to know why JM had been 'going around the country insulting Kenyatta'. JM denied that he had ever insulted Kenyatta and that all he had talked about was social justice for all Kenyans, which was quite in line with Kenyatta's beliefs. 

Thungu then touched on a raw nerve. He asked JM to account for some money he allegedly received for schorlarships while serving as a private secretary to Kenyatta. He also referred to money issued as compensation to Mau Mau fighters who had lost their land during the independence struggle, which was handled by JM when he was an assistant minister for Agriculture with special duties. Itote, who had worked closely with JM at the NYS (National Youth Service), talked of money from the Chinese Government which JM had allegedly received on behalf of the service. 

The exchange between JM and Thungu became heated. Thungu, says an impeccable source, lost his temper and punched JM viciously in the mouth, knocking out three of his teeth. JM's body found at the City Mortuary eight days later had three lower teeth missing. Instinctively, the bleeding JM reached for a pistol in his pocket, the same gun he had been given by Gethi that morning. But Gethi, the only person in the room who knew JM had a gun, was quicker on the draw. He whipped out his service revolver and shot JM in the upper right hand arm to protect Thungu. As JM collapsed in a pool of blood, Thungu phoned a senior politician to inform of what happened. It is not known what the senior politician said. However, evidence received by the JM Probe Committee and later corroborated by Gethi in a confession to JM's sister many years later, stated that after the telephone call, Thungu called three men who had been waiting in another room (the three were named in other circumstances by the Probe Committee). 

He ordered them to handcuff JM and take him to a car downstairs. They had been brought to Kingsway House by Nderi to give evidence on JM's alleged involvement in the city bombings. The vehicle into which a bleeding and wailing JM was bundled belonged to a councillor, John Mutung'u of Ngong ward, the area in which JM's bullet-ridden body was discovered by two Maasai elders the following morning. Councillor Mutung'u was later summoned by the Parliamentary Probe Committe and asked to bring with him his car, a green Peugeot station wagon with a red inscription: 'Meat Park'. 

In it's final report, the JM Probe Committe recommended that Councillor Mutung'u be investigated alongside Thungu, the Minister of State Mbiyu Koinange, his bodyguard Peter Karanja, Nakuru Mayor Mburu Gichua, then Nyandarua District Commissioner Stanley Thuo, NYS deputy director Waruhiu Itote and JM's rival in the 1974 General Election, one Evan Ngugi. A member of the JM Probe Committe who talked to the Nation disclosed that it suspected that Mbiyu Koinange was the person Thungu talked to on the telephone after JM had been shot. 

The MPs established that Thungu had driven to Nairobi from Nakuru by a discreet route on the afternoon of March 2. Questioned by the committee, Thungu insisted that he spent March 2 with the President at Gatundu. The President, of course, couldn't be summoned to verify this. A confidential witness testified before the Probe Committee that Gethi remained alone at Kingway House until past midnight, chain smoking and talking on a police radio. 

Before his death on September 12, 1994, Gethi confessed to JM's sister, Rahab Mwaniki, that he had taken JM to Nderi and Shaw, for questioning on the bombs. He said he had left JM with the two senior police officers and returned much later to find a Mr. Pius Kibathi and two other men dragging a bleeding and groaning JM to a vehicle behind Kingsway House. But other sources say Gethi never left Kingsway House until JM had been taken away. 

In his memoirs 'A Love Affair with the Sun', Sir Michael Blundell, a well-connected former politician and businessman, said one some of the cartridges recovered from the place where JM's body was found in Ngong were fired from a pistol belonging to a presidential guard he did not name. The House Committee established that two different pistols were used to kill JM. Clearly, he was shot at different places, first at Kingsway House and later at the Ngong Hills scene of murder. 

The guns were either a .38 Walther or a .38 Mann, both of which also happened to be the pistols used by members of the GSU Recce Company. Officers in the Recce Company are used for special duties, the main one being providing escort to the President and visiting heads of state. Probe Committee members believed that JM's murder was a foregone conclusion and would have taken place even if Thungu had not provoked the shooting at Kingsway House. 

http://www.kenyan-post.com/2013/04/detailed-report-on-how-kenyatta-killed.html

Time follows time and time follows time

Time follows time and time follows time and time
follows time. It is endless, 

One equals two and three more minutes and you're
dead. Castrated ambition cloaking my sense of belonging. 
The birds flap their wings but they are about
as free as fish in an aquarium. 

They proclaim liberty
only to ally themselves with servitude. The drinks get
drunk and the drunks get drenched. The bars stay open
later and later. 

Flapping signs blinking on and off that
never promise anything but escaping. Words jumble
onwards, words jumble onwards, words jumble onwards.
There is a same-ness to every single day. 

It begins to fuck with the mind and it is time we learn to think for
ourselves but we can't because the rent is due. We most continue to 
kow-tow to the man who writes the cheque. Laugh at his humour 
and sell the heart. Nothing is for free.

I find I am getting lazier by the day and the songs play but I
don't understand them anymore. So I smash the radio to the
ground and stomp it to death. Makes me feel I am in control
of my destiny. In a frenzied dash of energy I tire myself
into submission.
Now I have become a perfect citizen because
I question nothing and smile like a grinning jack-ass. 

The television is always on. That way I don't have to use my
imagination. I can drown with the rest of the sheep.....

stay alive.

I died in the Malaysian Incident

There she  finds him 
in the Hall of Lost Remembrance
Finds him lost among the arts there
Finds him
wanting . . . something

she can't remember how to speak
Can't remember . . . what words are for
Can't remember . . .
Turns to face him . . . puzzled

she says
“How is it young one
that I do not hear you?”

You do not hear me because I am not here

“How is it I see you
touch you
Know the look of your face
But I cannot know your heart . . . ?”

You can not touch my heart
Because I no longer have one
You can not touch my thoughts
Because my thoughts are my own

“How can this be
I have no small talent in this 
How can this be?”

I died in the Malaysian Incident
was dead for the longest time
in fact was never brought all the way back
And so I feel nothing
nothing at all
I walk through the hole in the zero of everyday

“Young one
should I feel pity for you?”

No more than for any other survivor
And a part of me still wonders
Are all survivors are worthy?

They stand silent for a small eternity
Looked upon by the twisted art wreckage 
The tortured memories of a by gone day

He holds forth a slip of parchment
She takes it
Holds it to the light
And finds the poem written there
By this young machine

William C. Burns, Jr.

Management Or Handling ? A Look at insurance claims

Claims Management Or Claims Handling? Issues & Concerns

The claims settlement and underwriting functions are the two most important aspect of the functioning of an insurance company. On taking out an insurance contract, the customer’s anticipations are:

I. Acceptable insurance coverage, which does not leave them high and dry in time of

Need, at the right pricing.

ii.   Timely    delivery    of   ambiguous    free   policy documents with relevant endorsements /

Warranties / conditions / guidelines.

iii. Should a claim happen, proper communication and quick settlement to his contentment

Here, we shall be concentrating on (iii)- occurrence of a claim, as (i) and (ii) relate to the underwriting function. It should however be noted that proper general insurance underwriting of the risk does facilitate claim settlement. Contrasting life insurance, where all policies necessarily result in claims – either maturity or death. In general insurance not all policies result in claim. It is approximated that around 15% policies in general insurance result in claims. Claim settlements in general insurance thus have their own distinctiveness and therefore require proper handling. It should be noted that how 15% of policy holders are attended to is of great importance since the services being rendered will determine the attitude of the customers. How the service being rendered is perceived by the customer needs to be kept in mind. Do we have a mechanism to find out the same?

Claims Handling

Insurance companies in Kenya and indeed much of

Africa  have  previously  been  handling  the  claims rather than managing them. Typically claims handling involves –

i. As soon as a claim is reported, the insurance company checks as to whether the cover was in force at the time of loss and whether the peril is covered under the policy

ii. A surveyor or adjuster is appointed to do the assessment and submits the report.

iii. Insurance company examines the report, calls for relevant supporting documents.

iv. On receipt of survey report and documents, the same are examined. The claim file is processed and settlement is offered.

In  this  way  claims handling is  thus more process oriented and does not pay adequate attention to the monitoring and  claims cost  aspect  as  also  to  the service parameters.

Claims management aspects to consider

With cut-throat competition in the local market and indeed much of Africa, the insurance companies have

to go much beyond the handling of claims. The following aspects need to be kept in mind.

I. General insurance is a market driven service industry, the customer has to be kept satisfied. With so many options available, a customer once lost is most likely a loss forever. Claim settlement can be used as a marketing tool. In addition bringing in a new customer is more costly than retaining the existing ones.

II. In a largely de-tariffed market such as ours, pricing will be the key factor. Proper claims management & quick settlement at optimal cost will help keep the

Price competitive.

III. A dissatisfied customer is a bad publicity. It has all the   potential   to   damage   the   reputation  of   the company.  A  majority  of  the  customers’  complaint

Relate to claims. It should be the exertion of any prudent insurance company to ensure that such complaints do not occur in the first place and in some cases  if  they  do  occur  it  is  attended  promptly,

Efficiently and transparently.

IV. IRA guidelines on ‘claims management’ effected in July 2012 stipulate certain obligation on the part of insurance  company  including time  limit  for  certain

aspects of the claim process. This is a regulatory requirement and insurance company personnel at every level must understand its implication.

V. Delayed claim settlement generally result in higher

Claims cost. Claims cost is a very important factor to profitability.

Why do delays take place in claim settlement?

Nobody will buy the excuse that the claimant is not forthcoming with documents and other requirements for settlement of claim. Is it because of the delay in submission of survey reports? If so, who is responsible for this? Are we undertaking necessary follow up steps for timely submission of report? The surveyors are duty bound as per IRA regulations to submit report within a stipulated time. Are there service level agreements with the service providers?. Even after submission of report and completion of other requirements how much time does it take to finally issue settlement cheque and its delivery to the claimant? Do we have a system to monitor it? How about our accounts department people meeting the claimants   or   intermediaries   for   a   change   to appreciate “the sensitivity of the client”

VI.  Claims  documentations must  be  monitored  as they progress. A little time spent thinking clearly right from the start will evade lot of unnecessary and time consuming patch-ups and straightening out later on. Unpleasant decisions bore timely with proper justification of the resolution is better than deferment which is bound to create an unpleasant situation.

VII. Proper underwriting is essential as defective underwriting results  in  complication at  the  time  of settlement of  claims. The  underwriting  and  claims department     should           not          work       in             segregation. Furthermore Flawed underwriting may saddle the companies with unwanted claims. Any defect / ambiguity in the documents issued invariably goes against insurance companies. It is therefore of utmost

Importance that the client is made aware in very clear terms about what exactly is covered and what is not. There should be a strong system of audit for examining the documents being issued.

VIII. Lot of resources are spent when claim cases go to alternative dispute resolution methodologies such as Ombudsman or Court. Besides, adverse comment bring bad name, when we are held liable. Insurance companies are invariably at the receiving end. The “watch and wait” attitude must change.

IX.  Claims-settlement  have  social  service  angle which must be met. In times of natural calamity lot of bad publicity comes to insurance company for delay in settlement of claims. This is in spite of the fact that in such situation insurance companies goes out of their way to settle claims at times even on ex-gratia basis. In any case claims relating to the assets of weaker section needs to be attended on priority. So do the health / medical related claims.

In view of the above, it is necessary that Insurance companies manage the claims rather than handling them. Insurance companies have a corporate claims management philosophy Managing claims involves not only claims processing but goes on to cover the entire range of claims management – strategic role, cost monitoring role, service aspect as also the role of people handling the claim.

Out of the total outgo on account of claims it is estimated  that  around  10  to  15  %  is  because of leakages,  frauds  and  inflated  claims.  In  absolute

terms this will be quite substantial amount. If this can be effectively checked, the benefit can be passed on to the customer by way of reduced premium rates.

Claim Reserving

Claims reserving is also an important part of the overall claim management process. Adequacy of claims reserving is important for any insurance company to meet its claim obligation.

In fact in a study in USA of the insurance companies going “bust” 34% (highest) was on account of insufficient reserves (www.irm.com) the analysis of

reserves and the process that goes into making the same and its comparison with past experience can help address such important concerns as;

·       Company’s   likely   future   obligations   on account  of  claims  and  its  ability  to  meet

them. This aspect is usually reserved under

IBNR (Incurred but Not Reported)

·       Solvency  aspect  and  assessing  the  true picture of the financial health.

·       Analysis of claims trend can help to timely initiate remedial action. e.g. restricting a particular class of business.

·       Effectiveness of loss control measure.

·       Average time being taken for the settlement of a claim and the claim settlement ratio and

how it compares with other operators in the market.

The claims management philosophy involves, the company  having  written  corporate  philosophy  on

claims management setting out the broad approach aiming to provide high quality service. It should specify the nature of claim service at each stage of the claim process, the speed of the claim service.

Attitude of the claims Team

It should be ensured that claim department which has to  deal quickly and fairly with all the claims have competent and well trained staff with right attitude. The claimant should not be treated as an intruder. In fact he is  reason for  our  existence. The  time-gap between reporting of claim and its ultimate settlement needs to be reduced to the bare minimum. System of time-audit for self-check may be introduced. The approach of people handling claims is important. Emerging challenges cannot be faced with past mind set and approaches. The personnel of insurance company should therefore change their present attitude, behaviour and must show flexibility to effectively   respond   to   the   requirements   of   the markets. They should thus exhibit empathy.  Mere

‘Sympathy’ will not do.

Let’s settle the claim gracefully. Let’s enjoy good image on that count. Let’s enjoy the confidence and

Good will of our customer for that is the ultimate litmus test for our service. In the likely changes that are going to take place as can be visualized (that is a topic for another day)

Bench Mark

The differentiating factor amongst the various players in   the   market will   continue to   be   the   pricing, innovative product lines and the quality of service in general and more particular the claims service. If the customer does not get good service everyone is going to pay the penalty and penetration of the industry will continue to be derisory comparatively to other aspects of finance.

Let’s see the writing on the wall and let’s responds to the needs of the hour positively. We are capable of that -- there is no doubt about it. Our capability commitment must be reflected in our conduct and behaviour so as to change the prevailing perception about us and our service.