Though their valuable contribution to the liberation struggle that led to Kenya independence in 1963 is widely forgotten and buried in the books of history, Mau Mau war heroes are still revered in the communities they came from.
Majority of these fighters who have since died with just a few of them remaining came from Mt Kenya region counties of Kiambu, Muranga, Nyeri, Nyandarua, Meru among others.
That is why in 2003 when the then new NARC government announced that a Mau Mau war general who had long been believed to be dead had been found alive, there was joy across Mt Kenya region and the country as a whole.
General Mathenge who is said to have crossed over to Ethiopia in 1955 at the height of Mau Mau war, was finally coming home from Ethiopia and was to be introduced to Kenyans during the Madaraka Day celebrations on May 1, 2003.
But as we all know now, this was just a 'big, fat con game', as US President Donald Trump would put it. The question, therefore is, who were the perpetrators of this whole fuss that took the whole country for a ride? We enumerate them below.
1. Veteran Journalist Joseph Karimi: The journalist was able to convince everybody that cared to listen to his well-woven lie that he had found General Mathenge in Ethiopia while on a normal work routine.
The government, two mainstream media houses (Standard Group and Nation Media Group) were the first to buy Karimi's 'hot' lie before it was sold to the rest of the country.
Nation and Standard sponsored among others Karimi's two different trips to Ethiopia where he was to break the big story of the newly found general.
He, however, knew that this was all con as General Mathenge's son, Mirugi Mathenge, was quoted by the Standard in 2013 as saying.
"I had accompanied journalist Karimi to Ethiopia to see the man (Lemma Ayanu), even before my mother went there, and I left without a doubt that the man was not my father.
"When I expressed my doubts to Karimi, he did not seem happy. I have tried to fight off the falsehoods peddled by Karimi to the best of my ability but you know he wields the power of the pen, and that is where I always lose out," Mathenge says.
2. George Milimo: This was the man who was reported to have 'discovered' General Mathenge and introduced him to Karimi. But according to Mirugi, he was a jobless drunk who spent his time drinking 'Ethiopian chang'aa' at low-end joints at the outskirts of Addis.
3. Lemma Ayanu: He was the backbone of the whole con game. Ayanu knew pretty well he was not Mathenge and had no Kenyan roots but had the guts to play the lead role in the whole saga.
After he was received by high government officials at JKIA, the 'general' could speak no Kikuyu, Kiswahili or English. Just Amharic. Who forgets their indigenous language?
But even with this unusual phenomenon the government still convinced that he was the real General Mathenge, went ahead to book him at a Nairobi five-star hotel.
Ayanu and his Ethiopian entourage blew up a record Sh3 million in one week and the rest remains history. Ayanu died in Ethiopia in 2010.
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