KAIKAI'S KICKER: Diplomacy - From Washington Okumu to Mark Too

Once upon a time, a country teetered on the brink of disaster. The name of that country is South Africa. The year was 1994. It was sometime in April 1994 that South Africa’s much-awaited transition to majority rule faced the prospect of imploding in ethnic violence. Two African sides—Nelson Mandela’s African National Congress (ANC) and Chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi’s Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP)—were locked in a deadly standoff that was playing out through deadly street clashes and violence in townships.

The conflict was part tribal and part political. The ANC wanted a central government flanked by weak provinces, while the Zulu-fronted Inkatha Party wanted a federal system. It is a bit like what Kenya experienced in the Lancaster independence process, where the Kenyatta-Oginga-led KANU party wanted a central government, while the Ngala-Muliro axis of KADU demanded Majimbo, or federation.

Back to South Africa, global diplomats scrambled to save South Africa’s first-ever all-race democratic elections that were only days away. Big names such as Henry Kissinger and Lord Peter Carrington were enlisted as the concerned international community pursued a mediated solution.

Coincidentally, there were no Africans in the diplomatic rescue team. An evangelist named Cassidy saw this as a gap and started advocating for the inclusion of an African named Washington Okumu in the mediation process. Okumu happened to be a Kenyan. He was named a special advisor to the Kissinger-Carrington mediation team. The warring parties were too far apart that the mediators left South Africa without starting the substantive negotiations. However, Washington Okumu was requested not to leave and instead tasked with giving it another go.

Okumu met the Inkatha leader, Chief Buthelezi, at an airport hangar and persuaded him that he had no future outside the first democratically elected all-race government and that he must participate in the elections. On April 19, 1994—only seven days before the election—Washington Okumu, a Kenyan, penned his signature as a witness to a memorandum of agreement signed by Nelson Mandela, then-President FW de Klerk, and Chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi. Whatever other intrigues were involved, Washington Aggrey Jalang’o Okumu, a Kenyan from Nyang’oma Village, Siaya County, went down in history as the man who saved South Africa’s all-race elections in April 1994.

A few years later, I became a journalist and met a man who was considered one of the most powerful and influential figures in the inner circle of then-President Daniel Arap Moi. I visited this man when he retired to his vast cattle farm in Eldoret. The late Mark Kiptarbei Too was a simple, personable, and humorous man. He shared many inside stories, some of which he required me to keep in absolute confidence. Then he told me about complex diplomatic assignments he was quietly deployed to by President Moi.

There was the story of an American hostage named Terry Waite, held in Lebanon by Shiite extremists. Mark Too told me how he was dispatched to Tehran with a special message to the powerful Iranian Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. Of course, I thought, that was truly high-end...

Then Mark Too told me how President Moi dispatched him to look for Mozambican rebel leader Alphonso Dhlakama, who was dragging his feet about participating in peace talks convened in Rome by Pope John Paul II. "Let us not embarrass the Pope," Moi instructed Too. Lonrho company tycoon Tiny Rowland gave Mark Too a private jet to find Dhlakama and bring him to Rome. He told me he did...

Then there was Ambassador Bethwel Kiplagat, nearly getting stuck somewhere in a Ugandan bush... Oh my, a long story for another day...

But in short, Kenyans used to perform some truly complex, even spectacular, diplomatic assignments many, many kilometres away from the KICC.