Chapter Eight—
The Moi Presidencies and Their Impact on Karanja and Muriithi

The Succession

President Jomo Kenyatta died on August 22, 1978, and Vice-President Daniel arap Moi, a Kalenjin, succeeded him. An era had ended, and not all were happy at the way the new one was beginning. The Kikuyu's matajiri leadership believed that it was necessary to provide differential benefits to their ethnic group if its workers and peasants were not to split from them along class lines. Such favoritism required Kikuyu control of the presidency.

At least some Kikuyu had been prepared to take drastic action to achieve that end: When Tom Mboya seemed the heir apparent to Kenyatta in 1969, he was assassinated. Immediately thereafter the Kikuyu engaged in mass oathing, pledging to keep the presidency among their number. The Gikuyu, Embu, Meru Association (GEMA) was founded in 1971 to consolidate the political power of these three closely related peoples. J. M. Kariuki was assassinated in 1975 when his populist campaign for the succession threatened to open up the much-feared class schism among the Kikuyu. And in 1976 a move was made to change the constitution to prevent the vice-president, who was Daniel arap Moi, from becoming president on the death of Kenyatta.

Other Kikuyu politicians, however, felt that it would provoke unnecessary ethnic strife to have another Kikuyu president. Apparently they believed either that the Kikuyu had already gained sufficient advantage and would continue to prosper under equal treatment, or that they could render Moi a figurehead president. Whatever their motives, Mwai Kibaki, then minister of finance and an M.P. from Nyeri, and Charles Njonjo, the attorney general and an ex officio M.P. from Kiambu, op-

posed the change in the constitution. In the end, Kenyatta also supported the status quo, and Daniel arap Moi succeeded him.

Moi's presidency was quickly confirmed by election, as the constitution required. His candidacy was uncontested; in Africa voters are rarely allowed to determine who will be head of state. In any case, election to the president's office does not guarantee that one will continue to occupy it on a continent where coups have been rife. It is widely believed that a plot to prevent Moi's succession to the presidency was aborted only by the circumstances of Kenyatta's death.^[*] Moi faced a politically mobilized and nervous Kikuyu who also dominated the officer corps of the armed forces and police.

To consolidate his position, Moi declared that his was a "nyayo" government, that is, that he was following in the "footsteps" of Kenyatta. He nominated Mwai Kibaki to the vice-presidency and kept him as his minister of finance. Charles Njonjo was retained as attorney general and was subsequently made minister for constitutional affairs. Almost all Kikuyu (and other) politicians and senior civil servants were able to retain their positions.

While stressing continuity, Moi created an era of good feeling by releasing all political detainees, assembling a broad multiethnic coalition, and instituting popular new government programs. Free milk for school children was one of them. In 1978 and 1979 satisfaction with the Nyayo government seemed virtually universal. Meanwhile, Charles Njonjo emerged as the leader of Moi's political supporters and orchestrated gradually increasing pressure on those Kikuyu politicians who had been most prominent in GEMA and in the movement to change the constitution. A leader of both had been Njenga Karume, who had been Charles Karanja's friend and immediate neighbor in Limuru until 1974.

Bureaucratic Power under the New Regime

Daniel arap Moi's election to Kenya's highest office changed the power relationships between the presidency and the public service in important ways. If we apply the Weberian model for analyzing administrative power (see figure 5.2), we can see that Moi was in a much weaker position than Kenyatta was in dealing with his civil service.

[*] For all of the foregoing, see Joseph Karimi and Philip Ochieng, The Kenyatta Succession (Nairobi: Transafrica, 1980). They present the documentary evidence for an anti-Moi plot, but it seems strange that the plan was so easily foiled and that most of those who were behind it continued to live in Kenya afterward. It is conceivable that release of this "information" was designed to throw off balance those who opposed Moi and to consolidate the power of those who supported him. Either scenario points to the insecurity of Moi's position.

Of course, on matters of class interest the political elite and the bureaucracy stood together. Both favored a situation in which the lower classes were accommodated through patron-client networks while the direct interests of the matajiri, and to a lesser extent the petty bourgeoisie, received primacy. This led naturally to intense competition among patrons for the resources they needed to maintain the loyalty of their clients.

Thus with regard to ethnic and regional interests neither the elective nor the administrative leadership was united. At the start of his presidency Moi's governing coalition was much broader than Kenyatta's had been. Although the core of his support came from his own Kalenjin group, Moi relied on backing from prominent politicians from virtually every Kenyan ethnic group, including the factions of the Kikuyu headed by Njonjo and Kibaki. Whereas the Kenyatta "inner cabinet" had presented a united front that favored the Kikuyu on issues of regional distribution, Moi's political circle was divided and incorporated most of Kenya's ethnic conflicts.

The bureaucracy was similarly divided, but the police, much of the armed forces, and a number of key ministries were led by Kikuyus who had exercised considerable power on behalf of the president under Kenyatta. Moi confronted a group of public managers whose implicit interests on regional matters were quite different from his own and who controlled a significant amount of the "means of administration."

First, they dominated the air force and held a plurality of the senior ranks in the army.^[1] The presumed British military guarantee of Kenya's elected leadership seems to have lapsed, so Moi had to treat a coup as a real possibility if he pushed the Kikuyu too far.

Second, the senior Kikuyu civil servants had enough political support to make it difficult to remove them without "cause." These men commanded considerable expertise and information by virtue of their long tenure in office. This same seniority gave them a "manifest" qualification for their positions, which many of their non-Kikuyu competitors lacked and which considerably diminished Moi's discretion in making appointments. Whereas Kenyatta had had a decision maker in whom he had personal confidence in virtually every public organization that was important to him, Moi quite frequently had to rely on men with whom he had no strong ties and some of whom he distrusted.

Third, the period of rapid upward mobility in the civil service, and the easy access of bureaucrats to new farms and businesses, was largely over. Moi could not reward his public servants for their support as richly as Kenyatta had done.

Moi, however, had his own bases of political support. The personal fortunes of civil servants were still subject to some presidential discre-

tion, and the Kenyan political culture had come to give precedence to the president in matters of public policy. Bureaucrats would not dare to oppose his wishes openly nor to directly subvert them. A failure to take initiative on behalf of his presumed intentions, and a lack of enthusiasm or creativity in implementing his policies, was as far as a civil servant would consider it safe to go. The balance of power still favored the political leadership (in the person of President Moi), as it does in virtually all systems. But the balance had shifted closer to an equilibrium than is healthy for policy effectiveness. The danger was less one of bureaucratic subversion than one of policy stalemate.^[*]

The result of this constellation of political and administrative power was indeed often a managerial deadlock. Many organizations were headed by men who lacked the confidence of the president, who could not get his support for the policy changes that were needed to keep their programs healthy, and who could not force such changes themselves. The magnitude of this problem was not immediately evident. The political centrality of Njonjo and the continuation of Kibaki as minister of finance gave the impression of greater continuity than actually existed. Moi had no desire to provoke the Kikuyu into unity against him. He was prepared to let the old Kikuyu managerial elite continue in office until, individual by individual, it retired or disgraced itself and could be replaced. The only visible signs of change were that the Office of the President intruded much more into the details of implementation, reversing much of Kenyatta's delegation, and that Kikuyu managers often did not find the presidency as responsive to their policy needs as it had been.

Karanja's Fall from Grace

Charles Karanja's relationship to the presidency had changed dramatically with the death of Kenyatta. Not only did he have a non-Kikuyu president, but he had been friends with Njenga Karume, who had been one of the leaders of the anti-Moi movement. His position was complicated further when he decided to back Ngengi Muigai for the Gatundu seat in Parliament that was vacated by Kenyatta's death. An ally of Njonjo's was also standing for the seat. Mwai Kibaki supported Muigai as well, but Njonjo had already positioned himself closer to Moi than had the vice-president. As the constituency encompassed Karanja's place of birth, and as he had always been generous in his donations to self-help

[*] A similar situation in the French Fourth Republic is described by Alfred Diamant, "The French Administrative System: The Republic Passes But the Administration Remains," in Toward the Comparative Study of Public Administration , ed. W. Siffin (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1957), and "Tradition and Innovation in French Administration," Comparative Political Studies 1, no. 2 (1968).

activities in the area, his political influence was significant. Early in the campaign Karanja received signals from Njonjo that public opposition to his candidate would be unwelcome. Karanja underestimated the danger and did not back off.

Karanja did not understand the extent to which his managerial position had changed. He felt that the tremendous success of the KTDA and his outstanding record in managing it rendered him invulnerable. He expected to be judged solely on the basis of his service to the nation and did not foresee how more active political support could be important to him.

In early 1978 the KTDA had taken over the packaging and distribution of tea for the Kenyan market. The beverage is a staple for African households. Its domestic retail price is regulated by the government, and when the international price of tea is high there can be a substantial disparity between the two. In 1977, for example, the local price of tea was only 39 percent of the world figure. In effect, tea producers subsidized Kenyan mass consumption. To assure that this burden was shared equally, all tea producers were required to contribute a portion of their output to a "pool," which ran a blending and packaging plant and sold the tea throughout the country. Since the colonial period this had been run by Brooke Bond Liebig, a multinational firm, which had been Kenya's largest producer.^[2]

When the KTDA surpassed Brooke Bond in size in 1977, Karanja decided to challenge its management of domestic sales. His motives were two. First, this part of the market was losing income for tea growers, and Karanja wanted to assure that it was run efficiently and that the burden of its implicit subsidy was equally distributed. His second but unstated objective was to gain experience in retail packaging and sales, laying the groundwork for the KTDA's possible eventual entry into international retailing.

There was intense opposition to the KTDA's assumption of these functions. The representatives of its major financiers, the Commonwealth Development Corporation and the World Bank, argued that such an expansion in the KTDA's mission would strain it unduly, but Karanja overruled them. More seriously, Brooke Bond saw the takeover of its packaging plant as nationalization and feared that it might be a prelude to the nationalization of all its Kenyan operations. British political pressure was applied on behalf of Brooke Bond, and the negotiations were intense. Karanja prevailed regardless, and the Kenya Tea Packers, Ltd. (KETEPA), was formed in 1978 under KTDA control.

Despite the turmoil, the takeover went smoothly. Karanja appointed a Kalenjin to run the packaging plant in Kericho, thereby protecting himself from the charge of tribalism that could have followed if he had

sent a Kikuyu to run an operation in Kalenjin territory. The commission that KETEPA charged for its services fell to 4 percent from the 7.5 percent that Brooke Bond had collected, and the price it was able to pay the producers for their tea increased.

Trouble was brewing with the tea, nonetheless. This was the period of the coffee boom, and international tea prices had been pulled dramatically upward as well. Packaged tea on the shop shelves in neighboring Ethiopia, for example, sold for twice what it did in Kenya, owing to the price controls that were being administered through KETEPA. The temptations for smuggling were irresistible, and packaged tea began to be scarce in Kenya. Since tea is basic to the Kenyan diet, a political crisis was in the making.

In August President Kenyatta died, passing responsibility for the welfare of the average citizen to Daniel arap Moi. Karanja was urged to ease the shortage by releasing more KTDA tea to KETEPA for packaging. He did increase the amount by 10 percent but declined to add more, arguing that "you can't fill a bucket with no bottom."^[3]

Then, in early December, Stanley Oloitipitip, the minister of home affairs, publicly lamented that smuggling had caused a shortage of tea in his constituency and called on the government to rectify the situation.^[4] Karanja lost his temper. Oloitipitip had written to him to secure a tea distributorship in his constituency for "an associate firm of mine" in July,^[5] so Karanja informed the press that Oloitipitip was a distributor, suggesting that since the distributors had received their normal allotments of tea plus 10 percent, they were the ones best placed to deal with any smuggling-induced shortages. "We are not accusing anybody of anything. But the distributors . . . should now tell the public where all the tea has gone."^[6] Oloitipitip countered by denying that he was a distributor. His political ally Charles Njonjo then intimated in a public rally that a KTDA official was responsible for smuggling.^[7]

Karanja prepared his rebuttal to this personal attack carefully. The KTDA hired private detectives to find out where the tea was going. They intercepted a shipment at the airport, and Karanja went to the head of the civil service, Geoffrey Kariithi, with the evidence. Although Kariithi was able to trace the source of the smuggled consignment, he declined to give Karanja the name of the party (presumably for reasons of state). Nonetheless, Karanja proceeded to announce a televised press conference, at which he planned to present his evidence of smuggling and of Oloitipitip's distributorship. As he was dealing with a cabinet minister, he asked for an appointment with the president to brief him in advance on what he would say. He was told that he could not see Moi "until there was tea in Kenya."

Stunned, Karanja canceled the press conference. Instead, the KTDA

took out paid advertisements in the newspapers and listed the tea distributors around the country, stated that the shortages were due to smuggling, and suggested that this was a problem for the police, not the KTDA. When the media pressed him for more information, he refused to talk and angrily said, "I hardly have got enough time to educate the press."^[8] For it appeared to him to be the instrument of his torture, and he did not know how to fight back when the political odds had so evidently turned against him.

At this point information damaging to Karanja was leaked to the press by a disaffected KTDA employee with links to the Njonjo camp. It was pointed out that Karanja and his chairman, Jackson Kamau, were among the five partners owning a private tea factory and that this factory had enjoyed the services of a KTDA trainee factory manager for a time as part of his apprenticeship. These allegations were true, and the press bayed at the scent of a conflict of interest.^[*] Publisher Hilary Ng'weno complained in an editorial about "public officials who [a]fter serving for many years . . . often begin to behave as if they own the public institutions they were appointed to head." Calls were made for Karanja's resignation.^[9]

Vice-president Kibaki finally came to the public defense of Karanja.^[10] (They had been allied in supporting Muigai against Njonjo's candidate in the Gatundu election.) The government took KETEPA away from the KTDA, made it independent, and forced Karanja to resign from its board. (Moi put in charge the Kalenjin manager Karanja had appointed.) Otherwise the affair appeared to blow over.

A journalist who was close to the coverage of the controversy said in retrospect, "If I were to make a list of people who have profited by their use of public position, Charles Karanja would be very far down it." He also indicated that the press did not even receive leads that would have

[*] Charles Karanja has asked that the following additional points be made about the Ngorongo Tea Factory: (1) Prior to Karanja's and Kamau's having acquired an interest in the factory, it was already processing green leaf from the KTDA. (2) The owners decided that all surpluses earned by the factory were to be distributed to those who provided leaf to the factory, in proportion to their deliveries. Other than their fees as directors, the owners received the same profits from the factory as did the KTDA. (3) At the time that the factory-manager trainees were placed at Ngorongo, the KTDA was having difficulty finding adequate on-the-job training opportunities. (4) Furthermore, Ngorongo, "like all the KTDA Tea Factories, was required to pay the wages of all the trainees seconded to it." (5) "Finally, let it be known that Ngorongo Tea Factory has been selling good quality tea even after the KTDA Factory Manager Trainees were withdrawn. . . . It is also noteworthy that the company's financial position and its ability to pay final payments to its outgrowers did not suffer as a result of discontinuation of delivery of KTDA tea in 1978." "The question of there being a conflict of interest in connection with C. K. Karanja's separate but distinct relationship with the KTDA and the Ngorongo Tea Factory does not arise in light of the arrangements described above."

linked KTDA staff to the tea smuggling. Karanja's major failings appear to have been that he challenged Njonjo and his ally, and that when he got into political trouble, instead of leaking information that would have made the media more sympathetic, he had antagonized it with his defensive anger.

The consequences were serious even if the infractions were minor by Kenyan standards. Karanja had been publicly exposed, which damaged his political effectiveness. He had no presidential support, which meant that initiatives that required policy change were out of the question. His moral authority with his staff was also compromised; he had failed to keep to the letter of the professional code by which they claimed to abide. And his iron managerial hand was weakened; no longer could he simply reassign or fire those whose competence he found lacking. It is indicative that the KTDA's efficiency improved steadily until 1978 (when the controversy erupted), but that it has had cost control problems since then. (See table 6.1.)

Still, President Moi did not remove him from office. He apparently found it convenient to have a weakened manager at the KTDA. More generally, he also has a pattern of not removing someone from office in immediate conjunction with a scandal. Perhaps he wishes everyone to see that the individual in question is no longer effective. Whatever the reason, Karanja was left in suspense and in charge of the KTDA for two more years. He was dismissed without ceremony or advance notice on February 28, 1981. Karanja kept his dignity, called his department heads together, congratulated his successor, and charged them all to continue to work for the benefit of tea smallholders and the country.

After Karanja's departure, the KTDA did not take on any major new challenges, as it frequently had under his general-managership. The Kikuyu who succeeded him did not have the political connections to mold the policy environment as Karanja had done. The KTDA may have lost some of its tight efficiency, for the organization could not be protected as well from political demands for favors. It certainly did not have the élan it once had. Almost all the senior managers remembered Karanja's tenure with great admiration and nostalgia. But the KTDA continued to be a well-run corporation and to prosper. It had been well built.

Karanja "retired" to run his own businesses. He felt humiliated at the way his career in public service had ended. To take his mind off his troubles, he built a hotel at Ruiru outside of Nairobi and named it Ndanga after his wife. (See plate 23.) It may have been bad business judgment to have done so; it seemed too far ahead of demand. But it was well designed, and the attention he gave to it helped to lift his spirits again. His farms and fortunes flourished.

The "Second" Moi Presidency

The first years of Moi's reign were consensual ones. He made expansive and expensive commitments. Almost everyone seemed to be doing well; no one had a basis for complaint. By 1980, however, the economy had begun to turn sour. The heady revenues of the coffee boom were long past, but the financial commitments they had encouraged remained, creating inflationary pressure. The world economy took a decided turn for the worse, and Kenya reeled in response. Local businesses were no longer prospering, and this upset the Kikuyu, who owned the largest number of them. Government expenditure had to be severely cut at the end of the 1981–82 financial year, disturbing all who depended upon it.

Kikuyu business, administrative, and political leaders began to complain privately that Moi was not managing things well. President Moi started to show signs of insecurity and initiated political detentions again. In the spring of 1982 he pushed through Parliament a constitutional amendment to make Kenya a one-party state. Although the country had in practice had only one party since 1969, many leaders were privately disquieted that opposition was being made more difficult. Moi's governing coalition was showing signs of significant weakness.

A group of radical junior officers in the air force then attempted a coup d'etat in August 1982. The coup was suppressed by the army, and suddenly Kenya's political circumstances were significantly altered. This coup attempt actually proved to be a piece of good luck for Moi. First, it is possible that a group of conservative Kikuyu army officers were planning a coup as well. These men were not going to let a multiethnic group of radicals take over, so they put down the air force coup. But the action preempted their acting to take power themselves. If the army had moved first, it is likely that it would have succeeded. Second, the coup attempt legitimated Moi's reorganizing of the command structure of the armed forces and police. In retrospect it is clear from public statements Moi made in the months leading up to the coup attempt that he had been aware it was coming. But he had been powerless to remove the offending officers without provoking the very event he feared. Once the attempt had been made and suppressed, his opposition stood exposed and disorganized, and he was able to remove its leaders from the positions that were most threatening. The armed forces and the police were neutralized.^[*]

[*] The author has heard people in usually well-informed circles in Kenya discuss the existence of a second coup plot. Such speculation is fueled by the slow and confused response of the army and the paramilitary police in the early hours of the air force takeover. Africa Confidential , which is thought to derive much of its information from British intelli-gence, doubts that an army coup attempt was in the immediate offing. It does confirm that Moi considered the army and the police negligent and undertook a considerable shake-up in the officer corps as a consequence. Africa Confidential 23, no. 17 (25 August 1982); 24, no. 5 (2 March 1983); 24, no. 25 (December 1983).

Moi evidently believed that Charles Njonjo was involved in some way with the various plans to overthrow him. Although the allegation has never been proved, Njonjo was forced out of the cabinet and the Parliament in mid-1983. Politicians scrambled all over one another in their attempts to disassociate themselves from him and to affirm their loyalty to the president. The mood was unpleasantly reminiscent of McCarthy's hunt for Communists in the United States in the early 1950s.^[11]

Mwai Kibaki had been transferred from the Ministry of Finance to the emasculated Ministry of Home Affairs in early 1982.^[12] He was clearly in disfavor with the president as well. In 1988 Moi replaced him as vice-president with Joseph Karanja, a minor Kikuyu politician and former head of the University of Nairobi. Then in 1989 the minister of finance, Saitoti, a Maasai, was made vice-president. Not only was Njonjo, a man who had seemed second in influence only to the president, gone; suddenly the government lacked any Kikuyu in its influential inner circle.

Those political forces that could oppose Moi had been routed. In relative terms Moi was stronger politically. But on any absolute scale his base of political support had declined.

Muriithi Presides over the Decline in Veterinary Services

The Moi years began well for the Veterinary Department. Moi's fellow Kalenjin are nearly as deeply involved in dairying as are the Kikuyu and they produce beef as well. Livestock are an important priority for Moi, and he created a separate Ministry of Livestock Development, combining the Animal Husbandry and Range Management divisions of the Department of Agriculture with the Department of Veterinary Services. Muriithi was promoted from director of Veterinary Services to director of Livestock Development.

Geoffrey Kariithi was retired as head of the civil service, and thus Muriithi lost his direct access to the president. But Charles Njonjo was a fellow Alliance High graduate, and Muriithi hoped to have, through him, the influence he would need. In 1979 Moi introduced the school milk program and removed any danger that there would be a depression in the dairy industry induced by a shortage of demand. Moi also encouraged the Veterinary Department to take over responsibility for

still more of the communally run cattle dips, in recognition of the fact that their disease-control functions served the interests of a wider group than just the owners of the livestock that were dipped.^[13] All the signs were that livestock production enjoyed the highest political priority and that Muriithi's vision of the Veterinary Department's expanding subsidized services to smallholders continued to be propitious.

The new ministry did not do well, however. Neither Muriithi nor any of its other leaders proved to have enough links to the president to get the ministry's urgent problems solved. Muriithi's promotion had not represented a special vote of trust; none of the viable candidates had inspired enough confidence in Moi for him to have ignored seniority. In addition, there was a good deal of turnover in the department's cabinet minister and permanent secretary positions, suggesting that the occupants were not especially influential and in any case did not have time to learn enough about the ministry to represent its positions well. No one could get the cooperation from Animal Husbandry that was necessary to create a meaningful extension program, and so an opportunity for major donor support in this area was lost.^[14] The Treasury would not come forward with new funds to support the president's implied commitments for expanded government support for cattle dipping. Neither would anyone announce a reversal of the policy. Muriithi was frightened at his inability to summon support. He probably was already weakened by illness and became more cautious in his decisions. Both his senior staff below him and his permanent secretary above him started to question his authority.

Then economic reality caught up with the country. The coffee boom was over. The revenues with which the government had been awash began to dry up, but the many new projects that had been floated still had to be carried forward. On top of this the international economy stumbled in 1980; export markets turned weak, and the interest on Kenya's foreign debts suddenly leaped upward. Moi could no longer purchase political popularity with governmental generosity.

The crisis of insufficient revenues to meet the bloated government budget was severe and extremely difficult to manage. Not only did real government spending shrink at least 8 percent between 1981 and 1983,^[15] it had to be done in a system that was unresponsive to fiscal restraints. During the years of the coffee boom, government officers had been able to overspend their budgets with the confidence that Parliament would always vote a "Supplementary" to bail them out. Once the profligate habit of ignoring red ink had begun, it was difficult to reintroduce fiscal restraint. The Treasury resorted to "cash flow budgeting"—the practice of stopping spending by simply letting the money to pay the

bills run out.^[16] Even this extreme measure was insufficient; astute spending officers simply stuffed bills in their desk drawers and presented them in the next financial year. An informal government debt of unknown size developed with private vendors, who charged "interest" in the form of higher prices.^[17]

Good management practice would have required the setting of priorities for government activities, cutting out those low on the list, and assuring adequate funding for the efficient and effective operation of those activities that remained. Politically, this proved extremely difficult to do, just as it has in the United States. People will fight more vigorously to defend the continuation of an existing service than they will to assure its efficiency or than they will work to create it in the first place. Thus priority setting and program cutting are extremely difficult in a democracy that has multiple sources of power and little centralizing political organization for imposing priorities. It seems fairer to people to freeze budget appropriations at their previous nominal levels, to let inflation erode their real levels, and to let all programs suffer "equally."^[18] In a first round of modest cuts this strategy has much to recommend it. Most organizations have some "fat," and a budget freeze will induce them to trim it away creatively to keep vital programs functioning effectively. When the cuts are large or repeated, however, they induce despair, not creativity. The organization lapses into ineffectiveness. This is what overtook the Veterinary Department.

When the budgetary crisis hit the government with full force in early 1982, the Ministry of Livestock Development responded creatively and well. In its submission to the Working Party on Government Expenditures that the president had created, the ministry's permanent secretary proposed new user fees, identified services that could be beneficially privatized, and suggested divestiture of the livestock parastatals whose deficits were being financed out of the ministry's budget and were no longer serving a useful social function.^[19] In short, he spelled out the policy priorities that would best serve the livestock industry in a period of serious budgetary constraint. Although this PS was retired, these proposals were fleshed out and further developed over the next two years.^[20]

At the micro level, when it became clear that there would be no "Supplementaries" for the 1981–82 financial year, Muriithi made his priorities clear. Disease prevention and artificial insemination (AI) had to be kept functioning; interruption in their provision would occasion long-term, perhaps permanent damage to the livestock industry. Curative veterinary medicine, animal husbandry extension, and other services could be temporarily suspended if need be. The wisdom of these decisions was accepted.

As the budgetary crisis dragged on, however, the ability and willingness of Livestock Development to respond effectively to it was dissipated. None of the innovative policy proposals that the ministry had put up were adopted by the cabinet or the president. This might not have been so debilitating if other priorities had been imposed in their place. But no choices were made between services; all continued with increasingly inadequate levels of budgetary provision. AI, which must be reliable to be effective, was left with a deteriorating fleet of vehicles, too little fuel, and no action on the proposal to increase its fees. The accompanying political cartoon from the Daily Nation shows the farm community's despair at its inability to count on this vital service. (See plate 24.) Smallholder production suffered as a result. What had been a well-managed AI service quickly became a professional embarrassment. Dan Mbogo tried several ways to find a solution to its problems but lacked the political connections to effect them.

Other services throughout the Veterinary Department declined as well and morale suffered. Staff could see little point in trying to change things if resources were going to bear so little relationship to real needs and if the cabinet was going to be unwilling to set any deliberate kind of priorities. There was particular despair at the government's failure to shut down the Uplands Bacon Factory. The parastatal had declined to the point where it was serving no useful purpose. But President Moi could not bring himself to lay off workers. The sums that were used to keep it alive would have served livestock producers far better in adequate provision for vital Veterinary Department services.

Without adequate budgetary support, the ambitious design for curative veterinary medicine showed flaws as well. There were inadequate funds for the purchase of required drugs and for the travel of veterinarians. The paraprofessional support staff did an increasing proportion of the work on their own, bought their own drugs, and began to accept illegal payments for their services. This informal commercialization actually had mixed benefits. At least it permitted veterinary care to continue to be available. It also happened that the market distributed veterinary services more widely and equitably than the old patterns of administrative allocation had done. (Poorer livestock producers in Kenya have better access to money than they have to bureaucratic influence.)^[21] But the quality of veterinary care declined, for the professional veterinarians were increasingly isolated from its provision. Producers would have been much better served by an officially and openly private veterinary care system, which would have put the paraprofessionals under the supervision of the vets. The great majority of the Kenyan government veterinarians wanted privatization but could not find the formula for making it politically palatable, even though a less-satisfac-

tory illegal version already existed. They were trapped by the embrace of earlier government favor.

In retrospect, Muriithi, Mbogo, and others had failed the Veterinary Department on one of the most critical of all leadership tests. They had not foreseen the damage that could flow from the expansive, subsidized programs that they had adopted in the 1970s. These made both dairy producers and the veterinary profession dependent on a government largess that proved impossible to sustain. As Bruce Johnston and William Clark conclude, "You shouldn't always want what you can get" in the public policy game.^[22]

Muriithi was unable to cope with the combination of this new set of circumstances and his lack of support from the president. He was unwell and nearing the end of a long public career. He was awarded the Order of the Silver Star by President Moi for his distinguished service in 1983, retired in late 1984 at the standard age of fifty-five, and died on March 20, 1985, with cancer of the liver and pancreas.

Conclusions

The accession of Daniel arap Moi to the Kenyan presidency brought a significant change in the nature of political-bureaucratic relationships. Jomo Kenyatta could appoint people in whom he had personal confidence to positions of leadership in most critical organizations. He then was able to give them great administrative discretion and to rely on them for advice on policies that affected their domains. Moi was much less fortunate. He had only a fraction of the personal political stature that Kenyatta had had and found himself constrained to accept leaders in whom he had no particular confidence. President Moi kept reassigning many of his cabinet ministers and permanent secretaries, probably to keep them off balance and to reduce their policy effectiveness. But he couldn't do the same with the technical officers. He therefore was much more interventionist in his relationships with most of his administrators and much less responsive to the demands of many of them for resources and policy support. In the first four years of his presidency many of these matters were handled by Charles Njonjo, who was building his own political machine within Moi's. After the 1982 coup attempt, no other politician had stature even close to the president's, and Kikuyu isolation from the levers of power was much clearer.

The consequences of this struggle for control between the president and his administrators were unhappy for many public organizations. The weakened presidency did not create bureaucratic subversion. Instead, it produced policy stalemate and inaction. In the case of the KTDA it led to Charles Karanja's losing a controversial public battle with

an Njonjo ally, having his integrity impugned, and eventually losing his position. The KTDA continued to be a sound organization but lost the strength that it had had for new initiatives.

Although the livestock industry enjoyed favor with President Moi, Ishmael Muriithi found his new political environment unmanageable. As budgetary resources became scarce, the Veterinary Department needed to retreat from the expensive position that it had adopted of providing highly subsidized services. Muriithi was unable to obtain either a retrenchment to a diminished set of higher priority activities, the approval of user fees to keep the existing services viable, or the policies that would have permitted the establishment of strong private services in their stead. He became a shadow of the authoritative administrator that he had been in the Kenyatta years.

Administrative effectiveness is contingent on political support and can vary from regime to regime for the same manager. Not all administration suddenly became ineffective under Moi's presidency. Some officials did enjoy his confidence and operated productively in the new circumstances. Two of them were Simeon Nyachae and Harris Mule.