Fascinated but also appalled, Kenyans are watching the unfolding of a power struggle involving their first family that might have been scripted by the makers of a soap opera.
Details of the private life of President Mwai Kibaki, 72, including his relationship with a woman many call his second wife, have burst onto the front pages in a rare collapse of deference to authority in the conservative African country.
The publicity has overshadowed his efforts to reverse the country's long economic decline and made Kenyans wonder about the leadership ability of the man they elected a year ago.
"Disharmony in the big house is not a joking matter, neither is it a regular domestic quarrel," wrote the East African Standard, referring to Kibaki's State House official residence.
"Any issue that distracts him from serious national business or has the potential to cause him even the tiniest bit of embarrassment becomes a grave matter."
The lid was lifted on a simmering State House power struggle when a row erupted between Kibaki's wife and the vice-president at a New Year's Eve party thrown by the president in Mombasa.
In front of a host of senior officials and businessmen, first lady Lucy Kibaki publicly upbraided vice-president Moody Awori for referring to her in a speech as "second lady".
The gentlemanly Awori immediately apologised profusely and said it was a slip of the tongue. But neither he nor Kibaki were able to mollify Lucy. Her continuing public show of anger was widely felt to have breached the decorum of the occasion.
Since then Kibaki's home life has been the focus of chat shows and has offered raw material for political cartoons. Kibaki's aides have struggled in vain to deflect the spotlight.
Many felt Awori's was a particularly unfortunate gaffe as Kibaki continues to maintain a 30-year-old friendship with a woman called Mary Wambui who receives protection from government security agents. The relationship has never been secret.
"The recent happenings in Mombasa convinced many of us Kenyans that President Kibaki may be too weak physically, mentally, psychologically and even as head of his own family to provide effective and sound leadership to Kenyans," wrote Rorogu Ng'Eno in the Kenya Times.
In Kenya and many other parts of Africa there is nothing wrong with a man maintaining more than one wife and equally there is no stigma in a wife dealing amicably with a co-wife.
But the husbands are expected to have the personal authority to instil a minimum of harmony in such extended families.
"Mrs Kibaki could do with the gentle but firm direction of a professional handler...It is a step she needs to take pronto," wrote Lucy Oriang, deputy managing editor of the Daily Nation.
"Mrs Kibaki clearly has some difficulty crossing the frontier between her matrimonial home and State House. The institution of the presidency must be separated from that of the family."
There was fresh consternation a week after the Mombasa incident when Kibaki issued an official statement saying Lucy and their children were his only "immediate family".
"Kindly refrain from making references about any other purported member of my immediate family," it added.
Mary Wambui's family, and many Kenyans, felt that the statement was an un-African disowning of a relationship that is held to be perfectly normal.
Wambui's family say Kibaki paid a bride price for her under African customary law. She has a grown-up daughter, Winnie Mwai, who has appeared at official functions and refers to Kibaki as her father.
Lucy Kibaki's defenders say she is fiercely protective of her husband following a car crash in late 2002 that left him with a broken arm, a dislocated ankle and a neck injury. The forceful woman is also admired as a vigorous AIDS campaigner.
But Lucy's turf war with Kibaki's powerful personal secretary, the so-called Comptroller of State House, Matere Keriri, has overshadowed the prestige of her good works. The two have clashed repeatedly over Kibaki's schedule.
Keriri's duties - running the president's official diary and controlling access to him in working hours - are government functions that the unelected Lucy must not touch, many argue.
When Keriri went on a three week overseas trip in early January commentators said he had been hounded out of office by Lucy Kibaki. He denied the report. State House officials could not be reached for comment on the report.
It's an unusual turn of events for conservative Kenya, where personal affairs are strictly private and the more relaxed attitudes of Congo or neighbouring Uganda are frowned upon.
The prominence given to the head of state's domestic arrangements would have been unthinkable under his strongman predecessor Daniel arap Moi, an austere and headmasterly figure.
Moi occupied State House as a single man after an estrangement with his wife before he became president. His private life remained behind closed doors.
The row poses no immediate political dangers for Kibaki. His shaky government has many more pressing problems, not least an ethnically-tinged split in his ruling coalition.
But his government has worked hard to try to play down any impression that Kibaki is weak or indecisive.
"Polygamy is no big deal in Kenya. That a leader has a second or third wife, or even a steady mistress, is taken as quite normal," wrote commentator Macharia Gaitho.
"The question which is bound to linger is whether the President is taking charge of his destiny, or falling completely under the control of a domineering and volatile wife".
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