He served as an MP for three consecutive terms, and was an assistant minister for all the 15 years.

With such an impressive past, many would expect Ezekiel Mwikya Mweu to lead a lifestyle befitting a mheshimiwa in retirement.

However, the former Kitui East MP from 1979 to 1992 is content with being an ordinary villager at his sun-baked Malalani location home in Kitui County, where he lives alone.

Mweu is a herder and beekeeper. On a typical day, he will trek long distances with his livestock searching for water. This is what is to be expected in an area ravaged by perennial drought.

At sundown, Mweu mingles with the locals at the desolate Malalani trading centre, where an active mobile phone signal is still a distant rumour, but the occasional bandit attacks are a reality.

The cars he drove while in government are long gone as well as important connections he once had with big shots.

To move around, a boda boda comes in handy for the man who served in the ministries of foreign affairs, education and water.

“This is our life and I have no problem with it. I can walk during the day or at night in this village,” says the former legislator, who was in a white Kaunda suit.

Often, the Leeds University educated 76-year-old is armed with a bow and arrows and joins village youths in warding off hyenas that pose a danger to their livestock. Kitui borders the forested Tana River and is home to a number of wild animals.

During his heyday in retired President Daniel Arap Moi’s regime, Mweu was in the good books of Kanu operatives, hence his ascent to the position of assistant minister.

His journey to the ‘high table’ began when he left for Leeds University in Britain in 1974, where he graduated with a diploma in education administration. He returned home and was appointed as the Education Staffing Officer in Kitui.

The political bug bit him five years later. He resigned and contested for the Kitui East parliamentary seat and successfully bundled out one-time powerful Kanu senior chief, Kitonga Muthangya, father to lawyer Nzamba Kitonga.

Mweu says he successfully defended his seat for the three consecutive terms because of his stellar performance as MP.

But while in his second term, a cabal of politicians led by Ukambani Kanu supremo, the late Mulu Mutisya, reportedly hatched a plot to bring him down.

“Mulu and other politicians, who I will not name, used to feed Moi with lies. They claimed I had befriended an enemy of Kanu.

This was a choreographed scheme to groom another candidate and dislodge me,”  claims the man who supplements his income from rental houses (where his wife lives in Kitui town) with selling honey as well as his cattle.

Mweu was accused of having close ties with Josphat Mulyungi, who was then working with the Catholic Diocese of Kitui, and was allegedly angling for the Kitui North parliamentary seat after it fell vacant following the murder of area MP Phillip Manandu by an AP officer in 1983, just a few months after the general elections.

He recalls Moi telling him during a rally in Kyuso market that, “Na wewe Mweu, ni shida gani?

Hii maneno nasikia uko urafiki na Mulyungi, hiyo urafiki yenu ni ya nini?” (What is it with you Mweu and the close ties I hear you have with Mulyungi?).

Mweu says he was surprised by this line of questioning from the Head of State. “Your Excellency, we just happen to be friends,” he had calmly told President Moi.

During the 1992 elections, his political enemies allegedly fronted Mutinda Ndambuki and “used dirty tricks to floor him.”

“It was like a stillbirth, Ndambuki did not perform at all, he never uttered a word in Parliament,” says Mweu. Ndambuki served for one term before being dislodged by Muthusi Kitonga, Nzamba’s brother.

Mweu says he served the country and his constituents well and is at peace with himself. He doesn’t miss the trappings of power.

He is comfortable being an opinion leader in the village where one of his cows can fetch between Sh35,000 and Sh40,000.

Having been born and bred in Malalani, he easily adapted to pastoral life. “I am satisfied with what I did. I don’t owe anybody anything, neither does anyone owe me anything,” says Mweu who draws Sh7,000 monthly as pension from the government.

He, however, routinely visits his wife in Kitui town, 120 kilometres away.

Source: SDE