Daniel arap Moi
Daniel arap Moi was president of Kenya for twenty-four years, from Kenyatta's death in August 1978 to the election of December 2002 that he was barred from contesting, a Kalenjin schoolteacher from the Rift Valley whom the Kikuyu establishment had tolerated as a harmless vice-president and who turned out, after a coup attempt by air force men in 1982, to be the most complete autocrat the country had: a one-party state written into the constitution, detention without trial, torture in the basement of Nyayo House, the ethnic clashes of the 1990s that killed a thousand and moved hundreds of thousands, and the Goldenberg scheme that took a tenth of the country's output out of the central bank. He also built schools, gave milk to every primary pupil, and left office peacefully to the man who beat his chosen successor. He was born in 1924 in Sacho in the Rift Valley, orphaned young, educated at African Inland Mission schools, and taught until he entered the colonial legislative council in 1955 as one of the first Africans. He helped found KADU, the party of the smaller tribes against Kenyatta's Kikuyu and Luo KANU, then dissolved it into KANU in 1964, and Kenyatta made him vice-president in 1967 as a man without a power base. The Kikuyu circle around the old president tried to change the constitution to keep him from succeeding, and failed. He took office promising to follow in Kenyatta's footsteps, nyayo, released political detainees, and then, after the attempted coup of 1 August 1982, which the army put down in a day, made Kenya a de jure one-party state in June and purged the air force, the university and the Kikuyu from the state. The 1988 election was held by queue-voting in the open. The end of the Cold War took away his usefulness to the West, the donors froze aid in 1991, and he conceded multi-party elections in December; he won those of 1992 and 1997 against a divided opposition. The Rift Valley clashes cleared his opponents' voters from the ground. Constitutionally limited to two multi-party terms, he picked Uhuru Kenyatta as his successor in 2002 and Mwai Kibaki beat him by two to one, and Moi handed over at Uhuru Park to a crowd that pelted his car with mud. He lived at his farm at Kabarak, was called on by every successor, and died in 2020 with a state funeral and the country's memory divided.
- Lived: 1924 CE – 2020 CE
- Nationality: Kenyan
- Roles: president, politician
