This man Ntimama: The warrior who never bowed

Ten years after his death,  William Ole Ntimama remains one of Kenya’s most consequential and colourful political figures.

To his admirers, he was the unbowed defender of Maa land, culture and political interests. This man refused to let the arithmetic of majoritarian politics swallow a minority community.

To his critics, he was a polarising politician whose fiery rhetoric sometimes deepened ethnic suspicion and political divisions.

But Ntimama was more than the politician captured in parliamentary records and newspaper headlines.

He had a booming laugh, a sharp tongue and an almost theatrical presence.

At political rallies, he could appear in Maasai regalia or his trademark red suit, command a crowd and then puncture a serious political argument with a joke.

Journalists knew that when Ntimama called a press conference, there was a good chance he would provide the headline himself.

That was part of the Ntimama magic.

As the Maa community prepares to mark his 10th memorial, his political shadow remains large.

His death did not end the debate over who speaks for the Maa community. Nor did it settle the question of how his own life should be remembered.

 On Saturday, September 12, his family, friends, political leaders and members of the Maa community will gather at the family home in Motonyi, Narok County, for the Ntimama@10 memorial service.

The commemoration comes as the Maa community finds itself at a political crossroads.

In Kajiado, Governor Joseph Ole Lenku, widely regarded as one of the leaders who could carry Ntimama’s political mantle, is facing a fresh challenge from Kajiado Central MP Memusi Kanchori.

Last week, Kanchori publicly challenged Lenku’s position as a spokesman for the Maa community in the presence of President William Ruto, bringing to light a contest that could shape the future of Maa politics.

Lenku, a former Interior Cabinet Secretary, became Kajiado governor in 2017 and was re-elected in 2022. His national profile and political experience have positioned him among the most prominent Maa leaders of his generation.

According to the Maasai Council of Elders’ deputy chairman Matiko ole Seddera, “Lenku was elected by the community to replace Ntimama.”

But succession to Ntimama’s influence is clearly not automatic.

Kanchori represents a younger generation of politicians with his own electoral mandate and ambitions. His challenge raises a question Ntimama understood throughout his career: who has the legitimacy to speak for the community?

The question of political succession is not new in Maa politics. During the 2013 election campaign, Ntimama found himself under attack from younger politicians determined to portray him as a relic of an older political order.

Among them was William Ruto, then a leading figure in the Jubilee coalition.

Ruto compared the ageing politician to the Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama — a jibe intended to suggest that Ntimama belonged to another political era.

Ntimama, characteristically, refused to retreat.

He responded that while his body might have grown frail, his intellectual and political capacity remained stronger than that of his younger opponents.

It was a revealing exchange. The old warrior had been told his time was over. His response, essentially, was that age had slowed his legs, not his mind.

The younger politician who once mocked Ntimama as a political relic is now President of Kenya. In contrast, the man dismissed as yesterday’s politician remains a reference point whenever the question of Maa political leadership arises.

Ntimama's political memory is inseparable from his words.

His most famous — and most controversial — phrase was the instruction to some outsiders in Maasailand to “lie low like envelopes.”

The phrase became political folklore.

Years later, Ntimama laughed when asked whether he had really meant “envelope”. He insisted he had meant “antelope”. But by then the newspaper version had travelled around the country and beyond.

His response was vintage Ntimama: “Let us just say envelopes because it has gone all over the world now.”

He did not apologise for the larger political argument either.

Asked whether he regretted some of his controversial statements, his answer was characteristically blunt: “No. I never regret when I say what I believe in.”

That was Ntimama.

He did not always polish his words before releasing them into the political wilderness. And sometimes the words came back to haunt him.

Yet beneath the firebrand was a surprisingly scholarly man.

Ntimama was largely self-educated. He never went through a conventional secondary-school education but studied independently, later pursuing legal studies by correspondence. He became an obsessive reader and accumulated an enormous personal library containing works on history, literature and biographies.

His reading sometimes surfaced in the most unlikely places — political rallies.

He once declared: “We Maasai are not Lilliputians; we’re not citizens of Lilliput.”

The line drew laughter, but it was also an argument about power. Ntimama invoked Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels to make a serious point about the Maasai's political size and significance.

Those who knew him say his library explained much about his political vocabulary.

He admired Martin Luther King Jr, Abraham Lincoln and Winston Churchill. At 85, he could still entertain journalists by reciting lines from Churchill and King.

According to his daughter, Lydia Naneu, he read late into the night and regarded books as part of the inheritance he would leave his people.

“Eventually, he donated his collection to the Narok Library; for a man remembered for shouting at political rallies, this was another side of my dad that is sometimes forgotten: the politician who loved books almost as much as he loved political arguments,” said Neneu.

According to a Maasai elder, Maranga Wotuni, Ntimama even had a name for himself. He described himself as a “mutukutu” — a troublesome person.

“It was an unusually honest description for a politician. He knew he was difficult. He knew he could be abrasive. He knew he could cause political storms,” said Mzee Wotuni, a former Narok County Council councillor during the Ntimama era as the chairman of the defunct Narok County Council.

And he seemed to enjoy the reputation.

His relationship with President Daniel arap Moi was a good example. Ntimama could be a loyal KANU man and still be an unpredictable political force. He later joked that he was surprised Moi never sacked him despite the trouble he caused.

Former colleagues led by Siaya governor remembered Ntimama as a no-nonsense debater who was difficult to intimidate. Journalists remembered something else: ‘the laugh’.

Narok Journalist Stanley Mbugua, who became his friend, recalled Ntimama’s roaring laughter, which shook his broad chest and exposed his wide gap-toothed smile.

“Beneath the intimidating political persona was a man capable of entertaining friends, journalists and political opponents around a plate of nyama choma,” said Patu Naikumi, a scholar.

Born in Narok in 1928, Ntimama came of age when colonial rule had profoundly altered the political and economic circumstances of the Maasai.

He began as a teacher before joining public administration and eventually rose through local government to become chairman of the former Narok County Council for about 15 years.

In 1988, he entered Parliament as the Member for Narok North, beginning a national political career that lasted roughly 25 years.

He served in several ministerial positions under Presidents Daniel arap Moi and Mwai Kibaki, but never abandoned his identity as a community politician.

National Maasai Council of Elders Kelena ole Nchoe says that, for the Ntimama, land was not merely property. It represented ancestry, identity, culture and the inheritance of future generations.

“He opposed what he considered reckless subdivision and sale of Maasai land and repeatedly raised historical grievances arising from colonial-era displacement,” said Nchoe.

Nchoe said Ntimama's politics, however, often placed him at odds with members of other communities living in Narok, exposing the difficult tension between indigenous rights and the constitutional principle of equal citizenship.

He said the Mau Forest was another defining political battlefield.

“Ntimama repeatedly demanded the removal of settlers from protected areas, arguing that the forest was a national ecological lifeline whose rivers and water systems supported agriculture, wildlife and millions of Kenyans,” he added.

His long campaign eventually saw successive governments undertake large-scale evictions from protected parts of the forest.

In that sense, one of his most persistent political demands was achieved. But the Mau political ghost did not disappear with the evictions.

It has followed successive governments into the present and now sits squarely on President Ruto’s desk.

The Government has moved to compensate thousands of people affected by past Mau evictions. Still, the programme has generated fresh complaints from some former settlers over delayed payments, unmet promises and the process used to identify beneficiaries.

The irony would not have been lost on Ntimama.

The battle he fought to protect the forest may have been won on the conservation front, but the political and human consequences of removing settlers remain unresolved.

The laughter and colourful language should not obscure the darker side of Ntimama’s career.

The violence surrounding Enoosupukia in Narok during Kenya’s early multiparty era remains among the most painful episodes associated with the region’s political history.

His name featured prominently in investigations and contemporary accounts of the political environment surrounding the violence. He disputed aspects of how some of his remarks were reported and interpreted, including before the Akiwumi Commission.

This is the contradiction at the heart of his legacy.

The same politician who gave voice to genuine grievances over land and minority rights could also use language that critics considered inflammatory and exclusionary.

He could make his supporters laugh, opponents angry and journalists reach for their notebooks — sometimes within the same afternoon.

Even in death, Ntimama’s legacy remains contested.

His daughter, Lydia Ntimama, and son, Amos Ntimama, are involved in a court dispute with biographer Patu Santoo Ole Naikumi over a biography of their late father.

The family has challenged publication of the work, while Naikumi has defended his position as its author and researcher.

The dispute has brought questions of authorship, family rights and control of a public figure’s story before the courts.

It adds an unusual dimension to the 10th memorial.

While politicians outside the family are contesting who should inherit Ntimama’s political mantle, his children are contesting how his personal and political story should be told.

 For a politician whose career was built around the question of who had the right to speak, the irony is difficult to miss.

Ntimama’s political longevity was extraordinary. He survived changing governments, shifting alliances, electoral defeats and controversies that might have ended the careers of lesser politicians.

He served in KANU during the Moi era, later entered opposition politics, and became an influential figure in the Orange Democratic Movement led by Raila Odinga, his close ally during the 2007 elections.

After losing his parliamentary seat in 2013, he gradually withdrew from elective politics.

In August 2016, weeks before his death, he led a delegation of Maasai leaders to State House to meet President Uhuru Kenyatta.

On September 1, 2016, William Ronkorua Ole Ntimama died at his home in Narok, aged 88.

At Motonyi, some will remember the cabinet minister; others, the MP, elder, mentor, or firebrand.

Others will remember the man behind the politics — the booming laugh, the red suit, the beaded regalia, the books, the nyama choma, the sharp retorts and the seemingly endless supply of memorable lines.