Release Political Prisoners was born out of a strike staged in 1992 at Freedom Corner – a well-known site in Uhuru Park next to Nairobi’s Central Business District - by the mothers of 53 political prisoners held and tortured at Nyayo House during the Moi regime74. Initially, RPP was
formed as a pressure group whose aim was to protect the mothers from the ire of the Moi regime and to support them in securing the release of their sons. All of RPP’s work during the first years
73 The KHRC has remained the most reputable human rights organisation in Kenya. The quality and training of its
staff has stayed constant throughout the years, as has the professional quality of its outputs. The KHRC’s staff are a constant presence at regional and international fora, such as the Africa Commission on Human and People’s Rights or the United Nations Human Rights Council, where they submit shadow reports on a regular basis, and where they conduct lobbying and advocacy around issues of interest in Kenya.
of its existence was done on a voluntary basis, and small costs involved were covered through contributions from its members:
“RPP had a desk at Njeri Kabeberi’s office -- someone would go there 3 days a week; we would meet there to discuss what to do about political prisoners -- do they need medicine, how would we do it? We did not have money, but those with a job would put in some money, and those without would contribute the work. You would take a bus to Kisumu overnight, go and see the prisoner in the morning, and come back to Nairobi by next bus. You only eat before and after you come back -- that was all the money we had. This is how we released the 51 prisoners in 1992, and the 52nd in 93 or 94” (Interview with Muthoni Kamau, RPP member, 1 August 2014).
According to Muthoni Kamau, during that time, the Nairobi based donors would not fund RPP because the group was “too radical”. However, in 1996, RPP too received a funding offer from the same Swedish NGO that had first funded the KHRC75. Before accepting funding, the core
membership of RPP met to discuss whether they should accept funding from an international donor, and what the benefits and disadvantages of doing so would be (Interview with Muthoni Kamau, 1August 2014, Nairobi; Interview with Gitau Wanguthi, 22 July 2014, Nairobi). Even after they did decide to accept funding, with that same money, RPP first held two workshops to decide how they were going to relate to donor money and to ensure that it would not highjack the group’s activities by aligning them to donor interests rather than RPP’s interests: “that was the
level of political awareness in RPP at the time” (Interview with Muthoni Kamau, 1st of August,
Nairobi). To receive funding, RPP had to start by operating as a project of the KHRC, which by that time had already registered and had financial accounting structures in place. Soon after RPP was able to account for funding through the KHRC, the Danish International Cooperation Agency (DANIDA) also approached them with an offer to fund the rest of their activities.
75 According to a long-standing member of RPP, who continues to be actively involved with them, this occurred
after the press publicized the arrests of a number of RPP members who had staged a protest (Interview with Gitau Wanguthi, 22 July 2014).
In the first few years after receiving funding, RPP was able to hold to its own when donors intervened in situations where they felt that the organisation’s activities were too radical and could potentially harm them as funders76. However, donor funding affected RPP in other
ways. Specifically, the establishment of a small secretariat to coordinate its activities, with paid members of staff, created a class structure in what had been an egalitarian, membership
organisation up to then:
“The little shillings that were contributed before stopped being given, and that goes away with the commitment and the belief system that the
organisation had. People started changing, it brings in a different association dynamics and it brought in a different culture. Because now this is an activist organisation, with a paid leadership, and with members doing risky stuff. But now there are members in the secretariat, and because they are employees, they have a medical insurance and a salary, and when it comes to going into the streets, those hurt in the streets have insurance, but ordinary members don't. This brought tensions until ordinary members went off; it was hard even for [the] leadership to continue with the earlier culture and
commitment” (Interview with Muthoni Kamau, 1st August 2014, Nairobi).
This rift further deepened when donor-dependence slowly crept in with the increase in donor- funding. Towards the end of the 90s, the donors were in a position to ask RPP that it hire human rights professionals rather than members, and this accentuated the pre-existing dynamics:
“Some people feel that they are employees of RPP, and we are going out in the streets, they are not coming, yet these are the people who are getting the insurance. So, you, the member who don't even have insurance or salary risk
76 In a particular incident that took place in 1997 or 1998, the Kenya Bus Service arbitrarily increased bus-fare rates
and RPP members, seeing this as a human rights issue, made and distributed leaflets urging people not to pay the new rates. A few days later, RPP got a call from one of its funders, who told the secretariat that it (the funder) would have problems with the government as one of RPP’s main funders. But RPP stood its ground and reminded this funder that it knew how RPP worked when they committed to fund them, and that RPP would not go back on their planned activities (Interview with Muthoni Kamau, 1 August 2014).
your life in the street for the organisation who is paying someone else to be in the office” (Interview with Muthoni Kamau, 1st August 2014, Nairobi).
This internal dynamics, extremely damaging to the RPP, was compounded by two factors post-2002, after the ascension of Mwai Kibaki to power on a platform of reform and anti-corruption, and the state’s institutionalisation of human rights through the formation of the KNCHR. In the new dispensation, the same factors that cemented RPP’s downward path, ensured KHRC’s trajectory in the opposite direction.