Goldenburg: Story of a whistleblower

“But one thing about David you must realise is that he was a very courageous person. Basically he was born that way.

He can easily reveal anything. Hii ni kitu imetoka utotoni. Brave.

In school he was very open.” Daniel says that David was seriously disgruntled a year after being employed and often talked of seeking a departmental change.”

Eventually when he was relieved from Central Bank and put in, the word that was going around was that there was some confidential information that had been leaked from the Central Bank to the public through the MPs.

We didn’t even know my brother was involved — this was just something I overheard. Fununu za Nairobi. We did not connect the two.”

It took three days for Daniel to know that his brother had been ‘put in.’

Daniel says their mother knew almost immediately but she was so disturbed that she did not even tell him immediately: “I tend to think that my mother got to know almost immediately. I could not ask why she did not tell me because I saw that, that thing affected her very much. We did not want to dwell on that. We wanted to get him out.”

“Our mother did not accept that someone could just be wrongfully arrested and be accused of big things like that. More so her son. She could not believe that he could be involved. She initially thought that he had stolen. Open theft, forgery. Things like that. There was a heap of speculation.”

Daniel says that the fact that their mother worked in prisons and had seen men and women who were hardened criminals made it seem worse for her.

“She could not imagine her son one day becoming a prisoner. She changed immediately. After that she died on 10th July.

Watu wakaanza kusema David amefanya mathee akufe because of criminal activities … “

“I went to see him in the Remand prison. He told me there was some confidential information that had been leaked and maybe that’s why he was there. We left the matter there. It was very torturing. We did not involve any big figures to get him out because we did not know the core of the problem. It was a big surprise. This man has never been implicated in anything. And during those Moi times anything could happen. They were not allowing you to talk. Even when I went I could not speak to him alone. Those guys even interviewed me: ‘You are his brother, where do you come from? Come and see him another day.’ It was a big thing. We could see. There was a block between him and the public.”

“After our mother died, at the funeral we were imagining many things. I remember very well we buried our mother and then we travelled to be at the law courts on Monday.”

Another important cog in David’s CBK years is the friend he had in the institution.

In December 2004 David Munyakei met this friend, mentor and confidante.