Is there a true-to-God biography?

They love it when their stories are told. Sweet stories laced with truths, half-truths, rumours, and even outright lies. The reason for having biographies is simple. Most of us were something in life: a president, a president’s wife, a founder of an outlawed sect, a soldier of fortune, a conman, a beggar man thief, a baby.

Many Kenyans, lead politicians, and corporate captains have published their memoirs. From controversial political commentator Miguna Miguna’s 2012 stinger, Peeling Back the Mask, to former Kamukunji MP Maina Wanjigi’s 2014 bio, Shepherd Boy in Search of Virtue.

Martin Oduor-Otieno, former KCB boss released, in 2012, Beyond the Shadow of My Dreams, while Joe Wanjui, one-time head of Unilever has The Native Son: Experiences of a Kenyan Entrepreneur.

Even fake cop Joshua Waiganjo Karianjahi is releasing Goodbye Police Comrades, an expose on the depths of deceit in politics and the police.
The common denominator in all these real-life stories is the singular tendency to overblow simple incidents and exaggerate their subject’s extraordinary abilities or powerful intuition while covering up or omitting shortcomings and failures.

But just how accurate are biographies?

Writer Binyavanga Wainaina’s One Day I Will Write About This Place 2011 bio, never touched on his sexual orientation. Before he came out of the closet, ‘Binya’ wrote the ‘lost chapter’, I am Homosexual, Mum, and released it online via South Africa’s Chimurenga magazine this year. That means, One Day I Will Write About This Place, as initially published, was not the story of Binyavanga Wainaina’s life in Toto. That in turn, casts doubt on the veracity of some biographies.
Let us consider a few.
While Njenga Karume’s 2009 bio, Beyond Expectations: From Charcoal to Gold, written by Mutu wa Gethoi, genuinely narrates his arduous journey from grass to financial grace, he conveniently excludes retired President Kibaki’s involvement in his life. Yet Karume largely funded Kibaki’s Democratic Party.

Raila Odinga’s Flame of Freedom published in 2013 evades details of his involvement in the 1982 abortive coup, explaining that ‘it would destabilize the country’. The chronology of events and facts surrounding the 2007 post-electoral violence are also not conclusive.
“Most biographies are laden with sanitized overtones as if wishing to revise their past and remove any blots,” explains Ngari Gituku, Staff Fellow at the Biographical Programme at the Kenya Leadership Institute.

While Simeon Nyachae’s decades of public life were full of drama and controversies, his 168-page 2010 biography, Walking through the Corridors of Service, is just a brief narrative of what Kenyans already know through the media. 

Duncan Ndegwa’s 2009 memoir, Walking in Kenyatta’s Struggles, is arguably one of the best locally written bios. But it glosses over how the Ndegwa Commission that recommended civil servants to engage in ‘side hustles’ inadvertently contributed to corruption in government.

“One of the criteria that were used in deciding what information to omit and what to include in this book was the desire to maintain national dignity,” Gituku, one of the Ndegwa biographers says. “Being the first head of the civil service we didn’t want, while still maintaining a degree of objectivity, to paint an indignified image of him and the country.”

Surveyed closely, Walking in Kenyatta Struggles portrays Ndegwa in no bad light. No blights. Such goody-two-shoe self-praise bios are called ‘epideictic.’

Gituku says a good biography should acknowledge the inherent difference between mere information and a story, aspire to inspire its target audience with genuine fundamental tenets of excellence, triumph over moral imperatives, and teach important life lessons while remaining realistic and grounded.

“The best example locally is Njenga Karume’s Beyond Expectations: From Charcoal to Gold which offers important entrepreneurial lessons and a spirit of determination, and the subject acknowledges that not everything could be covered in the book,” Gituku, who has ghost-written several bios, explains. “Most of the other biographies on Kenyan leaders are nothing but a continuation of political rhetoric.” 

Waithaka Waihenya and Fr Ndikaru wa Teresia’s, A Voice Unstilled: Ndingi Mwana a Nzeki, was hailed as objectively written when it was released in 2009.
“I spent a lot of time with Ndingi and what I learned is that the subject, his friends, and family must have a lot of trust in you for them to open up for you,” Waihenya,  the MD of KBC, told The Nairobian.

Mzee Kenyatta

Some biographies have been so well-written. President Jomo Kenyatta for instance, gave Jeremy Murray-Brown unfettered access to material and people when writing his 1972 biography, Kenyatta. Jeremy was to write everything without censorship about Mzee Kenyatta, including how he cried when he was forced to pay rent. But why do prominent Kenyan leaders turn to foreigners to pen their bios?

“It’s either because most of them do not attach much value to books or because most scribes in Kenya are not up to the task,” explains Muchiri Karanja, a journalist. “It’s also possible that publishers prefer fast-selling school books to biographies that may not sell as much,” he adds.

Indeed, bios are tricky. There are cases where personalities make it impossible to have their complete stories written. Eminent psychiatrist Sigmund Freud, burnt all his diaries to purposely “make it hell” for his biographers.