SK Macharia’s Journey To Immense Wealth – Part 2
The Media Politics
“At no time had I interest in the media before the1992 General Elections,” says Macharia, “I just happened to be a big political adviser and financier of Jaramogi Oginga Odinga Presidential campaign.” That year, he not only failed in bringing candidate Mwai Kibaki and Kenneth Matiba into a coalition to trounce President Moi, but he ended up paying expensively for political ads for Jaramogi on Kenya Broadcasting Corporation (KBC) that were neither aired or the cash refunded. But meanwhile, Macharia witnessed the power of radio in action. “We were making a lot of noises in the urban areas, but in the country, people did not even know that the opposition existed,” says Macharia, “In the villages, people just believed what KBC Swahili service said.” Of course it never mention the opposition.
In his youth, he had seen the power of radio in spreading propaganda during the Mau Mau war. The colonial government would try to brainwash the freedom fighters in the Aberdares Forest through radio broadcasts transmitted from an aircraft. Three weeks after the 1992 elections, Macharia-ignorantly-wrote to KBC demanding a radio broadcast license in a week. He got no replay. Shortly later, he wrote a threatening letter to the Office of the President demanding for a broadcast license. This letter was forwarded to the right address: the Ministry of Information. Macharia soon got an audience with Minister Johnstone Makau who declined. The next stop was to the office of A.A.A Ekirapa, who was at the time the CEO of the Nation Media Group. He tried to convince the Nation to join him in suing the government for a broadcast license in exchange of a joint ownership deal. This strategy failed as well.
“By that time I had not even registered a media company,” says Macharia, “I
registered Royal Media and gave instructions to Gibson Kamau Kuria to sue the government.” This court battle lasted four years. During that year, he learnt everything about broadcasting and radio licensing. This involved spending six months in Geneva to learn how radio frequencies are allocated to countries by the International
Telecommunication Union and how they are supposed to be distributed to citizens.
This research guided the Court in awarding a winning verdict for Macharia, but he could not enforce the order to grant him a license. This meant that he had to sue Makau and Attorney General, Amos Wako for contempt of Court. Things were looking so bad for the government and it was not surprising when he was summoned to State House and Moi promised him a broadcast license in exchange for political support and dropping contempt proceedings against Wako and Co., which he did. This saw Macharia dabbling in politics with the Central Province Development Group. He acquired a licence to run Citizen Radio and Television. As a reward, Citizen Radio even managed to negotiate an equipment co-location deal and rented transmission facilities for Sh10 million a year. Though his radio and television station was not set up soon enough to campaign for President Moi in 1997, in 1998, he installed transmission equipment in Limuru and at his house in Karen. He also set up a studio at AmBank House.
The honeymoon with the Moi government would however not last for long when Citizen radio went on air because of two programmes, “Wembe wa Citizen” and “Yaliyotendeka”. These two programmes that attacked corruption in both social circles and in government did not endear Macharia to power people. Though the government tolerated the stinging criticism for a while, but on 13 December 1999, a day after Macharia was awarded a national medal for his service to the country, his station was closed down for the first time, but was put back on air. However, on January 4, 2000 after airing a critical story critical of the army top brash, his stations were shut down for a year and re-opened in January 2001. Four months later, another corruption story would see Citizen vandalized by the police and shut down. “I literally gave up,” says Macharia, “They took me to court for not broadcasting without a licence.” The government even assigned a High Court Judge to listen to the case specifically for months, but Macharia lost. Meanwhile, the government was facing a lot of pressures from foreign governments and after a visit to the US, President Moi asked Macharia to go back on air. By then he had learnt the mistake of co-locating his equipment
with the government.
It would take up to January 2002 for Citizen FM to go back on air. By then, KANU was banking on support for Macharia’s stations. “I just turned like a chameleon at the end of 2002.”
Citizen makes a comeback
While Macharia was playing his political games in the 1990s, a new breed of media enteprenuers were busy minting money in the radio business. These included: Capital FM in 1996, Metro East FM, Nation FM, Kameme FM and the biggest of them all as it would turn out was Kiss FM, owned by Macharia’s business rival, Patrick Quarcoo.
For five years, Macharia and his stations was considered a running joke in the industry and with advertiser. However, 2002, by a twist of political fate became his comeback year. Because of his political passions, Macharia invested heavily in supporting President Mwai Kibaki and the ruling coalition using Citizen FM and television. During the campaign, Macharia ran the most vociferous and partisan political coverage that specifically ran a smear campaign against Kanu’s candidate, Uhuru Kenyatta. It turned out that this is what the country wanted to hear and all the radio dials turned to Citizen FM.
In December 2002, not only were the ratings of Citizen FM so high, but because of the investment that Macharia had put in the coverage of the elections, the crowning moment came when the Electoral Commission called the presidential election using the provisional polling results reports from Citizen. Finally, Macharia had come of age a media King maker, a modern day Kenya’s Citizen Kane. Citizen FM was the most listened to radio station that year.
Continue reading the third part of this series here
