The firm Nandi Flame that ignited national fire of change
Originally published by KBC Digital — Read the original article →
Young, female, unmarried and unafraid
Chelagat Mutai is the first Kalenjin and Nandi woman MP. In 1974, just at the age of 24 years, she won the Eldoret North parliamentary seat and shook the then male-dominated Kalenjin politics and Kenya’s leadership. She and Dr Julia Ojiambo joined Grace Onyango in Parliament to become the second women MPs in independent Kenya. But Parliament had never seen someone like her—so impatient and restless around bad power and always itching to poke dictatorship in the eye. The price she pays for choosing bravery and resistance at a time when silence seemed safe, useful and profitable is legendary.
Chelagat was born last to ordinary farming parents in early 1949 at Terige Sublocation in the then Lessos or Ol’Lessos Location of today’s Nandi County. Her whole life dealt serious blows to new colonialism and continues warning the country that the white colonial master was not our worst. To her, awakening us to the dangers of the enemy of new colonialism that within us was urgent to her because that could turn our independence into nothing more than just a flag and some African leaders in charge. whose interests did not match the freed Kenya.
