President Moi Sees Threat to Rule : Kenya Battle With Church Puts Missionaries on Spot

Bruce and Sue Kemp led the quiet life of Christian missionaries in a modest little prefab home, surrounded by miles and miles of raw, stubbled land in this remote niche of Africa.

They had a shortwave radio for emergency calls and the local Samburu tribe for company. Sue gave lessons in arithmetic and grammar to her four youngsters at home.

And every few months, a small plane ferrying fresh vegetables and mail from Nairobi, the capital about 190 miles to the southeast, made a bumpy landing on their grass airstrip.

But one afternoon last October, several trucks full of government officials from the provincial headquarters in Maralal, a three-hour drive west, pulled up at their outpost.

The officers sat in the living room, rifles propped against their legs, and drank tea under the wall hanging that says: “Bless This House, Oh Lord, We Pray. Make It Safe by Night and Day.”

Then, they confiscated the family’s radio, along with their Kenyan permit to have it, leaving wires dangling from the ceiling and a faded sheet of instructions for making radio calls to a doctor in Nairobi.

At police headquarters, Bruce Kemp’s interrogators talked darkly of his “high-powered communications equipment” and suggested that the small supply planes landing occasionally on the dirt airstrip near Kemp’s house were up to no good.

Kemp, a gangly 35-year-old from the state of Washington with a gray-flecked beard and a deliberate manner, soon began to realize what his questioners were suggesting: that he could be plotting against the government.

The Kemps are among several American missionaries living in the Kenyan bush who have recently found themselves caught up in a heated confrontation between the two most powerful forces in Kenya--the presidency and the church.

Since church leaders began loudly criticizing some policies of Kenyan President Daniel Arap Moi last September, the powerful chief executive has accused religious groups in the country of subversive plots, foreign influence and other “ulterior motives.”

Searching for Subversion

The registration of several churches in Kenya recently has been revoked, a Swedish missionary was ordered out of the country for reasons of “security” last month, and the work of missionaries has been disrupted by government security officers determined to find evidence of subversion--and angered when they cannot.

Moi’s campaign is seen by Western analysts in Kenya as an attempt to undermine the substantial political power that the church wields in this predominantly Christian country.

During his eight years in office, Moi already has weakened two other important institutions--the press and Parliament, neither of which now criticizes him or anything that he supports.

On a recent visit to Nairobi, U.S. Rep. Howard Wolpe (D--Mich.) caused a stir by accusing Kenya’s government of intimidating church and civic figures who dared to complain, even indirectly, about the country’s leadership. A growing concentration of executive power and attempts to muzzle political opponents are threatening Kenya’s stability, Wolpe said.

‘Foreign Masters’

Moi, unaccustomed to such direct criticism in Kenya, countered by claiming that Wolpe, chairman of the House subcommittee on African Affairs, had some Kenyan church leaders “on his payroll.” The president suggested that Kenyans who say anything the least bit negative about the government are controlled by “foreign masters” trying to destabilize his country.

The church-state clash illustrates the unusual brand of democratic politics practiced in one of black-ruled Africa’s most economically and politically stable countries.

It began in September when the National Council of Churches of Kenya denounced Moi’s Kenya African National Union, the country’s sole legal political party, for replacing secret ballots in primary parliamentary elections with a system of “queuing,” under which voters line up in public for the candidates of their choice.

In a country where dozens of people have been detained, often without trial, in the last year for criticizing the government, the action of that mainstream Protestant group made front-page headlines.

Clergymen Exempt

Moi later exempted clergymen and civil servants from “queuing,” but he nevertheless accused the church group of threatening national security with its comments.

He noted that the criticism had emerged from the council’s annual meeting, sponsored by the Monrovia, Calif.-based private charity organization, World Vision. Moi suggested that the “foreign” charity had sinister motives in paying for the meeting. (World Vision, which has worked for a decade in Kenya, said it had sponsored the conference for three years and did not set the agenda.)

The churches did not back down, however.

An Anglican bishop suggested that Kenya would be better off with more than one political party. Then, a Presbyterian minister in Nairobi, Princeton-educated Timothy Njoya, told his parishioners that they have a right to question the government. He said that a newspaper owned by Moi’s party and the government-owned television and radio station practiced biased journalism. Njoya also handed out copies of that sermon to his congregation.

Trying to ‘Cause Chaos’

In October, President Moi scored what seemed to be a victory in his war of words with the church: He said he caught an American missionary group importing ammunition, arms, maps, military uniforms and sophisticated communications devices into Kenya to “cause chaos” and destabilize the country.

He identified the culprits as the Associated Christian Churches of East Africa, a Medford, Ore.-based missionary group that was digging water wells in northwest Kenya. That $5-million project to provide clean drinking water was being paid for by World Vision.

Two missionaries with the Oregon group were arrested and interrogated for several days. One of them, Lyle Hutson, who had become a missionary after retirement, was waiting to be questioned in Nairobi when he saw a banner headline in the local paper describing Moi’s accusations.

“Oh, my God! My God!” he yelled, according to a colleague who was also in custody. Then, Hutson fell dead of a heart attack.

Jumping to Conclusions

The missionaries criticized the authorities for mistreating Hutson in jail and defended themselves vigorously. It soon became apparent that Moi may have jumped to conclusions about the group.

The “arms” turned out to be pellet guns and crossbows, for protection from snakes and other animals. The “military uniforms” were 500 blue school uniforms sewn by church members in Oregon. The communications equipment consisted of walkie-talkies and shortwave radio transmitters registered with Kenyan authorities for use in areas without telephone service. The maps that Moi said “infringed state security” were bought from the government map office in Nairobi.

Kenyan authorities dropped the matter, no charges were filed and the well-digging project has been revived.

The government, apparently embarrassed by the entire incident, went on an extensive, unpublicized search for subversives among the hundreds of foreign missionaries, such as the Kemps, who live in isolated areas of Kenya, communicate with each other by shortwave radios, meet planes full of supplies at landing strips and talk regularly with Kenyans in their home.

Ready-Made for Plotting

To the Criminal Investigations Department here, the entire arrangement suddenly seemed ready-made for plotting subversive activity. As Moi put it: “Why don’t they use their resources to build churches and bring in related things--like Bibles?”

The authorities now have plowed up Kemp’s grass airstrip as well as those used by other missionaries and have suggested that they apply for permits to operate an airport. They also revoked all radio licenses and asked everyone to reapply.

The concern about church activities is part of a broader effort by Moi to stamp out membership in an underground organization known as Mwakenya, a Swahili acronym for the Patriotic Front for the Liberation of Kenya.

Several people have been convicted of possessing or reading Mwakenya publications, and more than 60 people have been detained at various times during the last year on unspecified charges presumably related to political activity.

No Legitimate Opposition

“The way it is now, criticism (of Moi or the ruling party) is subversive by definition,” says a political analyst with a Western embassy in Kenya. “There is no ‘legitimate’ opposition to the president because you cannot criticize Moi.”

The country’s churches, however, have a tradition of bucking the Establishment in Kenya that dates to the days when church leaders took up the cause of Africans against the British colonial governors. The church still has a strong hold on many of the citizens in this land, where churches are packed on Sunday morning.

Moi, who attended American missionary schools, is himself a regular churchgoer. Some say that is what keeps clergymen who have criticized him out of jail.

“Moi’s Christianity is our protection,” the Rev. Timothy Njoya has said. “That’s our secret as pastors in Kenya.”

However, Moi is wary of the church’s potential political power, and he is clearly unhappy with the clergymen who, in his view, are taking potshots at him from behind their clerical robes, analysts say.

His attempts to find subversive elements in the churches are seen by Western diplomats as a way to consolidate his power by undermining a barrier to the control he seeks for himself and his party.

No Local Reports

While the church-state debate has raged in public, cases such as the Kemps’ have never been reported in the news media or mentioned by the government here.

Some of the harsh treatment of missionaries may be, in the words of one Western envoy here, “local officials simply trying to curry favor with the president, doing what they think he wants done.”

However, that has not made it any less frightening.

“We’re out here without much of a cover. That’s the way missionaries live,” said the Rev. Robert Ward, an American Lutheran minister who has been in East Africa for 33 years.

Ward’s shortwave radio, licensed in Kenya, was confiscated a couple of months ago by government security officers and taken to Nairobi, more than 300 miles of mostly unpaved roads away from his home in northern Kenya.

His attempts to recover the radio have been unsuccessful. Recently, armed officers appeared at his house and promised to shoot down any planes attempting to land at his airstrip. After a few hours, they dug trenches across Ward’s dirt landing strip.

‘Element of Risk’

“You’ve got an element of risk as a missionary,” Ward said in a recent interview at his home. “Wild animals and shiftas (bandits) out here. But now, I’ve got the government telling me I’m a suspect, even though they won’t say what I’m suspected of.”

Both Ward and Bruce Kemp were sent to Kenya by the World Prayer Mission in the United States, and they are affiliated locally with the Lutheran Church of Kenya. Kemp is a lay minister and came here two years ago. He had worked as a civil engineer.

Kemp first learned that there might be trouble here last October when he met with the chief administrative officer for his district to discuss a request to open a new evangelical center 25 miles north of Ngalai.

“Have you heard what’s going on in the world, Bruce?” the district officer asked. Then, he showed Kemp a newspaper article about Moi’s accusations against the Oregon missionaries.

“I’ll try to defend you,” the officer told Kemp.

“What are you defending me from?” Kemp asked.

“You wait here,” the district officer responded, and Bruce was escorted back to his home by a carful of police.

Questioned for Six Hours

They looked over his equipment and his permit and left without doing anything. But the next day, Kemp was questioned for six hours by the federal Criminal Investigations Department, government radio technicians and other officials.

They began by asking what he was doing with the high-powered radio equipment.

“I’m doing what I’m licensed to do with it--talk to other missionaries and call for emergency help,” he responded.

Meanwhile, a dozen officers had driven to his house, and Sue Kemp stood by as they confiscated the equipment. After another round of questioning the following week, the authorities seemed to lose interest in Kemp but refused to return his property, saying he was still under investigation. They returned this month, however, and dug trenches across his airstrip, making it unusable.

At one point, the Kemps packed up to leave the country, but they changed their minds.

“It seemed like it would blow over so we decided to keep working,” Bruce Kemp said. “We have 150 to 170 people in a 50-mile radius who have come to the Lord since we came here. We have no desire to leave this place.”