Meru's only female MP ever relives her brutal battles

Annarita Karimi shattered barriers, becoming the first and only woman elected MP in Meru and Tharaka Nithi counties. Yet, her groundbreaking achievement came at a heavy personal cost.

At just 34, Karimi walked away from a stable teaching career, twice, to challenge the entrenched patriarchy of Meru politics. She fought without wealth, took on powerful men, and won. But the victory was fleeting, and what followed was a whirlwind of betrayal, legal battles, and a brutal fall from grace.

In a highly patriarchal society that Meru is, Karimi set a monumental record when she beat five men and became Meru Central MP in 1975.

When Karimi ventured into politics in 1974, she was the headteacher of St Mary’s Girls Secondary School, Igoji.

She lost miserably, emerging fourth with just about 2,000 votes. The seat was won by veteran politician Kabeere M’Mbijjiwe, a rich pipe-smoking baron who owned large swathes of agricultural land in all the Meru regions.

She licked her wounds and returned to teaching.

But no sooner had she settled back to her job than a petition was filed in court against M’Mbijjiwe’s win, with claims that he had used witchcraft to clinch the seat.

“I remember that petition clearly because there were some bizarre claims and photos produced that showed some serving politicians in Meru carrying goats on their bare backs,” Karimi recalls.

She was summoned to give evidence in court as one of the contestants but she says she only spoke of what she had seen.

“I had not seen any witchcraft and testified to the fact. It angered the petitioners but when the win was nullified, it formed the basis upon which I would comfortably win the by-election,” she says.

The bitter M’Mbijjiwe’s supporters vowed not to vote for anyone associated with the petitioners and she was a direct beneficiary, having not given any adverse evidence against the vanquished winner.

Against her better judgement and “in my crazy thinking”, she left the teaching job again and plunged into the 1975 by-election campaigns with no resources at all.

“I relied purely on goodwill and was pleasantly surprised that many male supporters were vowing loudly that they would only support the young girl,” Karimi says.

The court having blocked M’Mbijjiwe out of the race, she was now up against five men.

“I still give myself tidy marks as far as speaking in a podium is concerned,” she says with a chuckle.

She won the seat comfortably and confesses that the votes were so many she forgot her count.

To her, the race was both difficult and easy, given she was trying something new in the patriarchal community.

But her political career would be short-lived. Because she had set out to be an outspoken agent of the people in Parliament, she eventually got into the bad books of powerful forces in government who immediately set out to clip her wings.

In 1978, an audit of the accounts of St Mary’s Girls School during her tenure as headmistress was launched and by the end of the year she had been convicted by the Meru Resident Magistrate on two charges of theft of a total of 56,510.40. And this earned her a two-year jail term.

She was still pursuing her appeals to avoid losing her seat when Parliament was dissolved in 1979, ending her short-lived political career.