Thread by @gathara

Dear Kenyans,
Remember the story of Long Teeth and the Seven Dwarfs?
wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/1…

Here's a little context. It involves what was then considered to be the "world's richest ruby mine", the President's wife and niece, and the "black mark in the middle of the Kenya pudding."
wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/1…

Here's how @TIME reported it in October 1974.
content.time.com/time/subscribe…

The @TIME story has an interesting intro that demonstrates the entitlement of naughty-by-nature Long Teeth to OPP.

Appears the mine may have eventually made its way into the hands of one of Kenya's latter day dwarves.
kenyans.co.ke/news/how-mutha…

Anyway, appears Jomo "Long Teeth" Kamau did not take kindly to media exposes of his family's thieving ways.
wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/1…

42 years later, his son, Uhuru "Long Teeth" Kamau, would also send people into the streets to hoover up newspaper copies in a bid to hide his family's chronic kleptomania.
businesstoday.co.ke/graft-cartel-b…

A little context to 2016: nation.africa/kenya/news/uhu…

Good to keep in mind, as Charles Hornsby reminds us in his opus, Kenya: A History Since Independence, that Long Teeth always had sticky fingers.

Long Teeth's odiero sense of entitlement to OPP was apparently nurtured during his time in London as this suggests. HT @MutemiWaKiama

Anyway, the tactics employed by Long Teeth and his family to steal the ruby mine are familiar even today.
wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/1…