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Kenya's first lady makes headlines with media assault

Kenya's first lady, Lucy Kibaki, entered the offices of the country's biggest-circulation newspaper late on Monday, where she allegedly slapped a TV cameraman and seized reporters' notebooks and tape recorders to protest at stories about her eccentric behavior.

Lucy Kibaki, one of President Mwai Kibaki's two wives, arrived at the offices of the Daily Nation just before midnight on Monday, accompanied by a six-man security detail, and stayed until 5am Tuesday.

She accused the paper of printing lies about her behavior last Friday night, when she disrupted a party for the outgoing country director of the World Bank, who lives next door to the Kibakis' private home.

Touring the newsroom and sitting down at different editors' desks, she reportedly said: "We cannot entertain lies, it is illegal and it is a crime."

According to reports in Tuesday's late edition of the Daily Nation, she demanded the arrest of a reporter who wrote a story about her visiting a police station to complain about noise levels at the party. She also wanted that reporter's editor arrested.

When she saw cameraman Clifford Derrick filming her, she allegedly assaulted him.

"After she stormed the newsroom, I rushed to take pictures and she furiously asked: `What are you doing? Are you taking pictures? Stop,' then she slapped me, grabbed me, and we started to struggle as she wanted to take my camera," Derrick said.

Audio recordings of the incident were broadcast on radio stations to a Kenyan public already unhappy about her behavior.

Friday night she went to a garden where the World Bank's Kenya director, Makhtar Diop, was holding a party, complaining that the music was too loud. Diop, who was playing bass guitar on stage with a Kenyan singer, agreed to halt the performance, but witnesses said Mrs Kibaki tried to unplug the amplifiers herself.

As she left, she told Diop: "You must have had a very bad mother, if you do something like this."

"[Diop] became very angry and friends had to restrain him from shouting something back," the guest said.

The presidential household has been divided by a feud between Mrs Kibaki, the president's first wife, and his second wife, Mary Wambui.

Mrs Kibaki's outburst may have been linked to a recent public appearance by Wambui who donated equipment to a hospital in the president's home town, Nyeri.

"This must have caused some domestic squabbles, with the first lady wondering where she got the money," said Owuor Olungah, a research fellow at the University of Nairobi's Institute of African Studies.

"We Kenyans are speculating that whenever the second lady is in the public domain, the first lady goes ballistic."

In a country where macho attitudes still hold sway, the president's credibility has been damaged by his failure to rein in his wife.

Voters question whether the mild-mannered president, an economist who has reportedly had a stroke, is capable of controlling Kenya.
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