Then, one by one, Nairobi's booksellers cancelled their orders. A panicky HarperCollins sales representative visiting the capital warned me that things were "very tense". Something had spooked them. 

When quizzed by journalists, these men, almost all Kenyan Asians, claimed they were afraid of being sued for libel by those named in the book. The justification made little sense. Yes, Kenyans are famously litigious. Moi's cronies certainly established a precedent of suing not just authors or publishers, but booksellers distributing the offending item. But the Kibaki administration's failure to bring a single individual to court over Anglo Leasing, five years after the scandal broke, surely indicated the last thing the ruling elite wanted was a trial, with all the light it would shed on government's darkest corners. Who, precisely, was going to sue? 

When I asked one shopseller what was going on, his answer was elliptical. "What would you say if I told you that strange men in suits, people who don't even know the book's title, are coming in saying, ‘Are you selling that book?"' He promised to explain in an email; it never arrived. 

"It smacks of an intimidation operation by National Intelligence," a Kenyan journalist told me. "All it takes is a few phone calls and those guys run scared." If he was right, this was censorship by the back door, with Nairobi's booksellers doing the government's job for it. Soon, not a single Kenyan bookshop was selling It's Our Turn to Eat.

Like all those who celebrated Kibaki's inauguration back in 2002, assuming it marked the dawn of a new era, I had misjudged the distance Kenya had travelled. March saw the gunning down in central Nairobi of two human rights activists who had — such irony — denounced extra-judicial killings by the police. Members of civil society, targeted by death threats, went underground. The cowed instincts of the past were making a vigorous return, sorely-won freedoms were being consigned to history.