The Late Rawson Mbugua Macharia was a man whose past was filled with controversy, as he was among the witnesses who testified against Kenya's first President Mzee Jomo Kenyatta.
Macharia hailed from Muthurumbi Village in Gatundu District and was known to always dress in suits and carried a briefcase wherever he went.
He was at one-time imprisoned for perjury over claims that he gave false evidence against Kenyatta, who would become Kenya’s first president.
When he was handed a six-month jail term in the early 1980s, Macharia had sworn an affidavit claiming he was misled by the colonial masters to give false evidence that would land Kenyatta in jail, together with his comrades in the freedom struggle.
Kenyatta was jailed together with Achieng Oneko, Kungu Karumba, Fred Kubai, Bildad Kagia and Paul Ngei over their links with Mau Mau freedom fighters, who the British considered a terrorist group.
Macharia was later sentenced to another jail term for perjury when the court ruled that the affidavit, which he had sworn claiming he gave false testimony on Kenyatta, was itself perjury.
A manuscript of a book he was about to publish, to clear the air about the famous trial, was later confiscated by the government and kept in the National Archives, according to a lawyer who represented a publishing house involved in the suit.
Macharia died at the age of 96 in a freak accident involving a motorcycle in 2008.
The motorbike hit the old man as he crossed the then Thika-Nairobi Highway, near his residence in Juja, killing him on the spot.
Macharia lived at Gachororo village with one of his three sons, Samuel Marima Mbugua. Two of his sons and their mother Edith Mwihaki, are deceased.
