Former NTV journalist Salim Swaleh has spoken out about the viral video that showed him crying, saying he recorded it as a private message to Prime Cabinet Secretary Musalia Mudavadi and never expected it to leave that office.
Swaleh made the recording in his bedroom after a tough day in court, sending it through one or two people inside Mudavadi’s office after the two men had barely spoken since the legal case began. He said the silence between them had gone on long enough and he wanted Mudavadi to hear from him directly.
The video sat in that office for a full month before someone pushed it online, and within hours it had spread across social media to an audience Swaleh had never spoken to. He said once it was out, there was nothing he could do to pull it back.
His children returned from school that day having been told by classmates they had seen their father weeping on video, and Swaleh said that was the moment the leak stopped being just a news story and became something that hurt his family. No coverage of the video had acknowledged what it did inside his home.
He rejected the reading that took hold online, saying many Kenyans assumed he had taken Mudavadi to court and was using the footage to push for public sympathy. Swaleh said the video showed a genuine private moment and that the story built around it online was wrong.
He had gone through several intermediaries trying to get a conversation with Mudavadi before recording the message, getting only one brief direct exchange in that whole period. A man who had known him since 2011, he said, deserved to hear his position from him personally rather than through lawyers and court documents.
Swaleh was arrested alongside other officials while running the press office in Mudavadi’s office, in a case involving alleged fraud against foreign nationals, and Mudavadi has not publicly responded to the message meant only for him.