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| (click to enlarge) Kenyatta (credit: John Moss/Black Star) |
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(b. Gatundu, Kenya, c. 1893; d. 22 Aug. 1978) Kenyan; Prime Minister 1963 – 4, President 1964 – 78 A member of the Kikuyu
ethnic group in central Kenya, his original name was Kamau wa Ngengi
and Kenyatta was a nickname. He received some mission education, and was
active in Nairobi politics from 1920, becoming General Secretary of the
first Kenyan African political organization, the Kikuyu Central
Association. In 1931 he went to Britain, where he studied anthropology
and wrote a detailed study of the Kikuyu, Facing Mount Kenya. In 1945, with others including Kwame Nkrumah, he organized the Manchester Pan-African Congress.
Returning to Kenya in 1946, he became president of the Kenya African Union and was active in nationalist agitation. He was subsequently suspected by the colonial administration of organizing the Mau Mau movement, which violently attacked white settlers and their African supporters, a charge which he strongly denied. He was however charged and convicted in 1953 of managing Mau Mau, and sentenced to seven years' imprisonment. Once the colonial government was obliged to concede independence, however, his authority was such that no settlement could be reached without his participation; the main nationalist party, KANU, elected him as leader while still in jail. He was released and elected to the legislative council in 1962, becoming Prime Minister in 1963; he retained the position at independence, and became President in 1964.
As a national leader, he showed few of the radical sympathies for which he had long been feared by white Kenyans and colonial rulers. Behind a titular socialism, he was firmly committed to capitalist development and established good relations with the United Kingdom. His political style was monarchical, but he absorbed rather than suppressing any opposition politician who accepted his authority, and was universally known as "Mzee", a Swahili term meaning "elder". Though an undercurrent of violence remained, his regime was not overtly repressive, and Kenyatta retained great personal support. Increasing corruption, in which members of his family were closely involved, did not prevent a constitutional transfer of power to his successor, Daniel arap Moi, on his death in 1978.
Jomo Kenyatta, who was known as a child as Johnstone Kamau Ngengi, was born, according to most biographies, on October 20, 1891 at Ichaweri. There have always been questions about his birth date created by the unusual way the Kikuyu kept records and Kenyatta's own convenient ability to deny his correct age. His parents were Muigai, a Kikuyu farmer, and Wambui.
Little is known of the early years of his life. He was baptized in August 1914 and received the first 5 years of his education at the Church of Scotland Mission in Kikuyu near Nairobi. From 1921 to 1926 he was employed by the water department of the Nairobi Town Council. He also served as an interpreter to the Kenya Supreme Court. It is said that his use of the name Kenyatta dates from this period, deriving from the Kikuyu-language designation for the beaded workers' belt he wore while at work called a mucibi wa kinyata.
A particularly vital problem to the Kikuyu was the question of land ownership within the colony; they held that the British had unjustly seized much Kikuyu land. Various political organizations, such as the Young Kikuyu Association and the East African Association, were formed to advance their case. Kenyatta, as one of the few educated Kikuyu, joined the Young Kikuyu Association in 1922. British opposition, however, prevented these organizations from achieving any success. The Kikuyu Central Association was created from the Young Kikuyu Association and the East Africa Association and, like all the former groupings, needed men trained in English.
In 1927 Kenyatta, one of the elite as an educated Kikuyu, was asked to become its general secretary, a position which he accepted in early 1928. His office entailed work to encourage the growth of a modern political consciousness among the Kikuyu and thus to develop a broad basis of support for the organization. This required extensive traveling throughout the extensive Kikuyu territory. During 1929 the organization decided to issue its own publication, the Kikuyu-language monthly Mwigwithania (The Reconciler), and Kenyatta was selected as its editor. It was probably the first newspaper produced by Africans in Kenya.
He returned to Kenya in the fall of 1930 and gained permission for the Kikuyu to control their own independent schools despite opposition from the Christian missionary schools. In May 1931 he and Parmenas Githendu Mockerie were dispatched to London by the Kikuyu Central Association to testify before a select parliamentary committee studying the East Africa federation plans by the Colonial Office. He remained in Europe for 15 years, married an English woman, and had a son, Peter. He studied English at the Quaker College of Woodbrooke and at Selly Oak in Birmingham. Among the positions Kenyatta held was that of assistant in phonetics at London University's School of Oriental and African Studies from 1933 to 1936.
In 1936 Kenyatta enrolled at the London School of Economics as a postgraduate student. In the course of his studies he presented a series of papers to the seminar directed by the eminent anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski. They were published in 1938 as Facing Mount Kenya. This work, which has been labeled as "a text in cultural nationalism" since it was one of the earliest publications by an African discussing his own culture without apology, made considerable impact.
Kenyatta asserted the right of Africans to speak for themselves, and not only to be discussed by foreign anthropologists or missionaries and, more important, he declared that Africans should be proud of their own cultural heritage. He especially developed his case around the then important issue of female circumcision, currently under attack by Christian missionaries, demonstrating the relevance of the ceremony to the total Kikuyu culture and indicating how Europeans had ignored this ritual aspect of the study of any African cultural facet. Facing Mount Kenya remains a classic among studies relating to the Kikuyu way of life.
When World War II began, Kenyatta worked on a farm in Surrey and lectured to the British army and the Worker's Educational Association on Africa. He became intensely active in general African movements; along with other pioneers of African nationalism, including Kwame Nkrumah and George Padmore, he founded the Pan African Federation and organized the fifth Pan African Congress at Manchester in March 1945 with the theme "Africa for the Africans." One great advantage of these long years away from Kenya was to isolate Kenyatta from the many divisions and rivalries of his homeland's nationalist movements, brought about by the frustrations imposed on Africans trying to organize in the British-dominated territory.
In 1947 Kenyatta also accepted the position of principal of the independent Teachers' Training College at Githanguri, thus bringing another facet of Kenyan protest under his influence. But despite his considerable success, the European settler dominated government of Kenya managed to keep control of the country's evolution. Many Africans therefore became increasingly frustrated by their lack of progress, and extremist groups began to prepare for a direct challenge to European domination.
A world-famous trial for Kenyatta was held at the remote location of Kapenguria in November. In conditions of intense military security, the government aimed to prove that Mau Mau was a part of the Kenya African Union and Kenyatta its leader. The judgment of the court in April 1953 gave Kenyatta and five other defendants the maximum sentence of 7 years at hard labor, but the trial was conducted in such a manner that many doubted the justice of the sentence.
The Colonial Office took a firm direction in moving the country toward independence through a series of new constitutions (in 1954, 1957, and 1960) designed to increase African participation in governing their homeland. But although African leaders seized the advantages offered to them, continually striving to wrest control from the European settlers, they made Kenyatta's participation in any government leading to independence one of their essential demands.
Kenyatta was freed from the desert prison of Lokitaung in northwestern Kenya in 1959 but was restricted to house arrest for two years in the Northern Frontier District town of Lodwar. In March 1960 the Kenya African National Union was formed and elected Kenyatta as its president in absentia. On August 14, 1961, after nine years of detention, Kenyatta assumed the presidency of the Kenya African National Union party.
On January 12, 1962, Kenyatta was elected to the Kenyan Legislative Assembly to represent the constituency of Fort Hall. On April 10, he agreed to serve in a coalition government as minister of state for constitutional affairs and economic planning. In the May 28, 1963 elections Kenyatta led his African National Union party to victory. Kenyatta was invited to form a government and became self-governing Kenya's first prime minister on June 1. He took steps to reassure the European farmers about their future and also appealed to the freedom fighters and members of the Mau Mau to lay down their arms and join the new nation.
On December 12, 1963 Kenya became the 34th African state to gain independence. The duke of Edinburgh was in attendance as the colonial flag was lowered at midnight and the new Kenyan flag raised.
The European settler problem disappeared, since most of those antagonistic to African rule left the country, but the problem of integrating the various African and Indian citizens of the new republic continued.
The greatest political challenge to Kenyatta was a dispute with Dginga Odinga, the leader of the powerful Luo tribe. Odinga had served as home affairs minister and later as vice president. Odinga was accused by other cabinet ministers of accepting financial aid from Communist China and using the money to buy influence with members of parliament. In March 1964, Kenyatta, who had given Odinga the benefit of the doubt for past loyalty, finally abolished Odinga's position as deputy president of the ruling Kenya African National Union party. In 1966 Odinga resigned as Kenya's national vice president and formed the Kenya Peoples' Union as a leftist opposition party.
On July 5, 1969, Tom Mboya, a popular Luo politician, was assassinated by a Kikuyu. The assassin was tried and executed, but Luo anger still ran high. In October 1969, Kenyatta's appearance in Luo territory set off riots and threatened to divide the new nation. After initially ignoring the problem, Kenyatta imposed a curfew, detained Odinga and his leaders, and banned the Kenya Peoples' Union party. Kenyatta moved the election date to early December 1969 and declared anyone could run for a seat if they were a member of the Kenya African National party. Several members of Kenyatta's party were defeated, but his government survived the election. Despite Luo anger and rumors of military plots, Kenya regained a surface calm which continued through Kenyatta's presidency.
Kenyatta made Kenya a showcase nation among the former African colonial states. Leading his nation on a relatively conservative course, he provided for peace and prosperity in his nation while improving health, agriculture, tourism, business, and manufacturing. Although Kenyatta utilized both communist and capitalist financial and technical aid, which helped Kenya take the lead in economic development in East Africa, he came down heavily and communist efforts to infiltrate the country.
Kenyatta followed a nonaligned, but pro-western, foreign policy and pursued an orthodox African policy towards the apartheid tactics of Rhodesia and South Africa. In 1971 he became the unmitigated leader in East Africa and achieved his greatest foreign policy success when he helped to settle a border dispute between Uganda and Tanzania.
Kenyatta died peacefully in Mombassa on August 22, 1978. His successor, Daniel arap Moi, was Kenya's vice president. The transition of power was seamless and Moi suggested a continuation in Kenyatta's policies by calling his own program Nyayo or "footsteps."
Education: Attended University College, London; studied in Moscow, 1932; postgraduate study in anthropology, London School of Economics, 1937.
Politics: Conservative Pan-Africanist.
Religion: Christian.
Jomo Kenyatta never knew the exact year of his birth--only that he was born sometime in the 1890s into a tribe that had always counted people's ages according to their initiation groups. This custom, part of a long tradition, had kept the group members loyal to each other even after the burgeoning Kikuyu population expanded into new territory during the nineteenth century. However, unchanging tradition could not barricade the people against outside events; it was powerless against both the drought of 1889-1890 and the evils of smallpox and cattle disease that sent Kikuyu fleeing back to their ancestral stronghold in the fertile highlands around Mount Kenya. On their homecoming, they met yet another disaster: foreigners had claimed their vacant land after Kenya became the British East Africa Protectorate in 1895. Furthermore, these foreigners could support their claims with 99-year Crown leases that virtually turned the Kikuyu into squatters on their own land, tolerated only as a source of cheap labor.
By 1902 Kikuyu lands were divided again, this time by the Uganda Railway built by the British to connect the Kenyan port of Mombasa with Lake Victoria. The railroad shattered tribal isolation forever, enticing the people into the new era with trading posts and introducing them to European missionaries bearing the messages of Christianity and education for their children.
The future president of Kenya enrolled in a Scottish-run mission school in Kenya's Central province around the year 1909. Naked except for three wire bracelets plus a strip of cloth around his neck, he is said to have given his name as Kamau wa Ngengi. There was little about him to hint at his future role as Jomo Kenyatta: he abandoned academic life for a carpentry apprenticeship in 1912, though he stayed at the mission long enough to undergo both the traditional Kikuyu initiation into manhood and entry into Christianity, taking the baptismal name of Johnstone.
The end of World War I found Johnstone Kamau settled in Nairobi, attending evening mission classes and working as a water meter reader. Generously paid, he was able to build a hut for his new wife and baby in his native Kiambu district. Johnstone is said to have made his hut big enough to accommodate a small general store, which he called "Kinyata" after the bead-strung leather strips he often wore as a belt.
A social center as well as a place of business, the shop was an ideal place for customers to air grievances over the laws that were instituted after Kenya was declared a British colony in 1920. Several topics came up for discussion. A 1915 law extending white-held land leases from 99 to 999 years and placing all black-held land under the British Crown was hotly opposed, as was a registration act stating that all black males had to carry a kipande, or document listing their employment history and references. Taken together, these laws increased the squatter problem, especially when combined with a ban on profitable sisal (hemp) and coffee crops for black farmers. The Kikuyu resented this almost as much as they resented the hut tax now payable for each wife, complaining that tax money would be better spent on government-run schools.
Discontented rumblings found expression in a rash of government-opposed societies. Kenyatta joined the fledgling Kikuyu Central Association (KCA) in 1925, later becoming secretary. Successful at increasing member support in rural areas, he soon earned himself an official reputation as a troublemaker by helping to shape a petition to the British government, asking, among other things, for permission to grow coffee and for publication of all laws in the Kikuyu language.
By 1929 the KCA had not received a response from local government about either these grievances or the issues of land rights and the hut tax. Disregarding the local authorities' assurances that they would have no success as an unofficial organization that did not represent all the Kikuyu, the KCA scraped together the funds to send Johnstone to England to consult the Colonial Office.
From London, Johnstone wrote to the British Colonial Office frequently. While he waited for a response, he took the opportunity to visit Europe and Russia, despite a shortage of money so acute that his landlord impounded his possessions in lieu of rent. Ignored by the authorities, he returned to Kenya in 1930 but was soon sent back by the KCA to protest a threatened federation of Tanganyika (now Tanzania), Uganda, and Kenya that would tighten Britain's colonial grip. Johnstone ventured back to England eagerly, lingering only to send his wife two bunches of bananas by way of acknowledging the birth of his second baby. Once in England, however, neither frequent letters to the Colonial Office nor impassioned pleas to several parliamentary committees brought any response on the federation question.
Nevertheless, he gained a chance to make himself heard, for the Kikuyu land loss complaint had at last found a British response. In 1932 the government appointed the Carter Commission to walk the precarious claims tightrope teetering between the powerful, wealthy settlers and the impoverished, aggrieved Kikuyu. Sir Morris Carter took statements from Kenyatta and others, then went to Kenya to inspect the lands. Finding that the ancestral territory around Mount Kenya had indeed been cut, he compromised by ruling that the Kikuyu be moved and compensated with less desirable land reclaimed from the thin strip of forest separating them from the Masai tribes. The white settlers were permitted to remain in the fertile area that would henceforth be known as the White Highlands.
Having infuriated the Kikuyu by removing them from their ancestral stronghold, the might of the law moved on to the neighboring Wakamba. Outraged by the devastating effects of Carter's dictums on their cattle-raising tradition, 3,000 Wakamba tribesmen marched to see the governor in Nairobi. Denied entry, they protested by swelling KCA membership rolls, which reached 10,000 by 1938.
These explosive events were faithfully relayed to Johnstone in England. In turn, he publicized the Wakamba and Kikuyu complaints both in lectures given all over England and in articles published in the Manchester Guardian. The Colonial Office, however, refused to acknowledge him, though they had begun to keep a list of all his activities. Meticulously documented were Johnstone's 1932 visit to Moscow, where he attended an institute for revolutionaries; his job teaching Kikuyu language at London University's School of African and Oriental Languages; and a bit part he played in a movie called Sanders of the River, which brought him a friendship with the world-renowned singer and activist Paul Robeson. Also noted were details of Johnstone's association with left-wing intellectuals who introduced him to the possibilities of Kenyan independence and black majority rule.
In 1936, despite the fact that he lacked a college degree, Johnstone went to the London School of Economics to take a postgraduate level class in anthropology from the distinguished Bronislaw Malinowski. Around the same time, he wrote a study of Kikuyu life called Facing Mount Kenya, depicting a complex African society that had developed free from European influence. To illustrate his pride in the uncorrupted Kikuyu culture, he was photographed for the book's cover in tribal dress consisting of a borrowed monkey-fur cloak and a spear made from a sharpened plank. He also rejected the missionary-given name of Johnstone, deciding that "Jomo," meaning "burning spear," might be more appropriate. By way of a last name, he adopted "Kenyatta," reminiscent of his little store in Kiambu. His book sold only 517 copies but was well received in academic circles.
The outbreak of World War II prevented Kenyatta's return to Kenya but did not leave his Colonial Office dossier incomplete. The list now included his job as a farm laborer in an English town, his 1942 marriage (Kenyan family notwithstanding) to an Englishwoman named Edna Clarke, and the birth of a son the following year. The record ended in 1946, when he finally returned to Kenya, leaving Edna behind.
Sixteen years abroad had changed both Kenyatta and his country. Fiftyish, highly educated, and well-traveled, he received an ecstatic welcome from his supporters. Kenya now had a booming economy, fueled mainly by exports of food to a hungry, wartorn Europe. Wealth, in turn, had brought thousands of settlers streaming from India on the eve of its partition from Britain. By 1948, the white population in Kenya stood at around 30,000, many of whom needed cheap labor to work their growing lands.
But Kenyatta's keen eye saw that the country's labor force would not be easy to manage. Blacks who had spent the war years in Kenya had learned about free education and territorial security from British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) news bulletins. Those who had gone overseas with the 75,000-strong fighting forces had left the racial discrimination of their colonial-run homeland behind, only to return at war's end to the usual problems of work documents and confiscated land. With no means of livelihood, these highly trained veterans had drifted into the rapidly swelling new slums of Kenya's cities, where the crime rate had begun to soar.
Kenyatta was dismayed to see the traditional honor of the Kikuyu besmirched by dishonesty and violence. Despite government restrictions that made meetings difficult to arrange, he harangued his huge audiences with pep talks on the necessities for hard work, fair trade in the cities, and an immediate end to tribal violence.
Kenyatta was a staunch opponent of white rule for Africans, and he introduced the idea of independence for his country's people through the Kenya African Union (KAU). Formed in 1944, the multitribal organization declared him its president in absentia and rallied for racial equality by law, voting privileges for blacks, and the restoration of land ownership rights to native Kenyans. Noting that urban blacks were more comfortable with the move towards independence than their conservative rural counterparts, Kenyatta made a decision that led to disaster: he chose to spur black allegiance with traditional oath-taking.
Oaths had always been part of the Kikuyu moral code. Underscoring loyalty to initiation groups, they were also a familiar part of each land sale, proving the seller's ownership before new boundaries were marked by the stomach contents of a ceremonially-slaughtered ram. But Kikuyu acceptance did not automatically guarantee backing for oaths from tribes unfamiliar with the practice. Distrustful of the unknown, they withdrew their support. White Kenyans, citing Kenyatta's enormous following and his familiarity with Communism, demanded that he be followed constantly by the Special Branch Bureau of Criminal Investigation. Kenyatta proceeded to reject oathing as a rural canvassing measure, but not soon enough to stop it from spreading in a perverted and most virulent form.
In 1948 Kenya began to experience a terrorist threat called Mau Mau. Its architects, both Kikuyus, were British army veteran Bildad Kaggia and trade unionist Fred Kubai. Like Kenyatta, they were bent on Kenyan independence; unlike him, they were committed to using any means necessary--no matter how forceful--to achieve it. Determined to force the whites out of Kenya, the men swiftly organized fighting cells in the Kikuyu-held forests girdling Mount Kenya and the Aberdare Range of mountains. Mau Mau raiders left behind them trails of strangled dogs and cats, disembowelled cattle with amputated legs, and human victims who had been burned alive or hacked to pieces with machetes. During the late 1940s and early 1950s, the Mau Mau is believed to have murdered a small number of white settlers and more than 11,000 blacks suspected of collaborating with the white regime.
Many political observers agree that Kenyatta knew about Mau Mau. However, he always disclaimed connection with it on the simple grounds that he opposed its brutality. Asked by the British government to denounce Mau Mau in his home district of Kiambu, he gladly did so, thereby bringing Mau Mau assassination threats down on his head. Still, the government banned the KAU in 1952 as a suspected Mau Mau front and then declared a state of national emergency.
Kenyatta and several Mau Mau committee members were arrested in October of 1952 and tried in a remote little town called Kapenguria. Found guilty of organizing the terrorist group, Kenyatta spent the following six years in Laukitaung Prison, cooking for the other convicts, reading books on comparative religion sent to him by his daughter, and piecing together news of his home district, where his farm had been destroyed on government orders.
Kenyatta completed his prison sentence in April of 1959. Opposition to colonialism in Kenya continued, and the government was reluctant to release him immediately. The turning point came after eleven hardcore Mau Mau supporters were slaughtered in an alleged disciplinary action that embarrassed the British government and caused the resignation of the colonial secretary.
The new colonial secretary was Iain MacLeod, a man firmly committed to Kenyan independence and black majority rule. Moving briskly, by mid-1960 MacLeod had encouraged the formation of two political parties: the Kenya African National Union (KANU) was a coalition between the dominant Kikuyu and runner-up Luo tribes, while the Kenya African Democratic Union was made up of smaller tribes fearing Kikuyu domination. Once again in absentia, Kenyatta was nominated the president of KANU.
MacLeod also authorized a press conference for Kenyatta, who had been transferred to another town. Now about 70, Kenyatta appeared before selected journalists fit and alert, and armed with a crisp three-point statement: he declared that he had not been the organizer of Mau Mau; he expressed his belief that black Kenyans must rule their country; and he emphatically denied any Communist connections, assuring the journalists that he had merely been to the former Soviet Union for educational purposes. Kenyatta went back to Kiambu in August of 1961 to a rebuilt farm packed with 10,000 well-wishers. The greeting was a triumphant boost to the beginning of his successful KANU campaign.
Kenya became Africa's 34th independent state at the end of 1963. Honored guests at the celebration included Britain's Prince Philip, actor Sidney Poitier, and U.S. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall. Also present were several truckloads of Mau Mau, all of whom had been promised feasts of oxen, jobs, and generous loans for land purchase. (Their euphoria, however, was shortlived. On learning that the loans would have to be repaid, many of them returned to lives of crime in the forests.)
Kenyatta was now the country's prime minister, and "Harambee!" ("Let us all pull together!") was the motto of new independence. By December of 1964, Kenyatta had become the first president of Kenya, with business in the one-party state getting off to a brisk and pragmatic start. The new order swept away tribal rivalries in favor of nationalism for the benefit of all Kenyans.
Kenyanization became the new economic watchword. A British-financed Land Transfer Program eased government efforts to buy out white farmers so that blacks could purchase their land; reluctant sellers, especially if they were noncitizens, were warned of "severe action" if they refused to comply. As a result, despite the doctrine of forgiveness and nonviolence that had always been Kenyatta's creed, 5,000 of the 45,000 white farmers in Kenya had already left the country by the time it became a republic at the end of 1964.
Still, Kenyanization was progressing more slowly than Kenyatta had expected. Nearly six dozen American companies, including Union Carbide, Colgate-Palmolive, and Caltex, had established ties with Kenya, but the president was troubled by and determined to curb the considerable economic influence of Asians who gained prominence in Kenya since the days of the Uganda Railway.
Anxious to avoid claims of Kikuyu favoritism, Kenyatta had carefully selected his first cabinet from each population group. Nevertheless, cracks in party loyalty began to appear early. Vice President Oginga Odinga, a self-confessed Communist, was later shown to have campaigned for anti-government support among the Mau Mau. Odinga resigned from Kenyatta's government in 1966 and formed a new party called the Kenya People's Union, which gained considerable support in the late 1960s. Kenyatta's aura of invincibility was threatened by the opposition of Odinga and the Kenya People's Union. He met the challenge with a grim warning later published in Time magazine's November 7, 1969 issue: "We will crush you into flour. Anyone who toys with our progress will be crushed like locusts." His first example was Odinga, who was placed under immediate house arrest.
As the 1970s advanced, the Kenyatta ranks split further. Rumors of government-sanctioned corruption abounded, with officials of the Kenyatta regime--and even members of the president's family--implicated as key players in incidents of poaching, deforestation, ivory exportation, and land grabbing.
A courageous and popular politician named Josiah Kariuki began to speak out against the corruption surrounding the aged president. "Kenya does not need ten millionaires and ten million beggars," he declared in a speech quoted by the London Times in 1975. Soon afterwards, Kariuki was abducted from the Nairobi Hilton, tortured, and murdered, his body lying unclaimed in a mortuary for more than a week before one of his wives identified it. Kenyatta made his position on the murder clear: he warned that further opposition would bring further bloodshed.
When Jomo Kenyatta died in his sleep on August 22, 1978, Vice President Daniel arap Moi, a handpicked successor, assumed smooth control of the government. In spite of the controversy and charges of corruption that surrounded him during his lifetime, Kenyatta remains in death the father of Kenyan independence and a key figure in the struggle to promote black rule and economic autonomy throughout Africa.
Kenyatta, Jomo (c.1894-1978). Kenyan nationalist statesman. Kenyatta's involvement in politics began in 1922 when he campaigned for the restoration of land lost by his Kikuyu tribe to white settlers. In 1929 he went to London to plead the case of the Kikuyu and stayed in Europe. Returning to Kenya in 1946 he was elected president of the Kenya African Union in 1947. In 1952 he was found guilty of master-minding the Mau Mau rebellion although the evidence was far from conclusive. He was released in 1961 and became prime minister in 1963 when the country achieved independence, then president in 1964 when Kenya became a republic.
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He then left home to become a resident pupil at the Church of Scotland Mission (CSM) at Thogoto, close to Kikuyu Town, about 12 miles north-west of Nairobi. He studied amongst other subjects: the Bible, English, mathematics and carpentry. He paid the school fees by working as a houseboy and cook for a white settler living nearby.
In 1912, having completed his mission school education, he became an apprentice carpenter. The following year he underwent initiation ceremonies, including circumcision, to become a member of the kihiu-mwiri age group. In 1914, he converted to Christianity, assuming the name John Peter, which he then changed to Johnstone Kamau. He left the mission later that year to seek employment.[3]
He first worked as an apprentice carpenter on a sisal farm in Thika, under the tutelage of John Cook, who had been in charge of the building programme at Thogoto. During the First World War, Kikuyu were forced into work by the British authorities. To avoid this, he lived with Maasai relatives in Narok, where he worked as a clerk for an Asian contractor.[3]
In 1919 he married Grace Wahu, under Kikuyu customs. When Grace got pregnant, his church elders ordered him to get married before a European magistrate, and undertake the appropriate church rites. On 20 November 1920 Kamau's first son Peter Muigai, was born. Kamau served as an interpreter in the Nairobi High Court, and ran a store out of his Dagoretti home during this period.[3] He eventually married Grace Wahu in a civil ceremony in 1922. Grace Wahu lived in the Dagoretti home until her death in April 2007 at the age of around 100.
In 1922 Kamau began working, as a store clerk and water-meter reader for the Nairobi Municipal Council Public Works Department, once again under John Cook who was the Water Superintendent.[2] Meter reading helped him meet many Kenyan-Asians at their homes who would become important allies later on.
He entered politics after taking interest in the political activities of James Beauttah and Joseph Kang'ethe the leaders of the Kikuyu Central Association (KCA). He joined KCA in 1924 and rose up the ranks of the association. Eventually he began to edit the movement's Kikuyu newspaper. By 1928 he had become the KCA's general secretary.
In 1928 he launched a monthly Kikuyu language newspaper called Muĩgwithania (Reconciler) which aimed to unite all sections of the Kikuyu. The paper, supported by an Asian-owned printing press, had a mild and unassuming tone, and was tolerated by the colonial government.[3] He also made a presentation on Kikuyu land problems before the Hilton Young Commission in Nairobi in the same year.
He returned to London in 1931 and enrolled in Woodbrooke Quaker College in Birmingham. Discouraged by the lack of official response to the land claims he was putting forward, he began an association with British Communists, who published articles he wrote in their publications.In 1932 to 1933, he briefly studied economics in Moscow at the Comintern School, KUTVU (University of the Toilers of the East) but left after the Soviet Union (worried about Hitler's growing power and seeing Britain and France as potential allies) withdrew its support for the movement against British and French colonial rule in Africa.[6]
In 1934, Kenyatta enrolled at University College London and from 1935 studied social anthropology under Bronisław Malinowski at the London School of Economics (LSE). He was an active member of the International African Service Bureau, a pan-Africanist, anti-colonial organisation that had formed around former international communist leader George Padmore, who had also become disillusioned with the Soviet Union and himself moved to London. Kenyatta read the draft of the Kenya section of Padmore's new book, How Britain Rules Africa (1936)[7] With the editorial help of an English editor named Dinah Stock who became a close friend, Kenyatta published his own book, Facing Mount Kenya (his revised LSE thesis) in 1938 under his new name, Jomo Kenyatta.[8] The name "Jomo" is translated in English to "Burning Spear", while the name "Kenyatta" was said to be a reference to the beaded Masai belt he wore, and later to "the Light of Kenya". After the war, he wrote a pamphlet (with some content contributed by Padmore), Kenya: The Land of Conflict, published by the International African Service Bureau under the imprint Panaf Service.[9]
During this period, Kenyatta was an active member of a group of African, Caribbean and American intellectuals who included Dudley Thompson, George Padmore, C.L.R. James, Eric Williams, W.A. Wallace Johnson, Paul Robeson and Ralph Bunche. During his presidency, a number of streets in Nairobi were named after those early black-emancipation intellectuals.
Kenyatta acted as an extra in the film Sanders of the River (1934), directed by Alexander Korda and starring Paul Robeson.
During World War II, he worked as a labourer at an English farm in Sussex, and lectured on Africa for the Workers' Educational Association.
In 1942, he married an Englishwoman, Edna Clarke. He also published My People of Kikuyu and The Life of Chief Wang'ombe, a history shading into legend. Edna gave birth to their son, Peter Magana, in 1943.[10]
In 1945, with other prominent African nationalist figures, such as Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, Kenyatta helped organise the fifth Pan-African Congress held in Britain.[11]
He left Edna Clarke behind in Britain when he returned to Kenya in 1946.[citation needed]
He married for the fourth time, to Grace Wanjiku, Senior Chief Koinange's daughter, and sister to Mbiyu Koinange (who later became a lifelong confidant and was one of the most powerful politicians during Kenyatta's presidency).
Kenyatta then went into teaching, becoming principal of Kenya Teachers College Githunguri.
In 1947, he was elected president of the Kenya African Union (KAU). He began to receive death threats from white settlers after his election.
From 1948 to 1951 he toured and lectured around the country condemning idleness, robbery, urging hard work while campaigning for the return of land given to white settlers and for independence within three years.
His wife, Grace Wanjiku, died in childbirth in 1950 as she gave birth to daughter Jane Wambui, who survived.
In 1951 Kenyatta married Ngina Muhoho, daughter of Chief Muhoho. She was popularly referred to as Mama Ngina and was independent Kenya's First Lady, when Kenyatta was elected President.
The Mau Mau Rebellion began in 1951 and KAU was banned, and a state of emergency was declared on 20 October 1952.[citation needed]
The trial lasted five months: Rawson Macharia, the main prosecution witness, turned out to have perjured himself; the judge — who had only recently been awarded an unusually large pension,[12] and who maintained secret contact with the then colonial Governor of Kenya Evelyn Baring[13] during the trial — was openly hostile to the defendants' cause.
The defence, led by British barrister D.N. Pritt, argued that the white settlers were trying to scapegoat Kenyatta and that there was no evidence tying him to the Mau Mau. The court sentenced Kenyatta on 8 April 1953 to seven years imprisonment with hard labour and indefinite restriction thereafter.[14] The subsequent appeal was refused by the British Privy Council in 1954.
Kenyatta remained in prison until 1959, after which he was detained in Lodwar, a remote part of Kenya.
The state of emergency was lifted on 12 January 1960.[15]
On 28 February 1961, a public meeting of 25,000 in Nairobi demanded his release. On 15 April 1960, over a million signatures for a plea to release him were presented to the Governor. On 14 May 1960, he was elected KANU President in absentia. On 23 March 1961, Kenyan leaders, including Daniel arap Moi, later his longtime Vice President and successor as president, visited him at Lodwar. On 11 April 1961, he was moved to Maralal with daughter Margaret where he met world press for the first time in eight years. On 14 August 1961, he was released and brought to Gatundu to a hero's welcome.[citation needed]
While contemporary opinion linked Kenyatta with the Mau Mau, historians have questioned his alleged leadership of the radical movement.[16] Kenyatta was in truth a political moderate. His marriage of Colonial Chief's daughters, his post independence Kikuyu allies mainly being former colonial collaborators (though also from his tribe), and his short shrift treatment of former Mau Mau fighters after he came to power, all strongly suggest he had scant regard for the Mau Mau.
In 1961 and 1962, he led the KANU delegation to first and second Lancaster Conference in London where Kenya's independence constitution was negotiated.
Elections were then held in May 1963, pitting Kenyatta's KANU (Kenya African National Union- which advocated for Kenya to be a unitary state) against KADU (Kenya African Democratic Union - which advocated for Kenya to be an ethnic-federal state). KANU beat KADU by winning 83 seats out of 124. On 1 June 1963, Kenyatta became prime minister of the autonomous Kenyan government. After independence, Queen Elizabeth II remained as Head of State (after Independence, styled as Queen of Kenya), represented by a Governor-General. He consistently asked white settlers not to leave Kenya and supported reconciliation.
On 1 June 1964, had Parliament amend the Constitution to make Kenya a republic. The office of prime minister was replaced by a president with wide executive and legislative powers. Elected by the National Assembly, he was head of State, head of Government and Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces. Under the provisions of the amendment, Kenyatta automatically became president.
His policy was that of continuity and gradual Africanisation of the government, keeping many colonial civil servants in their old jobs as they were gradually replaced by Kenyans. He asked for British troops' help against Somali rebels, Shiftas, in the northeast and in ending an army mutiny in Nairobi in January 1964.
On 10 November 1964, KADU officially dissolved and its representatives joined KANU, forming a single party.
Kenyatta was re-elected un-opposed in 1966, and the next year had the Constitution amended to expand his powers. This term featured border conflicts with Somalia, and more political opposition. He consolidated his power greatly, and placed several of his Kikuyu tribesmen in most of the powerful state and security offices and posts. State security forces harassed dissidents and were suspected of complicity in several murders of prominent personalities deemed as threats to his regime, including Pio Gama Pinto, Tom Mboya and J.M. Kariuki.[18] MP and Lawyer C.M.G. Argwings-Kodhek and former Kadu Leader and minister Ronald Ngala, also died in suspicious car accidents.
In 1968 he published his biography Suffering Without Bitterness.
In the 1969 elections, Kenyatta banned the only other party, the Kenya People's Union (formed and led by his former vice president, Jaramogi Oginga Odinga who had been forced to quit KANU along with his left leaning allies), detained its leaders, and called elections in which only KANU was allowed to participate. For all intents and purposes, Kenya was now a one-party state.
1973 newsreel about Kenyatta's rule
On 29 January 1970 he was sworn in as President for a further term.
For the remainder of his presidency, Kenyatta held complete political
control of the country. He made use of detention, appeals to ethnic
loyalties, and careful appointment of government jobs to maintain his
commanding position in Kenya’s political system.[19]
However, as the 1970s wore on, advancing age kept him from the
day-to-day management of government affairs. He intervened only when
necessary to settle disputed issues. His relative isolation resulted in
increasing domination of Kenya’s affairs by well-connected Kikuyu who
acquired great wealth as a result.[19][20]
Kenyatta was re-elected as President in 1974, again as the only candidate.[19] On 5 Nov 1974, he was sworn in as President for a third term.[2] His increasingly feeble health meant that his inner circle effectively ruled the country, and greatly enriched themselves, in his name.[20] He remained president until his death four years later in 1978.
He was succeeded as President after his death by his vice-presid
Read more: http://www.answers.com/topic/jomo-kenyatta#ixzz2Xnn6VTPy
Returning to Kenya in 1946, he became president of the Kenya African Union and was active in nationalist agitation. He was subsequently suspected by the colonial administration of organizing the Mau Mau movement, which violently attacked white settlers and their African supporters, a charge which he strongly denied. He was however charged and convicted in 1953 of managing Mau Mau, and sentenced to seven years' imprisonment. Once the colonial government was obliged to concede independence, however, his authority was such that no settlement could be reached without his participation; the main nationalist party, KANU, elected him as leader while still in jail. He was released and elected to the legislative council in 1962, becoming Prime Minister in 1963; he retained the position at independence, and became President in 1964.
As a national leader, he showed few of the radical sympathies for which he had long been feared by white Kenyans and colonial rulers. Behind a titular socialism, he was firmly committed to capitalist development and established good relations with the United Kingdom. His political style was monarchical, but he absorbed rather than suppressing any opposition politician who accepted his authority, and was universally known as "Mzee", a Swahili term meaning "elder". Though an undercurrent of violence remained, his regime was not overtly repressive, and Kenyatta retained great personal support. Increasing corruption, in which members of his family were closely involved, did not prevent a constitutional transfer of power to his successor, Daniel arap Moi, on his death in 1978.
Gale Encyclopedia of Biography:
Jomo Kenyatta
Jomo Kenyatta (1891-1978) was a Kenyan statesman and the dominant figure in the development of African nationalism in East Africa. His long career in public life made him the undisputed leader of the African people of Kenya in their struggle for independence.In the modern political history of Africa very few of the representatives of African peoples have had the opportunity for a sustained position of leadership. The lack of a Western education and the limiting horizons of tribal politics hindered the rise of an African political elite, especially in the British East African possessions, in the years before World War II. Kenyatta is one of the outstanding exceptions of this process; his public career of over 40 years established him as one of the most significant African leaders of the twentieth century.
Jomo Kenyatta, who was known as a child as Johnstone Kamau Ngengi, was born, according to most biographies, on October 20, 1891 at Ichaweri. There have always been questions about his birth date created by the unusual way the Kikuyu kept records and Kenyatta's own convenient ability to deny his correct age. His parents were Muigai, a Kikuyu farmer, and Wambui.
Little is known of the early years of his life. He was baptized in August 1914 and received the first 5 years of his education at the Church of Scotland Mission in Kikuyu near Nairobi. From 1921 to 1926 he was employed by the water department of the Nairobi Town Council. He also served as an interpreter to the Kenya Supreme Court. It is said that his use of the name Kenyatta dates from this period, deriving from the Kikuyu-language designation for the beaded workers' belt he wore while at work called a mucibi wa kinyata.
Early Political Career
In
the Kenya of the 1920s the emerging nationalism of the African
inhabitants was dominated by the dynamic Kikuyu peoples, the country's
largest tribal grouping. They had proved receptive to some aspects of
European culture, especially in education, and they began to attempt
using the techniques of British democracy to secure their desired goals.A particularly vital problem to the Kikuyu was the question of land ownership within the colony; they held that the British had unjustly seized much Kikuyu land. Various political organizations, such as the Young Kikuyu Association and the East African Association, were formed to advance their case. Kenyatta, as one of the few educated Kikuyu, joined the Young Kikuyu Association in 1922. British opposition, however, prevented these organizations from achieving any success. The Kikuyu Central Association was created from the Young Kikuyu Association and the East Africa Association and, like all the former groupings, needed men trained in English.
In 1927 Kenyatta, one of the elite as an educated Kikuyu, was asked to become its general secretary, a position which he accepted in early 1928. His office entailed work to encourage the growth of a modern political consciousness among the Kikuyu and thus to develop a broad basis of support for the organization. This required extensive traveling throughout the extensive Kikuyu territory. During 1929 the organization decided to issue its own publication, the Kikuyu-language monthly Mwigwithania (The Reconciler), and Kenyatta was selected as its editor. It was probably the first newspaper produced by Africans in Kenya.
Residence in Britain
Kenyatta's
chance for a broader role arrived in 1928, when he testified before the
Hilton-Young Commission, which had been sent to East Africa to
investigate the project for a federation of British East African
Territories. In February 1929 the Kikuyu Central Association decided to
send Kenyatta to London to testify against the proposed union of Kenya,
Tanganyika, and Uganda. He was refused an opportunity before the
commission, but the experience of visiting Europe was valuable. He
became involved with some radical anti-colonial organizations and
traveled to the communist-sponsored International Trade Union of Negro
Workers in Hamburg. He also traveled to Berlin and spent several weeks
in the Soviet Union in August 1929.He returned to Kenya in the fall of 1930 and gained permission for the Kikuyu to control their own independent schools despite opposition from the Christian missionary schools. In May 1931 he and Parmenas Githendu Mockerie were dispatched to London by the Kikuyu Central Association to testify before a select parliamentary committee studying the East Africa federation plans by the Colonial Office. He remained in Europe for 15 years, married an English woman, and had a son, Peter. He studied English at the Quaker College of Woodbrooke and at Selly Oak in Birmingham. Among the positions Kenyatta held was that of assistant in phonetics at London University's School of Oriental and African Studies from 1933 to 1936.
In 1936 Kenyatta enrolled at the London School of Economics as a postgraduate student. In the course of his studies he presented a series of papers to the seminar directed by the eminent anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski. They were published in 1938 as Facing Mount Kenya. This work, which has been labeled as "a text in cultural nationalism" since it was one of the earliest publications by an African discussing his own culture without apology, made considerable impact.
Kenyatta asserted the right of Africans to speak for themselves, and not only to be discussed by foreign anthropologists or missionaries and, more important, he declared that Africans should be proud of their own cultural heritage. He especially developed his case around the then important issue of female circumcision, currently under attack by Christian missionaries, demonstrating the relevance of the ceremony to the total Kikuyu culture and indicating how Europeans had ignored this ritual aspect of the study of any African cultural facet. Facing Mount Kenya remains a classic among studies relating to the Kikuyu way of life.
When World War II began, Kenyatta worked on a farm in Surrey and lectured to the British army and the Worker's Educational Association on Africa. He became intensely active in general African movements; along with other pioneers of African nationalism, including Kwame Nkrumah and George Padmore, he founded the Pan African Federation and organized the fifth Pan African Congress at Manchester in March 1945 with the theme "Africa for the Africans." One great advantage of these long years away from Kenya was to isolate Kenyatta from the many divisions and rivalries of his homeland's nationalist movements, brought about by the frustrations imposed on Africans trying to organize in the British-dominated territory.
Politics in Kenya
Thus
when Kenyatta returned to Kenya in September 1946, he was generally
recognized by politically conscious Africans as the most effective
leader for their new moves toward greater freedom. Many Europeans
reacted also by regarding him as a potentially effective threat to their
position of privilege. Kenyatta immediately began organizing a
political movement which would be represented all over Kenya. In June
1947 he became president of the most effective African political
movement to that time, the Kenya African Union. His efforts to encourage
non-kikuyu to join the movement were successful and membership in the
Kenyan African Union increased by over 100,000.In 1947 Kenyatta also accepted the position of principal of the independent Teachers' Training College at Githanguri, thus bringing another facet of Kenyan protest under his influence. But despite his considerable success, the European settler dominated government of Kenya managed to keep control of the country's evolution. Many Africans therefore became increasingly frustrated by their lack of progress, and extremist groups began to prepare for a direct challenge to European domination.
Trial and Imprisonment
Kenyatta
was unable to control the extremists, and by 1952 the violence had
risen to such a level, particularly in the so-called Mau Movement, that
the British reacted by declaring a state of emergency. Kenyatta was
arrested on October 20, the government considering that if the leader of
the Kenya African Union were removed from political life the Mau Mau
crisis, which had claimed nearly 200 European and 12,000 Mau Mau lives,
would cease. They planned no reforms to meet African aspirations.A world-famous trial for Kenyatta was held at the remote location of Kapenguria in November. In conditions of intense military security, the government aimed to prove that Mau Mau was a part of the Kenya African Union and Kenyatta its leader. The judgment of the court in April 1953 gave Kenyatta and five other defendants the maximum sentence of 7 years at hard labor, but the trial was conducted in such a manner that many doubted the justice of the sentence.
Achieving Independence
During
the state of emergency all Kenya-wide African political organizations
had been restricted. But as the British began to regain control of
affairs after 1955, African parties were allowed to reemerge at the
local level, a decision which harmed future African developments by
encouraging separatism among African leaders. Nevertheless, the Mau Mau
crisis had forced the British government to realize the futility of continuing the evolution of Kenya through the existing colonial government.The Colonial Office took a firm direction in moving the country toward independence through a series of new constitutions (in 1954, 1957, and 1960) designed to increase African participation in governing their homeland. But although African leaders seized the advantages offered to them, continually striving to wrest control from the European settlers, they made Kenyatta's participation in any government leading to independence one of their essential demands.
Kenyatta was freed from the desert prison of Lokitaung in northwestern Kenya in 1959 but was restricted to house arrest for two years in the Northern Frontier District town of Lodwar. In March 1960 the Kenya African National Union was formed and elected Kenyatta as its president in absentia. On August 14, 1961, after nine years of detention, Kenyatta assumed the presidency of the Kenya African National Union party.
On January 12, 1962, Kenyatta was elected to the Kenyan Legislative Assembly to represent the constituency of Fort Hall. On April 10, he agreed to serve in a coalition government as minister of state for constitutional affairs and economic planning. In the May 28, 1963 elections Kenyatta led his African National Union party to victory. Kenyatta was invited to form a government and became self-governing Kenya's first prime minister on June 1. He took steps to reassure the European farmers about their future and also appealed to the freedom fighters and members of the Mau Mau to lay down their arms and join the new nation.
On December 12, 1963 Kenya became the 34th African state to gain independence. The duke of Edinburgh was in attendance as the colonial flag was lowered at midnight and the new Kenyan flag raised.
Ruling Kenya
The first years of Kenyan independence were dominated by restructuring
and rebuilding the nation. In November of 1964 Kenyatta convinced the
rival Kenya African Democratic Union and its leader, Ronald Ngala, to
dissolve and join Kenyatta's Kenyan African National Union party to form
a single chambered National Assembly. Ngala had been Kenyatta's
greatest political rival because his party stood for regional autonomy
while Kenyatta's party stood for a strong central government.The European settler problem disappeared, since most of those antagonistic to African rule left the country, but the problem of integrating the various African and Indian citizens of the new republic continued.
The greatest political challenge to Kenyatta was a dispute with Dginga Odinga, the leader of the powerful Luo tribe. Odinga had served as home affairs minister and later as vice president. Odinga was accused by other cabinet ministers of accepting financial aid from Communist China and using the money to buy influence with members of parliament. In March 1964, Kenyatta, who had given Odinga the benefit of the doubt for past loyalty, finally abolished Odinga's position as deputy president of the ruling Kenya African National Union party. In 1966 Odinga resigned as Kenya's national vice president and formed the Kenya Peoples' Union as a leftist opposition party.
On July 5, 1969, Tom Mboya, a popular Luo politician, was assassinated by a Kikuyu. The assassin was tried and executed, but Luo anger still ran high. In October 1969, Kenyatta's appearance in Luo territory set off riots and threatened to divide the new nation. After initially ignoring the problem, Kenyatta imposed a curfew, detained Odinga and his leaders, and banned the Kenya Peoples' Union party. Kenyatta moved the election date to early December 1969 and declared anyone could run for a seat if they were a member of the Kenya African National party. Several members of Kenyatta's party were defeated, but his government survived the election. Despite Luo anger and rumors of military plots, Kenya regained a surface calm which continued through Kenyatta's presidency.
Kenyatta made Kenya a showcase nation among the former African colonial states. Leading his nation on a relatively conservative course, he provided for peace and prosperity in his nation while improving health, agriculture, tourism, business, and manufacturing. Although Kenyatta utilized both communist and capitalist financial and technical aid, which helped Kenya take the lead in economic development in East Africa, he came down heavily and communist efforts to infiltrate the country.
Kenyatta followed a nonaligned, but pro-western, foreign policy and pursued an orthodox African policy towards the apartheid tactics of Rhodesia and South Africa. In 1971 he became the unmitigated leader in East Africa and achieved his greatest foreign policy success when he helped to settle a border dispute between Uganda and Tanzania.
Kenyatta died peacefully in Mombassa on August 22, 1978. His successor, Daniel arap Moi, was Kenya's vice president. The transition of power was seamless and Moi suggested a continuation in Kenyatta's policies by calling his own program Nyayo or "footsteps."
Further Reading
Kenyatta's own writings include: Facing Mount Kenya (1938); My People of Kikuyu and the Life of Chief Wangombe (1944); Kenya: The Land of Conflict (1944); and Harambee!
(1964); an account of the early life and times of Kenyatta and of Mau
Mau groups is by Carl G. Rosberg, Jr., and John Nottingham, The Myth of "Mau Mau": Nationalism in Kenya (1966); for general historical background are Kenya, a Political History: The Colonial Period (1963), by George Bennett; and History of East Africa,
vol. 2 (1965) by Vincent T. Harlow and E. M. Chilver; the life and
career of Kenyatta is traced in the Anthony Howarth and David Koff film Kenyatta (1979); Kenyatta is also listed with a brief biography in the A&E Television Networks online biography at www.biography.com (1997); and mentioned in relationship to Kenya's present government in the JamboKenya homepage at sbwm.erols.com.
Gale Contemporary Black Biography:
presidentJomo Kenyatta
Personal Information
Born Kamau wa Ngengi, c.
October 20, 1891 (birth date is uncertain; some sources say 1890, 1893,
or 1897), in Ngenda, Kiambu District, British East Africa Protectorate
(now Kenya); took the name Johnstone Kamau, 1914; later known as Jomo
Kenyatta; died August 22, 1978, on Mombasa, Kenya; son of Muigai (a
farmer and herdsman) and Wambui; married Grace Wahu, Edna Clarke, Jane
(daughter of Chief Koinange), and Ngina (four wives; no divorces, since
Kikuyu society was polygamous); children: eight.Education: Attended University College, London; studied in Moscow, 1932; postgraduate study in anthropology, London School of Economics, 1937.
Politics: Conservative Pan-Africanist.
Religion: Christian.
Career
Store clerk and water works maintenance
employee for Nairobi Municipality, 1921-26; Kikuyu Central Association
(KCA), secretary, beginning 1928 (organization banned in May 1940), KCA
representative in England intermittently between 1929 and 1945; also
worked as a teacher, farm laborer, and lecturer while abroad;
co-organizer of 5th Pan-African Congress, 1945; Independent Teachers'
College, Githunguri, Kenya, vice principal, beginning 1946, became
principal; president, Kenya African Union (KAU; political party),
1947-52 (also president in absentia, beginning 1944); imprisoned by
British Government for alleged role in Mau Mau terrorism, 1953-61;
president, Kenya African National Union (KANU; political party), 1960-78
(first year in absentia); Government of Kenya, minister for Internal
Security, Defense and Foreign Affairs, 1963-64; prime minister of Kenya,
December 12, 1963-December 12, 1964; president of Kenya, December 12,
1964-August 22, 1978.
Life's Work
On December 12, 1963, the flag of
independent Kenya billowed over the capital city of Nairobi for the
first time. Flanked by thousands of other Kenyans, Jomo Kenyatta watched
the unfolding of a 50-year-old dream that had sent him overseas to
Europe, landed him in jail, and earned him the hushed admiration of his
fellow-Kikuyu tribesmen. An astute politician known to his people as
"Mzee," or "The Wise Elder," Kenyatta became the country's first
president in 1964. History remembers him as a brilliant communicator who
stressed the importance of black African rule in Kenya and conveyed his
message with stunning effectiveness to both his supporters and his opponents.Jomo Kenyatta never knew the exact year of his birth--only that he was born sometime in the 1890s into a tribe that had always counted people's ages according to their initiation groups. This custom, part of a long tradition, had kept the group members loyal to each other even after the burgeoning Kikuyu population expanded into new territory during the nineteenth century. However, unchanging tradition could not barricade the people against outside events; it was powerless against both the drought of 1889-1890 and the evils of smallpox and cattle disease that sent Kikuyu fleeing back to their ancestral stronghold in the fertile highlands around Mount Kenya. On their homecoming, they met yet another disaster: foreigners had claimed their vacant land after Kenya became the British East Africa Protectorate in 1895. Furthermore, these foreigners could support their claims with 99-year Crown leases that virtually turned the Kikuyu into squatters on their own land, tolerated only as a source of cheap labor.
By 1902 Kikuyu lands were divided again, this time by the Uganda Railway built by the British to connect the Kenyan port of Mombasa with Lake Victoria. The railroad shattered tribal isolation forever, enticing the people into the new era with trading posts and introducing them to European missionaries bearing the messages of Christianity and education for their children.
The future president of Kenya enrolled in a Scottish-run mission school in Kenya's Central province around the year 1909. Naked except for three wire bracelets plus a strip of cloth around his neck, he is said to have given his name as Kamau wa Ngengi. There was little about him to hint at his future role as Jomo Kenyatta: he abandoned academic life for a carpentry apprenticeship in 1912, though he stayed at the mission long enough to undergo both the traditional Kikuyu initiation into manhood and entry into Christianity, taking the baptismal name of Johnstone.
The end of World War I found Johnstone Kamau settled in Nairobi, attending evening mission classes and working as a water meter reader. Generously paid, he was able to build a hut for his new wife and baby in his native Kiambu district. Johnstone is said to have made his hut big enough to accommodate a small general store, which he called "Kinyata" after the bead-strung leather strips he often wore as a belt.
A social center as well as a place of business, the shop was an ideal place for customers to air grievances over the laws that were instituted after Kenya was declared a British colony in 1920. Several topics came up for discussion. A 1915 law extending white-held land leases from 99 to 999 years and placing all black-held land under the British Crown was hotly opposed, as was a registration act stating that all black males had to carry a kipande, or document listing their employment history and references. Taken together, these laws increased the squatter problem, especially when combined with a ban on profitable sisal (hemp) and coffee crops for black farmers. The Kikuyu resented this almost as much as they resented the hut tax now payable for each wife, complaining that tax money would be better spent on government-run schools.
Discontented rumblings found expression in a rash of government-opposed societies. Kenyatta joined the fledgling Kikuyu Central Association (KCA) in 1925, later becoming secretary. Successful at increasing member support in rural areas, he soon earned himself an official reputation as a troublemaker by helping to shape a petition to the British government, asking, among other things, for permission to grow coffee and for publication of all laws in the Kikuyu language.
By 1929 the KCA had not received a response from local government about either these grievances or the issues of land rights and the hut tax. Disregarding the local authorities' assurances that they would have no success as an unofficial organization that did not represent all the Kikuyu, the KCA scraped together the funds to send Johnstone to England to consult the Colonial Office.
From London, Johnstone wrote to the British Colonial Office frequently. While he waited for a response, he took the opportunity to visit Europe and Russia, despite a shortage of money so acute that his landlord impounded his possessions in lieu of rent. Ignored by the authorities, he returned to Kenya in 1930 but was soon sent back by the KCA to protest a threatened federation of Tanganyika (now Tanzania), Uganda, and Kenya that would tighten Britain's colonial grip. Johnstone ventured back to England eagerly, lingering only to send his wife two bunches of bananas by way of acknowledging the birth of his second baby. Once in England, however, neither frequent letters to the Colonial Office nor impassioned pleas to several parliamentary committees brought any response on the federation question.
Nevertheless, he gained a chance to make himself heard, for the Kikuyu land loss complaint had at last found a British response. In 1932 the government appointed the Carter Commission to walk the precarious claims tightrope teetering between the powerful, wealthy settlers and the impoverished, aggrieved Kikuyu. Sir Morris Carter took statements from Kenyatta and others, then went to Kenya to inspect the lands. Finding that the ancestral territory around Mount Kenya had indeed been cut, he compromised by ruling that the Kikuyu be moved and compensated with less desirable land reclaimed from the thin strip of forest separating them from the Masai tribes. The white settlers were permitted to remain in the fertile area that would henceforth be known as the White Highlands.
Having infuriated the Kikuyu by removing them from their ancestral stronghold, the might of the law moved on to the neighboring Wakamba. Outraged by the devastating effects of Carter's dictums on their cattle-raising tradition, 3,000 Wakamba tribesmen marched to see the governor in Nairobi. Denied entry, they protested by swelling KCA membership rolls, which reached 10,000 by 1938.
These explosive events were faithfully relayed to Johnstone in England. In turn, he publicized the Wakamba and Kikuyu complaints both in lectures given all over England and in articles published in the Manchester Guardian. The Colonial Office, however, refused to acknowledge him, though they had begun to keep a list of all his activities. Meticulously documented were Johnstone's 1932 visit to Moscow, where he attended an institute for revolutionaries; his job teaching Kikuyu language at London University's School of African and Oriental Languages; and a bit part he played in a movie called Sanders of the River, which brought him a friendship with the world-renowned singer and activist Paul Robeson. Also noted were details of Johnstone's association with left-wing intellectuals who introduced him to the possibilities of Kenyan independence and black majority rule.
In 1936, despite the fact that he lacked a college degree, Johnstone went to the London School of Economics to take a postgraduate level class in anthropology from the distinguished Bronislaw Malinowski. Around the same time, he wrote a study of Kikuyu life called Facing Mount Kenya, depicting a complex African society that had developed free from European influence. To illustrate his pride in the uncorrupted Kikuyu culture, he was photographed for the book's cover in tribal dress consisting of a borrowed monkey-fur cloak and a spear made from a sharpened plank. He also rejected the missionary-given name of Johnstone, deciding that "Jomo," meaning "burning spear," might be more appropriate. By way of a last name, he adopted "Kenyatta," reminiscent of his little store in Kiambu. His book sold only 517 copies but was well received in academic circles.
The outbreak of World War II prevented Kenyatta's return to Kenya but did not leave his Colonial Office dossier incomplete. The list now included his job as a farm laborer in an English town, his 1942 marriage (Kenyan family notwithstanding) to an Englishwoman named Edna Clarke, and the birth of a son the following year. The record ended in 1946, when he finally returned to Kenya, leaving Edna behind.
Sixteen years abroad had changed both Kenyatta and his country. Fiftyish, highly educated, and well-traveled, he received an ecstatic welcome from his supporters. Kenya now had a booming economy, fueled mainly by exports of food to a hungry, wartorn Europe. Wealth, in turn, had brought thousands of settlers streaming from India on the eve of its partition from Britain. By 1948, the white population in Kenya stood at around 30,000, many of whom needed cheap labor to work their growing lands.
But Kenyatta's keen eye saw that the country's labor force would not be easy to manage. Blacks who had spent the war years in Kenya had learned about free education and territorial security from British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) news bulletins. Those who had gone overseas with the 75,000-strong fighting forces had left the racial discrimination of their colonial-run homeland behind, only to return at war's end to the usual problems of work documents and confiscated land. With no means of livelihood, these highly trained veterans had drifted into the rapidly swelling new slums of Kenya's cities, where the crime rate had begun to soar.
Kenyatta was dismayed to see the traditional honor of the Kikuyu besmirched by dishonesty and violence. Despite government restrictions that made meetings difficult to arrange, he harangued his huge audiences with pep talks on the necessities for hard work, fair trade in the cities, and an immediate end to tribal violence.
Kenyatta was a staunch opponent of white rule for Africans, and he introduced the idea of independence for his country's people through the Kenya African Union (KAU). Formed in 1944, the multitribal organization declared him its president in absentia and rallied for racial equality by law, voting privileges for blacks, and the restoration of land ownership rights to native Kenyans. Noting that urban blacks were more comfortable with the move towards independence than their conservative rural counterparts, Kenyatta made a decision that led to disaster: he chose to spur black allegiance with traditional oath-taking.
Oaths had always been part of the Kikuyu moral code. Underscoring loyalty to initiation groups, they were also a familiar part of each land sale, proving the seller's ownership before new boundaries were marked by the stomach contents of a ceremonially-slaughtered ram. But Kikuyu acceptance did not automatically guarantee backing for oaths from tribes unfamiliar with the practice. Distrustful of the unknown, they withdrew their support. White Kenyans, citing Kenyatta's enormous following and his familiarity with Communism, demanded that he be followed constantly by the Special Branch Bureau of Criminal Investigation. Kenyatta proceeded to reject oathing as a rural canvassing measure, but not soon enough to stop it from spreading in a perverted and most virulent form.
In 1948 Kenya began to experience a terrorist threat called Mau Mau. Its architects, both Kikuyus, were British army veteran Bildad Kaggia and trade unionist Fred Kubai. Like Kenyatta, they were bent on Kenyan independence; unlike him, they were committed to using any means necessary--no matter how forceful--to achieve it. Determined to force the whites out of Kenya, the men swiftly organized fighting cells in the Kikuyu-held forests girdling Mount Kenya and the Aberdare Range of mountains. Mau Mau raiders left behind them trails of strangled dogs and cats, disembowelled cattle with amputated legs, and human victims who had been burned alive or hacked to pieces with machetes. During the late 1940s and early 1950s, the Mau Mau is believed to have murdered a small number of white settlers and more than 11,000 blacks suspected of collaborating with the white regime.
Many political observers agree that Kenyatta knew about Mau Mau. However, he always disclaimed connection with it on the simple grounds that he opposed its brutality. Asked by the British government to denounce Mau Mau in his home district of Kiambu, he gladly did so, thereby bringing Mau Mau assassination threats down on his head. Still, the government banned the KAU in 1952 as a suspected Mau Mau front and then declared a state of national emergency.
Kenyatta and several Mau Mau committee members were arrested in October of 1952 and tried in a remote little town called Kapenguria. Found guilty of organizing the terrorist group, Kenyatta spent the following six years in Laukitaung Prison, cooking for the other convicts, reading books on comparative religion sent to him by his daughter, and piecing together news of his home district, where his farm had been destroyed on government orders.
Kenyatta completed his prison sentence in April of 1959. Opposition to colonialism in Kenya continued, and the government was reluctant to release him immediately. The turning point came after eleven hardcore Mau Mau supporters were slaughtered in an alleged disciplinary action that embarrassed the British government and caused the resignation of the colonial secretary.
The new colonial secretary was Iain MacLeod, a man firmly committed to Kenyan independence and black majority rule. Moving briskly, by mid-1960 MacLeod had encouraged the formation of two political parties: the Kenya African National Union (KANU) was a coalition between the dominant Kikuyu and runner-up Luo tribes, while the Kenya African Democratic Union was made up of smaller tribes fearing Kikuyu domination. Once again in absentia, Kenyatta was nominated the president of KANU.
MacLeod also authorized a press conference for Kenyatta, who had been transferred to another town. Now about 70, Kenyatta appeared before selected journalists fit and alert, and armed with a crisp three-point statement: he declared that he had not been the organizer of Mau Mau; he expressed his belief that black Kenyans must rule their country; and he emphatically denied any Communist connections, assuring the journalists that he had merely been to the former Soviet Union for educational purposes. Kenyatta went back to Kiambu in August of 1961 to a rebuilt farm packed with 10,000 well-wishers. The greeting was a triumphant boost to the beginning of his successful KANU campaign.
Kenya became Africa's 34th independent state at the end of 1963. Honored guests at the celebration included Britain's Prince Philip, actor Sidney Poitier, and U.S. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall. Also present were several truckloads of Mau Mau, all of whom had been promised feasts of oxen, jobs, and generous loans for land purchase. (Their euphoria, however, was shortlived. On learning that the loans would have to be repaid, many of them returned to lives of crime in the forests.)
Kenyatta was now the country's prime minister, and "Harambee!" ("Let us all pull together!") was the motto of new independence. By December of 1964, Kenyatta had become the first president of Kenya, with business in the one-party state getting off to a brisk and pragmatic start. The new order swept away tribal rivalries in favor of nationalism for the benefit of all Kenyans.
Kenyanization became the new economic watchword. A British-financed Land Transfer Program eased government efforts to buy out white farmers so that blacks could purchase their land; reluctant sellers, especially if they were noncitizens, were warned of "severe action" if they refused to comply. As a result, despite the doctrine of forgiveness and nonviolence that had always been Kenyatta's creed, 5,000 of the 45,000 white farmers in Kenya had already left the country by the time it became a republic at the end of 1964.
Still, Kenyanization was progressing more slowly than Kenyatta had expected. Nearly six dozen American companies, including Union Carbide, Colgate-Palmolive, and Caltex, had established ties with Kenya, but the president was troubled by and determined to curb the considerable economic influence of Asians who gained prominence in Kenya since the days of the Uganda Railway.
Anxious to avoid claims of Kikuyu favoritism, Kenyatta had carefully selected his first cabinet from each population group. Nevertheless, cracks in party loyalty began to appear early. Vice President Oginga Odinga, a self-confessed Communist, was later shown to have campaigned for anti-government support among the Mau Mau. Odinga resigned from Kenyatta's government in 1966 and formed a new party called the Kenya People's Union, which gained considerable support in the late 1960s. Kenyatta's aura of invincibility was threatened by the opposition of Odinga and the Kenya People's Union. He met the challenge with a grim warning later published in Time magazine's November 7, 1969 issue: "We will crush you into flour. Anyone who toys with our progress will be crushed like locusts." His first example was Odinga, who was placed under immediate house arrest.
As the 1970s advanced, the Kenyatta ranks split further. Rumors of government-sanctioned corruption abounded, with officials of the Kenyatta regime--and even members of the president's family--implicated as key players in incidents of poaching, deforestation, ivory exportation, and land grabbing.
A courageous and popular politician named Josiah Kariuki began to speak out against the corruption surrounding the aged president. "Kenya does not need ten millionaires and ten million beggars," he declared in a speech quoted by the London Times in 1975. Soon afterwards, Kariuki was abducted from the Nairobi Hilton, tortured, and murdered, his body lying unclaimed in a mortuary for more than a week before one of his wives identified it. Kenyatta made his position on the murder clear: he warned that further opposition would bring further bloodshed.
When Jomo Kenyatta died in his sleep on August 22, 1978, Vice President Daniel arap Moi, a handpicked successor, assumed smooth control of the government. In spite of the controversy and charges of corruption that surrounded him during his lifetime, Kenyatta remains in death the father of Kenyan independence and a key figure in the struggle to promote black rule and economic autonomy throughout Africa.
Awards
Knight of Grace, Order of St. John of
Jerusalem, 1972; LL.D. from University of East Africa; Order of the
Golden Ark, bestowed by the World Wildlife Fund, 1974.
Works
Writings- Facing Mount Kenya: The Tribal Life of the Gikuyu, Secker & Warburg, 1938.
- My People of Kikuyu and the Life of Chief Wangombe, United Society for Christian Literature, 1942.
- Harambee! (speeches), Oxford University Press, 1964.
- The Challenge of Uhuru (speeches), East African Publishing House, 1971.
Further Reading
Books- Cox, Richard, Kenyatta's Country, Hutchinson, 1965.
- Delf, George, Jomo Kenyatta, Doubleday, 1961.
- Edgerton, Robert B., Mau Mau: An African Crucible, Free Press, 1989.
- Farson, Negley, Last Chance in Africa, Gollancz, 1950.
- Kenyatta, Jomo, Facing Mount Kenya, Vintage Books, 1965.
- Lineberry, William P., editor, East Africa: The Reference Shelf, volume 40, number 2, 1968.
- Murray-Brown, Jeremy, Kenyatta, Dutton, 1973.
- Nelson, Harold D., editor, Kenya: A Country Study, American University, 1983.
- Nation, August 11, 1969.
- Newsweek, September 4, 1978.
- New York Times, October 29, 1952; June 9, 1953; July 2, 1953; May 13, 1963; December 11, 1963; July 16, 1964; April 3, 1965; April 15, 1966; May 2, 1966; January 11, 1970; February 11, 1970; October 17, 1975.
- Phylon, volume 14, number 4, 1953.
- Time, June 11, 1965; November 7, 1969; September 4, 1978.
- Times (London), August 10, 1975; August 17, 1975; August 24, 1975.
Kenyatta, Jomo (c.1894-1978). Kenyan nationalist statesman. Kenyatta's involvement in politics began in 1922 when he campaigned for the restoration of land lost by his Kikuyu tribe to white settlers. In 1929 he went to London to plead the case of the Kikuyu and stayed in Europe. Returning to Kenya in 1946 he was elected president of the Kenya African Union in 1947. In 1952 he was found guilty of master-minding the Mau Mau rebellion although the evidence was far from conclusive. He was released in 1961 and became prime minister in 1963 when the country achieved independence, then president in 1964 when Kenya became a republic.
Columbia Encyclopedia:
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Jomo Kenyatta
Kenyatta, Jomo (jō'mō kĕnyä'tə),
1893?-1978, African political leader, first president of Kenya
(1964-78). A Kikuyu, he was one of the earliest and best-known African
nationalist leaders. As secretary of his tribal association (1928), he
campaigned for land reform and African political rights. In England he
collaborated with other African nationalist students and founded (1946),
with Kwame Nkrumah, the Pan-African Federation. Returning (1946) to
Kenya, he became president of the Kenya African Union. In 1953, during
the Mau Mau uprising,
Kenyatta was imprisoned by the British as one of its instigators, then
sent to internal exile (1959). Kenyatta was elected president of the
newly founded (1960) Kenya African National Union while in exile.
Released in 1961, he participated in negotiations with the British to
write a new constitution for Kenya, which became independent in 1963.
Kenya became a republic in 1964 with Kenyatta as president. Influential
throughout Africa, Kenyatta was intolerant of dissent in Kenya,
outlawing some opposition parties in 1969 and establishing a one-party
state in 1974. The stability resulting from his leadership attracted
foreign investment. He followed a nonaligned foreign policy and died in
office. He wrote Facing Mount Kenya (1938) and Suffering without Bitterness (1968).Bibliography
Read more: http://www.answers.com/topic/jomo-kenyatta#ixzz2Xnm5WoNg
Jomo Kenyattapron.
(20 October 1893, Gatundu – 22 August 1978, Mombasa) served as the
first Prime Minister (1963–1964) and President (1964–1978) of Kenya. He is considered the founding father of the Kenyan nation.
In Kenya, Nairobi's Jomo Kenyatta International Airport, Kenyatta International Conference Centre, Nairobi's main street and main streets in many Kenyan cities and towns, numerous schools, two universities (Kenyatta University and Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology), the country's main referral hospital, markets and housing estates are named after him. A statue in Nairobi city centre and monuments all over Kenya stand in his honour. Kenya observed a public holiday every 20 October in his honour until the 2010 constitution abolished Kenyatta Day and replaced it with Mashujaa (Heroes') day. Kenyatta's face adorns Kenyan currency notes and coins of all denominations, but this is expected to change as the new constitution bans the use of the portrait of any person on Kenya's currency.
In Kenya, Nairobi's Jomo Kenyatta International Airport, Kenyatta International Conference Centre, Nairobi's main street and main streets in many Kenyan cities and towns, numerous schools, two universities (Kenyatta University and Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology), the country's main referral hospital, markets and housing estates are named after him. A statue in Nairobi city centre and monuments all over Kenya stand in his honour. Kenya observed a public holiday every 20 October in his honour until the 2010 constitution abolished Kenyatta Day and replaced it with Mashujaa (Heroes') day. Kenyatta's face adorns Kenyan currency notes and coins of all denominations, but this is expected to change as the new constitution bans the use of the portrait of any person on Kenya's currency.
He then left home to become a resident pupil at the Church of Scotland Mission (CSM) at Thogoto, close to Kikuyu Town, about 12 miles north-west of Nairobi. He studied amongst other subjects: the Bible, English, mathematics and carpentry. He paid the school fees by working as a houseboy and cook for a white settler living nearby.Early life
Jomo Kenyatta was born Kamau wa Ngengi to parents Ngengi wa Muigai and Wambui in the village of Gatundu, in British East Africa (now Kenya), a member of the Kikuyu. His date of birth, sometime in the early to mid-1890s, is unclear, and was unclear even to him, as his parents were almost certainly not literate, and no formal birth records of native Africans were kept in Kenya at that time.[2][3] His father died while Kamau was very young after which, as was the custom, he was adopted by his uncle Ngengi, who also inherited his mother, to become Kamau wa Ngengi. When his mother died during childbirth, young Kamau moved from Ng'enda to Muthiga to live with his medicine man grandfather Kũngũ wa Magana, to whom he became very close.In 1912, having completed his mission school education, he became an apprentice carpenter. The following year he underwent initiation ceremonies, including circumcision, to become a member of the kihiu-mwiri age group. In 1914, he converted to Christianity, assuming the name John Peter, which he then changed to Johnstone Kamau. He left the mission later that year to seek employment.[3]
He first worked as an apprentice carpenter on a sisal farm in Thika, under the tutelage of John Cook, who had been in charge of the building programme at Thogoto. During the First World War, Kikuyu were forced into work by the British authorities. To avoid this, he lived with Maasai relatives in Narok, where he worked as a clerk for an Asian contractor.[3]
In 1919 he married Grace Wahu, under Kikuyu customs. When Grace got pregnant, his church elders ordered him to get married before a European magistrate, and undertake the appropriate church rites. On 20 November 1920 Kamau's first son Peter Muigai, was born. Kamau served as an interpreter in the Nairobi High Court, and ran a store out of his Dagoretti home during this period.[3] He eventually married Grace Wahu in a civil ceremony in 1922. Grace Wahu lived in the Dagoretti home until her death in April 2007 at the age of around 100.
In 1922 Kamau began working, as a store clerk and water-meter reader for the Nairobi Municipal Council Public Works Department, once again under John Cook who was the Water Superintendent.[2] Meter reading helped him meet many Kenyan-Asians at their homes who would become important allies later on.
He entered politics after taking interest in the political activities of James Beauttah and Joseph Kang'ethe the leaders of the Kikuyu Central Association (KCA). He joined KCA in 1924 and rose up the ranks of the association. Eventually he began to edit the movement's Kikuyu newspaper. By 1928 he had become the KCA's general secretary.
In 1928 he launched a monthly Kikuyu language newspaper called Muĩgwithania (Reconciler) which aimed to unite all sections of the Kikuyu. The paper, supported by an Asian-owned printing press, had a mild and unassuming tone, and was tolerated by the colonial government.[3] He also made a presentation on Kikuyu land problems before the Hilton Young Commission in Nairobi in the same year.
Overseas
In 1929 the KCA sent Kenyatta to London to lobby on its behalf with regards to Kikuyu tribal land affairs. Using the name Johnstone Kenyatta, he published articles and letters to the editor in The Times and the Manchester Guardian.[4] He returned to Kenya on 24 September 1930 and was welcomed at Mombasa by his wife Wahu and James Beauttah. He then took part, on the side of traditionalists, in the debate on the issue of female genital mutilation of girls. He later worked for Kikuyu Independent Schools in Githunguri.[5]He returned to London in 1931 and enrolled in Woodbrooke Quaker College in Birmingham. Discouraged by the lack of official response to the land claims he was putting forward, he began an association with British Communists, who published articles he wrote in their publications.In 1932 to 1933, he briefly studied economics in Moscow at the Comintern School, KUTVU (University of the Toilers of the East) but left after the Soviet Union (worried about Hitler's growing power and seeing Britain and France as potential allies) withdrew its support for the movement against British and French colonial rule in Africa.[6]
In 1934, Kenyatta enrolled at University College London and from 1935 studied social anthropology under Bronisław Malinowski at the London School of Economics (LSE). He was an active member of the International African Service Bureau, a pan-Africanist, anti-colonial organisation that had formed around former international communist leader George Padmore, who had also become disillusioned with the Soviet Union and himself moved to London. Kenyatta read the draft of the Kenya section of Padmore's new book, How Britain Rules Africa (1936)[7] With the editorial help of an English editor named Dinah Stock who became a close friend, Kenyatta published his own book, Facing Mount Kenya (his revised LSE thesis) in 1938 under his new name, Jomo Kenyatta.[8] The name "Jomo" is translated in English to "Burning Spear", while the name "Kenyatta" was said to be a reference to the beaded Masai belt he wore, and later to "the Light of Kenya". After the war, he wrote a pamphlet (with some content contributed by Padmore), Kenya: The Land of Conflict, published by the International African Service Bureau under the imprint Panaf Service.[9]
During this period, Kenyatta was an active member of a group of African, Caribbean and American intellectuals who included Dudley Thompson, George Padmore, C.L.R. James, Eric Williams, W.A. Wallace Johnson, Paul Robeson and Ralph Bunche. During his presidency, a number of streets in Nairobi were named after those early black-emancipation intellectuals.
Kenyatta acted as an extra in the film Sanders of the River (1934), directed by Alexander Korda and starring Paul Robeson.
During World War II, he worked as a labourer at an English farm in Sussex, and lectured on Africa for the Workers' Educational Association.
In 1942, he married an Englishwoman, Edna Clarke. He also published My People of Kikuyu and The Life of Chief Wang'ombe, a history shading into legend. Edna gave birth to their son, Peter Magana, in 1943.[10]
In 1945, with other prominent African nationalist figures, such as Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, Kenyatta helped organise the fifth Pan-African Congress held in Britain.[11]
He left Edna Clarke behind in Britain when he returned to Kenya in 1946.[citation needed]
Return to Kenya
Kenyatta returned to Kenya in 1946, after almost 15 years abroad.He married for the fourth time, to Grace Wanjiku, Senior Chief Koinange's daughter, and sister to Mbiyu Koinange (who later became a lifelong confidant and was one of the most powerful politicians during Kenyatta's presidency).
Kenyatta then went into teaching, becoming principal of Kenya Teachers College Githunguri.
In 1947, he was elected president of the Kenya African Union (KAU). He began to receive death threats from white settlers after his election.
From 1948 to 1951 he toured and lectured around the country condemning idleness, robbery, urging hard work while campaigning for the return of land given to white settlers and for independence within three years.
His wife, Grace Wanjiku, died in childbirth in 1950 as she gave birth to daughter Jane Wambui, who survived.
In 1951 Kenyatta married Ngina Muhoho, daughter of Chief Muhoho. She was popularly referred to as Mama Ngina and was independent Kenya's First Lady, when Kenyatta was elected President.
The Mau Mau Rebellion began in 1951 and KAU was banned, and a state of emergency was declared on 20 October 1952.[citation needed]
Trial and imprisonment
Kenyatta was arrested in October 1952 and indicted with five others on the charges of "managing and being a member" of the Mau Mau Society, a radical anti-colonial movement engaged in rebellion against Kenya's British rulers. The accused were known as the "Kapenguria Six".[citation needed]The trial lasted five months: Rawson Macharia, the main prosecution witness, turned out to have perjured himself; the judge — who had only recently been awarded an unusually large pension,[12] and who maintained secret contact with the then colonial Governor of Kenya Evelyn Baring[13] during the trial — was openly hostile to the defendants' cause.
The defence, led by British barrister D.N. Pritt, argued that the white settlers were trying to scapegoat Kenyatta and that there was no evidence tying him to the Mau Mau. The court sentenced Kenyatta on 8 April 1953 to seven years imprisonment with hard labour and indefinite restriction thereafter.[14] The subsequent appeal was refused by the British Privy Council in 1954.
Kenyatta remained in prison until 1959, after which he was detained in Lodwar, a remote part of Kenya.
The state of emergency was lifted on 12 January 1960.[15]
On 28 February 1961, a public meeting of 25,000 in Nairobi demanded his release. On 15 April 1960, over a million signatures for a plea to release him were presented to the Governor. On 14 May 1960, he was elected KANU President in absentia. On 23 March 1961, Kenyan leaders, including Daniel arap Moi, later his longtime Vice President and successor as president, visited him at Lodwar. On 11 April 1961, he was moved to Maralal with daughter Margaret where he met world press for the first time in eight years. On 14 August 1961, he was released and brought to Gatundu to a hero's welcome.[citation needed]
While contemporary opinion linked Kenyatta with the Mau Mau, historians have questioned his alleged leadership of the radical movement.[16] Kenyatta was in truth a political moderate. His marriage of Colonial Chief's daughters, his post independence Kikuyu allies mainly being former colonial collaborators (though also from his tribe), and his short shrift treatment of former Mau Mau fighters after he came to power, all strongly suggest he had scant regard for the Mau Mau.
Pre-independence
Kenyatta was admitted into the Legislative Council after his release in 1961, after Kariuki Njiiri (son of late Chief Njiiri) gave up his Kigumo seat for him.In 1961 and 1962, he led the KANU delegation to first and second Lancaster Conference in London where Kenya's independence constitution was negotiated.
Elections were then held in May 1963, pitting Kenyatta's KANU (Kenya African National Union- which advocated for Kenya to be a unitary state) against KADU (Kenya African Democratic Union - which advocated for Kenya to be an ethnic-federal state). KANU beat KADU by winning 83 seats out of 124. On 1 June 1963, Kenyatta became prime minister of the autonomous Kenyan government. After independence, Queen Elizabeth II remained as Head of State (after Independence, styled as Queen of Kenya), represented by a Governor-General. He consistently asked white settlers not to leave Kenya and supported reconciliation.
Post-independence
Kenyatta retained the role of prime minister after independence was declared and jubilantly celebrated on 12 December 1963.[17]On 1 June 1964, had Parliament amend the Constitution to make Kenya a republic. The office of prime minister was replaced by a president with wide executive and legislative powers. Elected by the National Assembly, he was head of State, head of Government and Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces. Under the provisions of the amendment, Kenyatta automatically became president.
His policy was that of continuity and gradual Africanisation of the government, keeping many colonial civil servants in their old jobs as they were gradually replaced by Kenyans. He asked for British troops' help against Somali rebels, Shiftas, in the northeast and in ending an army mutiny in Nairobi in January 1964.
On 10 November 1964, KADU officially dissolved and its representatives joined KANU, forming a single party.
Kenyatta was re-elected un-opposed in 1966, and the next year had the Constitution amended to expand his powers. This term featured border conflicts with Somalia, and more political opposition. He consolidated his power greatly, and placed several of his Kikuyu tribesmen in most of the powerful state and security offices and posts. State security forces harassed dissidents and were suspected of complicity in several murders of prominent personalities deemed as threats to his regime, including Pio Gama Pinto, Tom Mboya and J.M. Kariuki.[18] MP and Lawyer C.M.G. Argwings-Kodhek and former Kadu Leader and minister Ronald Ngala, also died in suspicious car accidents.
In 1968 he published his biography Suffering Without Bitterness.
In the 1969 elections, Kenyatta banned the only other party, the Kenya People's Union (formed and led by his former vice president, Jaramogi Oginga Odinga who had been forced to quit KANU along with his left leaning allies), detained its leaders, and called elections in which only KANU was allowed to participate. For all intents and purposes, Kenya was now a one-party state.
Kenyatta was re-elected as President in 1974, again as the only candidate.[19] On 5 Nov 1974, he was sworn in as President for a third term.[2] His increasingly feeble health meant that his inner circle effectively ruled the country, and greatly enriched themselves, in his name.[20] He remained president until his death four years later in 1978.
Death
President Kenyatta had suffered a heart attack in 1966. He would in the mid-seventies lapse into periodic comas lasting from a few hours to a few days from time to time. In April 1977, then well into his 80s, he suffered a massive heart attack.[20] On 14 August 1978, he hosted his entire family, including his son Peter Magana who flew in from Britain with his family, to a reunion in Mombasa. On 22 August 1978, President Kenyatta died in Mombasa of natural causes attributable to old age. Mzee Jomo Kenyatta was buried on 31 August 1978 in Nairobi in a state funeral at a mausoleum on Parliament grounds.He was succeeded as President after his death by his vice-presid
Read more: http://www.answers.com/topic/jomo-kenyatta#ixzz2Xnn6VTPy
Mzee Jomo Kenyatta, as he was popularly known, was an important and
influential statesman in Africa. He is credited with leading Kenya to
independence and setting up the country as a relatively prosperous capitalist state. He pursued a moderate pro-Western, anti-Communist economic philosophy and foreign policy.[22][23][24]
He oversaw a peaceful land reform process, oversaw the setting up of
the institutions of independent Kenya, and also oversaw Kenya's
admission into the United Nations.
However, Kenyatta was not without major flaws, and did also bequeath Kenya some major problems which continue to bedevil the country to date, hindering her development, and threatening her existence as a peaceful unitary multi-ethnic state.[25] [25][26]
However, Kenyatta was not without major flaws, and did also bequeath Kenya some major problems which continue to bedevil the country to date, hindering her development, and threatening her existence as a peaceful unitary multi-ethnic state.[25] [25][26]
Family
Kenyatta had two children from his first marriage with Grace Wahu: son Peter Muigai Kenyatta (born 1920), who later became a deputy minister; and daughter Margaret Kenyatta (born 1928). Margaret served as mayor of Nairobi between 1970–76 and then as Kenya's ambassador to the United Nations from 1976-86. Grace Wahu died in April 2007.[27] He had one son, Peter Magana Kenyatta (born 1943) from his short marriage with Edna Clarke.[28] His third wife, Grace Wanjiku, died when giving birth in 1950. Daughter Jane Wambui survived.[29] His fourth wife, the best known due to her role as First Lady, was Ngina Kenyatta (née Muhoho), also known as Mama Ngina. She often accompanied him in public and also has some streets in Nairobi and Mombasa named after her. She bore Kenyatta four children: Christine Wambui (born 1952), Uhuru Muigai Kenyatta (born 1961)now Kenya's president (as of 9 March 2013), Anna Nyokabi (also known as Jeni) and Muhoho Kenyatta (born 1964). Mama Ngina lives quietly as a wealthy widow in Kenya. Uhuru Kenyatta, Mzee Kenyatta's political heir, unsuccessfully vied for the Kenyan presidency as President Moi's preferred successor in 2002 and is today the Kenyan Deputy Prime Minister. He has served in different as a cabinet minister in different ministries and senior government positions including minister of local government and minister of finance,[30] a position he held until confirmation of charges of crimes against humanity at the International Criminal Court.[31] Muhoho Kenyatta runs his mother's vast family business but lives out of the public limelight. Kenyatta was the uncle of Ngethe Njoroge, Kenya's first representative to the United Nations and the great uncle of Tom Morello, the guitarist for Rage Against the Machine. His niece, Beth Mugo, married to a retired ambassador, is an MP and currently serving as Minister for Public Health.
Bibliography
Books by Jomo Kenyatta
- Facing Mount Kenya (1938)
- My people of Kikuyu and the life of Chief Wangombe (1944)
- Suffering Without Bitterness (biography 1968)
- Kenya: The land of conflict (1971)
- The challenge of Uhuru;: The progress of Kenya, 1968 to 1970 (1971)
Books about Jomo Kenyatta
- Guy Arnold (1974), Kenyatta and the politics of Kenya, London: Dent ISBN 0-460-07878-X
- Jeremy Murray-Brown (1979), Kenyatta, Allen & Unwin, ISBN 0-04-920059-3
- George Delf (1961), Jomo Kenyatta: Towards Truth about "The Light of Kenya" New York: Doubleday. ISBN 0-8371-8307-3
- Rawson Macharia (1991), The Truth about the Trial of Jomo Kenyatta, Nairobi: Longman. ISBN 9966-49-823-0
- Veena Malhotra (1990), Kenya Under Kenyatta Kalinga. ISBN 81-85163-16-2
- Montagu Slater (1955), The trial of Jomo Kenyatta London: Secker and Warburg. ISBN 0-436-47200-7
- Elizabeth Watkins, (1993) Jomo's Jailor — Grand Warrior of Kenya Mulberry Books ISBN 978-0-9528952-0-6
- Caroline Elkins, (2005) Imperial Reckoning. Henry Holt and Co ISBN 0-8050-7653-
Mzee Jomo Kenyatta, as he was popularly known, was an important and
influential statesman in Africa. He is credited with leading Kenya to
independence and setting up the country as a relatively prosperous capitalist state. He pursued a moderate pro-Western, anti-Communist economic philosophy and foreign policy.[22][23][24]
He oversaw a peaceful land reform process, oversaw the setting up of
the institutions of independent Kenya, and also oversaw Kenya's
admission into the United Nations.
However, Kenyatta was not without major flaws, and did also bequeath Kenya some major problems which continue to bedevil the country to date, hindering her development, and threatening her existence as a peaceful unitary multi-ethnic state.[25] [25][26]
However, Kenyatta was not without major flaws, and did also bequeath Kenya some major problems which continue to bedevil the country to date, hindering her development, and threatening her existence as a peaceful unitary multi-ethnic state.[25] [25][26]
Family
Kenyatta had two children from his first marriage with Grace Wahu: son Peter Muigai Kenyatta (born 1920), who later became a deputy minister; and daughter Margaret Kenyatta (born 1928). Margaret served as mayor of Nairobi between 1970–76 and then as Kenya's ambassador to the United Nations from 1976-86. Grace Wahu died in April 2007.[27] He had one son, Peter Magana Kenyatta (born 1943) from his short marriage with Edna Clarke.[28] His third wife, Grace Wanjiku, died when giving birth in 1950. Daughter Jane Wambui survived.[29] His fourth wife, the best known due to her role as First Lady, was Ngina Kenyatta (née Muhoho), also known as Mama Ngina. She often accompanied him in public and also has some streets in Nairobi and Mombasa named after her. She bore Kenyatta four children: Christine Wambui (born 1952), Uhuru Muigai Kenyatta (born 1961)now Kenya's president (as of 9 March 2013), Anna Nyokabi (also known as Jeni) and Muhoho Kenyatta (born 1964). Mama Ngina lives quietly as a wealthy widow in Kenya. Uhuru Kenyatta, Mzee Kenyatta's political heir, unsuccessfully vied for the Kenyan presidency as President Moi's preferred successor in 2002 and is today the Kenyan Deputy Prime Minister. He has served in different as a cabinet minister in different ministries and senior government positions including minister of local government and minister of finance,[30] a position he held until confirmation of charges of crimes against humanity at the International Criminal Court.[31] Muhoho Kenyatta runs his mother's vast family business but lives out of the public limelight. Kenyatta was the uncle of Ngethe Njoroge, Kenya's first representative to the United Nations and the great uncle of Tom Morello, the guitarist for Rage Against the Machine. His niece, Beth Mugo, married to a retired ambassador, is an MP and currently serving as Minister for Public Health.Bibliography
Books by Jomo Kenyatta
- Facing Mount Kenya (1938)
- My people of Kikuyu and the life of Chief Wangombe (1944)
- Suffering Without Bitterness (biography 1968)
- Kenya: The land of conflict (1971)
- The challenge of Uhuru;: The progress of Kenya, 1968 to 1970 (1971)
Books about Jomo Kenyatta
- Guy Arnold (1974), Kenyatta and the politics of Kenya, London: Dent ISBN 0-460-07878-X
- Jeremy Murray-Brown (1979), Kenyatta, Allen & Unwin, ISBN 0-04-920059-3
- George Delf (1961), Jomo Kenyatta: Towards Truth about "The Light of Kenya" New York: Doubleday. ISBN 0-8371-8307-3
- Rawson Macharia (1991), The Truth about the Trial of Jomo Kenyatta, Nairobi: Longman. ISBN 9966-49-823-0
- Veena Malhotra (1990), Kenya Under Kenyatta Kalinga. ISBN 81-85163-16-2
- Montagu Slater (1955), The trial of Jomo Kenyatta London: Secker and Warburg. ISBN 0-436-47200-7
- Elizabeth Watkins, (1993) Jomo's Jailor — Grand Warrior of Kenya Mulberry Books ISBN 978-0-9528952-0-6
- Caroline Elkins, (2005) Imperial Reckoning. Henry Holt and Co ISBN 0-8050-7653-
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