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KENYATTA... Taa ya Kenya or Swahili for the Light of Kenya was the man who brought the light of independence to Kenya. Indeed, he was a beacon, a rallying point for suffering Kenyans to fight for their rights, justice and freedom. His brilliance gave strength and aspiration to people beyond the boundaries of Kenya, indeed beyond the shores of Africa.
Just as one light shines in total darkness and provides a raising point, so did Ken-yalta become the focus of the freedom fight for Kenya over half a century to dispel the darkness and injustice of colonialism. Before matter can become light, it has to suffer the rigours of heat. So did Kenyatta suffer the rigorous of imprisonment to bring independence to Kenya. As the founding father of Kenya, and its undisputed leader, he came to be known as Mzee, Swahili for a respected eider.
No chronology can adequately reflect the many sided achievements of Mzee Kenyatta. His life is the life of the free Kenya nation chronicled here. There is Kenyatta the leader who united all races and tribes for the freedom struggle; Kenyatta the orator who held his listeners entranced, Kenyatta the journalist who launched the first indigenous paper to voice his peoples demands; Kenyatta the scholar who wrote the first serious study about his people; Kenyatta the teacher who initiated love for Kenya culture and heritage; Kenyatta the farmer who loved his land and urged his people to return to it; Kenyatta the biographer who documented his suffering without bitterness'; Kenyatta the conser-vation ist who protected Kenya's priceless fauna and flora; Kenyatta the father figure who showered love and affection on all; Kenyatta the democrat who upheld the democratic principle of one-man one-vote; Kenyatta the eider statesman who counselled other Heads of State, and finally Kenyatta the visionary who had a glorious image of Kenya's future and toiled to realise it. Since ideas are more enduring than human bodies and sacrifices last longer than sermons thus the light that is Kenyatta burns on to illuminate the path of Kenya. Kenyatta, Jomo (1897? - 1978), first prime minister (1963 - 1964) and then first president (1964 - 1978) of Kenya.
Kenyatta was Kenya's founding father, a conservative nationalist who led the East African nation to independence from Britain in 1963. Kenyatta was born in Gatundu in the part of British East Africa that is now Kenya; the year of his birth is uncertain, but most scholars agree he was born in the 1890 s. He was born into the Kikuyu ethnic group, Kenya's largest. Named Mau wa Ngengi at birth, he later adopted the surname Kenyatta (from the Kikuyu word for a type of beaded belt he wore) and then the first name Jomo.
Kenyatta was educated by Presbyterian missionaries and by 1921 had moved to the city of Nairobi. There he became involved in early African protest movements, joining the Kikuyu Central Association (KCA) in 1924. He quickly emerged as a leader within the KCA, and in 1928 he became editor of the movements newspaper. In 1929 and 1931 Kenyatta visited England to present KCA demands for the return of African land lost to European settlers and for increased political and economic opportunity for Africans in Kenya, which had become a colony within British East Africa in 1920.
Kenyatta had little success, however. Kenyatta remained in Europe for almost 15 years, during which he attended various schools and universities, traveled extensively, and published numerous articles and pamphlets on Kenya and the plight of Kenyans under colonial rule. While attending the London School of Economics, Kenyatta studied under noted British anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski and published his seminal work, Facing Mount Kenya (1938). In this book, Kenyatta described traditional Kikuyu society as well-ordered and harmonious and criticized the disruptive changes brought by colonialism.
Facing Mount Kenya was well received in Great Britain as a defense of African culture, and it established Kenyatta's credentials as spokesperson for his people. Following World War II (1939 - 1945), Kenyatta became an outspoken nationalist, demanding Kenyan self-government and independence from Great Britain. Together with other prominent African nationalist figures, such as Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, Kenyatta helped organize the fifth Pan-African Congress in Great Britain in 1945. The congress, modeled after the four congresses organized by black American intellectual W. E. B.
Du Bois between 1919 and 1927 and attended by black leaders and intellectuals from around the world, affirmed the goals of African nationalism and unity. In September 1946 Kenyatta returned to Kenya, and in June 1947 he became president of the first colony-wide African political organization, the Kenya African Union (KAU), which had been formed more than two years earlier. Recruiting both Kikuyu and non-Kikuyu support, Kenyatta devoted considerable energy to KAUs efforts to win self-government under African leadership. KAU was unsuccessful, however, and African resistance to colonial policies and the supremacy of European settlers in Kenya took on a more militant tone. In 1952 an extremist Kikuyu guerrilla movement called Mau Mau began advocating violence against the colonial government and white settlers (see Mau Mau rebellion). Never a radical, Kenyatta did not advocate violence to achieve African political goals.
Nevertheless, the colonial authorities arrested him and five other KAU leaders in October 1952 for allegedly managing Mau Mau. The six leaders were tried and, in April 1953, convicted. Kenyatta spent almost nine years in jail and detention. By the time he was freed in August 1961, Kenya was moving towards self-government under African leadership, and Kenyatta had been embraced as the colony's most important independence leader. Shortly after his release, Kenyatta assumed the leadership of the Kenya African National Union (KANU), a party founded in 1960 and supported by the Kikuyu and Luo. He led the party to victory in the pre-independence elections of May 1963 and was named prime minister of Kenya in June.
Kenyatta led Kenya to formal independence in December of that year. Kenya was established as a republic in December 1964, and Kenyatta was elected Kenya's first president the same month. As president, Kenyatta, known affectionately to Kenyans as mzee (Swahili for old man), strove to unify the new nation of Kenya. He worked to establish harmonious race relations, safeguarding whites property rights and appealing to both whites and the African majority to forget past injustices.
Kenyatta adopted the slogan Harambee (Swahili for lets all pull together), asking whites and Africans to work together for the development of Kenya. He promoted capitalist economic policies, encouraged foreign investment in Kenya, and adopted a pro-Western foreign policy. Such policies were unpopular with radicals within KANU, who advocated socialism for Kenya. However, Kenyatta isolated this element of KANU, forcing radical vice president Odinga Odinga and his supporters out of the party in 1966.
Odinga formed the rival Kenya Peoples Union (KPU), which drew much support from Odinga's ethnic group, the Luo. Kenyatta used his extensive presidential powers and control of the media to counter the challenge to his leadership and appealed for Kikuyu ethnic solidarity. The 1969 assassination of cabinet minister Tom Mboya a Luo ally of Kenyatta's by a Kikuyu led to months of tension and violence between the Luo and the Kikuyu. Kenyatta banned Odinga's party, detained its leaders, and called elections in which only KANU was allowed to participate. For the remainder of his presidency, Kenya was effectively a one-party state, and Kenyatta made use of detention, appeals to ethnic loyalties, and careful appointment of government jobs to maintain his commanding position in Kenya's political system. Kenyatta was reelected president in 1969 and 1974, unopposed each time.
Until the mid- 1970 s Kenya maintained a high economic growth rate under Kenyatta's leadership, due to a favorable international market for Kenya's main exports and external economic assistance. After 1970 Kenyatta's advancing age kept him from the day-to-day management of government affairs. He intervened only when necessary to settle disputed issues. Critics maintained that Kenyatta's relative isolation resulted in increasing domination of Kenya's affairs by well-connected Kikuyu who acquired great wealth as a result. Despite such criticism, however, no serious challenge to Kenyatta's leadership emerged.
Kenyatta died in office in 1978 and was succeeded by Kenyan vice president Daniel are Moi. Moi pledged to continue Kenyatta's work, labeling his own program Nyayo (Swahili for footsteps)... Kenyatta was revered after his death as the father of modern Kenya. His published works include Suffering Without Bitterness (1968), a collection of reminiscences and speeches. Kenyan independence involved some of the most characteristic elements of the African liberation movements: trivial division, settler resistance, a wavering colonial policy and a charismatic black leader, Jomo Kenyatta.
The grandson of a medicine man of the Kikuyu, Kenya s dominant tribe, Kenyatta was unsure of the date and year of his birth, probably 1891. Like other modern revolutionaries, his name was an adopted one; Jomo means burning spear and Kenyatta refers to the beaded belt, or kenyatta, that he habitually wore. Kenyatta spend much of his youth traveling in Europe. He returned home in the 1920 s, became secretary of the Kikuyu Central Association and began to involve himself in his country s future.
In 1929 and again in 1931 he went to London to argue his tribe s rights to the land on which it had settled... The British government refused to grant his request by allowed the Kikuyu to establish their own schools. Over the following years he attended the London School of Economics and wrote anthropological studies of his people as well as an autobiography, Facing Mount Kenya (1938), that became a bible of the independence movement. In October 1945, Kenyatta was one of the organizers of the landmark Pan-African Congress that met in Manchester, England. Seizing the postwar moment, young radicals such as Kwame Nkrumah demanded full independence for Africa. When Kenyatta returned to Kenya in September 1946, he became president of the Kenya Africa Union (KAU), a political party that sought to unify Kenya s tribes.
While urging his followers to act with discipline and restraint, he fought for African voting rights, the elimination of racial discrimination and the return of tribal lands. When the British rejected these demands, Kikuyu militants organized a terrorist underground, the Mau Mau, which prompted the declaration of a state of emergency, Kenyatta was accused of masterminding the Mau Mau, a charge almost certainly false; unquestionably, however, the KAU had links to the Mau Mau, and in 1952 Kenyatta was imprisoned. But British ascendancy was on the wane, and with Ghana s independence in 1957, Kenya s drive toward nationhood accelerated. The KAU, now the dominant black party, refused any participation in a transitional government until Kenyatta was freed. In 1961, he returned home in triumph, his captivity having made him the moral leader of his people s struggle.
In December 1963 he became the first president of the Republic of Kenya. Kenyatta s firmest base of support was among the Kikuyu, who formed but 20 % of the black population of Kenya. As president, he reached out not only to other tribes but also to white and Asian settlers, assuring them of their place in a multiracial society. Europeans continued to serve in his government, and despite his rhetorical commitment to the slogans of African Socialism, he rejected Soviet assistance and built up a wealthy black proprietor class under settlement schemes financed by the British treasury and the World Bank. This elite continued as the backbone of support for his successor, Daniel Are Moi (born 1924).
A man of enormous vitality, Kenyatta, more than any other figure, came to represent the new Africa on the world stage. never losing touch with his origins he lived on a farm outside his capital, Nairobi, and regularly worked the land he became a familiar figure at international conferences and assemblies. Wearing alternately impeccably tailored suits and resplendent tribal robes, he symbolized both the revolutionary charisma that had built modern Africa and the political pragmatism by which he hoped to forge its future. He died in 1978.
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