Komo Kenyatta Essay, Research Paper
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 raliying point, so did Ken-yatta
become the focus of the freedom fight for Kenya over half a century to
dispell 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 people’s demands; Kenyatta the scholar who wrote the first serious
study about his people; Kenyatta the teacher who initiated love for
Kenyah 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-vationist 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 1890s. He was born into the Kikuyu ethnic group,
Kenya’s largest. Named Kamau 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 movement’s 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 KAU’s 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 presiden
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 “let’s
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 Oginga Odinga and his supporters out
of the party in 1966. Odinga formed the rival Kenya People’s 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-1970s
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 arap 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
kinyata, 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 imprisioned. 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 Arap 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.