Jomo Kenyatta was a Kenyan politician and the first President of Kenya. Kenyatta was the leader of Kenya from independence in 1963 to his death in 1978, serving first as Prime Minister (1963–64) and then as President (1964–78).
Background
Jomo Kenyatta was born in Kiambu to parents Muigai wa Kung'u 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, was unclear even to him, as birth records were not traditionally kept. However, at least one biography gives his date of birth as 20 October 1891, a date so precise as to likely be apocryphal. 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.
Education
He left home to become a resident pupil at the Church of Scotland Mission (CSM) at Thogoto, close to Kikuyu, 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 his late teens, 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.
Career
He joined the Young Kikuyu Association in 1922 and when this became the Kikuyu Central Association in 1928, he was elected general secretary and edited the party newspaper “Muigwithania”.
In February 1929 he went to Ixindon to represent the Kikuyu on land problems. He travelled to Moscow in August 1929 and extensively in Europe. On his return he gained permission for the Kikuyu to run their independent schools in the face of opposition from the Christian missions.
Returning to Britain in 1931, he was to stay for 15 years. After studying English at the Quaker College in Woodbrooke, Selly Oak, he moved to London and worked from 1933 to 1936 at the School of African and Oriental Studies as an assistant in phonetics. In 1936 he took a postgraduate -degree under Professor Malinowski which provided the stimulus for his book “Facing Mount Kenya”, about the customs and sociology of the Kikuyu.
Caught by the World War, he tetnained in England as an agricultural labourer and a Workers' Educational Association lecturer. He married Edna Clarke, an English girl and had one son, Peter. In 1945, with George Padmore, Kwame Nkrumah and other veteran nationalists he formed the Pan African Federation and helped organise the fifth Pan African Congress in Manchester.
In September 1946, he returned as the unquestioned leader of the new nationalism expressed by the recently formed Kenya African Union (October 1944). He soon clashed with the colonial government and white settlers over the Kikuyu land problem and political advancement. He extended the KAU beyond the Kikuyu and won the support of prominent leaders from other tribes and achieved party membership of over 100,000. His mass meetings were attended by up to 30,000.
By 1950 the Mau Mau movement had started with violence directed against European settlers. Kenyatta denies that he was involved, and is on record condemning terrorism at mass meetings and no evidence that has stood the test of time has been found linking him to Mau Mau. But the colonial authorities thought he had created the atmosphere in which Mau Mau could take hold.
On October 22, 1952, the inevitable happened. He and five other leaders were detained and charged on November 18 with managing Mau Mau. On April 8, 1953, he was convicted and sentenced to seven years’ imprisonment. Since then the chief prosecution witness, Rawson Macharia, has recanted and said that he was bribed to give false evidence.
Terrorism grew worse after Kenyatta was imprisoned in the desert of Lokitaung in north-west Kenya. On April 1959 he was released from prison and the Kenya emergency was over, but Kenyatta was detained and restricted to the remote frontier district of Lodwar in Northern Frontier Province.
The new generation of African Nationalists, already making constitutional progress of the kind denied Kenyatta, campaigned vigorously for his release in the legislative council. The Kenya African National Union was formed in March 1960 and Kenyatta elected President in absentia. Finally he was released after nine years in detention on August 21, 1961.
Though KANU had won the February elections, it refused to form a government while Kenyatta was restricted, so on his release he entered the Legislative Assembly in January 1962 as leader of the opposition.
KANU swept the polls in the May 1963 elections and on December 11, 1963, Kenya finally became independent with Kenyatta as Prime Minister. A year later, when Kenya became a republic, Kenyatta was made President. Meanwhile he persuaded the KADU party to drop its opposition and dissolve itself voluntarily.
The whites who feared that Kenyatta might avenge himself were confounded as he embarked on a period of nation building based on racial and tribal harmony under the famous slogan “harambee”, pull together. The tense atmosphere after the Zanzibar coup of January 1964 brought a dispute between Oginga Odinga, who was pulling to the left and accepting finance from Communist sources, and his cabinet colleagues to a head. Kenyatta, recognising Odinga's past loyalty, at first gave him the benefit of the doubt, but was finally persuaded by a majority of the other cabinet ministers to his dismissal from the Vice-Presidency, first of the party and then of the nation.
But Odinga was a strong Luo voice in government. The situation was aggravated further by the assassination of Tom Mboya which unleashed a wave of Luo fury. In October 1969 Kenyatta ventured into the heart of Luo country and made a strong speech. This was followed by a riot, the banning of the Kenya People's Union party and the detention of Odinga.
By the end of 1969, Kenya was on the brink of tribal disruption when Kenyatta, in an astute move, brought forward the election date to December 6 and allowed anyone to stand for elections providing he declared himself a party member; two political opponents were allowed to stand on this basis. The elections dismissed 108 of the older MPs and Kenyatta had the chance to rejuvenate his cabinet. He missed an opportunity by making only a mild reshuffle, but he had brought his country peace.
Politics
Kenyatta played an increasingly back seat role in the years that followed though his hand is strongly evident in all the major policy decisions. He allows his ministers to take full responsibility for the day-to-day execution of their jobs. A large proportion of his original cabinet is still with him though posts have been reshuffled. In economic affairs he has hardly changed the tried and tested policies of the past. European land has been distributed to the Africans; Asian traders have been diverted from rural areas to the towns and encouraged to set up in industry; Europeans have been allowed to continue their established activities with full privileges if they are Kenya citizens.
In foreign policy he has pursued an orthodox African nationalist policy on South Africa and Rhodesia, but the Kenya style has been moderate and reasonable. Kenyatta has used his influence to hold East Africa together during periodic crises; his greatest achievement here being the ending of the border squabble between Uganda and Tanzania in December 1971.
He has no successor big enough to stand in his shoes, but he has set up a team of colleagues who already draw on the same power sources and have drunk deeply of his policies.
Membership
Numerous institutions and locations are named after Kenyatta, including 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. A statue in Nairobi's 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. Before the enactment of the new constitution, Kenyatta's face adorned Kenyan currency notes and coins of all denominations except the 40 shilling coin.
Connections
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 and 1976 and then as Kenya's ambassador to the United Nations from 1976 to 1986. Grace Wahu died in April 2007.
He had one son, Peter Magana Kenyatta (born 1943) from his short marriage with Edna Clarke.
His third wife, Grace Wanjiku, died when giving birth in 1950. Daughter Jane Wambui survived.
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), Anna Nyokabi (also known as Jeni) and Muhoho Kenyatta (born 1964). Mama Ngina lives quietly as a wealthy widow, and now as President's mother, in Kenya. Uhuru Kenyatta, Mzee Kenyatta's political heir, unsuccessfully vied for the Kenyan presidency as President Moi's preferred successor in 2002, but was elected Kenya's fourth President in 2013 . Muhoho Kenyatta runs the Kenyatta'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, was an MP, served as Minister for Public Health and is now a nominated Senator.