Full text of "Tom Mboya Young Man Of New Africa"

MEW

AFRICA

1 M Y M O. N A

$4.50

mm OF
AFRICA

It was the end of the hot season in Kenya,
March, 1955. Notices reading:

WE WANT REPLY

FOR MONEY AT 4PM

NO ONE TO ATTEND WORK

and

ANYONE WHO WORKS WILL DIE

were stuck on posts and walls The entire
African dock labor force was on strike. We
must stop this... shouted Tom Mboya. Gradu-
ally, as they listened to this powerful speaker,
ten thousand angry men became as attentive
as school children.

If was Tom Mboya's first major test since
he iiad become Secretary of the Kenya Fed-
ration of Labour. This underprivileged
African, who was never among the top pupils
in his class, this "very average" sanitary in-
spector of 1951, had become the country's
undisputed leading labor unionist-ac-
claimed as an energetic, skillful leader of
men.

From that position of popularity, Mboya
moved into the wider sphere of politics-in
JW" 7 he became the first African declared
eh "1 < the Kenya legislative council. Now
at tlui if , ! ; *> Mboya is one of Kenya's fore-
most leaaci , ; i rr of proven ability who is
widely praisea aid .udely criticized.
(Continued on back flap)

1148 00360 6704

52 -.1808=

MBQYA

TOM MBOYA

Young man

<$> <$><$><$> <$><$> <$><$><$><$><$><$> of new Africa

By ALAN RAKE<8><$><$><$><$><s><8><e><$><>

DOUBLEDAY & COMPANY, INC. I Q 6 2

Garden City, New York

To My Father

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOG CARD NUMBER 62-11463

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
FIRST EDITION

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

My first thanks go to Tom Mboya himself who has known
for the last few years that I have been planning to write about
him. He has had to treat me partly as a friend, and partly as
a dangerous journalist liable to distort events in his life, to
misquote him on matters of importance, or still worse, to
overunderstand him. But he has borne with me through
countless bleary-eyed Kenya mornings and innumerable cups
of weak tea, while we have been searching back into his past
life.

He is always afraid of being questioned too closely or of
romanticizing about himself. He gave me facts and wished I
could have left it at that.

Most of the other Kenya Africans active in today's politics
helped me at one stage or another. Particular mention must
be made of Dr. G. Kiano, Mr. A. O. Oginga-Odinga, Clement
Argwings Khodeck, Arthur Ochwada, J. M. Oyangi, M, D.
Odinga, Opar Mboya, and Dennis Akumu.

Thanks also to Sir Ernest Vasey who worked in Kenya

6^18085

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

legislative council alongside Mboya for many years and came
to understand him and what he is trying to do better than
most government officials. Mr. S. V. Cooke and Mr. S. G.
Amin and many other Indian members of the legislative
council have often given me their views which have found
their way into this book.

Shaikh Amin, A. R. Kapila, George Houser, Josephine Wrig-
glesworth and John Stonehouse all made particular contribu-
tions.

I received much help when inquiring into Mboya ? s early
life from Father Sheridan, Mr. Carter, Dr. A. T. G. Thomas,
and Mr. T. Askwith. Miss Margery Perham and Cherry
Gertzel both gave me information on his life at Oxford.
Johnston Wanzala was a veritable mine of factual information
and Njeroge Kabibi worked to help me with characteristic
Kikuyu energy,

I would like to thank the editors and contributors of the
various publications that I have quoted freely in this book.
Particular mention should be made of the Kenya Weekly
News which has followed Mboya's career with an absorbed
interest and has expressed a typical European viewpoint in
successive issues.

A. R.

Accra, Ghana, March 1961

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments 5

CHAPTER

1. Dockers' Advocate n

2. Kabakas' Son? 19

3. Sanitary Apprentice 28

4. Fast Cars, Fast Women 35

5. Mau Mau Storm Clouds 45

6. Between the Settlers and Mau Mau 54

7. Jomo Kenyatta on Trial 62

8. From Drains to Politics 76

9. Mr. General Secretary and Dressed for the Part 86

10. Oxford Days 90

11. The Whitewash Election 112

12. A Socialist in a City Suit 1 22

CONTENTS

13. Fanning the Embers of Rebellion? 134

14. Nkrainah of the East 147

15. Young Man on a Tiger 157

16. Africa's Number One Salesman 170

17. Big Brothers Quarrel 186

18. Politics in Pajamas 199

19. A Year of Crises 2 10

20. If You Can Keep Your Head . . . 225

21. When Elephants Fight , 237

22. A New Part to Play 1247
Appendix 257
Glossary 261

TOM MBOYA

Chapter JL

DOCKERS' ADVOCATE

It was the end of the hot season at the gateway to East
Africa. Mombasa's Kilindl port lay idle in the afternoon sun.
The long-armed cranes hung motionless over nineteen ships
that packed the docks. They had done no work since the
strike started three days before. The passengers had carried
their own luggage ashore and the European and Indian office
workers in the town had rolled up their white shirt sleeves
to struggle with the quick-rotting cargoes. Naval ratings stood
guard over them.

The entire African dock labor force was out on strike.
Apart from the pickets squatting at the gates of the harbor,
the remainder of the ten thousand strikers were hurrying to
a mass meeting at the Tononaka football ground.

The lethargic atmosphere of the heat-sodden streets was
split by the raucous noise of the loudspeaker vans, announcing
a meeting. It was March 1955 and the hurrying men had
memories of the biggest strike ever held in Kenya, in 1947.
That time it had developed into a general strike and there

TOM MBOYA

had been violence. The dockers could remember little of the
way events had moved, but it was they who had won their
way against the unknown, incomprehensible powers that op-
posed them. The white employers sitting up in the offices
under the cool fans had listened to them in the end. Their
bosses had shown their strength. Police had been called but
the government had finally started a Commission of Inquiry.
There had been a general wage increase, but that was years
ago. Prices had rocketed since. It was time for another show-
down. Their own union leaders had not declared an official
strike but there were other men who could organize it for
them.
Notices reading

WE WANT REPLY FOR MONEY AT 4 PM
NO ONE TO ATTEND WORK

and

ANYONE WHO WORKS WILL DIE

were stuck on posts and walls in the dock area on March 3,
and the strike started. It was unexpected. The leaders of the
newly formed dockers union were not leading it. In fact they
knew as little about it as the Port Authorities and the em-
ployers. The union leaders did not even know who were the
strike leaders, nor how the grumbling resentment of the men
had suddenly exploded. For the majority of the men it was
just a rebellion against organized authority. There were no
clear limits in which a strike was supposed to operate. Cars,
buses, and lorries were stoned. A white policeman was in-
jured. Twenty-five people were arrested. Troops and police
from all over Kenya were pouring into the town,

The Asian shops in the streets were shuttered, bolted, and
locked. Angry black faces sped past in the heat. Tattered
clothing partially covered the muscular bodies of the men,
as they moved from the heat of the sun into the shadows

Young Man of New Africa

thrown by the concrete shop fronts, and on down the road
under the tropical trees. All bare feet trailed the sand and
dust in the same direction.

The trades union officials were crowded into the car of Tom
Mboya. His well-built body was uncomfortably balanced on
his seat. His round, black face was intent, and like his eyes
and his voice, expressing the argument he was making. He
was totally preoccupied with his current problem.

He had spent one full day arguing with the Provincial
Commissioner and the Coast Province Security committee to
get permission to address the strike meeting without any
police or troop protection.

It was his contention that the more police there were, the
more violent a crowd would become. It was the first real
strike he had faced, but he was determined to put his theory
into practice.

This could well develop into his first major test since he
had become secretary of the Kenya Federation of Labour.
Seldom had so much depended on him in his first twenty-five
years of life. A large number of strikers only knew him as the
man who had publicly declared their strike illegal, and had
asked them to return to work while negotiations with the
employers took place. Others knew he had played a part in
starting the dockworkers union a few years before, but it had
made slow progress and had not brought the benefits the men
expected,

It was a noisy and edgy crowd that flowed onto the football
ground, Tom Mboya went to them to try to get them to
return to work, and to promise that negotiations would go
forward with management.

"I had no hesitation or fear about going to the meeting,"
he said several years later, with characteristic self-assurance.
"It did not worry me at all. I was quite confident that when
I finally got them to listen to me I could make them listen

TOM MBOYA

to sense. Looking back on it, it was very risky, if they had
refused I could have been killed.

"Just before I arrived they spotted a white police officer
standing on the outskirts of the crowd, and someone at the
back started shouting that there was a European around and
they began running after him. As I entered the field he ran
toward me. I rushed to the microphone and shouted into it
and told the man to sit near me and not to move or I could
not be responsible for the consequences."

Tom Mboya stood on a table and tried to quiet the angry
black faces which stretched out in front of him. The men
seemed determined to find a scapegoat for their feelings. One
minute they were shouting for the blood of the solitary
European police officer who had somehow got himself mixed
up in the meeting, the next they had turned on Israel Jacob,
the secretary of their union.

Threatening voices in the crowd shouted that the man was
a traitor who had let them down. As Tom Mboya watched, a
group of toughs moved toward the man. Then suddenly one
of them kicked him and another seized the microphone and
hit him with it. While Mboya called for order an assistant
pushed the frightened fellow into his car and drove him out
of the stadium in a cloud of sandy dust.

"We must stop this. We must stop this," shouted Mboya
from the table top where he was to give his address. "I have
stopped the police coining to this meeting to show them we
can look after our own affairs. This just gives them a chance
to say that we are still incapable."

Little by little order was restored as the men listened to the
smooth, round voice which could crack on steel and drown
the noises of the crowd. The violent men who attacked the
union secretary stood with sweat running in liquid ribbons
down their shiny black faces. The platform personality of the
twenty-five-year-old trades union leader was beginning to make
itself felt. He was gradually reducing chaos to order, bringing

Young Man of New Africa

discipline to the meeting, until ten thousand angry men were
as attentive as school children,

The low of rich, strong Swahili never faltered. The shout-
ing voice lost its cracked note and gained assurance. The
magic of the powerfully built young man with his passionately
determined voice was working. He was waiting for the mo-
ment when the crowd was on his side and prepared to listen.

When the immediate crisis was over it was a question of
preparing them to consider reasoned argument. He talked, as
always, for hours, keeping their interest. It was his technique
of argument to exhaustion. Perpetual persuasion, crossing
back and forth across the web of his message with simple
statements, that would only be partly understood and partly
agreed, but together they would form a strong and flexible
case.

He was almost ready to ask the men whether they would
approve a return to work, when pamphlets began to pass from
hand to hand around the crowd. He had been confident of
an arena full of black arms and brown palms waving their
approval, like the wind racking up the fur of a long-haired
cat. But the pamphlet was an ultimatum from the employers
threatening to dismiss the men unless the strike was im-
mediately called off. The pamphlet was passing from hand to
hand, followed by a wave of anger.

There was no longer any point in trying to stop the strike.
The meeting had to be wound up fast New tactics were
needed.

The young trades unionist put his case to the local Euro-
pean newspaper. "Whether the strike is legal or not, one has
got to accept the fact that it is on/' he said, "and that the
strikers want to know what the other side wants to do about
their grievances.

"I have gained the impression that the employers" attitude
is that because the strike is unofficial, they are not going to

TOM MBOYA

do anything about It That is not going to help anyone who
is trying to bring about a solution/ 7

Tom Mboya's was probably the first coherent African voice
that was ever heard in trades union disputes in Kenya. His
job as secretary of the Kenya Federation of Labour did not
allow him to do, exactly, the work of a mediator, but the
employers and even the Kenya government were in bad need
of someone who could locate the strike leaders and find what
their grievances were about.

Though he had not secured an immediate return to work
his speech at the public meeting had allowed him to win the
admiration and confidence of the dockers.

He continued to talk to them in small groups, sometimes
working through the night with their unofficial leaders under
the corrugated iron roofs of their mud-plastered houses in
the African locations.

Most of the men were illiterate. They had no idea how a
modern trades union should work. Even their grievances were
vague and unformulated, based on a feeling of injustice and
nurtured by real poverty. They had hazy memories of success-
ful strikes in the past.

He had to translate the passionate feelings behind the
notices NOBODY WORKS Into something that hard-headed
employers could be forced to consider.

More ships steamed into Mombasa's Kilindi Harbor as one
day ran into another and as Mboya talked out the nights
with the unknown men. Talk of a general strike and "emer-
gency action" grew in Kenya, and the world's press took a keen
interest in the way things were going in the Mau Mau colony,

When he found out who were the real leaders behind the
strike, he gradually convinced them that he could bargain for
a better working week and higher wages if they went back to
work and allowed him to lead a committee in negotiations
with the employers. He finally secured their agreement

His work changed from all-night sessions In the location

Young Man of New Africa

shacks to office-hour meetings round board-room tables. He
revealed his ability to talk and to listen. As long as the subject
Interested him he could go on for hours, never losing the
logical thread of his arguments, never losing patience. The
dock strike settlement was taking on great Importance. Mboya
quietly enjoyed his part in the center of things. It was cer-
tainly a heaven-sent opportunity to establish his trades union
among the dockers if he won. It would give the employers
and the government officials a measure of his own capabilities.
If he failed, the effects might have been serious both for him-
self and the dockers, but failure was something he dismissed
with his energetic self-confidence.

Six days after the strike had started his self-assurance and
stubborn tirelessness saw him through. The men returned to
work. Within four weeks they had secured a new wage of
7.10,0 (approximately $21.00) per month, an increase of
one third over the 5.1.0 (approximately $14.00) they had
originally earned. As it Is with most strikes the men had not
gained everything they wanted, but Mboya felt that the strike
had showed that industrial peace could be maintained with
proper negotiation.

A European who was on the employers side in the dock
dispute later wrote this tribute: "The manner in which he
conducted negotiations on behalf of the dock workers, was,
without doubt masterly. . . . If it had not been for Mr,
Mboya's efforts there would have been little likelihood of an
early settlement and when you consider that the strike had
only lasted for six days, this will Indicate how well he suc-
ceeded/*

The strike was one of the first settled under the Essential
Services Ordinance which made provisions for employees to
have the services of a lawyer to put their case. One of the
first things Mboya had to contest was that he should be
allowed to become the "dockers' advocate/' and argue for
them in the place of a trained lawyer.

TOM MBOYA

He put his case so astutely that Mr, Justice Windham, who
conducted the tribunal, not only let him assume the functions

of a lawyer, but congratulated him later for the way he had
conducted his case.

Immediately after the strike Mboya himself drew up a new
constitution for the working of a Joint Industrial Council,
which was accepted in full by the employers, and since 1955
the docks have continued, almost without interruption, under
the constitution drawn up at that time.

By March 9, 1955, the name of Tom Mboya was first in
Kenya's trades union world.

Chapter Z.
KABAKAS' SON?

Thomas Joseph Mboya has changed little In appearance since
the Mombasa dock strike. He is of medium height with
broad, well-covered shoulders and strong but sensitive hands,
active with health and energy.

His skin is black, but not so dark as the burnished ebony of
some members of his Luo tribe a Nilotic people that live
around the northeastern shores of Lake Victoria. The color
of his skin has long since ceased to worry him. He is no
longer conscious of it. It is something that remains but only
buried in the subconscious. He is neither militantly black,
nor does he wish he were white. The best thing is when color
is forgotten and when his African friends try to whiten their
skins with creams and powders, Mboya reminds them of what
Dr. f . E. K. Aggrey, the Negro pioneer once said; "If I could
be blacker, nothing would give me more pleasure." Mboya
passes on the remark if he feels his own people are trying to
change the color of their skins because they feel inferior. He
makes it to redress the balance.

TOM MBOYA

His round face Is generally passive. In profile it is handsome
but in front it is flat, receding and irregularly rounded. It is
a strangely elusive face. In some smiling photographs he is
every inch the herothe idol of his followers; in others the
soft flesh of his cheeks is emphasized by a sullen expression.
His eyelids can close downward leaving narrow slits staring an
inner scorn.

People who meet Mboya for the first time are often un-
nerved by the un-African, vacant face, bordering on indiffer-
ence and hostility. It is a face that changes easily from ar-
rogant indifference to a wide-open smile. When he meets a
stranger for the first time, his reactions are sudden and ex-
pressive. A charming warmth and spontaneity is as frequent
as a shell-like impenetrability, masking a feeling of suspicion
and mistrust. He reacts immediately one way or the other.
Visitors are either warmly impressed or sadly disappointed.

When he wants to, Mboya can put anyone at ease with
polished effortlessness, or he can stare vacantly over the top
of his desk; a figure in a well-cut suit and bright silk tie; a
mind without a heart. His thin black fingers play impatiently
with a silver paper knife, A large ring on one hand bears the
symbol of Africa. He talks English grammatically and with
a soft African accent, thinking with agility but seldom with
warmth coming from the heart,

His humanity often hides itself though his logical mind
readily expresses itself through his fluent speech and mastery
of the English language. The broad political problems with
which he deals demand a total submergence of the self. On
occasions he sees himself as no more than the intellectual
agent of his ideas and beliefs, even of the vast forces of
African nationalism that operate behind him. A simple politi-
cal problem will summon his entire concentration. It is con-
sidered by him as if he was really speaking for Africans every-
where, with intellectual detachment and yet, at the same time,
an intense belief in himself.

Young Man of New Africa

His mind works efficiently but it is totally preoccupied
with the future of his people and with the goals and ambitions
of an African politician* Tom Mboya the human being is
temporarily forgotten.

But at other times he can positively radiate charm, warmth,
humor, and generousness. Girls find him devastatingly at-
tractive, and those men who can show him the way to escape
from his preoccupations of the moment are amply rewarded
by his heart-warming reaction.

As a schoolboy he was a jolly, sociable fellow who was not
afraid to take a ribbing for singing soprano like a girl. As a
young man he was a dancer, guitar player, always prepared to
spend his money on a friend. It is the responsibility of being
a world and African leader that sometimes makes him forget
his human self.

Thomas Mbuya (as it was spelled in the register) was
baptized at Kilimanbogo mission, on a sisal plantation in the
European farming country that bordered on the Kikuyu tribal
reserve. His birthplace was some twenty miles northeast of
Nairobi.

At the time of his birth in 1930 his father was working
over two hundred miles from his home country as headman
on a European farm. He was called Leonard Ndiege. He was
an exceptionally tall man even compared with the other
long, loose-limbed Luo tribesmen.

Tom Mboya's father could neither read nor write. He was
quiet and popular with his friends and naturally intelligent
but entirely apolitical. The other workers on the estate re-
membered that he never discussed politics or racial problems
even in the crudest terms. As a laborer he had earned 1
($2.80) a month; cutting the tough sisal with a dexterous
backhand flick perfected over the years by the work of his
fellow tribesmen. At the time of his first son's birth he was
supervising the processing of sisal in a factory and earning
about 2.10.0 ($7.00) a month.

TOM MBOYA

Leonard Ndlege worked on the estate pioneered by Sir
William Northrap McMillan. An American with considerable
wealth, McMillan had arrived from New Mexico in 1904 and
carved himself 34,000 acres on the southern fringe of the
Kikuyo reserve.

His Juja estate, as he called it, was partially used to raise
ostriches, cattle, and pigs but "mainly as a private game
sanctuary wherein to preserve and study the habits of game/'
In the First World War, William McMillan fought valiantly
for the allies, became a British subject and was knighted.

Every inch an imperialist pioneer, Sir William made many
incredible safari expeditions into the wilderness and was
described by a friend as a "mighty big game hunter/* He
was said to have been a big gambler too, and to have won
his estate by throwing dice with other settlers in a Nairobi
hotel, but he died in 1925, when only fifty-three years old,
while holidaying in Nice.

Sir William's body was brought back to Kenya and buried
on Mount Donyo Sabuknow called McMillan's Mountain,
looking over the game park he had made his own in the
wilds of Africa. Tom Mboya was born at the feet of one of
Kenya's greatest white adventurers.

The sisal factory in the estate where his father worked was
owned by Lady Dorothy McMillan at the time of Mboya's
birth. She was an absentee landlord and left everything in the
hands of a farm manager,

Leonard Ndiege's wife was called Marcella Awour, also a
Luo and a devout Catholic. She gave her son the name
Odhiambo, in accordance with tribal custom and indicating
that he was born in the evening.

Actually he was born as the sun was sinking over the
Nairobi roof tops twenty miles to the west, at the end of the
long lines of regular green spikes of the sisal plants. His
mother gave birth in an ordinary African hut with its red-soil

"Young Man of New Africa

floor stamped hard by naked feet. The walls were made of
mud and the roof of grass.

The workers had spent the day crouched in the sun, hacking
with their sharp chopper-knives at the tough stalks of sisal
and were walking back to their huts at the foot of McMillan's
Mountain.

It was strenuous work; something they would only do
because they were forced to by economic necessity. Evening
was a time of gladness. It meant the return to the womenfolk
squatting in their brightly colored clothes over the cooking
pots. The cloth that they wrapped round them with its crude
pattern had been bought at the local shops owned by the
Indians. The returning men found a wooden stool outside the
door, hollowed from the trunk of a tree, a calabash of home-
brewed beer and escape from the days toil

Leonard Ndiege left the factory and walked to the village,
with the evening sunlight still warming the plump-shaped
McMillan Mountain in the east and the Athi Plains stretch-
ing far to the horizon in spikes of sisal like an upturned hair-
brush, on the west It was a long plain, rounding small grass
covered hills and stretching into distant mystery.

Leonard Ndiege returned to find his wife had borne him a
healthy child. It was a moment of great joy. It was a boy e

The missionaries at the nearby Catholic mission of Kili-
manbogo think that Leonard Ndiege's forebears originally
came from the Kabakas* kingdom of Buganda. The Kabakas
were the most powerful and civilized kings of the whole of
eastern Africa and still wield great influence even in this
modern age of African nationalism. The missionaries think
that Mboya's ancestors were finally driven from Buganda by
earlier Kabakas.

Kenya settlers tell an even more interesting tale in their
efforts to explain Mboya's outstanding ability and intelligence.
They say he is in fact an illegitimate son of one of the earlier
Kabakas who later expelled his family from the kingdom.

TOM MBOYA

This, they say, accounts for his cunning and acuteness. It is
unlikely that either the young King of Buganda, Kabaka
Mutesa II, or Mboya would consider the rumor complimen-
tary, for the Kabakas' thoughts are concerned with the preser-
vation of his feudal regime, and Mboya's turn on the building
of a modern democratic society. The only thing they have in
common is the skill and ability they show in handling their
own particular causes.

The theory of Mboya's descent from the Kabakas is not
supported by the fact that his Luo tribe has been established
in the west of Kenya for centuries and there is no factual
evidence to show that his stock was mixed with the Uganda
royal line.

The missionaries at the Catholic mission of Kalimonl where
the baptism registers are kept today, draw their flock both
from the workers on the sisal plantations and from the nearby
Kikuyu reserve. There are many more of the small, brown-
skinned Kikuyu who crowd the mission than the immigrant
Luo peoples who come to cut sisal on the plantations.

The Catholic fathers estimate that Tom Mboya must have
been about two years old at the time he was baptized, but
Mboya himself thinks the date was August 15, 1930.

"We Africans never had birth registers and that kind of
thing you know/' he once said to me, but on a later occasion
he insisted that August 15, 1930 was the correct date of birth.
"You can check with the baptism register!" Unfortunately
the register does not help, for it gives no indication of how
old Mboya was when he was baptized. But it is fairly certain
that he was between one and two years old.

The date of his baptism shows as April 22, 1932, Unlike
Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, Mboya never had a magic shipwreck
near his home by which he could gauge his age. The exact
date is further confused by the wild guesses of visiting journal-
ists who vary his age over a span of five years. The more

Young Man of New Africa

sensational the report about him the younger the age he is
given.

On one of his student registration forms when he started
training in Nairobi's medical school twenty years later, he
wrote the date of his birth in his own handwriting as August
15, 1929. This might have been a slip of the pen as he
corrected the date on later forms to 1930. It has been assumed
that August 15, 1930, is correct for the ages given in this book.

His parents were devout Catholics and genuinely believed
in the new faith to which they had been converted, but they
also saw that the Catholic missions would give their son the
chance to get an education which he might not have been
able to get otherwise. This education in their eyes, was the
key to a new and better way of life, and a good investment for
themselves in their old age.

He remembers that his parents were "keen on getting me
to become a good Christian." There was no conscious rebel-
lion against his religious upbringing, and he had no early
quarrel with the Catholic faith. It was not until later that
he felt there were inconsistencies in what the Church prac-
ticed and the position it officially took on social and political
questions.

Mboya can remember little about his early childhood. He
is suspicious of people who profess exact memories about
early events in their lives. "One cannot help selecting facts
to explain later developments and one cannot avoid creating
a romantic impression from quite ordinary happenings/'

On one occasion on the Juja estate Mboya opposed his
father's wish to take him to see the European plantation
manager, Bwana kiboko (the boss with the whip). Looking
back at the time he was taken to see the boss in his home he
says: "I resented the way he treated his Africans and I
resented the Africans' servility to him." He admits that this
statement may be retrospective thinking based on years of

TOM MBOYA

further thought, but It shows that a deep feeling of dislike
lay deep in his boyish self.

He can recall no definite thinking on boss-worker problems,
nor on race relations. His father never thought of the mildest
social change being possible and his very being was part of
the existing social order. When Tom osed to ask him ques-
tions the old man would reply, "You cannot change things,
my boy. How can you possibly compete against the Euro-
peans?"

He has vague recollections of going to a mission school
when he was about six. His family was poor, but better off
than some of the neighbors who did not even have enough
money to clothe themselves properly or to buy simple cooking
utensils. His father could at least contribute small sums to-
ward his school fees.

When he was only nine years old he was sent away to Kabaa
primary school in Wakamba country, the land of another
tribe living to the southeast of Nairobi. The school was
twenty-five miles from where his parents lived and he stayed
with a family of friends. At school, books were almost non-
existent and there were no writing materials. Instruction took
place under a tree with the master and pupils writing in the
sand.

In 1942 came another change of school. He went as a
boarder to Yala in his home district, Nyanza, to St. Mary's
Catholic mission school His father used his savings to pay
his 5 ($14) school fees each year.

Later his parents moved back to their homea small island
infested with tsetse fly in Lake Victoria. The lake is about
the size of Ireland, 26,000 square miles and is the source of
the White Nile. It washes the shores of Kenya, Uganda, and
Tanganyika with its muddy waters. Crocodiles were thick in
the water only a few years ago, and hippo are still there in
large numbers.

Mboya remembers walking back to his island home from

Young Man of New Africa

school. He claims that he covered seventy-two miles In the
day, walking from dawn to nightfall without any food until
he got to the edge of the lake. There he would stand looking
over the huge fresh-water sea ? hoping that the boat would set
out quickly and speculating on the possibility that it would
be upset by a hungry crocodile.

When he says he walked seventy-two miles he probably
means "African miles" longer when you have to walk them
yourself and shorter when you are telling a stranger how far
he has to go but it is likely that he had to walk forty miles
home from school at the end of term.

His friends remember him at school as a happy, sociable
fellow, not frightened of showing off or making a fool of
himself. He was the youngest boy in his class and always
about the middle when it came to marks or competitions.

He was nowhere near the top when he passed his Kenya
African Preliminary Examination in November 1945, at the
age of fifteen, but he passed well on most subjects. His marks
give a considerable clue to his future activities and develop-
ment:

Nature Study & Hygiene 65

Swahili 65

Geography 63

English 60

Record of activities 60

History 45

Maths 40

Agriculture 38

Rural carpentry 34

Bricklaying 18

He put up a good performance in all academic subjects and
his gift for languages was evident early on, but it was quite
clear that he was not going to make a bricklayer.

Chapter -c

SANITARY APPRENTICE

Tom Mboya was sixteen when he went to the Holy Ghost
College. It was a leading secondary school, run by Catholic
missionaries a few miles from the place where he was born,
where the crowded Kikuyu reserve borders on the rich, white
settler coffee and sisal plantations.

He did nothing exceptional at school. His schoolmasters
remember him as an average pupil who always passed his
exams but was seldom top of his class. One schoolmaster at
a neighboring school remembers the boys in Mboya's class
passing in front of his honse in an excited crowd every day,
Most of them would go by in their khaki shorts and bare
feet, ragging and laughing, dark eyes alight and regular white
teeth flashing in childish mischief,

After them would come Tom, walking alone, his nose
buried in a book.

Other school friends say that he was far from a recluse. He
used to play his full part in all activities, playing the flute,

Young Man of New Africa

singing in the choir, a member of the school debating society.,
and a Boy Scout. His friends ragged him mercilessly because
of his fine soprano voice, asking him how the singing was
getting on at the neighboring girls' school

"How are things at the Kima school? How is the little girls
choir?" It made him angry but he took school life in general
in good spirit.

Whenever a schoolboy argument started, he was keen not
to settle it by the normal schoolboy method of fighting. He
would somehow persuade his adversaries to argue it out, and
once he had them on his home ground, he would invariably
emerge the victor.

Though he was no more than sixteen years old he is re-
membered for his early prowess at debating. He joined a small
group of Luo boys in the predominantly Kikuyu school who
would get together to sing folk songs of their tribe.

In the Boy Scouts he was active and energetic, rising to
become a patrol leader. In the school itself he acquired the
privileged position of medical prefect in charge of the dis-
pensary and in a position to do favors to his fellows. In
general he got a lighthearted enjoyment out of his school
days and played his full share in everything.

But his father was hard pressed to meet his school fees out
of his savings, and though Tom managed to get a scholarship
from his district council he still needed to supplement this
with some earnings of his own.

He had his fees reduced by working for the Catholic fathers
during the holidays. Scrubbed, gleaming, and cherubic, with
his crinkly hair carefully scraped with a wooden spiked brush,
he would act as altar boy and swing the censer at services,
He also became a member of the choir. He had an expression
of natural altar-boy innocence which must have endeared him
to the fathers at Mangu. Even today this same expression can
show through the lines of responsibility on his face. It is one
of the things which arouses his girl friends' maternal instincts.

TOM MBOYA

A photograph of him was taken at a state banquet given by
Haile Selassie of Ethiopia in 1959 where the pomp of the
occasion reproduced the expression of choir-boy bliss.

Tom remembers disliking the discipline at school From
outside he always appeared quiet and restrained as if he
acquiesced to everything but he resented the priests com-
mands "Believe this," "Do that" in the same way that he
dislikes discipline imposed from outside even today. He was
a natural rebel against the authority of the Catholic Church
and the seeds for his later agnosticism were early sown. The
potential rebelliousness also expressed itself against too rigid
social discipline and sprang from the same roots that drove
him to attack the establishment throughout his later career.

At the age of sixteen he remembers struggling with his
first memorandum. His semi-literate uncle wanted to petition
a local council to have a school started in his area. He en-
trusted the job of writing to the bright young lad whose
schooling and cleverness was the pride of the family.

But his father was having an increasingly difficult struggle
to meet the school fees not only of Tom but of Alphonse who
was three years younger. Leonard Ndiege was tiring at his
work, and there were other children. Peter and John who
were nothing more than babies, but had to be clothed and
fed and sent to school later on. Tom decided to leave school
to try and lighten his father's burden and earn something to
provide for his younger brothers.

The last academic exam that he took was the Kenya African
Secondary School Certificate. The standard was about two
years lower than the old Cambridge School Certificate and
this was the last of Mboya's formal education.

He started his life as a man without even taking School
Certificate and the rest of his knowledge was gained in
courses, by private study and reading, and by his lively
contact with the people that he met in the world*

Young Man of New Africa

After he finished school he tried hard to find money from
some other source so that he could return to school. After
two months of unsucessful efforts he had to decide to take
some training for which his exam fitted him.

"I had to decide between teacher training or a sanitary
inspector's course. I was not very inclined to go into teaching.
I had already tried it but did not like it much."

The seemingly odd choice to become a sanitary inspector
was quite rational It was the best-paid course with the best
financial prospects afterward. It was also the only job which
had an external certificate that would allow travel elsewhere
in East and Central Africa and might lead to the possibility of
specializing in Britain later. Most important, it was a job
where Africans did the same thing as Europeans and where
there was no distinction between them. And so, in 1948, Tom
Mboya joined one of the first courses that the Kenya Medical
Department was running to train Africans to become sanitary
inspectors.

He lived in a large pole-and-hessian hut. The grass outside
the door grew yellow because the young men of hygiene
urinated on it every night instead of going to the lavatories,
and the cane taught them to mend their ways.

They worked in a hut used jointly as a workshop for
carpentry and as a classroom.

"Carpentry must cease while instruction proceeds owing to
the noise" reads the report for the year.

Mboya was eighteen years old. An awkward figure in a
khaki drill uniform buttoned up over a plump body. His city
suits were a thing of the future. Unshapely legs, with fat
calves and socks wrinkling down to the ankles, stuck out of
khaki shorts and he provided a bizarre appearance of youthful
gawkiness.

He studied anatomy, elementary physics, water supplies,
air ventilation, carpentry, refuse control, drainage, and sewage
disposal He made weekly visits to the Nairobi abattoir for

TOM MBOYA

instruction on meat inspection and trips to the city market
to inspect eggs and vegetables.

He was never top of his class, always somewhere in the
middle, and out of class his teachers did not notice him as
the leader of his group. It was another young lad, who was a
bright and rowdy pupil, that led the other boys in their out-
of-school activities. He later turned out to be a solid and
reliable health inspector, while Mboya, who was quiet and
reserved, blossomed into an African leader.

He had no exceptional desire or capacity for hard work and
the most common remark on his exam papers was "You must
try to improve your English. 9 ' He was a good mixer with no
particularly firm friends. The environment in the tiny training
establishment was rather cramping and he found much more
scope when he moved with the course to Jeanes school, an
agricultural training college with a much larger number of
pupils a few miles from Nairobi. The medical department
students formed one of the most advanced and privileged
courses at the school which catered for every type of course
and person, from old men who could not read or speak
English to young students just starting on a vocational train-
ing.

The headmaster at Jeanes, Horace Mason, was an ex-Army
man and determined to encourage the students to ran their
own affairs as much as possible. The most important body
that he built up was the students' council which advised the
principal on administrative matters as well as organizing enter-
tainment and social activities. It had much more power than
a student union at a British university and it was a great
honor when Mboya found himself elected to be its presi-
dent.

The Jeanes school days were the time of his greatest men-
tal development He was fast maturing and seeing the prob-
lems of life in perspective. As president of the democrati-
cally elected students* council he had his first real opportunity

Young Man of New Africa

to use his administrative ability. The council itself organized
its meetings rather like the United Nations with the tables
forming a U and each representative having his name and
capacity in the council printed clearly on a card in front of
him. Mboya presided at a table at the end of the room.

When a new headmaster., Tom Askwith, took over the job
of running the school he found the council had "become a
power in itself, more or less running school functions and
trying to assume an executive role/' He felt that the council
should not be allowed to be more than an advisory body.
Mboya natually saw himself as the champion of the council
against the new head and was determined not to let it lose
its powers or privileges. But he limited his arguments to
specific grievances and went down in the principal's memory
as "an outstandingly able fellow."

Another master used to joke with him half-seriously about
his future. He was aware of his increased political conscious-
ness and rapidly developing abilities.

"Well, Torn, I am quite sure you will be in Legco one day."

"Oh, no, sir. There are many people much better qualified
than me."

"You have something in you that will make you succeed
if you really want to."

"I am much too young, sir."

Mboya was becoming increasingly interested in politics,
but his ambitions were not in any concrete form. The idea
of being a member of the Kenya Legislature would occur
only as a vague hope, a possibility, but not something to be
considered seriously. He was too involved with the practical
problems of the time as president of the council. He was
organizing debates on political subjects among the students,
slipping down the road to Nairobi to listen to the political
meetings addressed by Jomo Kenyatta, and discussing politics
with his friends,

Jeanes school was the first time he became really aware of

TOM MBOYA

the grievances of his own people and of European privilege.
He was snddenly able to rationalize the sense of injustice and
bitterness that his childhood days had hinted at. Though he
could not know that Mau Man would disrupt his country in
a few years, he could sense his people's growing restlessness
and their determination to change the social order that their
fathers had accepted without question.

One day when he was out walking with his friends an
argument flared up between them, A friend recalls that Tom
Mboya's normal calm logic deserted him and he shouted,
"Just you wait my boy, when I am leader of this country you
will not be able to get away with things like that."

Tom thinks it unlikely that he would have used such a
statement even in a heated argument, for it would imply that
he already had his eyes on political leadership. "But it is
possible," he says with a laugh.

Chapter

FAST CARS, FAST WOMEN

The training as a sanitary inspector brought Mboya to Nai-
robi, the capital of Kenya. Nairobi had been built by pure
accident. When the great Uganda railway line was being
driven inland from Mombasa in 1897 wor ^ came to a stand-
still at the site of present-day Nairobi. The workers were
exhausted, decimated by malaria, attacks of tribesmen, even
by man-eating lions. Practically all of their machinery had
broken down and a pause had to be given to make repairs.

Crude shacks were constructed on the swampy windswept
piece of land where they had arrived. When the railworkers
moyed on other travelers followed the railway line from the
coast and also found Nairobi a convenient stopping place.
They built more of the old colonial wooden houses on stilts
and gradually a city grew up.

When Winston Churchill visited Nairobi in 1907 its
European population was 380, by the time Mboya arrived in
1951 the European population was nearly 30,000 while there

TOM MBOYA

were over 40,000 Indians, many of them descended from the
coolies who had worked on the railway. Nairobi had become
the largest and most cosmopolitan city in East Africa,

Lord Lugard had decreed that its avenues should be broad
enough for two span of oxen to pass abreast. Everywhere
multi-story buildings were springing up. No longer did the
settlers tether their horses on the wooden rails outside the
white hotels. Instead charabancs brought parties of big-game
hunters from Nairobi airport heavily laden with guns and
cin6 cameras with powerful telescopic lenses.

In 1951 Nairobi had become a city, busily establishing its
light industries and its commercial firms, but it was still a
playground for the rich ? the pleasure lovers, and the income-
tax dodgers. Nairobi was on the edge of primitive Africanext
door to the big-game parks; on the fringe of the Kikuyu
reserve, a short drive from the pioneer world of the white
settler fanners who looked back angrily at a city that their
own efforts had created.

Mboya had occasionally been to Nairobi before. He some-
times passed his school holidays with his uncle in the African
labor railway quarters, but only for short periods. He lived in
the other world. Not the European world of broad tree-lined
avenues, of flats on the hill and of gardens full of bougain-
villea, but in the African quarter of the city, down on the
plains. His uncle's house was built of gray stone and sur-
rounded by grubby earth. The house was exactly the same as
the one next door except for the big letter and number
painted on the wall corner. The houses were impersonally
numbered like convicts.

Mboya had never stayed long with his uncle and so his
permanent residence in Nairobi started when he qualified as
a health inspector in January 1951,

The prickly horizons of the sisal plantation, the hard boards
of the priests' schoolrooms gave way to the location streets of
the city.

Young Man of New Africa

The European bosses on the plantations, In their distant,
feudal world and the dedicated, dogmatic priests, were re-
placed by Europeans in the city who were not so different
from the Africans after all

Mboya began to do a job which, in the past, had been
reserved for Europeans alone. He did it without difficulty.
He could see that he was just as intelligent and capable as
the people he met in the "super-race/' The majority of them
thought of Africans as pleasant babies, a people who would
be happiest if they accepted simple jobs and were content
with their status in life. Most of them felt that Africans were
not born with the same intelligence and capabilities as they
were and they complained of their lack of tradition and
culture.

But to a young man of Mboya's type they showed how
thin their racial pretensions were. Many of them were not
intelligent, and others who were allowed their common sense
to be warped by bitter race prejudice. They wanted to main-
tain, at all costs, their racial position against the African,
particularly the young and rising African, like Mboya. They
showed their weaknesses too. There were great differences
between the democracy they preached and practiced, and
unwillingness to accept African criticism. There was a wish
to pour the Africans into the Western mold and yet keep
them in a lower social class. The Europeans showed personal
weaknesses by their impatience and irritability.

On the whole Nairobi life was welcome, but it had its
disadvantages. The dowdy house in the location where the
Africans lived alone, was scarcely more comfortable or clean
than the grass hut with water leaking through the roof or the
clean quarters of the boarding schools. There was the monthly
rent to find and no food growing outside the back door. When
the wages were spent, there was no family or clan to fall back
on for support.

But the city opened up a far wider world. Some of the

TOM MBOYA

things that the mission schoolbooks had hinted at, became
reality. He could now have the more modest comforts that
once seemed reserved for the European farm bosses a blan-
ket, a cake of soap, a suit, and a new tie.

The rigid authority of the chief and headman, watched over
by a paternal district officer, regulating all aspects of home
life, had gone. The police were the new and frightening
authority in the city.

"Where is your pass, boy? Where are your poll tax receipts,
eh?" But even the police could not keep the same close check
on every minute of daily life. One could learn to avoid them.
Mboya felt he could begin to live as an individual and not,
like a human machine, according to the clockwork of tribal
routine.

There was a bed to sleep on ? a peg on the wall to hang
clothes away from the dirt, a chance to ride in a friend's car
or in a bus piled high with boxes and baskets, bicycles and
bunches of green bananas all thrown up inside the rails on
the roof of Njoroge's taxi, or Ochola's Jolly Bus. There were
even extravagant hopes of a car for himself some day.

Work was necessary but it no longer meant dawn-to-dusk
toil in the African sun; not the back-breaking labor his father
and grandfather had known before him.

By the time he had moved to Nairobi, he had almost
entirely thrown over his tribal past. Fears and superstitions
went the same way as tribal customs. He remembered the
painful extraction of his two lower front teeth in accordance
with Luo tradition and looked forward to taking his full part
in the modem material world.

The young Mboya wandered restlessly from one girl to
another. They were mostly young and educated with jobs in
the town. It was a girls" paradise, for the bachelors greatly
outnumbered them and they had a wide field to choose from,
especially among the better-educated Africans.

Mboya likes to keep his private life entirely to himself. He

Young Man of New Africa

is reluctant to talk about It and is strongly opposed to having
anything written about it. He feels that logically his love life
and his political life can be separated and that no connection
need be made between them. But his critics have frequently
brought up his private affairs in an attempt to smear his
reputation. He claims that his love of girls is entirely sub-
servient to his political ideals and that he has never hesitated
to choose the political alternative whenever his loyalties have
clashed.

When I had been in Kenya only a few weeks I was invited
by Tom Mboya to go to a dance in one of the location dance
halls.

It was a long bare room lined with chairs and a few
decorations hung forlornly from the ceiling, rather like the
local hall in an English village, except this one was called
Akamba after the tribe who had built it and the gate-crashers
outside had black faces.

There were few cars in the dim lamplight near the entrance
steps except Mboya's black Volkswagen splashed with the
mud of the Kenya roads. Most people had come on foot. A
tense-faced little man sat at the door issuing tickets and
assuring party members that a membership card was no free
pass.

A crowd of black barflies stood round the hatch where
bottles of the local "European 5 " beer came through in ex-
change for the coins clinking into the tills. It was always beer
until you offered a drink and gave the opportunity for them to
ask for a spiritous concoction.

"I think 111 be having a whiskey then/'

"Sure?"

be having a brandy and orange. That would be very

nice/'

The young men's suits were made from cheap pastel-shaded
material bought from the local Indian tailors, except for the
fellow dressed in crimson corduroys with a cowboy hat as

TOM MBOYA

large as a bucket. Crinkly hair had been devotedly combed
with wooden spiked brushes.

Another group was crowding round Tom Mboya who was
holding court from an upright wooden chair. The noise from
the jazz band and the changing faces gave him a chance to
forget politics. There were no close friends sticking by him
the whole while. Each man had his turn and his time.

His face lit up in an encouraging smile every time he
greeted a new person into the circle of admirers. The smile
flickered, white teeth flashed. Traffic lights of politeness.

As always with Tom one got the fleeting impression of
genuine warmheartedness followed by the uncertain feeling
that it was just a salesman's smile put on for politeness, or
because smiles pay. Anyhow he was making the effort to be
sociable.

There were more men than women in the room and feet
tapped to the Latin American rhythm (for Kenya has no
indigenous jazz). It made the bottles jiggle on the window
ledges and the respectable couples joggled self-consciously.
Others were weaving about the floor, arms waving, bodies
wriggling. It was what is piously described as "the natural
rhythm of the African/' but it looked like that drummer and
the liquor to me.

Now and again two men would dance together. Their hands
showed a light-brown lining where they held each other and
half-smoked cigarettes hung from thick lips. They danced
together just as African men often walk hand in hand in the
streets. It signifies nothing more sinister than an affectionate
nature and brotherly regard.

Tom Mboya was not drinking or dancing and he noticed
that I was standing around looking bored.

"Why aren't you dancing?"

"All the girls seem to have been asked."

"Come, you must dance. Do you like that one over there?"
He pointed to one of the best-looking girls in the room. She

Young Man of New Africa

was tall and prettily dressed, but busily dancing with a little
man In a respectable suit.

"She is very nice but she is dancing."

"Wait"

With a flamboyant gesture he waved the couple over to
him. They stopped dancing and walked in our direction.

'This gentleman is going to dance with you/' he announced
to the panic-stricken girl, and he whispered a few quick words
in Swahili to her partner which I failed to understand. I
hesitated.

"Go on. Isn't she pretty enough?"

She went straight back to her partner after that dance, but
Mboya's command had been obeyed.

He never confined his attentions to African girls. All girls
find him attractive. An American teen-age bobby-soxer over-
whelmed him with congratulations after one of his speeches
in the United States. He looked at her softly and whispered,
"Thank you/' She swooned away.

"He has an overwhelming sex appeal/' another girl friend
once said.

He had many girl friends among European girls when he
was a student at Ruskin College, Oxford, in 1955. Among
them was an eminently respectable young lady who is now a
university lecturer. They were both deeply attached to each
other, but Mboya was at pains to make clear that he could
never have a European wife. When he returned to Kenya he
could see that he would be totally committed to the African
cause "and that there would be no future for a white wife in
it"

But this girl was more than just a passing passion. She was
intelligent, eager to draw him out, and to get him to complete
the integration of his political philosophy. They had many
common interests besides a strong personal attachment.
Mboya as a student must have come near to marrying her,
though he now states quite categorically that the whole thing

TOM MBOYA

would have been quite impossible. She, too, admits that she
could see that their marriage would not have been satisfactory.

One white ex-girl friend wrote: "He regards his sex life as
quite irrelevant to anything else; his own private affair and
his own business. In pursuit of getting what he wants in this
respect he will tell quite blatant lies and if you're sucker
enough to believe him well you're a sucker. On the other
hand his charm and sex appeal are such that it is worth it
up to a point.

"I am sure he asks practically every girl he invites out the
same questions and tells them he loves them and I think at
the moment he says it he is sincere, but on the next morning
it means nothing, just nothing to him."

He wears a large ring bearing a symbol of Africa on his
finger. He was once asked its significance. "It means I am
married to the African cause/ 7 he said with a smile. Before
his recent marriage he once told me that he never took "such
serious interest in a girl that it goes to the point of com-
mitment. In fact I treat them lightly/' If this were not true
it would not be consistent with his general political attitude.
There is no doubt that he used to sacrifice his girl friends'
feelings to his political responsibilities.

It is from this that some of his critics argue that he will
sacrifice any person to his ambitions. They say his attitude to
girls reveals a streak of unscrupulousness which is part of his
character, and which will be projected into his political deal-
ings at a later stage in his career. Mboya's defense is that the
contrary is true; that he sacrifices his relationship with a girl
in the interests of something that he holds far more impor-
tant. His political position must not be compromised and
certainly not by girls.

Rumors about his activities with white girls horrified the
Kenya settlers. Many of the extremists still think miscegena-
tion is the same thing as multi-racialism, and this has been

Young Man of New Africa

one of the deep-seated psychological fears in their long strag-
gle against the idea of African government.

When speaking to a journalist an old farmer spoke with
all sincerity when he said: 'That fella Mboya's politics are
bad enough but his main trouble Is that he is a damn' sight
too Interested In our women."

"I should have thought that would have demonstrated his
good taste/' said the journalist,

"Huh? I suppose It does, but that's the trouble with these
chaps, they all want to carry on with our women/'

After he had been In Nairobi a few years Mboya had
everything that would attract the young African girl, dazzled
by the glamour of city life. Even before he became famous,
he had a good job, an assured Income and spontaneous
generosity to all his friends. He wandered about the location
areas of Nairobi where the Africans lived strumming on a
guitar. He moved with the polished grace of a good ballroom
dancer and an accomplished football player.

One of his car-driving instructors remembers him best
"Very properly dressed In a white jacket and black trousers,
winning dancing competitions/' His natural sense of rhythm
showed In his successes on the dance floor and his love of
music made him learn the guitar and continue singing In
the Mangu old boys 9 choir until the responsibilities of his
work caught up with him and made him give It up. As soon
as he could afford it he began to collect suits and ties.

He made few really deep and lasting friendships with men.
Neither at school or afterward did he attach himself to any
particular person for long. He found his companionship
among his colleagues at work and In his political and trades
union activities. Men like George Bengo, a smooth-dressed
African who finally went to America on a scholarship, and
the neat and dapper Dennis Akumu who worked in the party
Mboya made his own the People's Convention Party were
very close to him in the early days. But Akumu has since

TOM MBOYA

quarreled bitterly with him. There were few other really close
ties which could transcend the pressure of his work once he
had entered the political arena. The one exception was prob-
ably Mboya's brother Alphonse Okuku, a tall, handsome lad,
who was three years younger but nowhere near so brilliant,
Tom was genuinely fond of him. He showed his devotion by
leaving school and working so that his brother's schooling
would not be disrupted. Alphonse is currently at Antioch
College in Yellow Springs, Ohio.

Tom's most serious love affair developed into his engage-
ment with Pamela Odede, a young girl whose full education
led her to an art degree course at Makerere, the University
College of East Africa, and later to the United States and the
Western College for Women in Oxford, Ohio. While she was
in the United States he always kept her portrait in a promi-
nent position on his work-filled desk.

She is the daughter of Walter Odede, the ex-legislative
council member who was arrested and detained without a trial
at the beginning of the Kenya emergency,

Mboya has always felt that Odede was wrongly detained
and he continued to press for Odede's release until he was
finally set free in 1960. He was glad to cement his relationship
with one of the great African leaders of the pre-Mau Mau
era by his engagement to his daughter.

After a long and patient engagement Tom married Pamela
in a Roman Catholic ceremony at St. Peter Clavers Church,
Nairobi, on January 20, 1962.

Chapter L

MAU MAU STORM CLOUDS

The storm clouds of Man Mau were gathering over Nairobi
city at the very same time that Tom Mboya first made his
entry. In 1951 nobody knew that the oathing ceremonies of
one of the Kikuyu secret societies would gradually lead to a
revolt of unparalleled violence in which thousands of Africans
and Europeans would die. But already there was an atmos-
phere of fear. People knew that something unpleasant was
creeping over the country an uncertain foreboding.

Tom Mboya was a young man In his early twenties with
vigorous health and an eager desire to get on in life. During
his studies at Jeanes school he had become more and more
interested in politics. He had slipped away to attend political
meetings in the city and had argued politics long and hard
with his fellow students.

His approach was that of a young rebel who wanted to
change the existing social order. His ideals were the ideals
of youth, uncomplicated by practical difficulties and unquali-

TOM MBOYA

fied by respect for past traditions. His reading had not been
wide nor deep, but he had been influenced by the lofty words
of men like Abraham Lincoln and Booker T. Washington.

But his politics were also firmly grounded in the real prob-
lems of his own African people. Idealistic aspirations were no
more than a guide in a country that was shivering in anticipa-
tion of the Mau Mau explosion. Mboya was by nature more
interested in practical day-to-day issues than in abstract theo-
rizing, and the way that Kenyatta and the other African
leaders were expressing their grievances encouraged this way
of looking at things.

When he started work as a trained sanitary inspector, or-
ganized trades unionism soon struck him as a practical way in
which he could put his ideals into practice and yet achieve
some positive results. He felt that it was better to act, even
in a small way in his trades union, than just to talk and
theorize about politics. The African political world was fast
changing.

The African political voice had rumbled as early as 1921. A
young, mission-educated Kikuyu, working as a telephone oper-
ator, had come forward to organize the first embryo political
party. It was called the Young Kikuyu Association, though it
is better known as the Kikuyu Central Association, which it
later became.

As the name implies the Kikuyu Central Association was
an almost wholly Kikuyu party. Even in those early days
Harry Thuku showed that he had some idea of the way a
modem political party should be organized. Subscriptions
were collected, cars were hired to tour the countryside and
crowds, several thousand strong, attended his meetings.

The immediate cause for the formation of the party was a
proposition by the Kenya government (almost entirely con-
trolled by white settlers) to cut agricultural wages wages as
low as nine or ten shillings a month by a third, But the

Young Man of New Africa

party would not have come to life if there had not been a
steadily growing resentment on the part of the Kikuyu over
the land question.

The Kikuyu were convinced that their land had been
"taken away ?? from them by the Europeans who first settled
in their lush countryside. Harry Thuku quite naturally made
political capital out of this Kikuyu feeling over land.

What were the facts? It is true that most of the lands
settled by the white fanners were unoccupied at the turn of
the century, when they first arrived in Kenya, but it has also
been proved that the movement of Africans away from their
land was only a temporary phenomenon. The Kikuyu had
withdrawn from those areas known as the ''White High-
lands" and had retired to their reserves land specially set
aside for them by the governmentfollowing the drought
and famine of 1898-99 and the smallpox epidemic,

In his book Kenya from Within, W. McGregor Ross, the
Director of Public Works in the Kenya government, wrote in
1927: "A large sweep of Kikuyu territory partially depopulated
at the time of the great famine and smallpox epidemic, passed
out of native hands. For ever?"

Ross quotes instances of whole Kikuyu villages and small
farm plots being included in areas of land transferred from
the Africans to white settlers: "A broad wedge of European
occupation was driven across the lands of the Kikuyu. The
scattered and spiritless survivors of the great famine today
regard this as an encroachment on lands under well-estab-
lished native ownership/'

Even European apologists admit that a fringe of good

iThe reserves which are traditionally African fanning areas had been set
aside by the Kenya government for African occupation only. This afforded
the Africans protection in theory against the encroachments of land-hungry
white farmers. The government also intended to make the contrary true,
thus while white farmers could not absorb African land, neither could Africans
extend the area of their own reserves no matter how strong the population
pressure.

TOM MBOYA

farming land (later used for profitable coffee plantations) was
taken by settlers at the edge of the Kikuyu reserve,

This was strongly resented by the Kikuyu tribe, who have
a keen sense of justice and have rapidly adopted Western ideas
on natural and individual rights. The Kikuyu are intelligent
and hard-working people and have resented colonial govern-
ment of Europeans as keenly as they have sought European
education and European material standards. To understand
this is to understand the majority of the Kikuyu whose tribal
tradition is one of equitable democracy and whose ambition
is directed toward complete modernization. It was when the
Kikuyu found that some of the doors of Western civilization
had been barred against him that he reacted with unparalleled
speed and violence.

In the 1920$ and 19308 it was the Kikuyu who first absorbed
European political methods and provided the chief African
opposition to white colonialism. A young man called Kamau
wa Ngengi (Kamau son of Ngengi) had already taken on the
evocative name of Jomo Kenyatta from the Kikuyu phrase
Mutibi W2 Rinyata meaning the beaded belt which he often
wore. Jomo Kenyatta was already a significant politician before
World War II, publishing his own Kikuyu language newspaper
before he went to London in 1929. From that time onward
Kenyatta never missed an opportunity to build his following.

If the government had the slightest feeling or respect for
the embryo African nationalism, and had realized Kenyatta's
qualities of leadership, he might have been given the responsi-
bilities he deserved. Even minor political concessions to him
at that early stage and Mau Mau might have been averted.

At first he was offered a few committee jobs, but gradually
he drifted away into political organization and the running of
non-government independent schools.

His independent schools gave 34,000 Kikuyu school chil-
dren an education they would have otherwise been unable to
get. The schools were ran by semi-trained teachers who could

Young Man of New Africa

find no other employment. They came from the ranks of the
young and politically disgruntled Kikuyu with a strong sense
of their tribal grievances. Land "hunger" and the problems of
unemployment were certainly ventilated in the classrooms. A
provincial commissioner said that he later discovered that the
Mau Mau organization itself soon learned how to work
through the Kikuyu Independent Schools Association.

Speaking at the time, Kenyatta had this to say about his
schools: "I am cutting the deadwood out of a lot of the old
African beliefs and I am reinforcing what I think are some
of the best things of our African way of life. I am sending
them out with something I hope is going to work. I want
them to be proud of being Africans. I don't want to make
them a lot of black Englishmen."

The independent schools were associated with independent
churches which had broken away from the orthodox Christian
churches in order to satisfy the strong desire in sections of the
Kikuyu tribe to have religions which had no objection to
polygamy, and would actively approve the tribal custom of
women's circumcision. Besides independent churches there
were innumerable secret societies with various forms of oaths
and initiation ceremonies. There were strange occult sects
following obscure and irrational beliefs. But, at the same time,
the Kikuyu showed that they were eager to educate themselves
and to better the Europeans at political organization. The
desire for more knowledge, for a place in the modern world,
went parallel to an aggressive reversion to primitive tribal
custom and religion.

Kenyatta claimed that he could get the best out of the old
order and the new. If he had stuck to genuine political
grievances he would have had a formidable case.

The Kiambu reserve, where he lived, was the center of
rural agitation in Kenya. It contained good land but it was
overworked, overgrazed and overpopulated.

In 1947 it was estimated that 40 per cent of its 400,000

TOM MBOYA

population was landless and that only 10 per cent of these
people could have been employed In nonagricultural work.
Thus, 30 per cent of the Kiambu Kikuyu had no means of
livelihood at all

The total acreage of Kiambu was 270,720 acres and had
about 27,000 acres which was unfit for cultivation or for graz-
ing. This left about 244,000 acres to support 200,000 mouths,
of which about 99,000 were children's.

The situation in the 585 square miles of the Fort Hall
reserve was scarcely better. Even today, Kiambu has a popula-
tion of 388,000 on 615 square miles or one acre per head, and
the Fort Hall Kikuyu has a population of 384,000 on 739
square miles which is not much better.

Since Mau Mau the situation has been partially relieved by
the Swynnerton plan of "consolidating" the fragmented hold-
ings of African land and of Intensifying farming, and further
progress may be made if the government decides to take the
bold step of setting African fanners up on co-operatives in
the White Highlands which were once exclusively European.

But even today, as in the period before Mau Mau, the
Africans can see, on the fringes of their reserves, European
farms of 1000 acres and more supporting one European
family. Farther away In the Rift Valley some European farms
are as large as 10,000, 20,000, or even 30,000, though mostly
on dry land that is only suitable for ranch farming.

The Royal Commission on Land In East Africa states that
there are only about 20,000 square miles of land In Kenya
which have more than 20 inches of rainfall and is therefore
good for cultivation. Of this area 5900 square miles was
reserved for Europeans who form less than one per cent of the
Kenya population.

Kenyatta's answer to this situation was political organiza-
tion. Harry Thuku's old Kikuyu Central Association (KCA)
had been banned before the war, and the government refused

"Young Man of New Africa

to allow the angry young men who returned from fighting
overseas in the war from reregistering the party in 1946.

A new organization called the Kenya African Union (KAU
pronounced cow) was formed instead. On his return,
Kenyatta virtually took it over and started to build it into a
formidable political organization. When Tom Mboya first
arrived in Nairobi the membership of the party was soaring
in a way that had never happened before in Kenya history to
an African political party.

KAU became the talk of the overcrowded and sinister
African "locations" where the African labor force was segre-
gated on one side of the boom town that was Nairobi.
Kenyatta toured Kenya enrolling more members for his union
and collecting vast party funds wherever he went.

To the Nairobi African, KAU was the focus of his political
demands. Though it was largely a rural Kikuyu organization
in its early stages, under Kenyatta's leadership it won support
from Africans of all tribes in Nairobi. Many KAU leaders
were drawn from non-Kikuyu tribes and Kenyatta was ob-
viously making a genuine attempt to form it into a modern
political party where tribal differences could be forgotten.

The demands of KAU seem exceptionally reasonable today.
They wanted African seats in the legislative council, the
abolition of the color bar, more farming land for Africans and
increased expenditure on education and medical services. But
these demands were so far removed from what the Kenya
government of the time was prepared to concede, that the
Africans were driven to a point of frustration bordering on
rebellion.

Jomo Kenyatta held meetings everywhere in the rural areas
and sometimes in Nairobi.

On April 23, 1950, Kenyatta and the African and Asian 2

2 The Asians in Kenya number some 213,000. The word Asian covers
all Indians, Pakistanis, Arabs, and people from the Seychelles Islands. Some
of the Indians are descended from the railworkers who built the great railway
to Uganda at the turn of the century. Others came to East Africa as traders

5 1

TOM MBOYA

legislative council members held a mass meeting in the
African quarter of Nairobi. The original Intention was to use
a dance hall in an area called Kaloleni, but a crowd of more
than 20,000 collected and spread itself from the hall across the
site of the whole of today's housing estate. Loudspeakers were
erected to carry the speakers' voices to the farthest limits of
the crowd.

An African eyewitness gives this description of the scene:

"Suddenly Kenyatta arrived, waving that carved elephant
stick of his, and wearing his old corduroy trousers. He called
to the crowd: 'My brothers! My sisters!'

"They were all cheering and dancing. Some were singing
hymns in his praise and the Kikuyu women were throbbing
up and down like In a tribal dance.

"The crowd was fantastic. I remember the collection of
money at the meeting. It took over half an hour. It weighed
so heavy that one man could not lift it!

"Kenyatta did most of the speaking and Makhan Singh,
the Indian trades union leader who was very popular with us
Africans/'

Today Makhan Singh recently has been released from de-
portation at Maralal a remote part of northern Kenya. At the
time of the meeting he was reaching the climax of a long
struggle with the Kenya government over his firebrand trades
unionism. At the Kaloleni meeting he told the crowds that
he was a Communist

Few of his African listeners had any Idea at all of what this
meant, for Makhan Singh and a few of his friends were the
only "Communists" existent in Kenya. When he used the
word It indicated to the Africans that he sympathized with

and businessmen, but very few are fanners. Most Indians are Hindu but
there are also Moslems. A big minority of Moslems are the Ismaelis, followers
of the Aga Khan. The Arabs have been settled along the coast for centuries.
Like the Africans and Europeans, the Asians had representatives elected by
the votes of their own racial groups under the Lyttelton Constitution, which
also gave them two ministries.

5 2

Young Man of New Africa

them. The government of Kenya was in great fear that Ma-
khan Singh would start a general strike through his trades
union federation organized on general union lines.

A few weeks later, as dawn was breaking, he was arrested
at his Nairobi home. Mr, Justice Thacker, the same judge
that later convicted f onio Kenyatta and his associates, reported
to the Governor of Kenya "stating reasons why Makhan Singh
should be restricted." The passionate Sikh, with his fierce
eyes staring through thick-rimmed glasses, was not seen again
in Nairobi until his release from restriction in October 1961.

Chapter

BETWEEN THE SETTLERS AND MAU
MAU

In July 1952 the Governor of Kenya, Sir Philip Mitchell,
said that the idea that Kenya was "seething with discontent"
was "inexplicable nonsense/' He was not alone in belittling
the danger of Mai Man. The European press in Kenya, the
left-wing press in Britain, and the African legislative council
members were unable to grasp the seriousness of the political
situation.

A crime wave was sweeping Nairobi. The early-morning
sunlight found the bodies of murdered Africans in the city
river, under bushes, in parks, and lying in the location streets,

The first reports of Mau Mau type murders came in from
rural areas in May 1952 and in the next seven months 37
people were murdered. The news of houses being burned,
cattle maimed, and people being slashed filled the local news-
papers. Ordinary Africans lived in perpetual fear of having
their homes broken into by night, of being robbed or slashed

Young Man of New Africa

in the streets. If anybody else told the lie that they were
working for the government, they walked in danger of their
lives.

Reports came to Nairobi of Man Man oathing ceremonies
in the Kikuyu reserves with oaths far more sinister than those
of earlier secret societies and occult religious groups. The
oaths were strongly anti-European, binding the oath takers to
various degrees of vengeance against whites in general. Then
Mau Mau oathing spread to Nairobi city itself. An African
policeman was found covered with panga-knife wounds on the
Athi River plains stretching out of the southwest side of
Nairobi.

The Kikuyu had a supernatural fear of breaking the oath
which was administered with the traditional ceremony of
black witchcraft and even those who did not believe that oath
breaking would bring divine vengeance had more material
fears of Mau Mau pangas and guns.

One of the European-elected members of the legislative
council, Mr. Shirley V. Cooke, the liberal member of Irish
stock, wrote a newspaper article about the situation in Nairobi
just before the declaration of the emergency:

The member for Law and Order said there were "10,000 Afri-
cans without homes every night in Nairobi" ... "53 % of
African children are living 4 or more and in some cases up to
10 in a room . . . And how do they fill their time before they
finally retire to their squalid sleeping quarters? Their main
preoccupation after dark seems to be sitting around a bra-
zier listening to their elders talk. And what is that talk? No
doubt it consists in many cases of airing grievances real and
imaginary; of extrolling secret societies , . . W1

An article by Frank Hawkins in the local newspaper the
East African Standard reported in September:

1 Kenya Weekly News, October 23, 1952. Much information in this and sub-
sequent chapters is taken from this magazine which circulates largely among
Kenya settlers.

TOM MBOYA

Now that most of the useless spivs have returned to their
country houses, there is a most serious shortage of accommo-
dation for those people who have really got jobs in Nai-
robi. . . . Literally many hundreds retire to filthy sheds, over-
crowded and stinking. Many sleep under stairways leading to
God knows what disgusting joints. . . .

"They were sleeping In trenches and ditches," says the
African journalist Johnston Wanzala. "They were lying under
the stalls and on the benches In Burma market. It was
terrible. We were scared stiff of going out at nights. Robbery
was the least we expected."

Far more bitterly worded editorials, listing Kikuyu griev-
ances and demanding the return of land, poured out of a host
of local African newspapers in the vernacular languages. Tom
Mboya himself worked on a rather more responsible paper
called Hdbari za Dunia (News of the World) and edited in
Swahili by the flamboyant legislative council member W. W.
W. Awori. Most influential of all at the time was a flood of
cyclostyled political pamphlets sold at ten cents a time at
Nairobi street corners. When the emergency was finally de-
clared, not less than 43 of them were proscribed at the same
time.

The left-wing Asian journal, Tribune, lashed out vehe-
mently against the Kenya government's complacency in July:

Stark discrimination based purely on race, stalks the civil
service; there is an intense and insurmountable colour bar in
Kenya's hotels, schools and hospitals; there are restrictions
on free Assembly of Africans which are widely and deeply re-
sented; and, above all, there is the highly undemocratic land
policy which is a cause of constant and acute discontent
among the African and Asian peoples of this country . . .
the eminently just principle of equal pay for equal work is
rejected on the plea that non-Europeans, having a lower
standard of living than the Europeans, cannot claim the same

Young Man of New Africa.

rate of pay as if a lower living standard were not the result, in-
stead of the cause of inadequate earning.
The list is almost endless. . . ,

The European settlers' Kenya Weekly News magazine was
thrown on the defensive and tried feebly to answer the points
that the Tribune raised, accusing it of "following the line of
the New Statesman and Nation" which was the worst possi-
ble damnation in the eyes of its readers, and of "swallowing
the Communist line of propaganda hook, line, and sinker/'

Europeans and Asians began to carry arms around with
them the whole livelong day. By night they slept with them
under their pillows. Women were warned not to carry guns in
their handbags in case they were snatched from them as they
walked along. European court cases followed one after an-
other with fines of 25 or 30 imposed on those people who
had their guns stolen from their cars.

By October 1952, Nairobi was in a state of imminent
rebellion. Prices were rising, particularly the price of maize
meal, the principal foodstuff of the African. Superficially life
seemed to be the same as usual at least by day. Trade con-
tinued briskly. Sunburned Europeans jammed the bars of the
white hotels at lunchtime and in the evenings their cars
lined the streets outside. But there were more armed police
in the streets, surrounding Africans and demanding identity
cards and passes.

At nights the slummy Asian shopping streets were still,
but full of nervous fear. Each tiny bazaar had closed its doors
with finality. The sticky scented sweets, the bales of cloth, the
Gujurati books printed on cheap quality paper, bottles of
Coca-Cola, cheap cigarettes, and betel nut leaves had been
sealed off behind metal screens and giant padlocks. The last
worshipers had left the Hindu temples. The brightly painted
figures and idols remained neglected as the garish electric
light bulbs were put out and people left for home.

TOM MBOYA

In the streets sloping down to the yellow Nairobi River
there was nothing, nothing except a stray cat and the shells
of old cars rusting on the side of the road ? long abandoned.
A watchman, crouched and fearing over his brazier, hoping
to see the dawn without trouble.

Anyone walking in the African locations was immediately
suspect of criminal intent. The tin-roofed houses with grimy
walls and slop-stained thresholds were silently shuttered to
the night. The Mau Mau alone dared to walk by night and
slip round the home guards in the shadows.

Nairobi in October 1952 mixed the modern and the
primitive. Genuine idealistic politics were confused with
savage reversion to barbarism. The orthodox, African nation-
alist KAU was slowly being infiltrated with terrorists who
saw murder and violence as the only way of ridding Kenya
of the whites.

Kenyatta's legitimate political demands were suspect be-
cause he refused to denounce Mau Mau openly and cate-
gorically. His desire for progress was questioned when he was
accused of preventing government schemes for Improved ag-
riculture and terracing, and when he made it clear that he
supported the practice of women's circumcision.

The vast majority of Kenya Europeans saw any form of
African political organization as wholly dangerous. Their
elected members demanded more and more drastic action
against crime.

The majority of Africans warmly supported KAU but
walked in fear of the terrorists and in fear of being wrongly
arrested by the government. Extremist blacks invented more
hideous oaths and perpetrated still more horrible murders,
extremist whites demanded equally savage retaliatory action. 2

A pioneer settler, Colonel Ewart S. Grogan, speaking in

2 A book which vividly depicts both the African and European position dur-
ing Mau Mau is Robert RuarFs Something of Value.

Young Man of New Africa

legislative council some time later said the government
should "take a hundred of the rascals" and hang some of
them in front of the others.

The Kenya government had long since missed the oppor-
tunity of making timely concessions to African opinion; by
October 1952 the situation had deteriorated too far for
them to avert the crisis even by some last-minute gesture.
The new governor, Sir Evelyn Baring, could do nothing
but put down the imminent rebellion by force.

The final event which led the governor to declare a state
of emergency was the murder of senior chief Waruhiu. The
old chief had virtually started a one-man campaign to con-
demn Mau Mau, and after a series of meetings, he invited
Kenyatta and chief Peter Koinange to address a mammoth
meeting at Kiambu, where he vigorously denounced Mau
Mau. Shortly afterward, on October 7, 1952, while his car
was stopped with a puncture, some gunmen appeared in
broad daylight and shot him dead.

Many Kikuyu thought this murder revealed weakness on
the part of the government and signs of the terrorists
strength.

If this was the fate of a prominent pro-government chief
how much less security would the ordinary African loyalist
get? The Kenya government had to act quickly or even the
loyalists among the Kikuyu might become too frightened
to help them. The situation could have deteriorated into a
civil war with the Kikuyu on one side and the Europeans
on the other.

During the whole of this period the police were trying to
find some conclusive proof of a connection between KAU
and Mau Mau. Europeans began to talk of a police raid
in Nairobi which "unearthed the headquarters of the Mau
Mau organization" where evidence was found proving that
KAU and Mau Mau were the same.

TOM MBOYA

The self-styled "White Kikuyu/ ? Dr. L. S. B. Leakey, who

lived a great part of his boyhood in close connection with
the Kikuyu tribe wrote:

KAU had to remain on the surface a genuine inter-tribal
political body aiming to produce a means whereby Africans
could bring to notice their genuine grievances. If it had failed
to do so it would have invited government suspicion . .
It is doubtful whether the full executive committee of KAU
was ever used as a part of the Mau Mau organization but
it was possible to hold Mau Mau executive meetings and if a
query was raised to say it was only a KAU meeting. 3

But it is unreasonable to suppose that the Kenya govern-
ment would have allowed KAU to continue if it had been
able to find any conclusive evidence that there was any
connection between it and the Mau Mau organization.

Even when the emergency was finally declared KAU was
still not proscribed and the idea that it might be was dis-
missed by the Colonial Secretary, Mr. Oliver Lyttelton, in
the House of Commons.

Some officers of the party have since been entirely cleared
of Mau Mau connections. One of them was the secretary
of KAU, Mr. Achieng Oneko, a Luo, who was charged for
managing and being a member of Mau Man but was later
acquitted. Many rank and file members still vigorously deny
that their party had any connection at all with the primitive
and murderous Mau Mau organization.

The aims and objectives of KAU were simply the aims
of a tough nationalist political party. The fact that it existed
at the same time as Man Mau and that some of its members
were arrested for being Mau Mau was a convenient excuse
for extremist Europeans to demand the suppression of the
most popular voice of the African people.

On the night of October 20, 1952, Jomo Kenyatta was

The Kikuyu and Mau Matt, Dr. L. S. B. Leakey, Methuen.

Young Man of New Africa

arrested. Police from Nairobi's Criminal Investigation De-
partment anticipated the declaration of the emergency by
one hour in case the news should leak to Kenyatta and his
associates. The precaution was unnecessary. He was found
asleep in his bed at Githunguri, his home in Kiambu district

With unnecessary formality he was handcuffed and led
unresisting to the police vehicles which took him to the
aircraft that was to fly him direct to Kenya's northern fron-
tier district to the heat of the desert of Lokitaung where
his old friend Makhan Singh was already detained.

The governor declared a state of emergency in Kenya ?
proclaiming a series of emergency regulations including the
power to detain people without trial:

This was owing to the prevalence of disorder in a part of
Kenya , , . there was no alternative in the face of mounting
lawlessness . . . the government has no intention of penal-
izing anyone merely for his political views.

Chapter j

JOMO KENYATTA ON TRIAL

At the time of Kenyatta's arrest, Mboya was a young man
of twenty-two. He had just qualified as a sanitary inspector
and had started on his career. He had still to decide what
he was going to do in life. He had no vision of himself
playing a major part in his country's future. He saw himself
for what he was, an ordinary, educated African with every
chance of making a success of his career.

At the age when American or British students would be
still at their universities listening to their lecturers, discuss-
ing ideas with their classmates, sorting out their own stand
in life -Mboya found himself thrust into a humdrum job,
He had no chance to test himself under the discipline of a
university. Sometimes he revealed an astonishing imma-
turity to his teachers and his colleagues at work. He was
learning the rules of life incredibly fast, but he still felt
rather awkward in the presence of his elders, or when he
spoke to white men. He was still not quite at ease socially.

Young Man of New Africa

He had not absolutely grasped the unwritten laws and taboos
of European life.

The job as a sanitary inspector in the Nairobi City Coun-
cil sharpened his sense of social injustice. As he trailed round
the shabby, overcrowded locations where the Africans lived,
he was in close touch with human stories of hard luck and
suffering. And he could hardly have avoided the comparison
between the African way of life and the luxury in which the
Kenya Europeans lived. Some African homes were just
single rooms, so narrow they were hardly wide enough for
a bed, while up on the hill overlooking the city the European
flats rose beautifully from the tree-covered slopes.

Down on the plain the green Kenya buses rolled for
mile after mile along the straight roads feeding the swarming
African locations. Up on the hill a cool tarmac road led past
the flowering garden of the Bishop of Mombasa and on
to the inner sanctum of the British Raj Government House
where there was an atmosphere of peace and tranquillity. It
stretched from the two African askaris in red fezzes and
cummerbunds who stood at the gate with nothing to do,
to the smart servants in the house itself moving about
their duties with oiled precision. The lawns had grass like
an Oxford quadrangle, tropical flowers bloomed in well-
cut beds, and plans were being made for a swimming pool
to be built.

How different this all was to the real Nairobi on the
plain below, where everyone lived on the alert, where Af-
ricans themselves were afraid of attacks by thugs.

Mboya was not a Kikuyu and he could never really under-
stand the deep-seated causes which led some of the Kikuyu
to the violence of Mau Mau. He never had their fascination
for the occult, their half-belief in the power of black magic,
their fear of the witch doctor. Nor did he know the strength
of the oath and how tightly it bound the oath takers together.

Mau Mau would not have had the success it did if the

TOM MBOYA

oath had not been so binding and if the believers in its
power had not guarded its secrets so jealously from European
and African alike. Mboya was never allowed to share in
the black secrets, thus he could never really understand what
turned some of his fellow Africans to savagery.

Nor was Mboya of sufficient importance at the time to
have any status in the political struggle. But Mboya did un-
derstand the desperately difficult position of the established
African leaders of the day. Here were men who would have
liked to have succeeded by constitutional means. But they
found on the one hand that some of their supporters had
resorted to bloodshed and on the other that th,e colonial
government was not prepared to make any concessions.

Until the arrest of Jomo Kenyatta,, Mboya had not even
been a member of the Kenya African Union. As will be
described later he concentrated his activities purely in the
trades union sphere, in building up the Kenya Local Govern-
ment Workers Union. It was the arrest of Kenyatta which
finally jolted him into taking an active part in pure politics,
for it was then that he joined the Kenya African Union.

By joining the party Mboya was adding his own weight
to those who thought that Kenyatta had been victimized.
Tom Mboya has always thought that Kenyatta was the
scapegoat of a desperate colonial government*

Mboya's opinions on the Kenyatta question have never
changed. They were the same in the days of the emergency,
when it was highly dangerous to whisper a word in favor
of Kenyatta,, as they are in recent times when Kenyatta has
returned from exile to the plaudits of his people.

Mboya had only met Kenyatta briefly, on one occasion,
before he was arrested. He formed his opinions about Ken-
yatta from what he read and from the stories he heard in
the non-Kikuyu African circles where he moved in Nairobi.

Late in 1957 Mboya and I were sitting in a caf&~one of
those caf^s which had dropped its color bar after the emer-

Young Man of New Africa

gency and the conversation swung round to the old ques-
tions of violence and Man Mau. He was carefully dressed
in a loose-fitting suit and was idly lingering the table cutlery
as he waited to be served. He was tired of visiting legions of
foreign journalists who always asked him the same questions
about Mau Mau with monotonous regularity.

"I never supported the violence of Mau Mau and I
certainly did not approve of it, nor did I approve of the
government's methods of meeting violence with violence/'

"Don't you think the government was justified in taking
action against Mau Mau?" I asked.

"Of course action was needed at the time, but who was
to blame for this situation coming about? The root of the
Mau Mau troubles were economic and social grievances and
these should have been tackled long before/'

"You have often accused the government of meeting vio-
lence with violence. What exactly do you mean by this?'*

"The brutal manner in which people were treated by the
home guard and the police reserve. There were numerous
cases of Africans who disappeared and have never been ac-
counted for and cases of security forces who shot people who
were challenged and failed to stop/'

He continued to castigate the Kenya government for its
policy before and during the emergency, but he was not
speaking with bitter passion, rather with the conviction that
reason would see the right thing done in the end.

He saw the Mau Mau episode as the logical result of a
government policy which was not prepared to make con-
cessions to African feelings and ambitions. He thought the
deteriorating situation in 1952 was because the aims and
objectives of the African political leaders had not been under-
stood and the meaning of African nationalism had been
misjudged. He thought the European settlers' explanation
of the emergency situation, as a reversion by Africans to
primitive barbarism, was entirely false.

TOM MBOYA

It was expected that the European community would
react emotionally in the way it did, for Mau Man was a
beastly business, but the situation was the result of the white
settlers' demand to retain a privileged position, and of the
government's maintenance of colonial rule.

He saw the brutality and cruelty of Mau Mau as the result
of a revolutionary situation. Most reasonable men and Af-
ricans were no exception would not want to achieve their
nationalist goals by violent means, but if the constitutional
approach was blocked, some people would turn to bloodshed,
"And 1 can quite understand why they should/' he said with
conviction.

His hands gestured emphatically as he revealed his sin-
cerely held belief that Kenyatta had nothing to do with
Mau Mau. It is a belief that is absolutely fundamental to
the proper understanding of his later political career. From
the day Kenyatta was arrested until the present, this con-
viction that Kenyatta was innocent has been a first premise
in his political thinking.

His belief was first tested on Kenyatta's arrest. Tom Mboya
joined the Kenya African Union. It was a gesture of con-
fidence in the party, and a personal protest against the great
leader's fate.

Tom Mboya was in Nairobi on the opening day of the
trial of Jomo Kenyatta, on December 3, 1952 it was to be
the most dramatic trial in Kenya history.

The eyes of the world were trained on the makeshift
schoolroom in Kapenguria nearly 300 miles from Nairobi
where Kenyatta and five of his political colleagues were
charged with managing and being members of the Mau Mau
organization.

The famous British Queen's Counsel, Mr. Dennis N.
Pritt, came out from England specially to organize the
defense. He was joined by D. W. Thompson, a West Indian
lawyer practicing in Tanganyika, two Asians, Mr, A. R.

Young Man of New Africa

Kapila (a young lawyer who was just maHng a name for
himself In politico-criminal cases in Nairobi) and Diwan
Chaman Lai from India. EL O. Davies, another lawyer,
came from Lagos, but one Ghanaian and two Indian lawyers
were prevented from attending the case, by being refused
the necessary passes by the Kenya government.

The trial was held in the scorching equatorial heat of
Kapenguria in the Rift Valley. It was an area that had
been "closed" since the beginning of the emergency. No one
could enter or leave it without a pass.

The government specially appointed Mr. Ransley S.
Thacker, a former Puisne judge to take the case. He had once
been acting chief justice but he had been specially brought
out of retirement to conduct the trial as a magistrate.
Thacker had faced Kapila several times before in the court-
room, so much so that the young Indian advocate would
often bet that Thacker would try all his political cases,
and three times out of four he was right. Thacker had a
reputation for being tough with politicians. He had already
tried and convicted one of Kenyatta's associates on a pre-
vious occasion. He was also the man who had "stated rea-
sons n why Kenyatta's colleague, Makhan Singh, the trades
union leader, should be restricted.

Despite efforts by the defense to have the case tried be-
fore another court, Thacker stayed. He was conveyed back-
ward and forward to the courtroom in an armored car
guarded by soldiers carrying Sten guns.

Lawyers, witnesses, interpreters, legal staff, police, and
troops drove their judicial cavalcade down the murrain roads
throwing up the red dust behind them in the shape of a
coiled spring. They dropped down into the valley, through
the police roadblocks and on to the sandbagged, barbed-
wired courtroom. Each day the journey had to be made
23 miles from the green-pastured settler town of Kitale,
into a land of dust and dry grass. At the end of the hot day's

TOM MBOYA

work they would reverse the process and climb back into
the chill air of the 8ooo-feet settlers' paradise.

Mr. Pritt took it like a man in his twenties, jumping in
and out of his small car, striding about the Kitale hotel
and fixing the hostile glances of the settlers through his
thin rimmed glasses. With settler outbursts about ''That
damn' Communist" and "That fella who defends the na-
tives" exploding all around him he stayed in the hotel
among the trout fishermen and the stock buyers. Other
members of his multi-racial judicial team found accom-
modation difficult because of the color bar.

The trial itself was full of heat and tantrums. In the
stifling atmosphere of Kapenguria, purely legal arguments
would deteriorate into sharp interchanges between the pub-
lic prosecutor and Mr. Pritt, the Queen's Counsel.

Despite the magistrate's protests that it was no political
trial, political passions were aroused and reflected in the
newspapers of the world and in personal arguments be-
tween the dozens of foreign journalists that packed the press
benches.

Mr. Pritt's sharp temper rubbed sorely against the injured
sensitivity of the magistrate and the trial had not run three
weeks when, exasperated, he sent the following cable to
four Labour Members of Parliament in London:

I AM PROTESTING CONTINUOUSLY, FIRST AGAINST THE INCON-
VENIENCE OF HOLDING THE HEARING IN A REMOTE REGION
WHERE ONE MUST SEND 280 MILES TO NAIROBI TO LOOK UP
AUTHORITIES . . , THERE ARE NO RESEARCH FACILITIES NEARER
THAN NAIROBI AND NO MEANS OF EATING NEARER THAN
KITALE 24 MILES AWAY.

SECONDLY, AGAINST THE TRIAL BEING HELD IN A CLOSED
DISTRICT VIRTUALLY EXCLUDING THE PUBLIC FROM THE COURT.

THIRDLY, AGAINST THE INEXCUSABLE EXCLUSION OF SOME
COUNSEL FROM THE COLONY AND OTHERS FROM THE DISTRICT
WHERE THE TRIAL IS BEING HELD. ALL THIS MAKES THE

Young Man of New Africa

PROPER PREPARATION OF THE DEFENSE CASE IMPOSSIBLE ANB
GREATLY INCREASES EXPENSES AND WASTES TIME. IT AMOUNTS
TO A DENIAL OF JUSTICE.

The columns of the most decorous local newspaper de-
scribed It as a "near sensation" when Mr. Thacker, speaking
in a quiet and injured voice, told Mr. Pritt, "In this cable you
have said that what amounts to a denial of justice is taking
place in this trial No such charge has ever been made
against me in the whole of my judicial career, in twenty-
one years, and I take the greatest exception to it.

"I have endeavored to exercise patience and to give you
every facility which is within my power/' continued the
aggrieved magistrate. "The accusation is most unfair and
unwarranted."

Mr. Pritt protested that his cable was not directed against
the magistrate in any personal capacity, but only against
the Kenya government. It was to no avail "In my present
frame of mind I am unable to continue this trial today/'
With that remark the magistrate adjourned the court and
for fifteen days proceedings were not continued.

In his next case, it was the eagle-eyed Mr. Pritt who
sat in the place of the accused while the most brilliant
lawyers of Nairobi crowded the benches beside him. The
Attorney General, Mr. John Whyatt and the Solicitor Gen-
eral, Mr. E. Griffiths Jones appeared for the Crown and
the Pritt-Kapenguria team had the moral support of two
prominent Asian lawyers, Mr. Chanan Singh and Mr. J.
M. Nazareth. After three days Pritt was acquitted.

The chief justice made it clear that he thought no
charge should ever have been brought against the British
Queen's Counsel. He said that his phrase "a denial of
justice" was "unfortunate/" but that it was a reflection on
the government alone and not on Mr. Thacker.

A crowd of Africans and Asians clapped and cheered as
the flushed and beaming face of Dennis N. Pritt passed

TOM MBOYA

down the court corridors and through two lines of police
constables standing outside. Mr, Pritt was already on the way
to becoming an African hero and, automatically, a European
bogey man.

No one was able to get down to the business of the real
trial before the first of January, 1953. Five men besides
Kenyatta were charged with managing Mau Mau and being
members of it. Fred Kubai was a trades unionist and news-
paper editor, Richard Achieng Oneko, a Luo tribesman
and General Secretary of KAU, Paul Ngei was an assistant
general secretary of the party, and Bildad Kaggia was a
priest from one of the Independent African churches. These
men were all educated Africans in the front rank of political
leadership in Kenya* The last man, Kungu Karamba, was a
Kikuyu tribesman of the old school who spoke no English
and had his ears pierced. Kenya was holding its own "treason
trial/' long before trials of that kind had become fash-
ionable on the continent of Africa.

The full story of the long and complicated trial has been
told elsewhere. 1 Kenyatta was inevitably the center of the
case. As he climbed into the witness box, dressed in his
leather jacket and corduroy trousers, the court was packed
to capacity. He gave his evidence in a deep, magnetic voice,
staring inscrutably about him with his large bloodshot eyes.
He was twice warned that his answers were becoming po-
litical speeches as his oratory rolled out of the witness box,

Point by point he went through a list of African grievances
against the government. There was the Crown Lands Or-
dinance which, he said, "showed Africans had no right to
land/' He objected to Kenya being made a colony in 1920.
When it had been a protectorate, Africans had the feeling
that their interests were being cared for by Britain, but a
colony implied control by white settlers. He wanted Af-
rican representation in the legislative council He said that he

i The Trid of Jomo Kenydtta, Montagu Slater, Seeker and Warburg.

Young Man of New Africa

had been involved In a dispute over the circumcision of
women and that he had disagreed with the missionaries
over it but that "we Kikuyu think it is a beautiful custom/'

Kenyatta declared that he had joined the Kenya African
Union because he was satisfied with its aims. It was trying
to unite all Africans and prepare for democracy and to fight
for equal rights of the African people by constitutional
means.

"I and my friends look forward to peace. We stand for
peace and could not stand for the mutilation of human
beings/' he said in his final speech. "I do not ask for
mercy, but that justice should be done and that injustice
against the African people should be righted/ 7

The evidence against Kenyatta was of widely differing
value. A police informer said that he had heard Kenyatta
denounce Mau Mau, but that he had followed the de-
nunciation with "Now let the people take a pinch of snuff."
When this was interpreted in Kikuyu tradition it was said
to mean "Let the people take what I have said with a
grain of salt/ 7 Many other witnesses who were at the
meeting said that Kenyatta had said nothing of the sort.

Kenyatta was also charged with having his name in var-
ious African political songs. The prosecution contended that
he was worshiped like some evil deity and at the end of the
trial the magistrate concluded that the two hymnbooks con-
tained passages which made Kenyatta "almost a figure of
divine worship/ 7

More weighty evidence came from three officials from a
branch of the Kenya African Union at Limura, not many
miles from Nairobi. They said that they had asked Kenyatta
to denounce Mau Mau at a political meeting, but when he
had spoken he had avoided the issue altogether. "It is difficult
to understand/ 7 said the magistrate in his summing up, "if
Kenyatta was opposed to Mau Mau why he did not accept
the invitation unequivocally to denounce it/ 7

7 1

TOM MBOYA

Another prosecution witness called Njui said that he had
actually been initiated to the Man Man oath in Kenyatta's
presence. This was important evidence, for if the magistrate
accepted it, it would certainly make Kenyatta guilty of close
association with Mau Mau. But there was considerable con-
fusion on the part of Njui, for in an earlier case he had told
the story against a man called Dedan Mugo. It was not
until the trial that he changed his tale to incriminate Ken-
yatta. When he had first reported the oathing ceremony to
his chief he had not mentioned Kenyatta's name at all. He
excused himself in court by saying he was too frightened to
give evidence against him.

Kenyatta denied the truth of the whole incident and was
supported by eight witnesses who endorsed his alibi, but at
the end of the trial Mr. Thacker had "no hesitation" in
believing Njui against the eight other men.

But the most damaging accusation of all came from
Rawson Mbogwa Macharia a name that has since became
notorious. He was a small, bespectacled Kikuyn who gave
his evidence in fluent English, and was described by Pritt
as "bumptious."

Macharia gave the time, place, and date when Kenyatta
was alleged to have actually administered the Mau Man oath
with all the mystic paraphernalia of banana leaves, grass
arches, bits of raw goat's meat, and blood.

His evidence sounded authentic and detailed, far too com-
plicated to be a figment of his imagination. He said he had
seen Kenyatta actually forcing another man to take the
oath. Kenyatta had instructed the man in the procedure of
the Man Mau oath and made him repeat "When we agree
to drive the Europeans away yon must take an active part in
killing them."

As in the case of Njui, the magistrate concluded that
Macharia was speaking the truth, "although my finding of
the fact means that I disbelieve ten witnesses for the defense

Young Man of New Africa

and believe one for the prosecution. I have no hesitation
in doing so. Rawson Macharia gave his evidence well."

Six years later, in December 1958, Macharia recanted.

He swore an affidavit which Mboya himself brought to the
notice of the British Colonial Secretary stating that the evi-
dence he gave in the Kenyatta case was totally false. He
said his own evidence was "absolutely untrue'* and that many
other witnesses, including Njui, had perjured themselves as
well.

When Macharia made this affidavit in 1958, the Kenya
government arrested him and tried him for swearing a false
affidavit. Macharia's confession had led to his own trial.

The men who had testified against Kenyatta in the orig-
inal trial stuck to their old stories. Macharia went to prison,
but the judgment against him made it clear that he had prob-
ably given false evidence against Kenyatta.

The magistrate concluded that Macharia had probably
concocted the evidence against Kenyatta just to get pub-
licity, in the same way that he swore his affidavit six years
later, to create a sensation. Macharia's case also brought out,
for the first time, that practically every prosecution witness
against Kenyatta had been given sums between 200 ($560)
and 2070 ($5796,0) as "compensation" either at the time of
the Kenyatta trial or afterward.

Mr. Pritt thought it curious that compensation should
have been paid by the government to Kenyatta's accusers,
but government officers argued that these payments had
been made because the witnesses were moved from their
homes. If they had been left in Kikuyu country during Mau
Mau, they would have been killed by the terrorists.

When Mr. Thacker gave his 88-page judgment on April
8, 195 3, he had no idea that his star witness would later
recant. He did not then know that Macharia would deny
everything he had said against Kenyatta. A policeman armed
with a Sten gun sat over him as he read his verdict to the

TOM MBOYA

Kapenguria courtroom. The place looked more like an armed
camp than a court of law. Armored cars and troops guarded
it on every side while spotter aircraft circled overhead in
case the Mau Man should make a bid to rescue their alleged
leader.

But nothing disturbed the magistrate as he read his long,
disputed judgment.

He did not believe that Kenyatta had stood for con-
stitutional change in politics. "I am sorry to say that I do
not believe you . . . I am satisfied that the master mind
behind the [Mau Mau] plan was yourself.

"I also believe that the methods to be employed were
worked out by you and that you have taken the fullest
power and influence over your people."

Kenyatta was sentenced to seven years' hard labor, to be
followed by indefinite detention. Very shortly afterward the
youthful Tom Mboya became the acting treasurer of the
Kenya African Union.

The verdict of the Kenyatta trial was clear cut. Kenyatta
and his colleagues later appealed, but the original judgment
was upheld and Pritt was unable to get the case tried before
the Privy Council.

But one of the accused was acquitted in the appeal court.
Richard Achieng Oneko was discharged. He left the court-
room a free man but the moment he set his foot outside
he was rearrested and detained.

During the trial the Labour M.P., Mr. John Stonehouse,
who was helping to build up the African co-operative move-
ment in Uganda, drove specially to Kapenguria to testify to
Achieng's excellent character. He had a chance of talking
with him privately and Achieng told him that he thought
all the accused were innocent of any connection with Mau
Mau except one rnan ? whom he had doubts about Achieng's
short conversation with Stonehouse showed that even the
top-ranking officers of KAU ? like himself, had no real knowl-

Young Man of New Africa

edge about Man Man and were not certain who its leaders
were.

The next time that Mr. Stonehouse, M.P., wanted to go
to Kenya on holiday he was told that he had been declared
a prohibited immigrant. As usual no reason was given. The
only thing the government could have had on his file was
that he was a friend of Achieng Oneko and had given ev-
idence on his behalf. Such was the attitude of the Kenya
government in the early days of Mau Man.

There were no doubts in the judgment on the Kenyatta
trial, but there are perennial questions that Africans have
asked themselves ever since.

First: Why was there so little evidence against Kenyatta?

When he was arrested the police took a lorryload of
books, papers, and files from his house and found nothing at
all incriminating in them. Or if they did find anything,
they forgot to produce the evidence at his trial Was it
possible that a popular figure could have lived such an
intensive political life without giving a clue of his Mau
Mau connections to a single police informer?

Second: What great nationalist leader anywhere would
get up in public and in court to denounce the movement he
was alleged to have led and organized? If the Kikuyu were
behind Kenyatta because he was Mau Mau, how could they
ever trust him following his public denunciation in court
and when, six years later, he repeated the same things at
the trial of Macharia?

Third: Why was it that the best-planned Mau Mau
military operations took place after Kenyatta was isolated in
prison in Lokitaung, a remote part of Kenya's northern
frontier desert?

Questions like these still spring to mind. They were
burning questions to a young African nationalist like Tom
Mboya,

Chapter

FROM DRAINS TO POLITICS

The Kenya emergency with all its brutality, injustice, and
suffering provided the backdrop to Tom Mboya's early ca-
reer. He was not exceptionally politically minded in the
early days, but the dramatic events of the emergency drew
him irresistibly into the political struggle of his people,
No young, educated, and intelligent African could be un-
concerned about his country as it was torn apart in civil
war, and as the European and African races clashed with
ever-increasing violence and hatred. Mboya was no excep-
tion.

At the time of the arrest of Jomo Kenyatta he was already
a full-time sanitary inspector in the Nairobi City Council
Every day there were new tales of people who had been
murdered, of men who had been arrested and detained, of
women and families who had been left without their bread-
winners.

These stories he heard as he went about his job were
factual accounts of hardship among ordinary African people.

Young Man of New Africa

He was listening to the real problems that lie behind politics
and soon understood why his people grasped desperately
at political salvation.

When Kenyatta was tried, the symbol of the hopes and
aspirations of the African people was on trial too. To the
ordinary African, Kenyatta was a chance to achieve political
equality and human dignity. When he was convicted Af-
rican hopes were dashed.

The African-nominated legislative council members Eluid
Mathu, W. W. W. Awori, and Walter Odede were in a
bitter dilemma. If they continued to lead the Kenya African
Union they would be attacked for not helping the govern-
ment to put down violence. If they abandoned KAU and
made public speeches against Mau Mau they would be
leaving their people defenseless in a situation where author-
itarian powers were being gradually increased (and fre-
quently abused) by the hot-headed extremists among the
white settlers and security forces.

Tom Mboya was indignant about the collective punish-
ment and mass fines of the Kikuyus. Enough evidence had
come to light to make all liberal opinion in Kenya and
Britain speak with the same voice. The Labour party chal-
lenged the government policy of collective punishment in
the House of Commons, while Colonel Ewart Grogan,
the pioneer settler-adventurer, said the government should
'take a hundred of the rascals" and hang some of them in
front of the other.

Even the liberal-minded farmer, Mr. Michael Blundell,
told a meeting of his constituents in Nairobi Memorial
Hall that the elected members are going "to make sure this
shooting position is clarified ... not this business of 'rea-
sonable force/ but something clear cut. When a man sees a
terrorist he must be shot/' (Loud cheers.)

This statement is not typical of Blundell himself, but it

TOM MBOYA

is typical of Kenya at the beginning of the emergency. The
settlers were crying for protection, for the right to shoot a
Man Mau gangster at sight . . . but what if it was an inno-
cent African and not a gangster at all? By the time his
identity could be proved, he would be a dead man.

One January morning some 1500 armed settlers poured
through the gates of Government House, and stood on the
lawn yelling and shouting for the governor and demanding
firmer emergency measures. They wanted to know why
proper action had not been taken following the brutal mur-
der of the Ruck family. When it came to propaganda the
settlers always had the advantage of some brutally photo-
genic murder to illustrate their case that all the trouble was
due to African barbarity.

The governor stayed silent behind the white walls and
polished doors of Government House. He did not want to
create the precedent of the Crown giving way to mob pres-
sure. Just as the crowds were about to push down the doors
of Government House, Mr. Michael Blundell went out to
assure them that the government would take tougher action
against Mau Mau.

The Kenya government and the new governor, Sir Evelyn
Baring, were in a difficult position. They were prisoners
of their past policies. The time had come when the settlers
were pressing for more and more drastic and punitive meas-
ures to defeat Mau Mau, while the injustices and brutalities
of the security forces were continually being held in their
faces by Africans and Asians.

A Nairobi barrister, one Peter Evans by name, brought a
report to the governor concerning breaches of regulations by
security forces and the police. He asked for a full inquiry into
cases of suspected murder. The government's answer was to
deport him from Kenya, and liberal opinion was profoundly
shocked,

The arrest of Tom Mboya's friend, the Legco member

Young Man of New Africa

Walter Fanuel Odede, put another sinister question mark
against government policy. Evans and Odede were both
prominent men in their own communities. Each respectable
and peaceful citizens who were doing nothing but trying to
see that the rights of ordinary Africans would not be ob-
literated in the drive against Mau Mau.

Tom Mboya remembers Odede as a gentle, polite, and
slow-moving man. He was rather plump and amiable and is
remembered for the ponderous slowness of his speech in
legislative council A present Legco member, Mr. A. (X
Oginga-Odinga, from the same Luo tribe, says that "he was
the one man in the Kenya African Union that was prepared
to criticize Jomo Kenyatta whenever he went wrong/'

As the Mau Mau threat increased, Fanuel Odede had an
almost touching belief in the principles of British justice
and law.

"Most people in this council," said Odede in Legco in
September 1952, "think that we oppose these bills [emer-
gency regulations] because we want to oppose them. It is
not so. We oppose them because we see that they will not
remove the cause of crime."

A European member speaking in the same debate said
later: "The Honorable Odede has opposed the bill and I
can quite understand his reasons. One of the main ones, I
presume, is that innocent people may be persecuted under
the bill. It is a matter that is possible but, I think, very un-
likely."

Less than six months later Fanuel Odede was arrested in
the early hours of the morning. The witnesses that informed
on him were exempted from giving evidence under the bill
that he had opposed so stronglyl

"As a result of information which has been received from
absolutely trustworthy and reliable sources ... it has un-
fortunately been found necessary to make a detention order
against him." Thus wrote the governor, Sir Evelyn Baring.

TOM MBOYA

One city councilor was so disturbed by Odede's arrest
that he went straight to the governor about the matter. He
was Councilor Ofafa, a man resolutely opposed to Mau
Mau and later murdered by them himself. Following his
interview he wrote to an old friend in Nyanza ? who knew
Odede well:

"I asked the governor whether or not it was his intention
to put Mr. Odede on public trial To this he said that he
was not likely to detain Mr. Odede indefinitely, but that
the matter depended wholly on witnesses. If the witnesses
agreed to come forward and give evidence in open court,
then he would soon bring Mr, Odede to public trial. If
witnesses refused to do so then he would have to wait a
little longer/'

This letter was sent a few weeks after Odede's arrest. He
was restricted for more than seven years and was only re-
leased in November 1960.

The thing that had antagonized the Kenya Europeans
most against Odede was the occasion that he had honored
Mr. Dennis N. Pritt. After the Kenyatta trial the British
Queen's Counsel had been invited to a ceremony in the
Desai Memorial Hall, a place with a long tradition in African
politics. There he had been enrobed in a monkey skin and
presented with an elder's stool and fly whisk.

But the most common theory about the reason for Odede's
arrest concerns an apparently harmless conversation he once
had at a cocktail party with Nairobi lawyer Peter Evans. He
was said to have told Evans that Luo tribesmen should not
replace Kikuyu labor which was being expelled from Euro-
pean farms; they should not blackleg their brothers.

This conversation, distorted by an unknown police in-
former, probably became a speech in favor of Mau Mau and
against the whites and Odede was arrested.

At the time of his arrest he was holding the original post

Young Man of New Africa

of Jomo Kenyatta in the Kenya African Union. He was its
acting president. Even after Kenyatta's trial had ended on
April 8, 1953, the party had not been banned. Colonial
Secretary Oliver Lyttelton said that KAU, "the most power-
ful African political organization in the country/' was not
being proscribed. Its leader had been arrested as an individ-
ual concerned with Mau Mau terrorism. He happened to be
leader of the Kenya African Union.

Tom Mboya, meanwhile, was taking to his Job as a sani-
tary inspector with what his training instructor, Mr. Carter,
described as "exceptional enthusiasm."

After he left the Medical Training School he sent a letter
to Carter:

"I find I can now convert my theoretical knowledge into
practice. Oh!! It is wonderfully interesting. I must repeat
again that experience is of vital importance in every way of
life."

Despite his enthusiasm, his immediate boss in the Nairobi
City Council found him "a very average worker, not excep-
tional in any way/'

But he continued to write to the kindly Mr. Carter. On
one occasion he showed that even a police-hater like himself
could have reason to wish the force was slightly more ef-
ficient at its duties:

I shall always be glad to here [sic.] from you about the school,
and will be willing to pay a visit at any convenient time, to
the school which as you know may act as a psychological
stimulant to the students to work hard.

The saddest news is, that yesterday burglers broke in my
house and stole away everything leaving only an empty bed
for me

Best compliments to all.
Yours most respectfully,
T. J. Mboya.

TOM MBOYA

Outside his job he was becoming increasingly absorbed
in the small Local Government Workers Trades Union
formed by many of the employees of Nairobi City Council
The union leaders were neither particularly keen nor talented
and the field was wide open for a young man like Mboya
who had determined to make a success of trades unionism.
After a very short time with the union he was universally
accepted as its new general secretary. He then turned to the
task of building union membership.

As time went on the Nairobi City Council officials be-
came more and more dissatisfied with him. "I told him he
was not doing his job/' said his boss ? the Medical Officer of
Health, "He was sitting up there in Alvi House when he
should have been doing department work/'

But the council officials maintain that it was not really
his trades union activities that they objected to. They feared
that his political interests were going to get him involved in
Mau Mau. Finally he was warned and just as his employers
were about to sack him he handed in his notice of resigna-
tion. He spared himself from official dismissal by a few
hours.

It was something that had to occur sooner or later. His
political feelings were gradually taking shape and he was
continually discussing ways and means of furthering his
ambitions in political and trades union fields with his friends.

After he had resigned from his job he became a full-time
general secretary of his 450 strong Kenya Local Government
Workers union. Eight months of hard work led to his proud
announcement at the union's annual conference in 1954
that his organization had the best bank balance of all African
unions existing at the time, and 1321 paid-up members.

That he could show any properly kept accounts at all
is something of an achievement. Union accounts in general
were very badly kept. Officials were paid low and irregular
salaries. Union members formed a small percentage of the

Young Man of New Africa

total labor force and cases of union officers escaping with
the funds, scarcely made a news item in the local press.

Before 1952 the Kenya unions had been organized by
Makhan Singh and others on the "general union" basis.
This was a large and centralized body with union funds
collected and kept by the central council. It undoubtedly
derived some inspiration from internationally organized Com-
munist bodies like the World Federation of Trades Unions.
Under Makhan Singh and Kenyatta's associate, Fred Kubai,
there was continual talk of bringing all the unions out to-
gether in a general strike, to disrupt industry for political
purposes. The unions of the time could be compared more
closely to the unions of Chartist England, a century before,
than they could to their modern counterparts in the Britain
or United States of today.

A visit to one of the more important trades union offices
in Nairobi would mean a long walk into the narrow back
streets, past the Asian bazaars in River Road, to the crowded
buildings sprawling behind. The walls of the passages are
stained with dirty handprints and spittle lies in the dust on
the floor. If the office is open at all, its only occupants are a
group of unemployed workers sitting ragged and dirty on a
wooden bench, and smelling of stale sweat. Their feet are
bare, or shod in sandals made of old motorcar tires, showing
cracked and dry toes.

A harassed clerk, dressed in a white shirt and tie that is
faded and stained despite its careful knot, sits tapping with
a finger or two at a typewriter that is as old as the Kenya
colony itself.

There are a couple of chairs, a desk, and a few files
stacked on the floor. The telephone is shared with another
union down the passage. The union secretary is generally
out driving to some far-off plantation to attend to some
minor dispute, or collecting union dues, or probably walking
to bank some money or to post his own letters.

TOM MBOYA

The clerk tells you he is out. No, he has no Idea where he
has gone. No, he did not say when he would return. He
might be at another union down the road.

"Better come back in the afternoon/'

"Could you tell him I will be in at three o'clock?"

"Oh yes, I am sure it will be all right"

The old men don't understand a word of English that the
clerk has learned at secondary school. They stare vacantly
in front of them, brooding without purpose, as they wait for
their chance to be dealt with.

A return journey is made at three o'clock,

"He was here just now, but he has gone out. I am sure he
will be back soon/'

The old men are still there waiting endlessly. You wait
hopefully for a quarter of an hour too.

"How long ago was it that he went out?"

"About lunchtime."

"Did you tell him I was coming?'*

"Oh, yes. He will be so happy to meet you. It is funny
that he is not coming . . . Maybe you had better come
back tomorrow/ 3 "

It was the same story in dozens of African unions at the
time. Mboya's own was run on stricter lines but it was
similar.

The late Shaikh M. Firoze, a Moslem, ran a building and
engineering business in Reata Road, and his son Bashir re-
members the poky little office in which Mboya worked with
nothing in the room but a table and chair.

Whenever he wanted to use the phone, Tom would come
into his office and ask patiently for permission. After he
had made his call he would put his hand into his pocket to
try to find thirty cents, but Shaikh Firoze who was a scrupu-
lously religious man would consider it his duty to let the
poor young African off. Mboya would meekly speak his
thanks and sink back into his chair to discuss his plans and

Young Man of New Africa

ambitions. He was already thinking that he would have a
part In shaping the future of Kenya and his talents were
readily apparent to the liberal-minded Asian businessman.

On the arrest of Fanuel Odede, Mboya was presented
with another political opportunity. The Kenya Legislative
Council member W. W. W. Awori, from the Abalhuya tribe,
took the acting presidency of the KAU (Jomo Kenyatta's
old political party). He began to look around for other
officers for the party who were not afraid of constant vigi-
lance by the police.

Besides Kenyatta and Odede most other key men had
been arrested and detained and the government had indicated
that it was seriously considering the total suppression of KAU.
When Mboya was invited by Awori to take on the treasurer-
ship, he accepted without hesitation.

From that time onward Mboya assumed the practical
functions of the party treasurer, but there is some disagree-
ment as to whether or not his appointment was actually
confirmed by Kenyatta.

Awori states that Kenyatta used to be consulted about all
important matters of KAU policy in his desert prison.
Messages would be conveyed to and from the camp by
friendly warders. When Kenyatta heard that Tom Mboya's
name had been put up for the post of acting treasurer,
Awori says he declined to confirm it because he thought
Mboya "far too young" for a post of such responsibility and
because he did not know him.

But Mboya maintains that he himself tried to contact
Kenyatta while he was detained at Lokitaung on several oc-
casions and that he found it was quite impossible to do so.
He thinks that it would have been impossible for Awori to
get a message to Kenyatta about KAU appointments.

Whatever the technical truth on this point, Mboya did
become an acting treasurer in KAU ? and a good one too,

Chapter

MR. GENERAL SECRETARY AND
DRESSED FOR THE PART

It took courage on the part of Mboya to become an officer
in KAU. He had already lost a job with a salary which was
the envy of most of his African friends, but when he decided
to work among the leaders of KAU there was even more
than a salary at stake; he was running the risk of sudden
arrest and detention,

A less-determined person might easily have waited to
make his political debut at a later and more stable time in
Kenya's political history,

But Mboya has never lacked courage in his opposition to
the government. He has seldom delayed a course of action
which he knows will be met with official disapproval. The
opportunity in KAU, though risky, would inevitably benefit
his political career, and Mboya had strong personal ambi-
tion. He was naturally keen on personal success and he must
have felt that he could do the job as well as any other man.

'Young Man of New Africa

The deliberate act of stepping Into KAU brought him quick
prestige and popularity. But he realized, even as he did it,
that he would have little scope for any practical political
success. The Kenya government was in a mood of repres-
sion. In practical terms he was doing little more than mak-
ing a gesture of defiance, and this was not entirely satisfac-
tory to a man who judges himself and others by the results
they achieve. He saw that a much more positive future lay
In his parallel enthusiasm for trades unionism.

Every member of KAU was closely watched by the police.
Mboya remembers that he was trailed by Special Branch
detectives from place to place and that his house was peri-
odically searched. One day his brief case, crammed with
letters and trades union documents, suddenly disappeared.
Shortly afterward Mrs. Barbara Castle, the Labour M.P.,
told him that she had found out that the police had taken
it to see if they could find any incriminating documents.

A respectable African civil servant tells the story of the
time a man was shot as he stood next to Mboya In his
trades union office.

'There was a meeting going on in the office and the door
was locked to stop outsiders casually dropping in. Suddenly
there was a hammering, and before anyone could do any-
thing, two shots were fired straight through the cardboard
walls. A Kikuyu standing next to Tom was shot in the leg.
They must have thought an oathing ceremony was going on
or something, and in those days they didn't need to have a
search warrant. They could just bash open any door when-
ever they wanted. Why they shot like that I don't know.
That's just the way it was in those days/'

The man who was shot was Jonathan Njenga. Later on
he was compensated by government.

The shooting brought home to Mboya in very real terms
what he described as ''the arbitrary manner in which power

TOM MBOYA

was being used." It did not surprise or shock him unduly as
a person, for this type of event was a common occurrence
during the emergency. Though he is not a man of dramatic
action himself, he is also surprisingly unaffected in danger-
ous physical situations. He was in his early twenties when
the shooting incident took place, yet it had less effect on
him emotionally than on his political thinking. "It con-
firmed allegations I had already made against the security
forces/' he says, "and the serious danger that Africans must
have experienced at their hands/'

"But what effect did it have on you personally?" one asks,
and his round face is almost vacant, as if he could not quite
understand what was being asked. He shrugs his shoulders.
If he feels any emotion it is immediately disciplined and he
gives a reasonable answer, a hard-headed businessman's an-
swer, only about politics.

Despite the vigilance of the authorities, not a shred of
evidence was found against Mboya during the emergency.
He must have kept a tight rein on his tongue especially
after the arrest of Odede. "Mboya was far too clever to have
anything to do with Mau Mau," said one of his European
employers. "He knew there was no future in it right from
the start." Another European explanation was that he re-
mained aloof "because the Luos hated the Kikuyus."

Even his most extreme critics have never accused him of
being implicated. The truth is that he is not a man of
violence by nature. It was true that he thought Mau Mau
had come about because Africans had not been able to ad-
vance themselves constitutionally, but it was equally obvious
that he could do no good personally by turning to violence.
The violent men would undoubtedly stir the consciences
of the colonial administrators in the long run, for the
British will always make concessions when really hard
pressed, but this was no reason for personal involvement in

Young Man of New Africa

Mao Mao. Mboya wanted to remain active in the political
arena when the troubles had passed and when constitutional
pressure was once more effective.

After the conviction of Kenyatta 7 there is some evidence
that KAU was gradually being infiltrated by some Mau Mau
sympathizers. Tom Mboya's opinion is that there may have
been a small group of petty officials on the branch secretary
level who were possibly involved. They were probably Ki-
kuyu ? and very likely to have been men who were masquerad-
ing as KAU members.

Mboya was selected as acting treasurer of KAU because
he was one of the few people considered capable of looking
after party funds. It was known that the party might be
banned at any time, and when this happened all the funds
would be seized by the police.

Instead of trying to hide the money the officials' solution
was to carry it around in a huge African-made wickerwork
clothesbasket which was painfully moved from one location
house to another. Tom Mboya followed It around wherever
it went At night he would sleep by it like a faithful watch-
dog, guarding his treasure against all coiners. He continued
to work as acting treasurer of KAU until the party was
finally banned on June 8 ? 1953.

The official reason for banning KAU was given by Oliver
Lyttelton in the House of Commons. He said that it had
been discovered in the course of the Kenyatta trial that
KAU was a cover organization for Mau Mau.

This was an odd explanation because Kenyatta had been
convicted over two months before and it would have to be
assumed that the governor, in consultation with the Colonial
Secretary, had taken over nine weeks to find out what had
happened in the trial. What seems much more probable, is
that more evidence about Mau Mau infiltration into KAU
had come in after Kenyatta's arrest, and that the Kenya
government was yielding to settler pressure to have it banned.

TOM MBOYA

The Colonial Secretary also told the House of Commons
that two notorious gangster leaders in the forest Dedan
Kimathi and Stanley Mathenge had once belonged to
KAU. What he chose to forget was that they had been
KAU members several years before, and that they had since
lived in the forest. They led their gangs in the forests like
wild animals, sleeping in ditches, feeding by making raids
on Kikuyu settlements and fighting the security forces with
homemade weapons. When their European clothes wore out
they dressed in skins and their long hair was greased and
twisted in the characteristic corkscrew curls of the Mau Mau
gangster. As the terrorists were systematically defeated, their
cunning and knowledge of the forest increased. When they
lighted a fire and did not want the smoke to give their posi-
tion away, they constructed a pipe of bamboo poles running
a long way through the ground and emerging far from the
spot where their food was cooked.

These men of the forest had no connection with KAU
headquarters in Nairobi whatsoever, but the settler press
reacted differently.

"At long last the government has proscribed KAU, n wrote
the Kenya Weekly News. "The official statement on the mat-
ter increases wonder that a union which has always been
predominantly Kikuyu and rotten, treacherous and subver-
sive to the core was not proscribed long ago . . . How
wretchedly foolish are now seen to be those who consorted
with KAU and lauded to the sky its policies and leaders/ 9
This kind of view expressed in equally emotive language is
also presented in F, D. Corfield's report on Mau Mau, Kenya
Sessional Paper 1959-60, No. 5.

The official government statement was again different:
"There are no doubt members of KAU who have no con-
nection with the violent movement. But action has to be
taken because there is ample evidence to show KAU has

Young Man of New Africa

often been used as a cover organization for the Mau Mau
terrorists."

All African political associations were banned forthwith,
and the ruling was kept in force until June 1955 when the
parties were allowed to organize once again on a district
basis, but the ban on national parties like KAU was main-
tained until mid-i96o.

The banning of KAU meant the end of any constitutional
opposition to the government and Tom Mboya realized that
there was little more that he could do in the political field.
Any other form of political organization was foredoomed
to frustration and the dangers of arrest were growing, "but
he saw the possibility of fighting for his people through the
labor movement. The Kenya Federation of Registered
Trades Unions (KFRTU) to which his union belonged was
the only organized body that the Africans could turn to y
and they soon began to use it to rectify innumerable griev-
ances. Complaints went far beyond the normal scope of
trades unions and people fiocked to the KFRTU to air
grievances about passes, collective punishment^ and forcible
eviction from the slums.

The Kenya trades union world was open to Mboya. There
was no one else in the country with his talents and abilities
in the field. Even the Kenya government was secretly pleased
to find somebody who could organize unions in a responsible
way on an industrial basis.

In the opinion of a top European civil servant in Kenya's
Labour Department: "No other African trades union leader
had grasped the technique of formal negotiation and could
understand the conventional approaches of industrial rela-
tions. Mboya was a man of caliber who knew the rules of the
game and the right moment when he could break them. n

Mboya kept his Local Government Workers union very
busy. While he was still a sanitary inspector he took up the
men's grievances and showed efficiency in handling them.

TOM MBOYA

"He used to spend half the day complaining to the
management down their own telephones/' says a friend.
When he gave up his job he organized his union in Kundi
building which stood in the back streets of the Asian quarter.
In eight months the membership increased from 450 people
to 1321.

The local government workers were organized in what
they called the "intellectuals union/' but Mboya had a
straight appeal to the ordinary worker as well There was a
big crowd of sweepers, cleaners, and other unskilled workers
outside his office every day. He would speak to the ordinary
worker in broken words of an African vernacular or in Swahili
or even in a series of smiles and grunted sounds signifying
nothing except a favorable disposition. He rapidly established
a strong sympathy between himself and the common man
that he has maintained ever since.

The progress of Mboya was watched with interest by the
government industrial relations officer, Mr. James Patrick,
who had a sincerely liberal approach to the young trades
unionist. He lent him books and pamphlets and invited
him to play a full part in trades union courses. On one
course in 1954 he was given a few words of friendly advice,
though he had acquitted himself well on the whole. Patrick
told him not to be too cocksure about his own knowledge
and ability.

Toward the end of 1953 the individual unions wanted to
come together in a federation. To get round government
suspicions of Makhan Singh-type unions organized on a gen-
eral basis, the individual unions first obtained separate regis-
tration and then, when they were all registered, came to-
gether in a federation. As they were a genuinely industrial
union their stratagem passed muster and the body was al-
lowed to exist as the Kenya Federation of Registered Trades
Unions (KFRTU) which later became the Kenya Federa-
tion of Labour (KFL), throughout the emergency.

Young Man of New Africa

The secretary and founder member of the organization
was Aggrey Minya y an emotional and friendly old boy who
found the complex business of a modern trades union fed-
eration rather too much for him.

"Old Aggrey was full of sentiments. Why he would weep
whenever he saw a worker in difficulties/' said a unionist at
the time. Under him the federation's organization depended
on a huge bag in which he carried the entire union corre-
spondence around with him. There were no permanent union
offices.

Aggrey's great day came when he was delegated to go as
the federation's representative to an International Confedera-
tion of Free Trades Unions 1 conference at Stockholm in
1953.

"He came along to the Labour Department/' said an
African officer, "and we took one look at him and saw that
we would have to do something. We just had to clothe him;
so Mr. Patrick lent him a suit and tie and I gave him a coat
and one or two other officers helped and by the time we had
finished, 1 think we had really dressed him for the occasion."
The idea of Aggrey Minya in baggy old trousers and a
grubby shirt at an international conference even a trades
union conference had made the Labour Department officials
sacrifice all formalities.

Off went Aggrey and hobnobbed with the world's trades
unionists, becoming a world figure overnight.

When he returned to Kenya he was flushed with success.
The glory of it all had gone to his head and he did foolish
things. He refused to disclose the contents of some of his
more careless speeches either to the Labour Department or

*The International Confederation of Free Trades Unions (ICFTU) is the
largest co-ordinating body of trades unions in the non-Communist world. The
American AFL-CIO are members as is the British TUC; the Kenya KFL is
also affiliated to it. Most of the financial strength of the ICFTU comes from
American trades unions, hence the feeling in Africa that it is American
dominated.

TOM MBOYA

to the trades union council. James Patrick was upset be-
cause Minya had broadened a general attack on the govern-
ment into a personal attack on him, and the "intellectuals"
in Mboya's KLGWU were disappointed and unsatisfied with
his general conduct.

Tom Mboya says that he had nothing to do with Minya's
downfall Disciplinary action against Minya was already on
the federation's council agenda before Mboya's union had
joined the federation. The first council meeting that Mboya
was able to attend was the one in which Minya was chal-
lenged. He arrived at the meeting to find other members
already attacking him on a series of charges. Minya was ac-
cused of denying the council information about his tour
abroad and of receiving funds without accounting for them.

He stumped out of the meeting and cabled the ICFTU
saying the council had been misled by its members. Mboya
was given his chance when he was asked to act as temporary
secretary for the day, and when Minya refused to attend
further meetings, he continued the job. A few weeks later
he was elected temporary secretary of the federation,

This sequence of events shows that Minya was already on
the way out before Mboya was even entitled to sit on the
general council. Mboya's critics have claim,ed that he de-
liberately engineered Minya's suspension, but he claims that
he had no ambition to become secretary of the federation
at the time the idea had not even occurred to him.

It would be uncharitable to state that Mboya was re-
sponsible for Minya's downfall and this theory is not sup-
ported by the facts. But Minya had shown himself incapable
of running the federation effectively, and had allowed a
solitary international conference to go to his head. It must
have been obvious to Mboya that he could do the job much
better than the other man, and he undoubtedly had every
incentive to oust him. Mboya was supremely confident in his
own abilities, but this is not sufficient reason to allow the con-

Young Man of New Africa

elusion that Mboya forced the old man out of the way to suit
his personal ambitions.

There were other bodies and individuals that were keen
to see Minya out of the way, including the Nairobi repre-
sentative of the ICFTU and even the Kenya Labour De-
partment.

The Labour Department can scarcely be blamed for com-
paring Aggrey, the salt of the African earth, who had to be
dressed for conferences, with the smooth and polished
Mboya, carefully dressed in his tailored suits, Mboya was a
part of the modern world, Aggrey was just stepping out of
the old.

Tom Mboya was elected the new general secretary of the
federation on September 12, 1953. In his ris,e to the top
other men had to be forced out of the way, even if he had
no intention of hurting them personally. Aggrey Minya be-
came his first real enemy.

Once in the saddle, Mboya had big plans for the union.
Working closely with the ICFTU he organized courses and
lecture tours throughout Kenya. He started to redraft the
whole of the federation's constitution and to force unions
to pay their affiliation fees for the first time. But many
unions were still faithful to their old leader. Mboya's re-
forming zeal suffered its first setback when five of the eight
unions broke off their affiliation to the federation. Aggrey
had persuaded the unions who supported him not to pay
their affiliation fees. He began to send official letters from
his office signed with a defiant flourish ''the leader of five
unions! 9

But this did not upset Mboya. He was determined to put
the federation on a businesslike basis even if enemies were
made in the process. He gave an early hint of his ruthless
determination to carry through a policy which he thought
necessary. No single person has ever been important enough
to him to delay or stop a policy which he could see would

TOM MBOYA

be good for the federation In the long run. And he has
always had complete confidence in his own judgment.

By the end of the year three of the dissenting unions had
reaffiliated and early in 1955 two other major unions fol-
lowed suit. The Labour Department gave a clear indication
of its own position in its annual report: "The split in the
federation is not expected to be permanent and may well
have a salutary effect on its internal administration/*

The peak of Mboya's early trades union achievements
came with the Mombasa dock strike of 195 5. 2 After the
strike the Labour Department congratulated him in handling
the biggest industrial dispute since the beginning of the
emergency. The European officials were particularly im-
pressed with the way he located the unofficial strike leaders
and for formulating their grievances as common-sense de-
mands. After the docks had returned to normal, he negoti-
ated the final settlement and a 33 per cent pay increase for
the men. In the weeks that followed he went even further
by drawing up the constitution for the working of the Joint
Industrial CounciL This body allows men and management
to thrash out their differences without reverting to strike
action and has insured relative stability in the Kenya docks.

Not so dramatic, but equally important to the trade
union movement, was the part played by Mboya in the
dispute between his own Local Government Workers and
the Nairobi City Council.

It was a time when unions everywhere were fighting hard
for recognition by the employers. The Kenya government
policy was to encourage the sound growth of trades unions
(and Mboya unreservedly congratulated the government for
this) but many employer groups opposed them vigorously.

The Nairobi City Council, under the mayorship of Mr.
R. S. Alexander who later became one of Mboya's most

2 The Mombasa dock strike is fully described in Chapter i.

Above, Jomo Kenyatta and his associates at the time of their trial in December 1952 for
managing Mau Mau. This picture was taken at Kapenguria a remote district some 300
miles north of Nairobi. Left to right, Achieng Oneko, Bildad Kaggia, Jomo Kenyatta, Paul
Ngei, Kungu Karumba, Fred Kubai. (PRIYA RAMRAKHA)

[1]

Below Left, Dr. G. Kiano talks in -his home to a student who had been collecting money
to go to the U.S. Kiano was one of Mboya's closest political colleagues when he first entered
legislative council early in 1958. At present the two men are both in the Kenya African
National Union.

Below Right, Tom Mboya addressing a strike meeting at Nairobi. No man has played a
greater part in building up Kenya's trade union movement. Mboya has established himself
as a brilliant union negotiator. (PETER LARSEN)

Tom Mboya always the brilliant orator talks to a packed audience in
Makadara Hall the venue for all Nairobi political meetings during the
Kenya Emergency.

[2]-

Above, Omolo Agar was the edi-
tor of the People's Convention
Party broadsheet. He was ar-
rested, tried and convicted in
March 1959 at a time when the
Kenya government was getting
tough with the PCE

[3]

Left, Jomo Kenyatta's first ap-
pearance in public after his arrest
for managing Mau Mau in Oc-
tober 1952, was at the trial of
Rawson Macharia. Macharia
claimed that he had given false
evidence against Jomo Kenyatta.
He recanted and was himself
charged for perjury. Kenyatta was
called as a witness.

[4]

Tom Mboya together with stu-
dents at Nairobi airport at the
time of the 1959 students air-lift.
It was largely due to Mboya's ef-
forts that 81 Kenya students left
by chartered airplane for univer-
sities in the U.S.

When Mboya joined the
Peoples Convention Party
in 1957 it was a small or-
ganization confined to the
Nairobi district. He built it
into the strongest political
party in the country. Here
he is seen at work in the
party offices at Alvi House,
Victoria Street.

Scenes of great rejoicing at
Nairobi airport in Febru-
ary 1960 when the African
members returned from
the Macleod constitutional
talks in London. For the
first time Africans had been
promised a majority in the
Kenya legislature. Hence
the great jubilation when
the African leaders returned
home.

Young Man of New Africa

persistent political opponents was rigidly opposed to recog-
nizing the KLGW Union. For nearly two years there had
been no negotiation between the council and its employees
at all, and when the union declared a wage dispute there
was no machinery to settle it.

The employers remained adamant, and the Kenya govern-
ment set up a commission of inquiry,

Again Mboya took the part of a lawyer, putting his men's
case to the commission in 38 single-line typed pages of
foolscap. Even his opponents admired the clarity of his ex-
position. A Labour Department official who attended as an
observer said, "The whole way through he was absolutely
brilliant, just like a trained lawyer/' Judge R. Windham, the
chairman of the board of inquiry, echoed these praises in
his final report

The employers used all the well-worn anti-union argu-
ments of history. Their chief objection was that the union
would be used for political ends; anyhow it was not rep-
resentative of the men; it would become a closed shop;
once negotiations started with one union others would de-
mand the right to negotiate too, and outsiders would be
called in to do the unions* negotiations for them.

Mboya made circles round these arguments one by one
and the ponderous report of the board of inquiry backed
him on every important issue:

"Our inquiries have impressed us with the responsible
and patient attitude adopted by the Nairobi branch of the
Kenya local Government Workers Union over the question
of its recognition since it was founded, with the efficiency
of its organization (including the keeping of books) and
with the reasonable and co-operative manner in which it
presented its case to us."

The commission had no hesitation in recommending that
the union should be recognized forthwith, and the Nairobi

TOM MBOYA

City Council reluctantly complied. How bitterly it regretted
ever engaging Mboya on its staff.

When I rang up the City Council Medical Officer of
Health for an interview for this book, his very first words
were:

"How do you make ink stink?"

Chapter 1
OXFORD DAYS

"You must improve your English/*

This was the most common remark on Mboya's examina-
tion papers in 1950 when training to be an inspector, yet in
1955 learned judges were congratulating him on the brilliant
handling of his trades union cases. The "very average'* sani-
tary inspector of 1951 had risen high in Kenya's political
world and had become the country's number-one trades un-
ionist. The boy who was never among the top pupils in his
class had suddenly become a "man of caliber who knows the
conventions of industrial relations/'

He had matured late, but fast. His abilities gave him the
chance to get to the top. His character showed signs of
restrained ruthlessness and a lack of respect for the people
that surrounded him. He also showed that the bigger the
challenge in life the more he was able to bring out of him-
self to meet it.

A girl friend described him as "completely insensitive to
the feelings of others." One of his loyal party workers said

TOM MBOYA

he could be "particularly hard on those who were his allies
and worked directly under him/' As his career progressed
his enemies' criticisms were stronger still,

Had he been a religious person, he would have been
something of a saint, not because he is an inherently "good y?
person, but because of his complete dedication. People are
not as important to him as the political goals or ambitions
he believes in. He has little time for anything else save the
cause he has espoused. His time away from politics is care-
fully rationed. He watches his private life carefully to see
that it does not interfere with his ultimate purpose. He
enjoys the company of women, he loves dancing and a
glass of beer, but If necessary he will switch abruptly to his
political self, back to the dedicated wave length.

When overworked and preoccupied he presents a silent
and impenetrable exterior. He seems to be continually
thinking and scheming and withdrawn from human con-
tact., then suddenly he remembers the person that he is with,
A joke or a phrase breaks through the mask of reserve and a
smile flushes his face in an Instant. He laughs and relaxes
and the people around rejoice in the sunshine.

His problem is that he sees the issues and principles
he is fighting for with clarity, and he Is irritated by the
incompetence and Inefficiency of people who get in his
way. "To compromise a principle, even in a small measure,
is to abdicate that principle." He once said, "We must decide
whether to stand on our principles or to abdicate/' Principles,
for Mboya, come before people. He Is a young man in a
hurry and personalities are often irksome. In the case of
trades unions his desire was to see them grow quickly in
strength and organization, and not to be delayed by personal
details on the way.

The clash of his personality, with other leaders, continued
to haunt Nairobi's trades union world,

100

Young Man of New Africa

For many years Aggrey Minya tried to maintain the
myth that he was general secretary of the federation and
to keep a number of other unions faithful to him. By 1955
there was another challenger to Mboya's supremacy. It was
Arthur Ochwada, a tall, handsome intellectual of similar
type to Mboya himself; a self-made man speaking slow "but
correct English, and dressed in the style of the African
trades union elite, in carefully tailored suits.

By the middle of 1959 Ochwada had finally broken with
Mboya and the trades union federation after a long series
of quarrels. Today he looks back with intense bitterness
over the years of his association with him. He has attacked
him publicly in long and damaging public statements that
have been published in the Kenya press.

Ochwada is one of those persons who thinks Mboya
ousted Aggrey Minya from his position as general secretary
and he claims that his own personal quarrel with Mboya
goes right back to 1955. He says that he had the backing
of most of the unions at their 1955 annual conference, and
that he could have displaced Mboya from the secretaryship
of the Kenya Federation of Labour.

"But," he says, "when the ICFTU man asked me to
stand down in Tom's favor, I did so. He was older and more
experienced than me and I felt that if I ran too fast in the
early days I would break my neck/ 7

Mboya claims that this account must be a figment of
Ochwada's imagination. He says there was no election for
the secretaryship of the KFL in 1955, thus Ochwada could
not have been a candidate. "It is also strange," he says,
"that Arthur should talk about rivalry in 1955. I was a
very close personal friend of his until 1957 when certain prob-
lems came to the fore."

Mboya looks back with sadness at the early days when he
worked side by side with Ochwada in Kenya's trades union
movement. His colleague was outstandingly capable and,

101

TOM MBOYA

as Mboya became more and more occupied with politics ?
he could have played a major role In the KFL, but this
was not to be.

His quarrel with Ochwada has moved Mboya more than
any other rivalry from public men. When he talks of it, his
voice sounds as if he is smarting from righteous indig-
nation as he thinks of the scathing and detailed attacks by
his old friend and colleague. Ochwada has been answered
formally on most of his points by the trades unionists who
support Mboya, but the bitterness between the two men
remains. When Mboya tells his story his usual hard phleg-
matism vanishes and his voice comes halting with emotion.
He is on the verge of tears. He is either entirely justified
and really hurt by his ex-colleague's attacks or he has con-
vinced himself that he is right and that Ochwada has been
maneuvering to bring about his fall.

One of Ochwada's early complaints about Mboya was
that he did not trust him. He claims that Mboya went
away for a conference after giving strict instruction to an
office clerk not to allow him to look at federation files,

"When he came back and finally gave me the key, one
or two of the more confidential files were missing. I asked
Tom about them and he said he did not know where
they were/"

He also says that the treasurer of the federation resigned
saying that he had not seen the account books since he
was elected and that he was not going to remain at his post
unless he could do his job properly.

The seeds of trouble were already growing between the
two men when Mboya left in September 1955 for Ruskin
College, Oxford. Ochwada complains that he was "very sur-
prised" when it came to light in the Kenya legislative council
that Mboya had been given 150 ($420) by the Kenya gov-
ernment toward a scholarship. To Ochwada this unusual gift
to a trades unionist by a colonial government implied an

102

Young Man of New Africa

"arrangement" between them. The remainder of the money
Mboya needed for his scholarship came from the Workers
Travel Association. There are letters in the Kenya Fed-
eration of Labour files that show the Kenya government
and the British TUG had sponsored other trades union
scholarships long before Mboya was granted one in 1955.

Ochwada's main criticisms against Mboya have been an-
swered by two General Council meetings of the KFL. "On
January 18, 1959, the General Council sat down for two
days listening to the complaints of the Ochwada group,"
says Mboya. "They put a resolution saying that Ochwada
and some others should be dismissed and I actually inter-
vened to amend the resolution. Since Ochwada had just
been to the U.S.A. and we had spent a great deal of money
training him for a year, I thought he should be warned
and not discharged/'

Late in 1959 Ochwada brought the same charges all over
again and the General Council unanimously resolved that
he should be discharged. Most of the members of the
council would doubtless have seen that it was in their own
interest to side with Mboya, but it is very unlikely that
he could have intimidated them all into supporting him.
Most of the members felt that if it had to come to a
showdown between the trades union giants, Mboya was the
best man to support.

Most of Ochwada's grievances were probably unjustified
and Mboya had been forced to clear his name, but at the
same time Mboya showed that he was a difficult man
to work with and certainly not the type of person who can
handle an ambitious rival tactfully and yet firmly.

While he carried through his reforms in the Kenya Fed-
eration of Labour, Mboya had not remained the whole time
in Kenya. He had taken every opportunity to travel, widen
his contacts, and push his name forward to the wider au-
dience of the world.

103

TOM MBOYA

In September 1954 he visited the International Labour
Organization the United Nations body which tries to get
a fair deal for the workers throughout the world in Geneva.
He visited the ICFTU headquarters in Brussels and the
British Trades Union Congress (TUG) the co-ordinating
body of all British trade unions In London.

I once asked him if he ever got lost when he first arrived
in the big cities of Europe. "I always went by under-
ground trains," he said with a twinkle in his eyes. "It was
the only way I could keep a sense of direction. Up above
everything was confusion." He was a young man of twenty-
four, strong and energetic, standing in the underground in
an impeccable suit with a brief case under his arm. He was
watching the swirl of Europe's big cities, concentrating
on the task he had set himself and reaching eagerly for the
new and complex world which was unfolding around him.

One of his main tasks in London was to present a mem-
orandum at the Colonial Office on the Kenya emergency
and on the way the trades union movement was being re-
stricted. He also protested about the incident when the
police shot a man in his office.

In November 1954, he and his friend Jim Bury attended
the ICFTU International Seminar at Calcutta, India, where
they discussed workers education and the economics of un-
derdeveloped countries. After Calcutta on to Karachi, Pak-
istan, and later to Beira, Mozambique, for a conference of
the Commission for Technical Co-operation South of the
Sahara (CCTA). This body is one of the most effective
technical and scientific organizations in Africa, Its con-
ferences are attended by the eight governments which fi-
nance it and by trade unions and other technical organi-
zations. At the conferences and seminars Mboya would display
a logical mind which could distinguish between trivialities
and the essential issues at stake. When he had isolated the
important issues, his thorough command of English and

104

Young Man of New Africa

fluent method of expressing himself would always make his
arguments impressive.

As he traveled he learned a great deal Ideas, policies,
and people with similar political enthusiasms interested
him more than the changing scenery and customs about
the globe. His creed is based on fundamental human unity.
His self-appointed life's task is to establish universal de-
mocracy. If too much time is given to the picturesque
differences of peoples and places around the globe, they
might distract him from his main purpose. He used the
countries which he visited to discover and discuss the pol-
icies that should be applied to man in general, not to
search for the explanations of man's odd diversity.

Oxford University gave him a further chance to relax,
think, and catch up with his reading. As he did a year's
course at Ruskin College, specializing in industrial relations
and political institutions, he was probably more impressed
by the beauty of Oxford and by its spirit of intellectual
freedom than he is prepared to concede.

He lived for most of his year's course at the Rookery
Hostel in Headington. The old country house appealed to
him. There was nothing like it in Kenya's modem wilder-
ness. He ate most of his meals at the college and "did not
take to English food."

He was not in the university proper in the colleges
where youth lives its life of breathless energy but in the
solid, serious-minded, politically conscious "workers col-
lege/' where he mixed with trade unionists and Labour
party constituency members.

He mingled with people who had fought as hard as he
had for an opportunity for higher education and had no
time to waste. They showed him that even Europeans had
their "struggle/' They thought it worth fighting to educate
themselves and be better equipped to represent their people.
It was a world of North country accents talking about

105

TOM MBOYA

Kier Hardie and people with patches OB their jacket sleeves.
He became secretary of one of the college student bodies
and joined the Oxford University Labour and Socialist
Clubs. Oxford was a stimulating place for him. He liked the
university atmosphere and the young people with their
crazy and interesting ideas. What a change it made from
the conformity of European thought in Kenya! It was an
ideal environment. The talk, talk, talk. Boundless discus-
sions on anything that catches the fancy of youth. Con-
versation over afternoon tea when priorities and practical
issues could be forgotten. Mboya gradually formed his plan
of campaign which he would use against the Lyttelton
constitution when he returned to Kenya. He tested it "over
and over again" in discussions with friends, particularly
with a student from Trinidad called Dickie Woodham and
a girl called Audrey Wooding who was much older than he

was,

He was soon in great demand at seminars and dis-
cussions at Nuffield, the postgraduate college. He would
sit in the rooms of the postgraduate students and hold his
own against some of the best academic minds in Britain.
Miss Margery Perham, the prominent Oxford Africanist,
says she was "amazed by his logical mind" and 'Very im-
pressed by his brilliance and ease of expression."

She found him so rational and intellectually unruffleable
while he was in England, that she was amazed, on a visit
to Kenya some years later, to hear him flare up and lose
his temper over government policy. In England he was
speaking and thinking with intellectual detachment that is
characteristic of one side of his character, but in Kenya he
had totally identified himself with the emotions of his people.
However, it is seldom that his political passion shows
through the calm reasonableness of his approach.

It is significant that he should have maintained a detailed
correspondence with Miss Perham, the elderly and liberal-

106

Young Man of New Africa

minded English don, long after lie left Oxford until the
present day. Miss Perhain does not think that she has ever
had any direct influence on his politics: "I do not think
I have a scrap of influence on him but I keep on writing/'
She is probably right in her assessment for few white
people, as people, have ever had a definite effect on Mboya's
thinking. When he adopts the ideas of others, he does so,
not because they come from a particular person, but be-
cause they are good ideas.

What is striking about the correspondence between the
young African nationalist and the Oxford liberal of the old
school is that Mboya sees some value in testing his ideas
far from the parish pump of Kenya politics. He sees that
Miss Perham can take a world view of Kenya politics,
and a view that is sympathetic though critical when nec-
essary.

Another person who was keenly impressed by Mboya at
Oxford was a young white Kenyan who was studying
economics. While he was at Oxford, Michael McWilliam had
developed an increasingly liberal outlook and was very keen
to see the young African leader who had become the talk
of university political circles. He finally met him one after-
noon over tea and started a discussion on some of the general
problems facing Kenya. McWilliam until recently an assist-
ant secretary in the Kenya Treasury was no novice in the
technique of intellectual discussion but he found Mboya "had
a remarkable grasp of every topical subject concerning the
country. He slammed me down on all my points and I went
away with my tail between my legs/'

As a result of his discussions at Oxford and in response to
many requests by students, Mboya wrote a Fabian pamphlet
entitled The Kenya Question, an African Answer. He was
given particular encouragement in this project by Miss
Perham, and the pamphlet has been recognized as one of
the clearest expositions ever written of the African case.

107

TOM MBOYA

He also took the opportunity to talk at political meetings
sponsored by various societies and associations concerned
about developments in the colonies. His greatest hour came
at an Africa Bureau Conference at Livingstone Hall in
May 1956.

He spoke for longer than any other speaker but made a
great impression on the predominantly British audience.
"I thought I had been listening for a few minutes only/'
said Miss Perham, "I am usually a bad listener and prefer
to read speeches, but when I looked at my watch, I was
amazed to find he had gone on for an hour and ten minutes.
He had held my attention the whole time/*

These views were echoed by numerous people who attended
that meeting, including Sir Ernest Vasey, now an adviser to
the Tanganyika government.

It was not the originality of the speech that impressed
his audience, but his smooth delivery in English and his
calm pragmatic approach built on carefully selected facts.

He went through Kenya history quoting governors, com-
missions, reports, committees, even prominent European
politicians, welding his facts together to make a strong
African case.

He made a particular point on the highly controversial
question of the African reserves which are restricted in area.
His argument was that land was originally restricted only
to provide an adequate labor force for European farmers.
He said that Lord Delamere had given evidence to the
1912 commission complaining of a shortage in the African
labor supply and that the commission had later concluded
that the shortage of labor was due to the wealth of certain
tribes, the fertility of the reserves, and the large quantity
of stock owned. As a result the "native had no intention
of working for wages in order to live."

He then quoted a memorandum from the chief native com-

108

Young Man of New Africa

missioner to district commissioners drawing attention to the

need to insure an adequate flow of native labor from the re-
serves and adding that special legislation might be neces-
sary to meet the need.

He attacked the privileged position of the European mi-
nority.

It is true that in the last forty or fifty years, during which
the Europeans have lived in Kenya, we have gained maay ad-
vantages of education, of awareness, of the Western con-
ception of politics and so on, and we are grateful But
this cannot offset our desire to determine for ourselves our
own destiny. . , .

On the old question of land hunger, he did not argue
that land had been "taken away from the Africans'" nor that
Europeans had "more fertile land/' but that 51 percent of
the land reserved for European use was not under cultiva-
tion. "Cannot African farmers be brought to farm this
land tinder supervision if necessary, or in some form of
co-operative fanning?"

Mboya's solution to the Kenya problem was no easy
one. He wanted a series of changes in line with the general
principles of socialist democracy nothing dramatic or rev-
olutionary. Even on the constitutional issue he only asked
for Africans to have the same number of legislative council
seats as the other races.

It was a calmly persuasive speech, intended to impress
a British audience. This presented few difficulties for Tom
Mboya, for his political thinking and emotional approach
are often strangely English.

When he talks about democratic socialism he has in
mind the left-wing pragmatism of British politics applied
to an African context. Politics without passion or poetry.
It sometimes horrifies his fellow nationalists in the French
colonies to hear him ignore the fundamental principles of

109

TOM MBOYA

Cartesian logic. Mboya's skepticism of the theoretical ap-
proach of French-trained Africans is undoubtedly part of
the explanation of one of the crosscurrents in Pan African
politics the rivalry "between the English- and French-speak-
ing nationalists.

On one occasion he told an American audience that he
could be described as a "realistic socialist"

This approach is perhaps best illustrated by his approach
to labor problems. An African, C. H. Malavu, who has
seen him in a series of trades union disputes, says, "If he
doesn't know all his facts he is not frightened to say so and
to ask for time to look them up/' He does not try to decide
issues by recourse to a dogmatic creed, not even by the
creed of African nationalism, that he sees so much more
clearly than most of his contemporaries.

His emotional reaction to politics is also oddly English.
When his opponents make a new challenge, his face gives
little away. His passive features and somber eyes reveal
nothing, except that he is thinking, probably contemptu-
ously, of the idea that is put to him. He tries not to show
his reactions until he has had time to think. Compared with
many of his African political colleagues he is phlegmatic
and unexcitable. When the cartoonist David Low first met
him, he said, 'That man has discipline. He disciplines his
words as well as his manner. He will go far." 1

David Low then produced a sketch of him that was
much more like his chief political opponent, Clement
Argwings Khodeck, than Mboya!

Mboya's life at Oxford was not as socially gay as might
have been expected. He was a young man with a love of
dancing, parties, and a weakness for pretty girls. He could
have used his year's freedom from political responsibility to
turn to fun, but he worked fairly hard and traveled frequently

1 Manchester Guardian, January 1960.

Young Man of New Africa

to London and elsewhere to have discussions and attend
meetings,

He remembers being invited by the Social Democratic
party to visit Germany. He was behind with one of his
essays and took all his books with him to read on the
plane. By the time he arrived back in England all the
necessary reading had been done and his notes were ready,
He always took advantage of train journeys to catch up
with his studies.

One European girl brought him into a wider intellectual
and social world. She was attractive, full of vitality and
intelligent energy. A hard and serious worker herself, she
provided a tough mind on which he could sharpen his
thought. She was always questioning him, getting him to
clarify his thinking and to formulate his ideas with pre-
cision. Tom could not let himself be intellectually domi-
nated by a woman, so he argued back. She was very fond of
him and he was attached to her, but his political dedication
stopped the relationship going any further. Idealistically he
may have thought that the color of his wife's skin should
make no difference, but this would not be practical politics
in Africa. And Mboya is first and foremost a practical
person.

Chapter

THE WHITEWASH ELECTION

While Mboya was still in Britain there was already talk
in Nairobi of getting him to stand in the first African
elections. It was late 1956 and the political situation in
Kenya had changed a lot since the early days of the emer-
gency.

The turning point of the war against the terrorists came
with "Operation Anvil 77 on April 24, 1954, Police cordoned
off huge areas of Nairobi city and stopped the whole Nairobi
labor force on its way into town for work.

"It was the worst thing I have ever seen/' said an African
journalist. "I was stopped at the railway yard at about
8 A.M. and was made to squat down. As the other people
came in to work, they were all forced to crouch down in
ranks like me. It started to rain and I stayed there most
of the day. Anyone who could not account for himself
was separated from the others and accused of Mau Mau,
A whole train was ready at the station to take them away."

Many innocent men suffered on that day, but a large

112

Young Man of New Africa

number of the 35,000 people arrested and removed from
Nairobi were Man Man or Man Mau sympathizers. They
were sent to what the government described as "specially pre-
pared camps/' Hola was one of them.

Half the Kikuyu male population was removed from the
city in a few days and the terrorists found their main
sources of supplies had dried up.

By the end of 1955 the crime rate in Nairobi was dropping
fast, and the troops, who had already gained mastery in
the forest war, could devote their whole attention to it.
Acts of violence dropped from twenty-five a week in 1954
to seven a week in 1955 and the figure was still falling.

The administration of Kikuyu villages passed back into
the hands of the civil authorities.

Early 1956 saw African political parties able to organize
on a local basis for the first time since KAU was banned
and the government made special provision for loyalist
Kikuyus to form their own party in Central Province.

The death penalty was lifted for such offenses as having
a gun without a license, and for attending a Mau Mau
oathing ceremony,

Mau Mau had made the Kenya government look more
closely to the wishes of the African people and changes
were promised on the constitutional level.

Until 1951 there had only been one African member in
the legislative council. He was Mr. Eluid Mathu who took
his seat in 1944. By the time Mau Mau started there were
six African members but they were still nominated by
the governor and there were no African ministers.

The Lyttelton Constitution of March 1954 named after
the British Colonial Secretary, Mr. Oliver Lyttelton, offered
Africans one Ministry against three for Europeans and two
for Asians. Africans had eight seats (still nominated), Eu-
ropeans fourteen elected members, and Asians six,

113

TOM MBOYA

The first elections of Africans by Africans was scheduled
for early 1957 following an inquiry by Mr. Coutts (who
had been brought to Kenya specially for the job and later
became Chief Secretary). The African members were to
be elected on a qualified franchise and some Africans the
educated, the property owners, the old soldiers, the over
forty-fives, those with civil or military decorations could
qualify for two or three votes. Kikuyu, Embu, and Mera
could "not vote unless they could prove that they had been
loyal to the government and held "loyalty certificates/'

'"The complicated franchise was a deliberate attempt to
try to get the most moderate of all African candidates
into the legislative council and to keep out those "most apt
at arousing the emotions, and the least scrupulous about
the promises they were prepared to make." The government
proudly announced that this was the first time that a
qualified franchise together with plural voting were to be
tried in a British colony.

The election that Mr. Mboya's supporters asked him to
fight at the end of 1956 had to be fought under these
conditions.

His own firm belief in democracy, based on the wishes
of the majority of the people, clashed fundamentally with
the government's ideas of qualifications on the electoral
roll.

He was faced with the old problem encountered by all
nationalists; whether to accept the little that was offered
them by a colonial government, or whether to reject every-
thing, and boycott the constitution.

When the time came, Mboya's solution was an ingenious
compromise; but on his return from his travels he found
it was his supporters who were pushing his candidacy, long
before he had decided whether to run.

The problems that had arisen in the trades union field
were enough to keep any man fully occupied. While he

114

Young Man of New Africa

had been away in England the Kenya Federation of Labour
had committed itself to many courses he did not agree with.

In March 1956 the KFL had been called on to "show rea-
sons why its registration should not be canceled" on the
charge that its political activities had gone beyond the scope
of its constitutional objects.

KFL had indeed become a pseudo-political body. After
KAU was banned on June 8, 1958, no other political
parties or organizations had been allowed in Kenya. The
Africans therefore turned to the KFL as the only organized
body which could investigate their grievances. The federation
was called upon to devote more and more of its time to
matters that were not strictly connected with trade un-
ionism; it became a universal complaints bureau for every
ordinary African who felt himself wronged under the emer-
gency laws.

The policy of the KFL under Mboya's leadership was to
take up African grievances wherever possible, and it con-
tinued to express its political views despite the Kenya
government's opposition. The Kenya government felt that
the KFL was far too politically inclined. In some ways it
actually encouraged the KFL as an industrial trades union
body, but it feared that it might grow into a dangerous
political movement.

The KFL was on the point of being banned at the time
of a visit of top officials from the British Trades Union
Congress to Kenya. The TUG leaders approached the Kenya
government in an entirely unofficial capacity for the British
TUG has no official standing in Kenyaand persuaded the
ministers concerned that Mboya was doing a responsible job
and that the KFL should be encouraged as the most impor-
tant and well ran trades union organization in Kenya.

The Kenya government was running special courses to
train trades unionists at the time. They were held at Jeanes
school the same place where Mboya had done his training

115

TOM MBOYA

as a sanitaiy inspector just a few miles from Nairobi. As
a result of the quarrel with the government the tirades un-
ionists decided to boycott the courses,

Arthur Ochwada, who had been acting general secretary
in Mboya's absence, felt that Mboya had been ^far too
soft with the government. He took a tougher line and
decided to boycott the conferences of another body, the
Commission for Technical Co-operation South of the Sa-
hara (CCTA).

The CCTA is not a political organization. It does much
valuable work in the underdeveloped countries of Africa in
scientific and technical fields but it draws its support from
the colonial powers as well as the newly emergent African
states. It is financed by the British, French, and Belgian
governments among others,

Ochwada was delighted to have the opportunity of a
showdown with the colonial governments which backed
CCTA. But the specific reason for his boycott was to pro-
test against Britain, France, and Belgium for not allowing
an International Labour Organization regional office to be
established in Africa.

The International Labour Organization is a United Na-
tions body which tries to get all nations to safeguard
workers' rights. It is now established in Africa, but at the
time it met considerable opposition from some of the
colonial and white governments on the continent.

When Mboya returned from England and America at
the end of 1956, he felt that the federation had been
misdirected in some of its policies. He did not agree that
the trades union courses at Jeanes school should be boy-
cotted, for in doing so, the unions would be boycotting
something that was of immense value to their members.
In 1954 the KFL had won the right to organize courses
jointly with the Kenya government Labour Department and
the right to select one of their own lecturers on the course.

116

Young Man of New Africa

There was moreover a great need for trained union leaders
and there were no alternative means of training them if
they did not attend Jeanes school. Mboya felt It was wrong
to prevent them from improving themselves because of a
disagreement with the government over general policy.

He also disagreed with the decision to boycott CCTA
conferences. Ochwada had put his own interrelation on a
decision made by an earlier ICFTU conference which had
discussed the possibility of boycotting the CCTA. Mboya
claimed that Ochwada had been selling the idea of boycott
because he had not been selected as the Kenya representa-
tive at the conference.

Mboya's job was to persuade the KFL council that he
was right on these issues and he found this task was big
enough without having a political campaign on his hands
as well. But his supporters were sure that he was the best
man in the field, and even Ochwada was keen that he
should fight as the "workers' candidate/'

The only other real challenger in the Nairobi elections
was an African lawyer, a B.A. from the University of Wales,
by the name of Clement Argwings Khodeck. He had been
taking the cases of Kikuyu tribesmen charged with Man
Mau offenses and had won wide popularity.

In 1956 he had organized an African party called the
Nairobi African District Congress and had a good fol-
lowing. His oratory was impassioned and he had an in-
tuitive sense of the popular mood.

Just before Mboya's return from England a major split
occurred in the Congress party over financial issues and
many people left it The break-away group formed the
nucleus of a party late in 1956 which called itself the
Nairobi People's Convention Party, commonly known as the

PCP.

Khodeck also made an enemy of Ochwada, It happened
when Ochwada had persuaded the employers to agree to

117

TOM MBOYA

the organization of the plantation workers' union, and they
had given their reluctant permission to the plan, providing
the new union would have nothing to do with politics. Then
Khodeck suddenly announced that his Congress party would
see that the plantation workers were politically organized,
The employers immediately drove the union officials from
their farms and the plantation workers' union was dealt a
severe blow: thus Ochwada broke completely with Khodeck.

After the quarrel the election became more open for
Mboya. He had to decide whether to plunge into a hard-
hitting electoral campaign, or whether to continue to spe-
cialize in trade unionism. Finally he decided to try to com-
bine both activities.

The two African candidates who faced each other had
many things in common. They both had large and influen-
tial followings; they were both from the same Luo tribe;
both young, educated, and enthusiastic about the African
struggle. They were equally feared and distrusted by Eu-
ropeans who dismissed them as "extremists/' but they were
the type of men that win the hearts of the African mass
ordinary unprivileged Africans, who had risen from hum-
ble beginnings. They were fighters who had, by their own
determination, made themselves the equals of Europeans.
They had risen to the top of the African social world and
the hearts and hopes of the people in the shabby Nairobi
locations went with them, for they had not forgotten that
they were African, and that their job was to lift their
people up to a position of equality with the privileged races.

When they rose to speak in the tiny location halls, a
sea of black faces stretched out before them. The emotional
Khodeck, with his tongue running away with him, exciting
the passions of the crowd. Mboya, starting as cool as a
surgeon at an operation, with the air of a man who can
sell you the world without raising his voice above a whisper,,
but gradually working his speech up to a controlled climax.

118

Young Man of New Africa

At first he speaks slowly and with detachment guiding
the crowd toward the emotional response he wants. He poses
a rhetorical question, then another that demands an an-
swer. They shout "back excitedly. Another question; their
voices are raised in a cry of applause and hands are clapping.

He systematically screws up the pitch of emotion, and
then a wry joke. His face spreads with a vivid, relaxing
smile and the crowd laughs joyfully with relief. It is the
masterful smile of a man who can control the emotions of
others.

The fat Kikuyu women in their yellow kerchiefs yell
"Ee . . . ee . . . ee . . . ee" like cocks crowing, for Mboya's
electoral symbol is a cock.

Both candidates preached pure African nationalism verg-
ing on black racialism. They worked to the African dictum
"If you want to beat an African candidate then whitewash
him/' They had to whiten their opponents good black rep-
utations at all costs. The bread-and-butter texts of their
speeches were straight nationalism. They both "rejected" the
Lyttelton Constitution. It did not mean that they rejected
everything or they would not have been fighting the election
at all, but it was important that they should be rejectors.
They would have no chance of winning otherwise.

From that time onward, Kenya African nationalists have
rejected everything. It became the fashionable thing to do
in African intellectual circles. Constitutions, compromises,
cocktail parties all were rejected. Behind the emotional
satisfaction lay sound reasoning, for in practice this meant
that no constitution could be accepted which did not give
effective control to Africans, and that no ministries would
be taken under a colonial constitution.

But rejection could not be too absolute, or eager politi-
cians might find themselves carried away by their own en-
thusiasm and rejecting offers of increased African repre-
sentation. Mboya worked on the maxim "Reject loudly,

119

TOM MBOYA

but be careful only to reject what does not suit you."

It was a Dickensian election in a black setting, with
each candidate trying to prove he was blacker than the
other, Khodeck shouting "Africa for the Africans" and mean-
ing "Africa for the blacks" when talking to African crowds.
But when he explained to Europeans he would say that the
slogan meant "Africa for anyone who called themselves
African, whether black or white." Mboya claimed that this
slogan was politically dishonest, and, without obviously
drawing attention to Khodeck's comely Irish wife, he called
European women "Africans' public enemy number one."

Mboya generally got the better of his public meetings.
One of his party organizers is sure that it was his oratory
alone that swayed many voters.

The organization of Mboya ? s election committee was
better than Khodeck's, A larger number of African in-
telligentsia followed him. By night the educated young
men translated extracts from his manifesto and his Fabian
pamphlet The Kenya Question to small gatherings of illiter-
ate Africans in their location homes.

As both men were of the same tribe they tended to
split their tribal vote the younger Luos tended to support
Mboya, the older, Khodeck and the election result de-
pended mainly on the impact they made on other tribal
groups. The Kikuyus formed a very small percentage of
the electorate as they had been moved from Nairobi during
the emergency and as there were severe restrictions on
their voting. It was the large, composite, Abalhuya tribe
which must have tipped the balance of votes in Mboya's
favor. Most of the trade union members also voted for
him.

On Election Day supporters of the two candidates gath-
ered in force outside the polling places wearing decorations
to demonstrate their preferences. One man paraded badges
of each candidate on either lapel of his coat, Mboya's men

120

Young Man of New Africa

crowed like cocks and had the edge on noise., for KhodecFs
supporters had to growl like lions!

Harassed administrative officers tried to create the illu-
sion of a smoothly run British polling station, Mrs. Argwings
Khodeck rushed about the locations on a motor scooter, her
red hair trailing in the wind, to the plaudits of the African
crowds. Police were out in force but had nothing to do.

At the end of it all Nairobi recorded one of the highest
polls in all Kenya; nearly 87 per cent voted. Mboya was
the victor by 392 votes. Though the voters with three votes
each divided almost equally between the two candidates,
Mboya had a much larger proportion of the people with
only one vote. Thus he had made a broader appeal to the
masses.

Nairobi area

Tom Mboya 2138

Clement Argwings Khodeck 1746

Muchohi Gikonyo 238

Mackenzie Kasioka 133

On March 10, 1957, Mboya was the first African to be
declared elected to the legislative council

121

Chapter

A SOCIALIST IN A CITY SUIT

The year that followed Tom Mboya's election to legis-
lative council (or Legco as it is familiarly called in Kenya)
was to be a vital one for him. He was trying to establish
himself as leader of the Kenya Africans and to force the
government to accept his own uncompromising policy on
constitutional change.

If he wanted to be the master of the African opposition
to the Kenya government, he had to be in a position to
decide the tactics and policies of the African elected mem-
bers, and this was one of his early objectives.

All the African members had agreed on their constitutional
proposals. In their first press statement they declared the
Lyttelton Constitution "null and void" on the grounds that
they were not parties to it when it was originally an-
nounced. They also refused to accept ministries in the govern-
ment under that constitution. They claimed that Africans
were underrepresented in Legco and demanded fifteen extra
seats.

122

Young Man of New Africa

These crudely stated demands came as a shock to Eu-
ropeans who thought that it was they who had been giving
way constitutionally, and they bitterly criticized the Af-
ricans for not accepting what they were offered.

But the African views were clear and highly influenced
by Mboya's year of thought and argument at Oxford. They
were based on certain fundamental assumptions of African
nationalism which were very much a part of Mr. Mboya's
thinking.

First, it is assumed that African wishes for democracy
and independence are always opposed by colonial govern-
ments, and particularly governments backed by white mi-
norities determined to cling to a privileged position.

Second, that this opposition from a white minority can
only be overcome by force Mboya chooses constitutional
force and not by compromising or getting embroiled in
the responsibilities of colonial government.

Third, that European offers of "reasonable compromises"
and "transition periods/' couched in terms of multi-ra-
cialism and meeting African nationalism halfway, are not
sincere, and are, at the best, delaying tactics on the part
of the Europeans that offer them.

Fourth, and following from these premises, that African
nationalists cannot afford to compromise or become mod-
erate until they are obviously sure of attaining their goals.
In practice this point is reached when self-government
and a democratically elected legislature are imminent.

These premises are all reinforced by the fact that the
African people, though often illiterate and inexperienced
in politics, have an uncanny awareness of these principles,
and a determination to unseat any of their leaders who
betray them.

Mboya clearly understood the principles of African na-
tionalism and knew that his own people would throw him

123

TOM MBOYA

out If he showed any signs of joining a colonial government.
In the elections where he had triumphed, he had seen the
African ex-Minister Mr. B. A. Ohanga seriously beaten in his
own constituency and the defeat of Mr. Eluid Mathu (after
thirteen years in Legco ), who had been clever enough not to
join the government, but still not clever enough to show his
followers that he was an out-and-out nationalist.

The Kenya Europeans misjudged African political clarity
and logicality and called it "extremism." Their dislike of
African nationalism (and of Tom Mboya) made them
delude themselves into thinking that "extreme" nationalism
would eot achieve results. Mboya was attacked for not taking
"responsibilities/' but if he had taken them he would have
acted against the fundamental principles of nationalism.

When the Kenya Europeans attacked him for not taking
ministries, he promptly turned round at Nairobi's multi-ra-
cial United Kenya Club and criticized Europeans for not
readjusting themselves to the rising tide of African nation-
alism.

The years that have passed since 1957 show that Mboya,
and not his critics, had a clearer understanding of the
forces at work in Kenya and that he was right in thinking
that uncompromising nationalism would pay, but, at the
time, the European press attacked him bitterly. Not only
did it disagree with the democratic solution for Kenya, but it
suggested that Mboya was using the wrong tactics even to
achieve his own ends.

The Kenya Weekly News a magazine that has studied
Mboya's career with attention wrote; "Mboya may live to
regret the words he spoke during the election."

The London Economist suggested that the "settlers should
get him embroiled in the cares of office."

Later the Kenya Weekly News: 'There is no doubt that
Mboya is the dominating personality of the African group
at the present time. He may be carrying racial fanaticism

124

Yotmg Man of New Africa

too far. He may force the pace to such an extent that some
of his colleagues will be forced to break away and indeed
they would be well advised to do so. . . ."

The only time African nationalists did break away to
form a moderate and non-racial party was in 1959. The
Kenya National Party then found its moderate ideas un-
workable and a few months later they were obliged to
rejoin Mboya and his group at the London talks in Feb-
ruary 1960.

But Mboya was not an extremist in everything. He made
a clear distinction between constitutional extremism (where
he always got his own way in the end) and physical extrem-
ism, or violence, which he knew the government would
crush (and rightly) as they had crushed Mau Mau.

When Mboya entered the arena of Kenya politics in
March 1957 the question of his leadership was of great
importance to him and became even more so as time went
on.

His first day in the legislative council saw him dressed
in a new suit on the front bench of the unofficial side
of the house. In the council the government nominees,
i.e. officials, sat on one side and the unofficials, i.e. elected
members, on the other. He sat in the seat traditionally
occupied by the leader of African unofficials in the past.
Next to him was Mr. A. O. Qginga-Odinga, a fellow tribes-
man from Central Nyanza in a beaded cap, hairy shirt, and
sandals studded with shells, busily expressing his African per-
sonality.

When he left the council, Mboya told reporters that
"no significance" should be attached to the position he
had been sitting in but he continued to sit in that place
in Legco for many years afterward.

He was elected secretary of the African Elected Members
Organization a body which was formed to co-ordinate Af-

125

TOM MBOYA

rican members" views in the council Mr. Odinga was elected
chairman.

There were soon signs that the other African-elected
members were jealous of Mboya's abilities and the way
he was taken as their spokesman by journalists. They were
not prepared to allow him to take on the role of leader,
Mr, Odinga says that the principle agreed to at the time
was one of "collective leadership/'

Even in Legco itself there was little sign that Mboya
influenced the tactics and substance of the other African-
elected members' speeches, nor their choice of speakers.
His oratorical brilliance was readily acknowledged. "But
oratory does not necessarily mean leadership/' says Odinga,
Yet few would deny that Mboya influenced the inner work-
ing of the African Elected Members Organization more
than any of the others. He was responsible for drafting
press statements, for handling press interviews, and it was
he who was chosen to lead the African members delegation
to London about constitutional questions in July 1957,
He went together with one of his closest colleagues in the
council, Mr. Ronald Ngala, but it was Mboya who did most
of the speaking.

Ngala is a small, restrained and quiet man of average
capacities. He is a keen Christian and has always been
the great conciliator in African politics. Whatever the dif-
ferences between the African leaders, Ngala has been re-
spected for his political honesty. Fundamentally the other
leaders think of him as the man who is not particularly
interested in personal advancement and Mboya has always
liked him for his sincerity.

Though Mboya was the one person among the African
elected members who possessed the qualities of leadership,
his colleagues were not prepared to accept him in the
role of leader. The rest of them were well-educated and
intelligent men, mostly from the teaching profession, but

126

Young Man of New Africa

they were completely inexperienced in the political world
and badly needed discipline and guidance if they were to
be an effective team in the legislative council.

Tom Mboya fully realized that the nationalist cause would
be weakened if each elected member adopted his own line.
The experienced European members would be able to play
havoc if the African members became divided among them-
selves. Though they might be able to overcome their dif-
ferences and remain united publicly, they could hardly move
at the political pace Mboya wanted, unless his leadership
was accepted. The question was how to establish that leader-
ship.

He discussed the problem at length with some of his
friends. One of them was Kenya's first African advocate, an
intelligent and politically conscious young man called John
Seroney, who had been trained in England. On one occa-
sion the leadership issue was raised. Seroney told Mboya
that the other African-elected members, despite their jealousy,
were aware that he was the only possible leader among them;
it was a question of making them realize the value of leader-
ship. Seroney advised Mboya to act like Disraeli had done
in the Conservative party in the days of Queen Victoria a
century before. He had retired into the background because
he knew the party was opposed to his leadership on personal
grounds and because he was a Jew. Disraeli gave advice when
asked and did not come forward until his colleagues showed
they needed him. Seroney suggested that Mboya should do
the same kind of thing. If he had followed his friend's advice
he might have become the recognized leader of the African
members, but even at the time these tactics were under
discussion he indicated that he could not abide by them. He
was a young man in a hurry. If he had disciplined himself at
the time and had been more statesmanlike his position might
have been more solid.

But there were fields in which he was scarcely challenged.

127

TOM MBOYA

He was the leader of the Nairobi masses. His popularity
had grown enormously since the elections. A visiting Brit-
ish Labour M.P. said he had "the common touch." In
the city he was the hero-idol; the symbol of African aspi-
rations. The more the European press attacked him, the
higher soared his personal reputation among his supporters.

At first the European press had spoken comparatively
soft, probably because Khodeck was considered even more
of an "extremist" Mboya was called "more of a Socialist
than an African nationalist' * . . . "arguing from the basis of
labor versus capital and not from African versus European." 1

Demands to the governor were "couched in a very cor-
rect and careful manner, presumably by Mr. Mboya ? who
shows a high degree of ability in a new member. . * ," 2

But before long the Economist wanted him "embroiled
with the cares of office (which would do him so much good
and perhaps even reduce his own opinion of himself. . . .)."
While the Kenya Weekly News attacked him as leader of the
"Nyanza clique" a group of politicians from the Nyanza
tribes on the east of Lake Victoria who were trying to
make the Luo tribe dominant in Kenya.

"There is no doubt that Mboya sees himself as the
Nkramah of the East, . . . Entirely disregarding the real
interests of the people Mr. Mboya is striving to stir up op-
position to land consolidation for purely political reasons.
. . . The speeches of the African members in Legco are
producing a hardening of thought amongst European mem-
bers. . . r

An outspoken settler, Mr. T. J. O* Shea, wrote indignantly
to the papers: "Mr. Mboya is the greatest disappointment
in Kenya politics that I have experienced for some
time. . . "

1 Kenya "Weekly News, April 19, 1957.

2 Kenya Weekly News, Apnl 26, 1957.

128

Young Man of New Africa

Nothing builds up the reputation of an African leader
faster than attacks by Europeans,

By 1957 Mboya's reputation in Kenya as a leader was
paralleled by his reputation overseas. He had already made
a name for himself in the ICFTU and in America. Two
bodies which give tremendous support to the African cause
the Africa Bureau in London and the American Commit-
tee on Africa in New York had already adopted him as the
bright young man they were looking for.

He was the person the foreign journalists wanted to in-
terview, record, and televise. But this international reputa-
tion did not help him in his relations with his colleagues.
It only made them jealous and more determined to keep
him in his "collective" place. Though they respected his
powers and valued him as a spokesman, they were not pre-
pared to let him direct their policies. Whenever he wanted
to make a new move in Legco he had to carry his colleagues
with him to preserve African unity. By nature he found
this attention to personalities irksome, and the African mem-
bers found his dominating character difficult

"Shame," shouted Mboya.

The Kenya legislators sat up with a jolt The new African
member had made his first utterance in the council

Within a few weeks the European member Mrs. A. R.
Shaw was lamenting that the advent of Tom Mboya and his
colleagues had shattered the quiet, sedate atmosphere of the
council.

Tom Mboya's first speech in Legco was chiefly noted for
its length, its coolness and its Socialist approach. He leaned
gracefully over the table by the dispatch box as he spoke. He
was dressed, as usual, to perfection and his voice came
fluently with the mildest trace of an African accent. It was
a speech with flashes of humor and a great deal of sound
common sense.

129

TOM MBOYA

A local commentator wrote: "His speech was novel to the
legislature in more ways than one and followed a well worn
Socialist pattern, but eschewed the bromide of incessantly
retailed African grievances/*

The debate was on the budget and he criticized the mis-
direction of investments brought to Kenya by the European
community. He told how a European had gone to his boss
for a loan:

"I want a loan to buy a bike."

"A bike? What for?" said the employer.

"To use to come to work. ??

The employer looked at him and then said seriously:

"That sort of thing does not happen in this country; you
must have a loan for a car, a small Ford Prefect at least/'

Mboya turned to the Speaker in Legco and said: "I sug-
gest, sir, that it is not the high cost of living for the Euro-
pean community that is the trouble, but the cost of high
living."

He soon showed that he was much quicker with the
parliamentary retort than any of his colleagues. When talk-
ing about equal education for all races he was interrupted
by Mr. Norman Harris, a European member,

"We pay higher taxes/' called Mr. Harris.

"I hear an honorable member shout at me and say, 'We
pay higher taxes/ Of course; yes. I appreciate that Euro-
peans pay higher taxes. What I say is let the African earn
as much as the European and then ask him to pay the same
amount. If he does not earn as much as the European then
let us ask ourselves why . . /'

Mboya's parliamentary technique was not entirely fair.
Mr. Harris had no immediate right of neply, but it was
quick and agile and he showed that he could turn a stray
remark back on its author.

He also revealed another favorite technique of argument
in his first speech. He first states his problem. Then he says

130

Young Man of New Africa

that he will doubtless be accused by the government of
political agitation for stating it. "But," he says, "political
agitation or not the problem remains. . . ." He has often
used this type of argument with skill. Besides the gimmicks
he made a sound statement of what he and the other African
elected members thought:

We merely ask that all members of our society, as indi-
viduals, should be regarded as equals, given equal rights and
equal opportunities. This is a prerequisite, in my view, to
any steady economic development. . . Some people have
referred to the current developments in African politics being
such that it may frighten away capital that we need from
outside Kenya. To some extent I agree with them ? but not
because it is African politics that is going to frighten away
capital . . . but all race politics in Kenya . . . and what we
should do is try to find a solution ... one that would in-
sure all the various sections of the community equal par-
ticipation both in the process of production and in making
use of the products so produced.

It was hardly a speech from the rabble-rousing demagogue
his opponents claimed him to be.

By July 1957 he was in London leading the African dele-
gation against the Lyttelton Constitution. He explained his
case to the press and in his Erst brilliant article for the
London Observer.

Any attempt to maintain the Lyttelton constitution in 1960
is bound to lessen the possibility of establishing a stable society
there. Let us be frank about the alternatives that face Kenyans.
In the long run the fate of the colony must be determined by
the unalterable fact that there are about six million Africans^
compared with 50,000 Europeans, 200,000 Asians, and 30,000
Arabs. 3

The only question to be decided is whether the Africans

8 Population figures in Kenya are estimated as follows in 1962: Africans
6,000,000, Asians 213,000, Europeans 66,000.

TOM MBOYA

will achieve their objectives with the co-operation of the
immigrant races and the British government or despite them.

Everything turns on the offer of, or denial of, co-operation.
If we Africans get this co-operation, we can move steadily
through a phased program of reforms toward internal self-
government and ultimately toward independence.

Each phase could take us further away from our present
setup of communal, racial politics, toward a parliamentary
democracy in which race will have ceased to count as a ma-
jor political factor.

We realize that the political and racial realities of Kenya
do not allow of overnight changes. The fears and suspicions
of all the races must be taken into account in planning future
policy . . .

For the short term we seek two changes: increased African
representation and universal franchise on the communal roll
At present eight elected African members represent almost
six million people, while sixteen Europeans [including two
corporate members] represent 50,000 constituents.

Because the task of representing illiterate people is so much
more onerous than that of representing an educated and
compact electorate, African representation should be greater
and not less than that of the Europeans. All we ask for is an
increase of fifteen members.

When he spoke or wrote to a British audience it was
with calm persuasiveness; when he spoke to a crowd of
Africans at a location hall he did not speak with the same
voice. In the words of his friend Sir Ernest Vasey, the ex-
Kenya Minister of Finance who knew him so well: "From
time to time he is prepared to put himself into a position of
intransigence. He sometimes considers that a more restrained
tone is so much wasted time and that he is not getting on
with the real job. He has not yet learned to restrain himself
and prevent other races from painting him as something
that he is not. This, I think, is one of his great weaknesses/'

A more extreme European accused him, shortly after a

132

Tfoung Man of New Africa

speech to a mass African crowd, of "using the techniques
of Goebbds." Though he sometimes let his tongue run
away with him in moments of emotion, he showed by
speeches and statements like the Observer article that there
was, within him, a voice of cool reason*

Chapter

FANNING THE EMBERS OF
REBELLION?

"It seems very clear to me, sir, that the honorable mem-
ber has been playing on the emotions and fears of the people
. * . and indeed many of his speeches can only be taken as
condoning Mau Mau/ ? The late Group Captain L. R.
Briggs, then the European Minister without Portfolio, was
speaking about Mboya in the legislative council in Nairobi.

"I consider he has adopted a dangerous and irresponsible
course . , . he appears to be trying to fan the embers the
dying embers of rebellion. . . .

'The technique of unsupported allegations, and inaccurate
assertions is all too familiar as that adopted by the Com-
munists, and by crypto-Communists. I feel it is regrettable
that the honorable member should appear to be adopting
these methods."

Before he died recently, Group Captain Briggs was a mem-
ber of the War Council responsible for dealing with Man

Young Man of New Africa

Man. In Kenya politics he was leader of the extreme right
and later he resigned from the Council of Ministers on the
grounds that the body was "moving to the left"

Within a few weeks of Briggs first foil-scale legislative
council attack on Mboya, the two met in headlong debate,
Mboya proposed the motion: "That this house dissociates
itself from the remarks made by the European Minister
without Portfolio/'

During the debate another settler, J. R. Maxwell., hinted
that Mboya might have felt violence necessary to achieve
some of his objectives. He then had fun in describing
Mboya's home country Nyanza in 1913 as a "cheerful nud-
ists' colony/* The sole adornment of the African maiden
at that time was a fringe, and, using a nautical term, it was
worn fore. When she got married she was privileged to wear
a fiber tail, aft, which added considerably to her dignity and
perhaps to what the honorable member (Mboya) referred
to yesterday as "basic human dignity."

Mboya rose to make one of the coolest and bitterest
speeches in his career:

"I have been told I am too young and inexperienced. I
would therefore have expected that my old, experienced,
highly educated friend, the Minister without Portfolio,
would have shown us something better by refraining from
such statements and remarks in this council/' Mboya chal-
lenged Briggs to substantiate his remarks, to give evidence
of his condoning Mau Mau. In response to this challenge
the chief secretary, Mr. R. S. Tumbull, quoted from an
American newspaper called the New Jersey Afro-American
where Mboya was reported to have said, "Who was the more
guilty of resorting to violence, the Mau Mau who killed 60
Europeans or the British who have slaughtered 10,000 na-
tives?"

Mboya denied the accuracy of the report. He asked why
government ministers never quoted his speeches from the

135

TOM MBOYA

London Observer, the Manchester Guardian, the London
Times, and the New York Times. Why was It that the
sole paper they could find to quote from was the New Jersey
Afro-American, a paper he had never heard of?

He made a brilliant speech and could have further strength-
ened his contention that he had been misquoted by pointing
out that he was not in the habit of describing his fellow
Africans as "natives" and that he seldom ever used the
word "slaughtered."

Oginga-Odinga described his colleague's speech as "the
most excellent speech I have ever listened to in this council."
The debate was long and bitter. Personal reputations were
at stake; personalities not policies the subject of attack. The
last word of comment comes from a settler source:

"Before withdrawing the motion, Mr. Mboya had a field
day at the expense of the government and the European
Minister without Portfolio in particular/' wrote the Kenya
Weekly News. "There can be little doubt that he left the
council with most of the honors . . ."

This was the first of several attempts by European mem-
bers to show that Mboya had somehow condoned Mau
Mau. From the Briggs' debate onward European members,
and sometimes government ministers, were on the lookout
for good quotes to throw in his face. They later found one
statement which he did not deny.

"European women are our public enemy number one. In
Europe they peel potatoes, wash dishes, sweep floors, till the
ground, but in Kenya they demand and employ no less than
three African boys to do the same job at starvation wages."
This remark was made in the heat of the African elections.
The people who had a right to object to this remark, Arg-
wings Khodeck and his Irish wife, no longer held it against
him.

The two-man African-elected members delegation to Lon-
don, Mr, Ronald Ngala and Mboya, returned to Kenya.

13 6

Young Man of New Africa

Their mission had achieved no immediate results, but the
new Colonial Secretary, the Rt. Hon. Alan T. Lennox-Boyd,
finally decided that he would have to try and resolve the
constitutional deadlock

He flew out to Kenya in October 1957 and started talks
between the different racial groups, but the talks broke
down on what has been officially described as "procedural"
difficulties. The magic touch of Iain MacLeod, Britain's pres-
ent Colonial Secretary, was lacking. The African members
claimed that they should have been given an increased num-
ber of African seats before the talks started. They said that
as both the European members and the Colonial Secretary
had agreed that they were underrepresented there could be
no reason for withholding the extra seats. The European mem-
bers wanted to use the increased numbers of seats as a part
of a package deal aimed at getting the Africans to accept
ministerial responsibility.

But the Africans were sure that they would not be offered
enough places in the Council of Ministers to have an effec-
tive voice and that the Colonial Secretary was attempting to
get them to accept a constitutional standstill for ten years.

When the talks broke down, Lennox-Boyd decided to 'Im-
pose" the constitution he thought Kenya should have.

He offered six more seats to the Africans and twelve
special seats to be elected by the legislative council sitting
as an electoral college. Four were to be African, four Euro-
pean, and four Asian. The Africans were also offered two
minor African ministries,

It has now become clear that if the Africans had accepted
these proposals they would have gone against the funda-
mental principles of African nationalism. The elected mem-
bers would have lost the support of their constituents, but
still, they did not immediately "reject" the new constitu-
tion.

In the days which followed the Colonial Secretary's an-

137

TOM MBOYA

noiiBcement, I remember personally asking Tom Mboya
what he was going to do. He had no pat answer and I think
he was genuinely trying to see if it was possible for an
African nationalist, in his position, to give the new constitu-
tion a trial Many of his liberal friends of all races were
counseling the policy of a trial period, and some Labour
party leaders in Britain advised the same course. One person
who" was convinced that Mboya would have to "reject" was
Mr. Cyril Dunn, the Observer correspondent in Africa. He
had a long interview with Mboya shortly after Lennox-Boyd's
announcement, and, before the African elected members had
officially commented, he wrote a news story forecasting the
almost certain rejection of the constitution. Cyril Dunn may
have played the part of more than a journalist on this oc-
casion.

Some of the African-elected members were calling for the
Immediate rejection of the constitution, but Mboya's mind
was not made up. He did not trust the Colonial Secretary's
solution because there was little personal trust between them.
Mboya claimed that Lennox-Boyd had double-crossed him
during the course of the negotiation. "I will never trust
that man again," he said in private conversation afterward.
But he has never been one to reject a political agreement
because of the nature of the men that make it. He was
genuinely hesitant over the Lennox-Boyd Constitution. It is
one of the few issues of principle on which I have ever
known him to hesitate and to reveal this hesitation to others.

But five days later the African-elected members officially
rejected the constitution in a long and carefully worded
statement obviously drafted by Mboya's hand.

The Colonial Secretary went forward with whatever ar-
rangements he could without African co-operation. The
European- and Asian-elected ministers tendered their resig-
nations to allow the Colonial Secretary to put his new plans
into effect and there were scenes of great rejoicing in the

138

Young Man of New Africa

African locations. In Tom Mboya's tiny house, where the
furniture takes up three quarters of the floor space, his
friends were crowding in, perching on the edge of the table
and the arms of the chairs.

The news came across the communal wireless loudspeaker
system installed in the location. "For the first time the
Africans have stood firm and the Europeans have given way/ ?
said Mboya to the excited black faces around him.

His indecision had gone. He had finally made up his
mind. "We are going to smash this plan now, like we
smashed the last/' he said without anger in his voice. In
fact his mood was unusually happy. It was one of those rare
political victories which transforms his sophisticated reserve
into the careless excitement of a young boy. He was not
thinking of the results of rejection at that time, but only of
the new power that the African-elected members had dem-
onstrated.

The Lyttelton plan which was to have lasted until 1960
had been brought to an end in 1958 after only seven months
of determined opposition by the African members.

Their most fundamental objection to the new Lennox-
Boyd Constitution was that they were not going to be strong
enough in the legislative council to send some of their mem-
bers over to the government side. As they could not have
effective power in the Council of Ministers, they were not
prepared to accept ministries. They were also strongly op-
posed to the twelve "specially elected seats/" which were
elected by the whole of Legco, for the Africans could see
that when the European voters on the government side were
added to the European-elected members, they would be
swamped.

But even a serious constitutional breakdown like this was
not without its lighter moments. An official in Tom Mboya's
party wrote an indignant letter to the secretary of the Labour
party, Mr, Morgan Phillips.

TOM MBOYA

Dear Mr. Phillip (sic.)

There have been allegations that African Politicians are
only doing what they are doing with the advice of the
Labour part}*. The P.C.P. is not only surprised but indignant
The Labour party too does not have a very clean record in
Africa, in fact their record is worse than the Torries (sic) ...
It was the Labour government that banned Seretse Khama
from marrying a white girl this was to please Mallan
(sic.) . . . We haven't forgotten that you arrested and im-
prisoned Nkrumah . , . These and many others the P.C.P.
can mention has made us shake confidence we had in the
Labour party. . * .

No responsible person can advice us to employ Fabian
tactic against Lennon Boyd plan, while the British people
in Central Africa are busily transferring power into the hands
of the SETTLER, and that is what the LENNOX BOYD
PLAN is going to do and nobody can convince us other-
wise . . , We are hoping to hear from your party soon, but
these having been matters of public concern which have even
been discussed on platforms, the party has advised me to
make it public.

Yours e.t.c.

Organising Secretary

Nairobi People's Convention Party

It is not known whether Tom Mboya used tactic of sending
this letter to Mr. Phillips nor what Mr. Phillips made of it!
The PCP expressed in its own idiom what the African
people in general felt and the African members were united
in their rejection. The divisions came later when it had to
be decided how complete this rejection was to be. Argwings
Khodeck, Mboya's old rival at the Nairobi elections and
Oginga-Odinga, were even for boycotting the government
offer of six additional African seats. Other members sug-
gested that all the African members sitting should resign
and fight the election on the slogan of "no participation'' in

140

Young Man of New Africa

the constitution, but some were frightened of losing their
seats.

Mboya was not worried that he would lose the Nairobi
seat but he felt that the opportunity of strengthening the
African opposition in the council should be taken. This view
finally prevailed though not necessarily because it was Mboya's
personal view.

He was keen to get six new rejectors into Legco and
among them to have his friend Dr. Gikonyo Kiano, a young
Kikuyu lecturer, who had got his Doctorate in Philosophy
after seven years' higher education in the United States.

Within two months Kiano was returned to Legco. Mr.
Eluid Mathu, the veteran African politician who stood
against him, had been defeated once again.

Shortly after Dr. Kiano was elected to the council an
attempt was made in an American magazine to build Mm
up as a dangerous rival to Mboya. It suggested that the
time had come for Kikuyus to return to their pre-Mau Man
predominance and that Kiano was the man to lead the
renaissance of the tribe. Mboya would be pushed out in the
process.

But this line of reasoning was far from the truth. In those
optimistic days of 1958, under the lead of men like Mboya
and Kiano, African nationalism was slowly eliminating the
pockets of tribalism that still existed. Kiano had no intention
of trying to revive it to sabotage his friend's position.

The two men have agreed on most important principles
throughout their careers. Before Kiano was active in politics,
at a time when he was still lecturing, Mboya would volun-
tarily consult him on most important issues. During his
election campaign he had Tom's moral support and when
he was finally returned to the council nobody was happier
to have him as a colleague than Mboya.

Kiano is a man with an agile and intelligent mind with a
long string of academic successes behind him at American

141

TOM MBOYA

universities including Antioch College, Ohio State Univer-
sity, and Stanford University, culminating in his doctorate
at * the University of California. He was away from Kenya
during the whole of the Mau Mau period and returned at
a time when nationalist politics were once more possible.
He can rapidly build an intellectual defense of any stand he
has taken, but he lacks Mboya's positive assurance. The re-
sult is that he veers to the right and left, and does not have
Mboya's convinced determination.

Mboya has sometimes criticized him privately for being
too moderate or too soft in his approach, but these criticisms
he keeps to himself, for, with a few exceptions, he feels that
his friend is politically right-minded, and that he Is loyal to
the African cause and not seeking personal power.

Klano has sometimes complained that he does not un-
derstand Mboya's psychology fully, but in the past his ac-
tions have shown a keen respect for Mboya's balanced and
common-sense approach to politics.

It is in the last year or so that Kiano and Mboya have
drifted apart. The strong personal friendship which once
held them together has given way under the pressure of
political intrigues. Kiano was once prepared to tolerate the
awkwardnesses of working with Mboya, because he respected
his ability and power, but he is not so much the close
friend and ally which he once was. He now tries to remain
uncommitted as Mboya embroils himself with an ever-
increasing number of opponents. He sometimes shows that
his sympathies are on the side of Mboya's critics.

Mboya's old trust in Kiano, his feeling that Kiano is not
maneuvering against him, was utterly shattered by some of
Kiano's actions toward the end of 1960.

But at one stage Mboya was able to exert considerable
influence over him. An example of this was when Kiano
decided to align himself with the non-racial group in the

142

Young Man of New Africa

constituency elected members organization, and Mboya
argued him back to a position of "pure" nationalism.

On January 19, 1958, Mboya held a mammoth meeting
in Nairobi to announce his decision to reject the Lennox-
Boyd Constitution. His meetings are often held in a huge
corrugated iron shed surrounded by a barbed-wire enclosure,
like a heavily guarded airplane hangar. It was specially con-
structed by the government at the extreme end of the Afri-
can locations and as far as possible from Nairobi town.

Mboya's meetings are usually scheduled for 2 P.M. and
generally start round 3:30 P.M. when the hall is packed with
three thousand people who have waited since mid-morning
to hear him. There are thousands more, around the barbed
wire outside, who cannot get in. Tin-helmeted, baton-armed
riot police, pack the lorries drawn up at strategic points all
round the hall. The door to the compound has been sealed
for several hours. No more Africans are allowed in. Worried-
looking police strut backward and forward.

The crowd and the police instinctively dislike each other.
They symbolize opposite sides in colonial evolution. If the
police give the slightest sign that they are not in command
of the situation trouble can start. Stones fly and batons
crack down on the nearest heads.

A police van with tape recorders is backed into a side
entrance. The crowd inside the hall is sitting down in ranks
and waiting. Kikuyu women in brightly colored scarves
and shawls sit in front. Some are suckling their brown babies
and knitting. The men stand and talk at the back of the hall.
Most are clerks, office workers, townsmen dressed in cheap
suits that they have bought from the Indian tailors after
months of saving. Others are barefooted with the rags of
discarded European clothing clinging to their wiry black
bodies. There is a strong smell of sweat and damp African
earth in the air. Faces, from the red-brown of the Kikuyu

TOM MBOYA

to the coal-black of the Nyanza men, stare at the empty
platform. A tense and expectant atmosphere fills the hall

Suddenly Mboya arrives.

On the meeting of January 19 his black Volkswagen drove
through the enclosure gates and the crowd outside tried to
force their way in after him. Police stopped them and a
fight started. Stones came flying in from outside the wire
and several policemen were injured.

Then, as quickly as the violence had flared up it died out
Mboya makes his way up to the platform, and inside the
hall everything is as quiet as falling snow. He sits down at
the table. His round face is rather preoccupied; not worried,
but possibly tired; buried in thought. He speaks to an
official for a moment. Party members clutching notebooks
mix with the crowd to collect membership fees. He rises to
speak and everyone cheers and claps. The women screech
their high-pitched imitation of a cock. He raises his arms
for silence and the noise dies away. Nothing is audible save
the police tape recorders rotating silently and the occasional
cry of a baby.

"You clap and cheer ... it is very nice . . . (a long
pause) but vhwru (the Swahili word for freedom) will never
come by clapping and cheering will it? (another pause).
Uhuru will only come by hard work, unity, and sacrifice
. . , (more cheers),

"The day when you and I must collectively and indi-
vidually lay ourselves ready for action against the forces of
colonialist, imperialist, and European domination is near.
Let it be known to those hypocrites who preach co-operation,
Christianity, and democracy by word of mouth but fail to
live up by example to what they preach, that we, the African
people of Kenya, are awake and do not intend to sleep any
more/'

Soul-stirring stuff. Shades of the political agitators in
Chartist England of the 1840$.

144

Young Man of New Africa

He starts to attack a European political party. He tells
his flock of the sad, sad plight of Mr. Michael BlundelTs
New Kenya Group; how It is attacked by the settlers on the
right, by the Africans on the left, and that its support is
only from "specially elected members." And who do these
"'specially elected members" represent? Do they represent
the crowd? Unanimous shouts of "No." Do they represent
the Europeans? . . . No, not even the Europeans. But how
then, did they get into Legco? Who are these men? Who are
they?

"Mr. Musa Amalemba . . . Mr. MU-SA-A~-MA~LEM-
BA." He stops, and the crowd starts laughing and jeering.
Mr. Amalemba is a specially elected member. He is a fa-
mous man. Europeans say he is a leader (more laughter).
He is Minister of Housing and gets 3500 ($9800) a year
salary (screams from the crowd) and he gets the money be-
cause of European votes.

Mboya does not scruple to attack his political opponents
personally, to attack the men he thinks are standing in the
way of his drive to his political goals. He does not weigh the
consequences of his words with an African crowd which
will make the individual he has chosen the victim of its
emotions.

He always begins his meetings smoothly, quietly, reason-
ably putting his case. Gradually he works himself to a point
where he has excited himself and his audience; when he
can shout questions and get three thousand voices joining
in the same answer. His fist shakes in the air. He throws his
arms apart Attacking, mocking, aggressive, and bitter, but
he never really lets his emotions ran away with him. He is
always in control and can make the crowd laugh as often as
he can make it angry.

He will speak without a pause even for a drink of water.
Sometimes he has talked from 3 P.M. to 6 P.M. without a
break, without a single written note, and the crowd that has

145

TOM MBOYA

waited most of the day to hear him stays with him to the
end,

I have only once seen Mboya not in absolute control of
the crowd he was addressing. It was a time when Argwings
Khodeck's Congressmen had placed groups of banner-wav-
ing hecklers at strategic points all round the hall. Mboya's
voice was drowned and he could not make himself heard at
all

Suddenly, halfway through a sentence, he stopped speak-
ing, turned round, and walked over to the press bench.

"It is absolutely fantastic/ 7 he said, "I have never known
anything like it."

But he went back to the yelling crowd and started talking
again. He did not try to shout louder than the hecklers but
spoke softer so they were tempted to listen to him. Once
they stopped shouting, his speech became quicker, louder,
gradually building itself into a crescendo. He flayed the
trouble-makers who either left the hall or remained silent,
and within a few minutes the hostile crowd was listening
as attentively as if he had hand-picked them all Not a voice
interrupted him until he was through.

146

Chapter

NKRUMAH OF THE EAST

In March 1958 Mboya returned to Kenya after attending
Ghana's celebrations for its first anniversary of independ-
ence. During his stay In Ghana he had been given celebrity
treatment, being taken to see all the country's newborn
achievements.

He watched Dr. Kwame Nkramah opening a new Ghana
broadcasting house; he saw a new harbor under construction
at Tema a few miles from Accra, Ghana's capital He at-
tended public meetings and talked to the top political leaders.
When he returned to Kenya he wrote laudatory articles about
his visit in the Kenya European press.

While he was in Ghana he had had long talks with
Premier (now President) Nkrumah who Immediately took
to him as a young man of ability and promise. Nkramah
must have seen him as the man who would lead his country
to independence, for he plied him with advice on future
political strategy.

147

TOM MBOYA

Few individual people ever influence Mboya's thinking or
his emotional reactions to political problems. Many of his
critics in Kenya have been unable to believe that he can
think and write for himself, and have searched tirelessly
for Fabians under his political platforms and for Commu-
nists at his party headquarters. In fact there are few people
who have made him change his political approach probably
no Europeans at all The exceptions are Kwaxne Nkramah of
Ghana and Julius Nyerere of Tanganyika.

Nkramah was one of the first people to have a strong
personal influence on him, for on his return to Kenya he
was full of "pressing on with the struggle" and a "new drive
to independence."

It was a diierent Mboya that stepped from the plane at
Nairobi airport on his return from Ghana. His visit had
buoyed him up emotionally and he looked on Kenya's future
with a new enthusiasm. He could almost see himself filling
the part of the settlers' taunts, by realy becoming "Nkrumah
of the East."

Though it was already night, he immediately drove off
to a meeting at Nairobi's Akamba Hall to tell his supporters
of future plans. He told his personal secretary that Nkramah
had said that it was useless to think of fighting for political
freedom without a strong, well-disciplined movement be-
hind him; Nkrumah had urged him to join one of Nairobi's
political parties.

It was a strange fact at the time March 1958 that
Mboya had never actually joiqed the Nairobi People's Con-
vention Party, The party had campaigned for him during his
election, had invited him to become its president and had
kept the presidency vacant for him, yet he had not accepted.

The reason for this was that the rival Congress party of
Argwings Khodeck had bitterly criticized him during the
elections for trying to split African unity by putting up a
rival party. No accusation can be more telling to an African

Young Man of New Africa

nationalist, so Mboya had tried to remain officially outside
the PGP while keeping the benefits of its alliance.

He had written a letter while still in Ghana to James D,
Akumu, the energetic little man who was the organizing
secretary of the PCP, saying that he had "more determina-
tion than ever to carry forward the straggle for freedom/'
He echoed the same enthusiasm in a press interview.

"He was very excited and enthusiastic I should say/' said
a clerk, and that was the general impression he had on the
party henchmen in the political headquarters of the PGP
in Victoria Street, Alvi House, Nairobi.

Mboya soon told the PGP that he would gladly accept
the presidency. He busied a local journalist to look into the
costs of printing a party newspaper ". . . and don't forget
to find out about registration/' he shouted as the fellow sped
down the passage muttering under his breath, "It Is being
very rushed without planning."

As he glanced through the piles of correspondence that
heaped his desk he told me of Ghana and the future of
Kenya. Party officials and clerks ran in and out of the office
at untropical speeds with problems, queries, and letters. A
girl waited patiently in a chair staring alternately at him and
at his bookshelves lined with books that he never has time
to read. His fingers worked busily slitting envelopes with a
pseudo-Oriental paper knife.

"I spent a lot of time in Ghana studying the organization
of the Convention People's Party, the way they built It up
and the part their party newspaper played. The same thing
has got to be done here. I now realize how mismanaged
much of the present political struggle has been. There have
been operations in high places, but we need a mass move-
ment,"

''What do you mean by that?" I asked.

''Something like the GPP based on locally organized seo

149

TOM MBOYA

retaries and committees. 1 studied their organization for
two weeks/'

"How can this help Kenya?"

"We need an organization so that if public meetings are
banned as they were recently, we will still be organized and
capable of positive action,"

"Positive action?"

"Yes. It does not mean violence, there are other methods
of passive resistance/'

Mboya was always vague about his "positive action/' He
repeated that it did not mean violence but boycotts and
demonstrations which might lead to voluntary imprison-
ment He said that there had been rumors that action might
take the form of a general strike, but he had earlier denied
it publicly. On the whole he felt that individual industrial
unions should specialize in bettering their own workers' con-
ditions.

This did not mean that trade union bodies such as the
Kenya Federation of Labour should not have political views
and state them ? but he was against individual unions trying
to get together and use the general strike weapon.

Mboya's new drive for reorganization in the PCP ? like his
earlier reforms in the KFL, inevitably brought its frictions.
He sacked a friend of his, who was working as his personal
secretary, for inefficiency and took on a slightly built, grub-
bily dressed, young African with a sly face and piercing eyes
that can reflect a hot temper. He was called M, D. Odinga. 1
With his trousers hitched untidily round his middle, a pen
stuck into a soiled shirt pocket, he is something of a
political fanatic, but he is clever and writes good English.

Mboya was in need of a man who could help him with
an ever-mounting pile of secretarial work so he engaged him.

3-M, D. Odinga must not be confused with A. Ogmga-Odinga the Legco
member.

150

Young Man of New Africa

Odinga's own story of his relationship with Mboya might
not be fair but it reveals the kind of personality clash that
has sometimes occurred in the PCP. He told me his ex-
periences in his own words:

"I remember quite clearly the time Tom asked me to be
his personal secretary. He was just going on safari to Nyanza,
and he drove me home one night to my house in Mbotela.
He stopped the car outside and we began talking. He said
he would like me to take care of his office until he came
back when arrangements could be made for me to work as
his assistant.

"He was very busy and probably thought there was no
other suitable person for the job. He gave me the office keys
and a bunch of letters that he asked me to reply to as his
personal assistant.

"I had to make quite a sacrifice to take the job on. I was
getting a good wage with a firm In the industrial area, but I
worked for him for about three and a half months. I never
got paid for that period and I wanted to go home to Nyanza
for a holiday, so I asked him if I could have some pay, but
he was always in a rush with interviews and appointments
and he was too busy to see me, so I went off without any pay.

"1 remained home a few days and then wrote him a letter
asking for a little money. He replied that it would be sent.
I waited for about two weeks and wrote again and then, after
another wait, a third time.

"I was getting annoyed and he wrote back to me full of
apologies saying my money would be sent in a week. A few
days later I happened to meet him when he visited my part
of the world. When he saw me he was rather upset. I did
not have any hard feelings, but he said he did not have
enough money with him and said he would send it when
he got back to Nairobi. I never got the money.

"Then I wrote him one of the bitterest letters I have ever
sent to a person I respect, I still got no reply and went to

151

TOM MBOYA

see him on my return to Nairobi. Finally he gave me a
check for 12.10.0 and asked me to return 2.10.0 to
him because he was short of cash. He said he would let me
know in due course about the balance of my salary, but I
would say I had no further communication/ 9

At a later date Odinga attacked Mboya in a public press
statement under the heading The Emergence of a Dictator
in the POP. He used words which he now says were "rather
too bitter." In the statement he complained that Mboya, on
his return from Ghana, "drove around the country in a
gorgeous Volkswagen and with a big trumpet preaching of
the big achievements he has rendered to the African/'

He complained that Mboya had "thrust a totalitarian con-
stitution on the heads of the members of the party . . . and
decided to throw overboard those who valued their opinions
and could not tolerate his orders/'

It was true that Mboya had changed the party's constitu-
tion after he became president in July 1958. In the old con-
stitution it was laid down that office bearers should be
elected by the annual conference by secret ballot, under the
new constitution only the president, vice-president, and audi-
tor were to be elected by the annual meeting. The rest were
elected by a new-style general council with a majority formed
by the secretaries of village committees. These village com-
mittees and their officers were democratically elected by
ordinary members at a village meeting. Under the new con-
stitution the president also had the right to sit on the
general council.

A new system of disciplining secretaries and branches was
also introduced in which the president could suspend gen-
eral council members in consultation with the council itself.

Mboya did two things by these reforms. He strengthened
the position of president, and he allowed the rank and 'file
of the party to have more direct say. He gained both ways,
by the direct strengthening of his own voice and because the

152

Young Man of New Africa

council had more rank and file members who looked up to
him as their leader.

He pushed through his changes in a series of meetings,
where he got majority support. Even Odinga supported him
at first. But later, he claims, he was one of those that was
"thrown overboard/' Mboya says that the reason he was dis-
charged from his job as editor of the party broadsheet
UHURU (Freedom) was because he had mishandled party
funds. He says that when he first employed Odinga he had
no other job and that he came to work for the party because
he had nothing better to do. After he dismissed him he
said, "As an editor I admired Odinga, but as a manager
and employee I am afraid to say he let us down badly. There
is no question of tribalism involved in the matter at all"

Odinga says that the real reason was that Mboya wanted
a friend, and fellow tribesman, to take over his job as editor
of UHURU. He took his counterattack on Mboya to a set-
tler newspaper, the Sunday Post, where Mboya wrote in
reply:

"I have neither the time nor the wish to enter into a
frivolous press war with Odinga. I have a public life and
duty that extends over the last six years and believe that it
is the right of my people to judge my sincerity and honesty
of purpose/'

Whatever the truth in a sordid business in which accusa-
tion and counteraccusation were bandied about, the result
was that Mr. Omolo Agar, who had returned from India
with a B.A. in economics, took over Odinga's job. He was
already the organizing secretary of the PGP.

Mboya has been frequently accused not only of having
bad personal relations with his juniors in the PCP but of
misusing party funds. Even Odinga thinks there are a num-
ber of reasons why these allegations cannot be true. In the
first place he would have accused Mboya of dishonesty him-
self if he had thought there was any justification for doing

TOM MBOYA

so. He had felt bitter enough against him in the past. Sec-
ond, party funds have been so small that they would not be
worth the taking, and last, Mboya has not been one of the
signatories of the party bank account until later years, and
then only a joint signatory.

There have been similar allegations concerning the Kenya
Federation of Labour funds. Instances are quoted when Tom
Mboya has traveled to some place in East Africa, ostensibly
on trade union business, where he spent most of the time
talking to politicians and dealing with political issues. In
the few instances that can be verified it can be shown that
trade union responsibilities were not neglected, though he
took the opportunity on his trips to have political discus-
sions at the same time that he dealt with trade union busi-
ness.

In July 1955 the treasurer of the federation threatened to
resign because he claimed that he had not been shown the
KFL books since he had been elected to his post and that
he had no means of telling what the financial position of the
organization was. This crisis occurred while Tom Mboya
was away in England taking his cours,e at Ruskin College.
Arthur Ochwada's solution was to appoint a subcommittee
to bring the federation books up to date, but this was found
impracticable and finally a completely new set of books had
to be started.

Within a few months the original treasurer, Elijah Odhi-
ambo, was posted away from Nairobi and an assistant treas-
urer took over. "I was determined to let Mm alone be re-
sponsible for the money/' said Ochwada, "but the result
was that the books got into a mess again in a very short
time/'

Mboya might well have wanted to keep the financial con-
trol of the federation in his own hands, feeling that he was
the only person capable of efficient accounting, but his ac-
tions invariably aroused suspicions. He did not realize that

Young Man of New Africa

it was not sufficient for a man in his position to be honest^
he has to appear to be honest as well.

An African with considerable knowledge of accounting
was asked last year to look into the Kenya Federation of
Labour account, but he claims that he found such disorder
that he declined to have anything to do with it. His short
study revealed no instances of funds being misappropriated*
but very incomplete accounting.

The explanation of this departure from rigidly orthodox
financial accounting probably lies with Mboya's disregard for
money rather than any desire to use it selfishly.

No one can accuse him of having grown fat on em-
bezzled money. His way of life has hardly ever been ex-
travagant from his early days when he cut short his schooling
to pay for his brothers' education. His yellow-stucco duplex
house was just the same as any other in the Ziwani location
side street where he lived until his recent marriage. He oc-
cupied two rooms. The bedroom was almost entirely filled by
his bed, a wardrobe, and a desk. The living room had a sofa, a
couple of armchairs, and an incongruous refrigerator which
stood idle for many years waiting for the city council to install
electricity and there was no bathroom, not even a sink with
running water. When he cleaned his teeth he had to go out-
side to spit in a drain. Once he was asked why he continued
to live in a small location house as he could afford something
better. "As long as my people live here, 1 will stay/' he an-
swered. "I have no right to leave them."

His most valuable possessions are presents from American
friends and political organizations an electric shaver, a Dic-
taphone, and an American camera. His only other luxuries
are a wardrobe full of tailored suits and a number of long-
playing records of popular music. He is particularly fond of
the records of Harry Belafonte.

When he has money he will spend it with genuine gener-
osity. Young African schoolboys do holiday jobs for him and

TOM MBOYA

lie gives them a chance to stay in Nairobi and study. In the
early days of PGP when the party had very few funds he
would often pay fines and lawyer fees for members out of
his own pocket. He would loan officials his car on party
business. There is no clear dividing line between generosity
and carelessness as far as he is concerned.

Other things are so much more important to him than
money that he tends to disdain the work involved in ac-
counting for it as a petty clerical business. He carries his
personal disregard for money and the benefits it brings into
his public life and this inevitably brings up questions of
responsibility and honesty* A deeper criticism can be made
that he does not want money for its own sake, but as a
means to bring him political power. This view presupposes
the fact that he spends the money he gets on political ends.
Granted that this is largely true the question then becomes
one of whether he is doing it for personal ambition or be-
cause it is necessary for the African cause. To answer this
his whole career must be carefully examined.

156

Chapter JL t

YOUNG MAN ON A TIGER

After the Lennox-Boyd Constitution had been imposed on
April 3> 1958, and rejected by the African-elected members,
the pattern of events in Kenya shows a double clash. First
between the interests of the African's and Kenya's colonial
government and second between the African and European
races,

The list of occurrences was typical of nationalist history
a trial of the African elected members; an African walk-out
of Legco in the middle of the governor's speech; government
discovery of a new Mau Mau-type society called KKM; a
demonstration against a visit by Sir Roy Welensky, the
premier of the settler-dominated Rhodesian Federation;
European moves for a closer alliance with the Rhodesias;
stricter government control of African political meetings.

Stronger measures were met by more agitation, more agita-
tion by stronger measures.

At first Mboya was not the leader of African opposition.

157

TOM MBOYA

He had not folly established his lead with the other African
members. The government had not victimized him person-
ally, nor arrested him and Oginga-Odinga's concept of "col-
lective leadership" had been uneasily accepted,

As Nkramah had reminded him, Mboya had not ade-
quately built up his own position of strength from ground
level The nationalist movement had not identified itself
with his name in the same way that it had with Julius
Nyerere in Tanganyika, or with Jomo Kenyatta six years
earlier in Kenya.

But African nationalism was not waiting for Mboya to
build his position. Events succeeded one another with inex-
orable inevitability.

The first major clash came on May 28, 1958, when seven
of Kenya's African-elected members were brought to trial.
Earlier they had issued a statement to dissuade Africans from
standing for the "specially elected" seats under the Lennox-
Boyd Constitution. These seats were to be elected by the
legislative council sitting as an electoral college. This meant
that even the African members would be elected by a ma-
jority of Europeans in the council.

Even the Indians were convinced that Europeans would
have things their own way ? and the president of the Indian
Congress the most powerful Indian political party in Kenya
-Mr. S. G. Amin summed up their feelings; "By no stretch
of the use of words can we call such members 'specially
elected members/ They should be described as 'members
selected by Europeans to suit their own purposes/"

A European-elected member, Mr. W. E. Crosskill, had
even hinted publicly that four Africans had been picked by the
Europeans for the seats. This made the African-elected mem-
bers write a strongly worded statement to those Africans
that had said they would stand, in an attempt to make them
withdraw their candidatures.

The African-elected members said that those who were

158

'Young Man of New Africa

standing were "stooges, quislings, and black Europeans**
and a "few self-seeking opportunists/* and called for an
economic, social, and political boycott on "these traitors/*

This was just the kind of issue that the Kenya government
had been waiting for. Immediately, the African members
were charged with publishing defamatory matter and for
"conspiring together to unlawfully inluence people/' The
government demonstrated its own eagerness for a showdown
by bringing a criminal charge of defamation. If the specially
elected members had wanted to bring their own charges they
could have done so ? but the government decided, of its own
accord, to bring a criminal charge instead.

The importance of the trial to Africans could be measured
by the crowds holding placards outside the court shouting
the words: SIX MILLION AFRICANS ON TRIAL and
by the return of Dennis N. Pritt, of Kenyatta trial fame, to
defend the accused. True to the pattern of colonial history,
the government had decided to teach the African members
a lesson, and the members saw their opportunity to turn the
trial into a mass demonstration in favor of the African
"struggle/' Tom Mboya's party organized "sacrifice days" on
which the people were asked to demonstrate their support
for their leaders. Orders were given to boycott:

1. Drinking

2. Smoking

3. Buses

4. Violence

Banners and slogans appeared everywhere. At the airport it
was WELCOME MR. PRITT, a garland of flowers round
his neck and a kiss from a beautiful lady in a sari the wife
of his old colleague at the trial of Jomo Kenyatta, Mr. A. R.
Kapila.

As the trial went on, thousands of people rushed to the
Nairobi law courts during the lunch hour, holding up the

159

TOM MBOYA

traffic with their enthusiastic demonstrations on behalf of
the African-elected members.

The "sacrifice days" were rigorously observed by the
Nairobi population with only three men reported for break-
ing boycott rules one who smoked and two who beat him
up when they caught him at it (violence). The poor fellow
later complained that he had not learned that Tom Mboya
had asked some people not to smoke cigarettes. The African-
elected members kept the boycott rules themselves by walk-
ing to the courts followed by cheering crowds, and Tom
Mboya appeared on the first day in Ghana robes and an
American T shirt.

Contributions to the defense fund flowed in from Britain,
the American trade unions, and from African nationalists
in Zanzibar and Tanganyika.

Within a week the magistrate had dismissed the charge of
conspiring against the electoral ordinance, but he convicted
on the grounds that the words "stooges, quislings and black
Europeans" were defamatory. Fines were imposed of 75
each but these were more than adequately covered by the
trial fund and a few months later the Kenya members were
able to make a handsome contribution to the fund of Mr.
Julius Nyerere who was being charged in the neighboring
territory of Tanganyika for libeling a district commissioner.

The government had won its case, but the political victory
had undoubtedly gone to the African members. They had
won martyrdom without actually having to go to prison.
Torn Mboya had done particularly well out of the trial. He
had used his party machine to organize the boycott days
that had been an unqualified success, and he had shown
himself to the Nairobi masses as the main victim of the
government's prosecution.

His dislike of the "specially elected members" grew as a
result of the trial. He saw the Africans who accepted the
seats as betraying the main cause of African nationalism.

160

Young Man of New Africa

The government could now hold them up to the as

moderates, reasonable men, and good boysan to

the extremist elected members. Mboya never had a
word to say for any of the specially elected members either
publicly or privately. He thought it impossible that any of
them could be acting on any disinterested motives. He felt
they had gone over to the government side for what they
could gain. Mr. Musa Amalemba just wanted to earn a
housing Minister's salary, Wanyutu Wawera had consist-
ently seen that his interests lay with being a good govern-
ment supporter, and even the liberal-minded John Muchura,
a solid and well-meaning conservative, was suspected by Tom
Mboya of fishing for a ministry.

Mboya could not be expected to like specially elected
members, but his personal opposition to them was deter-
mined by his own psychology; his impatience with people
who hinder the cause which he holds so dearly.

Following their immediate rejection of the Lennox-Boyd
Constitution in May 1958, the African members continued
to campaign for further constitutional changes and for a
round-table conference despite the chief secretary's warning
that they were "butting their heads against a wall" Parallel
pressure was brought to have the emergency regulations
brought to an end. They were first imposed on the Kikuyu,
Embu, and Mem tribes in 1952, at the beginning of the
Mau Mau rebellion, and covered practically every aspect of
everyday life. Mboya continually brought up the grievances
of the Kikuyu in legislative council, though his champion-
ship was not so urgently needed once Dr. Kiano was re-
turned as their representative.

The emergency brought severe hardship on the Kikuyu.
They all had to carry special passbooks. They needed move-
ment passes to go outside their local districts. They were
moved from their scattered homesteads and forced to live
in villages under the control of chiefs and headmen with

161

TOM MBOYA

arbitrary powers of search and arrest. Forty days unpaid
communal labor a year was imposed on all able-bodied tribes-
men during the emergency. Mboya spent much time deal-
ing with the problems of the Kikuyu under these laws.
Africans have criticized him for caring more for the Kilcuyu
tribe than he did for his own, and later for favoring Kikuyu
when choosing candidates for American scholarships. But
Mboya says he was acting as a national leader and not con-
sidering tribal differences. He helped the Kikuyu specially
during the emergency because they had the greatest need.

His own standing in Nairobi was indicated by the number
of Kikuyu who went straight to him rather than to their
local Kikuyu representatives. Mboya also had Kikuyu mem-
bers in the PGP including the party's general secretary,
Joseph Mathenge.

The governor of Kenya strongly resisted African pressure
to end the emergency on the grounds that another subver-
sive society called KKM (Kiama Kia Muingi, the Assembly
of the People) had grown up in place of Mau Mau. It was
typical of the traditional Kikuyu secret societies and had
oathing ceremonies of a generally anti-European nature.

During 1958 Mboya was still trying to establish himself
as leader of African opposition to government. Even after
the trial of the African-elected members he had still not
become the symbol of African nationalism.

He had troubles in his own political party in Nairobi and
had to strengthen the constitution. He had been personally
challenged by M. D. Odinga, the editor of his party news-
paper. Two African-elected members, Mr. Daniel Arap Moi
and the "philosopher-politician" Mr. T. Towett, had decided
to form their own tribal political parties and to draw their
strength from their home districts, to be able to follow a
more independent line in the legislative council.

But the most important challenge of all that shook
Mboya's position was not of his making. An all-out press

162

Young Man of New Africa

war had started between three other elected members,
Mr. Oginga-Odlnga OB one side and Dr. Klano and
Nyagah on the other, over a hasty remark by Odinga In the
legislative council that "Kenyatta was the leader of the
African people/' This remark caused a sensation in Kenya
at the time. The people of Kenya were trying hard to forget
the Mao Mau episode and Kenyatta was unfortunately still
identified with Mau Mau. Kenyatta had not revealed his
new self. No one kuew what he was actually thinking, nor
did they imagine how calm and statesmanlike he would be
after detention. Thus Odlnga's statement seemed very rash
at the time. But it was also a statement calculated to put
Mboya in a difficult position.

If Mboya supported Klano and said that he did not think
Kenyatta was still an African leader, he would be betraying
a man whom he still considered innocent of Man Man
connections; if he spoke in favor of Odinga he would be
accused of fostering the "Mau Mau culf ' and would be
helping the very man who was challenging his leadership.
If he remained silent he would be accused of being unable
to lead and of losing his grip; whatever he said he would
have to take sides and damage African unity.

While he hesitated the European Sunday Post delivered
the most crushing press attack on him that he had ever ex-
perienced, under the headline, YOUNG MAN ON A
TIGER (the tiger being African nationalism). Everything
was scored against him; the troubles In his own party, the
quarrels among the elected members, his lack of leadership,
his hesitation.

The Sunday Post's attack reached its goal in a way that
no personal attack on him had done before. In the past the
settlers* abuse of Mboya and African nationalism, in one
and the same breath, had only identified the two and rallied
the people to their leader; but the Sunday Post was quoting
Oginga-Odinga saying that Kenyatta was the real leader.

TOM MBOYA

M. D. Odloga's press statement declaring that Mboya was
a dictator was also quoted: "Tower Is more precious to him
than the African cause . . . he cannot learn to be firm. At
one moment he says w,e are not ready for independence, but
when the people angrily protest against such stupidity he
yells at the top of his voice saying he never uttered such a
thing. He supports land consolidation one minute, the next
he says he has not made up his mind about the whole
affair/'

"Last week at Makadara Hall/* wrote the Sunday Post
"a speaker described Kenyatta as leader of the African people
and Mboya, sitting on the platform, said nothing/'

It was the most disappointing period of Mr. Mboya's
career. He was momentarily paralyzed. The accumulation of
events that were largely outside his control were too much
for him, but as he had been drawn into the Kenyatta con-
troversy he was determined to make the best of it. His
article on the Kenyatta question in the East African Stand-
ard showed the way he could rise to the challenge of events:

"Despite the many rumors and criticisms that have been lev-
eled against me in the past few weeks," he wrote, "I have not
seen fit to make any statements since I believed that our
unity was more important than my personal position.

"I feel that some of the more recent newspaper articles are
deliberately being used for malicious propaganda to confuse
Africans. . . .

"For the past five years I have consistently pleaded for the
immediate release or trial of all Africans detained under
emergency regulations. I have condemned and still con-
demn the policy of detention without a trial.

"As regards Kenyatta I think it is necessary to take a
lesson from history. In many similar circumstances, persons
who have been condemned by alien or imperialist govern-
ments have been hailed as national heroes. The names of
such persons have lived and shall live and rank among the
greatest leaders in many countries. When Kenya's history is

164

Young Man of New Africa

written, not only will Kenyatta's name be mentioned.,
but any accurate record must include the fact he was
the pioneer in the African straggle . ,

"The question of Kenyatta's leadership is not at issue at
all. The immediate question is whether or not he will be set
free."

This was the essence of Mboya's answer to the Kenyatta
question; it was a clever mixture of sincerity and ambiguity.
When he wrote "the question of Kenyatta's leadership is not
at issue at all/' what did he mean? In private conversations
he said that the question did not arise because Kenyatta was
still detained., but this was just what Odinga and Kiano were
arguing about. Mboya had not answered the real challenge,
but he had deflected It. He posed a question to the African-
elected members in return: "Are you going to let this get in
the way of your own unity?"

As Mboya forecast, Kenyatta's name became ever more
clearly written in the minds of Africans as "pioneer of the
straggle." This was not because the Africans endorsed Mau
Mau; on the contrary, it was because they found it less and
less credible that Kenyatta had been associated with violence,

Events had piled up strongly against Mboya toward the
end of 1958. He had reached the low watermark in his
career, but as the year ended the tide began to ran strongly
in his favor. It was Mboya and his political party who formed
the vanguard of African nationalism from that time on-
ward. It soon became involved in a series of political cases
where the Kenya government tried to curb the young na-
tionalist party.

In September 1958 a minor demonstration was staged
against the visit of Sir Roy Welensky to Kenya. Placards
with DISSOLVE FEDERATION and GO BACK, ROY
appeared. The demonstrators were charged with breach of
peace but later acquitted.

Shortly afterward a group of party members was caught

165

TOM MBOYA

in the early hours of the morning in a location house, sing-
ing songs in praise of Tom Mboya and Jomo Kenyatta. The
police broke in and brought the songfest to an end. Rein-
forcements were called and the men. were pushed out of the
house and beaten with batons before being arrested. The
next day a technical charge was brought against them of not
having their identity cards. Later this was amended to the
charge of failing to produce identity cards, as some of the
men in the cells had their cards with them all the time.

Seven men and one woman appeared in court with braises
which they said had been caused by police batons. A govern-
ment doctor confirmed that they had braises "consistent
with their being beaten by batons."

The magistrate could either believe the defense story, that
the police had been angered by the songs praising Kenyatta
and had beaten them ? thinking up a charge the next day, or
he could have believed the police story that the men had
refused to produce their identity cards when asked, and had
resisted arrest so that "some force" had to be used.

The magistrate believed the two European police officers
for he saw "no reason why they should have lied/' He dis-
believed eight defense witnesses, including Tom Mboya, be-
cause they were "all members or sympathizers with the same
political party and therefore biased/' Mboya in his own evi-
dence said that one of the European officers had told him
that the men had been arrested for "singing Kenyatta
hymns," and that he had made no mention of identity cards
when Mboya had made inquiries the day after the arrests,

The Nairobi Africans had a name for the seven men who
were given a three-months' jail sentence. They called them
the "UHURU 7" (Freedom 7).

The climax to a series of political cases against Tom
Mboya's party came on the morning of March 6, 1959. In
the dark hours shortly before dawn, police officers hammered
OB Tom Mboya's door while he was still asleep. They pre-
166

Young Man of New Africa

sented a search warrant and began to Inspect every comer
of his house. Tom Mboya sat on a stool and watched them
with bleary-eyed astonishment as they examined even* shelf^
ransacked all drawers, and turned back the chair covers in
an effort to find documents and papers.

It took the police two hours to search his tiny house.
"They told me they had reason to believe I had proscribed
documents and literature and other stuff relating to terrorist
activities/' said Mboya. "I just sat and watched them turning
the place upside down."

About 6 A.M. the news came to him that Omolo Agar ?
the organizing secretary of the PCP y had been arrested.
Then came reports of other party leaders and members who
had been taken from their homes in the night.

This was the blow against his party that he had long
expected and feared. He wondered whether his time had
not come to join the other nationalist leaders like Nknimah,
Nehru, Kenyatta, Makarios, and Luthuli, in prison.

Arrests and searches were going on simultaneously all over
Kenya. Omolo Agar was detained at a hotel in Eldoret,
two hundred miles north of Nairobi, while his father's house
in Nyanza was searched. Books and papers were taken away
by the police at the same time as they were being taken
from the Nairobi house of J. M. Oyangi, the party propa-
ganda secretary.

Mboya was taken straight from his home to his party
offices where desks and filing cabinets were searched and all
papers that the police thought might lead to a case of
sedition were removed.

By March 7, 1959, thirty-nine Africans had been arrested
the largest batch since the Mau Mau emergency and
practically every leader of Mboya's party had been arrested
and either detained with the Mau Mau or restricted to the
confines of his home village.

The government's authority for its sudden action was the

167

TOM MBOYA

emergency law passed six years earlier to combat Mau
Mau. When the emergency was first introduced in 1953 the
governor had said that "there was no intention of penalizing
anyone for his political views/' By March 7, 1959, the
remark had worn rather thin. Of the thirty-nine arrested
for political olenses only two were later given a chance of
a fair trial.

Omolo Agar was convicted almost entirely on notes he
had made as a student in India some three years before,
which contained reference to training on civil defense, and
details on how to make a homemade bomb ? called a Molotov
Cocktail. It is possible that Agar ? a gentle, polite-mannered
Economics BA, had once toyed with the idea of rev-
olution, but the evidence against J. M. Oyangi, the party
propaganda secretary ? was largely based on a report some-
one had sent him from the Afro-Asian People's Conference
of 1957. Oyangi had not written the report, nor had he
anything to do with the conference, but he was guilty of
keeping a banned document The result? Nine months in
prison.

A strange thing about these arrests is that they took
place in Kenya only a few days after the Nyasaland emer-
gency was declared. Some of the people who were arrested
like Joseph Mathenge, the party general secretary, were
asked questions to establish a connection between the Kenya
nationalists and the Nyasaland uprising. Ministers in the
Rhodesian Federation were claiming that the All African
People's Conference at Accra had tried to foster an anti-
white movement through the length and breadth of colo-
nial Africa. At the same time the Kenya police were inter-
rogating PGP leaders on the subject. It is clear that the
police were looking for widespread Pan African subversion.
This would explain the seemingly haphazard arrests in Kenya.

If the Kenya government had wanted to arrest Mboya
as well it could undoubtedly have done so ? and later jus-

168

A happy scene at one of
the political meetings or-
ganized by Tom Mboya
(left) and Dr. Kiano
(center) as Kikuyu women
wrapped in their tradi-
tional kerchiefs and shawls
rush forward to shake their
leaders' hands.

[5]

After a political meeting Tom
Mboya is chaired away on the
shoulders of enthusiastic sup-
porters. He has always had the
common touch. Direct appeal to
the mass of voters.

Political meetings were se-
verly restricted in Kenya
during the emergency
which followed Mau Mau ?
but generally these restric-
tions were eased. Here
Mboya is holding one of
the first meetings in the
packed Nairobi African
football stadium.

Above, The author caught
this momentary grin on the
face of Tom Mboya during
his Election Eve rally-an
unusually serious occasion
in February 1961. A small
airplane trailing the slogan
VOTE TOM NDEGE
MBOYA had just flown
over the Nairobi African
Stadium where the meet-
ing was taking place.

[6]

Left, One or two hecklers
disturbed the peace at the
election eve rally and
Mboya spoke sternly to
them and to the rowdies
who were ejecting them by
force from the stadium.

Above left, The only time the author found he could have proper interviews with
Tom Mboya was in the early hours of the morning. Mboya would be up long before
dawn, sitting in his dressing gown in his tiny house in the African area of Nairobi.
His desk was always cluttered with papers. Until he got his dictaphone in the U.S.
all his writing would be done laboriously in long hand.

Above right, Mr. A. 0. Oginga-Odinga in the beaded cap has always been one of
Kenya's most colorful and flamboyant African leaders. He is worshiped in his home
areas Central Nyanza and he led the campaign for the release of Jomo Kenya tta.

[7]

Below left, Tom Mboya has had the chance of meeting many world statesmen in
his varied career. Here he is seen with visiting officials from the United Nations.
From Jeft to right, Dr. G. Kiano, Dr. Ralph Bunche, Tom Mboya, and the late
Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjold.

Below right, During the elections of February 1961 Mboya's electoral symbol was
the airplane. Knowing the right touch for the Nairobi electorate he had a model
plane carried aloft at all his political meetings.

Tom Mboya has a strangely elusive face. Sometimes his eyes can be playful and
innocent, at others his lids close to give a stare of scorn. Mboya is a logical and
reasonable man but many colleagues claim that he is difficult to work with.

[8]

Young Man of New Africa

tified itself by finding something in the documents it re-
moved from his house or or from the of
recordings that it had made at his political in
the past. A speech that Mboya made after the of his
part)* members could have been taken as seditious. He gave
the government other opportunities later when he con-
demned the death of the eleven Man Man detainees at
Hola as cold-blooded murder for which the government
should be held responsible^ but no action was taken against
him personally.

On both these occasions Mboya answered his more ex-
treme African critics who claim that he is not courageous
enough to go to prison for his political beliefs. They say
that he will use all the other weapons in the nationalist
armory except those that might put him in the physical
discomfort of a prison cell. Evidence for this view is
largely based on the fact that Mboya was not arrested at
the same time as his lieutenants. But he has several times
made speeches when he has been courting arrest.

After one such speech the Kenya Weekly News com-
mented: "Let us realize the folly of allowing agitators to
use the ways and institutions of democracy to destroy any
prospect of its survival in Africa/ 7

The Kenya Weekly News wanted Mboya to shut up. It
was also hinting that it wanted the government to shut him
up.

If the Kenya government had really wanted to be tough
with him it could have imprisoned him, but it must have
been realized, that Mboya, for all his fighting talk, was not
a man of violence, and it would certainly not be a sensible
policy to hand him the martyr's crown of imprisonment

169

Chapter

AFRICA'S NUMBER ONE SALESMAN

Of all the African nationalist leaders south of the Sahara,
Mboya is probably the one who has associated himself
closest with the United States of America. To most
Americans this must appear as a natural course for any
enlightened African leader, but Mboya's American alliance
has not been entirely a question of the gracious acceptance
of American dollars, or the plaudits of the crowds at Car-
negie Hall in New York; it has meant that Mboya has
exposed himself to the persistent and bitter criticism of
the more militant elements on the African continent.

Any politician in Africa who associates himself as closely
with the United States as Mboya is certain to be accused
of departing from the ideal of positive neutralism in the
East-West conflict. This criticism comes from other Af-
rican countries and leaders and from inside Kenya itself. It
takes no account of Mboya's attempts in the United States
to influence opinion in favor of the African continent. It

170

Young Man of New Africa

draws no distinction between the Mboya who to the

United States as a friendly critic and the who

the policy of the United States government in return for

United States financial aid.

The militants in Africa are particularly critical of Mboya's
faithful association with the 1CFTU, which is generally con-
sidered to be a trades union organization controlled by Ameri-
can money. But despite everything and despite very definite
disagreement with the United States on specific issues,
Mboya has remained a loyal friend. He has frequently visited
the United States and has taken all the help that Americans
have been able to give him in advancing the cause of Kenya
nationalism. An American journalist once described Mboya
as "Africa's number one salesman, over here.**

His first visit to the United States was in the summer of
1956 after his year of study at Oxford University, and he
has been keen to strengthen his ties with the American
people and American power ever since.

It was the American Committee on Africa (ACOA)
an organization which has always played a leading role in
helping Africa to advance itself politicallywhich spon-
sored his first tour and put him in touch with organizations
and individuals who were deeply concerned with African
problems.

At the time the American press was just beginning to
take a keen interest in Africa and Mboya rapidly became
news. The handsome young man "speaking softly in an
Oxford accent" and "the best of an intellectual bull ses-
sion" 1 became the subject of much favorable comment,
though Robert Ruark, whose best seller Something of Value,
an epic novel on Man Mau, described Mboya as a "tinpot
politico" and developed the theme in successive newspaper
columns.

1 This information and much more in this chapter comes fiom Africa
published by the American Committee on Africa.

171

TOM MBOYA

Mboya spent much of his 1956 tour in discussion with
American trade union leaders and officials, for his chief In-
terest In Kenya was still trades onions rather than pure
politics. He tried to Impress on the American unions the
great need In Africa for financial help. His success can be
measured by the result $35,000 to build a new head-
quarters for the Kenya Federation of Labour from the Ameri-
can AFL-CIO.

Two and a half years later, In April 1959, he was back
on a marathon tour In the United States once again. This
time It was to launch the African Freedom Day celebrations
at New York's Carnegie Hall and to work tirelessly to get
money from America for Kenya student scholarships. He
had changed a lot from the young trades unionist who had
visited America In 1956. His reputation had grown so much
in the meantime that he had become one of the best-known
African leaders on the continent after Kwame Nkrumah of
Ghana.

His Pan African honors had made news before him. He
had just been made chairman of the All African People's
Conference in Accra. 2 This organization had become the
most powerful Pan African organization In Africa and Mboya
had been elected chairman of the conference standing com-
mittee.

He had also become chairman of the southern, central,
and eastern regions of the ICFTU in Africa. Attention had
also been called to his Kenya leadership, British and Ameri-
can magazines had carried his photograph speaking to African
crowds and his position In the capital of Kenya had made
him the inevitable target of all American journalists. If the

2 The All African People's Conference (AAPC) met in Accra in December
1958. It was the first Pan African conference on African soil but in the
tradition of a long line of Pan African conferences going right back to the
first inspired by the American Negro leader Dr. W. E B. Du Bois in 1919.
All nationalist organizations in Africa were invited. The most important
resolution called for the rapid liberation of Africa from colonialism which
caused much resentment in the white-dominated colonies of Africa.

172

Young Man of New Africa

average American had heard of any African politicians at the
time, then Mboya was probably one of them.

By April 1959 he was definitely a celebrity and the Amer-
icans treated him like one. His hosts in the American
Committee on Africa (ACOA) arranged a hectic tour.

He journeyed backward and forward across the United
States in five weeks of brisk activity New York (April 8-11),
Washington (April 12-14), New York again (April 15-16),
Boston (April 17-18), Philadelphia (April 20), Pittsburgh
(April 21-22), Detroit (23-24), Chicago (April 25-28),
Minneapolis (April 29-30) and then on to the West Coast to
San Francisco and Los Angeles. He even found time to visit
Miami.

The ACOA arranged so many lectures that they lost
count of the number he actually gave it was approximately
one hundred. Almost all his meetings were packed to ca-
pacity. Thousands were turned away at the Carnegie Hall
where people had to pay to hear him speak, and a thousand
more from a meeting in Detroit. The demand to meet
him exceeded the organizers most ambitious plans and
often last-minute switches had to be made from smaller to
larger halls to accommodate the crowds that arrived.

When he was not speaking to massive audiences, or do-
ing TV or radio programs, he spent his time giving inter-
views to famous personalities and journalists and his hotel
rooms were always crowded with friends and African stu-
dents. Luckily he is the land of person that demands little
privacy and regards the invasions of well-wishers with good-
natured tolerance.

During the tour he showed clearly that he is a man of
tireless energy. In America he could easily have pleaded
that his schedule was too tight, and that excuses should
be made at his less-important engagements, but he delighted
his sponsors by his determination to do everything that was
asked of him. "He met all commitments arranged for him

TOM MBOYA

despite a valid temptation to %eg oi ? because of tiredness
or the relative unimportance of an engagement made long
ago/" wrote George Hauser,

He revealed a surprising African toughness in face of the
pressures and pace of the program that was thrust on him.
He rose to the grueling challenge because there is some-
thing in his character that will not let a triviality like physical
tiredness get in the way of a successful tour, or delay him
in achieving the results he wanted in America.

This determination, coupled with his youth and health,
has considerably helped him in his political life. I have
often interviewed him at his house at 7 A.M. (it is the
only time that you can get him to talk at length) and
however early I have called at his house I have never found
him in bed. He is always up working on piles of corre-
spondence in his large untidy writing. His routine is bed
after midnight and up again just after 6 o'clock, writing his
letters by hand or (after his American tour) talking into
a midget Dictaphone he acquired in the United States.

He is often visibly tired. The mask of an exhausted man
shows even on his round black face after timeless African
discussions lasting all through the night, but he is reluc-
tant to admit his fatigue or to sacrifice a promised social
occasion because of it.

During his tour he met the then Vice-President Richard
M. Nixon at the Capitol in Washington and Mboya took
warmly to him, in the way that he does to a person he
knows is as good a man as he, or better. He translated his
own warm feeling for Nixon into political language: "I was
impressed by the Vice-President's understanding of the im-
plications of changes taking place in Africa today, and his
awareness that changes require constant and careful con-
sideration." Mboya was speaking as the pragmatist, glad
that Nixon was willing to listen to his long and reasoned
argument and as the political realist who knew that his host

Young Man of New Africa

would have to consider the rising force of African national-
ism.

He repeated points to Nixon that he had else-

where in public during his American tour. He was asking
the United States to be logical in its policies and not to
condemn the Russians in Hungary unless they were also
prepared to condemn French colonial policy in Algeria and
the racial policies of South Africa. He also made the point
that America's own racial problems rob her of the moral
leadership that she should undoubtedly have in the free
world.

During his tour Mboya played continually on the Ameri-
cans fear of Communism spreading to Africa. His simple
answer was that everything should be done to strengthen the
democratic alternatives to Communism in Africa. This argu-
ment was put in a more subtle form to Vice-President
Nixon, and Mboya came away from the interview saying
that he had "expressed a sympathetic attitude toward African
aspirations/'

The discussions had ran over an hour much longer than
was originally intended, and Mboya was late for an address
he had to give at Howard University, the Negro college
in Washington, so Vice-President Nixon took him through
the streets of the nation's capital to the meeting in his own
private limousine.

Some time later a conversation was overheard between
the Vice-President and Walter Reuthefs brother Victor, also
a union leader, in which Nixon said that he was "impressed
with Mboya's maturity and broad understanding of world
affairs." Nixon's use of the word "maturity" is significant,
for it contrasts strangely with the view of top civil servants
and white members of the Kenya government who criticized
Mboya for "youth and immaturity/' It illustrates the dif-
ferent views that can be taken in different political envi-
ronments, and shows how often the word "immaturity" is

17?

TOM MBOYA

used In a purely emotive and pejorative sense. The Kenya
officials think of Mboya as someone who criticizes from
the outside and has no real grasp of the practical dif-
ficulties of government, but the remarks of men like Richard
M. Nixon and others who take the long view of Kenya,
show that this is a one-sided judgment. And Mboya has
always had an intuitive political sense that is at least a
partial substitute for practical experience in government,

Mboya found he got on well with ordinary Americans.
He found them less stiff and formal and more enthusiastic
than the British. He liked their generosity and hospitality
and on the 1959 and subsequent tours he found that they
had learned more about Africa and relied less on pro-
black emotions when discussing problems with him. When
Mboya is not on his own subject of politics he has an
almost goggle-eyed naivet6 about some of the mechanical
wonders of American civilization. American art and lit-
erature is not personally appreciated by him and his cultural
enthusiasms will seldom go further than a good American
movie or a pile of Harry Belafonte's records. He has no
real feeling for Negro jazz or for American progressive or
modern jazz. He is a practical man, a man of acute in-
tellectual perception but without aesthetic sense ? without
poetry. Outside politics the thing that impressed him most
in America was Miami's beach which he described as "fan-
tastic."

Mboya regards the American press with mixed emotions.
On one occasion he remarked that the press was "America's
greatest enemy." He was frequently disturbed by the sen-
sational and inaccurate reports in American news mag-
azines and yet he realized that the honest and vigorous
American journalism has often done great good to the Af-
rican cause. An issue of Time which featured Mboya on
the cover increased the circulation of the magazine in

Young Man of New Africa

Nairobi, where newspaper circulations are never very high ?
by three thousand copies*

Mboya's friendship with the United States is projected
into his close association with the ICFTU where American
unions play such an important part There have been
serious wrangles in the international body about their at-
titude to African unions, and Mboya has been under pressure
to join an African congress of unions instead, but he has been
reluctant to throw over his international connections.

The first Africa Freedom Day celebrations were launched
at New YorFs Carnegie Hall on April 15, 1959, largely
as the result of Mboya's initiative. His decision was met
with severe criticism. There were members of the All Af-
rican People's Conference standing committee who felt that
Mboya might be becoming a tool of American policy. He
was also criticized by British Africanists who felt that
Africa Freedom Day should have been launched by a mass
rally in Trafalgar Square.

His general answer to his British critics was that in
England he would have been confined to the few people
who were interested in Africa, whereas a big rally in the
United States would create the impression of solid American
backing for the African cause.

In the United States he had the chance of reaching the
ear of top American leaders who could privately sympathize
with the African cause without publicly offending their
British allies. He could continually remind them not to
forget their anti-colonial history nor the Communist threat
that they feared so much. When he spoke to American trade
unionists his desire to persuade was combined with polit-
ical poetry:

Today's needs call for a rededication to those principles
that drove your ancestors to fight for freedom, human rights
and justice. Maybe these words have ceased to have a mean-
ing because you have had so much of them that you take

TOM MBOYA

them for granted, and have forgotten that there are millions
of people throughout the world who don't know the mean-
ing of freedom, who don't know the meaning of prosperity,
who have never seen a pair of shoes in their lives or even
a blanket.

If the United States fails, the free world will fail. Our
struggle is a simple one, but it is a world struggle. We are
fighting for political freedom, for economic opportunity and
for human dignity. We believe that you stand for the same
thing.

After his 1959 tour Mboya brought back considerable
financial aid for African scholarships. Some money was
granted directly, places were offered in various American
universities which were prepared to advance tuition fees.
American families also offered to accommodate African stu-
dents who had already found places at universities.

The most serious problem was to meet the cost of the
students' passages to America. This was finally solved by
a plan worked out by Mboya and the wealthy William X.
Scheinman, a keen believer in African nationalism with a
passion for Kenya.

William Scheinman was not many years older than Mboya
and was the right kind of person to help him financially.
He was head of Arnav industries, a firm manufacturing
hydraulic components for use in aircraft. He was determined
to do what he could to help Kenya students.

Other Africans who have been given the luxurious hos-
pitality of Scheinman's vast mansion with its built-in swim-
ming pool are astonished at his particular desire to help
Kenyans and this is largely as a result of the friendship he
has formed with Mboya. He became president of the Af-
rican-American Students Foundation, the body which was
largely concerned with the students' airlifts.

Scheinman claims that the idea of the students' airlift
was exclusively Tom Mboya's. Between them Mboya and

Young Man of New Africa

Scheinman put the scheme for a students 9 airlift into effect
Basically the idea was to ind ways and to get a

number of Kenya students into American universities. There
were several problems. First, the student had to admis-
sion to an American university. Then the university would
generally provide board and tuition free, but the student
would have to show that he had sufficient funds to meet ad-
ditional expenses during his courses ia the United States.
Finally, he had to be flown by air from Kenya.

It was the question of transportation which Mboya and
Scheinman considered the most important. Thus in 1959
apart from a few others who had gone earlierthe first
plane was chartered and arrived at Nairobi to iy those
students to America who had made the necessary arrange-
ments to enter American universities.

Mboya felt that the average student, who had been given
a scholarship covering his board and tuition fees, would
have to find an extra $600 to meet expenses during a three-
year stay in the United States* This usually meant bor-
rowing from parents and relatives, pressing AJErican district
councils for loans and even trudging the Nairobi streets
to beg donations from offices, businesses, and shops.

Generally the Asian businessmen were most friendly and
sympathetic with the young African's wishes. And so the
student would call on the shops, stores, and bazaars and
gradually the total of the contributions would grow on the
grubby piece of paper which he circulated.

September 1959 saw Kenya's fast main students' airlift,
though Mboya had arranged for some students to go to
America between 1956 and 1958. Eighty-one students were
fidgeting round their luggage at Nairobi airport nervously
joking and laughing as their turn came for their 'first voyage
overseas. African-elected members came to see them off,
complete with fly whislcs, beaded caps, and tribal cloaks.

179

TOM MBOYA

They were in a party mood, warning their young admirers
not to return to Kenya until they were fully qualified.

Dr. Kiano draped the doctorate robes he had acquired
at the University of California over a young student, clapped
a mortar board on his head and told him not to set foot
in the country again until he was similarly qualified.

As it grew dark Mboya climbed the steps of the airplane
and spoke to his flock in the tones of an elderly head-
master. Flash bulbs popped. A call for "Uhuru" and the
airlift was under way.

It was largely Mboya's own efforts and initiative which had
allowed these eighty-one students the opportunity of a uni-
versity education. He helped and assisted another forty dur-
ing the year who could arrange their own methods of trans-
port. These young boys and girls will have an important
part to play in the future of Kenya. They will help meet
Kenya's overwhelming need for trained men when the
country becomes independent.

Compared with Mboya's 120 scholarships in 1959, the
Kenya government gave a total of 32. The same govern-
ment, whose ministers continually accused Mboya of irrespon-
sibility, first started giving African scholarships for overseas
education after World War II. In 1949, two Africans were
helped with bursaries; in 1951 there were three more; in
1954, twelve; and in 1958 the government spent 12,180
($34,104) on 32 bursaries. To be fair to the government it
should be indicated that large numbers of students were be-
ing sent to the University College of East Africa at Makerere,
Uganda, and to the Royal Technical College in Nairobi, but
only 32 were being assisted to overseas studies and many of
these were nurses and teachers and students not doing uni-
versity degrees. Mboya and Scheinman thus helped more stu-
dents to go to the United States than the Kenya government
sent abroad in a whole year. They also assisted more students

180

Young Man of New Africa

to go to America than the American did In its

entire program for the African continent in 1960.

These figures support Mboya's view that Af-

ricans are not being trained fast enough for independence.
But he has not been satisfied with destractiYe criticism and
has shown that an amateur can do more than the
resources of the state.

A one-day conference was held in New York on the
subject of education in East Africa with representatives
from a number of foundations and similar organizations in
attendance. For Mboya was the intensely worrying and
dramatic business of raising enough money to organize the
enlarged airlift. The new university year was only three
months away. Some 250 students from East and Central
Africa had made arrangements to go to the United States,
but $100,000 was needed to fly them over.

Between November 1959 and July 1960 the African-Ameri-
can Students Foundation had made repeated attempts to
get the U. S. State Department to help with the students'
finance. Particular appeals had been made by William Schein-
man, Jackie Robinson, and Frank Montero. Vice-President
Richard M. Nixon had himself been asked to use his influ-
ence, but all to no avail After the meeting of representatives
from various foundations on July 25 there was still only one
organization which was thinking of giving practical help,
that was the Joseph P. Kennedy, Jr., Foundation which had
promised to contribute at least $5000. The part which the
then Senator John F. Kennedy played in these events is ex-
plained later, but it is important to stress here that Washing-
ton showed no interest in helping with the students* airlifts
until it was informed that the Kennedy Foundation was
thinking of putting up the money.

It was as a result of this visit to the United States that
Mboya and Scheinman managed to organize the second
students' airlift for the fall of 1960. This time 287 students

181

TOM MBOYA

went to the United States In four chartered planes. By 1961
there were estimated to be eight hundred Kenya students in
the United States. Mboya had also brought other students in
from other East African and Central African countries.

Numerous criticisms have been made of the students'
airlift both in Kenya and in the United States. In Kenya
the claim has been that Mboya and his colleagues have
selected students for scholarships with a preference for their
own party political supporters. One prominent Kenya leader
said: "I want to see that students' funds are administered by
people interested in Kenya's development and not by politi-
cians who want votes/*

In September 1960 a major controversy on this issue
exploded in the correspondence columns of the Kenya
papers. The Minister for Education, Mr. W. A. C. Mathieson,
complained that the Kenya Education Department (a govern-
ment body) had not been asked for its assistance in selecting
students. As a result students had inadequate academic
standards and schools and sub-professions were deprived of
staff who were whisked away to America.

Mboya countered with characteristic vigor. He claimed
that it was the United States universities which selected
students and determined academic standards. His function
was to raise money on their behalf, introduce them to Ameri-
can families and to airlift them to the United States.

To those who accused him of political nepotism, he said
that he had assisted students entirely on their merits. They
had often been the supporters of other political parties. Fi-
nally, if his political opponents were so aggrieved by this
alleged nepotism, why had they done nothing for their own
followers themselves?

As for the complaints from the Kenya Education De-
partment, Mboya wrote: "Our view is that self-help pro-
grams must be encouraged among Africans and we need no
government referees to tell us what to do or how to do it."

182

Young Man of New Africa

If the Kenya government had done a more for

students on its own initiative, it would surely
in a stronger position to meet this characteristically Af-
rican nationalist argument. As it was they no an-
swer.

Further complaints about Mboya's scheme came from
the United States itself. It was claimed that of the eighty-
one students airlifted in 1959? sixty had become indigent
by the end of the first year of their three-year course. They
then turned to the Kenya government requesting between
$500 and $1500 each, a total of some $50,000. Moreover
many of the students were dissatisfied with the courses
which they were taking. Only eight students of the first
eighty-one were considered by the Kenya Education De-
partment to be properly qualified and did well in good
colleges.

The criticism of Mboya's schemes on the grounds of
political and tribal discrimination holds no water. Similarly
the complaints by the Kenya Education Department that
they were not consulted, cannot be taken seriously; for what
African nationalist wants a colonial government department
to organize a scheme that he has devised? But Mboya's
friends did have a point in saying that he had not set up
a sufficiently independent body to help him with the selection
of students.

Mboya's part as he has indicated was to provide the
students with much-needed funds, but the money he raised
should have been given to an entirely independent body
which would have selected the students to be airlifted on
the basis of merit and merit alone. Such a body would
not only have avoided the accusation of political discrimi-
nation but would have ensured that the students had the
correct academic standards.

It was toward the end of the 1960 trip that Mboya
flew to Hyannis Port, Massachusetts, and saw the then Sen-

TOM MBOYA

ator John F. Kennedy. He was accompanied by William
Scheinman. It was at this time that the idea was discussed
of getting a contribution from the Kennedy Foundation in
order to help with future airlifts. The offer of $100,000 came
just before an official offer from the State Department.

It was widely believed that Kennedy had made a shrewd
political move by giving his support to this grant, but it
should be pointed out that when the grant was first made
Kennedy himself had specifically requested that the offer
should be kept secret in order not to make a political issue
of it. Undoubtedly Kennedy saw a grant of this nature
was justified on its own merits, but he must have seen that
the news would leak out and be favorable to him politically.
It must also have influenced a number of American Negroes
when they came to vote in the presidential election which
followed. The loan would probably have been made on
merit alone, but it also happened to be politically opportune.

Mboya had had one brief meeting with Kennedy once
before in 1959, but in 1960 he had the chance of an hour
and a half meeting in which most of the time was taken
discussing the students' airlift. Mboya said afterward: "I
found him sincere, forward-looking, and I have been impressed
by his statements since he has become President. I hope
he will carry out the wishes of the world by bringing the
conflict between East and West to an end. I also hope that
he will see that the big powers adopt a more realistic approach
toward the underdeveloped countries of the world."

Mboya visited the North American continent again in
the spring of 1961. First he went to Canada where he had
talks with the Canadian Prime Minister John Diefenbaker
whom he found "most interested in the African point of
view in Kenya affairs/' He arrived in New York on April 15
and on to Washington the next day where he had break-
fast with Chester Bowles.

During the trip he met Kenneth Kaunda, the African

Young Man of New Africd

leader from Northern Rhodesia, who was

the same kind of tour in the States. Both he and

spoke at the Africa Freedom Day rally held at Hunter

College in New York.

Mboya was now so well-known in the United States
he was being treated both as an old guest and a special
friend. Once again he was working to make sure the stu-
dents' airlift would be a success and he was fulfilling en-
gagements on behalf of his old ally the American Com-
mittee on Africa. This time he and Kenneth Kaunda had
a chance to meet John Kennedy, by now President of the
United States. During his talks he asked the President to
use his influence to secure the unconditional release of
Jomo Kenyatta.

Arthur Qchwada, Mboya's trade union colleague, once
described Mboya as "a good beggar/ 7 This unflattering de-
scription pointed at Mboya's ability to persuade Americans
to give money for African causes. In today's world when the
rich nations get richer and the poor poorer, the ability to
"beg" at an international level has become increasingly
important. Mboya has shown that he knows how to go
about this often unpleasant business. He has a sufficiently
wide grasp of the way modern nations are organized to
know where and how he can get assistance for his country-
men.

He works by appealing to the advanced nations* enlightened
self-interest He feels that they should see that aid, without
strings attached, will bring its own reward. Mboya would
like to see the personal generosity of individual Americans
their openhearted hospitalitybecome part and parcel of
American national policy.

Chapter

BIG BROTHERS QUARREL

IB October 1958, Mboya was banqueting with His Imperial
Highness the Emperor of Ethiopia, Haile Selassie I. He
was photographed; his black face a picture of cherubic in-
nocence against his clinically white dress jacket and dapper
black tie. His dominating political personality had vanished.
Here was the spoiled schoolboy relishing his proximity to
royalty.

But earlier he had been having an audience with the
Emperor on the mundane topic of trades unionism. He came
away from the meeting satisfied that His Highness and his
ministers had no objection to trade union organization in
the empire.

He was conscientiously doing his job as chairman of the
ICFTU for the eastern, central, and southern regions of
Africa. By the time he was through, he had extended his
influence to another country. A few weeks later the
Emperor was putting in his own word of encouragement

186

Young Man of New Africa

for African nationalism^ and memories of Mboya's visit
seemed to be prompting him as he spoke.

By November 1958, Mboya was in to give

an executive meeting of the ICFTU information about the
organization of trades unions in East Africa. From Brussels?
on to London to talk to the Colonial Secretary, Mr, Lennox-
Boyd, about the constitutional deadlock. He also took the
opportunity to hand him an affidavit sworn by Rawsom
Macharia stating that the evidence he had given at the
trial of Jomo Kenyatta was false.

When Macharia suddenly decided to confess he did this
by hawking his story around the Nairobi newspaper offices.
At first no journalist would publish the story,, so incredible
did it sound. And it was politically dangerous. But Macharia
wanted to gain the maximum attention for his fantastic tale
and he inevitably found his way to the office of Tom Mboya.
The story also began to leak out in the local press, but it
was Mboya who gave it the public backing which it needed
and he finally took Macharia's allegations to the Colonial
Secretary.

On December 7 at a private meeting of fifty delegates
at the All African People's Conference at Accra,, Mboya
was offered the chairmanship of the first Pan African con-
ference held in Africa.

Kenya was in a state of intense excitement over the
Rawson Macharia confession. All the old questions about
the Kenyatta trial had the cobwebs dusted off them once
again. Attempts were made to assess the importance of
Macharia's evidence.

Wherever two Africans had time to stop and exchange
words the complicated court case came under popular dis-
cussion. 'That chap was the one who said Kenyatta was
in an oathing ceremony . . . The magistrate believed every-
thing he said ... He said Macharia was one of his best
witnesses . . . The police are sure to get that boy, but he

187

TOM MBOYA

will say anything, that Macharia, anything . . . They can't
stop him talking . . ," The case became the topic of conver-
sation of the African locations, and when Macharia was finally
arrested and charged for swearing false evidence, people
queued from dawn outside the Nairobi law courts waiting to
get in.

Meanwhile Mboya was rushing from one international
commitment to another. It was a measure of his new re-
sponsibilities outside Kenya that he could afford to be away
at such a time of crisis*

He had reached the stage in his life when he had to
weigh the importance of different engagements. Events were
forcing him to take his crusade out into the world. Individuals
and organizations outside Kenya were taking him as the
automatic representative of his country. It was also a time
when he was having personal difficulty in keeping up with
the pressure of work. For a period he began to forget en-
gagements and lose the thread of ordinary things of every-
day life. He found he had to master this personal dis-
organization by cutting out inessentials and delegating more
work to his subordinates. This meant that he had to sacrifice
the personal attention to detail and some of his standards
had to be lowered, but it was necessary if he was to be free
for real political concentration.

Kwame Nkrumah and his ministers in Ghana had such
a high opinion of him that they engineered his selection
at the All Africa People's Conference by suggesting that
he should be chairman. The preparatory committee, pre-
sided over by the Ghana Minister of Foreign Affairs,, Mr.
Kojo Botsio, put up his name as chairman to the first steering
committee formed by the leaders of 55 delegations, which
accepted his name without dissent. He had undoubtedly
become a Pan African figure.

The Kenya Weekly News commented indignantly about
his activities outside the country:

188

Young Man of New Africa

He believes that he can stoke up the
to an extent that the Government of Kenya, and Her Maj-
esty's Government^ will surrender to his demands. Brussels,
London, Accra and now, it is reported^ Nigeria and Sierra
Leone are all on the itinerary of Mr. Mboya's travels for the
same purpose. It is to set aside the influence and authority
of Her Majesty's Government and the Government of Kenya
and to set aside the policy of the Secretary of State. It is to
pave the way for Mr. Mboya to walk in the footsteps of
Dr. Nkramah . . .

Within a year of the All Africa People's Conference Mboya
and Nkramah began to have their differences.

No one who saw them sitting together in the supreme
positions at the conference, chatting amiably under the
slogan HANDS OFF AFRICA, would have expected the giants
of Africa to be quarreling before the year was out The ha!
was a kaleidoscope of militant placards and colorful costumes
symbolic of the nationalist straggle and the "African per-
sonality/* Dr. Nkramah's Rolls-Royce was parked outside and
Mboya was seated on a two-tiered throne, in the best tradition
of American trades union rallies. A huge map garlanded with
the words Ml Africa People's Conference hung over his head.
Two hundred delegates representing 200,000,000 Africans
turned the conference into a massive anti-colonialist, anti-
imperialist rally, bursting with resolutions in favor of FREE-
DOM, independence, Pan Africanism, Jomo Kenyatta, and
the "African personality/' In the heady atmosphere of Accra,
delegates made statements they never would have dared to
repeat in their colonial home countries.

Behind the excitement and cheering and the rashly worded
statements, the policies of George Padmore and the African
intellectuals were being forged into practical proposals. The
conference resolved to accelerate the liberation of colonial
territories of Africa by working on a Pan African basis. It
explored the possibilities of closer union between newly in-

TOM MBOYA

dependent African countries, with the ultimate goal of a
"United States of Africa" and it defined and expressed the
"African personality/'

In the chairman's speech Mboya came out with the slogan
that the colonial powers should "scram from Africa." He was
immediately challenged on this, but he had been careful not
to say the Europeans should scram, but only their colonial
governments. In his four years of public life he had become
much too clever a speaker to make a statement with which
his opponents could brand him as a racist, which he is not.

"We are nobody's enemies, but will tolerate no inter-
ference in our march to freedom/' he declared. "What Af-
ricans are fighting for is nothing revolutionary. It is found
in the charter of the United Nations, endorsed by the
colonial powers, we are determined to free Africa, whether
the colonial powers like it or not."

After his first clarion call, Mboya laid some stress on
the position that Africa as a continent should adopt in
international affairs. He wanted a policy of nonalignment

"If the big power blocs have nothing better to do than to
fight each other, let them do so outside Africa; we do not
want certain people to take advantage of our social and
economic underdevelopment for their own queer ends; we
will not tolerate any undermining of our independence."

But perhaps the most significant contribution of Mboya
to the conference was his stand on the old problem of
violence. The Algerian delegates demanded approval of vio-
lent methods in their own colonial struggle. Mboya com-
mented:

"In this our struggle for freedom nobody likes to employ
violence but actions of colonial powers, especially in Algeria,
will eventually determine whether we should also use force.
And when that time comes we should not be blamed/'

Later at a press conference he was sore pressed on the
issue by newspapermen from the world over. "We are going

190

Young Man of New Africa

to try by every possible to free the

concept of democratic principles/" he repeated,

a distinction of characteristic cleverness, U I don't
force must always mean violence/"

He had to be clever in the face of the keen-minded news-
papermen. In the Accra conference he had to show
Pan Africa had some sympathy for the Algerian rebels, but
his own stand on violence has been clear enough throughout
his career.

The strongly nationalist Nairobi lawyer, John Seroney,
was once talking of Mboya's character with regard to the
use of tough tactics in Kenya's internal political squabbles.
"You must understand this/* he said. "X will not scruple to
use gangster tactics but Torn, he is no gangster/'

At the Accra conference he finally secured the cleverly
ambiguous compromise resolution between the standpoint
of the African states south of the Sahara and the Algerians:

Recognizing that national independence can be gained by
peaceful means in territories where democratic means are
available, the conference guarantees its support to all forms
of peaceful action. This support is pledged equally to those
who, in order to meet the violent means by which they are
subjected and exploited, are obliged to retaliate.

One question on which the conference could find no answer
was on the trades union issue. The Egyptian delegation and
Ghana's ally, Guinea, were for the speedy formation of an
All African Trade Union Federation.

Mboya soon expressed his reservations for he felt that no
attempt should be made to form a wholly African federation
until national unions had been consulted. He could see what
developments were likely to follow the formation of such a
body and his views were confirmed when plans were made
for a union whose affiliates could "hold allegiance to none
but mother Africa." This precluded membership of the

191

TOM MBOYA

ICFTU and the African federation at the same time. Mboya
was certainly not going to consider the idea under those
conditions.

As one of the most prominent ICFTU leaders in Africa
he reacted unfavorably. Cynics declare that the reason for
this was that he was frightened of losing his own position of
authority in ICFTU. But he could not have acted for mo-
tives of personal gain alone for there was no reason why he
should not have risen to a position of similar prominence
in the African federation if he had left the ICFTU.

The real reasons for his refusal to join the new body were
more complex. He had often been critical of ICFTU in the
past. He had complained in America itself that the assistance
it gave to Africa was "not all that it should be," but this was
a criticism among friends. He was not keen to throw over
the alliance with the American labor movement that affilia-
tion to ICFTU implied. He was genuinely grateful for the
financial aid that the organization had made to African
unions in the past, and saw the benefits brought by the col-
lege that it had set up to train African unionists in Kampala.
He was also impressed with the organization's "American"
efficiency, which compared very favorably with the way
AATUF seemed to be shaping. The Accra conference was
hardly a masterpiece from the organizational point of view,
and if that was the best Ghana could do, it did not augur
well for the new federation.

Mboya knew that there were many ways in which the
African could benefit from the past experiences and mistakes
of a century of trade unionism in Britain and the United
States. He was loath to sever his connections with an organi-
zation that had served him well and that would continue to
do so.

His one reservation was that the ICFTU would not give
enough autonomy to its African region. Instead of cutting

192

Young Man of New Africa

himself off from the on he de-

cided to campaign for changes from within.

In December 1959 he achieved his aim. WHIRLWIND
MBOYA ROCKS THE UNIONS screamed the
Daily Mail headline. Mboya had won some autonomy for the
African region of the ICFTU. In practice this meant the
Africans had been given a seat on the International Solidarity
Fund committee and thus had the chance of influencing
future ICFTU spending. He won this concession despite
considerable opposition from the British TUC which con-
tributed 500,000 to ICFTU funds for the period 1958-
61 and was worried that money would be wrongly spent by
African unionists.

After these reforms in ICFTU Mboya was inclined to be
more loyal to the organization than ever before. He believed
in the wide principle of international solidarity. He did not
believe that alignment with ICFTU meant alliance with one
of the world power blocs (India is a keen ICFTU member)
and he felt that the organization had taken a positive stand
over Algeria and Nyasaland.

Mboya was also disappointed that Ghana, one of the
keenest supporters of an African federation, should have
passed legislation to curb the freedom and rights of its own
trades unions. He wanted all independent African states to
respect international labor conventions including the free-
dom of association and collective bargaining, "It is no use
condemning South Africa if we don't respect international
conventions ourselves,"

Mboya never intended rivalry to develop between himself
and Nkrumah, but the unions which they influenced in their
own countries were soon quarreling. The major dash be-
tween Accra and Nairobi came in November 1959, w ^en a
preparatory meeting of the AATUF was called in Accra at
the same time that an ICFTU meeting was called in Lagos.
Only three countries, Egypt, Guinea, and Morocco, sent

193

TOM MBOYA

official delegates to Accra while the trades union meeting in
Lagos was attended by twenty-nine African unions. Mboya
had won the first round, but his rivals were not prepared to
let him get away with his early victory lightly.

Nkrainah badly wanted a Kenya representative for his
conference. The man he chose was Mboya's chief rival, Mr.
Oginga-Odinga, who is jokingly called the "African capital-
ist/" by his colleagues. Odinga has had little to do with trades
unionism at any stage of his career, but he gladly accepted
Nkramah's invitation*

Though Mboya was hurt by Odinga's acceptance, he was
overheard while he was ragging him with good-natured
humor afterward saying: "How did the old capitalist like
the trade union conference? The workers are a terrible lot
. . . they have no mercy on big businessmen like you!"
Odinga could scarcely refrain from laughing as he stood pro-
testing, waving his arms in the air. On the surface African
politicians seem to forgive and forget very readily but under-
neath there are often deep resentments waiting to express
themselves, regardless of the polite affability they show out-
wardly.

Besides the trades union dispute there were other person-
ality differences between Mboya and Nkrumah. Mboya was
not happy in the position of Nkramah's prot6g6. He felt
that he had been appointed chairman at Accra by Nkrumah's
influence and that he was not being allowed to forget it
Nkrumah seemed to be increasingly preoccupied during
1959 by the implications of his alliance with Guinea and
the French-speaking nationalists. At first the French-speak-
ing Africans had not been prominent in the Pan African
movement, but Guinea, under the dynamic leadership of
Sekou Toure, was not content to play second fiddle to Ghana
for long. In fact the French Africans were recovering from
their poor start at Accra and soon made a bold bid for con-

194

Young Man of New Africa

trolling positions at the second Pan African at

Tunis in February 1960.

The problem for the Frenchmen was that Mboya
been elected chairman of the AAPC at Accra and chairman
of the conference steering committee afterward. To oust
Mboya, a special meeting of the steering committee
called in his absence, and the constitution was altered. Under
the new constitution the chairman was only chairman for
the duration of a conference and had no function
that. Thus Mboya was virtually suspended.

When the second AAPC conference took place in Tunis
in February 1960, Mr. M. Diallo, a minister in the Guinea
government, was made the conference general secretary. Tom
Mboya was not able to attend the conference as he was held
up by the Kenya constitutional talks in London. The organ-
izers were obviously keen to eclipse Mboya ? s influence and
to control the conference themselves. The Ghanaians could
only succeed in doing this by allowing the talented French-
speaking Africans (particularly from Guinea) into the major
conference posts. The organizers attempted to wholly ignore
Mboya. No mention was made of his name; no vote of
thanks was made to him as the outgoing chairman and an
underground campaign of disparagement was carried out
against him,

Oginga-Odinga's old theme that Mboya was not really the
leader of the Kenya Africans was circulated to deflate
Mboya's reputation. At first the officials refused even to ac-
cept a speech taped by Mboya to be played at the conference.
When many delegates protested at this, his speech was al-
lowed in place of another one from Kenya, but it was in-
audible over the earphones. As Mboya is an exceptionally
clear speaker the possibility of deliberate interference cannot
be ruled out.

On top of this Mboya was bitterly attacked by the news-
papers which support the Ghana government, saying he had

195

TOM MBOYA

"drunk too much champagne offered to him by the Im-
perialists/' One of Tom Mboya's closest colleagues In
Nairobi, Mr. Dickson Oloo 7 retorted that Ghanaians had
better be careful what they say about "our leaders over here/'
and that Dr. Nkramah had better stop trying to be "big
brother."

Mboya's reaction to all this could have been very bitter,
but he spolce to me shortly after the Tunis conference and
emphasized that these petty squabbles should not be allowed
to weaken the Ideals of Pan Africanism.

"I think the press has wrongly presented this business as
a Nkramah-Mboya fight/' he said. "They are probably doing
us both an injustice. People now believe that anything said
by the Ghana Trades Union Congress or any other Ghana
individual, must be made with the approval of Nkrumah.
This is not really fair and I am trying to do everything in my
power to resolve the situation." Mboya was keen to maintain
friendship with Nkramah despite the Pan African tangle.
He seemed to be willing to forget the hostility shown against
him by certain elements in Ghana, In the interests of Africa
as a whole. His vision on the trades union issue was equally
broad. He did not want to cut his international connections
simply because an All African Trade Union Federation was
to be formed. He decided to try to persuade the members of
the African federation to allow unions to join them and still
maintain their affiliations to international bodies. He saw
no reason for starting negative competition against interna-
tional bodies, particularly those like ICFTU, which were
trying to be helpful without attaching strings.

Mboya started a long campaign to make the AATUF
leaders drop their policy of exclusiveness. Late in 1960, after
a year of patient negotiation, he persuaded John Tettegah,
the Ghana TUC leader to agree that African unions could
join the AATUF and still keep their international affilia-
tions.

196

Young Man of New Africa

But this decision was later reversed at the big con-
ference of the AATUF held in May 1961 at Casablanca. As
a result of this conference, Ghana, Guinea, Mali, and Mo-
rocco became known as the Casablanca bloc in African
politics. These powers provided the inspiration for the con-
ference and were responsible for selecting delegates on an
unusual basis.

The Casablanca powers were allowed to send six
each while eighteen other African countries were only al-
lowed two delegates. Tom Mboya led the Kenya delegation.
His intention was never to prevent African unions from
joining the AATUF, but he felt that they should be free to
maintain their links with the other unions of the world, If
they so wished.

Mboya's stand was supported by twenty-eight unions af-
filiated to the ICFTU in Africa and by the main unions of
such countries as Tunisia, Nigeria, Liberia, Tanganyika,
Northern and Southern Rhodesia, Sierra Leone, Gambia, and
the Cameroons. But many of these unions were not invited
to the conference and the rest were hopelessly outnumbered
when it came to the vote because of the way delegates had
been selected.

The opponents of free affiliation finally won the day. They
carried a resolution banning all AATUF unions from affilia-
tions outside Africa by twenty-one votes to four. Most of the
opposing delegates had already packed their bags and left.

Tom Mboya's stand was defeated, but it was significant
that he had been honored by being selected as one of the
seven AATUF secretaries. Immediately he returned to Kenya
and announced that the Kenya unions need not "concede to
the decisions of the conference/'

In the international field Mboya has worked consistently
in line with the Afro-Asian bloc in world politics. He has
also adopted the practical ideals of Pan Africa and has tried
to demonstrate Africa's needs to the world. He wants Afri-

197

TOM MBOYA

cans to be proud of being African, proud of being part of the
huge continent that the world is studying with such interest.
But he is not aggressively Africanist He does not think that
Africa would do better to stand alone and critical. On the
contrary, he wants the continent to play its part in the
world, to give as well as to receive, and to benefit by the
mistakes and by the experience of the older nations.

The Kenya Weekly News spoke less than half the truth
when it wrote about Mboya's activities in the world at large:
'Whatever else Mr. Mboya may or may not be, he is most
certainly the most competent publicity agent for the cause
of Mr. Mboya, and a great showman. . . ." He was also a
great agent for the cause of Africa in the world, and for the
free world in Africa.

198

Chapter

POLITICS IN PAJAMAS

One really dangerous rival to Mboya*s position in Kenya has
always been Mr. Oginga-Odinga, the colorful father-figure
from central Nyanza. Most of the Kenya African politicians
are in their late twenties or early thirties, but Odinga is
getting on toward fifty, and expects to be treated with com-
mensurate respect.

He invariably dresses in what he claims is traditional Luo
costume a beaded cap and belt, hair shirt, and sandals
studded with sea shells. He has been a schoolmaster and, for
a Kenya African, a comparatively prosperous businessman
with a hotel and various concerns in Kisumu, the capital
of the country of his tribe, Nyanza.

He is an emotional old fellow with his heart in the right
place and a great concern for his people, who give him their
undivided loyalty. He is determined to demonstrate his ag-
gressive nationalism both by his flamboyant dress and ac-
tions, and by his wild and uncontrolled method of speech.

199

TOM MBOYA

No one who has heard Odinga speak In legislative council
would suggest that he is not sincere, but they might wonder
whether he has given any consideration to what he is going
to say before he gets up on his horny feet and explodes in a
spluttering torrent of impassioned verbiage.

He is very popular in his home district and it is widely
held that if Mboya had the temerity to stand against him in
central Nyanza he would be heavily defeated.

From the Erst days he arrived in Legco he was rather
jealous of Tom Mboya. He saw him as a young man who
was not prepared to grant his elders the respect to which
they were due. He was jealous of the attention that the
European and African press gave to Mboya and was deter-
mined to cut him down to size,

On one occasion Odinga asked to see me, as the local
editor of Drum, about an unfortunate caption in which the
magazine had wrongly described him as one of the "Lieu-
tenants of Mboya's People's Convention Party/' This was
not a deliberate mistake. It had been caused by some sub-
editor in Johannesburg who had assumed that Mboya must
be the leader of all Kenya African-elected members, and that
they must all be in his political party. But Odinga took it
as the last of a long series of indignities. He sent me a two-
page memorandum complaining bitterly about the undue
publicity that had been given to Mboya in Drum. He claimed
that I had played down the system of "collective leadership''
that had been agreed among the African-elected members.
Moreover, it was he who was chairman of the African Elected
Members Organization and not Tom Mboya, who was only
secretary for a year and then voted out of office altogether.

He claimed that far too much attention had been given to
Tom Mboya's People's Convention Party in Nairobi and too
little to the other district political organizations, and finally
that Tom Mboya was far from being the driving force of
African nationalism that I claimed he was.

200

Young Man of New Africa

When I had a meeting with Odinga later, about his letter,
I tried to convince him that Drum had never to

give Tom Mboya any more credit than he was due t
that there were numerous ways in which he was of

the Kenya Africans. Odinga disagreed profoundly.

During our talk he elaborated on his original theme and
said that Drum was being "run by Mboya for his personal
ends/* though he did not explain how this was done. His
most important point was that the African Elected Mem-
bers Organization was the body that decided who the leaders
were in Kenya and that Mboya was not even leader of the
group. He was "a mere nothing."

He became considerably excited: "Mboya would not be
elected at all if there was an election for the leader in Kenya
today/' he said.

"I suppose you mean that Kenyatta would beat him? 7 * I
queried.

"Yes, and I will tell you something else. Mboya would
not be in the top three . . ." He paused for a moment. "He
would not even be in the top six in Kenya,** he said with
finality.

Until very recently there were few powerful rivals to
Mboya apart from Odinga in Legco and Argwings Khodeck
outside. But, with the ending of the emergency and the
return of the Kifaiyu to political life, many new men came
forward claiming to be Kenyatta's prophets.

This is something that Odinga saw clearly for many years.
Indeed he saw the importance of championing Kenyatta
long before any of the other African-elected members. He
did so, not only because he wanted justice to be done, but
because he realized that Kenyatta was the only weapon which
he could use to undermine Mboya's position.

Mboya found no single challenger on his moderate wing
but there was a large group of moderates that was uneasy
about him. These members began to ally themselves more

201

TOM MBOYA

closely with the Asian-elected members in Kenya's Legco.
They timed their move for April and May of 1959 when
Mboya was away in the United States. The Asian- and
Arab-elected members, together with Mr. Shirley V. Cooke,
agreed that the time had come for a concerted effort against
the Lennox-Boyd Constitution. This experiment in co-opera-
tion between African-, Asian-, and Arab-elected members
was highly successful on the legislative council level, and a
nonracial delegation was sent to London to pot the case for
round-table talks OB the constitution.

At the same time Mr. Michael Blundell resigned from
his ministry so that he could form another nonracial group,
which later became the New Kenya Party. It drew its sup-
port largely from moderate Europeans and officials in gov-
ernment.

The Africans and Asians wanted a genuinely nonracial
party depending on members elected by popular votes. Blun-
dell wanted a less radical party, depending mostly on officials
and "specially elected" members.

Africans and Asians found they could work so well at the
legislative council level in the Constituency Elected Mem-
bers Organization (CEMO), that the idea soon came to
convert it into the nucleus of a genuinely nonracial political
party, with independence under parliamentary democracy as
its ultimate objective.

In the early stages both Odinga and Kiano were very keen
on the project, but Mboya's opinions were not fully known,
for he was still absent in the United States.

When Mboya returned, I called on him to get his views
for an article I was doing in Drum. It was not yet eight
o'clock in the morning. He was already up and yawning be-
fore the huge mirror of the ladies dressing table in his bed-
room. He was wearing pale blue, American-style pajamas.

He poured out a cup of chocolate, offered one to me, and
sat discussing politics in his pajamas. His desk was heavy

202

Young Man of New Africa

with correspondence written in longhand in his
penmanship, A friend came in and gave him a which

he skimmed as I talked to him. Then he went off to
his teeth and spit in the outdoor drain. While he was dress-
ing in his bedroom he shouted politics at me through the
open door.

He had had no time to consider the idea of CEMO being
turned into a nonracial party since he had returned from the
United States. His only definite objection to the idea was
that Africans were not in a sufficiently strong position to
commit themselves. He seemed to be suspicious of some
attempt by the Asian community to delay the march to-
ward independence.

His second line of argument was that there was no under-
lying unity in CEMO. It was holding together because
Asians and Africans both wanted to break the Lennox-Boyd
Constitution. After this was achieved the party would revert
to its racial groupings once again.

I told him that many Africans and Asians were arguing
that the most important thing was to get the Lennox-Boyd
Constitution changed first and this would be easier if they
worked in a united front, Mboya agreed that a united front
would carry more weight with the Colonial Secretary, but he
was loath to accept that the idea of a nonracial party was
acceptable. I felt that he was undecided and did not want to
appear in print until he had some time to think.

I went to see him several times on the same subject. On
the last occasion my deadline was getting near, and I had
to have some quotation for Drum without delay. I thought
I could soften him up by reading out a cleverly worded state-
ment on the subject that Dr. Kiano had given me the day
before. Kiano had not wanted a nonracial party, but a na-
tion-wide African party which opened its membership to
other races.

203

TOM MBOYA,

'That's just a lot of stuff for publicity purposes/" said
Mboya, when I read out the statement.

"You mean he Is not sincere?" 7 I asked.

"No, but he just wants to appear conciliatory/'

He said that he had had long talks with Kiano on the
subject and that he had continually changed his stand.

Whatever Kiano had said, I still wanted my statement
from Mboya. "All right/' he said, "take this down/' and he
started to dictate. There was no hesitation, no fumbling for
words. His voice went on from start to finish without a
pause, yet I am sure that he had not prepared a statement
and had not been expecting my visit:

I believe that Kenya is predominantly an African country
and will therefore not be party to any move or organization
which compromises that position. The creation of a non-
racial party cannot be dependent on political thinking or
political ideas or on a political system. If it succeeds it must
be fed on some identity of interests, purpose, and goals. I
don't believe that it would be possible to achieve this by
working through an organization that is not founded on
African trust and confidence. Such an organization can only
be one which fully meets the aspirations of the African peo-
ple at the pace they desire. Any African leader who pretends
he can do otherwise is in for a rude shock. The problem
is, and has always been, one of minority groups; where their
established order has led to the building of race conflict,
mistrust, and fear. Today it is they who are afraid and sus-
picious of African majority rale. I have all along said that
the only way to provide an answer is to face these minorities
with the inevitable. First, that Kenya will and must become a
democratic government based on adult suffrage. Second, this
must take place at a pace which recognizes the local political
climate and the rapid changes taking place all over Africa.

The whole statement did not take longer than two and a
half minutes to make. He spoke it with bitter conviction.
At the time I thought that he simply did not see that

204

Young Man of New Africa

Africans should be readjusting their as they

to a position when they were politically dominant,, as

other races were beginning to want to co-operate

For a considerable time after that meeting Tom, 1 felt

unhappy about his attitude. He seemed to be cutting

new political problems with his old political arguments,

which had become cliches., through years of use.

It appeared to me that the Asians and Mr. Cooke were
extending him a hand of co-operation and that he was spum-
ing it. He was not prepared to concede that their new attitude
of co-operation had changed the Kenya scene at all.

As I look back on that interview now, two years later, I
see that it was Tom who had been speaking political realism
whatever the rights and wrongs of the issue. He had refused
to take the opportunity to unite the Africans, Indians, and
liberals together, but if he had done so he would probably
have been long since eclipsed from the political stage. His
own position was still not strong enough for him to com-
promise the recognized principles of African nationalism.
His attitude was partly due to the fact that he did not trust
the Indians, Arabs, and liberal whites. How could the fami-
lies in the luxurious green suburbs of Nairobi really know
what the African in his grimy location felt and wanted?
How could they have enough common interest to provide
the spirit and the will from which true political feeling could
grow straight and strong? How could they understand Afri-
can nationalism?

Added to these doubts about the other races, Tom Mboya
understood the political realities of the situation. He had a
keen instinct that told him that schemes and maneuvers
lay ahead. Though Africans had preserved a shaky unity
hitherto and had always been able to avoid open divisions
between themselves, Mboya's intuitive political sense told
him that troubles were on the way.

He knew that friendship with Asians and liberal Euro-

205

TOM MBOYA

peaBS would be interpreted as making concessions to them.
The man who extended an open hand to other races would
soon have it burned by the hot temper of African nation-
alism.

There was probably something that Torn Mboya would
have liked to say if he had been able to. If he had not pro-
vided political ammunition to his enemies by saying it, he
might have said: "Look, I am being carried along in the
current of African nationalism. The only way I can do any-
thing about the current is to run with it until I can control
it. Don't ask me to swim against it now, for I would be
drowned. Just trust me. Trust me to act true to my words
when I am home and dry."

So Mboya rejected the nonracial party idea, but at that
time Oginga-Odinga was very keen on it indeed. The final
Constituency Elected Members Organization policy was
agreed under Odinga's chairmanship on July 2 and 3, 1959,
and was finally drawn up for presentation to the press on
July 23, at a time Odinga was ill in the hospital

When the time came to sign the statement Mboya and
Kiano refused. When Odinga heard that Mboya had not
signed, he refused too.

With Mboya, Odinga, and Kiano out, the brave new
Kenya National Party soon collapsed. Members of Mboya's
PGP broke up KNP meetings and though he publicly con-
demned the rowdyism and violence it is difficult to believe
that he could not have controlled his own party had he
wanted to.

Within three months attempts were already being made
by Ronald Ngala to bring the African-elected members to-
gether again. Ngala was the one person who was trusted
enough on both sides to do this. Julius Nyerere of Tanganyika
also used his good offices and the split in the ranks of the
Africans was healed almost as suddenly as it was created.

When the constitutional talks began in January 1960 at

206

Young Man of New Africa

Lancaster House, London, the African-elected members were
once more united. Mboya was not even chosen as leader of
the African-elected members delegation in London. The
compromise candidate was once again Ronald Ngala, but
Mboya was secretary and inevitably had to do much of the
detailed work involved.

It is almost impossible to isolate his own particular con-
tribution in the discussions that followed, in and out of the
committee rooms at Lancaster House and in closed sessions
with the new British Colonial Secretary, the Rt Hon. Iain
Macleod, and the governor of Kenya.

The talks started with deadlock and even the most opti-
mistic commentators thought they were doomed to failure.
At the outset the African-elected members insisted on the
presence of Peter Mbiu Koinange as a constitutional adviser
in addition to Dr. Thurgood Marshall, an American Negro,
who was the choice of Tom Mboya.

Odinga was particularly keen on Koinange's presence, for
he was keen to be able to tell his constituents that Kenyatta's
voice was heard, albeit indirectly, at the conference. It is
fairly clear that Odinga was also out to embarrass Mboya.
The Koinange issue was an easy way to curry favor with the
Kikuyu. Odinga found an ally in Kwame Nkrumah who
had engaged Koinange in the Ghana government's Africa
bureau, and was not, at that time, on the best of terms with
Mboya,

For a week the conference was deadlocked on the ques-
tion of whether or not Koinange should be admitted. There
were strong objections to him from the European members
on the allegation that he had been involved in Mau Mau
and the fact that he would have been detained in Kenya if
he had returned during the emergency. Mboya had taken the
position that Koinange should be admitted, and though he
was considerably irritated by the delay in starting the con-

207

TOM MBOYA

ference, lie was determined to remain firm and loyal to his

colleagues.

Mr. Macleod set the tone for the conference from his
opening statement when he said that independence was the
objective for Kenya and that this could not be granted "until
the government was responsible to a legislature fully reflect-
ing the views of all the people, expressed through a wide
franchise." No Colonial Secretary in the past had ever dared
to make such a bold statement about Kenya's future.

It gave the African-elected members hope, and they soon
showed that they really wanted to get down to negotiation.
The conference which had had such a pessimistic press
could now be expected to achieve results.

The conference differed considerably from previous talks
because there was a genuine attempt to find the highest
common multiple of agreement between all groups and the
Colonial Secretary showed that he was keen to guide Kenya
toward democratic independence. He was not attempting
to force his will on the delegates, but, by letting them all
express their views and try to resolve their problems between
themselves, he created the framework in which the Africans
could force the pace of change. His attitude was significant
for it was the first time in Kenya history that a Colonial
Secretary was prepared to help the balance of power swing
in the Africans' favor. While the discussions continued Iain
Macleod showed that he was prepared to readjust his initial
stand in the direction that the Africans wanted.

When the conference finally ended the Africans accepted
Macleod's solution because they realized that their influence
would be dominant. For the first time they did not reject
the constitution, but accepted it, with reservations.

The following table shows the way the balance of power
changed between the races:

208

Young Man of New Africa

Lennox-Boyd Constitution
ELECTED MEMBERS

These seats elected by
voters voting for candi-
dates of their own race.

African
European

Asian
Arab

African
European

Asian
Arab

14 elected by Africans
14 elected by Europeans

6 elected by Asians
2 elected by Arabs

MINISTRIES

i (Not an elected mem-
ber)

4 (Plus 7 European
officials)

Macleod Constitution

ELECTED MEMBERS

These seats controlled by
a majority of Africans on
a common roll.

33 Common roll seats
10 European reserved

seats
8 Asian reserved seats

2 Arab reserved seats

MINISTRIES

4 (Plus one Assistant
Minister)

3 (Plus 4 European
officials)

Lennox-BoycTs twelve "specially elected" seats were re-
named "national seats" under the Macleod plan. They were
still divided between the races on a 4:4:4 basis, the differ-
ence being that under the Lennox-Boyd Constitution they
were elected by the members of a majority European Legco,
while under the Macleod Constitution, they were elected by
a majority of Africans.

On his return to Kenya from the talks, Tom Mboya an-
nounced that he was prepared to "tolerate" the constitutional
proposals as "an instrument which will be used to further
our steps toward independence." The reason he could ac-
cord grudging agreement was because the balance of power
was moved in the Africans favor. But he had to take into
account that Africans had not reached their objective of
responsible government in 1960.

209

Chapter JL ^y

A YEAR OF CRISES

Mboya has survived many crises In his political career, but
none more serious than the one which followed the Lan-
caster House conference. His opponents were soon afterward
to launch a concerted attack on him in an attempt to remove
him forever from the scene of Kenya politics.

By the time the African-elected members had returned to
Kenya from London there were already two distinct groups
among them. One group, led by Mboya, Odinga, and Kiano,
soon formed themselves into a new party called the Kenya
Independence Movement. This was a militant nationalist
body, looking to Jomo Kenyatta as its leader and led by the
ablest and strongest men in Kenya politics at the time. At
home it had the support of most educated Africans who had
played an active part in the nationalist politics of the country
and abroad it had the blessings of the Pan African leaders.

The other group, which later became the Kenya African
Democratic Union, was formed largely as a reaction against

210

"Young Man of New Africa

the leadership of KIM. Its own leaders were Ronald Ngala,
Masinde Muliro, Jeremiah Nyagah, and John Keen.

During March 1960 African politics was in a state of
ferment. Events were exceptionally fluid even for Kenya.
The two main groupings were trying to build themselves
into modern parties with coherent policies. But it was not
on questions of policy that their main differences lay. They
were both African nationalist and both agreed on the Ken-
yatta question. It was largely personal rivalry with a thick
coating of tribal jealousy which kept them apart.

Mboya hated to see these divisions in the ranks of the
nationalists. Throughout his career he had straggled to end
tribalism, and like a schoolmaster fearing to be accused of
favoritism, he had gone out of his way to understand the
problems of people from other tribes.

On the question of personal rivalry Mboya felt that loyalty
to the cause should override personal disagreements between
African leaders. He and the other leaders were taking the
responsibility of leadership and the other members should
be prepared to accept the consequences of this. Some months
later he explained the attitude that made him think this way.

Addressing a mass meeting 1 he said: "It has been sug-
gested by my opponents that I am solely responsible for
the disunity among African leaders in Kenya. This I em-
phatically deny. I know, and I am convinced that envy,
jealousy, personal ambition, and tribalism are our greatest
evils today. Perhaps all of us, the African leaders, would do
well to read the following poem by Douglas Malloch:

" If you can't be a pine on the top of the hill

Be a scrub in the valley but be
The best little scrub by the side of the rill;
Be a bush if you can't be a tree . . / "

1 Speech to his Election Eve rally at the African stadium, Nairobi, February
25, 1961.

211

TOM MBOYA

It Is nnlikely that Mboya came accross this apt verse in
the course of his own reading. It had already been quoted by
the Nigerian leader. Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe, in his inaugural
speech, on November 16, 1960, when he became Nigeria's
first African governor-general. But the verse also expressed
Mboya's feelings very succinctly and he put it across to the
attentive crowd with touching naivete.

Until this time Oginga-Odinga had not split openly with
Mboya. The two men had similar views on policy, but
Odinga was politically jealous. In November 1959 he had
deliberately attended the Accra meeting of the All African
Trades Union Federation, though he knew that the main
Kenya Federation of Labour delegation, under Tom Mboya,
had already committed itself to a previously arranged
ICFTU meeting at Lagos. Odinga did this despite the fact
that he had never been a trade unionist in his life.

Then there was the famous interview which Odinga had
given me when he told me that Mboya was not among the
top six African leaders in Kenya. He showed his intense
dislike for Mboya, and hinted that he was in for an un-
pleasant surprise. I did not attach much importance to it
at the time but it soon became clear what this surprise was
going to be.

At midnight on March 24, 1960, Oginga-Odinga launched
an entirely new African political party, called the UHURU
(Freedom) Party. One by one he approached the African-
elected members and asked them to join Kiano, Ngala,
Nyagah, Khamisi, Arap Moi, Kiamba, Ole Tipis, Muimi,
and Mate. He also asked the well-known rivals of Mboya
from outside the Legco, Arthur Ochwada and Clement Arg-
wings KhodecL

The object was to get them all to join the new party
without telling Mboya anything about it. A Nairobi jour-
nalist claims that he was the first to break the news of the
formation of the new party to Mboya, twenty-four hours

212

Young Man of New Africa

after it had been formed. He showed Mboya a photostatic
copy of the signatories to the new party.

"Has Kiano signed?" gasped Mboya, in a broken voice.

He was shown the list, Kiano had not only signed, but
his name appeared first of all

It is impossible to be sure whether or not the signatories
knew that Mboya was not going to be invited to join, but it
seems that most of them knew about the plan, including
Kiano.

Shortly afterward at least three of the supporters of the
new party claimed that they had signed on the assumption
that Mboya and Muliro were also going to be invited to
join. Both Ronald Ngala and Jeremiah Nyagah said they
had signed on this assumption and withdrew their names.

Another who withdrew was James Gichuru. Gichura was
a veteran Kenya politician. He had been the first president
of the Kenya African Union in the pre-Mau Mau era and
had resigned his post in favor of Jomo Kenyatta when he
had returned to Kenya in 1946. Gichura had also been a
government chief and a headmaster of a Kikuyu school He
had managed to be a government servant while remaining
a keen African nationalist. His charm and solid approach to
politics had carried him through. He had not allowed per-
sonal rivalry or petty bickering between African leaders to
get the better of him.

But Gichuru was another African who had found himself
helplessly entangled in Mau Mau's cobweb of events. He
resigned his post of chief shortly before the outbreak of the
emergency because he did not "see eye to eye with govern-
ment policy." In 1955 he was placed under a restriction
order and held in the Kikuyu district of Githunguri until
1960.

He was not considered to be entirely reliable by the gov-
ernment which thought he was associated with Mau Mau
and yet he was suspected by his fellow African nationalists.

213

TOM MBOYA

They maintained that he was a government man throughout
the Mail Mau episode and that the government restricted
him in order to give him protection from the Man Mau.

Nowadays, Gichuru's critics claim that Tom Mboya has
some secret hold over him. They say that Mboya knows
something about his activities in the Mau Mau era, which
he has threatened to reveal should Gichuru fail to support
him politically. This, they claim, is the reason why Gichuru
withdrew his name from the UHURU party document and
why he stood loyally by Mboya through successive crises.
But it seems more likely that Gichuru is, what he seems to
be, a man of principle and reliability, who rejected the
UHURU party because he could see no justification for the
way it had been launched. He has a broad vision of African
nationalism and no desire to allow personality squabbles to
destroy it.

Oginga-Odinga soon revealed that he had deliberately
ignored Mboya when seeking support for the party. "There
was no need to approach him," he said, "as his recent
activities have shown that he is busy organizing his own
party into a country-wide organization/'

Clement Argwings Khodeck, Mboya's old rival, was the
other force behind the party and he had this to say: "Mboya
has been going around other members' constituencies with
money from the United States." For the first time Mboya's
connection with the United States was being thrown openly
in his face.

There were not many other African members who dis-
liked Mboya enough to follow up this first attempt to isolate
him politically. There were still fewer who saw any sense in
attempting to do it.

Two days later, on March 27, there was a conference at
Kiambu attended by all the main African leaders regardless
of their party affiliations. Some supporters of KhodecFs Con-
gress Party waved placards in Mboya's face and shouted

214

Young Man of New Africa

slogans at him: "You have sold us on the constitution" and
"We don't want American money. n This incident provided
colorful copy for the world press. It was indeed sensational
African nationalists had actually heckled Mboya, and not
in the rough and tumble of a political meeting, but as he
arrived for a conference. In getting their "angle" reporters
forgot to mention that Mboya was cheered as often as he
was booed by sections of the crowd which had gathered.

At the conference the African leaders refused even to
discuss the UHURU party, so utterly had Odinga's coup
misfired. Even Odinga's appeal to explain his intentions
was turned down. Instead Mboya proposed that a commit-
tee should be appointed to work out a constitution for an
entirely new party and this was unanimously accepted.

The new party was called the Kenya African National
Union, evoking the old Kenya African Union and the mem-
ory of Jomo Kenyatta. The party was to become the strong-
est Kenya has ever seen. Its committee included Mboya,
Ngala, Odinga, and Kiano, and it met under the chairman-
ship of James Gichura. Mboya's name was not put up as an
office bearer of the constitutional committee which showed
that maneuvers were still being made against him but he
was elected to the executive council and the tide was begin-
ning to tun in his favor.

At the launching conference of KANU on May 14 and 15,
Mboya was elected secretary general against Ronald Ngala,
Dr. Mungai Njeroge, and Arthur Ochwada. He was once
again firmly in the saddle.

When KANU was formed it was agreed that all smaller
parties would be disbanded and affiliated with it. On June 13
it was finally registered and Tom Mboya immediately dis-
banded the People's Convention Party and, joining forces
with Argwings KhodecFs Congress Party, formed the major
part of the Nairobi branch of KANU.

The PCP had been Mboya's child. Inspired by the Con-

215

TOM MBOYA

ventloa People's Party in Ghana, lie had nurtured It until
it became the strongest local party in Kenya.

Throughout most of its history it had not been allowed to
organize on a nation-wide basis. It had remained within its
legal limits and had become all powerful in the Nairobi
area. Unlike many other Kenya parties based on tribal and
rural loyalties, the PGP was a party of urban workers, drawn
from all tribes and held together by a good organization and
by loyalty to Tom Mboya's brilliant leadership.

The PGP had served its purpose admirably, but Tom
Mboya was glad to weld it into a national party with the
same militancy, and the same goals as his own. Tom Mboya
showed that he had no hesitation in dissolving the party,
which was almost his own personal organization, in the
interests of national unity. His critics can claim that his
motive was to dominate the KANU in the same way that he
had dominated the PGP, but the fact is that he had acted
consistently once more. What he did was in the interest of
the African cause. He could have made considerable trouble
if he had tried to preserve the PCP as an independent group
allied to KANU.

It was not to be expected that this series of events would
end the quarrel between Mboya and Odinga, Odinga had
not given up his struggle. He told a journalist in May:
"There was never any question of a personal quarrel be-
tween Mr. Mboya and myself it was a quarrel between
Mboya and everybody else. Now we will have to wait and
see if he is sincere in his support of KANU." 2

During 1960 the Kenyatta question became an increasingly
important problem in Kenya politics. The moral issues of
Kenyatta's trial were no longer debated, nor even the rights
and wrongs of his continued restriction. Instead Kenyatta's
name was being used as part of a political campaign. The
African leaders recognized that Kenyatta had become the

2 Sunday Nation, May 22, 1960, page 8.

2l6

Young Man of New Africa

symbol of the African people's aspirations. There were few
Africans who still associated him with the darkness of Man
Mao. The vast majority saw him as the man who could lead
them to the gates of freedom.

The name of Kenyatta had become a battle cry of African
nationalism, but it was also used by many politicians as a
means of carrying on personal warfare between themselves.
Kenyatta did not speak. He did not clarify his position; thus
every man was his interpreter.

When KANU was formed on May 14, Kenyatta was
elected as the first president, but the party could not secure
registration under this arrangement, so fames Gichuru came
forward. Once more he agreed to keep the president's office
"warm" for Kenyatta. He said he would hold the post until
Kenyatta was set free.

Mboya continued to press for Kenyatta's release, Just as
he had always done since his earliest days in Legco. There
is no need to repeat the reasons he had for doing this; what
is significant is that he was pursuing a long-established ob-
jective.

His opponents, on the other hand, saw that they could
use Kenyatta's name against Mboya. Oginga-Odinga was
particularly skillful in using this tactic. When Mboya was
on tour in West Africa, Odinga's supporters in Cairo, calling
themselves the Kenya office of KANU, made a fanatical
attack on Mboya through Cairo radio. They called him an
"American stooge" and an "imperialist agent"

Shortly afterward, Mboya made a statement in Monrovia,
Liberia, threatening civil disobedience if Kenyatta was not
released before the elections. Mboya claims that this "Mon-
rovia statement" was not a reply to the Cairo attack on him,
but the strong action which he demanded shows how im-
portant the Kenyatta issue had become. The Kenya Africans
were pushing one another from one extreme to another in
Kenyatta's name.

217

TOM MBOYA

When Mboya returned to Kenya from West Africa his
supporters gave him a warm welcome, but Khodeck's Con-
gress Party carried posters telling him he had no authority
to make the Monrovia statement. Later they told me that
Mboya's wild statements about strikes and civil disobedience
were just the kind of issue which made them dislike him.
They claimed: first, that he was doing it with the sole in-
tention of gaining personal popularity; second, that he had
no authority for making the pledges; third, that he could
not possibly carry out the things he had promised; and
fourth, that he was not really sincere in his campaign for
Kenyatta.

This last criticism was the one which was most passion-
ately pursued by his opponents. Nothing has been more
damaging to his position than the claim that he really did
not want Kenyatta to be released.

The feeling that he was not sincerely behind Kenyatta
gained concrete form when his opponents announced they
had proof of a secret agreement between him and British
Colonial Secretary Iain Macleod. It was said that Mboya
and Gichuru had gone to Macleod and had signed a docu-
ment asking for Kenyatta to be left in restriction.

The Kenya office in Cairo claimed that it had documentary
proof of the agreement. In preceding months men like
Khodeck, Joseph Mathenge, and Dennis Akumu, all open
critics of Mboya, had visited the Cairo office. Oginga-Odinga
had also been in Cairo and a meeting had been arranged be-
tween him and president Gamal Abdel Nasser by Abdalla
Hassan Beshir Karugo, who described himself as the chief
of information, radio, and military affairs of Kenya office,
Cairo.

The rumor of the secret agreement was so effectively
spread in Kenya that it lingered several months later when
Mboya started his electoral campaign. The answer of both

218

Young Man of New Africa

Mboya and Gichura was to ask for documentary proof of
the agreement. "I challenge any person responsible for these
rumors/* said Mboya "to bring this so-called document or
any other evidence to Makadara on Sunday or at any other
place in the country and share a platform with me so that
the people may judge."

Every effort was made by their opponents to find proof.
Dennis Akumu, once a loyal colleague of Mboya, was sent
to London by Oginga-Odinga to investigate, but he returned
empty-handed.

Looking back on this episode it is difficult to see how
such a rumor could have been believed by so many of
Nairobi's educated Africans. According to them Mboya had
put himself entirely into the hands of the British Colonial
Secretary and had given him a signed document which could
be issued to the world's press at a moment's notice. Mboya
had, with a stroke of the pen, betrayed the father of African
nationalism, and he had suddenly reversed the principles of
his whole career.

It was all too absurd, but it was widely believed. It showed
that many educated Africans were prepared to believe any-
thing they heard about Mboya's character. Mboya was un-
doubtedly innocent on this particular issue, but once again
past antagonisms were bearing their bitter fruit.

In the meantime the Kenya African Democratic Union
was being formed on June 25, It was largely a reaction
against KANU. Its leaders were Ronald Ngala, Masinde
Muliro, Jeremiah Nyagah, John Keen, Andrew Omanga,
among others. They were temperamentally less militant than
the KANU leaders though they disagreed little on policy
and also claimed allegiance to Kenyatta. But they tended to
lay more emphasis on orderly progress toward independence
and less on speed. They made much play on their wish to be
"democratic" as opposed to the "dictatorial" tendencies of

219

TOM MBOYA

KANU. "With Uhura we want democracy/' 3 said the
KADU leader Ronald Ngala.

KADU had tribal roots. Its support came from a series of
small tribes along the Kenya coast from the Masai and the
Kalenjin tribes, the Kipsigis, Elgeyo, Nandi, Sambuku, and
Sukwho all feared that Kikuyos and Luos would dominate
and control KANU.

The KADU leaders complained that their counterparts
in KANU intended to be the "masters of Kenya/' Ronald
Ngala claimed that he had been driven Into forming another
party because Tom Mboya was quite impossible to work
with, while Mboya described Ngala as "cunning and eva-

sive." 4

Mboya pointed out that Ngala had been offered the treas-
urership of KANU but he had campaigned for the forma-
tion of a new party with himself as the leader.

A few days later Masinde Muliro, KADU's deputy leader,
said: "It is common knowledge in Kenya politics, that Mr.
Mboya is the only African politician who is ambitious and
will never accept second place in any organization." 5

Thus it was partly Mboya's relationship with his colleagues
which led to the formation o another party. The KADU
leaders spoke openly of his ambition and domineering atti-
tude and privately they complained to me about the way he
tried to ride roughshod over the rest of them. He would try
and impose his views on his colleagues. They were bitterly
resentful of the way he treated their views with withering
scorn and felt that he was trying to force his own policy
forward regardless of their feelings.

It is interesting to see that Ngala and Muliro adopted
entirely different tactics, compared with Oginga-Odinga and
Dr. Kiano, in their quarrel with Mboya. The former launched

3 Sunday Nation, June 26, 1960, page i.
4 Edst African Standard, July 15, 1960.
&East African Standard, July 21, 1960.

220

Young Man of New Africa

a new party, opposing Mboya openly and putting their views
to the test of public opinion, while Odinga carried on his
internecine warfare inside the party itself.

New opposition to Mboya came from inside the ranks of
KANU in the form of a Ginger Group of young African
politicians. The main objective of the group was to ginger
up KANU and force it to adopt a more militant policy. The
young firebrands of the group sniped from critical positions
at men like Mboya and Gichuru who were already thinking
out the future policies of Kenya. To them, Mboya was be-
coming too respectablea man who negotiated with govern-
ment; someone who would inherit power; someone who was
already aware of the responsibility that would be thrust on
him.

The Ginger Group leaders were young. Most of them
came from the executive ranks of Mboya's old People's Con-
vention Party. They were a long way from the top of the
political world and they were in a hurry.

At an early stage the Ginger Group leaders accepted the
rumor that Tom Mboya and James Gichuru had made a
secret agreement with the Colonial Secretary to prevent
Kenyatta's release. Men who had worked alongside Mboya
in the beehive of PCP offices suddenly accepted the secret
agreement story and became his most bitter critics.

There is no simple explanation of the way in which Mboya
found himself deserted by his closest lieutenants but many
different factors put them in a state of mind in which they
were prepared to believe almost any nonsense they heard
about him.

Most of them were Mboya's close associates who had ex-
perienced the usual difficulties in working with him. They
had not learned to trust him personally.

One of them expressed this feeling in a private conversa-
tion with me: 'We feared that Torn would use us and then
cast us aside. Whenever we got in a close and influential

221

TOM MBOYA

relationship with him, disagreements would start and we
would feel we were not being treated with respect We were
being used like pieces of machinery which would one day
wear out and be discarded/"

Thus one of the principal reasons why the Ginger Group
was particularly anti-Mboya was because he had never estab-
lished proper relations with his subordinates. Oginga-Odinga,
on the other hand, had used his expansive charm and his
flaming nationalistic zeal, to win the young men over to
him. The young politicians had no experience of working
with Odinga ? but they could at least get sympathy from
him in their quarrels with Mboya.

Odinga's red star was rising. He was finding new and
powerful allies in Cairo and later in Communist China,
who were giving him the overseas backing which he needed,
together with large-scale financial aid. At the same time
Mboya's friends were drifting from him. Here are a few who
turned against him: Dennis Akumu (secretary of Mombasa
Dockworkers); Joseph Mathenge (ex-secretary general of
PCP); Dr. Mungai Njeroge and Dr. Munyua Waiyaki (both
doctors of medicine who had been among Mboya's closest
friends); Kariuki Njiri (who had helped Mboya with his
United States students' scholarships scheme); and Sammy
Maina, Elijah Mukaya, and J. M. Oyangi (all members of
the PCP executive). This is a formidable list of men who
are all active Kenya politicians.

More and more, educated Africans, who were not directly
connected with politics, were hearing the curious rumors
about his political conduct. Complaints, grievances, gossip
filled the African bars, the location dance halls, and the news-
paper offices. Educated Africans whispered words of doubt
in the ears of liberal Europeans and Asians.

Mboya's life, character, and ambition were discussed and
disputed in an atmosphere of uncertainty and doubt. Disil-
lusionment with his leadership spread as far as Kenya student

222

Young Man of New Africa

societies overseas, and the Africanist groups in the capitals
of the world. By the end of the year the confidence of edu-
cated Africans in him had been considerably undermined,
His political policy and attitude had remained firm and
consistent, but suspicions and fears had grown up all round
him.

His critics acknowledged Mboya's cleverness, his brilliance
and his self-confidence. They were sure of his ambition and
his driving personal desire to be at the top. So they argued
that he was playing a cunning political game in his own
interests. He was maneuvering to gain supreme power in
Kenya. Thus he could not be really sincere in his champion-
ship of Kenyatta.

Despite these views in educated African circles, the vast
bulk of the people were not so easily affected by the rumor
and argument which went on above them. Mboya was still
their hero and the only person who could affect his over-all
popularity was Kenyatta, still languishing in his desert exile
at Lodwar.

Kenya's first attempt at a serious opinion poll gave these
interesting statistics. 6 A comprehensive sample of Africans
was asked "Who do you think is the most outstanding
African leader in Kenya?"

Kenyatta Mboya Ngala Gkhvru Odinga Kiano Muliro Others

June 1960 24% 41% 7% 2% 3% 11% - 12%
Sept 1960 32% 42% 11% 3% 2% 2% - 7%
Jan 1961 33% 28% 7% 6% 7% 5% 4% 4%

It would perhaps be wrong to attach too much Importance
to the details in these figures, but certain broad generaliza-
tions can be made. In the middle of 1960 Tom Mboya was
considered more outstanding than any other Kenya leader,

Polls conducted by the MARCO organization, Market Research Company
of Africa, under the guidance of Dr. Gordon Wilson*

223

TOM MBOYA

including Kenyatta. He was many times more popular than
his chief rival, Oginga-Odinga, and Dr. Kiano and Ronald
Ngala.

But as the Kenyatta question became a burning issue
toward the end of 1960, and as his opponents mounted their
whispering campaigns against him, Mboya's popularity be-
gan to decline. It was quite inevitable that Kenyatta should
become the most popular of all African leaders, but Mboya
was still a long way ahead of his nearest rivals.

224

Chapter

IF YOU CAN KEEP YOUR HEAD . . .

The first elections to give Africans a majority of seats in the
legislative council, under the Macleod plan, were arranged
for the end of February 1961.

Tom Mboya found himself opposed by four other candi-
dates in the Nairobi East constituency. His chief rival was
a young Kikuyu doctor of medicine, Dr. Munyua Waiyaki,
who had once been a close friend, KADU had an official
candidate in Martin Shikuku and there were two relatively
unknown independents, Akoko Mboya (no relative of Tom)
and C. H. Were.

The main challenge came from Dr. Waiyaki, who was
chairman of the Nairobi branch of KANU and backed by
many of the party leaders. Waiyaki was the focal point of
all discontent which had been generated against Mboya.
Behind Waiyaki lurked the figure of Oginga-Odinga, still
scheming and maneuvering and waiting for the election
campaign to make one last attempt to topple his rival.

Waiyaki also found support from a group of Nairobi's

225

TOM MBOYA

leading Kikuyu. They were led by university graduates who
had returned from courses In overseas universities. Most of
them had found excellent careers in the professions and in
government service^ but they devoted their spare time to
political intrigue. In the .evenings they would meet in one
another's houses and while away the hours in political dis-
cussion., taking their problems to Dr, Kiano who had become
their mouthpiece in Legco. These Kikuyu led by Dr. Mungai
Njeroge, Karluki Njiri, and others soon acquired the name
of the "Kikuyu clique."

Many of them formed strong friendships with Mboya
when they first returned from overseas, but sooner or later
they wonld drift away from him and return to the intrigues
in their homes and In the African corner bar, their favorite
drinking place.

Quite naturally Waiyakl drew strength and encouragement
from this group of fellow tribesmen during his election
campaign. He was joined by other Kikuyu who had brushed
with Mboya in the Ginger Group. Sammy Maina ? once an
enthusiastic member of the PCP and later a keen Ginger
Group man, became one of the most active members of
WaiyakTs election team.

If an opinion poll had been taken among Nairobi's edu-
cated African elite, a few weeks before the elections, a
majority of them would have supported Waiyakl and many
would have given him a good chance of winning the
election. Mboya's quarrels and disagreements in the stormy
months of 1960 were at last catching up with him and many
commentators doubted whether he would have a clear-cut
electoral victory.

One of the chief reasons for this was that Mboya's own
supporters were not a vocal, educated group like the Kikuyu
intellectuals. The party branches, which he had originally
built up in the locations as part of the PCP remained
loyal, but their faith in their leader and their solid organi-

226

Young Man of New Africa

zational work escaped publicity in the hectic weeks be-
fore Election Day.

Political commentators also forgot Mboya's immense
personal appeal with the man in the street. Though he
could count on the trades union vote and on the crowds that
he drew to his weekend meetings, they doubted that he
could overcome tribalism and persuade the 27,000 Kikuyu
in the 40,000 electorate to choose him rather than Waiyaki
their fellow tribesman.

Mboya had a piece of luck right at the beginning of his
campaign, when he drew an airplane out of the hat as his
electoral symbol. The nearest translation of "airplane" in
Swahili was "ndege" meaning "bird." Pronounced "day-gay"
it was the ideal word for shouting at the top of one's voice
at a political meeting, and no symbol could have been more
convenient than an airplane.

Soon the world's major airlines were competing with one
another in handing out publicity material to Mboya's elec-
toral teams. One plane followed another, from huge models
in metal, showing the seating arrangements in jetliners, to
small cardboard signs, and in between were an infinite
variety of posters, placards, and display signs all boosting
the airplane.

The election was not fought on real issues. The five
candidates spent most of their time attacking one another.
Their chief concern was to prove that their rivals were not
really sincere in their demands to get Kenyatta released.

Mboya was particularly susceptible to this criticism and
Waiyaki did his best to paint him as a man of ambition who
cared for nothing but his own personal advancement
Thousands of copies of an anonymous document were
circulated in the Nairobi locations saying that Mboya was
trying to form another party outside KANU. It also claimed
that 2850 had been collected in PCP subscriptions and

227

TOM MBOYA

asked what had become of the money since the party had
been dissolved.

In his speeches Mboya pointed out that he had been
chosen by KANU headquarters as the official party candidate
and that the people should vote for him if they believed
in the party. KANU was the party which wanted Kenyatta
as its leader. It was the party which could unite all Africans
and bring them triumphantly to freedom.

But whatever messages the candidates had hoped to put
across^ their campaigns were, as Mboya put it himself "re-
duced to the level of ugly personality conflicts/' 1

Mboya had always been careful in the earlier days of
his career to stick to the facts and policy issues and to
avoid attacking his colleagues at all costs, but he found it
very difficult to keep this standard during the elections.
He felt that he had been betrayed by many of his colleagues
and friends. He would single out his enemies in public
speeches and attack them with a passion that he had never
shown before. His anger gave his oratory wings as he clutched
the microphone and stabbed his finger into the air pouring
a never-ending stream of Swahili onto the crowds before
him.

It is interesting to take a glimpse at events on some of
the days at the height of the electoral campaign: On Janu-
ary 30 Mboya and Gichura decided the time had come to
expel Oginga-Odinga from KANU. "Mr. Odinga has, by his
activities and his statements, shown that he is determined
to create disunity and wreck KANU/ ? wrote Gichura in his
press release. 2 "He has officially announced his support for
non-KANU candidates and has gone out of his way to sup-
port new political organizations, particularly the Kenya Action
Group 3 which is contrary to KANU policy.

"Mr. Odinga has consistently been carrying out a smear

^-Mboya's speech to his Election Eve rally, February 25, 1961,

2 Daily Nation, January 31, 1961.

3 The young men of KANU Ginger Group had tried to form a new party
called the Kenya Action Group.

228

Young Mem of New Africa

campaign In Kenya and abroad directed against KANU
officials. He has recently launched an attack against me and
the people of Kiambu for having elected me unopposed.
. . . Since his visit to Communist states he has made a
number of pro-Communist statements . . "

Odinga ? s reaction to the statement was to snap back:
"These are all Mboya's points. He is like a drowning
man seeking support before he goes down. But his support
will go down too . . . it is all bull and nonsense created by
Mboya who is anxious about his position in Nairobi/ 7

At his next meeting Mboya read out the statement sus-
pending Odinga to the assembled crowd and he was roundly
applauded. After the meeting Odinga again commented:
"Let him ght like the true leader he pretends to be in-
stead of running to his stepmother, British Imperialism,
and crying like a spoiled child/'

The next day ? January 31, Odinga decided to share a
platform with Waiyaki to answer Mboya on his home
ground. The crowd which turned up to hear them speak was
not more than two thousand strong compared with the
ten thousand or more who flocked to hear Mboya and
it immediately became hostile. For thirty minutes the two
speakers tried to shout above the riotous noise and finally had
to abandon the meeting.

Afterward Odinga claimed that Mboya had organized
the jeering crowd "to spoil me speaking." This accusation
could only have been true if Mboya had managed to pack
the greater part of the crowd with his supporters; for the
hostility came from the majority of the people and not
from isolated groups.

Later, Mboya condemned "without reservation the dis-
gusting behavior at Waiyakfs*meeting" ... "I am deeply
concerned. Such behavior is both disgusting and in con-
flict with the democracy we want to create in Kenya/'

Every day of the election campaign was bringing some
new statement in the battle of personalities. On February i,

229

TOM MBOYA

John Keen, organizing secretary of the KADU announced
that Mboya had "political, personal, and financial arrange-
ments with the American ICFTU." He then attacked James
Gichuru for being "just a stooge/'

On February 3, the general council of KANU met to
discuss Odinga's suspension. The meeting went on for sev-
eral hours and attracted huge crowds outside the party offices.

Odinga spoke for an hour in his defense. He became very
excited and at times his voice was so loud that it rever-
berated through the windows of the KADU party offices
across the road causing much amusement in the opposite
camp. Mboya then replied in a quiet speech lasting fifteen
minutes. In the end the general council decided not to
expel Odinga though it censured him severely for his
attacks on Gichura and Mboya. The majority of council
members thought that party unity was more important than
anything else at such an advanced stage in the election
campaign. They felt that it would be disastrous to support
one group of leaders against another. The best plan was to
hold the party together and hope that the quarrel between
Mboya and Odinga would eventually subside.

Mboya felt that he had plenty of justification in his
complaints against Odinga and he tried hard to have him
removed from the party, but his attempt had failed. Odinga
had demonstrated his very real strength in the governing
council of the party.

But outside the party conference rooms, Mboya's election
campaign was moving quickly toward success. He was con-
fident and found that he could spare time to speak on the
platforms of Europeans and Indians who were running on
a KANU ticket. These non-African candidates were run-
ning for seats which had been specially reserved for the im-
migrant communities under the Macleod Constitution and
in areas where Africans formed the majority of votes many
of them depended on support from the African parties.

Thus Mboya found himself speaking on behalf of Mr.

230

Young Man of New Africa

R. S. Alexander., his old rival In legislative council, and a
leading member of MX. Michael BlundelTs New Kenya
Party. He also spoke for Mr. Ahmed Ali, an Asian Muslim
in Nairobi East, and Mr. Inambar, an Indian candidate in
Mombasa.

By campaigning vigorously for candidates of other races
Mboya played a major part in improving race relations in
Kenya during the electoral campaign. This was an extraordi-
nary phenomenon race relations were actually getting bet-
ter in the heat of a nationalist election campaign! There
had been gloomy warnings of trouble, but they proved un-
founded. The European womenfolk who had been sent over-
seas before the elections started began to return peacefully
to their homes. Not a single racial incident was reported
during the whole campaign.

This good inter-racial feeling was demonstrated by an
incident which I, and some other white friends, experienced
on Election Night, The results of the Nairobi seat had been
announced and the crowds were delirious with excitement
They were singing and dancing in the location streets. Our
car headlights shimmered over the jumping black bodies
and the excited faces. Branches of trees were waved jubi-
lantly in the air and eventually the car was forced to stop,
so thick was the black crowd before us.

When they saw we were white, the people nearest to us
were stunned. A look of doubt spread over their faces: What
have these white people got to do with our victory? they
seemed to be thinking. And as we watched, we wondered
whether the bubbling electoral fever might not boil over into
something unpleasant. At a moment like this the people of
the new Africa would give vent to their pent-up feelings.
We were sitting targets white faces inside a motorcar (that
mechanical symbol of the white man's civilization).

There was no doubt what some of them felt. A few
young men were bouncing the front bumper. Others were
using the side of the car as a bass drum, but a look of anxiety

231

TOM MBOYA

was passing over a face nearby. "Let them pass. Let them
pass/' called a voice. And then another elderly man cried
out, "Go in peace. Go in peace, for now we have our Uhuru/'
And with those words ringing in our ears we pushed our
way forward. Some of the crowd had taken it on themselves
to clear us a passage. They seemed anxiously concerned in
case we might get the wrong impression of their excitement
We might feel that this was a demonstration of race hatred
rather than a genuine expression of joy because Africa had
come into its own. As we drove away we could still hear the
old man's words: "Go in peace. Go in peace, for now we
have our Uhuru . . ."

Mboya did more than just speak on behalf of potential
European and Indian allies. In the months before the elec-
tion campaign, and during the campaign itself, he made
many speeches which his most severe critics would have
dubbed "responsible/*

"I am not going back to Legco to challenge the British
government/' he said at one meeting. 4 "That is over . . ,
the British are no longer the obstacle ahead of us. ...
We are constantly hearing people say *If only Kenya could
be another Tanganyika/ Give us a chance by electing a per-
son who has the confidence of our people and I believe we
can create here, not just another Tanganyika, but something
much better/'

And when the election was all over he made a stirring
statement showing he had been sincere in his campaign:

Tomorrow we enter a new era. Europeans and Asians will
look to us, as well as work with us, in preparing Kenya for
her destined place in the world independence. Let us not
become arrogant or racial, but humble and conscientious in
taking our new, legitimate, and rightful status. Let us show
the immigrant races that their suspicions and fears are un~

4 Daily Nation, February 11, 1961, page 2.

232

Young Man of New Africa

founded. To some extent you have already achieved this by
your conduct during these elections. Now let us get down,
roll-up our sleeves and make Kenya the land of progress,
peace, and prosperity. 5

On the eve of Election Day one could almost feel the
election fever In Nairobi. People of all races were talking
about the elections. Party cars raced up and down the streets,
plastered with posters, hooting their horns excitedly. Prepara-
tions were made for the last political meetings.

Tom Mboya had reserved Nairobi's African football sta-
dium for his Election Eve rally. It started in the afternoon,
under Nairobi's brilliant sun and blue, cloudless skies. The
crowd was spread over the football ground, the running
track, and the grandstands In one continuous phalanx. The
people stood like ants In a sugar bowl, in a thick, brown,
moving mass covering everything.

A forest of fuzzy heads and brown faces was broken by
proud new banners In red lettering on white cloth, by pic-
tures of Jomo Kenyatta, and by the inevitable model air-
planes.

The buzz of expectation turned Into a cheer as Mboya and
his party drove into the stadium. With difficulty they forced
their way through the crowd to the open land rover which
was waiting to make a triumphal tour of the running track,

The vehicle crept forward through the yelling, human
wall of bodies. Everywhere there were shouts of "Ndege"
and the crowd surged forward to get a closer view of their
leader. Mboya smiled. The mass enthusiasm warmed his
heart and it was specially welcome at this critical moment in
his career. But he seemed tired. The strain of past months
had washed some of the color from his face.

Back on the main grandstand, subsidiary speakers climbed
to their feet and harangued the crowd. A man from Nyanza

5 Statement after declaration of election results, February 27, 1961.

TOM MBOYA

shouted deafeningly. A Kikuyu speaker muttered academi-
cally. James Glchura spoke with commanding sternness and
ponderous responsibility.

One or two hecklers infuriated the crowd with their com-
ments. The people standing round them lost their tempers
and hustled them through the exits. The speakers called for
peace but silence was not restored until Tom Mboya rose
frowning to his feet and called in a weary, irritated tone, for
his flock to behave itself,

Then came the airplane. First it was just an insignificant
flylike speck in the sky ? but then it dived low over the sta-
dium. Behind it trailed the slogan VOTE TOM NDEGE
MBOYA. A huge grin spread over Mboya's face as the
crowd rocked on its heels with laughter and delight.

Mboya rose to speak. He raised his arm and shouted^

"Uhuni" answered the thousands of voices.

"Uhuru na Kenyatta" he cried.

"Uhvru na Kenyatta" came back the chanting answer.

"Uhuru na KANU."

"Uhum na KANUJ 9

It was a long, noisy ritual of call and response, an invita-
tion to the crowd to participate, to pledge itself. Mboya took
them all through the cries for "Uhuru" and so it went on
until the last cry of all there was no need for him to say
anything. The noise was louder than all the others put
together-"UHURU NA NDEGE, NDEGE, NDEGE"
roared the people.

Mboya started speaking with his usual calm restraint and
the Swahili rolled in a liquid stream from his lips. On this
occasion though, he was not relying entirely on his natural
eloquence. He had prepared a long speech in English be-
forehand which gave additional shape and purpose to his
case, as he addressed more than half the electorate, spread
out before him.

234

Young M<m of New Africa

This was the last chance the Nairobi Africans had of
putting tribalism behind them. It was their chance to show
their faith in KANU, the party that would be the driving
force in Kenya of the future. And Mboya was making his
tactics clear. Too often, in the past, had he been accused of
breaking his promises and pledges about Kenyatta. This
time he was going to make a promise before thirty thousand
people. He would not participate in a new Kenya government
unless Kenyatta was unconditionally released and allowed to
become chief minister.

The time came for a personal appeal to the deepest feel-
ings of the people. He wanted to make them see what he
had been through.

"Throughout these past years/' he said, "and especially
in the last five weeks when friends and foes alike have joined
together to seek my complete liquidation from politics, even
to the point of threat of physical bodily harm, I have been
kept sustained spiritually by this poem of Rudyard Kipling,"
Whereupon, Tom Mboya, the voice of Africa in the 1960$,
unblushingly quoted the words of the bard who spent a life-
time singing the praises of British Imperialism:

" 'If you can keep your head when all about you,

Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,

But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired of waiting,

Or being lied about don't deal in lies,
Or being hated don't give way to hating,

And yet don't look too good or talk too wise . . / "

As he read the poem, the afternoon shadows were length-
ening. His voice sounded more African than I have ever
heard it before. The crowd listened without understanding.
They wondered at the magic English jingle, singing in their
ears; "If you can ... If you . . . If you . . "

Mboya's white Mercedes turned out of the gates of the

235

TOM MBOYA

stadium and thousands flowed from the turnstiles with the
red dust swirling into the air and darkness falling over the
townships. Tomorrow* Sunday^ February 26, 1961, was Elec-
tion Day.

236

Chapter

WHEN ELEPHANTS FIGHT . . .

Not even the night could swallow up Nairobi's election
fever. The bars were alive with lights and talk. People were
singing and dancing as if it was the eve of a great public
holiday. Cars flashed past crammed with party workers. A
continual hum of noise rose from the locations, broken oc-
casionally by the sharp, distinct cry of "Ndege, Ndege,
Ndege . . ."

At dawn 25,000 people more than half of the 40,000
electorate were waiting at the polling places. Voters stood
ten abreast in queues leading to the different stations curl-
ing round and round the administrative offices. At 6 A.M.
the police began to let a trickle through. Some had waited
for several hours for their turn to go through the polls.

The police had laboriously sorted out the voters into neat
queues and they tried to keep them apart from the fat
mammies who led chanting groups dancing down the streets.
Placards, posters, and emblems appeared everywhere. For
every clock or key there were ten airplanes. For every cry of

TOM MBOYA

"Wafydk? 9 or "Were" there were a hundred u Ndeges n and
yet the publicity men of the other candidates were received
in carnival spirit. When they tried to influence the patient
queues, the people took it with smiling tolerance. The
women with babies on their backs chanted "Ndege" at
them, while the men chuckled quietly to themselves.

Despite the excitement, the atmosphere was so good-
natured that the supporters of other candidates were often
to be seen dancing and holding their placards high among
groups of Mboya ? s men*

The handfuls of Indians and white missionaries who lived
in Tom Mboya's constituency voted heavily in his favor.
During the last year or so their attitude toward him had un-
dergone a rapid change, as he revealed he was a man without
racial prejudice. When the immigrant races compared him
with the other candidates, he was suddenly seen in proper
perspective a man of extraordinary ability, with an honest
desire to make nonracialism work in Kenya.

As Election Day wore on, excitement mounted and the
sun shone hotter. Opposition to Mboya began to melt in
the heat, like ice cream. When the people had voted they
waited in the crowd; seeking excitement; growing more res-
tive.

Dr. Waiyaki came to vote and walked the length of the
street followed by an excited crowd chanting its support for
Mboya. Akoko Mboya, another candidate, found the people
still more agitated. He made the mistake of trying to drive
through their ranks in his car. When he got out to vote he
was treated like a teen-age singer in the hands of his rock V
roll fans. They began clutching at his clothing and handling
him roughly until he had to be whisked away under police
protection.

A few minutes before the polls closed Tom Mboya drove
up in his white Mercedes. The cheers from the crowd reached

238

Young Man of New Africa

a crescendo as mounted police galloped down the road, clear-
ing a passage for his car.

There was one more day of voting but the next day was a
Monday. After Sunday's electoral carnival it was a real anti-
climax. It was not until evening, when the workers returned
home, that the crowds gathered once more outside the poll-
ing places.

After the count the district commissioner walked onto
the roof of the building. It was already dark and his face was
lit by the floodlights. Thousands of people were standing in
the darkness looking up at the roof. Mboya and the district
commissioner could be clearly seen. Suddenly the commis-
sioner raised the hand of the winning candidate and tried to
speak. But before he had mouthed the first words a sudden
roar shattered the air and rolled across the locations, across
Nairobi, and out into Africa. Everyone went mad, cheering,
singing, whistling, dancing, embracing strangers, and leaping
around in the street

They knew that Mboya had won a sweeping victory and
slowly the full facts circulated, from mouth to mouth, in the
crowd below.

Mboya's majority was 28,739 and all the other candidates,
including Waiyaki, had gained such a small percentage of the
vote that they lost the cash deposits handed over to the elec-
toral authorities. The voting was as follows:

Tom Mboya 31,407

Dr. Waiyaki 2,668

M. Shikuku 1,557

C. Were 79

Akoko Mboya 76

It was an astonishing victory. Even Mboya himself had
not expected such an overwhelming majority and his most
enthusiastic supporters were more than satisfied. Mboya's
reputation in Nairobi had not been touched by the long

239

TOM MBOYA

campaign of smear and misrepresentation which his oppo-
nents had directed against him.

Tribalism had been dealt a crashing blow. Practically all
of Nairobi Kikuyu had ignored the man of their own tribe
and had chosen a man who stood for something far greater
than tribalism, someone whose name was synonymous with
African nationalism and with the new Africa of the 1960$.

Apart from his personal success, Mboya had the pleasure
of seeing Indians and Europeans, who had the support of
KANU ? being returned with large majorities. It was the
African voters who were responsible for putting Blundell,
Alexander, Havelock, Marrian, Ibrahim Nathoo, and K. P.
Shah into the legislative council. On the other hand, the
coalition candidates, including their leader Sir Ferdinand
Cavendish Bentick, who had the backing of Oginga-Odinga,
were heavily defeated.

The results of the elections came through and the Nairobi
crowds were wild with excitement. Mboya chose to escape
from the multitude. While his supporters were filling the
streets outside his house, he slipped away, utterly exhausted,
to drink whiskey with the European Minister for Agriculture,
Mr. Brace MacKenzie.

As the Kenya Broadcasting Service announced the elec-
tion results, the new shape of the legislative council gradu-
ally became clear. Mboya had reason to be pleased, but soon
he heard that all his principal colleagues, rivals, friends, and
foes had also been re-elected.

Odinga scored a considerable personal victory in his own
constituency of Central Nyanza. Dr. Kiano and Ronald
Ngala also achieved giant majorities, while James Gichura
and Masinde Muliro were returned unopposed. The only
African leader of any stature who failed to get into the new
Legco was Arthur Ochwada who found himself at the bot-
tom of the poll in Nakuru town.

Thus all the main African leaders found themselves back

240

Young Man of New Africa

in Legco once more and most of them had been given power-
ful support in their own constituencies. As a result the
African-elected members were in a majority in the council
They were in a position to take over the government of their
country. The obstacles in the path of African nationalism
and democracy, which once seemed so formidable^ were
slowly melting away.

The Kenya settlers who held so much power in the past
can now only speak with a minority voice. The Africans
can now determine the conditions on which they remain.
The settlers, with all their faults, helped to build Kenya to
nationhood. Today they produce four fifths of Kenya's export-
able farm produce. Will they now have to pack their bags and
go, or will they be able to stay and help their country with
their special skills and knowledge?

The great problem in Kenya after the elections was the
formation of a new government The Kenya African Na-
tional Union had won 19 seats to 15 for KADIL

KANU made it quite clear from the start that it could
not participate in government until Jomo Kenyatta was un-
conditionally released. Mboya fully endorsed this view. In
repeated pledges and statements he said that he would play
no part in any government unless Kenyatta was freed. At
the time of his visit to Canada in April 1961 Mboya said
that he was "absolutely sure Kenyatta will be the first Prime
Minister of Kenya when it achieves independence," 1

Thus he honored the pledges he had given at the election
and the other members of KANU including Oginga-Odinga
and James Gichuru remained unshaken, despite the great
pressure put on them by the Kenya governor and officials.
These KANU leaders inevitably laid themselves open to
criticism. Kenya was drifting like a pilotiess ship waiting for
a crew to steer it. The economy was suffering. Fanners and
businessmen became increasingly alarmed, but the African

lEast African Standard, April 14, 1961.

241

TOM MBOYA

nationalists were sore that no political stability could be
achieved without Kenyatta.

KAMI stuck to this stand, but KADU (despite the fact
that they were a minority party who would have to rely on
European and Asian ministers to get a majority) were finally
persuaded to form the government.

Mboya commented that "They have succumbed to the
manipulations of the Governor and the Colonial Secretary.*'
He pointed out that KADU had agreed, on a previous visit
to Jorao Kenyatta at Lodwar, to preserve African unity, but
now they had caused a sharp division in the African ranks.
Later he described the government as "nothing more than
a gramophone record of the Governor and British Govern-
ment"

KADU argued that one group or another tad to form the
government; as KANU refused they were obliged to do so.
This was necessary in their view to secure Kenyatta's release
if for nothing else. So an uneasy KADU government was
formed and KANU became the opposition.

KANU soon drew up a Shadow Cabinet on the lines of
the opposition party in the British Parliament.

It was decided that James Gichuru should be leader of the
house. Dr. Kiano was to be Minister of Finance, Oginga-
Odinga was to be Minister of Local Government and Lands,
and Clement Argwings Khodeck was to be Minister of Legal
Affairs. Tom Mboya was to have the Ministry of Defense
and Internal Security, and External Affairs.

This organization of an official opposition showed a gen-
eral trend for KANU members to forget their internal quar-
rels. The party which had been so divided at the time of the
elections was gradually forgetting its differences. Rivalry be-
tween its leaders was assuming more natural proportions
and was now diverted against the leaders of the KADU
party.

The Shadow Cabinet appointments also gave an interest-

242

"Young Man of New Africa

ing insight into Mboya's standing within the party. Sur-
prisingly he had been given the Internal Security portfolio.
The man who had pleaded so long and bitterly against the
wrong uses of the forces of law and order was now prepared
to take on the responsibility for them! Would he really like
the role of a policeman? Would his heart find repose in the
luxury of the minister's office or would it be out there with
the crowds of ordinary citizens on the Nairobi streets?

But he was an obvious choice for the Ministry of Ex-
ternal Affairs, for there are few politicians in Kenya who
have greater understanding of the outside world than Mboya.
Whenever a news story breaks concerning events in the
world which have a direct bearing on Africa, Mboya reacts
sooner than any of his colleagues with an intelligent com-
ment based on real understanding.

His travels and his international contacts have allowed
him a frequent escape from the in-fighting of Kenya's little
parish. No matter how involved he is with the internal
affairs of Kenya he can also stand back and take a world
view.

On August 14, 1961, Jomo Kenyatta was released. He
had been detained or restricted since October 20, 1952
virtually nine years. Kenyatta seemed younger, stronger, more
alert, and above all, more moderate than most expected. His
health was quite striking for one who had been so long
detained and claiming that he was an old man of seventy-
one. At one of his early meetings Kenyatta took off his
jacket with its leopard-skin lapels and threw it on a nearby
chair. Showing the crowd his broad shoulders and powerful
arms he shouted, "Am I old?" and the crowd roared back
"No." 2

But Kenyatta remained as enigmatic as ever. Behind his
striking good looks, his attractive personality, his charming

2 Daily Nation, September 25, 1961, page 2.

243

TOM MBOYA

manners lay his inscrutable mind. Journalists who tried to
pin him down on important issues found his answers vapor-
ized in the thin Kenya air leaving nothing but puzzlement
Was he just taking his time and sizing up the new political
situation? Was he still not sure how he should lead the new
Kenya?

There was a general feeling that Kenyatta wanted African
unity. He seemed to want to give the white farmers a fair
deal and to assure them that they would not be arbitrarily
evicted from their farms. He also publicly stressed the need
for African unity, but he still worked in mysterious ways.

Kenyatta's fellow detainees were also released from re-
striction. Back into Kenya politics came Mr* Paul Ngei ? the
young politician who had been tried and convicted at the
same time as Kenyatta. Immediately Ngei took a much more
militant line than his leader. His voice recalled the days
before Mau Mau when he announced at a public meeting
that land in Kenya occupied by "foreigners" must be handed
over to the Africans. Perhaps the greatest ever crowd in
Kenya's history gathered at Nyeri on September 25, to hear
Paul Ngei lead a prayer:

"African God who created this country to be for Africans,
the trees, the grass and the cattle for milk for our children,
we ask you today to see the European God and let him
know that the African children want their farms back.
Amen." 8

Jomo Kenyatta at the same meeting spoke with another
voice:

"We want our land. For almost forty or fifty years we
have been demanding our land back. We must be enthusi-
astic and take up our pangas and farm it properly to educate
our children. The land we want is land which is not farmed,
but is a place for wild animals."

s Daily Nation, September 25, 1961, page i.

244

Young Man of New Africa

The third voice was a voice of Modern Africa. Tom
Mboya explained what Paul Ngei really meant: "What he
said was that he wanted land reforms. We all want land re-
forms. These reforms will be based on certain standards
and on certain ideas, and fair compensation is part of
them,"

Which voice will speak for the future of Kenya?

As I write this the Kenya leaders are once more involved
in constitutional discussions which started in London on
February 15. At this conference a final date is expected
to be fixed for Kenya's independence.

A further development in Mboya ? s thinking on the land
question came during the marathon constitutional talks of
February, March, and April 1962. In a general discussion on
the future of the European White Highlands, he said these
must be regarded as a national asset and that future control
should come under the authority of a proposed Central Land
Board.

Mboya said: "The Central Land Board must be able to
buy land from the European farmers and negotiate on behalf
of the African settlers who are to become the new land own-
ers.

"It cannot be denied that at present 80 per cent of all
direct exports of the country come from these areas, thus we
must recognize its economic effect in the whole of our coun-
try and the grave anxiety any proposals must have on the
people of Kenya."

Mboya was lending his support to the KANU plan that
resettlement of Africans should come under central control
and not under regional control as the KADU party suggested.

During the constitutional talks Mboya stood loyally by
Kenyatta. As usual he was a powerhouse of ideas and logic
and again he demonstrated his ability to negotiate and com-
promise to gain a fair and workable constitutional settlement.
He played his full part in working out the compromise which

245

TOM MBOYA

finally led to a coalition government tinder the joint leader-
ship of Kenyatta of KANU and Ronald Ngala of KADU. On
his return to Kenya he was sworn in on April 10 as Minister
of Labour in a coalition government. In taking on this ap-
pointment he regretfully resigned his position as Secretary
General of the Kenya Federation of Labour for it would have
been impossible for him to represent the workers and the
government at one and the same time. No Minister of La-
bour could have had more firsthand experience of his ap-
pointed job!

246

Chapter

A NEW PART TO PLAY

In eight years a young nobody called Tom Mboya has be-
come one of the foremost African leaders in Kenya. In the
world, his name is directly associated with his country, with
African nationalism and with the new force of Pan African-
ism. He has come from the old, rural world of primitive
Africa fresh into the twentieth century, to see his country
through the last violent convulsions as a new nation is born.
Africa has woken from its long sleep. Mboya has arrived at
the continent's great moment in history. He has come to
help it take its part in the modern world.

This book looks at Mboya in a particular historical con-
text. The effective years of his political life have been lived
in the post-Mau Mau, post-violent era of Kenya politics.
Mboya came into his own at a time when Jomo Kenyatta,
one of the greatest actors on the stage of Kenya politics,
was missing. From the time of Kenyatta's arrest until com-
paratively recently when he was released, all political deci-
sions were made in his absence,

247

TOM MBOYA

It is easy to forget today, now that Kenyatta Is taking a
full part In Kenya politics, that his detention was once con-
sidered to be almost Irrevocable. Even the most enthusiastic
nationalists, crying for his release, felt they were asking for
the impossible and day-to-day politics went on without him.

In the years between it was Mboya who was taken by the
world as the undisputed leader of his people. The world
press and world leaders took his voice as the voice of seven
million Africans. Inside Kenya the masses still idolize
Mboya. The new urban Africans have waited for a leader to
express their inchoate feelings for them. They want someone
who has risen from their ranks and has not forgotten them.
Mboya is one who has achieved what the ordinary African
wants human dignity.

Mboya is a young man In his early thirties. He is well-
dressed, self-educated, the master of social convention. He
was once an ordinary unprivileged African, but he has risen
to equal the best white men who start with .every advantage
in life. Because Mboya has achieved equality many Africans
think of him and lose the sneaking feeling of Inferiority
which lies deep even in the minds of the most intelligent

In past years Mboya's great qualities of leadership were
challenged by many of his contemporaries In the Kenya
political scene. The challenge did not come from men of
the same ability as he. His rivals did not seriously disagree
with his views, but they clashed instead on a personality
level.

The other African leaders in Kenya had many reasons for
refusing to allow Mboya to take the over-all lead. Some
manifested tribal prejudice which lurked below the fagade of
modern political thinking. Some were ambitious without
any consistent political beliefs to excuse themselves and
they were convinced that Mboya was consumed with the
same ambition and the same lack of principle. More thought-
ful rivals admitted that Mboya was of greater stature than

248

Young Man of New Africa

they, but this did not make them any the less suspicious.

The most recent judgment on Mboya's stature comes in
the authoritative Africa 1962 broadsheet privately circulated
in Britain: "Few Kenyans deny that Mboya has the best
political brains in the country, perhaps in all black Africa/' 1

Unfortunately the strongest weapon against Mboya was
the claim that he was not being faithful to Kenyatta. Mboya
found himself in a world of scheme and double scheme., of
talk and double talk as Kenyatta lived out his days in his
desert exile.

What Mboya's opponents often forgot was that there was
political work to do in Kenya, Kenyatta was in detention,,
but events in Kenya were changing in the same way as any
other part of Africa. Somebody had to take the lead in
Kenyatta's absence. This Mboya did and he could not be
expected to act as the interpreter of Kenyatta, a man whom
he could not consult and whom he had hardly met Most
people in Kenya at the time felt that Mboya, being an
ambitious and clever politician, was jealous of Kenyatta and
waiting for a time when he could try strength with him.
But looking at Mboya's record there is nothing in his public
or private life where he has not shown his respect for Ken-
yatta as the "father of the nation" and recognized his lead-
ership. Since Kenyatta was released in August 1961 Mboya
has been constantly at his elbow a power house of good
sense and practical knowledge. Once again during the lengthy
constitutional conference in London in March 1962 Mboya
worked consistently with Kenyatta; unobtrusively at Ken-
yatta's elbow ready with advice and ideas.

Mboya's opponents naturally conclude that he is too weak
at present to cross swords with Kenyatta and that he is
simply biding his time. But this cynical view is pure con-
jecture. Apart from anything else, Mboya is far too wise to
want to split African unity in Kenya still further. On the

i Africa 1962. No. 7. April 16, 1962, page 2.

249

TOM MBOYA

contrary, lie has continually stressed the need for African
leaders to stand together. Moreover Mboya knows that he
has an immensely important part to play in Kenya's future
a part which will absorb all his energies and talents.

But there is a danger that his other rivals may try and
sow the seeds of doubt and mistrust between himself and
Kenyatta, by filling the old man ? s ears with rumor and sus-
picion. If this happens, much will depend on their personal
relationship and on the trust, loyalty, and friendship which
Mboya can demonstrate.

When Kenyatta was away it was Mboya who was the
policy maker, the strategist, and the tactician who directed
the African nationalist campaign. He also became an expert
in specialized fields.

For example, as Minister of Labour he is the country's
leading trades unionist. As a negotiator he knows the limits
of his case, how much the employers will finally give and
how to bring them to the position where they will make con-
cessions.

Under Dr. Nkrumah's early encouragement he also be-
came an expert in the sphere of political organization-
another field in which a lesser man would fulfill a lifetime's
ambition. He built the PCP as the first really effective po-
litical party of the post-Mao Man era and staffed it with
loyal members of all tribes.

Mboya has also shown himself an expert in another thing
that is an unpleasant necessity in this age. In a world where
the rich countries get richer and the poor poorer, Mboya
has become an expert "beggar/' And with some justifica-
tion. He has explored the ways in which countries such as
the United States can help Kenya. He knows America and
Americans and this knowledge will be of vital importance
in the future.

How much have the achievements of this thirty-one-year-
old leader been due to historical circumstance?

250

Joung Man of New Africa

If he had been born ten years earlier his fate could scarcely
have been the same. At best he might have been in exile,
at worst in detention. He could not have stopped Mau Mao,
even Kenyatta could not have done that. It was a move-
ment that was determined by historical causes far beyond
the control of a single man. If Mboya had been born a few
years earlier Mau Mau would certainly have engulfed him
too.

If he had been born ten years later, so that his entry into
the political arena would only just be starting today, he
would doubtless have been a brilliant specialist, a leading
trades unionist, even a prominent politician, but the forces
of African nationalism would have triumphed without him.

He arrived at the right moment in Kenya's history. He
cannot quarrel about the time he made his debut on the
political stage, nor with the drama that was being enacted,
nor with the role for which he was cast. As he was still in
his early twenties he scarcely had time to get seriously po-
litically involved before the Mau Mau explosion. Leaders
who were a few more years experienced than he were ar-
rested. He came into his own with the Africans leaderless.
The policy of violence had hopelessly failed. The attempt
had unleashed the forces of repression and an organized
war to counter Mau Mau. New thinking was needed and
new men were wanted who could not be put out of action
by the pattern of events which led to the emergency.

Mboya was the man who was needed. He was a detribal-
ized product of an urban civilization. He has lived in the
classrooms of mission schools and in a small location house
a typical house in a big African town most of his life.
He has been exposed to all the main influences of the
Western way of life. These were often secondhand influ-
ences, like secondhand clothing covering the majority of
the African proletariat but the effect is the same on a per-
son whose tribal background is a dim childhood memory.

251

TOM MBOYA

He had a Western education. Missionaries taught him
the morals of Western Christianity. He has absorbed the
arguments and ideas of the nationalists and socialists of
history. He has studied Western methods of organization.
He has pitted himself against Western minds using Western
logic.

There is no attempt, on his part, to defend the customs
of tribalism, nor any effort to theorize about the "African
personality." Even his ultimate political objectives are not
the product of Africa. Long before Mboya the English
Chartists wanted "undiluted democracy/' The Indian, Irish,
and Cypriot nationalists wanted "total independence/'
Many British colonies besides Britain herself have thought
the best system of government was one based on "parlia-
mentary democracy on the Westminster pattern/' And be-
yond the political goals Mboya hopes that his people will
rapidly share in the material benefits of Industrial civiliza-
tion.

"We are not asking for anything new or revolutionary,
but something that Britain has straggled centuries to
achieve/' said Julius Nyerere on one occasion. Mboya agrees
entirely with his friend.

Mboya is essentially the modern African that was needed
to lead the modern African revolution. He was modern from
his American Dictaphone to his method of speech, from his
way of dressing to his polished manners. He arrived at a
time his people needed him, at the right historical moment,
but there are hundreds of others who fill these qualifications.
What are his other qualities that have allowed him to get to
the top?

Fundamental to his character is his clarity of purpose and
his ability to distinguish between essential issues and details,
He has always been a believer in the underlying simplicity
in complicated issues. He sees the great need in politics,
where all men think differently, to isolate principles of gen-

252

Young Man of New Africa

eral agreement and not to dwell on trivial details that dis-
unite and divide. It is not just that he knows the African
nationalist slogans about ultimate goals, but he knows the
right tactics to employ at the right time.

His clarity is not the clarity of pure theory, or the mastery
of abstract principles, but of a limitless fund of practical
common sense. This is what led him to trades unionism
when a political future seemed hopeless at the beginning of
Mau Mau. He saw that he could achieve positive results in
the trades union field which ordinary Africans could appreci-
ate. He saw trades unionism would shape part of his coun-
try's future. The test came when he had to choose between
being top of the trades union field or moving into the wider
sphere of politics where major policy would be decided.
Mboya rightly chose the wider political canvas. He was sure
enough of his own capabilities to take the risk of failure,
and he succeeded.

Mboya is also a person who rises to the occasion. His
friend, Sir Ernest Vasey, said that he was like many other
great men. The wider the subject on which he had to think
or speak, the better he acquitted himself. His best legisla-
tive council speeches were on the governor's addresses and
on the budget, not on small and cramping subjects. When
faced with a crisis he seems to have the ability to view it
and himself with detachment, to be able to study the situa-
tion with calm reason, as if a solution were only dependent
on finding the right answer, which was always there.

His ease of expression, oratorical brilliance, and negotiat-
ing cleverness need not be repeated here, nor his capacity for
hard work, his stamina and tirelessness. These are all qualities
that he has to a marked degree and that are invaluable to
him, but it is his weaknesses that will probably determine his
future.

However logical and brilliant a statesman is he seldom
succeeds in political life if he cannot win the trust and con-

253

TOM MBOYA

fidence of at least one group of Ms colleagues. This has
been Mboya's greatest failure so far In his career. Leaving
Kenyatta aside, with the exception of fames Glchuru, he has
not kept one really gifted colleague loyal to him and pre-
pared to acknowledge his natural ability without jealousy. He
has been almost too clear-headed about things and ideas to
have time for the irrationalities of people. His fine intuition
which tells him what the ordinary man in the street wants,
deserts him when dealing with people who are his equals.

When other men show themselves to be as clever as he,
he often gives them his respect, but he also tends to take
up an intellectually aggressive position. His supreme self-
confidence urges him to show that he is right and to de-
molish his opponents argument. His attitude is often taken
for the height of vanity and self-satisfaction, but to Mboya
it is merely the attitude of a person who believes himself
to be right He thinks that the other person is talking non-
sense and cannot understand why.

Mboya's youth and keenness to see his political principles
vindicated aggravates his self-confidence and scorn for others
who cross him. Sir Ernest Vasey wishes he had a little more
patience and a little more ability to laugh inside himself.
He would be more of a statesman if he was not in such a
single-minded hurry, but there are already signs that he is
learning this from the school of life.

His weaknesses would be more easily forgotten if people
felt they could get to know him better, if his true feelings
were not masked by an ultra-English, un-African reserve.
Many of his friends and closest political colleagues Dr.
Kiano, Miss Perham, myself, and even some of his girl
friends have remarked how distant they always feel from
Mboya. However much they know his mind^ they grope to
know him personally. The result is that no one ever really
understands his feelings, and when the motives of a man of
power are not clear they are immediately open to suspicion.

254

Young Man of New Africa

People understand Mboya's political reasoning and yet feel
that they cannot trust his motives.

If it is assumed that he will ind a way to a position
among leaders in the independent Kenya of tomorrow, the
most interesting speculation is whether or not he will be
faithful to the democratic ideal he has set himself.

Throughout his career when he has taken one course or
another, the question can always be asked whether he did It
for personal ambition or because it was the right thing which
his ideals dictated. He vehemently denies that he acts for
personal ambition, but his critics, particularly among the
settler Europeans, have continually argued that he is using
arguments in favor of democracy to get himself into the
position of a dictator.

Mboya has asked that his motives should be judged on
the whole of his record of public service. When his career is
examined impartially, it is practically impossible to pin down
one occasion when he acted out of pure ambition. On the
other hand most of his public actions seem to be consistent
with his declared principles. This must be what people
mean when they talk of his political logic. He has pursued
a consistent course with steadfast determination. If he had
been working from motives of personal ambition he should,
by this stage in his career, have revealed some discrepancy
between the democracy he preaches and the things he has
done. But this is not so. He has only done what is expected
of him.

His critics say that the reason for this is that he has so
far had no responsibility; that he will not reveal his consum-
ing ambition until he finally gets power. It is true that he
has so far always been in the position of asking others to be
democratic. He has asked the Kenya government for un-
diluted democracy. He has criticized Nkrumah for restrict-
ing the freedom of Ghana trade unions but we still do not
know what he will do if he gets power. The answer to this

255

TOM MBOYA

problem lies IB the future. All that can now be said is that
his career shows that he looks at the problems of the world
and his own country with the broad view of a nonracist
democrat. He has said that he wants to make democracy
work and there is every reason that he should do so, if his
rivals, and historical circumstances, allow him.

APPENDIX
TOM MBOYA

1930

1942

August 15

November

1946

1948

1951 January

Born.

Catholic secondary school, Yala.

Passed Kenya African primary school

certificate.
Holy Ghost College, Mango, Catholic

high school

African secondary school certificate.
Joined Royal Sanitary Institute Medical
Training School Moved to f eanes school

President of student council.
Qualified as a sanitary inspector.

October 20, 1952. EMERGENCY DECLARED. KENYATTA AR-
RESTED

Mboya joins KAU. Made director of in-
formation services. Resigns from
Nairobi City Council

APPENDIX

Fantiel Odede arrested. Mboya becomes
effective treasurer of KAU. Full-
time secretary of Kenya Local Gov-
ernment Workers Union*

Kenyatta convicted*

Man shot through wall of Mboya's
office and wounded in leg,

KAU banned.

Becomes general secretary of Kenya Fed-
eration of Labour.

Lyttelton Constitution promulgated*

Travels overseas, Geneva^ Brussels, Lon-
don.

1954 November ICFTU seminar on workers education

in Calcutta, Tours India and Paki-
stan.

Mombasa dock strike. Labor conference
at Beira. Labor and wages advisory
boards.

Begins years course at Ruskin College,
Oxford University, England.

Tours United States and Canada.

1953 March 9

1953 April 8

1953 J une 8

1953 Sept 12

1954 March

1954 My

1955 March

1955 October

1956 October

AFRICAN ELECTIONS TO LEGISLATIVE COUNCIL UNDER LYTTEL-
TON CONSTITUTION

1957
1957

March 10
July

1957 October

1958 March

Elected to legislative council

Delegation to London to change Lyttel-
ton Constitution.

Breakdown of constitutional talks under
Alan Lennox-Boyd.

Attends Ghana's first anniversary of in-
dependence.

257

APPENDIX

April 3, 1958. LENNOX-BO YD IMPOSES CONSTITUTION

1958 May

1958 July

1958 October

1958 November

2958 December

1959 March

1959 April-May

1959 Jwly

1959 August

1959 November

1959 December

1960 January 18
1960 March

Trial of Kenya's African-elected mem-
bers.

Appointed chairman of eastern, central
and southern sob-regions of 1CFTIL

Visits Ethiopia.

ICFTU conference^ Brussels. Meets Len-
nox-Boyd in London and gives him
Macharia affidavit

Chairman of All African People's Con-
ference in Accra, Ghana.

Mboya's house searched. Thirty-nine
People's Convention Party members
detained or restricted.

Tour of United States. Meets Vice-Presi-
dent Richard M. Nixon.

Starts to form Kenya Independence
Movement as a national party.

Eighty-one students airlifted to United
States.

ICFTU conference., Nigeria.

Brussels ICFTU conference. Wins more
autonomy for African region.

Kenya constitutional talks, London.

Joins Kenya African National Union,

March 1960. MACLEOD CONSTITUTION PROMULGATED
1960 April

1960 June

Trade union conference, Tunis. Confer-
ence of independent African states,
Accra. Talks with Nlrumah. Visits
Liberia.

Merges PGP with KAMI

258

APPEHDIX

1960 July In United to raise money for sec-

ond student airlift Meets Senator
John F. Kennedy,

1960 September Two hundred and fifty students

to United States.

1961 January Mboya starts his second election cam-

paign to Kenya Legco.

1961 Feb. 27 Mboya re-elected to legislative council by

an overwhelming majority.

1961 April Visits Canada. Attends Africa Freedom

Day, New York.

1961 May Disappointed at All African Trades Un-

ion Conference at Casablanca.

1961 August 15 Jomo Kenyatta released.

1961 September Kenya constitutional talks.

1962 Jan. 20 Married Pamela Odede.
1962 Feb. 15 Kenya constitutional talks.
1962 April Kenya constitutional talks end.
1962 April 10 Mboya made Minister of Labour.

259

GLOSSARY

Political parties, trade unions, and other organizations re-
ferred to in this book.

AAPC (ALL AFRICAN PEOPLE'S CONFERENCE) A gathering
of African nationalist organizations following in the long
tradition of Pan African conferences going back to the
first Pan African conference of all at Paris in 1919. The
first AAPC on African soil met at Accra in December
1958. It called for the rapid liberation of Africa from
colonialism which caused much resentment in the
white-dominated countries of Africa.

AATUF (ALL AFRICAN TRADES UNION FEDERATION) At
the All African People's Conference at Accra in 1958 the
idea was put forward to form an All African Trades
Union Federation. After much delay this body came
into being as a co-ordinating body of African trades
unions at Casablanca in May 1961. The conference de-
cided that AATUF unions should not have other in-
ternational affiliations.

260

GLOSSARY

ACOA (AMERICAN COMMITTEE ON AFRICA) A private
American organization with a strongly pro-African politi-
cal viewpoint. Its chief activities have been the organiza-
tion of student airlifts and the organization of Africa
freedom days in America.

CCTA (COMMISSION FOE TECHNICAL CO-OPERATION
SOUTH OF THE SAHARA) Not a political organization.
It does much valuable work in scientific and technical
fields in Africa and is financed by the colonial powers
as well as some of the emergent African states.

CEMO (CONSTITUENCY ELECTED MEMBERS ORGANIZA-
TION) This is a now defunct grouping. It was formed in
1959 and represented an alliance between Indian-and
African-elected members in the Kenya legislative coun-
cil

CPP (CONVENTION PEOPLE'S PARTY) The majority party
in Ghana founded by Dr. Kwame Nkrumah in 1949 to

spearhead the nationalist movement in Ghana. The in-
spiration for Tom Mboya's People's Convention Party
(PCP) in Kenya.

ICFTU (INTERNATIONAL CONFEDERATION OF FREE TRADE
UNIONS) The co-ordinating organization for individual
trade unions in the Western world. It still retains the af-
filiation of Nigeria, Tunisia, Sierra Leone, and the East
and Central African countries among others, despite the
formation of the rival All African Trades Union Federa-
tion (AATUF).

KAU (KENYA AFRICAN UNION) Formed in Kenya in 1943,
KAU soon became the leading Kenya African political
party under the presidency of Jomo Kenyatta. It was
particularly concerned with the land problem and Afri-
can representation in the legislative council The party

261

GLOSSARY

was banned in 1953 when the Kenya government was
engaged in putting down Man Mao*

KADU (KENYA AFRICAN DEMOCRATIC UNION) One of the
two leading political parties in Kenya today. It forms
the present Kenya government under its leader Ronald
Ngala and deputy leader Masinde Muliro. It is strongest
in the areas populated by Kenya's smaller tribes,

KANU (KENYA AFRICAN NATIONAL UNION) The other ma-
jor political party in Kenya today. It has no direct link
with the old KAU though the name is evocative. KANU
grew from various groupings of the Kenya African elected
members. In June 1960 Kenya African parties were al-
lowed to organize on a national basis for the first time
since Mau Mau, and Tom Mboya's PGP merged with
KANU.

KCA (KiKUYU CENTRAL ASSOCIATION) Earlier known as
Young Kikuyn Association, this Kikuyu political party
was probably the oldest recognizable political party in
Kenya. Founded in 1922, its leader was Harry Thuku;
its program., to regain African land from the Europeans.

KFL (KENYA FEDERATION OF LABOUR) The leading co-
ordinating body for the Kenya trade unions. The KFL
was the new name given to the Kenya Federation of
Registered Trade Unions founded in 1953. During the
emergency it played a leading role in expressing African
grievances, since then it has acted primarily as an in-
dustrial union.

KFRTU (KENYA FEDERATION OF REGISTERED TRADE UN-
IONS) This name was given to the co-ordinating body of
Kenya trade unions in order to satisfy government reg-
istration requirements during the emergency. Later in
the same year, 1953? it was renamed KFL.

262

GLOSSARY

KIM (KENYA INDEPENDENCE MOVEMENT) This was a short-
lived political party formed in 1960 at a time African
political groupings in Kenya were very fluid. KIM was
backed by Mboya, Oginga-Odinga, and Dr. Kiano. It
was refused registration by the Kenya government at a
time when African political parties were still not able
to organize nationally. It was the forerunner of KANU.

KKM (KIAMA KIA MTJINGI) Assembly of the People. A
purely Kikuyu organization a watered-down version of
Mau Mau. It was given much prominence by the Kenya
government in 1958 but received no attention afterward.
It was later replaced by other Kikuyu secret associations.

KLGWU (KENYA LOCAL GOVERNMENT WORKERS UNION)
The trade union of workers for the Nairobi City Council
Mboya built this union to a position of strength and so
started his trade union career in 1953.

KNP (KENYA NATIONAL PARTY) Another short-lived party
of 1960. The KNP was formed when the African and
Asian legislative council members tried to organize them-
selves on a national basis. The party lost the support of
Mboya and others from the very start

KWN (Kenya Weekly News) A well-produced, well-edited
journal with a readership chiefly among Kenya's white
farmers. Strongly pro-European.

MLC (MEMBER OF LEGISLATIVE COUNCIL) These initials
are officially used after the name of a Kenya legislative
council member.

MP (MEMBER OF PARLIAMENT) This is only used in Britain
after the name of a member of Parliament

PCP (PEOPLE'S CONVENTION PARTY) More correctly
known as NPCP, Nairobi People's Convention Party. It
was formed in 1956 at a time when African parties could

GLOSSARY

only organize on a national basis, by break away mem-
bers from Argwings-Khodeck's Nairobi District African

National Congress. Tom Mboya joined this party and
made it the most powerful in Kenya before it merged
with KANU in June 1960.

TUG (BRITISH) THE BRITISH TRADES UNION CONGRESS.
The co-ordinating body of all British trade unions. It has
no direct link with Kenya unions, but gives advice and
assistance on occasion.

TUG (GHANA) THE GHANAIAN TRADES UNION CON-
GRESS, and co-ordinating body of Ghana unions. It comes
under direct government control. Its secretary general,
John Tettegah, is paid by the Ghana government It has
broken off its affiliation with the ICFTU and has taken
an active part in the formation of the AATUF.

UHURU Party (Uhura is the Swahili word for Freedom)
During 1960, when African political parties grouped and
regrouped themselves, A. Oginga-Odinga tried to form
the UHURU party, but it was soon abandoned in favor

of KANU.

264

3024

(Continued from fiont flap)
In this objective portrait, Alan Rake ex-
amines both sides of the con trovers), shaping
his anal) sis from personal knowledge of the
man and the facts of his career. Mbo)a is
shown as an individual who doesn't sacrifice
principle for personality. He is a >oimg man
in a hurry, to whom personalities are often
irksome ... a fact which has caused many
clashes with other African leaders.

Mboya is a man whose abilities as well as
his timely entry upon the political scene, have
hastened him toward a position of world
prominence. He made his debut when his
people were leaderless when Jomo Kenyatta,
one of the greatest performers on the stage of
Kenya politics, was missing. He arrived at a
time when most of the alleged Mau Mau sup-
porters were in jail. While it is true that
Mboya, a man of non-violence by nature, felt
that Mau Mau had come into existence be-
cause Africans had not been able to advance
themselves constitutionally it was equally
clear to him that he could not advance his
cause by turning to violence. He made a
sharp distinction between constitutional ex-
tremismwhich offered concrete results and
physical extremism which he knew the gov-
ernment would crush (and rightly) as they
had crushed Mau Mau.

More than a story about the personal rise
of a youthful politician to a figure of world
prominence, this incisive commentary de-
scribes the rise of a young nation onto the
international scene as such it makes an im-
portant contribution to our understanding
of the new Africa.

JACKET DESIGN BY TOM RUZICKA
JACKET PHOTOGRAPH BY PETER LARSEN

Printed in the U.S. A.

114144