December 1959
...A year ago, young Tom Mboya from Kenya was the toast of Accra, enjoying the benevolent patronage of that would-be leader of emerging Africa, Ghana's Prime Minister Kwame Nkrumah himself. The principal difference between the two men is that Nkrumah is the unchallenged boss of an independent nation of 5,000,000, almost all of them black, while Mboya, in the multiracial British colony of Kenya, is merely the leading African politician in a government where the whites run things. When Nkrumah held his All-Africa Peoples Conference, he propelled Labor Leader Mboya into the chairmanship, and the stage seemed set for a lasting alliance of Mboya's rising influence in East Africa with Nkrumah's power on the West Coast...
SOME OF THE PLAYERS TO DATE:
KENYETTA. MBOYA. OGINGA ODINGA.
Oginga Odinga was the father of Raila Odinga, for whom Barack Obama campaigned in Keyna. Kenyetta was a student in the US at the same time as Nkrumah was also a US student.
Biography: Thomas Joseph Mboya
In 1960 Jomo Kenyatta was still being held in detention. Kenyatta, a Kikuyu, was considered by a majority of Kenyans to be the country's nationalist leader, but there was great potential for ethnic division amongst the African population. Mboya, as a representative of the Luo, the second largest tribal group, was a figurehead for political unity in the country. Mboya campaigned for Kenyatta's release, duly achieved on 21 August 1961, after which Kenyatta took the limelight.
Kenya achieved independence within the British Commonwealth on 12 December 1963 -- Queen Elizabeth II was still the head of state. One year later a republic was declared, with Jomo Kenyatta as president. Tom Mboya was initially given the post of Minister for Justice and Constitutional Affairs, and was then moved to Minister for Economic Planning and Development in 1964. He remained a defiant spokesman for Luo affairs in a government heavily dominated by Kikuyu.
Mboya was being groomed by Kenyatta as a potential successor, a possibility which deeply worried many of the Kikuyu elite. When Mboya suggested in parliament that a number of Kikuyu politicians (including members of Kenyatta's extended family) were enriching themselves at the cost of other tribal groups, the situation became highly charged.
On 5 July 1969 the nation was shocked by the assassination of Tom Mboya by a Kikuyu tribesman. Allegations linking the assassin to prominent KANU party members were dismissed, and in the ensuing political turmoil Jomo Kenyatta banned the opposition party, the Kenya People's Union (KPU), and arrested it's leader Oginga Odinga (who was also a leading Luo representative).