HOW MBOYA FOUGHT BACK BUT LOST THE BATTLE
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...Mboya probably made things worse for himself by the clinical and ruthless methods to consign his nemesis, Odinga, to political oblivion. Mboya played a key part in watering down the Independence Constitution to concentrate powers in the presidency.
The manoeuvres did not stop with the Constitution. For instance, Mboya proposed a new Kanu structure in which the party would have eight vice-presidents, one from each of the country’s eight province.
This amendment sailed through and effectively wiped out the power base of Odinga, then the party vice-president. Jaramogi resigned. But Mboya’s craftiness did not end there...
"...He led the first-ever delegation of Luo elders, businessmen and intellectuals to visit Kenyatta at State House, Nairobi. A memorandum was presented to the president assuring him of their loyalty to his leadership.
"There are too many careless and reckless statements abroad and here, branding all Luos supporters of KPU and hence anti-Government. What you see here, your Excellency, are the true leaders of the Luo," Mboya said.
Another constitutional amendment, this time in Parliament, requiring that any candidate who changed political parties seek fresh mandate from the people, swiftly sailed through.
Many people believed that Mboya was being groomed by Kenyatta as a potential successor, a possibility that worried the ruling elite. When Mboya suggested in Parliament that a number of Kikuyu politicians, including members of Kenyatta’s extended family, were enriching themselves at the expense of other Kenyans, the situation became highly charged.
On July 5 1969, Mboya was slain and the assassin was Kikuyu. This pushed animosity between the Kikuyu and Luo to a new high.
Allegations linking the assassin to prominent Government officials were dismissed, and in the ensuing political turmoil, Kenyatta banned the opposition party, KPU, and arrested Odinga, the leader.
In 1958 Mboya attended a convention of African nationalists at Accra, Ghana. He was elected chairman and declared it "the proudest day of my life." The following year he received his first honorary doctorate, and helped set up the African-American Students Foundation which raised money to subsidise the cost of flights for East African students studying in America. In 1960 the Kenya African National Union, KANU, was formed from the remnants of the KAU and Mboya elected secretary-general.
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...On a hot July weekend nearly 40 years ago, Barack Obama Sr. was shopping on a busy Nairobi street when he ran into his friend and mentor Tom Mboya, one of Kenya's most charismatic political leaders. The two chatted for several minutes and Obama kidded him that his car was illegally parked.
"I told him, 'You are parked on a yellow line. You will get a ticket," Obama, the late father of the US presidential candidate, would later testify, according to press accounts at the time. And then the two men parted.
Minutes later, Mboya was shot twice and died in a pool of blood. It was a crime that convulsed the newly independent nation and would, in Obama's eyes, trigger a steep decline in his own promising career. Then 33, and a freshly minted government economist, he testified in the ensuing trial, an act which probably enraged those responsible for Mboya's assassination.
Obama, according to one friend, was convinced he had been targeted for murder after his testimony.
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Kenya: LUCAS MBOYA. WHO KILLED MY FATHER?
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"When my late father died I was I had been on God’s good earth for 21 months. As I grew up I had to grope my way around trying to find out who my father was and why he had been killed. Answers I got ranged from ‘he was a criminal and CIA agent’, to ‘he was next in line for the Presidency’, which I do now believe was the case. What I would like to do now is explore the real reason why Tom Mboya was killed and by whom. I will for legal reasons make many references to a book, ‘Tom Mboya, The Man Kenya Wanted to Forget”, David Goldsworthy. My goal is to first get Kenyans to understand that I believe my fathers’ death was the point in Kenyas’ history that the two most influential tribes parted, both publicly and permanently and this acrimony has been the root cause of most of the political problems Kenya has had to date...
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