August 22 was the 40th anniversary of the death of President Jomo Kenyatta, Kenya’s “Founding Father”. To be sure, Kenya has many founding fathers and – significantly – unsung mothers. But the touts of “official” history have always made it look like Kenyatta liberated Kenya from British colonialism singlehandedly. The media is complicit in some of the gross distortions and fabrications.
As usual, last Wednesday all the major media outlets were awash with reports dedicated to the first president. The Star stood out among the newspapers. No rambling articles regurgitating decades-old right wing agitprop about Kenyatta. The paper carried only a short news report about how a senile and very ill Jomo was abandoned by his kitchen Cabinet – the fearsome Kiambu Mafia – in his last days. Everyone was busy scheming for a place in the post-Jomo order. Former President Moi’s spin doctor Lee Njiru supplied more details of that in a Citizen TV interview.
“Kenyatta: Legacy of a nationalist”, the Nation declared. “His regime greatly expanded the economy in favour of Africans.”
Although the Nation’s main piece mentioned a few of Kenyatta’s defects – failed resettlement of landless citizens, assassinations – its general thrust was celebratory.
The writer even had the cheek to mourn that “Mzee Kenyatta’s legacy is sometimes underplayed.” Kenyans owe him a lot more. What more, after raising Jomo to the altars of African political sainthood?
In one of its tributes, KTN ran a series of old pictures, under the heading “Kenyans remember Jomo Kenyatta in reference to economy”, apparently showing the dizzying heights of progress to which Kenyatta had propelled the country.
Well, Kenyatta is often credited with superb economic management. But any serious student of Kenya’s economic history who is able to understand reality beyond GDP numbers would know that in the years after Independence, Kenyatta and his henchmen pursued economic strategies featuring close ties with western industrial nations, especially Britain, to gain foreign aid, investment and build overseas markets for local products and tourism. These policies, plus the repressive climate and rampant corruption in the Kenyatta state, worsened poverty and heightened among citizens the sense of disappointment with Independence.
“A small but powerful group of greedy, self-seeking elite in the form of politicians, civil servants and businessmen has steadily but surely monopolised the fruits of Independence to the exclusion of the majority of the people. We do not want a Kenya of 10 millionaires and 10 million beggars.”
That was how freedom fighter and legislator JM Kariuki described Kenya under Kenyatta in the 1970s. He was assassinated in 1975 and his murder remains unresolved. But fingers point to the Kenyatta government.
Historian Bethwel Allan Ogot observes that during the Kenyatta years, “…significant portions of the Kenyan population still remained on the fringes of society. They felt deprived of a place of dignity in the national life by barriers of class, ethnicity, gender or even geography. On the other hand, many Kenyans who were already enjoying the fruits of Independence were reluctant or even opposed to sharing their fortunes with the disadvantaged groups. Questions were asked as to whether Kenya could any longer be regarded as one large community, one large family, when a significant number of its members remained alienated.”
Were these observers (and many others) mistaken?
The People Daily dedicated eight pages to the memory of the “Founding Father” who “bestrode the country’s public life like the proverbial colossus.” Actually, that is an understatement. Historians table incontrovertible evidence to show Kenyatta believed he owned Kenya.
“Mzee’s rise from carpenter to a revolutionary”, read the headline of one article, tracing the life of Kenyatta. A carpenter he may have been but a revolutionary Kenyatta certainly wasn’t. If he were, he would not have abandoned – and repressed – Kenya’s foremost anti-colonial revolutionary movement, namely, the Kenya Land and Freedom Army, known to reactionary intellectuals as the Mau Mau. The colonial ban imposed on the movement was lifted only in 2003 by the Kibaki government – 40 years after Independence.
If Kenyatta were a revolutionary, how does one explain the fact that he condemned to detention without trial some of his erstwhile comrades and outspoken politicians and intellectuals who disagreed with him in principle?
How do we account for the brutal elimination of Tom Mboya, Pio Gama Pinto, JM Kariuki and others in a country ruled by a man who allegedly “dedicated his career to the defence of African dignity and freedom” (People Daily, August 22, p.14)
A K24 reporter standing outside Kenyatta’s mausoleum at Parliament intoned: “Forty years on and the legacy of the nation’s founding president, a man many referred to simply as Mzee Jomo Kenyatta, continues to live on – a nationalist, a beacon of hope to Kenyans up until this day.”
Ahem. What else could one expect from hacks brought up on a flat diet of state propaganda (disguised as history) in an anti-intellectual society; guys who went to school not to be educated, to inquire, to question, but to pass exams?
Just before Independence, the famous Kenyan political scientist Ali Mazrui published an article titled, “On heroes and Uhuru worship” (Transition, No.11, Nov. 1963, pp. 23-28). The piece is a review of JM’s book, “Mau Mau Detainee”, but it partly discusses Kenyatta’s rise to national immortality.
In his meaningful thesis, Mazrui cautions that “…we must not concentrate too much on Kenyatta and forget some of the other stars in Kenya’s new constellation.”
It then rests upon the individual journalist to work hard, to decipher meanings in history with the genuine intention of putting forward the correct narrative. The need to heed such warnings by thinkers like Mazrui becomes necessary if we are to get right the antiquity of this country.
