Kenyatta Day

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Kenyatta Day is celebrated in Kenya every year on 20th October.

Each year in October, Kenyans celebrate their first two leaders – Jomo Kenyatta and Daniel Arap Moi (Moi Day on 10th October).

Neither day is without controversy as there are differing opinions about the relevance and nature of the celebrations, which are dealt with separately in the feature Kenya Retrospect.

Joma Kenyatta was born Kamau wa Ngengi in the village of Ichaweri, Gatundu in British East Africa (now Kenya) on or around 20th October 1893. He was a member of Kikuyu people.

As a child he is said to have assisted his grandfather, a well-known medicine man, after the death of his parents. He went to school in the Scottish Mission Centre at Thogoto and was converted to Christianity in 1914 with the name John Peter, which he later changed to Johnstone Kamau (and in 1938 to Jomo Kenyatta). He moved to Nairobi. During World War I he lived with relatives in the Maasai at Narok and worked as a clerk.

In 1920 Kenyatta married Grace Wahu and worked for the Nairobi City Council in the water department. His eldest son Peter Muigai was born on 20th November that year.

Kenyatta entered politics in 1924 when he joined the Kikuyu Central Association (KCA), and was chosen to represent the Kikuyu land problems before the Hilton Young Commission in Nairobi. In 1928 he began to edit the newspaper "Muigwithania" (Reconciler).

In 1929 the KCA sent Kenyatta to London to lobby for their views on Kikuyu tribal land affairs. In London Kenyatta wrote articles to British newspapers on the issues. He returned to Kenya in 1930 but one year later he returned to London and enrolled in Woodbrooke Quaker College in Birmingham.

During 1932 and 1933 he briefly studied economics in Moscow at the Comintern school, KUTVU (University of the Toilers of the East) until his sponsor, the Trinidadian Communist George Padmore, fell out with his Soviet hosts, and he was forced to move back to London.

In 1934 Kenyatta enrolled at University College London and from 1935 studied social anthropology under Bronislaw Malinowski at the London School of Economics. During all this time he lobbied on Kikuyu land affairs. He published his revised LSE thesis Facing Mount Kenya in 1938 under his new name Jomo Kenyatta.

In the 1930s Kenyatta was an active member of a group of African, Caribbean and American intellectuals that included at various times C L R James, Eric Williams, W A Wallace Johnson, Paul Robeson, and Ralph Bunche, his association with Robeson (who was the "star") gaining him a role as an extra in the film Sanders of the River (1934), directed by Alexander Korda.

During World War II, Kenyatta worked on a British farm in Sussex (some say to avoid conscription into the British army, but given his age this is most likely not the case). He also lectured on Africa for the Workers Education Association and during this time he married an Englishwoman, Edna Clarke, who gave birth to a son, Peter Magana in 1943. When he returned to Kenya in 1946 neither his wife nor his son followed him.

Back in Kenya, in 1946 Kenyatta founded the Pan-African Federation with Kwame Nkrumah, later the first President of Ghana, and he married for the third time, to Grace Wanjiku. He became principal of Kenya Teachers College and president of the Kenya African Union (KAU) within two years. His profile meant that he began to receive death threats from white settlers after his election.

Grace Wanjiku died in 1950 giving birth to his daughter Jane Wambui. The following year Kenyatta married Ngina Muhoho.

Kenyatta's relationship with the British Government was marred by his assumed involvement with the Mau Mau and their struggles against British rule. He was arrested in October 1952, and accused of organising Mau Mau activities, which resulted with him being sentenced to seven years in prison with hard labour on 8th April 1953.

At the time there was a consensus that linked him with the Mau Mau, but later research proved this to be almost certainly false. Kenyatta was in prison until 1959, when he was sent into exile "on probation" in Lodwar, a remote part of North Western Kenya.

Following the "defeat" of the Mau Mau, the British imposed State of Emergency was lifted in December 1960. In 1961, the two successors to the KAU party - the Kenya African National Union (KANU) and the Kenya African Democratic Union (KADU) - demanded Kenyatta's release.

On 14th May 1960, Kenyatta was elected president of KANU in his absence. He was released on 21st August 1961, and was admitted into the Legislative Council the next year when a member handed over his seat, contributing to the creation of a new constitution. Kenyatta attempted to reform the KAU by merging KANA and KADU, but failed.

When elections were held in May 1963 Kenyatta's KANU won 83 seats out of 124. On 1st June Kenyatta became Prime Minister of the autonomous Kenyan government, and became known as mzee (a Swahili word meaning old man or elder).

To the surprise of many, Kenyatta urged white settlers not to leave Kenya and supported reconciliation between them and the native peoples – the whites having been the focal point of the Mau Mau troubles.

Kenyatta retained the role of Prime Minister after independence from the British was declared (by agreement) on 12th December 1963. Exactly one year later, on 12th December 1964, Kenya became a Republic, with Kenyatta in the role of executive President.

As with all leaders, there are debates about his rule. Kenyatta was accused of maintaining too close ties with Britain (even having British troops help in overcoming Somali insurgents and put down a mutiny), favouring his native Kikuyu tribe and favouring friends and family when land was granted for development.

He did succeed in reuniting KANU and KADU factions to create a single party. He saw Kenya join the UN and created trade agreements with neighbouring states (Tanzania and Uganda) – and was fervently anti-communist at a time when many newly emerging post-colonial African nations were embracing Russian, Chinese and Cuban (de facto Soviet) finance for "freedom struggles".

Kenya's stability, often amidst chaos and civil war elsewhere in Africa, attracted foreign investment and he was an influential figure across the continent. However, his authoritarian policies drew criticism and caused dissent.

Despite re-election in 1966 and 1974, his later years were marred by more controversy including accusations of election-fixing.

Jomo Kenyatta died on 22nd August 1978 in Mombasa whilst still nominally President of the country which many say that he founded. He was buried on 31st August in Nairobi.

Kenyatta was a controversial figure, not least because of his continued friendship with his former colonial "masters" at a time when the opposite was the norm. He is accused by his critics, mainly retrospectively, of having left the Kenyan republic at risk from tribal rivalries, given that his dominant Kikuyu tribesmen did not like the idea of having a president from a different tribe. He was succeeded by Daniel Arap Moi, who has been equally controversial, but for different reasons.

Visitors to Kenya, an increasingly popular holiday destination, usually land at Nairobi's Jomo Kenyatta International Airport.