Kenya: The Spear Speaks

Kenya’s 65,000 white inhabitants, already bitter over Britain’s repeated concessions to the colony’s black nationalists, had more to swallow last week. They had accepted an increased political role for the Africans in the hopes that moderates would come to power and learn gradually the art of governing. But after eight years in prison and exile, extremist Jomo (“Burning Spear”) Kenyatta, the organizer of the Mau Mau terror, proved himself once again the most powerful man in Kenya.

Kenyatta, who says his age is about 70, has been confined to the desert village of Lodwar since his release from prison two years ago. Kenya’s British Governor Sir Patrick Renison refused to grant Kenyatta full liberty and refused to let him return to politics. But eleven African political leaders flew to Lodwar from Nairobi last week to ask Kenyatta a question. Should they cooperate with the British in putting into e” ect Kenya’s new constitution (its third since 1954), under which the Africans are assured of a majority in the legislature? Kenyatta’s answer: accept no half measures, fight on for full independence.

Jomo has a personal stake in the struggle: his own freedom. Governor Renison —who once described Kenyatta as “a leader to darkness and death”—has agreed to move Jomo soon to a more pleasant location in the Kenya highlands, but still in confinement. In London, British Colonial Secretary Iain Macleod backed Renison’s stand in Parliament.

Unmoved by all this, Kenya’s biggest African party, the K.A.N.U., led by James Gichuru and Tom Mboya, vowed to sabotage the new constitution until Kenyatta gets his freedom. Both Gichuru and Mboya now refer to Kenyatta as “our national leader,” openly profess their intention of installing him as Kenya’s first African prime minister. In part, this deference to Jomo is dictated by fear of the almost godlike status which 30 years of nationalist struggle has won Kenyatta among Kenya’s black masses.

Despite Kenyatta’s intransigence, the British still cling to the hope that Kenya’s second biggest African party, the K.A.D.U., may yet be persuaded to participate in the new Kenya government. But the realistic prospect is that no African faction will dare oppose Kenyatta’s wishes for long. The Africans who visited him last week insist that, contrary to earlier reports, Jomo is neither ill, feeble nor alcoholic. Recently, he produced a child by his young third wife, who shares his Lodwar cabin. Said Tom Mboya: “I can assure people who consider that his age has impaired him mentally and physically that they are quite wrong. For the Europeans, this is the end to their wishful thinking.”