Kenyatta, Jomo

Kenyatta, Jomo 1893-1978

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Jomo Kenyatta, also known as Mzee Jomo Kenyatta, is considered the founding father of the independent nation of Kenya. He became Kenya’s first prime minister (1963–1964) and first president (1964–1978). Acknowledged as a fascinating and courageous leader, his controversial life began when he was born to Muigai and Wambui as a member of the Kikuyu people. His birth name was Kamau wa Ngengi. His parents died while he was a young boy, and he spent time in his youth working with his grandfather, who was a medicine man steeped in the Kikuyu tradition. Kenyatta married his first wife, Grace Wahu, in 1920. They had two children, a daughter and a son.

Kenyatta entered local politics in 1924 when he joined the Kikuyu Central Association (KCA). He created and began to edit a monthly journal for the KCA known as Muigwithania (The Reconciler) in 1928. Much of the writing in this journal was focused on cultural nationalism, unity, and moral ethnicity for the Kikuyu people. He also focused heavily on campaigning for land reform, ownership rights, and political rights for African people. The KCA sent Kenyatta to London to lobby for Kikuyu rights, and in 1931 he enrolled in Woodbrooke Quaker College in Birmingham, England. He later attended the Comintern School in Moscow, then returned to London to study at the University College London and the London School of Economics (LSE). He focused on social anthropology and economics, and published his LSE thesis in 1938 as his first book, Facing Mount Kenya, an ethnography of the Kikuyu people penned under the name Jomo Kenyatta. He was briefly married to Edna Clarke during this period, and she gave birth to his son in 1943.

In England, Kenyatta had many friends and associates, and formed the Pan-African Federation with Kwame Nkrumah (1909–1972) in 1946. He then returned to his homeland and became the principle of Kenya Teacher’s College and president of the Kenya African Union (KAU). Upon his return to Kenya, he married Grace Wanjiku in 1946. She died in childbirth in 1950 after giving birth to a daughter. The following year, he married his fourth wife, Ngina Kenyatta, to whom he would remain married for the rest of his life. They had four children together.

On October 20, 1952, Kenyatta was arrested by the British government and charged with being a manager and member of the society of Mau Mau. The Mau Mau revolution was a lengthy battle of the Kikuyu people against British control. Kenyatta denied any participation and countered that he spoke out against the Mau Mau because they were not working with the KAU. After a lengthy trial in 1953, Kenyatta was convicted and imprisoned for six years in Lokitaung, a region in northwestern Kenya. He was later sent into exile. While in exile, he was elected president in absentia of the Kenya African National Union, which later joined with the Kenya African Democratic Union to become one party. Kenyatta was released by the British government, and returned to government in 1961. He was instrumental in forming a parliamentary body, instituting a new constitution, and creating the republic of Kenya. Kenyatta is heralded as a great leader. He was also a noted author, publishing numerous books and pamphlets, including My People of Kikuyu and the Life of Chief Wangombe (1944), Suffering without Bitterness (1968, a biography), Kenya: The Land of Conflict (1971), and The Challenge of Uhuru: The Progress of Kenya, 1968 to 1970 (1971). He died in his sleep in Mombasa in 1978.

SEE ALSO Anticolonial Movements; Kimathi, Dedan; Mau Mau; Nkrumah, Kwame; Pan-African Congresses

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Berman, Bruce J., and John M. Lonsdale. 1998. The Labors of Muigwithania: Jomo Kenyatta as Author, 1928–45. Research in African Literatures 29 (1): 16–27.

Branch, Daniel, and Nicholas Cheeseman. 2006. The Politics of Control in Kenya: Understanding the Bureaucratic-executive State, 1952–78. Review of African Political Economy 107: 11–31.

Kenya: Landslide for Kenyatta. 1963. New Republic 148 (23): 8.

Kenyatta, Jomo. 1968. Suffering without Bitterness: The Founding of the Kenya Nation. Nairobi, Kenya: East African Publishing House.

Kijua Sanders-McMurtry