13 thoughts on “43rd Anniversary of Tom Mboya’s Assassination Passes Quietly”
JOMO KENYATTA /UHURUS FATHER & GEMA KIAMBU MAFIA KILLED TOM MBOYA FOR BEING A POWER HUNGRY !GEMA USED A KIKMUYU TO ASASSINATE HON:TOM MBOYA CALLED NAHASHON ISAAC NJENGA NJOROGE A TRAINED MURDERER HE WENT FOR KILLING TRAINING IN BURGARIA A COMMUNIST COUNTRY DURING COLD WAR DAYS!
IT DOESNT MATTER THOSE BEHIND TOM MBOYA MURDER AND OTHERS VERY SOON WILL BE BROUGHT TO BOOK ! IT DOESNT MATTER HOW LONG ITS GONNA TAKE!
Mboya up against Kenyatta’s tough inner circle
•
Monday, 03 December 2007 18:29
Written by HILARY NG’WENO
There had always been the question of What next after
Kenyatta? Or rather, Who after Kenyatta?
writes HILARY NG’WENO in today’s instalment of ‘The Making of a Nation’
President Jomo Kenyatta’s closest ministers, the inner circle made up of Koinange, Njonjo and Mungai, and sometimes James Gichuru and Julius Kiano, had been concerned at first about Oginga Odinga, the country’s first Vice President. Odinga had charisma, nearly as much as Kenyatta; he was a man of the people, and he was a fighter, like Kenyatta.
The inner circle, or the Gatundu Group, as they were sometimes referred to, worried about Odinga taking over from Kenyatta, should the old man die or become incapacitated.
With Odinga safely out of the way after he had been forced out of the ruling party, the Kenya African National Union (Kanu) and into the opposition Kenya Peoples Union in 1966, Kenyatta’s inner group now worried about Tom Mboya, the Minister for Economic Planning and Kanu’s powerful secretary general. The prospects of Mboya stepping into Kenyatta’s shoes became an obsession for them. Part of their concern had to do with ethnic considerations.
They were determined to ensure that the presidency, and its now enormous powers, did not slip from the grasp of the Kikuyu, and most certainly not into Mboya’s hands.
They feared Mboya because of his frightful intelligence and his organisational skills. But there was more than fear involved. There was resentment. However intelligent, however astute a politician, academically Mboya was simply not the equal of any of the three top men in Kenyatta’s inner circle.
Social credentials
Koinange, senior most of the circle, was a person with outstanding academic and social credentials. Born in 1907 to Senior Chief Koinange wa Mbiyu, Koinange was sent to the US for education when he was barely 20, becoming the first Kenyan African to be educated in the US.
He first attended Hampton College in West Virginia, then the University of Columbia where he received a BA degree. He proceeded to the University of London and got a diploma from the university’s Institute of Education before moving on to the London School of Economics from which he obtained a Masters degree in 1948-the first Kenyan to get an MA.
On coming back home the following year he set up the Kenya Teachers College at Githunguri and managed it until 1946 when he turned it over to Kenyatta who had just come back after nearly 15 years in England and Europe. The two men had known each other in England and had kept in touch while they were separated.
Now a strong bond developed between them, becoming even stronger when Kenyatta took for his second wife, Grace Mitundu, Koinange’s younger sister.
In 1947 Koinange would return to England for further studies but was prevented from returning to Kenya by the outbreak of the Mau Mau rebellion and the declaration of a state of emergency in 1952.
In exile, Koinange expanded his political activities to embrace Pan African gatherings and demonstrations in England. He made contact with Kwame Nkrumah who after Ghana’s independence invited him to work at the newly set up Bureau of African Affairs in Accra.
It was from Accra that Koinange was invited by KANU and KADU leaders meeting in London at the first Lancaster House constitutional conference.
The invitation was the idea of Odinga who was trying to pressurize the British government to release Kenyatta. Odinga figured that Koinange’s presence would put added pressure on the British, and it would embarrass Mboya who was then not yet as forthright about Kenyatta’s release. Koinange would come back home soon after that meeting, run for parliament and be elected as MP for Kiambaa in 1963, when Kenyatta appointed him to the Cabinet.
The second most powerful man in the triumvirate was Charles Njonjo, the Attorney General. Like Koinange, Njonjo was the son of a senior chief in the colonial government. His father Josiah Njonjo was able to send him to the best schools of the time. Alliance High School, King’s College Budo in Uganda, Fort Hare University in Cape Town and Exeter University in England where he did post graduate studies in public administration finishing in 1947.
From 1947 to 1950 he attended the London School of Economics and then studied law for four years before being admitted to the bar at Gray’s Inn, one of England’s most prestigious inns of law. His long stay in England had a tremendous influence on him; he absorbed British culture and British mannerisms, down to the wearing of striped suits and bowler hats. In later years these British mannerisms would earn him the nickname of Sir Charles.
On returning to Kenya in 1954 Njonjo joined the colonial attorney general’s office and rose quickly from being a registrar to registrar-general. In 1961 he was a senior state counsel, and one whole year before Independence he had been promoted to the powerful job of deputy public prosecutor. At Independence he was named attorney general. The following year, with Kenya’s change to Republican status, the attorney general became an ex-officio Member of Parliament as well as the cabinet.
Six years younger than Njonjo, Mungai did not have a chief or senior chief for a father, but what he lacked in genes he more than made up for in upbringing. He too went to Alliance High School, leaving in 1945. Like Njonjo he attended Fort Hare University from 1948 to 1950.
In South Africa, Mungai had his first taste of apartheid. That experience was to shape his future political views and general mistrust of white people. From South Africa Mungai proceeded to Stanford University, then, as today, one of the top universities in the world, where he obtained a BA degree in 1952 before going to Stanford Medical School, and later to further medical studies at Columbia University.
With his string of qualifications, Mungai came back to Kenya in 1959 and set up the Chania chain of clinics around the Dagoretti area of Nairobi from which he dispensed affordable medical treatment. When Kenyatta was released from detention in 1961, Mungai became his physician. But even before that, Mungai was already immersed in politics, serving as the secretary to the preparatory committee that gave birth to KANU in May 1960. It was on that committee that Mungai first worked closely with Mboya.
Kenyatta’s inner circle was therefore made up of highly educated and sophisticated men, who by dint of their birth, education and training considered themselves to be natural leaders. On that account alone, and not even on ethnic grounds, Koinange, Njonjo and Mungai for different reasons, must have found Mboya difficult to take.
Mboya was born in 1930, and was therefore four years younger than Mungai, ten years younger than Njonjo and a whole 23 years younger than Koinange.
But by the time they started interacting with him, the older men must have been awed by his enormous organisational skills, sharp intellect, and sheer determination. The awe must have given rise to a sense of resentment when in the three or four years leading to Independence, Mboya made himself almost indispensable in the general nationalist struggle.
He was by far the most articulate leader in the country. He hogged the press, both local and international, and was on the cover of TIME magazine before Independence. Then as now, making the cover of TIME was something even Americans envied.
Mboya’s energy, charisma, his organisational and tactical skills made him indispensable in the bruising battle against Odinga and the radicals within Kanu.
The man to watch
And for some time at least Njonjo built up a close friendship with Mboya during their joint effort, at Kenyatta’s behest, to shove Odinga out of the ruling party. But Kenyatta and his top lieutenants had Odinga more or less under control. The man to watch now was Mboya.
Barely a year after forcing Odinga out of Kanu they would set about trying to do to Mboya what they had done to Odinga so successfully, except that they would now have to do their battles without or against Mboya’s enormous organisational skills, financial resources and a reputation for political fighting.
Until then Mboya had never lost any major political battle; but then, neither had Kenyatta and the men who made up his inner circle.
Exposed: Murder Of Mboya, JM And Ouko Linked To Standard Newspapers Raid
Some cold cases (unsolved murders) have a way of almost resolving themselves with the benefit of hindsight. Hindsight is like a bird’s eye view. By looking at the whole picture or getting a bird’s eye view of the situation one is able to put the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle together much more easily.
JM Kariuki was the only Kikuyu politician to set foot on Rusinga Island for Tom Mboya’s funeral. Later he was to be brutually murdered after terrible torture. It is believed that he was tortured at the then notorious Kingsway House by security agents. What information were they seeking from him?
For a long time now, I have carefully studied all the evidence linked to the Mboya murder. The JM and Ouko case were a little too obvious and to date these are virtually solved cases, the only problem is that the perpetrators have not been brought to book.
The recent Standard newspapers raid, the Ouko murder, the brutal JM killing and the Mboya assassination all have one thing in common. All were matters of internal security or security of the state and were handled as such. When you understand this simple fact all the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle fall very neatly into place.
I have just been studying details of all four cases once again and they all bear uncanny resemblance. Before we go into that it may be a good idea to define national security (state security, internal security, they all mean the same thing).
Here is what the online encyclopedia Wikipedia has to say;
National security refers to the public policy of maintaining the integrity and survival of the nation-state through the use of economic, military and political power and the exercise of diplomacy, in times of peace and war.
Measures taken to ensure national security include:
• using diplomacy to rally allies and isolate threats
• maintaining effective armed forces
• using intelligence services to detect and defeat or avoid threats and espionage, and to protect classified information
I want you to take careful note of the third point mentioned. “To defeat and avoid threats.” “To protect classified information.” All three assassinated Kenyans were seen as threats. Threats to the presidency and therefore threats to national security (more on that later).
Ouko was murdered after a controversial trip to the United States where it is rumoured that he had easier access to the then US President George Bush Senior than did President Moi. That was a threat to National security.
JM Kariuki was never the same person after the death of his close friend Tom Mboya. In fact it is on record that JM was the only Kikuyu politician at that time who set foot on Rusinga Island for Mboya’s burial. JM started talking about not wanting a Kenya where there were 10 millioniares and 10 million beggars. It is believed that he was referring to the persons close to the then Ptresident Kenyatta who were using their position to amass colossal amounts of wealth through corruption. JM had been Kenyatta’s private secretary and must have witnessed first hand the way the president was accumulating land for himself like there was no tomorrow. It is said that JM could even turn up at harambee meetings being presided over by the president and donate more money than the president. Remember the threat to the internal security of King Saul in Biblical times when the women sung that shepherd boy David was killing tens of thousands but King Saul was killing only thousands? And to think it was only a song.
The implication here was that JM was trying to prove in public that he was better than the president. The guys he was dealing with had already felled a Mugumo tree called Tom Mboya and had no qualms doing the same with JM and this time, they tortured him first. Even cutting out his private parts. Thanks to a reader of this blog, we now know that the same building where Mboya’s murder was planned and finalized is the same building where JM was taken in and tortured for hours on end.
What information were the security guys looking for by tortusing JM? A good guess is that they wanted to know what foreign support he had.
As we have said before in this blog, Tom Mboya had been in line for the presidency when Jomo Kenyatta was out of the picture and still in detenrion. Mboya’s greatest undoing and the reason why he was viewed as such a huge threat to internal security was the fact that he was very friendly with the Americans. In fact he had direct access to American Presidents like John F. Kennedy and President Johnson, who took over after Kennedy was assassinated. For some unexplained reason, Mboya never really hit it off with Richard “Watergate” Nixon, and must have turned in his grave when the Watergate scandal broke and brought down Nixon’s presidency. The Americans had just organized “something” in Zaire where charismatic Patrice Lumumba had brutally been removed from the picture and replaced by their darling, Mobuto Sese Seko. The Americans could easily organize the same in Kenya. After all they did not like the dominance of the British (who were very close to the Kenyatta government.)
Were the British consulted on this one? It is very likely that they were. Mboya as I have said was a Mugumo tree and the government may have wanted reassurances that incase of any serious backlash, they could count on the support of the British. Here it is interesting to note that during Mboya’s funeral President Kenyatta was visibly so shaken (there was rioting going on outside, that was ho popular Mboya was) that he was unable to read the eulogy. It was done for him by a cabinet minister and MP from Nyanza, Mr Ayodo.
Now the big revelation here is the Standard raid. Here we have the advantage that a cabinet minister admitted in public that it was a matter of national security. Going by what has happened in the past, chances are very high that whatever it is the Standard newspapers were about to publish touched on (you guessed it) the Presidency. Now your guess is as good as mine as to what the big issue was about exactly. Anglo-leasing? The Arturs? Who knows.
You will have noticed that internal security seems to mean the same thing as presidential security. In young states in Africa, it does. If you doubt it, look at what happened in Somalia. Everybody cheered when strongman Siad Barre was overthrown, but look what followed – chaos. To date order has not been restored and there has been no peace.
Part of the problem is that there is too much power vested on the presidency meaning that a threat to the presidency is a threat to the security of the state.
I would like to thank one of my readers who has been making comments here, who forced me to think more deeply and thus put everything together in this way.
I still believe that the best way to heal all this wounds is to have a truth and reconciliation commission and have these issues and accompanying evidence tabled. This is another reason why a new constitution with proper separation of powers is so important.
This has been very exhausting for me but I feel a lot more enlightened today.
I hope to continue with this depressing topic of state security and espionage in a later post soon.
====================
Other Related Stories To Tom Mboya’s Assassination in Kumekucha
Kibaki bodyguard sent serena to clean Kibaki Suits with Polonium & fired>
cKitili replaced Githinji in 2010 after he was named Western Province police chief. George Gichane Nderitu was kicked out of PEU in 2010 after he and a State House valet in charge of the President’s wardrobe failed to take Kibaki’s clothes to the official laundry at the Serena Hotel.
Lets Pity Kenya Minister of Transport Mr Kimunya (Who sold) Regent Hotel to dead Gaddafi of Libya! Kimunya weighs 60 Kilos A Minister who used to have the biggest Tumbo (Tummy) among Kibakis Thieving Cabinet !
Kimunya Must attend Aids Hospital somewhere in USA/EU or in China!
KENYA POLICE WERE USED TO ASASSINATE TOM MBOYA !YET THEY CANNOT ARREST A PYTHON ? THEY CALLED WHITE MAN(MZUNGU) FROM FRANCE TO COME AND GET THE HUGE PYTHON FROM A TREE-TOP
>
Foreign agents link in Mboya assassination
Saturday, 14 April 2012 11:24
By JOHN OYWA The Standard Daily
There were several attempts to kill charismatic Cabinet minister Tom Mboya before he was finally cut down at a Moi Avenue pharmacy in 1969.
Indeed, just months before his death, Mboya left the country briefly as rumours of an impending assassination attempt spread. His success in fighting the ideological battles of the day drew admiration for him and animosity in the Kenyatta and Odinga camps in Kanu.
But after the defeat and ouster of the Odinga camp from Government in 1966, the greatest threats came from corrupt officials close to President Kenyatta and foreign agents smarting from their loss of influence.
Details have emerged about a series of security mishaps that may have set the stage for the assassination that shocked the world and drove the country into the throes of tribal animosity. Whether these incidents were related to his assassination remains a mystery.
Suspicions that foreign agents may have worked with Mboya’s Kanu colleagues to eliminate him also raise questions about how his killing was related to the 1965 murder of Jaramogi Oginga ally and specially elected MP Pio Gama Pinto.
Gunned down
Mboya, who was the MP for Kamukunji and Minister for Economic Planning was gunned down on July 5, Saturday afternoon, as he left the Chhani pharmacy on Government Road (now Moi Avenue). He was only 39. The man arrested for the killing was Nahashon Njenga Njoroge, a former waiter and watchmaker who was later employed as a Kanu youth activist and errand boy for various politicians. Njenga, who described Mboya as a friend, denied pulling the trigger and was keen to claim he did not act alone.
His cryptic questions to a police superintendent investigating the case – “Why do you pick on me? Why not the big man?” – have long tortured Kenyan minds with many people latching onto the most obvious suspects.
However, the list of people who may have conspired to kill Mboya, or been involved in the unsuccessful attempts, has always been much longer than most Kenyans realise. Information pieced together by the Standard on Sunday shows Mboya was a marked man from as early as 1962. Close associates say there were several apparent attempts on his life, which he chose to shield from the public for fear of alarming his supporters.
The most daring attempt came in early 1969, when an Administration Police officer guarding the minister’s home in Nairobi’s Lavington Green area opened fire at him, missing his chest by a whisker. The incident was one of three attempts narrated to the Truth, Justice and Reconciliation Commission last year.
Mboya’s former Private Secretary, Otieno Nundu, 75, says he remembers the incident at the Convent Drive residence clearly.
“It was a few minutes to 7pm and the AP officer called from the gate to report that an unidentified man wanted to see Mboya,” Nundu told The Standard On Sunday. “He insisted that the minister come out to meet the visitor who claimed he had an urgent message, but Mboya declined. When the policeman was persistent, Mboya became apprehensive and sent one of his relatives to meet the man. By this time, the AP officer was walking towards the main house. There was a sudden burst of gunfire forcing Mboya to run back into the house as the relative dived under a parked car.”
Convinced he had hit his target, the policeman swiftly disappeared into the darkness. The only casualty, however, was the minister’s Mercedes Benz, which took two bullets. Nundu believes the officer had planned to lure Mboya out of the gate and into the hands of an assassin. It was never established who the stranger was.
The policeman was arrested three days later, Nundu says. He was not charged with attempted murder, but instead disciplined for the lesser offence of wilfully damaging Mboya’s car. Nundu says the man was jailed for a paltry six months and was still serving his prison term when Mboya was eventually assassinated a few months later.
Nundu said Mboya was shaken by the incident, but chose to play it down.
Kill Mboya
“It was scaring. The AP later claimed to have acted under the influence of alcohol, but we were convinced he had been paid to kill Mboya. Investigators never sought to know the identity of the strangers, who wanted to see Mboya at the gate,” he says.
In another incident about a year earlier, a man armed with a panga walked to a function in Siaya and tried to reach Mboya at the VIP dais. Freelance journalist Odera Omolo, who was at the event, says it took the quick action of nearby Kanu youth-wingers to disarm the man. His motive was never established as police abandoned investigations claiming the suspect was mentally ill.
“Mboya did not want the incident reported because it would cause unnecessary tension,” says Omolo. Associates like Nundu say Mboya’s reluctance to speak up about the threats to his life and his failure to engage round-the-clock bodyguards may have helped his enemies to execute their plans with ease.
“Tom was eliminated by people who feared he was headed for the presidency,” Nundu says. “They killed a great man who would have driven this country to greater heights. Kenya would be a much better country today, with Mboya’s leadership.”
Nundu’s conclusions about the killing may be right, but the question of who ‘they’ were is not as clear-cut.
Mboya was a national leader of Kanu. The fact that his alleged assassin, Njenga, was also a Kanu man informs the conclusion the assassination was motivated by a power struggle inside the party. Yet the struggle to succeed Kenyatta was not the only power struggle going on – or even the most immediate one.
According to a Time magazine report from the day, “Kanu had just been dealt a reeling blow in a parliamentary by-election (in May) for a vacant seat in the Luo constituency of Gem… The district gave a lopsided victory to the candidate of the Kenya People’s Union, the opposition party headed by Luo leftist, Oginga Odinga. Realising that many Luo tribesmen had come under Odinga’s sway, President Kenyatta asked Mboya to undertake an emergency reorganisation of Kanu before national elections, which must be held before next June. Mboya, a member of Kenyatta’s Cabinet and a possible, if not likely successor, was hard at work when he was shot.”
The report notes that Mboya’s task in the final months of his life was to find new candidates for the party and unseat its more corrupt elements. Did Kenyatta’s request that Mboya clean house to strengthen Kanu against KPU put the minister on a fatal collision course with the corrupt cabal around the president?
JOMO KENYATTA /UHURUS FATHER & GEMA KIAMBU MAFIA KILLED TOM MBOYA FOR BEING A POWER HUNGRY !GEMA USED A KIKMUYU TO ASASSINATE HON:TOM MBOYA CALLED NAHASHON ISAAC NJENGA NJOROGE A TRAINED MURDERER HE WENT FOR KILLING TRAINING IN BURGARIA A COMMUNIST COUNTRY DURING COLD WAR DAYS!
IT DOESNT MATTER THOSE BEHIND TOM MBOYA MURDER AND OTHERS VERY SOON WILL BE BROUGHT TO BOOK ! IT DOESNT MATTER HOW LONG ITS GONNA TAKE!
Mboya up against Kenyatta’s tough inner circle
•
Monday, 03 December 2007 18:29
Written by HILARY NG’WENO
There had always been the question of What next after
Kenyatta? Or rather, Who after Kenyatta?
writes HILARY NG’WENO in today’s instalment of ‘The Making of a Nation’
President Jomo Kenyatta’s closest ministers, the inner circle made up of Koinange, Njonjo and Mungai, and sometimes James Gichuru and Julius Kiano, had been concerned at first about Oginga Odinga, the country’s first Vice President. Odinga had charisma, nearly as much as Kenyatta; he was a man of the people, and he was a fighter, like Kenyatta.
The inner circle, or the Gatundu Group, as they were sometimes referred to, worried about Odinga taking over from Kenyatta, should the old man die or become incapacitated.
With Odinga safely out of the way after he had been forced out of the ruling party, the Kenya African National Union (Kanu) and into the opposition Kenya Peoples Union in 1966, Kenyatta’s inner group now worried about Tom Mboya, the Minister for Economic Planning and Kanu’s powerful secretary general. The prospects of Mboya stepping into Kenyatta’s shoes became an obsession for them. Part of their concern had to do with ethnic considerations.
They were determined to ensure that the presidency, and its now enormous powers, did not slip from the grasp of the Kikuyu, and most certainly not into Mboya’s hands.
They feared Mboya because of his frightful intelligence and his organisational skills. But there was more than fear involved. There was resentment. However intelligent, however astute a politician, academically Mboya was simply not the equal of any of the three top men in Kenyatta’s inner circle.
Social credentials
Koinange, senior most of the circle, was a person with outstanding academic and social credentials. Born in 1907 to Senior Chief Koinange wa Mbiyu, Koinange was sent to the US for education when he was barely 20, becoming the first Kenyan African to be educated in the US.
He first attended Hampton College in West Virginia, then the University of Columbia where he received a BA degree. He proceeded to the University of London and got a diploma from the university’s Institute of Education before moving on to the London School of Economics from which he obtained a Masters degree in 1948-the first Kenyan to get an MA.
On coming back home the following year he set up the Kenya Teachers College at Githunguri and managed it until 1946 when he turned it over to Kenyatta who had just come back after nearly 15 years in England and Europe. The two men had known each other in England and had kept in touch while they were separated.
Now a strong bond developed between them, becoming even stronger when Kenyatta took for his second wife, Grace Mitundu, Koinange’s younger sister.
In 1947 Koinange would return to England for further studies but was prevented from returning to Kenya by the outbreak of the Mau Mau rebellion and the declaration of a state of emergency in 1952.
In exile, Koinange expanded his political activities to embrace Pan African gatherings and demonstrations in England. He made contact with Kwame Nkrumah who after Ghana’s independence invited him to work at the newly set up Bureau of African Affairs in Accra.
It was from Accra that Koinange was invited by KANU and KADU leaders meeting in London at the first Lancaster House constitutional conference.
The invitation was the idea of Odinga who was trying to pressurize the British government to release Kenyatta. Odinga figured that Koinange’s presence would put added pressure on the British, and it would embarrass Mboya who was then not yet as forthright about Kenyatta’s release. Koinange would come back home soon after that meeting, run for parliament and be elected as MP for Kiambaa in 1963, when Kenyatta appointed him to the Cabinet.
The second most powerful man in the triumvirate was Charles Njonjo, the Attorney General. Like Koinange, Njonjo was the son of a senior chief in the colonial government. His father Josiah Njonjo was able to send him to the best schools of the time. Alliance High School, King’s College Budo in Uganda, Fort Hare University in Cape Town and Exeter University in England where he did post graduate studies in public administration finishing in 1947.
From 1947 to 1950 he attended the London School of Economics and then studied law for four years before being admitted to the bar at Gray’s Inn, one of England’s most prestigious inns of law. His long stay in England had a tremendous influence on him; he absorbed British culture and British mannerisms, down to the wearing of striped suits and bowler hats. In later years these British mannerisms would earn him the nickname of Sir Charles.
On returning to Kenya in 1954 Njonjo joined the colonial attorney general’s office and rose quickly from being a registrar to registrar-general. In 1961 he was a senior state counsel, and one whole year before Independence he had been promoted to the powerful job of deputy public prosecutor. At Independence he was named attorney general. The following year, with Kenya’s change to Republican status, the attorney general became an ex-officio Member of Parliament as well as the cabinet.
Six years younger than Njonjo, Mungai did not have a chief or senior chief for a father, but what he lacked in genes he more than made up for in upbringing. He too went to Alliance High School, leaving in 1945. Like Njonjo he attended Fort Hare University from 1948 to 1950.
In South Africa, Mungai had his first taste of apartheid. That experience was to shape his future political views and general mistrust of white people. From South Africa Mungai proceeded to Stanford University, then, as today, one of the top universities in the world, where he obtained a BA degree in 1952 before going to Stanford Medical School, and later to further medical studies at Columbia University.
With his string of qualifications, Mungai came back to Kenya in 1959 and set up the Chania chain of clinics around the Dagoretti area of Nairobi from which he dispensed affordable medical treatment. When Kenyatta was released from detention in 1961, Mungai became his physician. But even before that, Mungai was already immersed in politics, serving as the secretary to the preparatory committee that gave birth to KANU in May 1960. It was on that committee that Mungai first worked closely with Mboya.
Kenyatta’s inner circle was therefore made up of highly educated and sophisticated men, who by dint of their birth, education and training considered themselves to be natural leaders. On that account alone, and not even on ethnic grounds, Koinange, Njonjo and Mungai for different reasons, must have found Mboya difficult to take.
Mboya was born in 1930, and was therefore four years younger than Mungai, ten years younger than Njonjo and a whole 23 years younger than Koinange.
But by the time they started interacting with him, the older men must have been awed by his enormous organisational skills, sharp intellect, and sheer determination. The awe must have given rise to a sense of resentment when in the three or four years leading to Independence, Mboya made himself almost indispensable in the general nationalist struggle.
He was by far the most articulate leader in the country. He hogged the press, both local and international, and was on the cover of TIME magazine before Independence. Then as now, making the cover of TIME was something even Americans envied.
Mboya’s energy, charisma, his organisational and tactical skills made him indispensable in the bruising battle against Odinga and the radicals within Kanu.
The man to watch
And for some time at least Njonjo built up a close friendship with Mboya during their joint effort, at Kenyatta’s behest, to shove Odinga out of the ruling party. But Kenyatta and his top lieutenants had Odinga more or less under control. The man to watch now was Mboya.
Barely a year after forcing Odinga out of Kanu they would set about trying to do to Mboya what they had done to Odinga so successfully, except that they would now have to do their battles without or against Mboya’s enormous organisational skills, financial resources and a reputation for political fighting.
Until then Mboya had never lost any major political battle; but then, neither had Kenyatta and the men who made up his inner circle.
Exposed: Murder Of Mboya, JM And Ouko Linked To Standard Newspapers Raid
Some cold cases (unsolved murders) have a way of almost resolving themselves with the benefit of hindsight. Hindsight is like a bird’s eye view. By looking at the whole picture or getting a bird’s eye view of the situation one is able to put the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle together much more easily.
JM Kariuki was the only Kikuyu politician to set foot on Rusinga Island for Tom Mboya’s funeral. Later he was to be brutually murdered after terrible torture. It is believed that he was tortured at the then notorious Kingsway House by security agents. What information were they seeking from him?
For a long time now, I have carefully studied all the evidence linked to the Mboya murder. The JM and Ouko case were a little too obvious and to date these are virtually solved cases, the only problem is that the perpetrators have not been brought to book.
The recent Standard newspapers raid, the Ouko murder, the brutal JM killing and the Mboya assassination all have one thing in common. All were matters of internal security or security of the state and were handled as such. When you understand this simple fact all the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle fall very neatly into place.
I have just been studying details of all four cases once again and they all bear uncanny resemblance. Before we go into that it may be a good idea to define national security (state security, internal security, they all mean the same thing).
Here is what the online encyclopedia Wikipedia has to say;
National security refers to the public policy of maintaining the integrity and survival of the nation-state through the use of economic, military and political power and the exercise of diplomacy, in times of peace and war.
Measures taken to ensure national security include:
• using diplomacy to rally allies and isolate threats
• maintaining effective armed forces
• using intelligence services to detect and defeat or avoid threats and espionage, and to protect classified information
I want you to take careful note of the third point mentioned. “To defeat and avoid threats.” “To protect classified information.” All three assassinated Kenyans were seen as threats. Threats to the presidency and therefore threats to national security (more on that later).
Ouko was murdered after a controversial trip to the United States where it is rumoured that he had easier access to the then US President George Bush Senior than did President Moi. That was a threat to National security.
JM Kariuki was never the same person after the death of his close friend Tom Mboya. In fact it is on record that JM was the only Kikuyu politician at that time who set foot on Rusinga Island for Mboya’s burial. JM started talking about not wanting a Kenya where there were 10 millioniares and 10 million beggars. It is believed that he was referring to the persons close to the then Ptresident Kenyatta who were using their position to amass colossal amounts of wealth through corruption. JM had been Kenyatta’s private secretary and must have witnessed first hand the way the president was accumulating land for himself like there was no tomorrow. It is said that JM could even turn up at harambee meetings being presided over by the president and donate more money than the president. Remember the threat to the internal security of King Saul in Biblical times when the women sung that shepherd boy David was killing tens of thousands but King Saul was killing only thousands? And to think it was only a song.
The implication here was that JM was trying to prove in public that he was better than the president. The guys he was dealing with had already felled a Mugumo tree called Tom Mboya and had no qualms doing the same with JM and this time, they tortured him first. Even cutting out his private parts. Thanks to a reader of this blog, we now know that the same building where Mboya’s murder was planned and finalized is the same building where JM was taken in and tortured for hours on end.
What information were the security guys looking for by tortusing JM? A good guess is that they wanted to know what foreign support he had.
As we have said before in this blog, Tom Mboya had been in line for the presidency when Jomo Kenyatta was out of the picture and still in detenrion. Mboya’s greatest undoing and the reason why he was viewed as such a huge threat to internal security was the fact that he was very friendly with the Americans. In fact he had direct access to American Presidents like John F. Kennedy and President Johnson, who took over after Kennedy was assassinated. For some unexplained reason, Mboya never really hit it off with Richard “Watergate” Nixon, and must have turned in his grave when the Watergate scandal broke and brought down Nixon’s presidency. The Americans had just organized “something” in Zaire where charismatic Patrice Lumumba had brutally been removed from the picture and replaced by their darling, Mobuto Sese Seko. The Americans could easily organize the same in Kenya. After all they did not like the dominance of the British (who were very close to the Kenyatta government.)
Were the British consulted on this one? It is very likely that they were. Mboya as I have said was a Mugumo tree and the government may have wanted reassurances that incase of any serious backlash, they could count on the support of the British. Here it is interesting to note that during Mboya’s funeral President Kenyatta was visibly so shaken (there was rioting going on outside, that was ho popular Mboya was) that he was unable to read the eulogy. It was done for him by a cabinet minister and MP from Nyanza, Mr Ayodo.
Now the big revelation here is the Standard raid. Here we have the advantage that a cabinet minister admitted in public that it was a matter of national security. Going by what has happened in the past, chances are very high that whatever it is the Standard newspapers were about to publish touched on (you guessed it) the Presidency. Now your guess is as good as mine as to what the big issue was about exactly. Anglo-leasing? The Arturs? Who knows.
You will have noticed that internal security seems to mean the same thing as presidential security. In young states in Africa, it does. If you doubt it, look at what happened in Somalia. Everybody cheered when strongman Siad Barre was overthrown, but look what followed – chaos. To date order has not been restored and there has been no peace.
Part of the problem is that there is too much power vested on the presidency meaning that a threat to the presidency is a threat to the security of the state.
I would like to thank one of my readers who has been making comments here, who forced me to think more deeply and thus put everything together in this way.
I still believe that the best way to heal all this wounds is to have a truth and reconciliation commission and have these issues and accompanying evidence tabled. This is another reason why a new constitution with proper separation of powers is so important.
This has been very exhausting for me but I feel a lot more enlightened today.
I hope to continue with this depressing topic of state security and espionage in a later post soon.
====================
Other Related Stories To Tom Mboya’s Assassination in Kumekucha
Kibaki bodyguard sent serena to clean Kibaki Suits with Polonium & fired>
cKitili replaced Githinji in 2010 after he was named Western Province police chief. George Gichane Nderitu was kicked out of PEU in 2010 after he and a State House valet in charge of the President’s wardrobe failed to take Kibaki’s clothes to the official laundry at the Serena Hotel.
c
HIV /AIDS Is Killing Hon Kimunya ! Look how Hiv/aids is dangerous The tummy (Kimunyas Huge Tummy) is Gone !He looks ugly and moronic!
http://www.the-star.co.ke/national/national/83741-pnu-plots-to-kick-out-kimunya
Lets Pity Kenya Minister of Transport Mr Kimunya (Who sold) Regent Hotel to dead Gaddafi of Libya! Kimunya weighs 60 Kilos A Minister who used to have the biggest Tumbo (Tummy) among Kibakis Thieving Cabinet !
Kimunya Must attend Aids Hospital somewhere in USA/EU or in China!
KENYA POLICE WERE USED TO ASASSINATE TOM MBOYA !YET THEY CANNOT ARREST A PYTHON ? THEY CALLED WHITE MAN(MZUNGU) FROM FRANCE TO COME AND GET THE HUGE PYTHON FROM A TREE-TOP
>
Foreign agents link in Mboya assassination
Saturday, 14 April 2012 11:24
By JOHN OYWA The Standard Daily
There were several attempts to kill charismatic Cabinet minister Tom Mboya before he was finally cut down at a Moi Avenue pharmacy in 1969.
Indeed, just months before his death, Mboya left the country briefly as rumours of an impending assassination attempt spread. His success in fighting the ideological battles of the day drew admiration for him and animosity in the Kenyatta and Odinga camps in Kanu.
But after the defeat and ouster of the Odinga camp from Government in 1966, the greatest threats came from corrupt officials close to President Kenyatta and foreign agents smarting from their loss of influence.
Details have emerged about a series of security mishaps that may have set the stage for the assassination that shocked the world and drove the country into the throes of tribal animosity. Whether these incidents were related to his assassination remains a mystery.
Suspicions that foreign agents may have worked with Mboya’s Kanu colleagues to eliminate him also raise questions about how his killing was related to the 1965 murder of Jaramogi Oginga ally and specially elected MP Pio Gama Pinto.
Gunned down
Mboya, who was the MP for Kamukunji and Minister for Economic Planning was gunned down on July 5, Saturday afternoon, as he left the Chhani pharmacy on Government Road (now Moi Avenue). He was only 39. The man arrested for the killing was Nahashon Njenga Njoroge, a former waiter and watchmaker who was later employed as a Kanu youth activist and errand boy for various politicians. Njenga, who described Mboya as a friend, denied pulling the trigger and was keen to claim he did not act alone.
His cryptic questions to a police superintendent investigating the case – “Why do you pick on me? Why not the big man?” – have long tortured Kenyan minds with many people latching onto the most obvious suspects.
However, the list of people who may have conspired to kill Mboya, or been involved in the unsuccessful attempts, has always been much longer than most Kenyans realise. Information pieced together by the Standard on Sunday shows Mboya was a marked man from as early as 1962. Close associates say there were several apparent attempts on his life, which he chose to shield from the public for fear of alarming his supporters.
The most daring attempt came in early 1969, when an Administration Police officer guarding the minister’s home in Nairobi’s Lavington Green area opened fire at him, missing his chest by a whisker. The incident was one of three attempts narrated to the Truth, Justice and Reconciliation Commission last year.
Mboya’s former Private Secretary, Otieno Nundu, 75, says he remembers the incident at the Convent Drive residence clearly.
“It was a few minutes to 7pm and the AP officer called from the gate to report that an unidentified man wanted to see Mboya,” Nundu told The Standard On Sunday. “He insisted that the minister come out to meet the visitor who claimed he had an urgent message, but Mboya declined. When the policeman was persistent, Mboya became apprehensive and sent one of his relatives to meet the man. By this time, the AP officer was walking towards the main house. There was a sudden burst of gunfire forcing Mboya to run back into the house as the relative dived under a parked car.”
Convinced he had hit his target, the policeman swiftly disappeared into the darkness. The only casualty, however, was the minister’s Mercedes Benz, which took two bullets. Nundu believes the officer had planned to lure Mboya out of the gate and into the hands of an assassin. It was never established who the stranger was.
The policeman was arrested three days later, Nundu says. He was not charged with attempted murder, but instead disciplined for the lesser offence of wilfully damaging Mboya’s car. Nundu says the man was jailed for a paltry six months and was still serving his prison term when Mboya was eventually assassinated a few months later.
Nundu said Mboya was shaken by the incident, but chose to play it down.
Kill Mboya
“It was scaring. The AP later claimed to have acted under the influence of alcohol, but we were convinced he had been paid to kill Mboya. Investigators never sought to know the identity of the strangers, who wanted to see Mboya at the gate,” he says.
In another incident about a year earlier, a man armed with a panga walked to a function in Siaya and tried to reach Mboya at the VIP dais. Freelance journalist Odera Omolo, who was at the event, says it took the quick action of nearby Kanu youth-wingers to disarm the man. His motive was never established as police abandoned investigations claiming the suspect was mentally ill.
“Mboya did not want the incident reported because it would cause unnecessary tension,” says Omolo. Associates like Nundu say Mboya’s reluctance to speak up about the threats to his life and his failure to engage round-the-clock bodyguards may have helped his enemies to execute their plans with ease.
“Tom was eliminated by people who feared he was headed for the presidency,” Nundu says. “They killed a great man who would have driven this country to greater heights. Kenya would be a much better country today, with Mboya’s leadership.”
Nundu’s conclusions about the killing may be right, but the question of who ‘they’ were is not as clear-cut.
Mboya was a national leader of Kanu. The fact that his alleged assassin, Njenga, was also a Kanu man informs the conclusion the assassination was motivated by a power struggle inside the party. Yet the struggle to succeed Kenyatta was not the only power struggle going on – or even the most immediate one.
According to a Time magazine report from the day, “Kanu had just been dealt a reeling blow in a parliamentary by-election (in May) for a vacant seat in the Luo constituency of Gem… The district gave a lopsided victory to the candidate of the Kenya People’s Union, the opposition party headed by Luo leftist, Oginga Odinga. Realising that many Luo tribesmen had come under Odinga’s sway, President Kenyatta asked Mboya to undertake an emergency reorganisation of Kanu before national elections, which must be held before next June. Mboya, a member of Kenyatta’s Cabinet and a possible, if not likely successor, was hard at work when he was shot.”
The report notes that Mboya’s task in the final months of his life was to find new candidates for the party and unseat its more corrupt elements. Did Kenyatta’s request that Mboya clean house to strengthen Kanu against KPU put the minister on a fatal collision course with the corrupt cabal around the president?
http://www.standardmedia.co.ke/?id=2000056305&cid=4&articleID=2000056305