TOM MBOYA MEMORIAL: REVOLUTION INTERRUPTED, PROMISE DEFERRED
Long before Nairobi’s political salons took notice, Tom Joseph Mboya was honing his craft amid the clang of factory floors and the stench of colonial neglect. As a sanitary inspector, he reforged the African Staff Association into the Kenya Local Government Workers’ Union, providing exploited municipal labourers with a disciplined vehicle for collective defiance. When the Kenya African Union was proscribed and Mau Mau leaders disappeared into detention camps, Mboya positioned organised labour as the beating heart of the anti-colonial front. From streets to strike committees, he confronted the colonial state with the one language it feared: unified mass action.…