The jury’s is out on Mzee Kenyatta’s Legacy I only knew Mzee Jomo Kenyatta as an icon. My interaction with him is through his mementos, history books and much more recently when we elected his son Uhuru to be president, a distance I share with most. Why is this man so revered and loathed in equal measure? Why is the academia still so divided over his legacy? Much of it has to do with his personality. Kenyatta is described as a mystic, the son of a seer and a magician as he calls his grandfather in his autobiography. Kenyatta mastered the art of writing and speaking earlier than most penning Kenya, the land of opportunity and later facing Mount Kenya amidst numerous letters and petitions to the western media including the times as early as 1938. Despite living abroad he canvassed succinctly on the issues that were important to KCA the organization that sent him to London. He once told his white wife Edna that he feels like a general separated from his troops while in London. On the other hand Kenyatta failed on the one issue that was closest to the people of Kenya: land. That single issue has defined Kenyatta’s legacy. His close confidants like Duncan Ndegwa noted in his book walking in the footstep of Kenyatta that he erred by allocating himself too much land but they had no to guts to tell the old man. Kenyatta came from a tradition of lords in Britain and he wanted to emulate that and to consolidate his power by owning and controlling the most important factor of production. He failed to reign in on his inner circle that wrecked havoc to land, government property and public appointments. This effectively alienated other Kenyans and planted a seed of tribalism that his successor Moi tended well and Kibaki harvested in 2008 post election violence. Relatively speaking Kenyatta’s stance was a good thing for Kenya in comparison with his peers. Most African nations were led by very brilliant individuals to independence. They included Senghor the gifted poet of Senegal, Houphouet- Boigny a graduate of school of medicine in Dakar, Kwame Nkurumah the gifted Pan- Africanist and Patrice Lumumba to name a few. However unlike Kenyatta most of these leaders deteriorated to unimaginable lows of mass murders and wrecked their economies to the ground. This led to coups and counter coups ushering in a reign of unprecedented terror to their people. African leaders like Emperor Bokassa of CAR who earned the title “the butcher of Bangui”, Nasser of Egypt, Nguema of Equatorial Guinea, Obote and Amin of Uganda and Karume of Zanzibar descended on a path that forever changed the face of Africa and earned the dark continent status. Kenyatta opted for a pragmatic approach to the international relations issues that divided the world into the east and the west. He refused to take the road of ideological trips that Nyerere and Lumumba chose. This path that Lumumba chose is evident in the Congo to date. Scholars have sometimes played the small-ball of Kenyan politics and tribalism denying Kenyatta’s legacy justice. They have struggled to rewrite history and bring to the fore the “real heroes” of independence which brought forth the mantra that ‘we all fought for independence’. Kenyatta is often banished for not being a true Mau but he refused to give in to anything that would have altered the fragile stability that he thought Kenya needed to go forth. He refused to take the route South Sudan has taken of rewarding war generals and allowing them to take the country hostage seeking rewards for their sacrifice with high office. Granted, Kenyatta never took us to heaven but neither did he allow us to descend to hell but unfortunately he left us with a driver designate who took us down. No one should feel obliged protect Mzee’s legacy by purging the TJRC report, the jury’s out.
Posted on: Wed, 05 Jun 2013 12:12:04 +0000
Trending Topics
© 2015