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Jomo Kenyatta

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Kamau wa Muigai

c.1897-1978
Kenyan politician

  1. Introduction
  2. Stories
  3. Biographical summary
  4. See also
  5. Further reading
  6. References

1. Introduction

Jomo Kenyatta was an independence activist and Kenya’s first president, gaining three terms from 1964 until his death in 1978. Kenya’s independence in 1963 was part of the accelerating decline of the British Empire, much to Churchill’s horror. Kenyatta spent around 15 years in the UK in the 1930s and 1940s, at London universities and on a Sussex farm. He was arrested and convicted in Kenya for being an alleged leader in the Mau Mau uprising against white settlers, serving seven years in jail and two under restriction of movement. His son Uhuru became Kenya’s fourth president in 2013.

2. Stories

  • Jomo Kenyatta’s various name changes were good illustrations of his background.
  • Churchill visited Kenya in 1907; Kenyatta would later spend around 15 years in the UK.
  • Kenyatta was an extra in a film produced by Churchill’s friend Alexander Korda.
  • Kenyatta was tried and jailed during Churchill’s second term as prime minister.
  • Kenyatta’s three terms as president from 1964 to 1978 were mainly pro-western and anti-communist.
  • Kenyatta’s funeral was partly modelled on that of Churchill.
  • A bust of Churchill in the Oval Office was replaced by President Barack Obama, but not, as has been claimed, because his Kenyan grandfather was mistreated by the British.

Jomo Kenyatta’s various name changes were good illustrations of his background.

His given name at birth was Kamau, meaning ‘quiet warrior’ in the Kikuyu language. His father’s name was Muigai (‘protector’), so he was known as Kamau wa Muigai, ‘wa’ indicating ‘belonging to’. It is not necessarily the same as ‘son of’, as shown by his name change when his father died of smallpox and his mother married Muigai’s younger brother, Ngengi, according to custom. He was then known as Kamau wa Ngengi.

From 1909, Kenyatta attended school at a Church of Scotland mission and in 1914 he was baptised. He wanted to adopt the Christian names John and Peter (early church apostles), but was obliged to choose just one, so he combined them into Johnstone (the Greek origin of ‘Peter’ means ‘stone’ or ‘rock’). Although he subsequently retained a loose interest in Christianity, he identified more closely with traditional Kikuyu beliefs and later dropped the Johnstone name.

He moved to the capital Nairobi and started wearing a mucibi wa kinyata, a Kikuyu term for a beaded belt. He liked the look and the name and started calling himself Kinyata, later spelling it Kenyatta. In later life, his belt was substituted by a leather jacket, a beaded hat and a fly whisk as emblems of his identity.

In 1938 he started using ‘Jomo’ as a first name, sometimes translated as ‘burning spear’. The Order of the Burning Spear, which he instituted in 1966, is Kenya’s second highest honour, with three levels: Chief, Elder and Moran (warrior).

In the early 1940s, when he lived in Sussex, England, he was given the friendly nickname ‘Jumbo’, referring to the elephants in his native land and to his robust (though short) physique. As he grew older in Kenya he became widely known as Mzee, a Swahili term of respect for an elderly man.

The name of the country ‘Kenya’ is unrelated to ‘Kenyatta’. ‘Kenya’ is derived from Mount Kenya, or ‘ki nyaa’ in the Kamba language, meaning ‘the place of the male ostrich’. The mountain has black rocks and white snow, prompting comparisons with the black and white feathers of a male ostrich.

Churchill visited Kenya in 1907 when it was British East Africa; Kenyatta would later spend around 15 years in the UK.

In late 1905, Prime Minister Henry Campbell-Bannerman appointed Churchill as under-secretary of state for the colonies. Two years later, Churchill visited British East Africa (now Kenya), as part of a long tour including Uganda, Sudan and Egypt. He travelled around 500 miles (800 km) by rail from the port of Mombasa on Africa’s east coast to Lake Victoria, stopping in Nairobi, which had superseded Mombasa as the capital in 1905.

Kenyatta was around 10 years old during Churchill’s visit, when Churchill was 32 (estimates of the year of Kenyatta’s birth range from 1890 to 1898, with later years being more likely). At the time, Kenyatta was herding his family’s livestock near Gatundu, now in Kiambu county, around 30 miles (50 km) north of Nairobi.

Kenyatta received some woodwork training at school and afterwards became an apprentice carpenter. He relocated to Nairobi for work, then to remote Narok to avoid British army conscription. On returning to Nairobi he married Grace Wahu and had two children while working as an interpreter, store assistant, store owner and water meter reader. He became involved in political activities through the Kikuyu Central Association (‘KCA’) and travelled to London in 1929 to present land grievances, with little effect.

In 1931 Kenyatta returned to Britain for the KCA. He met Mohandas Gandhi and was mentored by Trinidadian communist George Padmore. After some free tuition in Moscow, he worked in the linguistics department of University College London and studied anthropology under the renowned academic Bronisław Malinowski at the London School of Economics, publishing his thesis as Facing Mount Kenya (1938). Although associated with various communist activists and organisations, Kenyatta denied being a communist himself and later adopted largely capitalist policies.

During World War II, he became a farm labourer in Sussex, again avoiding British military conscription. He gave anti-colonial lectures around the country and helped to organise the fifth Pan-African Congress in Manchester. Still married to Grace in Kenya, he married Edna Clarke, a governess, in the UK in 1942 and had a son. He returned to Kenya in 1946, without Edna or son, due to anticipated problems related to mixed-race marriage at the time.

Kenyatta was an extra in a film produced by Churchill’s friend Alexander Korda.

Alexander Korda was a well-known film producer who made propaganda movies for Churchill during World War II. A naturalised British subject from Hungary, Korda was a keen supporter of the British Empire and made four films in the 1930s that portrayed it in a favourable light.

One of these was Sanders of the River (1935), based on a collation of stories by Edgar Wallace, about a district commissioner in the British colony of Nigeria, played by Leslie Banks. African American actor and bass baritone Paul Robeson played a Nigerian chief; Nina Mae McKinney was his on-screen wife. Kenyatta was one of 250 extras, probably obtaining the part through his friendship with Robeson, a fellow anti-colonialist. Kenyatta also played a tribal chief, appearing in the movie for about two minutes, standing silently next to Robeson. Alfred Hitchcock was involved in the early stages of editing but moved on to other projects.

The film was well-received by the public and critics, but not by Robeson when he saw the final version, which was dedicated to the ‘handful of white men whose everyday work is an unsung saga of courage and efficiency’.1 Robeson was studying Swahili at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London at the time and had originally taken the role to try and portray African cultural issues sensitively. He had been encouraged by Korda’s despatch of a small team to Nigeria for four months to record tribal dancing and singing to incorporate into the film. He disowned it publicly, saying ‘I hate the picture’.2

Kenyatta gave Korda a cigarette case as thanks, perhaps before seeing the final version. He was grateful for the income, which he needed at the time. He never mentioned the movie later in public. Robeson went on to perform in various other films and in stage productions and concerts, becoming one of the USA’s leading entertainers, although he had his US passport cancelled during some of the 1950s for refusing to disclaim communist party membership. Kenyatta did not pursue any other movie roles.

Kenyatta was tried and jailed during Churchill’s second term as prime minister.

Shortly after Kenyatta returned to Kenya in 1946, he became president of the Kenya Africa Union (‘KAU’) which sought political rights for indigenous people and, later, Kenyan independence. He made a distinction between KAU’s non-violent methods and the violence of Dedan Kimathi’s Kenya Land and Freedom Army (‘KLFA’) guerillas, known as the ‘Mau Mau’ (the etymology of the term is unclear). The Mau Mau inducted members with blood-curdling oaths and committed various atrocities, some against white settlers but mostly against fellow-Africans suspected of collaborating with the white regime. Some of the British forces also committed atrocities, brought to public attention during a lawsuit initiated in 2009, resulting in a settlement in 2013 for over 5200 claimants. A follow-up case in 2018 for more than 41,000 others was unsuccessful.

Despite Kenyatta’s speeches against the Mau Mau, he was viewed with suspicion and as a threat by the governor of Kenya, Evelyn Baring, great-grandson of the founder of Barings Bank. In October 1952, Baring declared a state of emergency and launched Operation Jock Scott, arresting over 80 people, including Kenyatta.

Kenyatta and five others, the ‘Kapenguria Six’, were put on trial in a remote town in western Kenya and convicted in 1954 of being leaders of the Mau Mau organisation, which had been declared illegal in 1950. The judge and some witnesses seem to have been provided with various incentives to ensure convictions, resulting in seven-year jail sentences followed by indefinite restriction of movement. The key witness in Kenyatta’s conviction retracted his testimony in 1958. Kenyatta was released from jail in 1959 and his restriction of movement was lifted two years later, under international and domestic political pressure, despite the new governor Patrick Muir Renison calling him ‘the leader to death and darkness’.3

In the early 1950s, Churchill’s attention was primarily on the Cold War, and he was also distracted by a severe stroke in 1953. He was briefed about the situation in Kenya and intervened occasionally, mainly to press for negotiation rather than confrontation. As prime minister, he was, nevertheless, ultimately responsible for British governance until his resignation in 1955. The Mau Mau uprising was continuing at this time but had mostly died down by 1957, with a few sporadic activities lingering until 1964.

Kenyatta’s three terms as president from 1964 to 1978 were mainly pro-western and anti-communist.

After national elections in 1963, Kenyatta became prime minister of the Commonwealth realm of Kenya (1963-64) under Queen Elizabeth II and Governor Malcolm MacDonald, son of former UK prime minister Ramsay MacDonald. Princess Elizabeth had become queen while staying with Prince Philip at Treetops Hotel in the Aberdare mountains near Mount Kenya in 1952, when her father George VI died unexpectedly.

Kenya gained independence from the UK on 12 December 1963, with Prince Philip representing the Queen at the ceremony. Just before the British flag was lowered, he is said to have turned to Kenyatta and asked, ‘Are you sure you want to go through with this?’4

A year later to the day, Kenya became a republic, with Kenyatta as its first president. The country’s Western-leaning policies contrasted with the pro-China sympathies of socialist President Julius Nyerere in Tanzania to the south. To the west, Uganda underwent considerable turbulence under secessionist Edward Mutesa, socialist Milton Obote and the unpredictable Idi Amin, all deposed.

Kenyatta included a small number of former Mau Mau leaders in his cabinets, but said in an April 1963 speech, ‘Mau Mau was a disease which had been eradicated, and must never be remembered again’.5 This sentiment has been partly reversed in recent years, with some Mau Mau memorials being established.

The First Lady was ‘Mama’ Ngina, Kenyatta’s fourth wife, with whom Kenyatta had four children, including Uhuru (meaning ‘freedom’, a synonym for ‘independence’), Kenya’s fourth president. Coincidentally, his first three wives all had ‘Grace’ as one of their names. His third wife, Grace Wanjiku, died during childbirth in 1951. When Kenyatta died in 1978, aged around 80, his family consisted of three wives, two Kenyan and one British, and eight surviving children.

His first child, Peter Muigai, was a politician who died only two years after his father. Margaret became mayor of Nairobi and a Kenyan representative to the United Nations. Peter Magana was a BBC producer in the UK and Jane (‘Jeni’) held the Kenyan women’s 220 metre sprinting record. Christine (‘Kristina’) is a charity director; Uhuru became the fourth president of Kenya; Nyokabi is a businesswoman; and Muhoho manages the family’s substantial business holdings.

Kenyatta’s funeral was partly modelled on that of Churchill.

After Churchill’s stroke in 1953, detailed funeral plans (‘Operation Hope Not) were developed and updated until being implemented on his death in 1965 (see Elizabeth II). Similarly, Kenyatta’s funeral plan was a long time in the making, from 1968 to 1978, in consultation with Britain, known for pomp and circumstance and still having a close relationship with Kenya after independence. However, the secrecy and ad hoc planning was such that many of the preparations were lost and had to be remade hastily upon Kenyatta’s death.

Funereal similarities included the use of a gun carriage for the coffin’s procession, a highly plagiarised opening address, one of the same hymns, the playing of the Last Post and Reveille, and an air force fly-past.

Plans had been made to use the services of the company J. H. Kenyon for a death mask, embalming, and the provision of a coffin. Kenyon was highly experienced, including having embalmed Churchill. All was ready to be put in place at a moment’s notice, with the coffin being manufactured in advance.

A key intermediary was South-African born Bruce McKenzie, a member of Kenyatta’s government. However, he died three months before Kenyatta when a bomb exploded as he was flying from Uganda to Nairobi, allegedly placed by agents of Ugandan president Idi Amin.*

When Kenyatta died in August 1978, the mortuary keeper in Kenya, unaware of the Kenyon plan, contacted a former Nairobi cemetery manager living in England to find an embalmer. His contact asked a colleague to perform the task and to arrange for a coffin. A gun carriage was hastily found and flown from Britain to Kenya. A mausoleum was rapidly designed and built in the grounds of the parliament in Nairobi.

The funeral was held nine days after Kenyatta’s death. British dignitaries included Prince Charles and Foreign Secretary David Owen, with Prince Charles sitting three seats away from Idi Amin, who had shown up unexpectedly the day before.

Vice-President Daniel arap Moi, from the minority Kalenjin tribe, became the country’s second president, having survived a plot by the ‘Mount Kenya Mafia’ (also known as the ‘Kiambu Mafia’) to install another Kikuyu president. Initially a caretaker leader, he remained in power for 24 years.

* The assassination was allegedly in retaliation for McKenzie’s supposed assistance to Israel’s Mossad, which included facilitation of the 1976 Israeli operation at Entebbe airport in Uganda to release hostages on an Air France flight, hijacked while flying from Tel Aviv to Paris.

A bust of Churchill in the Oval Office was replaced by President Barack Obama, but not, as has been claimed, because his Kenyan grandfather was mistreated by the British.

President Barack Hussein Obama’s grandfather, Hussein Onyango Obama, was a cook for a British army captain during World War II. After the war, he became a smallholder in western Kenya and had disputes with the district commissioner’s African assistant who added Onyango’s name to a list of agitators. In 1949 Onyango was taken away and imprisoned for around six months. On release, he was very thin, had difficulty walking and had become prematurely old. Grandson Obama’s autobiography Dreams from my Father (1995) does not mention claims of torture, unlike some newspaper reports.

When Obama moved into the White House in 2009, he replaced a bust of Churchill in the Oval Office with one of Martin Luther King. Some media reports claimed this was because he is anti-British due to his grandfather’s treatment; some added a specifically anti-Churchill sentiment due to suppression of the Mau Mau uprising.

In fact, the bust had been loaned to George W. Bush in July 2001 and was returned, as expected, after he left office. Churchill was not in power when Onyango was detained and the Mau Mau uprising was not until three years after Onyango’s detention. Obama biographer David Maraniss interviewed five people who knew Onyango, including one of his daughters, who each said that Onyango was never detained.

There was some nervousness when President Obama addressed the UK parliament in 2011, but relief when he said that ‘it’s possible for hearts to change and old hatreds to pass; […] it’s possible for the sons and daughters of former colonies to sit here as members of this great Parliament, and for the grandson of a Kenyan who served as a cook in the British Army to stand before you as president of the United States.’6

In 2016, during another visit to the UK, Obama explained the return of the Churchill bust and added that he had a second one outside his private study (a gift to President Lyndon Johnson in 1965), which he sees every day. ‘I love Winston Churchill,’ he said. ‘I love the guy.’7

The Oval office bust was reinstalled during Donald Trump’s presidency, presented by Prime Minister Teresa May, but was again returned to the British ambassador in Washington, by President Joe Biden in January 2021.

3. Biographical summary

OccupationNationalist leader, politician
CountryKenya
CareerNumerous short-term jobs (1914-22). Representative, Kikuyu Central Association (1922-29). London activism (1929-30). Studies in UK and Russia (1931-39). Farm worker (1939-45). President, Kenya African Union (1947-52). Trial and imprisonment/house arrest (1952-1961). Chairman, Kenya African National Union (1961-78). Prime Minister (1963-64). President (1964-78).
BornKamau wa Muigai; later Kamau wa Ngengi, c. 1897 in Ichaweri village near Gatundu, British East Africa, now in Kiambu county (23 years younger than Churchill); baptismal name Johnstone Kamau in 1914
FatherMuigai wa Kung’u, leader of a small Kikuyu community
MotherWambui, smallholder
SiblingsSecond of three sons:
1. Kung’u (died in infancy)
2. Kamau, later Jomo (c. 1897-1974) Kongo; disappeared in World War I, aged 13
Step-sibling by Wambui and Ngengi: Muigai, baptised James; teacher
EducationThogoto Church of Scotland mission; University College London (English, phonetics); London School of Economics (social anthropology under Bronisław Malinowski)
Spouses1. Grace Wahu (c.1907-2007), m. 1919 until his death
2. Edna Clarke (1908-1995), m. 1942 until his death; middle name Grace; teacher
3. Grace Wanjiku (d. 1950), m.1946 until her death; died during childbirth
4. Ngina Muhoho (1933-), m. 1951 until his death in 1978; ‘Mama’ Ngina
Relationships 
ChildrenWith Grace:
1. Peter Muigai (1920-1979), businessman, politician
2. Margaret (1928-2017); mayor of Nairobi; Kenyan ambassador to UN Environment Programme
With Edna:
3. Peter Magana (1944-), retired BBC producer
4. Miscarriage or death in infancy
With Grace Wanjiku:
5. Jane ‘Jeni’ (1951-); married Udi Mareka Gecaga
With Mama Ngina:
6. Christine (now ‘Kristina’) (1953-); teacher, charity director; married Victor Pratt, Lebanese
7. Uhuru (1961-); President of Kenya (1913-)
8. Anna Nyokabi (1963-); businesswoman, philanthropist
9. Muhoho (1965-); businessman
Died1978 in State House, Mombasa, Coast Province, aged 80-81 (13 years after Churchill); heart attack
BuriedMausoleum in the parliament grounds
NicknamesJumbo (by friends in England); Mzee (respectful Swahili name for an old man); Father of the Nation
Height5’5”
Time magazine–

4. See also

Decline of British Empire

  • Aung San (Burma)
  • Gandhi, Mohandas (India)
  • Jinnah, Mohamed Ali (Pakistan)
  • Nasser, Gamal Abdel (Egypt)
  • Zionist Paramilitary Groups (Palestine)

Churchill’s funeral

  • Elizabeth II

Other characters

  • Korda, Alexander (film director)

Churchill controversies

  • Excessive force
  • Imperialism
  • Mau Mau
  • Race

5. Further reading

Kenyatta

  • Angelo, Anaïs, Power and the Presidency in Kenya: The Jomo Kenyatta Years (Cambridge University Press, 2019)
  • Maloba, W.O., Kenyatta and Britain: An Account of Political Transformation, 1929-1963 (Springer International Publishing, 2017)
  • Maloba, W.O., The Anatomy of Neo-Colonialism in Kenya: British Imperialism and Kenyatta, 1963–1978 (Springer International Publishing, 2017)
  • Murray-Brown, Jeremy, Kenyatta (E. P. Dutton, 1973)

Mau Mau

  • Anderson, David, Histories of the Hanged: The Dirty War in Kenya and the End of Empire (W. W. Norton, 2005)
  • Bennett, Huw, Fighting the Mau Mau: The British Army and Counter-Insurgency in the Kenya Emergency, Cambridge Military Histories (Cambridge University Press, 2013)
  • Van der Bijl, Nicholas, Mau Mau Rebellion: The Emergency in Kenya, 1952–1956 (Pen & Sword Books, 2017)

Kenya settlers

  • Barnes, Juliet, For Love of Soysambu: The Saga of Lord Delamere and His Descendants in Kenya (Old Africa Books, 2020)
  • Barnes, Juliet, The Ghosts of Happy Valley: Searching for the Lost World of Africa’s Infamous Aristocrats (Aurum, 2013)
  • Best, Nicholas, Happy Valley (Thistle Publishing, 2013)
  • Nicholls, C.S., Red Strangers: The White Tribe of Kenya (Timewell Press, 2005)

Colonialism in Africa

  • James, Lawrence, Empires in the Sun: The Struggle for the Mastery of Africa (Orion, 2016)
  • Pakenham, Thomas, The Scramble for Africa (Little, Brown Book Group, 2015)

Miscellaneous

  • Churchill, Winston S., My African Journey (New English Library, 1908) (Churchill’s East Africa visit in 1907)
  • Obama, Barack, Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance (Canongate Books, 2007)

6. References

1. Mark Duguid, ‘Korda and Empire’, BFI Screenonline.

2. Nathalie Morris, ‘Paul Robeson: The Singer and Activist Who Pioneered a Path for Black Actors’, British Film Institute, 2017.

3. Kenya National Assembly Official Record, Adoption of Sessional Paper No. 4 of 1980 (Hansard, 1980), p. 1474.

4. Reuters Staff, ‘Factbox: Some of Prince Philip’s Famous Gaffes’, Reuters, 2017.

5. Marshall S. Clough, Mau Mau Memoirs: History, Memory, and Politics (Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1998), p. 25.

6. Barack Obama, ‘Obama’s Speech to UK Parliament’, BBC News, 2011.

7. Jordyn Phelps, ‘President Obama Explains Why Winston Churchill’s Bust Was Removed From the Oval Office’, ABC News, 2016.