UNDERWRITING MBOYA AND HIS Labor Federation was a natural strategy for the U.S. in Kenya during the '50s and early '60s. It advanced responsible nationalism; and it was painless, because the employers faced with higher wage demands were British, not American. By 1964, however, American investments, which would reach $100 million by 1967, were becoming significant, and some of the Kenyan union demands began to lose their charm. But even more important, 1964 also brought dangers of "political instability" serious enough to make radio communications with the Nairobi Embassy eighth highest on the State Department roster for the year.
Zanzibar revolted and Tanzania's Nyerere was nearly overthrown. Rebellion was spreading through the Northeast Congo, and Kenya lay astride the natural supply route. The CIA decided that a new approach was in order.
In June 1964, U.S. Ambassador to Kenya William Attwood met with Kenyatta and agreed that Western labor groups would stop subsidizing Mboya and the KFL; for balance, Kenyatta assured him that Russian and Chinese aid to the leftist leader, Vice President Odinga, would also end. Simultaneously, the CIA was making appropriate shifts in its operations, throwing its resources into a new kind of vehicle which would embrace the whole Kenyan political mainstream, while isolating the left and setting it up for destruction by Kenyatta. To this end the CIA shifted its emphasis to an organization by the name of "Peace With Freedom."
The CIA programme in Kenya could be summed up as one of selective liberation. The chief beneficiary was Tom Mboya who, in 1953, became general secretary of the Kenya Federation of Labour.”
Ramparts quotes Mboya as saying:
“Those proven codes of conduct in the African societies, which have over the ages conferred dignity on our people and afforded them security regardless of their station in life.Had the CIA sowed enough seeds of wrath between Mboya and the political establishment in Kenya to provide someone with enough reason to kill him?
“I refer to the universal charity, which characterises our societies, and I refer to the African thought processes and cosmological ideas, which regard men, not as a social means, but as an end and entity in society.”
Ever since I started this blog, I have always remembered this names Kassim Hanga ,Othman Shriff Who vanish or disappeared. and never seen until today in Zanzibar, Tom Mboya and Robert Ouko was next in Kenya, In Tanganyika Sokoine was one of them ,Oscar Kambona, , Abrahman Babu took refuge in London until they die and Others who were young Leaders during the sixties and 70 inspired me to know more about them and more specifically what happened to them like this in 1969 before I was born.
This powerful quote not only captures Mboya’s own prescription of African socialism, which endeared him to the West and made the CIA view his policy as safe, but it also paints the picture of an articulate, sophisticated and ambitious political thinker.
Soon after, Mboya joined the CIA jet set, travelling around the world from Oxford in the UK to Calcutta in India on funds from such conduits as the Africa Bureau and from the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU).
ICFTU, which played a key role in Kenya’s independence through trade unionism, is an aggregation of international trade union secretariats set up in 1949 to counter an upsurge of left-wing trade unionism outside the communist bloc, according to Ramparts. The CIA allegedly funded operations at the time.
But when George Cabot Lodge, one of the directors of the ICFTU, made the statement (believed to have been in specific reference to Mboya at the time) that “the obscure trade unionist of today may well be the president or prime minister of tomorrow,” he left no doubt about Mboya’s personal ambitions and by extension the CIA’s scheme of things.
Initially, CIA’s natural strategy was to underwrite Mboya and his labour federation as a force against Kenyatta. But when tact changed in accordance with the world order and the CIA’s new priorities, it was agreed that Western labour groups stop funding Mboya.
An accommodation with Kenyatta was now thought necessary, particularly to ensure that he did not support rebels in Congo, and to get him to close ranks against the agitating Kenyan left.
But the die had been cast. The CIA, through its activities, had effectively propped up Mboya as a possible future President of Kenya. That threat was real during Kenyatta’s time and even at the dawn of the second decade of his leadership, according to Ramparts.
It was a strategy that the CIA would use again to the benefit of Kenyatta against Odinga – use the credibility of the appropriate militant to crush the rest. The CIA link, which Mboya vigorously fought to distance himself with, would be used later to fight him politically by branding him a traitor and a man who could not to be trusted. He wrote lengthy responses in his defence.
But had the CIA sowed enough seeds of wrath between Mboya and the political establishment in Kenya to provide someone with enough reason to kill him?
It is the day Tom Mboya was shot dead. there are many questions in East Africa never answered about the deaths of some of this big names I mention above.
He retained the portfolio as Minister for Economic Planning and Development until his death at age 38 when he was gunned down on 5 July 1969 on Government Road (now Moi Avenue), Nairobi CBD after visiting a pharmacy. Nahashon Isaac Njenga Njoroge was convicted for the murder and later hanged. After his arrest, Njoroge asked: "Why don't you go after the big man?. Who he meant by "the big man" was never divulged, but fed conspiracy theories since Mboya was seen as a possible contender for the presidency. The mostly tribal elite around Kenyatta has been blamed for his death, which has never been subject of a judicial inquiry. During Mboya's burial, a mass demonstration against the attendance of President Jomo Kenyatta led to a big skirmish, with two people shot dead. The demonstrators believed that Kenyatta was involved in the death of Mboya, thus eliminating him as a threat to his political career although this is still a disputed matter.
Mboya left a wife and five children. He is buried in a mausoleum located on Rusinga Island which was built in 1970. A street in Nairobi is named after him.
Mboya's role in Kenya's politics and transformation is the subject of increasing interest, especially with the coming into scene of American politician Barack Obama II. Obama's father, Barack Obama, Sr., was a US-educated Kenyan who benefited from Mboya's scholarship programme in the 1960s, and married during his stay there, siring the future Illinois Senator and President. Obama Sr. had seen Mboya shortly before the assassination, and testified at the ensuing trial. Obama Sr. believed he was later targeted in a hit-and-run incident as a result of this testimony
The Tom Mboya Monument above is along the Moi Avenue of Nairobi Kenya. It was honor of Tom Mboya, a Kenyan Minister who was assassinated in 1969.
CIA-Backed African Leader Sponsored the Airlift that Sent Obama's Father to the USA
CIA support for Tom Mboya was terminated well before his muder on July 5, 1969 (sponsored by the CIA?), so no one should come away from this post claiming that Obama's father was in some way Langley's poodle. John Kennedy appears to have restored the financial aid quietly cut off by the Agency. All that these articles establish is CIA financing for Tom Mboya at one time - he was a socialist pawn, not a seditionist jackal - and there is no necessary intelligence connection to Obama's father.
Thomas Joseph Odhiambo Mboya (15 August 1930 – 5 July 1969) was a Kenyan politician during Jomo Kenyatta's government. He was founder of the Nairobi People's Congress Party, a key figure in the formation of the Kenya African National Union (KANU), and the Minister of Economic Planning and Development at the time of his death. Mboya was assassinated on 5 July 1969 in Nairobi. Kenyatta's government. He was founder of the Nairobi People's Congress Party, a key figure in the formation of the Kenya African National Union (KANU), and the Minister of Economic Planning and Development at the time of his death. Mboya was assassinated on 5 July 1969 in Nairobi.
It should be noted that the U.S. government and its intelligence agencies have a long history of rogue operations intended to discredit governments or social movements with whom they happen to disagree. To see how far this can go, one need only recall the sordid history of disinformation, lies, and deceit propagated by U.S. government include the assassination of Patrice Lumumba of Congo.
Barack Obama has inspired many a comparison to John F Kennedy ... but the two men forged a less known link - before Obama was even born. The bond began with Kenyan labour leader Tom Mboya, an advocate for African nationalism who helped his country gain independence in 1963.
In the late 1950s, Mboya was seeking support for a scholarship program that would send Kenyan students to US colleges - similar to other exchanges the US backed in developing nations during the Cold War with the Soviet Union. Mboya appealed to the state department. When that trail went cold, he turned to then-senator Kennedy. Kennedy, who chaired the senate subcommittee on Africa, arranged a $100,000 grant through his family's foundation to help Mboya keep the program running.
Fresh details of a conspiracy that could have provided a motive for the assassination of Cabinet Minister Thomas Joseph Mboya have emerged ahead since his death.
The truth is that there were two very well planned phases of the Mboya assassination. That is the actual hit and the cover up that was to follow. Both were carried out clinically. With the clinical precision of a doctor... a surgeon perhaps?
The CIA appears to have recruited the flamboyant minister and former trade unionist in a heavily funded “selective liberation” programme to isolate Kenya’s founding President Jomo Kenyatta, who the American spy agency labelled as “unsafe.”
Declassified information in an undated issue of Ramparts, an American political and literary magazine published in the 1960s and early 1970s, accessed by The Standard at the Kenya National Archives, shows an elaborate conspiracy by CIA to prop up Mboya and isolate Kenyatta.
Kennedy: " ... 'Mr Mboya came to see us and asked for help, when none of the other foundations could give it, when the federal government had turned it down quite precisely. We felt something ought to be done.'
"One of the first students airlifted to America was Barack Obama Sr., who married a white Kansas native woman
Mostly my annual memorials have been a lonely crusade. But not this year. Yesterday and today Kenya’s leading daily, The Nation has carried extensive coverage on the assassination of the man I consider to be the greatest politician to ever come out of a Kenyan woman’s womb.
I interpret that to mean that finally more and more Kenyans have come to the realization that this assassination was significant and that if the country is to move forward and truly have a new beginning then we must face the ghosts of Tom Mboya and settle this thing once and for all. More so because the chief planner and executor at the centre of that assassination still lives.
Why was Mboya’s assassination so significant? Simply because the two bullets that were fired that Saturday lunch time July 5th 1969 changed the course of Kenya forever. Today we are suffering the consequences of that new course that was clearly charted out that day. Impunity won that day. Years later the rhetorical questions were to be asked over and over again; Mboya was killed and nothing happened, who is so and so? We survived the Mboya assassination what crisis can we not survive?
Tribal politics won that day. In killing Mboya the assassins killed nationalism. To date we are yet to see another Kenyan attracting national popularity in their own right enough to win a presidential poll with votes from every corner of the republic. Every single prominent politician now has their political base in their ancestral village and those who don’t have imported their fellow tribesmates in large numbers into the constituency they represent away form their village. Tom Mboya was a Luo who was time and again voted in by mostly Kikuyus even when other prominent Kikuyus from very prominent families stood against him. To a young Kenyan who understands Kenyan politics today, this statement seems like pure fiction.
I want to say today that most analysts agree that Tom Mboya was on course to end up as the first president of Kenya. A man called Jaramogi Oginga Odinga noted this fact early and decided that he would do everything in his power to make sure that this did not happen. And so he started a crusade insisting that Kenyans did NOT want Uhuru unless Kenyatta was released. In fact Odinga said that Kenyatta was “like a god to Kenyans. This clever ploy put Mboya in a tight corner. Knowing his constituents he knew that if he failed to support this belated call his support would evaporate. And so the old man who had been so out of touch with what was happening was released from Kapenguria and Oginga Odinga won the day while Kenya and nationalism lost badly. The Brits also won big time (more on that later).
It has now been revealed that a few weeks before the assassination of one Pio Gama Pinto, Tom Mboya warned the politician that he was going to be killed by Kenyatta’s inner circle (the same people who murdered Mboya). This is instructive and demonstrates the fact that Mboya’s intelligence sources were impeccable. We also know that Mboya knew his life was in danger. Indeed his biographer tells us that his American friends warned him and discussed the possibility of getting more body guards (which Mboya turned down). In fact on the day Mboya was killed, he had just released his driver and bodyguard. Why? Was he not concerned about his own life? He had warned Pinto that the Kenyatta inner circle was capable of murder and Pinto had doubted saying that his killing would cause serious problems for the Kenyatta administration. In other words “they wouldn’t dare.” Is this what Mboya thought about his own possible asassination? We can only speculate but the truth is that this is a question that badly begs for an answer.
It is also instructive to note that warnings of assassination came to Mboya from the Americans. This adds an International angle to the plot. Which major world power had a motive for Mboya’s death? Which country benefited most with Mboya out of the way? Britain of course. I have come across many interesting facts that point to MI5 links in the assassination of Tom Mboya. Indeed it would seem that Kenyatta’s inner circle got encouragement to proceed with their heinous plan from the Brits (unofficially of course).
In planning Tom Mboya’s assassination the plotters were keenly aware that this was one hit that could NOT go wrong. The Kenyatta administration and everything they were fighting for (in terms of personal gain) could not afford any slip ups. It would have been a disaster for them if Tom Mboya survived. The plotters already had the experience of carrying out the Pio Gama assassination over 4 years earlier and knew that many things can and do go wrong in the best planned assassinations. So they had to choose the gunman very carefully. There was no way they could afford him getting cold feet or worse still, missing his target.
I can authoritatively report today that there is increasing evidence that I am coming across that suggests the unbelievable. That apart from being the chief planner and operations man in the killing of Mboya, a certain man well known in the security forces at the time may have been the man who coolly pulled the trigger and fired those two shots that change Kenya forever. This man had a striking resemblance to Nahashon Njenga (the man who was convicted of Mboya’s assassination). That man remained an “untouchable” throughout the reign of Kenyatta. That man’s name is Ben Gethi (now deceased). I have talked to several people who confirm that in his last days Gethi's consceince seemed to have been disturbing him greatly. He drunk way too much and seemed to be haunted by the things he had done in his savage and eventful life (including overseeing the cutting off of certain sensitive parts of JM Kariuki's body).
In Pio Gama Pinto’s assassination word got out about the taxi driver who had been hired to carry out the hit. Nothing of the sort happened in the Mboya assassination and it is no accident. Little wonder that the Nation told us yesterday that then Vice President Daniel arap Moi described the Mboya assassination as “brilliantly Planned and executed.”
Eye witnesses say that there was a bald-headed man with a brief case who looked like he was window shopping moments before Mboya was shot. Naturally the brief case concealed the murder weapon. Now just think about it for a moment. It is possible but unlikely that that man was a Kanu youth winger with little or no previous training in firearms. It is hard for me to believe that that youth winger coolly pulled out his revolver at just the right time and with precise timing shot the Minister just as he walked out of Chaani’s chemist. In fact the door was not fully open when the shots rang out because Mboya fell back inside the chemist’s shop. Now the fascinating thing here is that both Nahashon Njenga and Ben Gethi were approximately the same height. The resemblance of the two was uncanny.
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