PROFILE Mboya Has A Foot In Both Camps

Press, Volume C, Issue 29504, 4 May 1961, Page 13

PROFILE Mboya Has A Foot In Both Camps

[By

SIMON KAVANAUGH]

The questiton under discussion was the political and I economic future of Kenya. | Having emphasised the need ! for economic development, i the speaker said that this depended on security of investment and political stability, which was needed to attract overseas capital. The speaker’s meticulous voice went with the expensive, well-cut suit. He might have been a British businessman warning against the dangers of a too-liberal policy in a colonial territory. But for the colour of his skin. It was black. A tool of the imperialist Powers, perhaps? Listen to Tom Mboya on the subject of British rule in Kenya: “For 61 years the British Government has been incapable of doing anything; about illiteracy, poverty and disease. The Kenya African ■ National Union will require only four years,” Tom Mboya is the general secretary of the Kenya African National Union. He is the big man behind the big force in Kenya African politics. He could become the first African Prime Minister of Kenya. But whose side is he on, the African nationalists’ or the Europeans’? The Europeans have no doubts. He is described as Kenya's most militant African and belligerently antiEuropean. African Reservations But many Africans have reservations about Mboya. He has had a long dispute with Ghana’s Dr. Kwame Nkrumah for refusing to accept unreservedly the gospel of pan-Africanism. As a trade union leader, Mboya refuses to sever his connexions with the International Confedera-

tion of Trade Unions, a Western body, in order to throw in his lot with an independent movement of African’ trade unions.’ Mboya prefers to keep contact with both camps. Last month, Mboya was accused by members of his own party of deliberately

wrecking plans the party had for a three-day strike to enforce the release of the detained nationalist leader, Jomo Kenyatta. Is Mboya trying to get the best of both worlds? He is. But not for any sinister reason, but simply because he believes that such a course will be the best for everyone in Kenya. He never courts popularity. Patronage has no place in his make-up. He suffers gladly neither fools nor friends who try to alter his course. It could well be that his

biggest struggle will be with the Africans in Kenya rather than with the white man. | The anti-Mboya influences at work concern Jomo Ken-' yatta and tribalism. For many Africans, Kenyatta is; the father figure who cannot be usurped. As long as he remains alive, even in detention, they can recognise no other leader. Not a Kikuyu This is particularly true of extremists of the mighty Kikuyu tribe. Mboya comes from the Luo tribe, and many jealous Kikuyus feel that he and other Luos have taken advantage of the suppression and detention of Kikuyu leaders that followed the Mau Mau outbreak to establish their own positions. Mboya’s other big anxiety is the general extremist attitude of many of his followers. • To the ordinary African In Kenya the political issues at stake are simple. He wants his freedom, the white man represents anti - freedom;! therefore the white man must go. i The task of persuading the African that the white man has a place in Kenya and of convincing the white man that the African should be allowed to run his own country Is one of the biggest issues facing mankind. Is Mboya equal to the task? His background shows him to be a man of high intellect and ability. He was the bright boy of the Catholic mission school where he got his elementary education and at the Mango High School. On leaving school he went into the civil service as a sanitary inspector. For three years he atttended training school before taking the Royal Sanitary Institute certificate. At the training school his political awareness was awakened by talk among African former servicemen and by the time of his early twenties Mboya was a keen trade unionist. At 23 he was secretary of the Kenya Federation of Labour. He once stopped a sevenday strike which had caused such a dangerous situation that troops were being alerted. Mboya’s action won praise from the Government and the population—African and European. He travelled widely—lndia. Pakistan, Europe, United States, Canada. He spent a; year studying at Ruskin Col-' lege, Oxford. Only Thirty He came back to Kenya' in 1956 and stepped into the; political vacuum following the Mau Mau trouble. He' has been a national leader, for five years, and he is only I 30, an age when in the Western world political careers are normally just getting under way. He lives modestly with a schoolboy brother (he is one of 12 children) in a small house in an African township on the outskirts of Nairobi. Soon the bachelor part of his existence is likely to end as it has been reported that he is to marry Pamela Odede, daughter of a fellow-Nation-alist, Walter Odede, who has recently been allowed to return from exile by the Kenya Government. However big the job in front of him, Tom Mboya will not shirk it. There is nothing he likes better than a scrap where principles are involved. He is said to be sensitive, but has not become embittered by experiences as an African under colonial rule. Such as the time when he was being given a lift home by two white friends and. on the car being stopped at a road block, he was forced to get out and walk home in torrential rain. Mboya himself is not a man of violence. He deplored the methods of the Mau Mau rebellion, although feeling strongly about its causes. And although few would think so now, he could prove to be the white man’s best friend in Kenya.—(Express Feature Service.)