Jomo Kenyatta

'As Luos, we should never ever forget the massacre of 1969,' (when the bodyguard of the late Kikuyu President, Jomo Kenyatta, shot 11 Luo demonstrators outside Kisumu town)...

Before that, he had been carving out a role as manager of the transition to the next presidency, should Moi retire - much the same role that he played as Attorney General during the succession to Jomo Kenyatta in 1977 and 1978...

Huge plantations and ranches are owned by wealthy Africans (including the families of the founding President, Jomo Kenyatta, and of Moi himself), sometimes jointly with white Kenyans or foreign investors...

The weekend after parliament adopted his report, Raila Odinga led a 40-vehicle motorcade into Nyeri District in the Kikuyu heartland, taking along the late Jomo Kenyatta's son Uhuru Kenyatta, a KANU stalwart who lost the parliamentary election to an opposition neophyte in 1997...

The Luo and Kikuyu fell out while Jomo Kenyatta (Kikuyu) was President; cooperation is a huge political liability in Luoland...

Biwott, a Kalenjin (Geiyo) may fear the fate that met the Anglophile Kikuyu lawyer Charles Njonjo, chief engineer of Moi's succession to the Presidency after the death of founding President Mzee Jomo Kenyatta in 1978...

When Jomo Kenyatta died in 1978, Vice-President Moi used his three months to forge an ethnic coalition and fight off rival claims from a close-knit group of Kikuyu plotters...

To make amends, Nyachae recently met with Kibaki's main rival for Kikuyu loyalty, Kenneth Matiba (who is ill), along with Ngengi Muigai (Jomo Kenyatta's nephew), who are both popular in their respective bailiwicks...

Started by Jomo Kenyatta’s government in 1968 in a bid to Africanise the economy, NBK has current assets of 23 bn...

KANU’s principal contenders for the vice-presidency are still: • Planning Minister George Saitoti (Maasai/Kikuyu), with no firm ethnic base but a protégé of Moi’s favourite, Biwott; • Finance Minister Simeon Nyachae strives for renewal of the International Monetary Fund’s suspended structural adjustment facility and for a political coalition of his own Kisii with disenchanted Luhya and Kalenjin; • Agriculture Minister Wycliffe Musalia Mudavadi (Luhya/ Maragoli) has been buoyed by his defeat, as leader of government business in the House, of Orengo’s no-confidence motion, and is attracting Maragoli enthusiasm, especially in Nairobi; • Foreign Minister Bonaya Adhi Godana (Boran/Gabra) has no significant ethnic backing and his prospects have waned; • So have those of Noah Katana Ngala (Coastal/Giriama); • Marsden Madoka (Coastal/Taita), once Jomo Kenyatta’s aide-de-camp and a retired army major, is a Minister of State in the President’s Office and KANU’s new dark horse; he seems more bureaucrat than politician and his marriage to a Kikuyu may hurt him with some Kalenjin; • Moi has muddied KANU waters by rehabilitating Charles M...

Not even the late Jomo Kenyatta’s name could save his son, Uhuru Kenyatta (KANU), a business partner of Moi’s sons, who lost Gatundu South by 12,000 votes to the Social Democratic Party’s little known Moses Mwihia...