KENYATTA: imperialism's favourite nationalist

Scan page 3

and cities, forming the basis of a ence could be assured along Lying in state in a pingeois press into a fit of fulsome eulogy.

This corrupt and dictatorial President of Kenya received his due as a loyal servant to imperialism: universal acclaim as a 'statesman'.

Handsome (if rather belated) apologies were made for his years of imprisonment at the hands of British colonial rule.

Nationalism

But perhaps the worthiest tribute at the coffinside came from a former and vanquished rival, Odinga Odinga:

"We have had very many differences, but it's only the way of doing things. My goal was his goal: nationalism."

Plain words for the unvarnished truth. Kenyatta was a bourgeois nationalist leader, who succeeded triumphantly in damming the course of the anti-imperialist struggles and forming a sheltered reservoir of capitalist profits from the turbulence of revolutionary Kenya.

His career followed the typical pattern familiar from the lives of so many nationalist leaders in colonial countries.

Born in the 1890's, as British rule was being imposed Kenya, nyatta gainec his first educatio vom mission schools -his earlest notable achievement was assisting to translate the New Testament into Kikuyu -and steadily worked himself into the smail layer of the African petty bourgeoisie of minor civil servants.

He was involved in the nationalist movement from 1919, when the East African Association was founded with Kenyatta as propaganda secretary.

As the struggles for polițical independence developed over the next few years to pose a serious threat to the British administration, so Kenyatta emerged into greater prominence, particularly through his speaking skills.

By 1927 he had become general secretary of the Kikuyu Central Association-the Kikuyu are the dominant tribe in Kenya and the Association was the leading force in the nationalist movement.

But from 1932 to 1946 Kenyatta lived in Europe where he schooled himself more fully in the methods of political opportunism and established profitable contacts with Labour politicians and bourgeois liberals.

Transformed

When he returned to Africa after the war, the political situation of Kenya had been transformed.

The African intelligentsia was no longer in control of the nationalist movement, which had erupted into huge popular struggles. • The land question was the driving force behind this upheaval. As European farmers settled in the fertile Kenyan highlands, many thousands of Africans were dispossessed of their agricultural land and driven from their stock pastures to inferior and inadequate grazing land.

Many maver tn the truns Iviary V. LIV growing proletariat.

Kenyatta with Kissinger But the majority remained in the rural areas, either as agricultural day-labourers, or attempting to eke out an existence in conditions more intolerable than any in their impoverished Kenyatta was rapidly elected president of the Kenya African Union and declared that 'we must buy freedom by blood.

Defuse

But all his actions at this time were attempts to defuse the militancy of the African masses and divert their activity towards a parliamentary forum, so that Kenyatta's own influwith the underlying priority of stable capitalist dominance.

Although his meetings acted as mass rallying points for the had developed in brutally suppressing the Malayan revolution after the war.

The African rural population was herded into specially constructed, fortified village encampments with agricu tural production supervised by troops to ensure that supplies were maintained for the occupying forces and not directed to the guerrillas.

labour and concentration camps -in some cases whole tribes were moved hundreds of miles across the country in an effort to smash the guerrillas' basesand a 'scorched earth' policy was pursued.

These measures had an effect, but did not succeed in crushing the liberation struggles.

British imperialism was the armies of imperialism were given complete freedom to establish bases from which to seek control over eastern Africa and the Indian Ocean.

Inevitably these policies provoked opposition, particularly as revolutionary developments emerged in other African states.

division Capitalist 'prosperity' produced an ever more marked division into classes, with a growing gulf between the impoverished urban proletariat and rural masses on the one hand and on the other the various bourgeois layers accumulating the wealth from expanding agricultural and industrial Kenyatta's 'benevolent' dictatorship came under increasing attack for its authoritarian methods of rule and the gross corruption and nepotism of its administration.

The President frequently resorted to the repressive powers of the state in order to deal with his opponents.

But Kenyatta's rule was more firmly assured by the total political bankruptcy of this motley opposition, which never attempted to mobilise the masses in a struggle to realise their economic and political demands.

But at Kenyatta's funeral, as David Owen paid the respectful tribute. from one faithful servant of imperialism to another and a greater, his mind was doubtless turning anxiously from the 'Old Man's' past to the future of Kenya.

Faded prestige

The immediate succession to the presidency seems destined for Daniel Arap Moi, Vice-

----- pull-quotes -----

striped suit, Jomo Kenyatta provoked the British bour-

Thousands of 'suspects' were detained and imprisoned in the