In a few hours time it will be August 15th. Tom Mboya’s birthday.
Had this Kenyan hero lived he would have been 77, a year older than President Kibaki and 3 years younger than Vice President Moody Awori.
If it were possible for people to celebrate their birthdays in the grave, this birthday would have been the happiest and most memorable for TJ, as his friends called him. What would have made him happiest is that his younger son (just 21 months old when he was gunned down in Nairobi that fateful July lunch time in 1969, has come of age and shown the same courage he himself showed in challenging the mighty British government. A government that just 5 years earlier in 1952, had crushed the Mau Mau land uprising with such ruthlessness that somebody would have to be out of their minds to dare challenge them.
Pictures speak 1000 words and this one does. Note Kenyatta's expression and Mboya's beaming confidence. The man directly behind them is Njoroge Mungai a nephew to Kenyatta and a member of Kenyatta's dreaded kitchen cabinet.
Videos of Tom Mboya's Funeral;
1. http://www.tommboya.com/video/3465_26_56k.wmv
2. http://www.tommboya.com/video/funeral.wmv
3.
http://www.tommboya.com/video/funeral%20clip%20full%20resolution_56k.wmv
Tom would also have no doubt been deeply intrigued that technology has now allowed a leading Kenyan blog to publish an open letter addressed to persons still living who know a lot about his assassination.
Nothing happens by accident and life really has no coincidences. This is the time for Kenya’s healing and it has to start with the solving of the mystery of the Mboya assassination.
Why is it so important? What is so special about Mboya that is different with JM, Pinto, Ouko and the other political assassinations?
Mboya is important because he played a very key role in Kenya winning independence from her colonial masters. It is ironic that he never lost his life in the hands of the colonialists, but instead he was felled by his own people. Fellow Kenyans anxious to continue grabbing and getting rich at the expense of the masses.
But even more important Mboya’s assassination helped entrench a terrible habit amongst Kenyans of having no interest in her true heroes and heroines. Instead we choose to idolize the stinking rich who have robbed us blind to become so. That is why we have little regard today for Kenneth Matiba, Wangari Mathai and others who risked their lives to confront evil in this country.
Mboya’s successful assassination was also a great victory for corruption because he stood in the way of those who never fought and risked and yet wanted to be overnight millionaires in the new Kenya, and sadly they succeeded. The reason why others were killed after Mboya is simply because somebody must have said repeatedly; “if we killed Mboya and nothing happened, who does so and so think they are?”
My close friend and a true friend of Kenya (because she has done more for the country than all the rest of us here put together) Marianne Briner has put her many year’s friendship on the line by writing an open letter to a man who knows a lot about the Mboya murder. I support her with everything I’ve got.
My appeal to all you dear Kenyans is that you join me and her in this noble and fundamental campaign to demand justice as a way of the country finding her way again. As somebody has so aptly quoted our national anthem so well (Tom Mboya made major contributions to it);
Oh God of All creation
Bless this our land and nation
Justice be our shield and defender
Ukweli Sasa!!
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