Tom Mboya is welcomed aboard a British navy battle ship in this undated photo.
We miss you Tom Mboya… Oh How Kenya misses you!
39 years ago on a Saturday just like today a few minutes to one o’clock PM, two revolver bullets rung out loudly on Moi Avenue Nairobi.
A Handsome well built man in an immaculate designer suit stopped those two bullets. He fell back towards the door of the Chemist from where he had just emerged a split second before. His name was Tom Mboya.
Tourists seated at the popular Thorn Tree Bar (the restaurant next to the street at the New Stanley Hotel along Kimathi street heard the loud gun fire and silence and panic fell in the bar area.
Those were the days before crime got to be what it is today and the sound of gun fire was a very rare thing indeed in Nairobi, especially in the CBD. One or two men in the bar then (whose identities shall remain secret for now) started running in the direction of where the gun shots had come from. The thing that they found most odd was that there were policemen already at the scene of the crime when they got there (outside Chaanis Chemist on Moi Avenue, adjacent to Standard Chartered headquarters which is less than a minute’s run from the Stanley Hotel for most people). Even stranger was how the assassin had gotten away with so many policemen around. It struck one of the men that the policemen seemed to have been on the scene waiting for the crime to happen!
It is the view of many historians that those two bullets were the most significant bullets ever fired on Kenyan soil because they changed the course of the river called Kenya significantly. One of the results of the events of that fateful Saturday that we see so clearly today is the culture of impunity that now threatens to shut down the nation. As you read this a Finance Minister who has been censured by parliament for breaking the law in disposing of public property is still not in police cells and instead clings to his office and the duly elected president (who incidentally was fetched from his lecturer job at Makerere University by Tom Mboya himself to become Kanu’a fast executive officer. TJ did it in his old reliable VW beetle which he drove all the way to Kampala and back) said yesterday that the current crisis is just a “normal” problem that is commonly faced by other countries—even developed nations. Huh!!
TJ I know you’ve been on the night shift for 39 years now BUT I just have to tell you, that was a big mistake you made… very big mistake, fetching that guy from Makerere. Kenya would have been better off and certainly much less robbed as of today not to mention thousands of our brothers, sisters and children who would still be alive and with us today, if you had left that chap alone to continue with his lectures at Makerere. You and Jomo thought more of getting educated people into politics then than people with integrity and we Kenyans are paying a very heavy price now for that mistake you guys made then.
If circumstances were a little different this is how I would have loved to spend today.
I would have gone up to them mountains, high in the Iveti hills not far from Machakos town and I would right now be seated under the shade of a tree eating Nyama Choma with my usual Coke and discussing the life and times of Tom Mboya with my father (a man who still believes in Mwai Kibaki). But more than anybody else my dad is the man who has brought TJ to life before my very eyes and made me read the history of this country like my life depended on it (there is no way you can read the history of independent Kenya and avoid the name of Tom Mboya, no matter what you do). And that is how I understood so well where we are as a nation and why we are where we are. This is the realization that drove me to launch this blog in May 2005. And that realization has been my sole agenda here from day one.
It is my deep desire to take as many Kenyans as I possibly can through that journey of discovery that I went through myself and that is why the big gift that I have worked long and hard to prepare is being released to readers of this blog today. That gift is an entertaining weekly summary of Tom Mboya’s biography from various sources delivered to your email inbox every week. It is FREE to anybody who wants it. Get details on how to get it at the end of this article.
In conclusion I would like to point out that some of the people responsible for the murder of Tom Mboya are still very much alive today. If you still don’t know them you had better make sure that you read my FREE weekly summaries on the man’s life.
Indeed one of the excuses that has long been peddled for the murder of this great son of Kenya is the allegation that he was a CIA agent. Some writers have even gone as far as claiming to unravel some new evidence proving that TJ was a CIA agent. Whether this is true or not should not have been for a few individuals to decide and play the role of judge jury and executioner by snuffing out the Kenyan life that did more than any other single life to bring independence to Kenya so quickly (you will understand why I say that after reading through my weekly summaries of Mboya’s biography.)
Have a poignant July 5th my friends and countrymen. Kenya shall be free.
Online IM (Instant Messaging) Conversation with Tom Mboya in the Twilight Zone:
Kumekucha: Hello TJ. It’s 39 years today since you left the world of the living.
Tom Mboya: Who is this?
Kumekucha: It’s the Kumekucha guy visiting you yet again this year.
Tom Mboya: Hehehehehehehe.
This is the chap trying to cut down a Mugoma tree with a razor blade? Have you not given up yet?
Hehehehehehehehehehe.
Take heart, son, from the fact that I single-handedly did the most to bring down the mighty colonial government in Kenya. You too can do the impossible, if you have it in you.
You know my illiterate sisal-cutter father Mzee Leonardus Ndiege, used to ask me if I thought I was smart enough to defeat the white man who had invented very clever inventions like the aero plane.
Kumekucha: Yes, I know. I even wrote about it in Kumekucha.
Tom Mboya: You just have to be very brave and single-minded.
Kumekucha: What was your lowest moment in your long fight for Kenya?
Tom Mboya: In 1960 at Limuru when Jaramogi Odinga brought in tribal politics as a weapon for the first time, just to finish me and to sideline me from Kenyan politics.
Kumekucha: Your greatest moment of glory?
Tom Mboya: There are two actually. March 11th 1957 when I became one of the first 8 Africans to be elected to parliament (in those days called the Legco) after the first serious political fight of my career.
The second was the Uhuru celebrations in Uhuru gardens on the night of 12th December 1963. As you know I was the main organizer. It was a colourful unforgettable occasion for those of us who were there; at times solemn at times joyous. The day that signified the final defeat of the people who invented the aero plane only to enter another more vicious battle amongst ourselves.
Kumekucha: Have you read what I said about your trip to Makerere in 1960?
Tom Mboya: You’re a cheeky young man. You should know that people change. When I fetched that fellow from Makerere he was a very patriotic man of integrity. Even Njoroge Mungai was a very patriotic uncorrupt man when he graduated as a medical doctor from Stanford in the United States. Politics in Kenya is notorious for changing people so much so that those who have known them intimately for many years can no longer recognize them any more.
Kumekucha: Did you change yourself?
Tom Mboya: Yes, I too changed in many ways. I was human.
Tom Mboya: Have my killers finally faced justice?
Kumekucha: That is what I was coming to. This year I have two messages for you. First the bad news which is that Kenya is disintegrating mainly because those who murdered you are still the real rulers of the country.
But the good news is that Kenyans have woken up and have started fighting back. You will be very proud of what your youngest son has done to keep your memory alive. You will also be very proud of what the other young people of Kenya are doing to get their country back.
My hope and prayer is that when I come visiting again, this time next year (God willing) I will have some very good news for you.
Kenya misses you TJ.
Gifts to Kumekucha readers to celebrate the life of Tom Mboya.
So you think alone, you can’t do anything to change the politics in Kenya?
21:11 
source: African Gardens
7:13 
3:40 