Three decades later, Kenyatta’s legend and mystery live on

By Joe Kiarie

Today marks exactly 31 years after Kenya’s founding President Mzee Jomo Kenyatta breathed his last.

Kenyatta died at about 3.30am at the Mombasa State House while on a working holiday at the Coast. He was 89.

The moment marked one of the most emotional periods in the country’s history. The nation was engulfed in tears as Kenyans and the African continent paid tribute to a leader who was acknowledged as one of the greatest men of the 20th century.

Kenyatta had waded through health problems that started when he suffered a heart attack in 1966. He would in the mid 1970s lapse into periodic comas. In April 1977, he suffered a heart attack.

In September last year, Kenyatta’s former information officer, Lee Njiru, claimed Kenyatta died of neglect by aides and top advisors.

He said Kenyatta was given poor medical attention despite his deteriorating health, and there was no resident physician or cardiologist by his side when he died.

Njiru said Kenyatta was unable to even sign his own name or remember simple things, and on numerous occasions collapsed at public functions. He said the former president fainted in a washroom in Msambweni a day before his death.

"To start with, Mzee should not have been allowed to travel to Msambweni on August 21, 1978, to be subjected to the indignity of collapsing in a washroom," Njiru said in a statement sent to the press.

Object of exploitation

"Outwardly, they pretended to love Mzee, while in fact they used him as an object of exploitation. They should have been prosecuted for criminal negligence," he said of Mzee’s aides, most of whom have since dismissed the claims.

Barely a week to his death, on August 14, Kenyatta hosted his entire family to a party in Mombasa.

But Njiru’s theory contrasts what was said when Kenyatta died in 1978.

Then, the public was informed Kenyatta passed away peacefully in his sleep at the Mombasa State House, and there was no mention of failing health and growing inability to undertake governance issues.

In his book, Walking in Kenyatta Struggles, Mr Duncan Ndegwa, a former Secretary to the Cabinet and later Governor of the Central Bank, revealed Kenyatta had been sick for a while.

Kenyatta spent most of his life crusading for Kenya’s sovereignty, and the efforts earned him seven years in jail after the British colonists convicted him of being a member of Mau Mau.

But he sustained his fight upon release in 1960 and finally led the country to independence in 1963. He served as Kenya’s first Prime Minister (1963—1964) before becoming President in 1964. Moi succeeded him after his death in 1978.

But even in death, Kenyatta’s legacy lives on. He was not only an important and influential statesman in Africa but is also credited with setting up Kenya as a relatively prosperous capitalist state.