How Alliance, Mangu and Maseno high schools shaped Kenya’s politics

When an accomplished mathematician of international fame was seized by a burning desire to migrate to Africa, Kenya was his natural choice. This was at a time when Europe was awash with stories of Africa’s savagery and how it was in desperate need for salvation and civilisation.

But when the scholar who had served in the First World War as a soldier, Carrey Francis arrived in Kenya in 1928, the Church Scotland Mission saw it fit to dispatch him to Nyanza Province, where he was expected to educate children of African chiefs.

Francis was a Mathematics guru who had made a name for himself at the University of Cambridge, where he taught the subject and won several accolades before he migrated to Kenya. He would be instrumental in helping put up education structures aimed at perpetuating the dominance of the white man’s rule.

The Church Mission Society (CMS), which had sponsored him, to come to Kenya found it natural to send him to one of its oldest school, Maseno, in Nyanza that had been started in 1906. Maseno, the oldest secondary school in western Kenya, had been started by James Willis as a centre for imparting technical knowledge to Africans. They were taught how to read and write as well as technical subjects such as carpentry, tailoring, printing building and telegraphy.

By the time Francis arrived in Maseno, the Christian missionaries were not very keen in producing scholars. Actually, this was at a time when primary school teachers would be subjected to village teachers test and then issued with certificates. In Francis’ opinion, the students were conceited and selfish and slack at everything they did. Once Maseno students were admitted to Alliance, they seemed to lose all love for the school.

Dismantle elitists behaviour

 According to a new book, The Kenyatta Cabinets, published by the Kenya Yearbook editorial board, Maseno, such was Alliance’s magnetism that it would influence Jomo Kenyatta and his choice of ministers and senior civil servants although he himself had not studied there.

Francis, whose first impressions of Kenya were based on his experiences in Maseno, where he thought the school was just producing insolent Africans who would later be ruined by education, largely charted the destiny of Alliance High School.

It is apparent that the intentions of the missionaries and the colonial Government were not to produce outstanding scholars but just wanted to enhance literacy among Africans so that they could convert more people to Christianity easily. This and the fact that they wanted technicians who would be employed to carry out various middle level jobs dictated the nature of subjects and courses offered by the pioneer schools and colleges.

This perspective is validated by Francis’ approach to education for he made it quite clear he wanted to instill discipline among his students: was so strict that he not only barred his boys from wearing trousers and blazers, but also saw a number of them expelled for various reasons.

According to the Kenyatta Cabinets, Francis wanted to dismantle the elitists behaviour of students he had seen at Maseno, reminding them they were supposed to serve the colonial Government loyally as there was no room in Kenya for graduate Africans. 

To ensure the Provincial Administration was appraised of all the students academic performance, Francis ensured that school report forms were forwarded to chiefs, education officers and parents so that the budding scholars did not get carried away.

At Alliance, he introduced a prefect system where students’ interactions and behaviour at school were closely monitored and those who did not toe the line were promptly expelled. After all, he believed no Kenyan should proceed to a university, as they were likely to be damaged by too much education.

Despite the pains he and the other mission teachers took in keeping students in their place, some Kenyans still defied all odds and proceeded to universities abroad including Makerere, which later graduated from a diploma college to a university college, a development that did not go well with the missionaries.

Attachments to alumni

When some of Francis’ old students such as Eliud Mathu and Joseph Otiende joined Alliance Old Boys Association, which had been started in 1931, and started engaging in politics, the veteran teacher acted decisively by kicking them out of the outfit. By this time it had attained a membership of 125 and Francis was still a patron. The missionaries and colonial authorities were concerned that Mathu and Gichuru had become too radical.

In no time, Francis engineered their expulsion and unwittingly drove them into mainstream politics that would climax with the formation of a political party. Kenya Africa Union, the precursor of Kenya African Union, the party that fought for independence owes its origin to this pioneer group of students from Alliance.

The union had started as Kenya African Study Union but was transformed into Kenya African Union (KAU) when the word study was removed. KAU’s first meeting was called by Francis Khamisi, an assistant editor of Baraza, a Swahili publication owned by the East African Standard on October 1, 1944, according to the Kenyatta Cabinets. Predictably, Gichuru and Mathu turned up for the meeting and were inevitably embroiled in politics.

In the meantime Mathu, who had since acquired higher education while still teaching at Alliance was frustrated and ultimately forced to quit teaching by Francis who refused to acknowledge his new credentials, denied him promotion and treated him as a nonentity.

Another former student, Njoroge Mungai, who had defied Francis by seeking university education in Stanford America, where he graduated with a degree in medicine in 1957 was equally treated as an outcast and could not be absorbed by the Government.

He was forced to open his own clinic in Thika, as the colonists were not happy with his achievement and viewed him as bad influence to Africans that were only supposed to get sufficient education to serve the whites in middle level jobs.

Despite the missionaries’ schemes and attempts to frustrate Africans, Maseno and Alliance High Schools still produced outstanding students that would later determine Kenya’s future.

The alumni included leaders such as Jaramogi Oginga Odinga, Kenya’s future vice president; B Apolo Ohanga, who would later become the first African Cabinet minister as well as Barack Obama senior as well as Festus Olang, the first Archbishop of Kenya and Achieng’ Oneko. While Maseno and Alliance were interlinked by CMS missionaries, there was a third force, Mang’u High School started by the Catholics’ Holy Ghost Fathers, which also contributed a fair share of its students into positions of leadership and influence in determining the course of the country.

Interestingly, although Kenyatta had not attended either Alliance or Mangu, he seems to have had strong attachments to the alumni of the two institutions. It is telling that his younger brother, James Muigai, had been admitted to the Alliance High School at the time Mbiyu Koinange was also a student. Kenyatta, whose parents had died earlier, had been indicated as his brother’s guardian in Alliance.

Lifelong friendship

It is possible that while visiting his brother at Alliance, Kenyatta got acquainted to Mbiyu, a man he would meet later in London, marking the start of a relationship which would translate into a lifelong friendship; cemented further when the future president married his friend’s sister.

Mbiyu made history of sorts by being one of the first Kenyans to fly out of the country in 1927. Another of Alliance’s pioneers, Mathu, would later play an important role in Kenyatta’s Government as he was appointed State House Comptroller, the man with immense power to determine who had the ear of the president.

According to the book chronicling the founding presidents reign, Kenya’s first Cabinet constituted by Kenyatta comprised nine former students of Alliance, two from Mang’u and two from Maseno.

Among the personalities who wielded immense powers during Kenyatta’s presidency were Mbiyu, Gichuru, Jackson Angaine, Charles Njonjo, Jeremiah Nyaga, Ronald Ngala, Paul Ngei, Robert Matano, Munyua Waiyaki, Julius Kiano, Charles Rubia and Nathan Munoko, Dawson Mwanyumba, Kitili Mwendwa and Ngala Mwendwa.

All the men mentioned above had studied in Alliance High School. There were other old boys of the school such as Stanley Njindo, whose son Kenneth Matiba would later rise to prominence.

While Alliance High School, which the Protestant Church started was busy producing prominent leaders; Mang’u too made its contributions both during Kenyatta’s time and later as some of its former students carved out distinct careers in public service.

The school too had made giant strides from its humble beginnings in an abandoned mission centre in 1925 in Kabaa, to the time it admitted its first batch of students in 1940 when pioneers Stephen Kioni, Philip Getao, Hilary Oduol were moved.

The boys were originally enrolled in Kabaa but were transferred to Mang’u in Thika to continue with their secondary education in Forms 3 and 4. Although compared to Alliance, Mang’u’s approach to education was a bit relaxed; it still produced some prominent personalities. Some of its most famous pioneers were Cardinal Maurice Otunga, Ndingi Mwana’a Nzeki, John Njenga as well as Mwai Kibaki, George Saitoti, Moody Awori and John Michuki.

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