Jomo was a great thinker; his son has no known philosophy

A friend has written to me, to complain about this column last week. “I really like this article,” she wrote, “except for the part that you included Jomo Kenyatta as a great thinker.”

I wrote about people who think. I suggested that they should also be the people who act, especially in politics. Regrettably, I observed, those who act in Africa are rarely the thinkers. I placed Kenya’s founding President, in the class of thinking politicians Africa has produced.