How Jomo Kenyatta, Mboya feud led to the formation of Cotu

Outspoken  politician Tom Mboya during a public rally.  [PHOTO: file/STANDARD]

By KENNETH KWAMA

A quiet fallout between Kenya’s first President Jomo Kenyatta and his erstwhile political ally, Tom Mboya, led to the formation of the Central Organisation of Trade Unions (Cotu) in the early 1960s.

Cotu was mooted by the Kenyatta administration ostensibly to neutralise  Mboya’s influence in the country’s trade union movement.

Trouble started in 1962 when Mboya threatened to leave Kanu, which was embroiled in factional fights.

The outspoken politician wanted to use the Kenya Federation of Labour  as a launchpad for a new political party. This alarmed Kenyatta.

Kenyatta feared that an economic strategy, which favoured capital rather than labour, would give his critics further ammunition to fight his government.

And the fact that Mboya had appeared to make use of his position in the trade union movement to promote his political career did not help matters.

Kenyatta feared, and rightly so, that the trade union movement would be turned into a highly effective agency for political mobilisation, something he could not stomach.

Rival union

In his book titled The Roots of Political Stability in Kenya, author M Tamarkin says that until 1965, Kenyatta made efforts to undermine Mboya’s position in the KFL by supporting a more radical rival trade union, sponsored by Jaramogi Oginga Odinga.

Mboya and Odinga did not often see eye to eye.

“In 1965, Kenyatta switched his alliance after realising the danger involved in the co-operation between the radicals within Kanu and the radical trade union leaders. In order to neutralise the radicals’ influence in the trade union movement, the government forced, in September 1965, an amalgamation of the rival trade union organisations within the newly formed Cotu,” states Tamarkin.

After Odinga formed an opposition party, Kenya Peoples Union (KPU), radical trade union leaders, who supported Odinga were suspended from Cotu.

The minister also stressed that no one could be a member of Cotu while at the same time working to undermine the government that sponsored its establishment.

And in the years that were to follow, no trade union was allowed dabble in politics.

This especially became evident in April 1975 when Cotu was denied a permit to stage a peaceful demonstration following JM Kariuki’s murder on grounds that the killing was not an industrial matter.

 Following the 1966 ‘Little General Elections’ when the true proportion of the KPU threat was revealed, influential individuals within the Kenyatta administration resorted to undermining Mboya’s influence in the trade union movement.

In 1969, for instance, C Lumembe, who was considered to be Mboya’s protégé, lost his seat as Cotu secretary general to Dennis Akumu, an ex-KPU leader, thanks to the machinations by the clique.

When after Mboya’s murder Akumu proved too ambitious, these people began to undermine his position too. Akumu resigned in 1974 and his post was taken over by Juma Boy from the Coast. Boy’s incompetence and his markedly ineffective leadership skills made him a darling of Kenyatta’s government.

The regime would later provide Boy with a forum to launch a political career in Coast Province.