When I started reading this book, I thought it was unnecessary since the life and times of Thomas Joseph Mboya has been discussed much.
However, as I perused the middle pages towards the end, I found out that Prof. Bethwell Ogot had done us justice. We needed this brief history of Mboya in the manner Prof Ogot has delivered.
In the future, we will thank this celebrated historian for writing this necessary 96 paged tribute and commentary on the life of Kenya’s most consequential politician.
It is from this brief book that the current happenings in social, economic and political spheres are put in perspective. That we lost the plot with Mboya’s death.
I agree. We lost the plot and since then, our politics, the one thing that our social and economic lives depends on, went to the dogs.
Tom Mboya: Inside the murder of Kenya’s independence icon
Kikuyuism and propaganda permeated every sector of society which led to ethnic conclavism. We are very ethnic because a dream of nationwood disappeared with the death of Tom Mboya.
Prof. Ogot points out that we still grapple with the politics of succession each and every day, and this can be traced back to that fateful day in July 1969, when Mboya succumbed to an assassin’s bullet.
Mboya the pan Africanist inspired unity and vision for development all over Africa. In Kenya, he was instrumental in educating those that would later take the reigns of power anc chart a course for the nation.
There was no tribal bone in Mboya’s body, Prof Ogot argues. This can be seen even from his multi-area upbringing. The good professor insists Mboya would not be happy by being referred to as a Luo leader, like what has happened after his death.
Kenya became lost after Mboya’s death.
‘Project Kenya hardly six years old, was effectively taken over by forces of negative ethnicity and patronage’
Prof Bethwell Ogot It is from this book that I get the urge to get and read the other books by Tom Mboya.
Buy this book and enjoy.
