Peter magana kenyatta biography of donald

President of Kenya from 1964 to 1978

"Kenyatta" redirects here. For his son, the 4th President of Kenya, see Uhuru Kenyatta. For other uses, see Kenyatta (disambiguation).

Jomo KenyattaCGH (c. 1897 – 22 August 1978) was a Kenyan anti-colonial activist and politician who governed Kenya as its Prime Minister from 1963 to 1964 and then as its first President from 1964 to his death in 1978. He played a significant role in the transformation of Kenya from a colony of the British Empire into an independent republic. Ideologically an African nationalist and a conservative, he led the Kenya African National Union (KANU) party from 1961 until his death.

Kenyatta was born to Kikuyu farmers in Kiambu, British East Africa. Educated at a mission school, he worked in various jobs before becoming politically engaged through the Kikuyu Central Association. In 1929, he travelled to London to lobby for Kikuyu land affairs. During the 1930s, he studied at Moscow's Communist University of the Toilers of the East, University College London, and the London School of Economics. In 1938, he published an anthropological study of Kikuyu life before working as a farm labourer in Sussex during the Second World War. Influenced by his friend George Padmore, he embraced anti-colonialist and Pan-African ideas, co-organising the 1945 Pan-African Congress in Manchester. He returned to Kenya in 1946 and became a school principal. In 1947, he was elected President of the Kenya African Union, through which he lobbied for independence from British colonial rule, attracting widespread indigenous support but animosity from white settlers. In 1952, he was among the Kapenguria Six arrested and charged with masterminding the anti-colonial Mau Mau Uprising. Although protesting his innocence—a view shared by later historians—he was convicted. He remained imprisoned at Lokitaung until 1959 and was then exiled to Lodwar until 1961.

On his release, Ken

President of Kenya from April 2013 to September 2022

For other uses, see Uhuru (disambiguation).

Uhuru Muigai KenyattaCGH ( born 26 October 1961) is a Kenyan politician who served as the fourth president of Kenya from 2013 to 2022. The son of Jomo Kenyatta, Kenya's first president, he previously served as Deputy Prime Minister from 2008 to 2013.

Daniel Arap Moi had picked Kenyatta as his preferred successor. However, he was defeated by the then opposition leader Mwai Kibaki in the 2002 election, and Kibaki was subsequently sworn in as the President. Kenyatta served as the member of parliament (MP) for Gatundu South from 2002 to 2013 and also as Deputy Prime Minister to Raila Odinga from 2008 to 2013. Currently he is a member and the party leader of the Jubilee Party of Kenya, whose popularity has since dwindled. Kenyatta was previously a member of the Kenya Africa National Union (KANU), a political party that had led Kenya to independence in 1963. He resigned from KANU in 2012 and joined The National Alliance (TNA), one of the allied parties that campaigned for his election victory during the 2013 election. He later on went to form a merger with the United Republican Party (URP) led by William Ruto to form the Jubilee Party.

Kenyatta was re-elected for a second and final term in the August 2017 general elections, winning 54% of the popular vote. The win was formally declared on national television by the Chairperson of the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC), Wafula Chebukati. However, Uhuru's election was challenged in the Supreme Court of Kenya by his main competitor, Raila Odinga. On 1 September 2017, the court declared the election invalid and ordered a new presidential election to take place within 60 days from the day of the ruling. A new presidential election was held

I have always regretted not being able to find any photos of Jomo Kenyatta during his wartime years in Sussex – apart from the one allegedly showing him destroying a wasps’ nest and a blurry image of him waving from the balcony of his wartime home at Heath Common near Storrington, that was about all. Many years ago, I was told by a cousin that he had once seen photos of Jomo when he was employed as an agricultural worker at Linfield’s nurseries in Thakeham; he had been shown them by Miss Mabel Willmer, who had occasionally worked with Jomo during the war, and secretively kept them in an old biscuit tin, only to be brought out on special occasions. Unfortunately, after she died, they were never found and she probably destroyed them. Apparently, she really admired Jomo’s flamboyant signet ring which he promised he would give her one day!

Over the years I have made various requests in the media for any surviving photos of Jomo during his time in Sussex, but the effort has always failed to come up with anything. One of the objectives for writing my article about Jomo Kenyatta and his connections with West Sussex was to put the story in the public domain. Therefore, out of the blue, I was very excited when I received a ‘comment’ to our website from Karen Heald who had stumbled across my article on Kenyatta; she said ‘I have lots of photographs of him in Sussex before and during the war including the full sequence of the wasp nest incident taken by my grandfather’. Of course, I immediately got in touch and she was able to send me a cache of some 30 images, many of which are reproduced in this article, thanks to her kindness and her desire to make them available to a much wider audience.  

Karen also provided some really useful background information about her family and how they became friendly with Jomo. Her grandparents were married at Brighton Register Office on 28 March 1942 and Jomo was best man, also signing the marriage certificate as one of the witnesses

Page of

Source:

Dictionary of African Biography

Author(s):

john m. lonsdalejohn m. lonsdale

Kenya’s first prime minister and president (1963–1978), was born Kamau wa Muigai, adopted as Kamau wa Ngengi, baptized Johnstone Kamau, nicknamed Kenyatta, and took the pen name Jomo. Born at the time the British annexed Kenya to their empire, young Kamau was orphaned in the famine that ravaged Kikuyuland at the turn of the twentieth century. Disliking life under his uncle Ngengi, but intrigued by his grandfather Magana’s mastery of invisible powers, around the age of fourteen, he entered a Scottish mission school to learn white man’s magic. He became a responsible member of the community in both Kikuyu and Christian ways, being circumcised in the mission clinic and then baptized. Wanting to take the names John Peter but restricted to one only, Kamau first showed his famed skill with words by combining both in the single “Johnstone.” To judge by his later ease in quoting Scripture, he was a keen student of the Bible, in the Gikuyu or Swahili languages. He would have had the opportunity when staying with Maasai relatives during World War I to escape probable conscription into the carrier corps of porters. These suffered terrible losses in supplying the British forces fighting in German East Africa, now Tanzania.... ...