allAfrica.com: Kenya: Secret Land Deal That Made Kenyatta First President (Page 1 of 2)

Fresh evidence pieced together by the Sunday Nation confirms widespread speculation that Kenya's first president Jomo Kenyatta entered a secret pact with the British government not to interfere with the skewed land distribution at independence.

In return, the British would clear his way as independent Kenya's first leader which looked impossible only three years to freedom. Kenyatta would later extract a similar pledge from his successor, retired president Daniel arap Moi.

The information is contained in the secret papers of the late Sir Michael Blundell, the white settler leader who acted as the go-between Kenyatta and the British government in sealing the deal.

It is corroborated in the secret notes of Kenya's second vice president, the late Joseph Murumbi deposited at the Kenya National Archives. The land question haunts the country to this day, an entire generation after Kenyatta's death.

Early this year, the country was engulfed in the worst incident of bloodshed, displacements and destruction of property since independence.

Though the excuse for it was the disputed results of 2007 election, many agreed the underlying tinderbox was the historical disputes especially on the land issue.

The background to the secret pact is a memo Blundell wrote to then Kenya's colonial governor Malcolm MacDonald on the possible leader of independent Kenya after it was decided the country must be granted freedom in early 1960s.

Blundell zeroed in on four men. Tom Mboya who Blundell described as, "a robust trade unionist and political schemer who had deep pockets, thanks to his American friends".

The second was the "demagogic Oginga Odinga who held great charm with the rural African folk but was clearly in the payroll of the Soviets".

Ronald Ngala was the third man and who Blundell described as "an eccentric coastal preferred by the settlers and supported by the small ethnic communities, but who could not muster enough numbers to hold the new country together".

The last possibility, wrote Blundell, was Jomo Kenyatta who he described as "the wild card of native politics in the colony".

Kenyatta was in prison at the time on charges of managing the outlawed Mau Mau movement.

Compromise candidate

Blundell recommended Kenyatta as the "possible compromise candidate who could bring together the two major African blocs headed by Mboya and Odinga and probably reach out to the minority group led by Ronald Ngala and Daniel arap Moi".

On the basis of Blundell's assessment, the colonial governor sought permission from London to quietly explore the possibility of Kenyatta as first leader of independent Kenya.

The reply came fast.

In a cable to the governor, the colonial secretary, Mr Reginald Maudling, said upon consultation with the new prime minister, Harold MacMillan, it had been decided that "the possibility of Jomo Kenyatta as leader of independent Kenya be looked at without any delay".

He went on to say that given Kenyatta's exalted status as a freedom fighter arising from the Kapenguria trial, he would be the best person to unite the new country "but only if he could personally give assurance that he had abandoned the extremist anti-white views he held before his imprisonment".

The colonial secretary said it was particularly important that Kenyatta's position be known on the question of the white settlers in colonial Kenya and what economic policies he would adapt in the event he became the first leader of the independent nation.

He suggested that Sir Michael Blundell be assigned the job of assessing the possibility of working with Kenyatta.

Blundell was immediately dispatched to Lowdar where Kenyatta was held.

After a couple of secret meetings and where Blundell reported "positive progress", Kenyatta was re-located to, in the words of Blundell, a decent home in Mararal "where he could be with his family, have a library and once in a while take a glass of his favourite wine".

In a secret memo to the colonial secretary, governor MacDonald talked of "great success by Blundell" and recommended that Kenyatta be "set free the soonest possible so that he could take his rightful place as leader of the new Kenya".

He noted that an earlier assertion by his predecessor, governor Patrick Rension, that Kenyatta was a "leader unto death and darkness" was based on "failure to talk to Kenyatta and gossip by a few paranoid white settlers".

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