Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

Jomo Kenyatta was a leader in the anti-colonial struggle against Britain and the first president of independent Kenya. His exact date of birth is difficult to establish because record keeping, like that of the rest of Kikuyu society, was alien to his father Muigai and his mother Wambui. He was probably born in the mid-1890s among the Kikuyu of central Kenya, and grew at a time of immense change that heralded the alienation of Kikuyu land for British settler occupation. Curiosity about the “Whiteman's magic” (education) sent him to Thogoto Scottish Mission in 1909, thus formally entering the history of the West.In the mid-1920s he was among a small group of progressive and educated young men who formed a political organization called the Kikuyu Central Association (KCA) to challenge the colonial establishment. These men pursued their complaints through the limited channels of petition and constitutional redress. They demanded a return of African land and a stop to forced labor. Kenyatta and his group also waged a cultural battle against the British colonial government over the issue of female circumcision, which the protestant churches, with government approval, had outlawed.In 1929 Kenyatta left for Britain, sent by the KCA to present the case of land for the Kikuyu. While in Britain he studied anthropology at the London School of Economics under the instruction of Bronislau Malinowski, ... log in or subscribe to read full text