KENYA: NOT YET UHURU
By Dick Roberts
NOT YET UHURU: An Autobiography, by Oginga eo nae Hill and Wang, New York, 323 pp. 7.50.
"Is there any limit to Africa's ability to surprise the world?" asked the British Economist in its May 7, 1966, issue. The occasion for The Economist's somewhat gleeful surprise was the rightward drift in East Africa -- particularly in Kenya -- signalized at the time by Jomo Kenyatta's attack on his number two man, Oginga Odinga.
"Kenya slapped down an offer of Russian aid in February," The Economist stated. "In March it expelled a number of Russian, Czech, and Chinese diplomats and journalists...Now President Kenyatta has declared ‘total war' on his own left wing."
Kenyatta had culminated a two-year long red-baiting attack on Oginga Odinga by removing him from the vice-presidency on March 13, 1966. Odinga responded by resigning from Kenyatta's party, KANU {Kenya African National Union], to form an oppositional party, KPU (Kenya People's Union].
But the KPU could not get off the ground. Many of its secondary leaders were imprisoned. It was deprived of an electoral base through legal manipulations.
By November 26, 1966, New York Times correspondent Lawrence Fellows could report "Kenyatta's foes are limited to funeral orations." Odinga was the brunt of ridicule in the official press.
Not Yet Uhuru, recently published in the United States, is Oginga Odinga's defense of his political career.
Odinga's life spans the history of Kenya's struggle for independence from British imperialism. Born in Central Nyanza in about 1911 -- no exact date is recorded -- Odinga is a member of the Luo tribe, the second biggest tribe in Kenya.
This fact is important because the main force of the so-called "Mau Mau" guerrilla uprising was the larger Kikuyu tribe. While Kenyatta and the entire Kikuyu leadership were imprisoned during the British-sponsored "Emergency" rule, from 1952 to 1961, Odinga was free to remain active in the liberation struggle.
For nine years, Odinga played the leading role in the independence fight. He was primarily responsible for the release of Kenyatta, making the slogan of "free the political prisoners" the main thrust of his political organization. Odinga founded KANU in 1960, a national alliance of the political groupings dedicated to the freeing of Kenyatta and the independence of Kenya.
Two central themes are emphasized in Not Yet Uhuru: the role of missionary schooling in developing an intellectual elite, divorced from and hostile to its African upbringing; and the long and conscious preparation of this leadership by the imperialists in the years prior to independence.
The first half of Odinga's adult life, almost thirty years, was spent in the missionary schooling system. He fought a continual battle to assert the right of Africans to equal education against the colonial schooling for subservience -- and at the same time, for the right of Africans to maintain their national identities against colonial assimilation.
But towards the end of the second world war, Odinga had concluded that it was impossible to change the educational system without changing the governing authority.
Between 1946 and 1957, Odinga experimented with "building independence through business." (This covers the period of the Kikuyu revolt, the decapitation of its leadership and its crushing by the colonial regime.)
Odinga and others had the idea of setting up an African business cooperative which could compete with white business while at the same time unifying Africans. The enterprise failed in the first task but was successful in the second.
It was through the Luo Thrift and Trading Corporation that Odinga built the Luo Union -- a transitional political organization which spearheaded the Luo struggle for independence.
Odinga met Kenyatta in 1952 and became convinced of the necessity of armed struggle to overthrow the colonial regime. Although Odinga did not take part in the Kikuyu fighting, which erupted almost immediately, he supported it and gives it full credit for catalyzing the independence forces.
Nevertheless, the "Mau Mau" fail-
ure gave Britain needed time. It was during the long imprisonment of the Kikuyu leaders that the Colonial Office was able to create divisive forces within independence organizations.
And the account of how this secon-~ dary leadership with neocolonialist rather than African aspirations was created, forms the most valuable part of Odinga's autobiography .
From 1957, when the first Africans were admitted into a dummy government, until 1966, Odinga worked side by side with most of the men who rule Kenya today for Western interests.
He never believed that such participation in government could gain mean-~ ingful concessions to Africans, but he thought that parliament could be used as a forum for public attack on colonialisn. And at the same time, he attempted to use it to build a party capable of struggling for freedon.
If Odinga was successful in using parliament as a forum, he was not success-— ful in using it to build a revolutionary party.
World public opinion was ultimately rallied to the defense of the imprisoned Kikuyu leadership and the freedom of Jomo Kenyatta. But the freedom process was a long one involving continuous maneuvering between the