The Other Barack (39 page)

The trial that followed revealed little of substance except that the Smith and Wesson .38 revolver that killed Mboya was in fact Njenga's. The other
piece of information to emerge was that during a preliminary hearing Njenga had asked a police superintendent, “Why do you pick on me? Why not the big man?” Njenga, a small businessman and low-level KANU activist, refused to identify the “big man.” He was soon convicted and sentenced to death. Although the government announced that Njenga was hanged, the procedure was open to only a tiny group, and many believe he was never killed at all.
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Many Kenyans suspect that Kenyatta or those among his inner circle arranged the assassination and that Njenga was simply the fall guy.

There were sixty-six witnesses at a preliminary hearing and more at Njenga's trial. The final prosecution witness was Barack H. Obama. According to newspaper accounts of his testimony, Obama said nothing incendiary. He testified only that he and Mboya chatted briefly and he related his own comments about Mboya's parking job. Mboya, he added, “did not say anything to me to indicate that he was frightened.”
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These were hardly the kind of words that would mark a man. But in the politically inflammatory moment, just taking the stand in Njenga's trial was a highly precarious thing to do. Since his provocative remarks about Sessional Paper No. 10 and his liquor-laced public rants, Obama was already known as a critic. Testifying in Njenga's trial was to wave a scarlet flag of defiance directly in Kenyatta's face.

Obama was in a highly vulnerable position. His longtime mentor was now gone. His post at the KTDC was anything but secure. Already underrepresented, Luos were sure to be even further marginalized as the Kikuyu reveled in their now-unobstructed dominance of the political system. As Caroline Elkins, the Harvard historian, put it, Obama's testimony was “the nail in the coffin. He had no one to protect him either way. So, it was a very bold move.”
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Obama could easily have chosen not to testify. He could have remained silent and hoped that he would drift under the radar and his career would survive. But staying quiet had never been one of his strong suits. “I told him this was like suicide. If they killed Mboya, they can kill you,” said Peter Aringo, shaking his head. “He said, ‘No. I have to speak my mind.' He could not stand that Tom had been killed. He knew that he might be killed himself if he testified. He knew that Kenyatta wanted that case to die. But he went ahead and did it.”

Some considered Obama a hero for doing so. “Tom's death was a shattering thing. The shock was as strong for us as it was in the United States with [John F.] Kennedy's killing,” said Achola Pala Okeyo, a Kenyan anthropologist and international women's advocate. “It was unthinkable that Kenyatta, someone who had come out of the liberation movement, would preside over such a killing. People could not say anything or they would have been killed. Barack was one of the very few who were bold enough to speak out.”

Obama may have known more than the little he revealed in the witness box. Years later Obama confided in two of his friends that he had seen Mboya's killer and believed that he was the only witness who could identify him. Of the nine eyewitnesses to the shooting who testified at the hearing, not one was able to identify Njenga in a police lineup.
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Obama told Pake Zane, his friend from his Hawaii days, during a 1974 visit to Nairobi that he chose not to identify Njenga publicly because prior to the trial he had received a death threat on his family. He also claimed that a car that struck him while he was walking in the city in 1973 was a failed attempt on his life in retaliation for his testimony. In light of Pinto's death and now Mboya's, Obama had good reason to fear for his safety. Indeed, Mboya's murder remains so deeply shrouded in mystery and suspicion, to this day the Mboya family in Nairobi will not comment on whether Obama confided in them about what he had seen for fear of repercussions.
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Many Kenyans who are unrelated to the incident decline to speak about it publicly. Zane, an American well removed from Nairobi's punishing political culture, would have appeared a safe and perhaps irresistible confidant. “Barack said he was the only one who witnessed the assassin and the only one who could identify him,” Zane recalled. “But if he told he said he and his family would be killed. He did not say exactly who had threatened him. He just said ‘the people who killed Mboya.' And I believed him. Barack had a lot of integrity and he was always very upfront with everything.”

Evaluating Obama's statement in retrospect is difficult. Goldsworthy makes no mention of Obama in his meticulously researched biography of Mboya. Nor does he figure in any other accounts of the much written about Mboya assassination. It is also true that Obama clearly took liberties with the truth when it suited his purposes. At the time he made his
revelation to Zane, embellishing the truth would have been tempting. A courageous patriot threatened by murderous political bosses made a much better story than an egotistical alcoholic having difficulties keeping his job. But nor can Obama's story be dismissed as impossible.

The blood of political assassinations runs deep through contemporary Kenyan history. Few found it surprising that none of the eyewitnesses in Njenga's case managed to identify him. Who, after all, wanted to take such a public stand and find themselves looking down the barrel of a gun? Among the political elite who lost their lives, Mboya was neither the first nor the last. Four years earlier Pinto had been shot. In January 1969 C. M. G. Argwings-Kodhek, a prominent activist lawyer, died in what was officially declared to be a car accident. But when his body was later exhumed, a bullet was found in his body and many believed he had been assassinated.
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Then came J. M. Kariuki, a onetime personal secretary to Kenyatta who then turned and accused him of corruption and neglect of the poor. In 1975 he was found murdered in the Ngong Hills with several of his fingers missing. By the mid-1970s, as the historian and anthropologist David W. Cohen wrote, “a tradition of assassination was firmly in place as part and parcel of governance in Kenya.”
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Cohen, coauthor of
The Risks of Knowledge: Investigations into the Death of the Hon. Minister John Robert Ouko in Kenya, 1990
, believes it is possible that Obama may well have been threatened as a consequence of his testimony. “What Obama did in testifying was highly risky,” Cohen said in an interview. “Foes of the powers that be in Kenya are prone to be eliminated. Anyone who is a witness to this kind of thing are themselves potential victims of assassination.”

Against this setting, Obama's claim of having received a death threat seems more plausible. Obama revealed to a second friend that he not only was able to identify Njenga, whom he had often seen around town, but that he was the one who gave the assassin's name and description to police, enabling them to make an arrest. Such information would have been critical. Furthermore, Obama said that investigators advised him not to testify to what he had done. The friend, a veteran of Kenyan political circles to this day, declined to be identified out of concern for his safety. But he said that when Obama spoke of the matter, he seemed uncharacteristically cowed. “Barack was a very vocal man who always spoke quite openly, but
in this case he was very careful and he seemed quite scared,” said the friend. “I think he carried that for the rest of his life.”
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In the months after Mboya's killing, ethnic unrest spiraled out of control across the country and a political crisis loomed. With elections not too far off, Kenyatta embarked on an electoral tour in October of 1969 in large part to emphasize that he was firmly in control. But when he stopped in Kisumu—Odinga's political home base—to preside over the opening of a new hospital, Kenyatta was again heckled by young members of the Kenya People's Union who shouted “
dume
” and waved signs reading, “Where is Tom?” Enraged, Kenyatta launched a vicious verbal attack on Odinga, who was standing just a few feet away from him. If it were not for their friendship, Kenyatta declared, he would have had him locked in detention long ago. He commanded Odinga, “Tell these people of yours to desist. If not, they are going to feel my full wrath. And me, I do not play around at all.... I want to tell you, Odinga, while you are looking at me with your two eyes wide open, I have given my orders right now. Those creeping insects of yours are to be crushed like flour. They are to be crushed like flour if they play with us. You over there, do not make noise there. I will come over there and crush you myself.”
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Now it was the crowd's turn to be furious. As protestors surged toward Kenyatta's departing vehicle as they hurled stones, police opened fire on the crowd. Seven people were killed and more than seventy injured in what came to be called the “Kisumu massacre.” Kenyatta hurriedly left the scene, never to return to Nyanza for the rest of his life. Two days later Odinga and the other KPU leaders were arrested, and the KPU was finally banned. Odinga was confined to detention for two years. And with that Kenyatta had at long last vanquished the opposition and cleared the stage for his unchallenged one-man, one-party, and largely one-tribe domination of the nation. The yawning chasm that had been opened between the Kikuyu and Luo would divide the ethnic groups for generations.

For the Luos, the years to come would not be easy. Although some lost their jobs outright, they were more commonly stalled in their careers and their influence severely curtailed. Many who felt they were being turned down for a job because of the spelling of their name were often correct. In 1969 Kikuyus, who represented 20 percent of the population, held 30 percent of the government's senior bureaucratic jobs. Luos, who accounted
for 14 percent of the population, held 10.8 percent of the posts. But three years later 41 percent of the senior positions were held by Kikuyus, whereas the Luos' share of those coveted jobs had shrunk to 8.6 percent.
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With Mboya dead and Odinga incarcerated, Kenyatta was free to expand his political dynasty of extended family members and Kikuyu loyalists as broadly as he wished. The Luo had no choice but to hang on as best they could and remain discreet.

Obama did just the opposite. Far from muffling his rage over Mboya's death, he took every opportunity to denounce Kenyatta and his “betrayal of the Kenyan people,” as he often described it. He insisted that Kenyatta had never received an education in London as he claimed and had personally amassed an immense personal fortune. He was a tribalist who had betrayed the promises of independence. And now Kenyatta had murdered his good friend Tom. In bars and restaurants he would approach Kikuyu patrons and insist that they take responsibility for the assassination. And the more he drank, the louder he got. “He was very abusive to the Kikuyus. He would walk right up to them and say, ‘You Kikuyus, you killed Tom Mboya. You
killed
my brother.' He was very, very reckless to do that,” said Joel Bonuke, a government economist in the 1960s and 1970s. “People would beg him to stop but he paid no attention. Was he brave, or was he foolish? You know, it depends on how you look at it.”

Partly because of Obama's reputation as a highly skilled economist and partly because so few others were speaking out, his comments were widely noted. Soon Kenyatta himself took notice. “Obama always talked about being victimized,” said Philip Ochieng, the
Nation
columnist. “But the truth was that he was too clever for many of the Kikuyu and they did not like him. Kenyatta was very angry with Obama for saying bad things about him and his clique. The Big Man was above criticism. Everyone knew that.”

It is the conventional wisdom among many Luos, including the sprawling Obama family, that after Mboya's death Obama was punished for his own testimony and his subsequent tirade against the government. But though Kenyatta may have had his eye on him, Obama sowed the seeds of his decline. Two days before Mboya was shot the KTDC had a full board meeting to consider confidential reports on Obama's conduct. Although the minutes of the meeting do not specify what were the specific concerns,
Owuor was asked to write Obama to ask him to show cause why the board should not take action against him.

Six months later the board noted a specific and very egregious complaint against Obama. One of the KTDC's long-term pet projects was the creation of a
boma
, a traditional Kenyan village designed to showcase the country's culture and way of life and intended largely for tourists. Obama was a strong advocate of the project and had discouraged other developers from establishing competitive villages elsewhere in the country. Not long after the board had approved an expenditure on the proposed boma in January 1970, Obama unilaterally altered the terms offered to the contractor and architect. In doing so, he reduced the price tag on the project and shortened the time frame for its completion by ten weeks.
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Without any authorization, he then awarded the contract under the revised terms.

Why he did so is unclear. But what alarmed the board members was not so much the specifics of the deal, for Obama had apparently negotiated terms more beneficial to the government. What upset them was that Obama lied about receiving authorization to take such a step. Obama maintained to the board that because general manager Owuor was out of the country at the time, he had conferred with the then chairman of the board, J. K. Ole Tipis, before he signed a contract with the architect. But the board considered his explanation “completely unsatisfactory.” It noted that “there was no written evidence of any consultation between Mr. Obama and the then Chairman, and considered this to be a gross action of irresponsibility on the part of Mr. Obama.”
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The board had the architect contacted and immediately halted the project.