Word: kenyattas
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Shortly after that, the process of selecting a new President will begin. Two factions within the ruling party, the Kenya African National Union, may enter candidates; both groups are more or less dominated by Kenyatta's politically powerful tribe, the Kikuyu. The first includes the Kenyatta family and its political cronies, whose power is tribally based. The strongest member of the group is former Foreign Minister Njoroge Mungai, 52, who was also Kenyatta's cousin and personal physician. But the handsome Mungai lost his parliamentary seat in 1974, largely because of his reputation for high living, and thus...
...politicians and business leaders who are mainly Western educated. Their power is derived from their wealth and urban business connections. Moi, a hard-working but color less politician, is actually a member of the minority Kalenjin tribe. But he is strongly supported by two competent Kikuyu members of the Kenyatta Cabinet, Attorney General Charles Njonjo, 58, and Finance and Economic Planning Minister Mwai Kibaki...
Whatever happens, Kenya will not likely be led again by so dominating a man as Kenyatta. He was at least a generation older than most African leaders, and he was working for uhuru (independence) before some of them were born. If in the end he was unable to control corruption and permitted younger colleagues to struggle among themselves over the succession, he also gave Kenya a stability and prosperity that most African states would envy...
Through it all, Kenyatta remained something of an enigma. He changed his reputation at least as often as he altered his name?from Kamau wa Ngengi to Johnstone Kamau, then Johnstone Kenyatta and finally Jomo Kenyatta?as he grew from a herdboy to a mission-school pupil, from a Nairobi water-meter reader to a political activist. His career was shaped by the crucial facts of Kenya life: the lust for land by his Kikuyu tribesmen, and the character of the settler community that was determined to fight to preserve Kenya as a white man's country...
While studying at the London School of Economics, Kenyatta wrote Facing Mount Kenya, describing the life and customs of the Kikuyu in a golden, pre-European past. The book contained a photograph of a bearded Kenyatta carrying a spear and wearing a blue monkey cloak slung over his shoulder?all fabricated to make him look more like a tribal elder than a Western student. He was, as British Author Elspeth Huxley once observed, "a showman to his fingertips...