Word: kenyattas
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Tribalism is a distasteful word to educated Africans. It suggests that atavistic fears play a disproportionate role in the politics of new African nations. Distasteful or not, tribalism is a key to many African problems-a point that was made all too emphatically in Kenya last week. President Jomo Kenyatta, who with his fellow Kikuyu has ruled the country since independence in 1963, threw Opposition Leader Oginga Odinga in prison and banned his Luo-dominated party...
Kikuyu and Luo, first and second largest of Kenya's 46 main tribes, have long controlled the country's politics. Initially, neither Kenyatta's Kenya African
When a black Kenyan these days says, "I'm going to Gatundu for a cup of tea," his friends know that it may be a cover-up for something else. Gatundu is the residence of Kenya's President Jomo Kenyatta, and "tea drinking" is really oath swearing. Unlike the tribesmen who swore secret oaths to join the Mau Mau rebellion against foreigners in the 1950s, Kikuyu by the thousands are swearing oaths against fellow Kenyans in the President's backyard...
...vast scale of the Kikuyu activity got into the headlines in Kenya last week with the accidental crash of three trucks. All were jampacked with Kikuyu, and survivors said that they were traveling to or from Kenyatta's home. Thirteen passengers were killed, 105 injured. The presence of so many Kikuyu on the road to the President's house raised suspicions that the tribe was engaged in a clandestine operation. In Parliament, members of Leader Oginga Odinga's opposition party charged that the Kikuyu were engaged in oath taking on the grounds of the President...
...Kikuyu, so the story went, had asked Kenyatta, who is a member of the tribe, to allow mass oath taking. Outsiders do not know Kenyatta's response, but there is no doubt that his yard has become the scene of mass oath ceremonies. Many non-Kikuyu citizens fear that Kenyatta, the founder of the country, has been pressured into allowing tribal factionalism at the expense of national unity and his own policy of pulling the tribes together...