Word: kikuyu
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...conventional wisdom was that Kenya would be torn apart in a bloody tribal struggle for power, because no one in sight had anything like the following of the Mzee (Swahili for old man). But with the backing of the two most powerful Cabinet ministers belonging to the dominant Kikuyu tribe, Arap Moi was selected as the new President by the country's ruling party, the Kenya African National Union...
...death of Mzee (the old man), he won the job, more or less, on the assumption that he would not make too much of it. A member of the minority Kalenjin tribal group, arap Moi will be particularly dependent on three powerful figures who belong to the dominant Kikuyu tribe: Minister of Natural Resources Mbiyu Koinange, 71, Attorney General Charles Njonjo, 58, and Finance Minister Mwai Kibaki, 47, whom arap Moi straightaway appointed as his Vice President. That troika, along with Kenyatta, has plotted Kenya's pro-Western, pro-capitalist course for the past several years. Their support guaranteed...
...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...
...often turned a blind eye to corruption, particularly among the Kikuyu new elite. His own holdings, and those of his fourth wife, Mama Ngina, 48, multiplied enormously. Together they controlled Nairobi's lucrative gambling casino, plus coffee and sisal plantations, manufacturing concerns, downtown office buildings and coastal resorts. His government's reputation was further damaged by the political murders of Planning Minister Tom Mboya, once regarded as a possible successor to Kenyatta, and Kikuyu dissident Politician Josiah M. Kariuki. Both men died under circumstances that have never been fully explained...