Word: kikuyu
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...unique experiment in one-party elections: his Tanzania Africa National Union put up two candidates for each post, with the result that several of his own Cabinet ministers were defeated. Kenya's Jomo Kenyatta has overridden the intense tribal rival ries of the Luo and his own Kikuyu and made a national fetish out of harambee (togetherness), winning the good will of most white settlers in the bargain. Even the disappointments have not been total. The personal tyranny of Ghana's Nkrumah has been succeeded by a military regime that is miraculously popular despite the fact that...
Africans have a superstitious horror of the chameleon, which in Kikuyu is pronounced kipu. It so happens that the initials of Leftist Oginga Odinga's nascent opposition party, the Kenya People's Union, have the same phonetic pronunciation-a fact that President Jomo Kenyatta's political songwriters did not overlook during the nation's three-week special election campaign. All through Kikuyuland last month, Jomo's ardent KANU party youth-wingers chanted a 20-verse warning against the abhorrent turncoats of the "chameleon party," punctuating each stanza with guttural cries of "moto, moto, moto!"-meaning...
Main target of Jomo's wrath was not Odinga but rather Bildad Kaggia, the lone Kikuyu in the KPU's Luo-dominated upper ranks. Kaggia, roared Kenyatta, was a captive of the Communists, a liar, a cheat and a lover of "black necks"-a derogatory Kikuyu reference to the darker-skinned Luo. Moreover, suggested Jomo in the ultimate Kikuyu insult, he suspected that Kaggia was not even circumcised. Kaggia was crushed by an 18,000-vote KANU plurality...
...many of whom owned vast tracts in the "white highlands" northwest of Nairobi. Soon after uhuru, the government of Jomo Kenyatta bought up thousands of acres in the white highlands-at fair prices but with no refusal-and turned the land over to land-hungry Kikuyu families as part of Kenyatta's political debt to the tribe. Down came the trim hedges and the lofty stands of trees that the English farmers had so cherished; up went ramshackle huts and fields of maize...
...Kikuyu proverb...