April 8, 1953 - Jomo Kenyatta - a podcast by Stephen Hammond

Kenya’s future president, Jomo Kenyatta, sentenced to seven years’ hard labour.White Europeans controlled Kenya, like much of Africa, from the early 1900’s onward. (Kenya officially became a British colony in 1920) Tribal resentment of this grew until the country’s Kikuyu tribe launched a secret society and the Mau Mau movement in 1947. Eager to rid their country of the thousands of white settlers who had seized African land after World War II, the Mau Maus utilized such violent tactics that by 1952, the government found it necessary to declare a state of emergency. White authorities arrested hundreds of Mau Mau members, as well as Jomo Kenyatta, an individual whom many historians contend was not involved with the group. But during his trial, Kenyatta refused to denounce the Mau Mau’s actions. On April 8, 1953, he was found guilty and sentenced to seven years’ hard labour. He not only survived this, but two years after his release, became president of the Kenya African Union – and then, in June 1963, the country’s first prime minister. By 1964, Kenya had severed ties with the British monarchy and become a republic with Kenyatta as its president. The government of Kenya finally lifted the ban on the Mau Mau in 2003.

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