Without this man who was killed by a Kikuyu gunman in 1969, we would
not have Barrack Obama today. At 28, he soundly defeated Dr. Kwame
Nkrumah for the Chairmanship of the Pan African People's Congress
elections held at Accra.
TOM MBOYA could have been Kenya's first president but he was too
young. When he was felled by a Kikuyu gunman's bullet, the African
revolution was aborted. It was similar to PATRICE Lumumba's
assassination by the CIA.
TOM MBOYA's death at the hands of a Kikuyu gunman would explain the
violence witnessed in Kenya a few weeks ago. The people have not
forgotten.
Why do I say he brought us Obama? Well, TOM MBOYA was responsible for
the largest airlift of African students to the USA. Before Nigerians
started moving to the USA after the Biafra war, Tom Mboya had moved
thousands of Kenyans to the US in the 60's. Obama's dad was one of the
scholarship recipients.
READ ON.........FLASH BACK 1959:
Tug of War
Courtesy Time Magazine Dec. 14, 1959
A year ago, young Tom Mboya from Kenya was the toast of Accra,
enjoying the benevolent patronage of that would-be leader of emerging
Africa, Ghana's Prime Minister Kwame Nkrumah himself. The principal
difference between the two men is that Nkrumah is the unchallenged
boss of an independent nation of 5,000,000, almost all of them black,
while Mboya, in the multiracial British colony of Kenya, is merely the
leading African politician in a government where the whites run
things. When Nkrumah held his All-Africa Peoples Conference, he
propelled Labor Leader Mboya into the chairmanship, and the stage
seemed set for a lasting alliance of Mboya's rising influence in East
Africa with Nkrumah's power on the West Coast.
This was not to be; last week Nkrumah's obedient press in Ghana was
lambasting Mboya as being a "stooge of imperialism" and "under the
thumb of the Americans." The reason: Mboya had dared to challenge
Nkrumah in the race for leadership of the budding trade-union movement
in Africa.
Neutralist Nkrumah, with Partner Sékou Touré in neighboring Guinea,
would like to build an "independent" union movement in Africa and cut
labor ties with the free world's International Confederation of Free
Trade Unions, but many suspect this merely conceals an inclination to
affiliate with a Communist-backed rival, the World Federation of Trade
Unions. Mboya's union headquarters in Nairobi was built with $35,000
contributed by U.S. unions, and Mboya himself is a staunch supporter
of I.C.F.T.U. as well as chairman of its union organization in East,
Central and Southern Africa.
Last May, Mboya called a conference in Lagos, Nigeria, almost next
door to Nkrumah, to form the first All-Africa I.C.F.T.U. labor
organization. Ghana stalled for months before replying, finally sent
word that the idea of a conference was all right, but that it should
be held in Accra, "capital of the All-Africa movement." Mboya declined
to change the site, tartly pointing out that Nigeria, with a
population of 35 million, is the largest African country. Ghana
decided to call a trade-union conference of its own at the same time
as Mboya's.
In Lagos, Mboya's meeting drew union leaders from 29 countries.
Nkrumah's affair was a flop, with officially accredited delegates only
from Guinea, Morocco and the United Arab Republic. "I have no quarrel
with Nkrumah," Mboya insisted last week, but it was no secret that he
strongly dislikes the way Nkrumah runs his unions, i.e., as a
government department and as instruments of government power.
Apparently, most other African labor officials feel the same way.
Delegates representing Nigeria, the Belgian Congo, the French
territories and many other parts of Africa voted overwhelmingly at
Lagos to form an All-Africa union under Mboya's leadership, totally
ignoring a rival group formed by Nkrumah's rump session in Accra.
A piece of history indeed......
