In 1962, when we were both young, I spent a good number of hours with Mwai Kibaki in Nairobi, listening to him explain the complexities of Kenya tribal politics. He was an official of the Kenya African National Union (KANU), the party that would lead the colony of Kenya to independence a year later, and I was a Ford Foundation fellow studying the new nations of Africa. I would drop by his office every week or so and, if he was not busy, he would take time to reply to my questions. He was polite, soft-spoken and matter-of-fact, not charismatic at all, and it never dawned on me that he might become president of Kenya some day...

Mau Mau burst upon the imagination of the world half a century ago, when newspapers and magazines published lurid photos accompanied by accounts of crazed savages slaughtering white settlers and their families in the Arcadian and romantic British colony of Kenya in darkest Africa. The images of an irrational black onslaught were reinforced by the publication in 1955 of Robert Ruark’s bestselling novel “Something of Value,” which was made into a movie starring Rock Hudson and Sidney Poitier. To European and American ears during the 1950s, the words “Mau Mau” conjured up chilling terror. Historians and academics have chipped away at these images ever since. Carl Rosberg, a UC Berkeley political scientist, and John Nottingham, a former British colonial officer, published their pioneering work, “The Myth of Mau Mau: Nationalism in Kenya,” in 1966. More studies have followed over the years. The two latest books, remarkable and lucid accounts by British and American academics that are brimming with new evidence, surely smash the myth and images for good...

Before the murder of Tom Mboya in July 1969, Kenya politicians could mute and obscure their country's tribal tensions. The tensions, of course, were always there, straining the fragile unity of the new country, but they did not pervade every side of political life. Personal rivalry counted; so did ideology. The assassination changed all that. For more than a year, Kenya was torn by a dangerous and blatant tribal conflict that colored all political activity. In a sense, this only followed what had happened elsewhere in Africa, where crisis invariably heightens tribal hatreds and suspicions. The results, as Nigeria showed, can be terrifying. But Kenya is not another Nigeria. In recent months, the fury has diminished, giving Kenya a time of calm to deal with its tribal problem. Its future depends on whether its politicians learn to do so...

This article discusses about the Asians settled in Nairobi, Kenya. Most of the shops of downtown Nairobi are in the hands of Indians and Pakistanis. Living in a land run by African blacks, are the most visible evidence of the gravest minority problem in East Africa today. There are 350,000 Asians, as the Indians and Pakistanis are called here, among East Africa's 29 million people. About half of them live in Kenya, a quarter in Tanzania, a quarter in Uganda. They are the shopkeepers, clerks, artisans and foreman of East Africa. The Asians fill just those jobs and places that Africans believe they now have enough experience and training to take. Although they are called Asians, many either were born in East Africa or have spent most of their lives there. They consider East Africa as their home.

The aftermath of the murder of Kenyan political leader Tom Mboya has mocked what he stood for. Mboya, who seemed to represent all that was modern in Africa to the rest of the world, always shunned the appeals to tribal allegiance that have crumbled political stability elsewhere in Africa. His constituents were mainly the urban workers groping for a modern way of life. Yet his assassination on the first Saturday in July, 1969 unleashed intense tribal hatreds. Kenya faces a long and dangerous period of instability unless the government can somehow placate his grieving Luo people.

The article discusses various aspects of the U.S. foreign policy in Africa. For years, the American Federation of Labor & Congress of Industrial Organization (AFL-CIO) has pursued its own foreign policy in Latin America and now it is turning to Africa. In January 1968 Vice President H. Humphrey visited Kenya with a large party that included executive director Irving Brown. Despite unpopularity Brown's African American Labor Center was set up in 1965 in Kenya. The Center often gives office equipment and cars to African unions or creates vocational training schools. But the Center also tries to fulfill the traditional AFL-CIO role of helping non-Communist unions fight alleged Communist union.

Stanley Meisler, former Peace Corps deputy director for evaluation and research and Associated Press correspondent in Washington, D.C., Monday, was named chief of the Los Angeles Times news bureau in sub-Sahara Africa, now located in Nairobi, Kenya. Meisler, 33, succeeds Don Shannon, who has been transferred to The Times' Tokyo bureau following two years in Leopoldville, The Congo. The Leopoldville office has been closed. Meisler began his newspaper career with the Middletown (Ohio) Journal in 1953. He moved to the AP bureau in New Orleans a year later and to the Washington bureau in 1958. Meisler covered the House of Representatives prior to his appointment as a Peace Corps official in 1964. Awarded Ford Foundation Fellowship in 1961, Meisler spent a year traveling in Africa, followed by graduate studies in African affairs at UC Berkeley. He has written articles on Africa for Atlantic Monthly, the Reporter, the Nation and other magazines. A native of New York City, Meisler was graduated from City College of New York in 1952.

For most Americans, one dynamic young man, Tom Mboya of Kenya, symbolizes the onrush of African nationalism in the last few years. On his several trips to the United States, he has been publicized in rallies, television shows, and newspaper interviews. He is, for America, the magazine cover boy of Africa. But despite all the American cheers, Mboya is in deep political trouble at home, and some of the trouble stems from those very cheers. Mboya has qualities that appeal to western taste. He is vigorous. He is efficient. He is moderate, though always frank and direct, in his speech. He seems to combine the shrewdness of a politician with the honor of a statesman. Even the British settlers in Kenya, long displeased with the American encouragement of Mboya, have now come to regard him as a main hope for their survival when the colony becomes independent, perhaps some time this year or next. They trust him and would help him. The vision of an independent Kenya led by Mboya has replaced their shattered dream of a white man's Kenya. But Mboya, now thirty-two, will not be at the helm when Kenya becomes independent...

The words came cold and clipped from the government secretary with gray hair and pale English skin. "When that man enters a room," she said, "I can feel the hackles rise up and down my back. Even if I don't see him, I can feel that man." That man is Jomo Kenyatta. A court has convicted him of managing the savage Mau Mau uprising in Kenya. A British governor has condemned him as "the African leader to darkness and death." Yet, within a year or two, when the colony of Kenya assumes independence, Jomo Kenyatta likely will be the new nation's first prime minister. The gray-haired Englishwoman and other white settlers watch this onrush to power helplessly, with distaste and bitterness. To them, a man streaked in evil and blood is reaching for their rolling, green land. But whites number no more than one per cent of Kenya's six million people. Africans see a different Kenyatta...