Political assassinations that will still remain unforgetable in Kenya and USA: Martin Luther King jr, and Tom Mboya.

Publisher, Korir, africanpress@getmail.no

<Story written by Fred Obera:

Political assassinations will always remain a goal, which is too evil. It has caused many earthmen to loose very amicable personalities of times that were destined to see great radical changes on the world in terms of economical development and contest for equality for human life. It has mad many of our heroes to cease to adventure the wanderlust of their dreams of better political rights, higher living standards, and more diversified economies. In United States, they fought for racial discriminations, they hated the practice of racial discrimination, and on their hatreds they were sustained by the fact that the overwhelming majority of mankind and their God hated it equally.

In Africa they fought for freedom, justice, slave trade and apartheid.

They fought like demons to bring justice. They fought like peaceful warriors to end the wrong principle of slavery, racial discrimination that was necessary evil. They fought like countrymen, servants and henchmen to bring equality in the life of the Negroes and Africans, which was still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. Because they knew that God had a promise that all men would be guaranteed the inalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness and they fought like men of God to let ‘right be done’ .

Down the memory lane, it is now approximately 39 years from now since we lost Dr. Martin Luther King. At approximately 7:17pm, April 4th, 1967 in Memphis, the memory is still very fresh and bitter in the eyes of the black American society, and will still remain a grief moment for the whole world and more to the Americans who witnessed and who are still hailing today, an assassin bullet fired an aimed shot that mortally and wounded Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., a human rights activists, the peaceful warrior, the non-violence man, a man who would go where he knew he would be killed, a non racial man and a man of God. Dr. King was a noble man who was ready to change the world spiritually, economically and free for all.

It was sad to the black peasant, perhaps the life of Negro’s, whom rolled on the ground as they mourn their king. “The nation would not wait the winter night to express its own response to this national tragedy. It was like a terror to them, as painful night lingered on, they wouldn’t wait for the dawn to wake, they had to stay awake, news reports…ten blocks from the white house, building in the largely black ghettos of Washington D.C, were already in flames, many striking out irrationally and in anger, in State after State, City after City, and Street after Street, in response to the senseless death of the prophet of non-violence”.

His death left many starling questions in the White House, where President Lyndon Johnson asking his vice president the then George Bush, what can be done? As the world ponder and asking fellow earthmen why? But the history of his death will never be buried; it will flow from generation after generations. He died under the reign of President Lyndon Johnson.

Almost two years latter in Africa Kenya! One of the own native son’s Tom Joseph Mboya was assassinated in a Government Street in the capital Nairobi. It was evening hours June 1969, when TJ. Mboya was having courage of walking on the street of his own country having fought tirelessly to make colonizers to scrum from Africa, after parking his car, since he was not in a foreign country, neither an enemy of the people. He was courageous enough to hum and breathe the goodness of being an ideal leader and living in an independent (sovereignty) country after along struggle to force colonial rulers to stop scrambling for Africa. It was a usual day, when the cruel powers shot wounded Tom Mboya to his mortality. The assassin was no more a mercy man -he was merciless, and to him he couldn’t see what Tom Mboya had done to his country. And he had to shot him on the chest twice. To him Tom Mboya was a nonentity and a plain tosh.

Nairobi the capital city of Kenya was upside down, men’s heels took them to the streets to battle with the assassination of Tom Mboya. The University of Nairobi students led the way by striking and battled with the riot police, like demons, demonstrators did not surrendered their demands and continued to battle with the riot police under their fierce hands, the streets of Nairobi and Kisumu was filed with chaos, bloodshed and smoke. Hundreds of cars were burnt, windows were smashed, scores of others were injured and killed, tension grew high and tensed, writers wrote what they knew was right, women wailed, hollered, ululated, some were in death grief for their killed hero, men and women left children at home to heel for demonstration. His home area was in terror, they mourned and cursed and talked along the tribal lines, which created hatred between two major tribes Kenya, everybody pointing fingers at each other. In Nyanza province, especially in Kisumu the cosmopolitan city, non native suffered, many lose their lives, properties worth millions of shillings and their rights were violated, as the Luo’s whom their son was assassinated retaliated very hard and strong.

The president was having his lunch in his village home with his kitchen cabinet where he received the message of the sudden death of Tom Mboya.

The little youthful Mboya who died at the age of 39 discussed his death calmly and disappointedly, with deep sense of shared pain, which was apparent to him and the world as a whole. They had worked hard with Dr. Martin Luther King, JF Kennedy in an attempt to obliterate racism from American life and bring freedom and independence in Africa. Many thinkers reasoned that it was the courage which the American took to assassinate Martin Luther King Jr., which also made Kenyan rulers to assassinate the young promisingly brilliant mind from an island in Nam Lolwe (Lake Victoria), a fluent Kiswahili and English. He was the leader of the Kenyan workers’ organization (Trade Union) fighting for the rights of labourers under the hands of the colonial empire. Not only that he was trade unionists’, he stood for realm and his way of getting things done with time. His ambition to succeed the first Kenyan president who loved and liked him like his real son failed.

Tom Mboya was a leader with intellectualism brilliancy, with vast practical competence, fine judgment, great drive and courageous and dedicated young man. Tom Mboya was a mayor, and indeed brilliant, political figure, a president figure and a figure not to dare challenge in the contest for supremacy or power; a man of extraordinarily and dynamism; a prolific and protein achiever. He was a non-racial man and non-tribal man that were very seldom in African leaders and even to date. He was a populist, he was elitist.Tom Mboya was a militant, a moderate, a radical, a liberal, a conservative and an ardent nationalist. Tom Mboya was an outstandingly modern man. Few enemies hated him a little and liked him much better when dealing with matters of nation building and policy making.

But today the world knows that those who planned the assassinations of these amicable leaders are cursing themselves for having killed before their achievements in the role of nation building. And I mightily converse in God’s name that I have praised the heaped leaders of yesterday like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Tom Mboya, Winston Churchill, Abraham Lincoln, Nelson Mandela, and JF. Kennedy, and Mahatma Gandhi…and due to their golden liberty, they really fetched for the world to score in a achieving the destiny of each humane. Respectfully, I strongly believe that if only leaders of today can have the integrity, character and especially of the two assassinated black heroes, Dr.King and Tom Mboya, then today racial discrimination, poor economic situation, ethnic cleansing and poverty in Africa would or might have been quickly be resolved.

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