Transition Without Violence

As Kenya's first common-roll elections began, the land was heavy with fear and dread. It was the first time a black man's vote was as good as a white's. To the white settlers, the imminent prospect of control by the blacks was disturbing enough. Even more alarming was the fact that the chief black candidate sometimes seemed to be Jomo ("Burning Spear") Kenyatta himself. Though Kenyatta was still confined to a desert village after his 1953 conviction for masterminding the savage Mau Mau movement, his name was on placards everywhere, his photographs at every black rally. Fiery Tom Mboya campaigned in a sports shirt emblazoned with Kenyatta's image. As if things were not tense enough, it was the peak of the dry season, when the air is hot, dusty and stilla time when tempers are short. The army canceled all leave for the troops, and heavily armed riot police set up tents in Nairobi's city park.

Tom's If. To everyone's surprise, there was no violence at all. Almost to a man, African speakers urged moderation on the black electorate. Mboya astonished white witnesses by eschewing his usual provocative slogans. "Let us not become arrogant or racial, but humble and conscientious in taking on our new legitimate and rightful status," cried Tom to the crowds, and quoted Rudyard Kipling's "If":

If you can wait and not be tired by waiting, Or being lied about, don't deal in lies, Or being hated don't give way to hating

When the votes were counted, Tom Mboya's Kenya African National Union had won control of 18 seats; 15 other black candidates were elected, giving the blacks a majority in the 65-man legislature. Mboya's own victory was a triumphant refutation of the charge that the Africans would split along tribal lines. Mboya is a member of the Luo tribe, and his opponents cannily ran a prominent Kikuyu doctor against him in his Nairobi district, where Kikuyus made up the bulk of the voters. It was no contest. Mboya won, 31,407 to 2,668. Young (30), victorious Tom was hoisted to the shoulders of the mob, as 6,000 shrieked "Uhuru!" (freedom).

Whites v. Whites. The extremist white settlers, led by Sir Ferdinand Cavendish-Bentinck, suffered a sharp defeat. In the all-white primaries for the ten seats reserved for whites, Cavendish-Bentinck's candidates swamped the moderate backers of Kenya Farmer Michael Blundell, who had sided with the British in advocating cooperation between the black majority (6,000,000) and Kenya's white minority (65,000). Blundell's fellow whites in the rich Rift Valley bombarded him with eggs and tomatoes at village rallies and hanged him in effigy. But in the general election, blacks were voting for the first time on the same list with whites, and their votes pushed Blundell to victory over Cavendish-Bentinck, 20,009 to 2,059. In the new legislature. Blundell's liberals probably will outnumber C-B's followers 8 to 3.

The long-feared first step toward peaceful transferral of power was at hand.

Though the British will retain ultimate control of Kenya's colony through the governorship, the Africans will get one-third of all Cabinet posts. But there is still Jomo Kenyatta. Mboya and his party swore to take part in no government until Kenyatta ("our first Chief Minister") is released "unconditionally'' from detention in Lodwar in the Northern Frontier Province wasteland 340 miles away.

Governor Sir Patrick Renison. who only last May had called the jailed Kenyatta a "leader to darkness and to death." was forced to find a compromise. Kenyatta, the Governor decreed, would be moved to a house within 200 miles of Nairobi so that he could be consulted by the African politicians. But he insisted that Kenyatta must remain apart from his nation in detention "until the new government is working well." Whether Mboya. in his new moderation, is satisfied by this remains to be seen.

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