Editor's note; Comments received from our July 5th Special seem to overwhelmingly demand for more information on Tom Mboya and his still unsolved assassination riddle. I have therefore decided to include a few more posts, specifically focusing on this. Many of our readers understand the simple fact that it is impossible to fully grasp and understand Kenyan politics today without understanding what Mboya stood for and why his life had to be so brutally snuffed out.
JM's torture and shooting happened here. Some Say Mboya's Assasination Was Also Planned In This Eerie Building.
Recently a company by the name of Kingsway Tyres has burst into the limelight. This firm has been mentioned adversely in the ongoing Charterhouse Bank controversy.
Actually the company is situated in a building that occupies a large chunk of both University Way and Muindi Mbingu street in Nairobi, with one side of the building facing the University of Nairobi.
Mboya with Kenyatta in happier times, selling Kenya together, most probably at the Lancaster Conference in London in the early 60s. Both men seem to be enjoying quite stiff drinks even as they chat with the then Israeli Prime minister Golda Meir. Something usually snaps in the head of Kenyans who end up occupying State House and deep Amnesia accompanied by insatiable desire for more power and to remain president forever set in. The result is that they completely forget, ignore and even kill those who helped them in more humble times to get to the damned State House in the first place.
If buildings could speak, then this particular building would have plenty to say from its' rather notorious history. Especially the side that houses offices which are accessed through a small door that is easy to miss along Muindi Mbingu street.
This building once housed the notorious dreaded Special Branch and what has happened here in the past would make the Nyayo House torture chamber look like a kindergarten. It is said that this is the building where the late JM Kariuki was tortured and interrogated, even shot, before being killed and dumped at Ngong Forest. That was sometime in early March 1975.
It is also believed to be the building where the assassination plot that took the life of one of Kenya's most illustrious politicians, Tom Mboya was planned. A prominent reader of this blog recently passed on this information to this blogger and brief initial inquires and research seem to support this amazing allegation. In later years this building came to house Kenya Times, the Kanu daily paper and I personally visited this building many times over the years.
I'm really not the superstitious type but there is something about that building that can only be described as eerie, and that was the feeling I used to get years ago before I even discovered any of this particular building's dark secrets of the past.
One set of secrets that many Kenyans would have liked Kingsway House to reveal, if buildings would talk, was the planning of details that led to the assassination Of Tom Mboya.
There is plenty of evidence to suggest that whoever planned and executed the murder of Mboya had access to impeccable intelligence information. The day before Mboya was assassinated, he arrived at the then main Embakassi International airport from a conference he had been attending in Addis Ababa Ethiopia. The Standard newspaper on the morning of his assassination carried a photograph of Mboya arriving and waving to somebody who must have been at the waving bay in the airport. However, to have planned and executed this assassination, the person or persons who plotted must have had the information about Mboya's arrival back into the country, the day before.
More significantly, they must have also been aware of the fact that on most Saturday's Mboya would release his bodyguard and drive himself around the city alone, as he did on that fateful lunch time in 1969. Mboya's white Mercedes Benz was easily distinguishable in the considerably lower traffic in Nairobi in those days. It is highly likely that the killers were also aware that he was a frequent visitor to Chaani's Chemists where on the fateful day he had gone to purchase an ointment for a skin ailment he had had for years.
Mboya was a creature of habit and that is one of the aspects that cost him his life. Whilst it is possible that Mboya's killers followed him to Chaani's chemist, it is more likely, from eye witness accounts at the time, that the assassin waited nearby knowing very well that Mboya was on his way. There were no mobile phones in those days, anmd therefore once again, this minor detail in the whole execution of this murder points straight at official involvement by persons with access to the government's (more specifically, the government security personnel's) communication network.
Eyewitness account indicate that as Mboya was in the chemist a short man with a balding head and a brief case could be seen hanging around outside, as if he was window shopping. He waited and the minute Mboya stepped out into the streets again, there were two loud bangs and Kenya's minister for economic planning fell backwards on the door to the chemist. He was quickly whisked inside the chemist by the couple inside who had known him for years. They claim he said nothing before losing consciousness before their very eyes.
It is even more significant that the assassination did not take place in the more deserted areas of the city in the drive from Jogoo House, where the Treasury and Mboya's office as Minister for Economic Planning was then situated, To Government Road where he was shot. Instead it took place in the much busier Government Road (Moi Avenue today, next to the Standard Bank headquarters). As usual this place was busy with the usual Saturday lunchtime crowd and interestingly enough plenty of security personnel, who arrived at the scene of the shooting within moments of the incidence. If you get my drift, this was no amateur job. It was a well-orchestrated, intricately planned well executed assassination that had access to vast resources.
It is instructive to note here that there had been an earlier attempt on Mboya's life either early in 1969 or towards the end of 1968. A policeman guarding his house apparently went berserk and emptied several bullets at his official vehicle's back seat. But Mboya was not in the vehicle at the time. The policeman was later arrested and charged. The intricate planning and execution of this second successful attempt seems to suggest that the plotters were categorical that there should be no slip-ups this second time.
Some people have suggested that there were some foreign powers involved in his assassination. The point where he was shot seems to point a finger straight in the direction of the government of the day. It was like somebody wanted this thing done as far away from government offices as was possible. The Saturday lunchtime crowd was also an advantage because in the confusion, the killer would quickly get away (which he did).
There is even a theory that there was more than one gunman at the scene on that day in July – just in case the first gunman failed to hit his mark.
All this detail are hidden away, probably forever in the dark corners of Kingsway House, Nairobi.
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I dunno what to say. There is something sinister about scandals/assasinations that happened pre-Kibaki admin.
ReplyDeleteReading your posts I feel scared like some CID dressed in black will come and swoop me from my office desk! That's something that Kibaki hasn't achieved- causing fear in our hearts, maybe that's why he keeps calling Moi for talks so that some of that fear we had for the former President will rub off.
Keep up the Tom Mboya updates, makes for more of an interesting read than what was fed to us in school.
On the right track Chris. To describe Kingsway House as eerie confirms that I was not the only one who shuddered when I entered that building. I visited it when it was Kenya's hub of intelligence and indeed Nyayo or Nyati houses pale in comparison. Blood curdling is the phrase I would use. You have explored TJ's threat to the status quo very well. Let's rummage abit further, who were the intelligence apparatchiks at that time (1969)? Indeed one very relevant observation you made is that there were no mobile phones then, so that 'wet job' involved considerable operational and communication resources. Only the security organs had these resources. I believe this matrix holds the key...a garden path that keeps getting missed year in year out.
ReplyDeleteA key item you may wish to note is that shortly after Tom Mboya was shot that Saturday afternoon (5th July 1969), his office was broken into by security personnel and searched. A number of documents including a will and munuscript he was working on were stolen. In addition to this rumours had been doing rounds in Nairobi that he would be assasinated. The night after Mboya was shot, his killer (the man who pulled the trigger) attended a large party somewwhere in Kiambu. It would appear his killers were celebrating his demise.
ReplyDeleteI was living in Nairobi in '69 and was in the Thorn Tree when Tom Mboya
ReplyDeletewas shot in Government Road, my office was above the Swiss Cake Shop, so my lunches were taken in the Thorn Tree.
Later that evening with a couple of chaps from StanBank at the Sombrero (not very salubrious, but somewhere to have a jar or three) and the debate started about the shooting, we decided to keep our thoughts to ourselves until we left the country.
It still intrigues me to this day, the 5th of July will always be a prime date in my history of traveling and living overseas.
It was the same year that King Idris was deposed and killed by Gaddafi, Idris was dumped out of the Kings Hawker 125 over the Gulf of Sirt. This caused us no end of problems as we fuel stopped in Benina enroute NBO/Europe/NBO.
I have been back to NBO many times since, I am still in love with that red earth, as the aircraft door opens, you can smell it, wonderful.