'TRAGEDY': UP TO 150 PEOPLE FEARED DROWNED IN MEDITERRANEAN SEA

Tripoli, LIBYA

Scores of refugees and migrants are feared drowned after the boats they were travelling in capsized off Libya's coast in the Mediterranean Sea, according to aid agencies and officials.

Nearly 700 deaths have been recorded in the Mediterranean so far this year, according to the UN 

Ayoub Qasim, a spokesman for Libya's coastguard, told The Associated Press news agency that two boats carrying around 300 people sank around 120km east of the capital, Tripoli, before adding that 134 others were rescued.

However, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) said in a Twitter post on Thursday that more than 150 people were feared drowned while 145 were rescued and returned to Libya after the incident.

Charlie Yaxley, spokesman for the United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR), said the survivors were picked up by local fishermen and then taken back to shore by the Libyan coastguard.

"We estimate that 150 migrants are potentially missing and died at sea," he said. "The dead include women and children."

"The worst Mediterranean tragedy of this year has just occurred," Filippo Grandi, the United Nations high commissioner for refugees, said.

He called on European nations to resume rescue missions in the Mediterranean, halted after a European Union decision, and appealed for an end to migrant detentions in Libya. Safe pathways out of the North African country are needed "before it is too late for many more desperate people", Grandi said.

Qasim told AFP news agency that most of the rescued from the sea were from Ethiopia while others were Palestinians and Sudanese.

Sabah Youssef, from Sudan, lost her seven-year-old child after the boat sank. "I don't want anything now except to go back to my country, Sudan, to die there," Youssef, who was rescued, told Reuters news agency.

Some of the survivors shared their ordeal at the sea.

"In the afternoon, we started from Libya going to Italy, but when we went there, after one hour the ship started to sink and most of them (people) sank," an unnamed survivor from Eritrea told AP.

Migrants boat

Another survivor from Eritrea added: "We rescued ourselves. No-one could help us and no one came to rescue us, and here we are in a big problem so we need your (International community) help."

Libya is one of the main departure points for migrants and refugees fleeing poverty and war in the Middle East and Africa and attempting to reach Europe by boat via the Mediterranean.

Those who make the journey often travel in overcrowded and unsafe vessels.

Nearly 700 deaths have been recorded in the Mediterranean so far this year, according to the IOM, almost half as many as the 1,425 registered in 2018.

"If current trends for this year continue, that will see us pass more than 1000 deaths in the Mediterranean for the sixth year in a row," Yaxley, the spokesman for UNHCR told Al Jazeera.

"That’s a really bleak milestone. It comes just weeks after more than 50 people lost their lives in a detention centre following an airstrike in Tajoura, and really once again stresses the [need] for a shift in approach to the situation in Libya and the Mediterranean."

An estimated 6,000 refugees and migrants are held in detention centres across Libya, while some 50,000 registered refugees and asylum seekers reside elsewhere in the country, according to the UNHCR.

The UN has repeatedly warned that the conflict-wracked sprawling North African country is not a safe place for migrants and refugees to be held in and called for those in detention centres to be released.

It has also urged the European Union to drop its policy of backing the Libyan coastguard to intercept and forcibly return people caught while trying to cross to Europe from the country. 

The EU ended its naval patrols in the Mediterranean in March due to disagreements on how to divide those rescued among EU member states.

Italy's far-right Interior Minister Matteo Salvini has objected to the existing arrangement because most of the rescued migrants and refugees were brought to Italian ports.

Salvini, who is also Italy's deputy prime minister, has barred charity rescue vessels from docking at Italy's ports, and threatened to fine transgressors tens of thousands of euros and impound their vessels.

Medical charity Doctors Without Borders (MSF) in recent days slammed the EU's approach, saying the "suffering" of migrants and refugees in Libya and "deaths" of others in the Mediterranean were "preventable".

"Politicians would have you believe that the deaths of hundreds of people at sea, and the suffering of thousands of refugees and migrants trapped in Libya, are the acceptable price of attempts to control migration," Sam Turner, MSF's head of mission for search and rescue in Libya, said in a statement on Sunday.

"The cold reality is that while they herald the end of the so-called 'European migration crisis', they are knowingly turning a blind eye to the humanitarian crisis these policies perpetuate in Libya and at sea," he added.

KENYA'S FINANCE MINISTER ARRESTED FOR CORRUPTION

By Our Correspondent, NAIROBI

Kenya's Finance Minister Henry Rotich and other treasury officials have been arrested on corruption and fraud charges related to a multimillion-dollar project to build two massive dams, police said.

Rotich, his principal secretary and the chief executive of Kenya's environmental authority handed themselves in to the police on Monday, hours after the country's chief prosecutor ordered the arrest and prosecution of Rotich and 27 other top officials.

"They are in custody now awaiting to be taken to court," police chief George Kinoti told AFP news agency.

"We are looking for [the] others and they will all go to court."

Rotich's arrest marks the first time a sitting Kenyan minister has been arrested on corruption charges, in a country where graft is widespread. The charges against him stem from a police investigation into the misuse of funds in a dam project overseen by the Italian construction company CMC Di Ravenna.

Rotich denied any wrongdoing in a large newspaper advertisement in March. The company has also denied any wrongdoing.

Noordin Haji, Kenya's Director of Public Prosecutions, said the finance minister and the co-accused would face eight charges, ranging from conspiring to defraud and financial misconduct.

"They broke the law on public finance management under the guise of carrying out legitimate commercial transactions, colossal amounts were unjustifiably and illegally paid out through a well-choreographed scheme by government officers in collusion with private individuals and institutions," Haji told a news conference earlier on Monday.

According to the contract, the project was to cost a total of $450m, but the treasury had increased this amount by $164m "without regard to performance or works", he said.

Some $180m has already been paid out, with little construction to show for it.

Another $6m was paid out for the resettlement of people living in areas that would be affected by the project, but there is no evidence of land being acquired for this, he said.

"I am satisfied that economic crimes were committed and I have therefore approved their arrests and prosecutions," said Haji.

Rotich's arrest will send shockwaves through the political elite, who are accustomed to corruption scandals resulting in little official action.

Earlier this year, the finance minister's questioning by police provoked an angry reaction among politicians from his powerful Kalenjin ethnic group.

Rotich's arrest may also be seen as further evidence of growing distance between President Uhuru Kenyattaand Deputy President William Ruto. Ruto had requested Rotich's appointment.

On Monday, Ruto's allies played down the charges.

"There is nothing to worry about. Relax," Kipchumba Murkomen, the senate majority leader and a Ruto ally, told reporters.

Critics have accused Kenyatta, who was re-elected for a second term last year, of failing to deal with corruption despite his promises to do so.

"We've seen the president coming out very strongly over the years saying he wants to make this issue a priority, he wants to leave behind a corrupt-free country, but a lot of Kenyans are disappointed," Al Jazeera's Catherine Soi said, reporting from Samburu County in Kenya.

"Over the years we've seen major scandals involving public money, millions of dollars, involving public figures as well ... arrests have been made. But then people are saying that beyond that nothing happens, they have not seen any convictions,  those who are found culpable haven't seen their assets frozen, or their money returned to taxpayers," she said.

"Thirty percent of government expenditure is lost to corruption and mismanagement .. a lot of Kenyans are saying that they need the president to do more if this fight against corruption is to be won."

Rotich's arrest was a "significant" step on a very long road, said Samuel Kimeu, the head of Kenya's chapter of Transparency International.

But he added: "I would not be celebrating arrests. We need to see people in jail and we need to see what has been stolen recovered."

ISRAEL BEGINS DEMOLITION OF PALESTINIAN HOMES IN EAST JERUSALEM

SUR BAHER, West Bank (Reuters)

Israeli forces began demolishing buildings near a military barrier on the outskirts of Jerusalem on Monday, in the face of Palestinian protests and international criticism.

Bulldozers accompanied by hundreds of Israeli soldiers and police moved in to Sur Baher, a Palestinian village on the edge of East Jerusalem in an area that Israel captured and occupied in the 1967 Middle East War.

Palestinians fear that the razing of homes and buildings near the fence will set a precedent for other towns along the route of the barrier, which runs for hundreds of kilometers around and through the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

The demolition is the latest round of protracted wrangling over the future of Jerusalem, home to more than 500,000 Israelis and 300,000 Palestinians, and sites sacred to Judaism, Islam and Christianity.

Israeli forces cut through a wire section of the barrier in Sur Baher under cover of darkness early on Monday, and began clearing residents from the area.

Floodlights lit up the area as dozens of vehicles brought helmeted security forces into the village.

After first light, mechanical diggers began destroying a two-storey house as soldiers moved through several floors of a partly constructed multi-storey building nearby.

“Since 2 a.m. they have been evacuating people from their homes by force and they have started planting explosives in the homes they want to destroy,” said Hamada Hamada, a community leader in Sur Baher.

Journalists and Palestinian demonstrators run away from tear gas canisters fired by Israeli forces during a protest against Israeli plans to demolish Palestinian homes, in the Palestinian village of Sur Baher which sits on either side of the barrier in East Jerusalem and the Israeli-occupied West Bank. 

The work was filmed and photographed by Palestinian, Israeli and international activists who had mobilized to try and stop the demolition.

Israel’s Supreme Court ruled in June that the structures violated a construction ban. The deadline for residents to remove the affected buildings, or parts of them, expired on Friday.

Some Sur Baher residents said they would be made homeless. Owners said they had obtained permission to build from the Palestinian Authority, which exercises limited self-rule in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

The sprawling village of Sur Baher straddles the line between East Jerusalem and the West Bank.

Its political geography is complicated by the fact that parts of it lie outside the municipal boundaries of Israeli-occupied East Jerusalem but on the Israeli side of the barrier, cutting it off from the rest of the West Bank.

Palestinian officials say some of the threatened structures lie within areas that they should control. The Palestine Liberation Organization issued a statement accusing the Israeli court of aiming “to set a precedent to enable the Israeli occupying forces to demolish numerous Palestinian buildings located in close proximity” to the barrier.

Jamie McGoldrick, the United Nations humanitarian coordinator, and other U.N. officials called on the Israeli authorities last week to halt the demolition plans. They said 17 Palestinians faced displacement from the plans to level 10 buildings, including dozens of apartments.

The European Union issued a statement saying: “The continuation of this policy undermines the viability of the two-state solution and the prospect for a lasting peace.”

However, the Israeli Supreme Court’s 3-judge panel ruled unanimously in favor of demolition. “The petitioners took the law into their own hands when they began and continued building structures without receiving a special permit from the military commander,” it said.

The court said construction close to the barrier could provide cover for attackers.

The Israeli military had no immediate comment on Monday, but a statement last week by Israel’s military-run civil administration in the West Bank said enforcement would be pursuant to “operational considerations” and “state policy.”

In some built-up areas the barrier is a high concrete wall, but in Sur Baher and much of the West Bank it consists of two wire fences separated by a military patrol road and protected by watchtowers and electronic sensors.

Israel credits the obstacle - projected to be 720 km (450 miles) long when complete — with stemming Palestinian suicide bombings and shooting attacks. Palestinians call it a land grab designed to annex parts of the West Bank, including Israeli settlements.

The International Court of Justice in The Hague issued an advisory opinion in 2004 that building the barrier on occupied territory was “contrary to international law.”

Israel dismissed the non-binding decision as politically motivated and says the barrier played a key role in drastically reducing the number of attacks, which peaked in 2002 and 2003 during the Second Palestinian uprising known as the Al-Aqsa Intifada.

MEDIA GROUPS SEEK ANSWERS OVER MISSING TANZANIAN REPORTER

By Aljazeera

Press freedom groups have demanded answers from the Tanzanian government following contradicting statements by the country's foreign minister about the fate of a journalist who vanished two years ago.  

Activists have accused President John Magufuli's government of cracking down on press freedom

In an interview with the BBC earlier this week, Palamagamba Kabudi, the minister, said reporter Azory Gwanda had "disappeared and died" somewhere in Rufiji, eastern Tanzania, without offering additional details. 

The announcement was blasted by media watchdogs and activists who have long been calling for transparency in the case, prompting apparent backtracking by Kabudi on Thursday.

"The reference I made on Azory Gwanda contextually did not mean that Azory Gwanda is confirmed dead. To date, the government of Tanzania has no confirmation on whether Azory is dead or alive," a government statement quoted Kabudi as saying.

In a statement on Thursday, Reporters Without Borders (RSF) criticised Kabudi's "casual reference" and accused the government "of displaying a lack of consideration in its handling of the case".

"After a year and a half of silence and then downplaying the journalist's disappearance, the minister announces his death without explanation," RSF's Africa representative, Arnaud Froger, told AFP news agency.

"The flippancy with which the Tanzanian authorities have handled this case illustrates the low regard they have for the safe exercise of free and independent journalism."

The United States-based Committee to Protect Journalists, meanwhile, called the minister's remarks "wholly inadequate and distressing" and urged the government to immediately make public all the information it has about Gwanda's fate.

Gwanda, a reporter for the Mwananchi and The Citizen newspapers, disappeared while reportedly investigating a series of murders of police and local officials in Kibiti, in the Rufiji district of the Pwani region.

According to his wife, Gwanda disappeared on November 21, 2017, after leaving in a white Toyota Land Cruiser with unknown people on an "emergency trip".

He promised to return the following evening but was never seen again.

The government of President John Magufuli has been roundly criticized by press-freedom groups and local rights organisations for attempting to stifle media freedom in Tanzania.

The government denies the allegations.

Last year, 65 civil-society organisations wrote 

DANGOTE PROMISES NIGERIA BIG GOAL BONUS

Cairo, EGYPT

Nigeria's footballers are in line for a minimum $75,000 windfall if they score against Algeria in Sunday's Africa Cup of Nations semi-final in Cairo.

The continent’s richest man Aliko Dangote (pictured) has promised to pay the Super Eagles $50,000 for each goal they score against the Algerians.

According to Amaju Pinnick, President of the Nigeria Football Federation (NFF), Nigerian oil mogul Femi Otedola has also promised to reward the team with $25,000 for every goal beginning from the encounter with Algeria.

Several other wealthy Nigerians have showered the Eagles with huge cash donations after they reached the last four of the tournament.

Officials said that each player has so far received at least $72,000 in bonuses and donations.

The team received cash gifts and plots of land from the Nigerian government when they won the competition for the third time in South Africa in 2013.

Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari has urged the Eagles to remain focused in order to win the tournament for a fourth time.

"MISSING TANZANIA JOURNALIST IS DEAD" - GOVERNMENT

Azory Gwanda who is said to be dead

Nairobi, KENYA

The Committee to Protect Journalists today called on the Tanzanian government to provide a detailed public account of the fate of freelance journalist Azory Gwanda after the country's foreign minister, Palamagamba Kabudi, said in an interview that the journalist is dead.

In an interview with the BBC's "Focus on Africa" program today, Kabudi said that Gwanda had "disappeared and died" in the country's eastern Rufiji region, and said that the government has since "been able to contain that kind of extremism" in the region.

Gwanda went missing on November 21, 2017, after investigating mysterious killings and disappearances in his community, and the Tanzanian government has never delivered a promised investigation into his case, according to CPJ research.

Tanzania foreign minister, Palamagamba Kabudi

"For a year and a half, Azory Gwanda's family and the Tanzanian media have pleaded with the government to explain what happened to their loved one and colleague," said CPJ Deputy Executive Director Robert Mahoney from New York. "Then suddenly the foreign minister mentions, almost in passing, that the journalist is apparently dead. This is wholly inadequate and distressing. The government must immediately share publicly all information it has about Gwanda's fate."

Kabudi told the BBC that the Tanzanian government is not "proud" of the disappearances and killings in Rufiji, which he said also took the lives of police officers and ruling party officials, and said that the government was taking measures to make sure that citizens and journalists are safe. However, CPJ research shows that impunity in journalists' deaths or disappearances contributes to an environment that fosters violence against journalists.

CPJ's phone calls today to Kabudi and Tanzanian government spokesperson Hassan Abbass went unanswered.

TANZANIA WOMEN URGED TO "SET OVARIES FREE" TO BOOST ECONOMY

Dar es Salaam, TANZANIA

Tanzania’s President, John Magufuli, urged the country’s women to “set your ovaries free” and bear more children as a way to help boost the economy into a regional powerhouse, a step critics said would instead worsen inequality and poverty.

“When you have a big population you build the economy. That’s why China’s economy is so huge,” he said late on Tuesday, citing India and Nigeria as other examples of countries that gained from a demographic dividend.

 “I know that those who like to block ovaries will complain about my remarks. Set your ovaries free, let them block theirs,” he told a gathering in his home town of Chato.

Since taking office in 2015, Magufuli has launched an industrialization campaign that has helped buoy economic growth, which has averaged 6-7% annually in recent years. But he has said a higher birth rate would achieve faster progress.

Tanzania has sustained relatively high growth, averaging 6–7 percent a year, over the past decade. At the same time, the East African nation of 55 million people already has one of the world’s highest birth rates - around 5 children per woman.

Data from the United Nations population fund UNFPA shows Tanzania’s population is growing by about 2.7 percent a year while most public hospitals and schools are overcrowded and many young people lack jobs.

UNFPA says about a third of married women in Tanzania use contraceptives, but Magufuli has criticized Western-backed family planning programmes implemented by the health ministry.

Last year Magufuli said curbing the birth rate was “for those too lazy to take care of their children”, and the health ministry barred broadcasting of family planning ads by a U.S.-funded project. 

While Tanzania’s poverty rate - people living on less than $1 a day - has declined to about 26% as of 2016, the absolute number of poor citizens has not because of the high population growth rate, according to the World Bank.

President Magufuli waving to some Game Ranger officers on the event

Opposition leaders in Tanzania have criticized Magufuli’s stance, saying the country’s already rapid population growth is a time bomb, and disapproving remarks surfaced on social media.

“As a modern woman I can’t believe this ... especially coming from him (the president),” said one Twitter user.

Others said it was simply bad economics for Magufuli to urge Tanzanians to have more babies.

“High population growth in Tanzania means increased levels of poverty and income inequality,” said a rights activist based in Dar es Salaam who asked not to be named to avoid possible repercussions from the government’s ongoing review of registration of non-governmental organisations. “Women’s ovaries should never be used as a tool for seeking economic prosperity.” - Reuters

WHO: MORE THAN 1 000 KILLED IN BATTLE FOR LIBYA'S TRIPOLI

Geneva, SWISS
The battle between rival groups for the Libyan capital has killed more than 1 000 people since it began in April, the United Nations said, a grim milestone in a stalemated conflict partly fueled by regional powers.

This picture taken on April 12, 2019 shows a smoke plume rising from an air strike behind a tank belonging to forces loyal to Libya's Government of National Accord (GNA), during clashes near Tripoli. (AFP Photo)

The World Health Organization said in a brief statement on Tuesday that 1 048 people have been killed since the offensive began, including 106 civilians. It said 5,558 were wounded, including 289 civilians.

"WHO continues to send doctors and medical supplies to help hospitals cope. Our teams have performed more than 1 700 surgeries in three months," the UN body said on Twitter.

Forces loyal to Khalifa Haftar, a renegade military commander, launched an offensive on Tripoli in early April, advancing on the city's southern outskirts to wrestle the capital from forces loyal to the UN-recognized Government of National Accord (GNA).

Haftar's Libyan National Army, which holds eastern Libya and much of the country's south, enjoys the support of Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, and Russia.

But it has faced stiff resistance from fighters aligned with the UN-recognized government, which is aided by Turkey and Qatar.

The battle lines have changed little since the offensive began, with both sides dug in and shelling one another in the southern reaches of the capital.

Forces aligned with the GNA recently recaptured Gharyan, a town 100km west of Tripoli, which is on a major supply route.

Fighting has emptied entire neighborhoods of civilians.

Thousands of African migrants captured by Libyan forces funded and trained by the European Union are trapped in detention centers near the front lines.

An air raid on one facility last week killed more than 50 people, mainly migrants held in a hangar that collapsed on top of them.

Libya slid into chaos after the 2011 NATO-backed uprising that toppled and killed long-ruling dictator Moammar Gaddafi.

Armed groups have proliferated and the country emerged as a major transit point for refugees and migrants fleeing war and poverty for a better life in Europe.

Haftar's supporters say he is the only leader who can end militia rule, reunite the oil-rich country, and keep it from being a safe haven for "terrorists".

But his critics see him as an aspiring strongman, and his offensive appears to have at least temporarily united western Libya's fractious forces in opposition to a return of one-man rule.

On Friday, the UN Security Council called on the warring parties to commit to a ceasefire and seek a political solution following the air attack on the migrant detention centre. 

SENEGAL DREAMING FOR 2019 AFCON CHAMPIONSHIP

Cairo, EGYPT

Senegal national team boss Aliou Cisse said the surprise exit of hosts Egypt and Morocco and the elimination of defending champions Cameroon has fueled hopes of a first Africa Cup of Nations title.

Senegal national team boss Aliou Cisse

Cisse was captain of the team that reached the 2002 final, losing to Cameroon on penalties, and is now coach of a strong side featuring Liverpool star Sadio Mane and Napoli defender Kalidou Koulibaly.

"It's true that Cameroon are not here, the big favourites are no longer here today. Of course that gives us ideas and it gives us even more confidence to say yes, maybe this year will be the one," Cisse said on Tuesday.

"But like I said, that's just hope and it won't be enough. We'll have to work very hard, we'll have to be serious, and that is what we're doing."

However, Cisse warned Senegal would pay the price for looking any further than Wednesday's quarterfinal with Benin in Cairo.

Michel Dussuyer's side have, remarkably, progressed to the last eight in Egypt for the first time despite not winning a single game.

But after advancing in third place following three draws in a group that included both Cameroon and Ghana, Benin survived a missed Hakim Ziyech spot-kick in stoppage time before beating Herve Renard's Morocco in a penalty shootout in the last 16.

"As for Benin, I'll say it again and again, for the past four years I have been here trying to convince you that there are no small teams on the African continent anymore," said Cisse.

"And I believe that this Afcon has shown that again, that winning in Africa is difficult, winning in Africa is complicated and wrong are those teams who think that a match is already settled."

PRESIDENT MUSEVENI GIVES UGANDA CRANES SH3.7 BILLION REWARD

Entebbe, Uganda

Ugandan President, Yoweri Museveni, has given Uganda Cranes a sh3.7 billion ($1million) reward for their performance at the ongoing Africa Nations Cup finals.

The team returned yesterday from Cairo, where they were knocked out at the Last-16 stage by Senegal. This is the first time the team gets to the knock-out stage since 1978.

President Museveni congratulated the team, saying they had achieved a lot despite dropping off in the knockout stages. He emphasized the importance of sports, saying that in addition to entertaining and improving one’s health, it also generates income and builds one’s character.

He also noted the limited budgetary support to sports by government, saying the country is still struggling with basics like security, public infrastructure, roads, electricity and piped water.

Museveni promised more support for sports when the resources allow.

Moses Magogo, the President Federation of Uganda Football Association-FUFA thanked the president for the support he gave to the team.   He also said he was proud of the team since they were in position to reach the knock out stages.

Magogo noted that the players put in a lot since a lot of teams including giants dropped out in the initial stages.

THE AFRICAN: TOM MBOYA

By Osoro Nyawangah

July 1969 was a month when Kenyan history changed forever. For much of humanity, eyes were firmly fixed on the skies. Far above them, for eight days starting on the 16th, three men left the bounds of earth, on their way to set foot on the surface of the moon.

In Kenya, though, eyes and thoughts were not cast skywards. Ten days before the moon landing, all attention was on a little patch of ground on a small island on Lake Victoria, the Rusinga Island.

On July 10, 1969, Tom Mboya was buried on Island. Five days before that, on a Saturday afternoon in Nairobi, Tom Mboya had walked into a chemist’s shop. He had bought a bottle of lotion and chatted to the Chhanis, the proprietors of the pharmacy. He had then stepped out, straight into a gunman who fired two bullets into him. Mboya was dead within the hour.

The alleged killer a certain Nahashon Njenga Njoroge was hastily hanged at Kamiti Prisons bringing the investigations to an end without answers to the most important questions. Before he died, Njenga said “Why don’t you go after the big man?”

So who was the big man who put a hit on Tom Mboya? Thanks to Lee Njiru, a former Press Secretary to both Kenyatta and Moi, we now have some fresh details about Mboya’s relationship with Mzee Kenyatta.

According to Njiru, Mzee Kenyatta liked Tom Mboya because he was a workhorse and an intellectual, but Kikuyus did not like him because he was too clever. People did not like the idea that the young man from Luo Nyanza was going to succeed Kenyatta.

But Mboya had irked a few Kikuyu Mafias during a conference in Canada a few years before Kenyatta’s release:

“Before Kenyatta left detention, one time Mboya had gone to Canada, and when asked: “Who will be Kenya’s President?” He said: “Kenyans will decide.” The Kikuyus noted that. They did not want any grey area, the answer should be, “It is Kenyatta.” People thought Mboya would succeed”

Lee Njiru also says that tribalism was ripe in post-independence Kenya and people from Mt. Kenya had been brainwashed and told that there was no way leadership would go to Western Kenya.

“You know there was that divide that leadership must stay within Mt Kenya region. So as young people, you know, we had been brainwashed that a Luo should not lead this country. And you know there is that narrative even up to now.”

With his murder, Kenya was shaken as it had never been before, and hasn’t since. A certain innocence was shattered. There had been political murder before — Pio Gama Pinto had been shot dead four-and-a-half years before. 

The late Cabinet Minister Tom Mboya with school children. 

But Mboya’s killing shifted something fundamental in the Kenyan political firmament. Before July 5, 1969, one could console oneself about the possibilities of reconciliation among a not-quite-fully-formed Kenyan political elite.

After July 5, 1969, all myths were shattered. Whoever ordered the killing — and until today this mystery has never been solved conclusively — had decided that they were no longer taking chances on the succession of a president who was suddenly showing his mortality. Jomo Kenyatta had been stricken the previous year.

Mboya’s biography, written a decade after his murder, is subtitled The Man Kenya Wanted to Forget. It is an apt title. Mboya is now, in the public imagination, merely a street and a monument. What is perceived as his memory is perhaps a misremembering.

Who, then, was Thomas Joseph Odhiambo Mboya? Why was it said of him that his death was when Kenya’s train came off the rails? Why, 50 years later, must we cast a gaze back with great interest?

A file image of Kenya's founding President Jomo Kenyatta and his Economic Planning Minister Tom Mboya.

Mboya was a young man in a hurry. Even as he jostled politically with his cohort as Kenya came to independence and after, he stood head and shoulders above them.

His politics was essentially forward-looking. He had used his positions of leadership in the labour movement to forge strong links within Africa and beyond, giving him access to powerful networks, significant amounts of financial resources, and an international profile that put him right at the forefront of global affairs.

He was on the cover of Time in March 1960, when getting on the cover of that magazine was a significant achievement. He was getting these international accolades more than three years before Kenya’s independence. He was Kenya’s foremost spokesperson on the international scene, leaving one with a lingering sense of loss and of what might have been.

In Tom Mboya: The Man Kenya Wanted to Forget, David Goldsworthy outlines how nervous Mboya was becoming in the months and years before July 1969. While he had engineered Kanu to position himself to take over (he was Secretary-General), the enemies were circling. He was beginning to be regarded as an interloper by the ethnic Praetorian Guard forming around Kenyatta.

They allowed for a Joseph Murumbi, who served a hapless seven months as Vice President because he was seen as a harmless dreamer. They allowed for a Daniel Moi because he was an even safer choice, seen as controllable by the far more urbane group around the President.

Mboya, however, was none of this. He was ambitious and well-connected. He did, too often for his own good, show an element of arrogance and disdain for the parochial and the small-minded.

At the same time, he was no longer trusted by the nascent opposition.

The reason the vice presidency was serially vacant was because Kenyatta had decisively broken with his erstwhile ally, Oginga Odinga.

But because Mboya had been, unfairly or otherwise, seen as a stalking horse for the conservative Kikuyu elements around Kenyatta, and because he had so brilliantly outflanked Odinga and his allies, he was not acceptable to Odinga’s group. It was then conveniently remembered that he was not quite Luo, seeing as his Rusinga Island antecedents were actually Abasuba.

From this precarious position, trying to thread the needle on a nervous political stage, Mboya approached the 1969 elections knowing that matters were coming to a head. His enemies were confident that they could diminish him further. And he knew that it was not just political annihilation they were after. There was a distinct possibility of physical danger. He confided in letters (which he was so sure were being surreptitiously opened and read) that political forces in Kenya were bent on cutting him down to size before fate made the presidential contest an open one.

The obvious question then is why, if he was steadily losing influence, was Mboya important enough to kill? The reason, perhaps, lay in his character and political skill. He was by far the most talented politician and the best organiser in the country.

He could call upon resources that few had access to. At this time, no one knew how long Mzee was going to stay alive, and thus whatever plotting was going on was, in essence, happening in the dark. You could try and isolate Mboya, but you knew that you could not keep him down. The decision was thus to get rid of him, permanently.

What would have become of the man and his career had Mboya lived?

Would Mboya have stayed patiently biding his time as Kenya’s politics went through the sclerotic 70s — with rapacious personalities taking advantage of the infirmities at the top? Would he have participated in the intrigues and counter-intrigues of the middle of the decade, or would he have tired of these and sought to deploy his prodigious talents elsewhere? It is intriguing to imagine Mboya striding on the world stage, perhaps even as a UN secretary-general, and coming back to resume leadership in Kenya once the path was clear.

Let’s indulge in some further counterfactual, and assume the inevitability of a Mboya presidency. How would he have performed? Would he have patiently consolidated democracy in the young nation, with all the messiness and compromises necessary? Or would he have been impatient to carry out an ambitious economic and developmental programme, ruthlessly casting aside those who were incapable or insufficiently committed?

Of course, this would have depended on when he ascended. Had it been in the 1970s, a President Mboya would have had to deal with the oil shocks and economic slowdown. Would Kenya have avoided the paranoia and lost decades of the 1980s and 1990s? How would a former President Mboya have behaved as an elder statesman?

A creature of the global elite, traversing the world on missions large and small, or a homebound sage, dispensing political wisdom? Or would he have tired of the ceaseless decades of endless activity and retired quietly to an undisturbed dotage?

But counterfactual history is just that — the fertile imaginings of what could have been. What is that Kenya’s greatest political talent was murdered 50 years ago.

The man who designed Kenya’s flag, named Banki Kuu ya Kenya and founded Kanu, was shot dead on a July afternoon before he reached the full flowering of his colossal political, organisational and strategic power.

One fateful month. When humanity reached for the heavens. And Kenya snuffed out our brightest star.