Presidents Made In Kenya

Today at Kasarani Stadium as we were celebrating our 50 years of independence, H.E. Joyce Banda was called up to make a speech. She spoke of the 6 years she was in Kenya, though in a few words. Joyce was in Kenya from 1975 to about 1981 where she was with her abusive diplomat husband. It is in Kenya where she got enlightenment about women rights and decided to quit her abusive marriage.
“I think it all started out when I went to live in Kenya, because that is the time they declared the decade for women, 1975. I didn’t realize at that time that I was locked up in an abusive marriage. As an African woman, I had been brought up to believe that, that was normal, that if you are in a marriage there is nothing too much for you to bear, you can tolerate anything, you can live with anything, until I went to Kenya,” she told the Harvard Gazette in March last year.

But she is not the only president made in Kenya. Apart from the obvious Obama, another president, is the other female president H.E. Ellen Johnson Sirleaf of Liberia.

At the time Joyce was leaving Kenya, Ellen was coming in. She was fleeing from a coup in Liberia and came to Kenya where she was a director at Citibank. She later on left to contest the presidential elections in Liberia.

However, the most infamous president Kenya made was Ugandan despot Iddi Amin.
Amin was in the King’s African Rifles regiment. In 1947, he was transferred as a private to Kenya and was involved in the 1949 Shifta War in Northern Kenya. Amin must have declared his evil ways early on when he was deployed to fight the Mau Mau in 1952.
In February 1976, he actually claimed about a third of Kenya belonged to Uganda. In typical Jomo fashion, Kenyan troops and armored personnel carriers were deployed along the Kenya Uganda border. Amin could never threaten anymore.

Maybe the greatest president Kenya has made is Mandela. Mandela was inspired by the Mau Mau to use violence against the whites, where hitherto the ANC had restrained from violence for 40 years. Umkhonto we Sizwe was the South African Mau Mau that Mandela formed.
In 50 years, we have made presidents for 4 nations in the world; and these are those we know of. May the next 50 make more