Dark Saturday in 1969 when Jomo’s visit to Kisumu turned bloody

Police disperse crowds in Kisumu by shooting indiscriminately during a visit by Jomo Kenyatta on October 25, 1969. PHOTO | FILE | NATION MEDIA GROUP

Photo credit: FILE | NATION MEDIA GROUP

What you need to know:

  • A visit to the town by former President Kenyatta in October 1969, came only four months after the assassination of his Cabinet minister Tom Mboya and 10 months after Argwings Kodhek’s death.
  • The ceremony ended in a bloodbath with the presidential guard and the police fatally shooting more than 50 people after a commotion on the presidential podium.

October 25, 1969, was a day of gloom in Kisumu as a ceremony to open a public hospital turned into a massacre.

Founding President Mzee Jomo Kenyatta had been on a two-day tour of Western Kenya, three years after his Vice-President Jaramogi Oginga Odinga instigated a mass exit from then ruling party, Kanu, and formed the Kenya Peoples’ Union (KPU) in 1966.

Since Mr Odinga enjoyed massive support in the region, Mr Kenyatta’s tour was full of tension.

TENSION

In his tour of Western and Nyanza provinces, Kisumu was to be his last stop before his return to Nairobi, the Kenyan capital.

It was on a Saturday, 49 years ago when Mr Kenyatta arrived in Kisumu to preside over the opening of the Soviet-built New Nyanza Provincial General Hospital, better known as Russia.

Kisumu gets its name from Luo term Kisuma which means ‘sumo’, a place of barter trade, where people came to exchange their goods. It was initially named Port Florence in 1901.

BLOODBATH

A visit to the town by former President Kenyatta in October 1969, came only four months after the assassination of his Cabinet minister Tom Mboya and 10 months after Argwings Kodhek’s death. The ceremony ended in a bloodbath with the presidential guard and the police fatally shooting more than 50 people after a commotion on the presidential podium.

Mzee Abdul Hussein Dahya, 89, whose only son Alnoor was shot dead at their Kibuye home, barely 70 metres from the new hospital, says hell broke loose when KPU youth clashed with those from Kanu.

He says someone hurled a stone at the main dais prompting the shootings as Presidential guard rushed to ensure his safety.

KPU leader Jaramogi Oginga Odinga (with cap) in an exchange with President Jomo Kenyatta in October 25, 1969, shortly before Mzee's bodyguards opened fire and killed about 50 people in Kisumu.

Photo credit: FILE | NATION MEDIA GROUP

The younger Alnoor, aged nine, was playing with his sister Shyroz Mohammed outside their house when he was shot. Mr Dahya and his wife Zaria Abdul Dahya, 78, told the Nation.

“At that time, I was still at the hospital where I had gone to witness the facility’s official opening. Gun shots rented the air. Women and children were uncontrollably wailing and victims of shootings lay soaked in blood in the corridors,” Mr Dahya recalls.

“Jaramogi had been taken away by his guards as presidential security also whisked him (Kenyatta) away. I managed to get out of the scene and dashed to my house through the rear gate only to be met with the sad news of my son's shooting.”

SHOOTING

His wife Zaria narrated that they rushed the young boy to the same facility that had been rocked by chaos for treatment, but he was pronounced dead on arrival.

“That’s how we lost our third-born, who was then a Class Four pupil at Aga Khan Primary School,” Ms Zaria says.

“It was like a horror movie. Even senior police officials were shooting anybody on sight. The shootings went on along the Kisumu-Nairobi Highway as the presidential motorcade left for Nairobi and there were reports of people killed along Ahero and Awasi — 30 to 50 kilometres away,” Mzee Dahya narrates.

HOSTILE

It was the last trip President Kenyatta made to Kisumu until his death in August 1978.

Mzee Dahya, who was then the Nation Media Group’s distributor in Western region, adds that the day will forever remain in their minds as a family.

Showing us the exact spot on his wall hit by the killer bullet that snatched the life of his only son, Mr Dahya demeanour spoke despondency.

According to football legend Ambrose Nyapada, Mzee Kenyatta was received by a hostile crowd that chanted "Dume! Dume” (Bull) — the KPU party symbol.

MOTORCADE

“Some of the placards waved at his motorcade as it snaked into Kisumu from Kakamega by road also questioned the whereabouts of Mboya, who had been killed a few months before the visit,” said Mzee Nyapada, who led Kenya football national team to victory against Zanzibar in the 1958 Gossage Cup finals staged at African National Stadium, now City Stadium.

Jaramogi said that the Luo were unhappy with Kenyatta's leadership. As they exchanged harsh words, the crowd got more hostile.

HANDSHAKE

Mzee Adera Osawa, who was then the larger South Nyanza Kenya National Union of Teachers (Knut) secretary-general, revealed how the government banned KPU and placed Mr Odinga under house arrest.

“Jaramogi and other KPU officials were arrested and taken to Kamiti Maximum Security Prison on October 27, 1969.”

“That further heightened tension in the country. This probably explains the bad blood that has existed between the Kikuyu and the Luo community that our leader Raila Amollo Odinga intends to bury with the famous handshake with President Uhuru Kenyatta,” Mr Osawa, who is also the Luo Council of Elders secretary-general, says.

SUFFERING

Mr Odinga disclosed during his first visit to Kondele in Kisumu after the handshake that his pact with President Kenyatta seeks to heal all the past historical injustices against the Luo tribe.

Luo Council of Elders’ executive secretary Owino Nyady narrated that due to the shootings and killings of 1969 in Kisumu, the Luo community coined a word; “goch Kisumo” that can be loosely translated to "beatings Kisumu style.”

Mzee Nyady says no wonder the term sends shivers down the spines of any Luo as it makes one recall the suffering of those who witnessed Russia Hospital’s opening in 1969.

ATTACHMENT

But the scenes at the hospital’s opening could have been prevented had Jaramogi listened to his aide Collins Odinge Odera’s advice to skip the ceremony.

In his book, My Journey with Jaramogi, Memoirs of a Close Confidant, Mr Odera narrates how he tried, in vain, to convince Jaramogi to keep off the ceremony, but he refused, insisting that he had influenced the hospital's construction.

Jaramogi’s adviser and speech writer in the book narrates: “Jaramogi said ‘if the President is going, I must also go because he is coming to our area.'”

He says Jaramogi felt a strong attachment to the hospital since it was built by his Soviet Union allies.

He however, believes the killings were planned and that the youths who heckled Mr Kenyatta leading to the shooting were “planted.”