Okello: Man who used media to fight British propaganda

In the late 50s, there were tens of pro-independence activists strewn in several foreign countries, and then there was William Odhiambo Okello, who died this week.

While we know of the men behind the Kennedy Airlifts which took many Kenyan students to the US, we hardly hear of the team that was taken to Eastern Europe through efforts coordinated by Okello in Egypt.

For those who have followed the story of the dying days of the colonial empire, the tale of the Kenya Office in Cairo turns to be the little talked about turning point towards freedom.

But the contribution of the young Kenyans who managed events from here has not been fully appreciated; the reason why Okello is a forgotten titan of Kenya’s independence struggle.

Okello was the man behind the Kenya Office in Cairo and had the support of both Jaramogi Oginga Odinga and Egyptian Abdel Nasser — whose government helped finance the activities of the group to accelerate Kenya’s move towards independence.

PROPAGANDA

The group had, at one point, earned the attention of British intelligence who frequently copied Odinga’s letters and documents as they sought to build a case about his dalliance with the Communist East through the Kenya Office.

The office was opened to counter emerging propaganda from the British government that Kenya was not ready for independence and that Jomo Kenyatta had no place of authority in a new Kenya.

The reason Okello had to leave college to lead the Kenya Office in Cairo was best put by Odinga in his epic book Not Yet Uhuru:

“Throughout the emergency years, Kenya freedom fighters had struggled on their own resources … (and were) unable to counter the propaganda against us spread by the hostile settler and imperialist press. If the worldwide news agencies would not disseminate our material we would have to find other ways of doing so. This is one of the reasons I supported the establishment of the Kenya Office in Cairo.”

Besides Okello, others in the secretariat included Wera Ambitho and Abdullah Karungo Kinyariro — a former Mau Mau fighter who the British wanted to arrest over the 1953 attack on loyalists in Lari.

PASSPORTS

Kinyariro would later in 1970s become a district officer in Siaya.

Okello would also join the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) headquarters in Addis Ababa as the Chief of General Services before becoming a consular at the Kenyan Embassy in Washington DC, staying at 801 Delaware Avenue.

In Cairo, Okello provided space at 5 Ahmad Heshmat Street in Zamalek for the students en route to the Eastern bloc colleges and universities and lobbied for them to get scholarships. Most of these students arrived in Cairo via Uganda and Sudan.

With the British government reluctant to give travel documents to Eastern Europe, Okello managed to lobby for some students to get travel papers from either Sudan or Egypt.

Okello had, for his part, secretly crossed over to Uganda — after he was denied travel documents to pick up a scholarship to study in Italy.

According to Odinga, Okello and Ambitho “had their passports impounded by the Kenyan government the day they boarded the ship to leave. I pleaded their case before the Chief Secretary, but to no avail.

"The three young men made their way out of the country illegally, travelling across Uganda and taking three months to reach Khartoum where the students at the university helped them.”

COUP

Okello, with his ruthless determination to get university education, was enrolled at Khartoum University to study law.

From here, he continued to attack the British government through an outfit financed by the Sudan government of Prime Minister Abdallah Khalil, but a November 1958 internal coup against the coalition government allowed Khalil to ally Sudan with the pro-West regime.

The move uprooted several pro-Communist students and groupings from Khartoum to Cairo and that is how the Kenya Information Office moved north into Egypt where Gamal Abdel Nasser granted the students refugee status.

They were also given an office which became an important contact for all the East-leaning Kenyan politicians and students willing to study in communist countries. This is what Okello would name The Kenya Office in Cairo which acted like a consulate.

KENYATTA

After the formation of Kanu in 1960, Odinga managed to transform this office into a formidable unit which spewed propaganda against the British government and all those he thought were opposed to the release of Jomo Kenyatta.

It was his take that a group allied to Tom Mboya and James Gichuru was opposed to the early release of Jomo Kenyatta and their hope was to sideline the future vice-president from Kenyan politics.

It was Odinga who called for the release of Jomo Kenyatta from Maralal restriction without any conditions as Mboya and Gichuru continued to dilly-dally with political negotiations in London.

As Okello opened a new radio in Cairo and published a newsletter which became a source of information for radicals abroad, another group would coalesce around Denis Akumu who formed what he called Ginger Action Group (GAG).

This was another outfit formed to derail Mboya, and many historians think that both Odinga and Okello were the politicos behind the Ginger group.

Actually, when the GAG was founded, it received a lot of coverage at the Kenya Office in Cairo newsletter and it was to be a forum for Kanu radicals who were opposed to the moderation of both Mboya and Gichuru — who wanted a Kenya which also guaranteed settlers a right to property, including land.

MBOYA

Akumu was known to frequent the Kenya Office in most of his travels abroad.

Actually, shortly after Mboya stated Kanu’s new stand on settlers after the London talks on the future of Kenya, Akumu’s GAG wrote an open letter, later published by Okello’s newsletter: “It is reported that some Kanu national leaders intend giving settlers a guarantee of continued ownership of farms to expel fear of expropriation. This assurance is unrealistic and absurd.”

Okello, as the chairman of the Kenya Office, was instrumental in all the dealings and dalliance that Odinga had in the East and through him Odinga became more linked to Communist Russia and China where his fundraising efforts and eloquence were well-known.

At one point, the Kenya Office accused Mboya of being behind an “imperialist plot” to prevent the release of Kenyatta.

While its anti-Mboya stance was known, the group remained a thorn in the flesh of Kenyan moderates and questions were raised over how far Odinga could survive in Kanu with his radical and communist leaning.

Questions were always asked about the intentions of the Kenya Office in Cairo, which had broad support of Nasser’s government as part of his anti-British policies.

That William Odhiambo Okello was little-known in Kenya was thanks to a policy that tended to sideline those who studied in Eastern Europe. But he was a man who made a huge contribution to the East-West political drama.