Saturday, July 12th 1969.

Footage of a press conference given by Daniel Arap Moi, the Vice-President of Kenya . He was speaking after the July 5th assassination of Tom Mboya, Kenya's Minister of Economic Planning & Development.

Moi described Mboya's murder as "a political execution, monstrously conceived" and claimed that it appeared to be part of a wider plan, aimed at the destruction of the government. He said that the assassination and its consequence were aimed at causing chaos and civil disorder as a stepping-stone to the imposition of "some alien ideology".

He refused to be drawn into allegations made on British TV that the South African security services was involved.

Source: Reuters News Archive.

Note:

1. Daniel Moi would succeed Jomo Kenyatta as Kenyan president after Kenyatta's death in 1978.

2. Tom Mboya, is considered a key architect of Kenyan independence.

3. Mboya's alleged assasin, Nahashon Njenga, a Bulgarian-trained sapper, was convicted and secretly hanged in a Nairobi prison in November 1969.

4. Mystery surrounds the circumstances behind Mboya's murder, with many still believing that it was part of a conspiracy by highly-placed Kenyan politicians. Ngenga's cryptic comment to the authorities “Why don’t you go after the big man? ” was interpreted by some as a reference to the Kenyan president Jomo Kenyatta, who they believed had a motive for eliminating all potential rivals. Kenyatta formally banned the opposition party dominated by ethnic Luos just before Ngenga's hanging, turning Kenya into a one-party state..

5. Mboya's death caused great anguish and anger among his Luo kinsmen, a minority to the dominant Kikuyu.