A new history was made in the nation on October 25, 1969, a terrible and painful one which many Kenyans would rather forget all about.
This was the day when hundreds were shot, several killed and peace disrupted in the lakeside city of Kisumu, as Presidential guard combated the angry crowd.
In what would later be dubbed ‘The Kisumu Massacre’, then President Jomo Kenyatta visited the lakeside town to open the Nyanza General Hospital, before he was heckled by reported opposition supporters.
The main man in the incident was opposition figure and ex-Vice President Oginga Odinga with whom Kenyatta had fallen out with earlier in 1966.
The group heckled and booed the President chanting Dume! Dume!, the Kenya People’s Union (KPU) slogan, a party that was being led by Oginga.
And though Oginga and his allied were blamed for the same, his former speech writer and Press Secretary Barrack Ondinge Odera was of the contrary opinion, maintaining that it was all the doing of the state.
In his book ‘My Journey With Jaramogi, Memoirs Of A Close Confidant’ released in 2010, Odinge noted that the heckling group was deliberately planted in the crowd by the state.
He says that the plan was to provoke the police and when that happened, the force fired into the crowd, killing some and maiming others.
Prior to the incident, Odinge had warned Oginga against attending the event, after gathering intelligence that things would take the worst turn were he to avail himself.
That was on October 23, after KPU allies close to the Special Branch, then the intelligence agency learned that it was dangerous to attend the event.
“I met Jaramogi at his Nairobi office and told him there would be trouble if he travelled to Kisumu, he says in the book as is quoted by a Standard publication dated March 15, 2015.
The defiant Oginga would attend the event anyway.
The aftermath of the shootout was a heavy number of casualties, a deteriorated relationship between the two, a curfew days later and ultimately, the arrest of some of Oginga’s allies.
Odinge died in March 2015 aged 82.
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