After the first black Kenyan Chief of General Staff Major-General Joseph Ndolo and other co-conspirators unsuccessfully sought to topple the government of Mzee Jomo Kenyatta in early 1971, many hard questions were asked thereafter as to what could have led to the state of affairs.
Of course, this was the order of the day in many freshly independent African countries that had just gained freedom a decade earlier.
However, Kenyatta having survived the first ever biggest challenge to his authority, could not sit back pretty and assume that it was the normal wave of military coups that was sweeping across Africa.
The head of state, according to historians, embarked on a serious mission to find out what could have precipitated the coup attempt. And what was found out? Well, historians point to three possible factors.
First, they say, the euphoria of independence had largely evaporated as an increasingly frail and sickly Kenyatta fell out with many of his comrades, including his first principal assistant, Jaramogi Oginga Odinga. Two years before the attempted coup (1969), Odinga had been detained and his opposition Kenya People's Union party banned.
Second, Kenyatta's brutal crackdown on critics and the tight grip on the State by some influential Central Kenya power barons that were his insiders put him at odds with leaders from other regions who felt excluded and betrayed at the same time.
Finally, early in the same year, a precedent had been set in neighboring Uganda when Idi Amin, the head of the military, ousted President Milton Obote. Obote, who had himself fallen out with Kabaka Mutesa, had been accused of the same shortcomings that were now confronting Kenyatta.
In the ensuing prosecutions, details emerged on how at least 12 meetings christened as 'goat-eatings', had been held to plan on the coordination and execution of the coup slotted for April 8, that year.
The secretive meetings were said to have taken place in Ukambani, Kampala and Dar es Salaam with the then Yatta MP Gideon Mutiso acting as the chairman of the Revolutionary Council, the political wing of the plotters.
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