MAMA NGINA KENYATTA
| DATE OF BIRTH | June 24, 1933 |
| GENDER | Female |
| OCCUPATION | Former First Lady |
Biography
Mama Ngina Kenyatta is the widow of Kenya’s first president, Jomo Kenyatta and the matriarch in charge of the Kenyatta family’s vast business empire.
She leads a business empire that is associated with popular commercial brands and blue-chip companies.
She is known to be intensely private and operates more like the enigma that surfaces from the shadows only when her family’s name is being drugged in the mud.
Mama Ngina Kenyatta Family
Mama Ngina Kenyatta was born in 1933 into an elite Kenyan family. Her father was a colonial chief, Muhoho wa Gathecha.
She got married to Jomo Kenyatta, a commoner, when she was only 19 years old.
Together with the late Kenyatta they had five children including Kenya’s former fourth President Uhuru Muigai Kenyatta.
Politics
Aside from her family, Mama Ngina was actively involved in supporting various Harambee (community development) initiatives.
Despite her limited public profile and political involvement since the days of Jomo Kenyatta, her political influence remained largely unknown.
However, in 2022, she openly campaigned for Uhuru Kenyatta‘s preferred presidential candidate, Azimio la Umoja leader, Raila Odinga.
Role in fight for independence
Mama Ngina Kenyatta’s marriage came a year before the 1952 state of emergency declared by the British governor, Sir Evelyne Baring, shortly after the assassination of Senior Chief Waruhiu.
During this period, British troops conducted ‘Operation Anvil,’ resulting in the arrest of 20,000 Mau Mau fighters who were then placed in detention camps.
Additionally, 30,000 individuals were relocated to native reserves. In the tumultuous period leading up to Kenya’s independence.
As such, Jomo Kenyatta was seen as a highly influential figure, and Mama Ngina experienced the full impact of her association with the founding father.
Ngina would later be arrested alongside Mukami Kimathi, wife of late Mau Mau leader Dedan Kimathi and Miriam Muthoni, wife of General Mathenge wa Mirugi and imprisoned at the dreaded Kamiti Maximum Prison under deplorable conditions.
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