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Approximately 600 highland farms are up for sale, many of them at cut prices by owners who talk bitterly of leaving the country. Half a dozen of the angriest settlers were at Nairobi Airport to greet homecoming Michael Blundell (see box), the moderate who accepted the new plan in London and bravely agreed to try to sell it to his fellow whites. One kept booming through a bull horn: "Shame, shame; shame on you! We have been betrayed by you, Mr. Blundell!" Others cried, "You rat!," and their leader, wiry little highlands farmer, Major Jim Hughes, 63, hurled a handful of coins at Blundell's feet, shouting, "Here are 30 pieces of silver for you, Judas—go on, pick them up!" (Said Blundell later: "It's due to his living at 8,300 feet.")
Vote for Some. Tom Mboya was exultant: "We have exploded once and for all the myth of white supremacy." Now it was his task to sell the plan to the doubters and the angry among his own Africans. There were some of both, for Mboya and his delegation were not returning with all they had promised. He had sworn to settle for nothing less than one man, one vote, but in London he accepted a franchise still limited to those who can read or write, or are over 40, or are earning at least $210 a year. He had promised "Uhtiru today!," but he will not have full independence tomorrow, or perhaps for three or four years. Even the African majority will not take effect until early next year.
But Mboya had taken what he could get from Colonial Secretary Iain Macleod, and he proclaimed, at his own big welcome-home, that the agreement was just "an instrument to use" in getting more—and getting it more quickly. "As to the future of white settlers, there's no room for anyone who does not believe in undiluted democracy. Those Europeans who hesitate have only one alternative, and that's to sell out and leave."
The violence of Mboya's language, delivered with a pleased smile, reflected his own increased self-confidence and his shrewd tactical awareness that he dares not let any African leader grab a more extreme position for independence than his. To the crowd of 20,000 gathered in Nairobi's African Stadium, Mboya pledged, to the biggest cheers of the day: "We will not rest until Kenyatta is back with us."
The big challenge to Mboya's leadership revolves around the famous exile in faraway Lodwar village. The legendary Kenyatta remains the idol of every Kenya African. If Kenyatta is angry with Mboya's compromise, Tom is in for trouble, for, after all, he is a mere youngster in the eyes of some Kikuyu politicians, who were fighting for African rights before Mboya was born. Cautiously, Tom says: "I have never represented myself as a replacement for Kenyatta. When he comes back, we will all accept him as our leader," and he adds: "It does not make much difference to me. I am not in this for personal gain." One Kenyatta associate says that Jomo, a man of harsh action, "does not like Mboya's talk-talk-talk way of doing things."