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"Tom always acts as if he has a majority," says one of his rivals, "and he gets away with it." If he emerges as the head of an African-led Kenya, what then? In the new states of Africa, independence by no means brings a net gain in individual freedom, as the roughly handled opposition party in Ghana has come to realize. The one-party system is the predominant pattern so far in emerging Africa.
"Often there is no room at first for a 'loyal opposition,' for its sole aim after independence could only be overthrow of the independence movement itself," says Tanganyika's Nyerere. Mboya, too, is a professed democrat, but he does not guarantee that pure Western-style freedom can be achieved. "I am flattered by those who demand perfection from us," he says. "The paraphernalia of Western democracy are not necessarily best suited for Africa . . . New nations are bound to experiment with the institutions they inherit."
Mboya is firmly committed to a land-reform program that would split up the idle portions of large estates, but not to the wholesale expulsion of Europeans from the 12,700 sq. mi. of white highlands. "We must treat land as a national asset, encourage African ownership and cooperatives where necessary. We hope to acquire the land voluntarily—and pay fair value," he says, but he opposes specific constitutional guarantees to protect the minority whites. A strong bill of rights, he insists, is all that is needed: "Either people trust us that we are sincere or there is very little that can be done."
Future Republic? He sees the Kenya of the future as a republic (within the British Commonwealth "unless something very drastic happens"), committed politically to neither East nor West but guided by the Western principles of freedom, which have molded his own rise to influence. For all his forays into British socialistic thinking, he knows the need for Kenya to attract capital investment.
When he is off the platform and not being demagogic, he seems well aware of the lack of trained Africans to run the country, the need for the good will, the energy and skill of the European settlers, and the necessity to deserve, in order to get, large injections of foreign aid. Tom Mboya hopes the Europeans will stay in an African-run Kenya, developing a Kenya loyalty (why should they remain Europeans, he asks, when in Canada they become Canadians?).
Mboya speaks as a man of good intentions. But even if Mboya's intentions are to be trusted, there is no assurance that wilder men like Argwings-Kodhek, or Kenyatta's fierce activists, will not rise to power, hurling democratic principles out the window. As Michael Blundell puts it: "It requires a lot of faith."