Not Yet Uhuru
Oginga Odinga
Flag independence was not yet real freedom.
The autobiography of Kenya's first vice-president, who broke with Jomo Kenyatta and resigned to lead the opposition. Odinga argues that formal independence had not delivered uhuru, real freedom, for ordinary Kenyans, as land and economic power stayed with a narrow elite and foreign interests. Written from a socialist and pan-African standpoint, it gave early voice to the disillusionment of the independence generation.
Its legacy. The phrase not yet uhuru became shorthand across Africa for the unfinished business of independence.
- Author
- Oginga Odinga
- First published
- 1967
- Genre
- Political memoir
- Theme
- Liberation and the Decolonized Mind
Facing Mount Kenya
Next →Decolonising the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature
More from Liberation and the Decolonized Mind
- The Wretched of the Earth — Frantz Fanon
The psychiatrist of the Algerian revolution anatomizes colonial violence.
- Neo-Colonialism: The Last Stage of Imperialism — Kwame Nkrumah
Independence on paper, control in practice.
- Return to the Source — Amilcar Cabral
Culture as a weapon of the liberation struggle.
- I Write What I Like — Steve Biko
The most potent weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed.