Following the disagreement between Vice President Odinga and President Kenyatta, Joseph Zuzarte Murumbi was named second vice president in May 1966. Murumbi had previously served as Kenya’s first minister of foreign affairs after independence.
Murumbi was born in 1911 to a Maasai lady and a Goan merchant in Londiani, Kericho. He recalled his mother as a polyglot who spoke Maasai, English, Hindustani, Lumbwa, and Kikuyu in a media interview. The first few years of his life were spent in India. When he was just six years old, in 1917, his father, Peter Zuzarte, sent him to Bangalore, India, where he would get a missionary education. He obtained employment at an ice manufacturing company after graduating from high school.
Between 1941 and 1951, he was employed by the Somali government; from 1951 to 1957, he served as the Movement for Colonial Freedom’s assistant secretary. After that, Murumbi was employed by the Moroccan Embassy in London as the press and tourist officer. At a public forum in Kenya in 1952, Murumbi “persistently but unsatisfactorily” sought answers from a speaker. It was then that he met Pio Gama Pinto. After Pinto later identified himself, their friendship blossomed into something more than that, lasting until Pinto was shot dead in 1965.
Murumbi was first introduced by Pinto to the Kenya Study Group, a small gathering of politicians and other professionals who gathered on a monthly basis to discuss current political issues. Pinto was Murumbi’s political inspiration. The top leadership of the Kenya African Union was detained following the October 20, 1952, imposition of a state of emergency. As a result, Murumbi was named interim secretary-general of the party.
Murumbi played a major role in procuring legal representation for the core group of inmates seized in the Emergency crackdown (the Kapenguria Six), including Kenyatta. During his six-month stay in India at the height of the emergency in 1953, Pinto provided him Press cuttings and commentary on the local political situation every week, which Murumbi utilized in his anti-colonial operations in India and subsequently Cairo and London. He used Pinto’s assistance to expose the world to the cruelty of British colonial control via Indian journals like The Chronicle.
He was elected to the Nairobi South House of Representatives in the 1963 elections after serving as the Kanu treasurer in 1962. He was named Minister of State in the Prime Minister’s office during the first Cabinet, which convened in 1963.
He completed his praise of Pinto by saying, “He reacted quickly to injustice.” I must tell his detractors that their understanding of political orthodoxy is, in fact, warped if this hero possessed such traits and was labeled a communist as a result of his deeds.
Murumbi was a unique kind of patriot who aspired to honorably and dignifiedly serve his country. However, he discovered that morality and integrity were insufficient for being a prosperous politician. Different opinions existed among government officials on how to run a firm.
But Murumbi, a morally pure politician who detested political scheming and corruption, did not go along with the crowd and left government in November 1966, having served just seven months. Kenyatta, however, was opposed to Murumbi leaving the administration.
Before Murumbi passed away in 1990, the former vice president described how a visibly distraught Kenyatta “walked away” from him without saying anything at a news conference after telling him he would step down.
Moi, who followed Murumbi, then succeeded Kenyatta after his death in 1978.
But aside from his disapproval of the importance politicians placed on their own image rather than their public service, Murumbi’s resignation was mostly motivated by resentment at the death of Pio Gama Pinto, his mentor and friend. Murumbi submitted a heartfelt letter of gratitude to Pinto a year after his murder, characterizing him as a friend of the underprivileged and oppressed. “Across the nation, men continue to remember his generosity,” the author said. He offered the impoverished everything he had. He donated without expecting anything in return. He was impoverished when he passed away.
Murumbi noted that Pinto’s enemies had accused him of being a communist, “but even if he were, surely in a democratic Kenya, that is not a crime warranting death to follow any political persuasion”. He described his fallen friend as a socialist “who lived his socialist beliefs in thought and deed”.
After buying his first collector’s item at a shop in London in the early 1960s, Murumbi became an avid art collector. By the time he died, he had collected over 50,000 books and official correspondence. The Kenya National Archives has set up a library of 8,000 rare books (published before 1900), which were entrusted to it by Murumbi.
Murumbi co-founded the African Heritage with his wife Sheila and friend Alan Donovan. It has become Africa’s largest Pan-African art gallery. Joe, as his friends fondly knew Murumbi, turned down huge offers from overseas bidders for his vast art collection. Instead, he sold it to the Kenya Government at a concessionary rate. And he gave conditions — that the collection would be preserved at his Muthaiga home, which would be expanded to become the Murumbi Institute of African Studies, with a library, a hostel and a kitchen.
Regretfully, Murumbi was terribly upset when the government separated the property and gave it to developers. Reportedly, he never really recovered from the shock of seeing that the property was being developed into real estate when he visited. At this point, he relocated to a Maasai community close to the Maasai Mara Game Reserve, where he constructed what his friend Alan Donavan reportedly called a “stunning” home. Murumbi fractured his back in 1982 after falling in his bathroom. After being transported to Nairobi, he was left wheelchair-dependent.
Murumbi suffered a heart attack in 1990 and passed away. Sheila, his wife, passed away in October 2000. Outside the City Park Cemetery, they are interred close to one another. Murumbi’s final request was to be buried at the City Park, beside the tomb of his buddy Gama Pinto. However, the cemetery was full, so his widow was permitted to bury him outside the park, close to the grave of a friend.
On March 29, 2009, the Murumbi Peace Memorial was opened at the Nairobi City Park. It encloses the graves of Joseph and Sheila Murumbi as well as a sculpture garden created by pioneer East African artists whose works are in the Murumbi collection. The memorial is one of the few places where sculptures by leading African artists can be viewed in an open space.
A $50,000 grant from the Ford Foundation (Kshs4 million at the current exchange rate) was given to the Murumbi Trust in the 1980s to restore, interpret, preserve, and label the historic collection of political, artistic, textile, material, and cultural artifacts. These are now on permanent display in glass showcases at the Kenya National Archives. Both residents and tourists may learn about the artistic and cultural variety of the continent at the gallery.
There are said to be 8,000 pieces in Murumbi’s collection, which is among the richest in Africa. However, there is a notice that reads, “The collection herein is still in progress, still awaiting more memorabilia and awards given to the revered collector,” pinned to his personal display case.
The collection is in three parts — books or publications, records and material culture. He collected more than 2,000 rare books on African history, expeditions and travels. The records include those he collected in his official capacity in government and personal letters and cards. These are in the private archives, but the books are displayed in the Murumbi Africana Book Library alongside the National Archives Library. The material culture includes a wide range of original items collected from West, Central and East Africa. They cover every aspect of human activity and artwork. The collection also includes mythology, magic, weaponry and farm inputs. There are items made from wood, stone, clay, ivory, hides and skins, bronze, brass and even bones.
Murumbi had a keen eye for rare African artefacts, such as the mono print titled Young Girl by renowned Nigerian Muraina Oyelami and the Ejiri carvings credited to Ijo artists, which reflect traces of ancient cubism as a prevalent art form in the Niger Delta. Equally impressive are the wooden Gelede masks, whose gigantic heads are elongated in a traditional style. The Gelede mask was used during special ceremonies held to worship the beauty of womanhood and witchcraft among the Yoruba.
