Jomo Kenyatta had eczema across his body. Kenyatta's imprisonment transformed him into a political martyr for many Kenyans, further enhancing his status. A Luo anti-colonial activist, Jaramogi Oginga Odinga, was the first to publicly call for Kenyatta's release, an issue that gained growing support among Kenya's anti-colonialists. In 1955, the British writer Montagu Slater—a socialist sympathetic to Kenyatta's plight—released "The Trial of Jomo Kenyatta", a book which raised the profile of the case. In 1958, Rawson Macharia, the key witness in the state's prosecution of Kenyatta, signed an affidavit swearing that his evidence against Kenyatta had been false; this was widely publicised.
Jomo Kenyatta own wishes". Kenyatta expressed this in his statement that "I have stood always for the purposes of human dignity in freedom, and for the values of tolerance and peace." This approach was similar to the Zambian President Kenneth Kaunda's ideology of "African humanism". Murray-Brown noted that "Kenyatta had always kept himself free from ideological commitments", while the historian William R. Ochieng observed that "Kenyatta articulated no particular social philosophy". Similarly, Assensoh noted that Kenyatta was "not interested in social philosophies and slogans". Various commentators and biographers described him as being politically conservative, an ideological viewpoint likely bolstered by his training