Kenya African National Union nonetheless decided to remove all provisions of a federal nature from the constitution. Kenya became independent on December 12, 1963, and the next year became a republic within the Commonwealth. Jomo Kenyatta, head of the Kenya African National Union, became Kenya's first president. KADU dissolved itself voluntarily in 1964 and joined KANU after a strong lobbying by Tom Mboya. A small but significant leftist opposition party, the Kenya People's Union (KPU), was formed in 1966, led by Jaramogi Oginga Odinga, a former vice president and Luo elder. The KPU was banned and its leader detained after political unrest related to
Jomo Kenyatta For Kenyatta, acquiring an advanced degree would bolster his status among Kenyans and display his intellectual equality with white Europeans. Over the course of his studies, Kenyatta and Malinowski became close friends. Fellow course-mates included the anthropologists Audrey Richards, Lucy Mair, and Elspeth Huxley. Another of his fellow LSE students was Prince Peter of Greece and Denmark, who invited Kenyatta to stay with him and his mother, Princess Marie Bonaparte, in Paris during the spring of 1936. Kenyatta returned to his former dwellings at 95 Cambridge Street, but did not pay his landlady for over a year, owing over £100