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 degraded black people. Appearing in the film also allowed him to meet and befriend its star, the African-American Paul Robeson. In 1935, Italy invaded Ethiopia (Abyssinia), incensing Kenyatta and other Africans in London; he became the honorary secretary of the International African Friends of Abyssinia, a group established by Padmore and C. L. R. James. When Ethiopia's monarch Haile Selassie fled to London in exile, Kenyatta personally welcomed him at Waterloo station. This group developed into a wider pan-Africanist organisation, the International African Service Bureau (IASB), of which Kenyatta became one of the vice chairs. Kenyatta began giving anti-colonial lectures