Jomo Kenyatta As the historian Keith Kyle put it, for many whites Kenyatta was "Satan Incarnate". This white animosity reached its apogee between 1950 and 1952. By 1964, this image had largely shifted, with many white settlers referring to him as "Good Old Mzee". Murray-Brown expressed the view that for many, Kenyatta's "message of reconciliation, 'to forgive and forget', was perhaps his greatest contribution to his country and to history." To Ochieng, Kenyatta was "a personification of conservative social forces and tendencies" in Kenya. Towards the end of his presidency, many younger Kenyans—while respecting Kenyatta's role in attaining independence—regarded him as a
Jomo Kenyatta manners" and a flexible attitude in adapting to urban situations dissimilar to the lands he had grown up in. A. R. Barlow, a member of the Church of Scotland Mission at Kikuyu, met with Kenyatta in Britain, later relating that he was impressed by how Kenyatta could "mix on equal terms with Europeans and to hold his end up in spite of his handicaps, educationally and socially." The South African Peter Abrahams met Kenyatta in London, noting that of all the black men involved in the city's Pan-Africanist movement, he was "the most relaxed, sophisticated and 'westernized' of the lot