There he spent his whole life supporting Jomo Kenyatta to achieve independence for Kenya, without any greed or grabbing for high status from the Prime Minister.
Jomo Kenyatta | Kenyatta University | Jomo Kwame Sundaram | Jomo Sono | Uhuru Kenyatta | Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology | Kenyatta National Hospital | Jomo Kenyatta International Airport | Jomo Kenyatta Prize for Literature |
As a young man in 1952 he joined a team of lawyers from various Commonwealth countries, including the British barrister Denis Nowell Pritt and other lawyers educated in England but not born there, defending Kenyans accused of Mau Mau activities by the British colonial administration, in a series of trials including that of Jomo Kenyatta.
It is known for the first Kenyan president Jomo Kenyatta who was from this area, as well as his son, Uhuru Kenyatta, now 4th President of Kenya and former Member of Parliament representing Gatundu South Constituency.
He arrived at Mombasa by sea from South Africa in 1951 afterwhich his father introduced him to Jomo Kenyatta and Mbiyu Koinange at a restaurant along Latema road in Nairobi.
The most famous photograph of him is with President Jomo Kenyatta on attainment of Uhuru (independence) in 1963 and most of the post war Mau Mau video clips show him inspecting a Mau Mau guard of honour or with President Jomo Kenyatta.
Mekonnen received awards and recognition from His Imperial Majesty Haile Selassie of Ethiopia, president Jomo Kenyatta of Kenya, president Idi Amin of Uganda, and president Julius Nyerere of Tanzania.
As Carol Polsgrove has shown in Ending British Rule in Africa: Writers in a Common Cause, Padmore and his allies in the 1930s and 1940s—among them C. L. R. James, Kenya's Jomo Kenyatta, the Gold Coast's Kwame Nkrumah and South Africa's Peter Abrahams—saw publishing as a strategy for political change.