Kenya's first President Mzee Jomo Kenyatta almost died in prison when a fellow inmate tried to kill him.
A book titled Jomo's Jailers by Elizabeth Watkins narrates that Kariuki Chotara, a criminal who had been sentenced to prison for committing three murders, was reportedly convinced by Kenyatta's enemies to stab him.
In 1957, Chotara was transferred from Manyani Prison to Kapenguria where Kenyatta was locked up.
The Lokitaung Annual Report of 1957 states that during the last week of July 1957, the young man attacked Mzee Kenyatta during breakfast.
Luckily for Kenyatta, his assailant's pair of trousers was caught up in a splinter of broken wood from a table as he was charging to stick the knife into the late former president's body.
Kenyatta caught the attacker's arm and shouted for help from one of his close associates General China (Waruhiu Itote), who later became one of his bodyguards.
Other inmates tried to restrain China from saving Kenyatta, but he threw them off and grabbed Chotara’s knife before wardens came to break up the scuffle.
The young delinquent was then transferred to Lodwar and sentenced to solitary confinement, penal diet, and 12 strokes of the cane.
News of the attempt on Kenyatta's life reached his daughter Margaret, through a letter he penned to her.
“Envy and hatred had no mercy… now, calm your heart, for although the attack was planned secretly and craftily, it didn’t achieve its aim. Almighty God brought me out of this danger…. I was not badly injured…
"I think you are aware that envy, desire, and ignorance are trouble to many people in the world,” wrote Kenyatta.
After Kenyatta’s death in 1978, Chotara rose through the political ranks to become a powerful Nakuru District Kanu chairman and nominated MP.
