In 1984, a man called Kimani Kenyatta was reported as having been found dead by gunshot in Miami, Florida. There had always been mystery and hype surrounding Kimani, who had been originally christened as “Glenn Trapp.” And the circumstances of his death were not 100 percent clear. About ten or fifteen years ago, one of my sources actually said that an American Belizean was saying to him that Kimani hadn’t really died. It is always impossible to verify anything about Kimani.
I’ve never written about Kimani, because of all the mystery and hype surrounding him, and because I didn’t want to say anything which his family might consider disrespectful. It is important that I say what I experienced, however, because one day the history of UBAD will be researched and written, and Kimani was a part of UBAD history in 1971 and 1972.
Now if you wanted to paint a picture of what would be the Hollywood ideal of a black power leader, you’d have wanted to use Kimani Kenyatta as a model. He was 6’3", lean and muscular, good-looking, and, to top it off, he was a karate expert. Karate was big, big excitement in Belize in those days, the days of Bruce Lee and Jim Kelly movies. Kimani created excitement in Belize, and he loved the stage.
A boat builder or shipwright by the name of Mr. Davis was his stepfather, so Soul, Boat, and all the Davis brothers were Kimani’s half brothers. That’s about all I knew when the news came that a karateman by the name of Glenn Trapp had come to town and was teaching karate to the policemen and paramilitary at the Queen Street Police Station.
Norman Fairweather, a scion of Belize’s most famous military family, had returned to Belize from New York around this time, which was early 1971. But whereas Norman had immediately come by the UBAD headquarters at #46 Euphrates Avenue and taken up a posting as Secretary-General, Glenn Trapp on his return home had taken up special employment with the Ministry of Home Affairs.
I can’t say if Norman or Kimani came home first. I know, though, that there were reports of a famous confrontation between Norman and Kimani at a Brooklyn party. As a result of that confrontation, Norman’s iconic status amongst those of my generation had grown. Again, I’m not sure whether Glenn Trapp had already become Kimani Kenyatta when the faceoff with Norman took place.
Whatever, at some point in 1971 Kimani started dropping in at UBAD headquarters. Usually wearing a beret and a blue jeans jacket, he was giving off the Black Panther vibes which were so electrifying in the black world at the time. One thing I remember Kimani doing was making everybody sign an exercise book when they visited the office. (I’m not sure if you had to sign out when you left.)
Between September of 1971 and June of 1972, I went to teach at Wesley College, so I was absent a lot from headquarters. Sometime during this time Kimani had recruited and was training his own group of UBAD militants. These included the late Arturo Rosado, Hot Stuff Dawson, and others. I didn’t know anything about the group until sometime after they ceased to exist.
I do remember one time when UBAD marched in the city and Kimani led the march with a group of about 10 or 12 beautiful black sisters dressed in sparkling dashikis. The effect was spectacular. The remainder of the march was an afterthought. This was classic Kimani. He was a showman. He loved the spotlight, and the spotlight loved him.
One time, under pressure from Ismail Shabazz, five of us UBADers went for a training session to the Stafford Youth Center on Berger Field where Kimani was training some young men in karate. From UBAD that night, I remember myself, Shabazz, Galento X Neal, Wilfred Nicholas, Sr., and perhaps Charles X Stamp. I believe Albert “Macca” Lamb was one of Kimani’s people on that occasion. This was an experience I’ll have to tell you about another time.
Because of being involved at Wesley College, I couldn’t pay sufficient attention to Kimani. I really didn’t know where he was coming from or where he was going. He was, to repeat, a mystery.
For me, the mystery became greater after the UBAD march on May 29, 1972, a march which became a riot and ended with 12 UBADers in jail for a week and 3 tried in Supreme Court for attempted arson and damage to public property. Just before the riot began at the Guatemalan Consulate on Albert Street, I distinctly remember seeing Kimani in the march, although night had fallen. After that, I did not see him again. The reports were that Kimani flew out of Belize the following day, May 30, 1972.
When UBAD began to quarrel and divide at the leadership level in early 1973, Kimani played no role there. He was never a member of the UBAD executive, and he may not even have been in Belize at the time.
At some point after the quarrel in UBAD, however, Kimani formed an organization which was regularly featured in stories in The Reporter, which was Belize’s leading newspaper at the time. This would have been 1974, 1975, I think. I didn’t have the time to pay attention, because I was personally in all kinds of street trouble, and the Kimani Kenyatta mystery had deepened to a point where I believed he had become irrelevant.
Before the reports of his death, Kimani was involved with an American civil rights organization called CORE, which was led then by one Roy Innis. (CORE stands for Congress of Racial Equality.) According to the Wikipedia Encyclopedia, CORE supported the presidential candidacy of Richard Nixon in 1968 and 1972. More on CORE from Wikipedia: “An article in Mother Jones magazine said of the modern organization that it ’is better known among real civil rights groups for renting out its historic name to any corporation in need of a black point person. The group has taken money from the payday-lending industry, chemical giant (and original DDT manufacturer) Monsanto, and ExxonMobil.’ In his book, Not a Conspiracy Theory: How Business Propaganda Hijacks Democracy, Donald Gutstein wrote that ‘In recent years CORE used its African-American façade to work with conservative groups to attack organizations like Greenpeace and undermine environmental regulation. It’s fair to say that CORE was for sale to anyone with a need for visible black cheerleaders in its campaign.’”