Tom Mboya was shot dead on Government Road in Nairobi on July 5, 1969. Three months later, Kenyatta visited Kisumu and police opened fire on a crowd, killing at least eleven. Between those two events, Kenya's political future narrowed. Mboya had been the technocrat, the bridge-builder, the man who could have held the country together. His assassination triggered ethnic suspicion that never fully healed. The Kisumu massacre marked the end of any pretense of national unity. By December 1969, Kenya was a de facto one-party state. The year changed everything.