Bruce McKenzie

Bruce Roy McKenzie was a South African-born Kenyan politician, born 1 January 1919 in Richmond, Natal Province, who served as Kenya's Minister of Agriculture from 1959 to 1960 and again from 1963 to 1970 under President Jomo Kenyatta, to whom he was also a close adviser. Before his political career he joined the South African Air Force in 1939 and was seconded to Britain's Royal Air Force during the Second World War, seeing action in North Africa, the Mediterranean and Europe. As agriculture minister he was instrumental in implementing the policy, funded by the British government, of buying land back from white settlers and transferring ownership to Kenyans in the years after independence. He was killed on 24 May 1978 when a bomb concealed inside a gift he had received from Ugandan dictator Idi Amin exploded aboard his aircraft, an assassination reportedly ordered by Amin.