The weekly Nation supplement Kenya@40 told the story of independent Kenya through the pages of the Daily Nation, from Uhuru in 1963 to the moment the country celebrated its 40th anniversary of nationhood, last year.But what remains untold is the stirring story of Kenya’s fight for freedom, that culminated in the unfurling of the flag in Uhuru Park on December 12, 1963.Today, the Nation’s team of investigative reporters starts to set the record straight.
Week by week we shall trace the Fight for Freedom, from its beginnings in 1952 with settler concern over a new mood of nationalism in Kenya, through the bloody struggle for independence in the forests, the farms, the notorious detention camps and the towns and the city, and through to the birth of the new republic.
Few of those alive in Nairobi at the time of Kenya’s First Liberation will ever forget the overflowing emotions and outpourings of creativity among our people during those precious first years of freedom. Whether it was the exhilarating beauty of the language flowing from the stunning poetry of Okot p’Bitek and Jared Angira, or the freshness of the perspective in the novels of Ngugi Thiong’o, Grace Ogot and David Rubadiri, or the depth of characterisation in the reality plays of John Ruganda and Francis Imbuga, the city was buzzing with talent, imagination and expectation.
Backing-up this bubbling front-line of innovation and excellence among artists and writers a complete school of our own dedicated scholars had also evolved, patiently but inexorably excavating and retrieving long lost histories.
The path-finders included Bethwell Ogot, Gideon Were, Godfrey Muriuki, William Ochieng’, Idha Salim and many others, most of whom have by now quietly metamorphosed into highly respected and learned Professors. However, in 1963 they were the academic Young Turks of their day, turning upside down the Eurocentric viewpoint that had hitherto dominated African history and boldly tracing the remarkable story of our peoples back into the mists of time.
In the course of their explorations they refined new approaches for the greater understanding of oral history as they exploited to the full various specialist tools.
Dendrochronology, the skill of measuring tree rings, joined the well-tried art of radio carbon dating as they sought to fill in the bottomless abyss of time.
Finally came glottochronology, the tracking down of priceless linguistic evidence along the shadowy trails of neighbouring peoples borrowing each other’s words. The race was on to produce the basic building blocks and chronology of the neglected history of Africa.
Sadly, however, the more the exciting work of our historians succeeded in revealing the past, the less time our politicians and educational professionals allocated to the study of history in our schools. Many believe that this trend has today reached an absurd level as History has effectively been squeezed in the timetable between Geography and Civics.
Yet our historians know our past is running over with fascinating and instructive material covering all the regions of our nation. History is the vehicle through which we all absorb and develop personal identities and should not be allowed to fade back into obscurity.
Through this series, the Fight for Freedom, the Nation will be bringing you insights into some of the decisive moments in Kenya’s history. We shall also be focusing on some of the truly extraordinary characters who strutted the stage of the Kenya Story. Their actions and their decisions often had profound and lasting effects on what we are and what we do today.
The story begins with what happened one sunny morning in early March almost exactly 45 years ago in a detention camp in the Tana River District.
This was an incident that shook to their foundations the pillars of authority in both Kenya and the United Kingdom. In Britain, it threatened the survival of Harold Macmillan’s Conservative government, while in Kenya it abruptly and dramatically shortened the road to Independence. |
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Link: http://www.nationmedia.com/dailynation/nmgcontententry.asp?category_id=57&newsid=5866
The untold story of the Fight for FreedomStory by The Daily Nation
Publication Date: 2004/04/08 |
| The true story of the relentless war that led to Kenya winning Independence begins in the Nation today.This major new series will reveal week by week the country’s true heroes and explain how their selfless sacrifice led to the founding of a nation.It follows the success of Kenya@40, the weekly series that tracked the history of Kenya from Independence up to date, told through the pages of the Daily Nation.Fight for Freedom focuses on the struggle that led to the First Liberation – fought from 1952 to 1963 – at first in the forests, detention camps, and towns and villages of the Kenya heartland and then in the plush surroundings of London conference halls.
This moving story of the Fight for Freedom reveals the secret documents and correspondence between colonial governors and Whitehall, takes you inside meetings of the colonial war council, and shows you the illegal orders that allowed British troops to bully and beat prisoners held in the horrific Mau Mau detention camps.
It tells of a fierce struggle by proud people, largely unknown by today’s generation of Kenyans and too often unsung.
Fight for Freedom starts today and continues week by week. |
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Link: http://www.nationmedia.com/dailynation/nmgcontententry.asp?category_id=57&newsid=5839
The road to blood bath at Hola Camp Story by The Daily Nation
Publication Date: 2004/04/08 |
The events at Hola detention camp in 1959 and their unexpected consequences cannot be found in any of the prescribed textbooks in Kenya schools. There is therefore almost total ignorance, certainly among the younger generations, of the whole Emergency period from 1952 – 1960. So this first part of the series is devoted to the political build-up to Hola, a defining moment in the Fight for Freedom.October 1952 – May 1953
Britain rushes in troops
as Kenya eruptsAt the beginning of 1952 the minds of the majority of the leaders of the European Settlers in Kenya were concentrated on two topics. Foremost, undoubtedly, was the imminent first visit in February of Princess Elizabeth and Prince Philip to the colony. It was during this fairy-tale occasion that she famously became Queen of England at Treetops after the sudden death of her father.
The other subject increasingly rattling around in the Settlers’ heads, however, at this time was the rising tide of Kikuyu ‘subversion’. This they blamed on the underground activities of certain African political leaders. By the middle of the year the European Electors Union was openly calling for the “neutralisation or liquidation” of these ‘subversive’ leaders.
The previous Governor, Sir Philip Mitchell, at the end of his long and meritorious 40-year career as a colonial civil servant, appeared almost too exhausted to care as he complacently coasted to retirement as a Kenya settler and an old age of trout fishing in the River Gura.
Nevertheless at this stage he was playing, if only through sheer seniority, a dual role as both the British Colonial office’s expert adviser on African affairs and also the legendary “man on the spot,” a combination portraying unquestionable wisdom in London’s eyes. He authoritatively pronounced that “there was no serious danger.”
Simultaneously he assured the incoming Governor, Sir Evelyn Baring, that the Africans were “largely apolitical, but beginning to show good ability operating a system of local government.” Mitchell, described by one historian as “a blunt, unattractive, fat, little man without any social graces,” has been portrayed by another as “easily succumbing to Settlers’ pressure” and “personally hostile and contemptuous of African peasant agriculture”.
On 7 October 1952 Senior Chief Waruhiu, a pillar of the Kikuyu establishment in Kiambu District, was assassinated. At 5 p.m in the evening of 20th October, at the Brackenhurst Hotel near Limuru, Baring, after a quick safari through the Central Province and with the unanimous approval on 14 October of the British Cabinet, signed the Declaration of a State of Emergency in Kenya.
The police, jumping the gun so to speak, had begun to implement “Operation Jock Scott” in the night of the 20th.
This involved the arrest and detention without trial of some 180 top political leaders, mainly from the Central Province. A Royal Navy Cruiser, the “Kenya”, was already anchored at Mombasa. Concurrently a battalion of British troops (the Lancashire Fusiliers) flew in to Eastleigh Airport from their Cairo Base. The European Settlers greeted their arrival rapturously.
They believed the
Emergency would not last
These were in fact the first British troops to serve in sub-Saharan Africa in a time of peace for over forty years. Ironically, however, British troops, of one ilk or another, were to be stationed in Kenya until well after the country achieved independence in 1963 under President Jomo Kenyatta. Indeed there are agreed “training” arrangements even today.
On 20th October Baring had only been in the country three weeks. The new Governor and his local advisers, who included the palaeontologist and Special Branch officer Dr. Louis Leakey, “on whom everyone relied for wisdom about the Kikuyu”, naively believed that, after the first shock and awe, the Emergency was unlikely to last more than two or three weeks.
Even Sir Percy Sillitoe, the Director-General of the Security Services in Britain, who had come out to advise the Kenya Government on setting up an efficient system of intelligence, confirmed that the insurrection would surely be short-lived. But all the pundits were to be proved hopelessly wrong about this and, of course, many other things. The Emergency actually lasted nearly twice as long as the Second World War, eventually being officially declared over on 12th January 1960.
October 1952 – May 1953
Provincial Administration
found itself overwhelmed
The first six months of the phoney period of the subsequent war were, from the Colonial Government’s side, little short of chaotic. The coordination between the army, the police and the administration was minimal.
The Provincial Administration found itself overwhelmed by the sheer magnitude of the problems that the Emergency had unleashed. The situation in Nyeri, at the centre of the gathering storm, was frantic crisis management from one predicament to the next. At this point no one knew what was happening, let alone who or what was making it happen.
The European Settlers, conscripted into the Kenya Regiment or the Kenya Police Reserve, entered the fray with a wild-western gung-ho approach that paid scant regard to either discipline or the law, beginning to cement a culture of violence and extreme brutality into the situation that was to end up tragically in the Hola Detention Camp disaster six years later.
For these Settlers it was now truly a ‘Them’ or ‘Us’ war, with no holds barred. For many extermination really was an option. The leaders of the Resistance in the forest on their part were soon receiving a constant stream of recruits and supplies.
These enabled them to initiate a series of attacks both in Nairobi and Central Province on police stations and other Government posts. At this point the operational initiative was clearly with the freedom fighters who were supported in their political objectives (land and independence) by virtually all the people of Kikuyuland and their East African diaspora.
On 24 November 1952 Baring wrote to Oliver Lyttelton, the Colonial Secretary, warning him that what had been previously been considered a police action, albeit on a large scale, now resembled a small guerilla war.
He demanded an experienced Director of Operations. Whitehall did not agree and Baring flew to London to plead with Prime Minister Winston Churchill himself. He lost his case but was at least allowed to appoint Major General Hinde (who had relatives among the European Settlers) as his Personal Staff Officer.
To the European Settlers, however, there was no sign of any change for the better in early 1953, although Hinde had been pushed up a peg to become a pretty ineffectual Director of Operations. Indeed it seemed as if no one on the British side had any new ideas on how to tackle the resourceful and innovative Mau Mau fighters. Nor did anyone have much intelligence about the movement’s organization or deployment.
The British went on unimaginatively launching huge ineffective sweeps of the dense forests with the heavily overloaded KAR soldiers clumping noisily about in their leaden boots and breathing so heavily that the forest fighters, by now highly skilled and much superior in bushcraft, could hear them in the clear mountain air literally miles away.
It is often forgotten that unlike Algeria and other African colonial insurgencies, the Mau Mau had no material or financial help from anyone outside Kenya. This was Africa’s first truly autochthonous insurrection.
January 1953
European settlers storm
Government House
In January 1953, a rowdy mob of about 1,000 frustrated and furious European Settlers, largely composed of Nairobi shopkeepers and residents, by now disgusted with the indecisiveness of the ‘wobbly’ Governor, and by the lack of any progress on the ‘battle’ front, marched on Government House, at one point even trying unavailingly to storm the massive front doors.
Their leaders, Michael Blundell and Humphrey Slade, hoisted on to chairs, eventually managed to calm and disperse them. Shortly after this the British Middle East Commander-in-Chief came to Nairobi from Cairo, meeting Lyttelton in Nairobi.
The visitors agreed that Hinde, with whom Baring got on surprisingly well, would have to go. Baring reluctantly accepted a compromise. A “senior general” would be appointed as Commander-in-Chief for East Africa, with direct access to the War Office in London and no longer subordinate to the Cairo HQ. Hinde would answer to him.
March 1953
Naivasha police station
raided and ransacked
In the early months of 1953 there were three other critical events. Two took place on the same night – March 26th.
A group of forest fighters under the command of Muraya Mbuthia (still alive) and Mbaria Kaniu (whom the newly registered Mau Mau War Veterans Association buried last month with respect and ceremony), both from Murang’a, reinforced by thirty men under Kibira Gatu (still alive) from Othaya in Nyeri, surrounded the Naivasha Police Station compound.
They had only five guns and very little ammunition. Surprise, however, was total. They cut through the wire and made straight for the Armoury. Mbuthia broke down the door and began distributing the weapons.
The forest fighters lost one man killed. They made a large haul of Bren guns and rifles and also took off with a considerable quantity of ammunition, incidentally releasing some 150 prisoners.
The sheer courage and brilliantly executed planning demonstrated by the insurgents involved in this episode had a profound effect on the humiliated and enraged colonial Security Forces, who were finally beginning to realise they had a real war on their hands.
Shortly afterwards the Government decided to issue the embryonic so-called “Loyalist” Home Guard (disparagingly christened ‘The Kamatimu’ – The Little Spears). network with shotguns and rifles. Not totally unexpectedly, several members immediately disappeared into the forests with their invaluable trophies.
The motivation and complex structure of these “loyalist” collaborators requires detailed research, as does the whole concept and the different degrees of “loyalism” acceptable in different localities. It is assuredly a more complicated picture than even that of Petain’s Vichy France.
Now that today a few of these so-called “loyalists” are tentatively breaking their self-imposed silence about the war period, it is clear that the motivation and quality of their “loyalism” differed greatly in both space and time.
There were substantial differences not only between Districts but even between locations. Large numbers were merely fence-sitters who changed their positions depending on who they thought was winning at any particular time in their local area.
Many of the Home Guard groups originated in late 1952 around Chiefs and Headmen (sub-chiefs) who had committed themselves irrevocably to the Government cause, whether by some illegal act outside the law or by over-zealous implementation of Government policies.
Such Home Guard groups were initially recruited from the extended families and age-mates of these chiefs but were joined piecemeal by others who thought they had wealth and property to lose or who, for one reason or another, felt they would be the targets of the Mau Mau movement.
These amorphous band were later joined both by double agents and by the usual fringe elements who for a time felt safer inside the Home Guard than outside it, especially when uncommitted males at this time were almost by definition assumed to support the aims of the forest fighters.
Any analysis will also have to bear in mind that with the influx of the KPR and Kenya Regiment the Rule of Law in the Reserves had rapidly been replaced by the Rule of Fear.
“Loyalism” was a tangled mess of motives and emotions that will be very difficult to unravel. Its primary motivation, however, was never Freedom (Uhuru) and Land. Often it was simply greed, fear, indecision, religion or personal animosity.
The Christian Missions were another centre of Home Guard activities. At the beginning Christian believers would coalesce at the local mission stations or even in trading centres, led at some assembly point by the local Chief or Headman, at others even by a European missionary of strong personality. These stations would over time be barricaded and surrounded with barbed wire, developing eventually into reasonably secure sanctuaries for the mission adherents.
It is significant that “loyalists” never created a unity oath of their own. Their membership was too diffuse and their ideology too elastic varying as it did from Senior Chief Njeru in Murang’a, solemnly raising and lowering the Union Jack outside his homestead daily to a poor shopkeeper desperately trying to preserve his meagre stock of goods.
In general, as the war went on, it paid in many ways to be, or at least appear to be, a “loyalist”. Movement passes, trading licences and contracts, education, jobs and eventually even voting rights could all depend on the possession of the precious Loyalty Certificate.
What began as tentative, irregular, undisciplined bands of collaborators ultimately developed into a much more organised and regular addition to the tribal police force with its own commandant, transferred from the Malayan communist rebellion.
They acted under the immediate orders to several locally recruited European District Officers (Kikuyu Guard). Before and after villagisation these units were responsible for some of the worst atrocities and abuses of human rights. It is believed that Baring took the decision in favour of villagisation himself, apparently on the advice of Louis Leakey.
By 1955, Central Province had become one vast detention camp with the reoganised paramilitary Kikuyu Guard of the all-powerful wardens and controllers.
Lari – Punishing
the traitors
The second incident on the same night was the burning down of the “Traitors Settlement” at Lari by a small group of Mau Mau.
The chief of the area (Luka Wakahangara) had accepted land at Lari in exchange for his portion of an island of African Ð owned land in the middle of the “White” Highlands at Tigoni, near Limuru.
He had been unanimously condemned by the local Mau Mau court for traitorously collaborating with the Administration and the Europeans in the land conflicts on the Kikuyu frontier. In accepting land at Lari, which was already claimed by another mbari group, he was also publicly supporting the political basis of the unacceptable 1934 Kenya Land Commission Report (popularly called the Carter Commission).
The report had officially recommended the extinction of all other Kikuyu land rights and the recognition of the White Highlands. So the Mau Mau court’s decision was implemented and Luka, his family, his followers and guards were burnt to death in their houses.
Massacre of
the innocents
However, on the next day the colonial Security Forces went berserk and it would appear that more than 300 of the inhabitants of the surrounding area, who had not been involved in any way in the previous night’s activities, were brutally killed in a psychotic spasm of revenge and racist genocide. In addition 1,400 people were arrested.
Probably no other single episode in the war was more ruthlessly exploited by the British for propaganda purposes. It was a Godsend.
Lari hit the world’s headlines and its apparent irrational purposelessness was brazenly used by the British and colonial governments to alienate sympathy for the freedom fighters’ cause.
Ignorance of the White Highlands issue in the background made the raid seem incomprehensible to many. Lari was also ruthlessly and fatefully manipulated to boost the moral credentials of the Security Forces and to reduce the impact of the increasing number of complaints from missionaries and the more radical British MPs about the barbaric nature of the methods they were using to quell the uprising.
April 1953
Corruption in the trial
of Kenyatta and five others
The third event was the trial of Jomo Kenyatta and five others for managing Mau Mau. This began before Mr. Justice Thacker, a retired High Court Judge from Kenya.
Governor Baring bribed Thacker with £20,000 from some source of (secret) Intelligence funds that was personally controlled by him. Thacker responded by shamelessly asking as well for an honour from the Queen. This, however, was too much and it was not given.
Baring also informed Lyttelton that “Every possible effort has been made to offer them (the witnesses) rewards and to protect them but no one can tell what will really happen when they are confronted in court by Kenyatta’s formidable personality . . . ” Interesting stuff, especially as one witness did indeed later recant, admitted he had been bribed, and was then promptly convicted of perjury. Thacker significantly fled to Zimbabwe (then Southern Rhodesia) as soon as the trial was over.
Luckily for him there was no Aaron Ringera around at the time. It would seem that the incorruptibility of British Justice was yet another myth to be severely damaged by the Kenya Emergency.
Tightening
the screws
In March 1953 Governor Baring and Secretary of State Oliver Lyttelton publicly committed the British Government to a promise that Kenyatta and at least 15 other leaders would never be allowed to return to live in Kikuyu country. From then on Kenyatta was air-brushed to oblivion. It was as if he had never been.
His very substantial house at Githunguri was demolished. As one writer has it: “Like Trotsky and the Russian revolution the name and fame of Jomo Kenyatta were to disappear from Kikuyu and Kenya history”.
By mid-1953 the State of Emergency was steadily giving birth to its own ever thicker Book of Regulations. The legal stranglehold on all activities, possessions, opportunities and movement was rapidly tightening.
The land of all the rank and file Mau Mau adherents was legally confiscated and their houses and shops demolished. All KISA and Karinga Independent Schools were razed to the ground or handed over to Christian missions.
Finally while what was called the process of “reconstruction” went on, the Central Province was legally closed to visitors and sealed off from the outside world for six years. This accompanied the introduction of a comprehensive Pass system for all Kikuyu, Embu and Meru persons. Henceforth permission to move out of one’s location could only be granted by District Officers.
June 1953
Churchill appoints
Gen Erskine as CinC
The “senior general” whose appointment had been agreed at Lyttelton’s Nairobi meeting shortly after January’s Settler March on Government House, was Sir George Erskine, who had been personally selected by Winston Churchill.
Over the next two years Erskine carried out his orders, which were to take the military measures required to end the Emergency, to the letter. But, most importantly, before he had finished in 1955 with Kenya (and its Settlers), he had effectively moved the battle arena from the forests and the African Reserves to the Detention Camps. And Erskine’s troops had no role in the Camps. And the Colonial Administration, who did have the all-powerfull role in them, had only one weapon they could use over the next four years on the determined and heroic political detainees facing them down in these Camps. That weapon was illegal force.
Having detained 150,000 (at least) alleged Mau Mau adherents in the camps for taking the Mau Mau oath, it would surely be ridiculous to release them until at least they “confessed” they had taken it.
Only brutal illegal force seemed to do the trick.
In 1959 in Hola, in the defining moment of the Emergency, the illegal use of force totally exploded in the Administration’s face and destroyed with that same explosion their carefully constructed concept of Mau Mau as an atavistic cult rooted in some mystic African religion.
The savage Government-initiated, European-supervised, stage-managed butchery at Hola shocked the political pragmatists in Britain’s Conservative Government to the core.
They had survived Nasser and the Suez Canal Crisis and its secret conspiracy with France and Israel. They had rallied round the subtle, clever but ruthless Harold Macmillan. They were even facing a General Election in October with relative equanimity.
And now some remote spot called Hola was threatening to bring them crashing down.
Were the European Settlers in Kenya really worth this trouble any more? |
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Posted by kikuyusworld on July 26th, 2007
Kenya Timeline
A time line overview of big and small events in the history of Kenya.
Prehistoric time
Some of our earliest human ancestors (Homo erectus and Homo habilis) walked on East African ground more than 2 million years ago. Several skulls and fragments has been found in Kenya and neighbouring countries.
The Khoisan-speakers are the first modern people known to inhabit East Africa. They are followed by Cushitic people (from north), Bantu speaking groups (from Central Africa), Nilotes (from Sudan) as well as Oromos and Somalis (from Ethiopia).
Arabian and Portuguese traders/invaders
8th century AD: The first visits by Arabian and Persian traders to East Africa are made. Some Arab traders stays in the region and brings a Muslim influence to the culture. Most areas of Kenya are inhabited at this time, but most trade and development takes place in the coastal region. Trade with ivory, rhino horn, gold, shells and slaves makes Mombasa, Malindi and the Islands Lamu, and Pate into important centres of trade.
The 15th century: The Coast is rich and the cities are great in this period. It becomes the first centre of trade out of Africa. The African groups on the coast gradually forms the Swahili culture adapting Islam as their religion. The common religion makes way for better understanding and business with the Arabs. Religious beliefs (Islam and later Christianity) also gives status in society (this can still be seen in the pride of many religious people in Africa). Some Africans may have turned to Islam simply to avoid being sold as slaves. The Swahili were mainly black Africans and it were these people who build the great cities along the coast.
The Swahili people makes a fortune on trade and forms business families. They are able to communicate better with the foreign traders as the Kiswahili language develops. They also serves as middlemen for those wanting to sell gold and Ivory from deep within the continent.
The trade net grows to cover Africa, Arabia, Persia, India and China. It is recorded that traders even succeeds to send a live Giraffe all the way the Emperor of China.
1498: Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama reaches East Africa with ships and guns. Until now most meetings with foreigners has been relative peaceful, but the Portuguese are eager to get their hands on the rich trade around the Indian Ocean. The Swahili people gives Vasco da Gama what he wants: They direct him on the way to India -and are happy to sea him leave. (See also Mozambique Timeline).
1505: The Portuguese invades, slaughters and robs most cities on the East Coast of Africa. Dom Francisco de Almeida arrives with 23 ships and approximately 1500 soldiers. Mombasa is bombed and the occupied by Portuguese troops.
The next 200 years are marked by the fights between the Arabs and the Portuguese for control of the region. The main losers in this long struggle are the Africans, seeing their towns destroyed all along the coast.
1585 and 1589: The Ottoman Turks tries to regain their power on the Kenyan Coast but are beaten by the Portuguese. Portugal starts a brutal colonial rule and exploitation of the Africans and their resources. With weapons in hand they try to convert people into Catholicism, but Islam has already grown strong on the coast.
1593: Mombasa becomes the local centre of Portuguese power. Fort Jesus is constructed in Mombasa harbour to defend the city from the seaside and also against a growing resistance among the Swahili people.
1698: Fort Jesus and Mombasa are finally lost to the Arabs after 33 months of siege. After a few years the Portuguese has left Kenya completely. Arab sultans now rules over different parts of the coast.
19th Century: The European countries starts a race of land grabbing in Africa. In East Africa it is mainly Germany and England competing in making colonies and protectorates. By now a political pressure has influenced Britain to try and stop the African slave trade.
1822: The Sultan of Oman (Sayyid Said) sends an army to East Africa. He claims control of all Swahili dynasties along the coast. The local Swahili clans resists to give up their power and asks Britain for help. Two warships are send from Britain and the captain declares the Mombasa region for British protectorate. The protectorate is given up after 3 years.
1832: The sultan of Oman moves with his court to Zanzibar. He starts plantations of cloves and develops trade routes deeper into Africa. Spice production and export of Ivory and slaves are an important economic injection for the Sultan’s empire.
1847: The first European missionaries starts traveling west and exploring more of Kenya. The Germans, Krapf and Rebmann, are the first to reach Taita Hills and later gives the first reports of seeing Mount Kilimanjaro and Mount Kenya.
May 1, 1873 : Dr. David Livingstone dies in Central Africa. His body is carried on a month-long journey to Zanzibar.
1877: the Sultan offers the company British East Africa a concession of administration in East Africa. The British completely ignores the Swahili people -only negotiating with the Sultan on Zanzibar. Their racist prejudices makes them believe that the East African Coast has only developed because of the Arabs.
British Crown Colony
1886: The European colonial powers divides Africa between them at a conference in Berlin. Germany and Britain are the main players in the game of control with East Africa. The Sultan of Oman is still granted a strip on the Coastline.
1888: Imperial British East Africa starts “economic development” in their possessions (today’s Kenya and Uganda).
1894: Jomo Kenyatta is born in Ichaweri.
1895: Britain’s protectorate is formed and officially named British East Africa.
1898: Construction of a railway from Mombasa to Lake Victoria is progressing fast, but delayed in Tsavo. Two lions kills and eats 135 Indian and African railway workers. Lt. Col. J.H. Patterson manages to kill the lions after hunting them for nine months. The events were dramatised in the film The Ghost and The Darkness. The man-eating lions are still on display in The Field Museum, Chicago.
1898: The railway reaches half way through Kenya. The city of Nairobi is founded a few years later.
1901: The railway from Mombasa to Kisumu is completed with its 965 km. European and Indian settlers now arrives in great numbers to East Africa. White settlers are favoured from the beginning and given influence on the management of the colony. The African inhabitants of the “White highlands” are forced into “native reserves”. In the following years several local uprisings are stopped by British soldiers. As in the other African colonies some tribes are favoured by the British. This makes the foundation for jealousy, hatred and ethnic clashes for generations ahead.
1902: The border between Kenya and Uganda is adjusted. Before this Kisumu and the area around Lake Victoria was a part of Uganda.
1905: First experiments with growing coffee in Kenya are made by British settlers. Today Kenya is the African country exporting most coffee.
1907: The British colonial administration moves from Mombasa to Nairobi.
January 1914: 28 year old Karen Blixen (also known as Isak Dinesen) arrives in Kenya with her husband Bror Blixen. They settle on a farm close to Nairobi and starts growing coffee. Karen Blixen has no experience and no success with farming but after returning to Denmark in 1931 she becomes a well known writer.
1914: World War I also includes Africa. 200,000 Africans are recruited in Kenya by the British Army. One fourth of them dies.
1915: The British settlers requires more land. Another 5186 hectares are taken from the Africans. The “Registration Act” forces all African adult males to carry identification whenever leaving the reserves.
1921: The protectorate becomes Kenya and gets status of British Crown Colony. A British governor administrates the colony.
1922: Foundation of East African Breweries (today: Kenya Breweries, producing the popular “Tusker” and other brands).
1922: Africans educated in the Missions starts protesting against the British policies. Harry Thuku, leader of the East African Association (EAA) is arrested. Another young Kikuyu from EAA is about to begin his career: Jomo Kenyatta leaves for university Studies in England (1931) and returns to become a political leader years later.
1923: The first tea plantation is founded in Kenya. A law ensured that only the European settlers could profit from growing tea and coffee for export.
1924 : Daniel Arap Moi is born in Baringo.
1933: American writer Ernest Hemingway visits Kenya and writes some of his most famous stories.
1939: Labour unions are becoming stronger in the colony. Strikes hits hard on Mombasa.
1944: A organisation for African independence is formed: Kenyan African Union (KAU).
1947: Jomo Kenyatta becomes leader of KAU.
Mau Mau rebellion
1952: A political Kikuyu group called “Mau Mau” starts violent attacks on white settlers. The Mau Mau guerillas are organised in Kenya Land Freedom Army (KFLA). Jomo Kenyatta is regarded to be leader of the “Mau Mau” and he is jailed the following year. The Mau Mau rebellion continues and Britain declares a state of emergency in Kenya.
February 6, 1952: The young Elizabeth stays in the Aberdare Treetop Hotel when her father, King George VI, dies of cancer. She returns to England as Queen Elizabeth II.
October 1956: The leader of KLFA, general Dedan Kimanthi is captured by British troops with assistance from a loyal Kikuyu group. The Mau Mau are now without efficient leadership.
1956: The Mau Mau warriors kills more Africans loyal to the British than white people. Around 50,000 British soldiers are set in against the rebellion. They burn down villages and carry out bomb attacks from airplanes. When the rebellion is finally put down a total of app. 12,000 Africans are killed -and only about 30 Europeans. 100,000 Africans are imprisoned.
1957: Dedan Kimanthi is executed.
195?: Kenyan songwriter Fadhili William records the pop song Malaika. The song becomes a world-wide hit and as has since been recorded by several other artists.
1957: Ghana is the first African colony to gain independence. (See also Ghana Timeline)
1959: Kenyatta is transferred from jail to house arrest. Formation of political parties are now allowed and African politicians are invited for negotiations in London.
1960: Britain gives in to the pressure and starts preparing Kenya for independence. Estimated 60,000 Europeans now live in Kenya.
1960: A team of archaeologists led by Mary and Louis Leakey finds a skull of Homo Habilis near Lake Turkana in Northern Kenya. The skull is estimated to be 1.8 million years old.
1961: House arrest ends for Kenyatta and he becomes leader of the political party KANU.
Independence
December 12, 1963: : Kenyan independence day.
1964: The Republic of Kenya (Jamhuri ya Kenya) is formed with Kenyatta as president and Oginga Odinga as vice president. The party KADU dissolves and integrates with KANU. The government is without opposition.
1966: The Luo politician Oginga Odinga is excluded from the Kikuyu dominated KANU party. He tries to start an opposition party, but is arrested several times during the following years.
1969: Conflicts between ethnic groups continue. The Luo politician Tom Mboya aspires to future presidency and is assassinated by a Kikuyu. Odinga is arrested.
1974: Jomo Kenyatta is re-elected as president. Kiswahili becomes official language in the parliament.
1976: Border problems and regional tensions: The Ugandan dictator Idi Amin claims huge parts of Kenya and Sudan.
1977: Big game hunting becomes prohibited by law.
August 22, 1978: Jomo Kenyatta dies in his home in Mombasa. During his presidency Kenya has become one of the most stable and prosperous countries in Africa. In spite of mistakes and some degree of paranoia, Kenyatta was loved by most Kenyans and respected by politicians abroad. The Republic of Kenya held many promises which were soon to fade.
Kenya’s second president
October 6, 1978: Daniel Toroitich Arap Moi becomes president of Kenya. At the time he is not seen as a very strong politician, but he was vice president for Kenyatta and the parliament agrees on the choice. This is partly because as a Kalenjin (Tugen) he is not representing any of the dominant tribes in Kenya. The new national slogan launched by Moi is “nyayo” -follow the tracks. But soon Moi starts hitting hard on opponents, banning tribal societies and closing universities. The president makes more and more frequent use of prisons and guns in the coming years.
1979: The president launches a plan for protection of Rhinos in Kenya.
June 1982: The Republic of Kenya is officially declared to be a one party state by ruling party KANU.
August 1982: The Kenyan Airforce attempts a military coup. A few days pass in uncertainty and 120 people are killed. Then forces loyal to the government puts an end to the rebellion. Following the coup-attempt, 12 people are sentenced to death and 900 are jailed.
1985: Hollywood premieres Out Of Africa filmed on location in Kenya, starring Meryl Streep and Robert Redford.
1987: President Moi is re-elected after introducing a complicated and highly criticised voting system. Opposition leaders including Kenneth Matiba are jailed without trial.
1989: Paleontologist Dr. Richard Leakey becomes manager of the Department of Wildlife in Kenya. President Moi burns of 12 tons of ivory, making a public statement against poaching.
1990’s: Communist regimes in eastern Europe collapses, putting an end to “the Cold War” era. USA and Western Europe has supported corrupt regimes all over Africa in their attempt to keep communism from the door. But now they loose interest in the continent. For the first time donor countries makes demands of democratic development and puts pressure on the Kenyan government. Multiparty systems are a public demand all over the continent and the governments no longer has Western support to suppress the opposition.
The KANU Youth group is used as pro-government troublemakers. In the following years KANU Youth are used to harass opposition members and provoke riots in democratic demonstrations. The KANU Youth has also been involved in the unleash of violence and ignition of ethnic clashes.
July 7, 1990: An illegal demonstration becomes known as the “Saba Saba” (Seven Seven – the date in Swahili). The government sends in police and military, killing at least 20 and arresting several hundreds, including politicians, human rights activists and journalists.
1991: A new opposition party is formed under the name Forum for the Restoration of Democracy (FORD). The party is at first banned by Moi. Leaders, including Oginga Odinga, are arrested. Most Western countries suspends their economic aid to Kenya in condemnation of the political oppression and abuses of human rights. Moi finally gives in and introduces the multiparty system in Kenya: The constitution is changed, for the first time allowing registration of opposition parties.
Political violence on the road to democracy
1992: Political discussions slowly becomes more common on the streets and some people even dare to hope for a change. But at the same time many people fears the wars, violence and chaos in other African countries. An argument often heard is that Moi may be one the most corrupt leaders in the world, but he has kept Kenya peaceful.
Prior to elections, 2000 are killed in ethnic clashes in the Rift Valley region. It is almost certain that the violence was provoked by KANU. But President Moi manages to end the conflict and makes himself an image as the peace maker.
1992: The Ford party splits into two fractions. Moi gains more power as the opposition waste their efforts on internal conflicts.
December 29, 1992: Moi is re-elected as President in Kenya’s first multiparty election. All foreign observers reports that KANU manipulated the voters and election in every possible way.
1993: International donors, IMF and the World Bank forces the government to start economic reforms in Kenya.
1994: Oginga Odinga dies. The opposition parties form a new coalition, but are still having strong internal disputes. Moi is becoming more and more clever in setting up opposition members against each other.
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“We want to see our president”.
A group of Masais demonstrates near Nakuru in 1995. Photo: Jacob Crawfurd. |
1995: Paleontologist Richard Leakey forms Safina, a new opposition party. The Leakey family is famous for their archaeological findings in Kenya. Moi argues strongly against having white men in government.
1996: KANU announces a wish to change the constitution allowing Moi to stay in office for one more term.
1997: Demonstrations for democracy are frequent in Kenya.
August 14, 1997: 200 raiders attacks the police station in Likoni, Mombasa. Prisoners are freed, six police officers and seven civilians are killed. The violent attackers steels rifles and ammunition. In the following weeks horror rules on the coast with massacres and ethnic violence. Many people are on the run. Who started this, and why was nothing done to stop it?
1997: Daniel Arap Moi wins his 5th term as president in criticised elections. Once again Moi has succeeded to play opposition and ethnic groups against each other.
1997: The El Nino weather phenomena brings cascades of water to the Kenyan coast. Several thousands are left homeless.
September 8, 1997: President Mobuto Sese Seko of Zaire (D. R. Congo) loses his power and dies soon after. Mobuto was considered to be the richest man in Africa. According to an Ugandan newspaper, Daniel Arap Moi is a possible number two. (The Monitor, August 4, 1997)
August 1998: 230 people are killed when a bomb explodes in Nairobi’s US embassy. At the same time people are killed by a terror bombing in Tanzania. The bombings are later linked to Osama Bin-Laden and the Al-Qaeda terrorist network.
1999: Richard Leakey becomes minister in the KANU government. He is tasked with fighting corruption in Kenya.
June 2001: Moi forms the first coalition government in Kenya. Opposition leader Raila Odinga becomes minister of Energy.
August 2001: 3 million people starves as Northern Kenya suffers from drought.
2001: Several anti-corruption initiatives are started in order to please the IMF.
October 2001: Uhuru Kenyatta (son of Jomo Kenyatta) is appointed to parliament and a cabinet post by President Moi. The inexperienced Uhuru Kenyatta is later appointed by Moi to be his successor in the presidential office.
2001: Ethnic clashes breaks out again. Worst in the Kibera slum area of Nairobi. As the violence continues the government stays passive. Some people fears that Moi would like to see chaos break out in Kenya after he gives up presidency.
The third president
December 27, 2002: Election in Kenya. Moi is leaving the office to opposition leader Mwai Kibaki.
Kibaki soon announces that Kenya will provide free primary schooling for all children.
Another imprtant law from Kibaki is new rules for Matatu-owners. The matatus are privately-owned mini-busses. They are loud and colourful contributions to Kenyan culture, but also notorius for their high rate of accidents (more than 3,000 dies in road accidents every year). The new laws are made to improve traffic security, but the matatu owners have protested and paralysed the country with strikes and new high fares.
Link about the new president:
Profile: Kenya’s new leader – BBC world
December 10th 2004: Kenyan Wangari Maathia receives the Nobel Peace Price in Oslo. She is the frist African woman to receive the price. Prof. Maathia is minister in the Kenyan government and founder of the Green Belt Movement. Also visit www.wangarimaathai.com
Sources:
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Posted by kikuyusworld on July 26th, 2007
Origins of the Mau Mau
In 1946, impatient with the pace of change proposed by KAU, and angered by the shooting of demonstrators in Nairobi, a group of former Kikuyu solders formed the ‘Forty Group’ and started organising violent opposition to the white settlers. They joined other groups and began robbing shops and raiding fire-arms, imposing oaths and eventually executing as traitors those who were not ready to follow their fight for freedom. Women became directly involved in 1948, when workers at Olenguruone agricultural settlement scheme went on strike: the women refused to participate in terracing the land to prevent erosion unless they first received title to it. Supported by the nascent labour unions, the colonial response was the by now familiar repression.
The resulting ad hoc organisation called itself the Land Freedom Army (LFA), whose violent resistance to colonial rule was to become better known in the world as the Mau Mau Uprising.
The exact origins of the inherently secretive LFA/Mau Mau movement are uncertain, as the Mau Mau were only ever loosely organized, and most of their actions were opportunistic in nature. In any case, properly organized military resistance was impossible, given the extent to which the British controlled Kikuyu territory and the reserves.
The name “Mau Mau” itself was (as far as I know) never used by the Kikuyu themselves, and did not exist in their language. One theory says that the name was invented by the British as part of an attempt to demonise the Kikuyu people, though exactly how this would demonise them – if no one knew what the name meant – is unclear.
Kenyatta’s Arrest and the Creation of a Myth
When the staunch British loyalist Kikuyu chief Warihiu was assassinated on 7 October 1952, the government saw the LFA as the first serious threat to colonial rule in post-war Africa. Two weeks later, on 20 October, a state of emergency and martial law was imposed, which was to last until 1960.
Following the imposition of martial law, Jomo Kenyatta and over one hundred other leading members of the Kenya African Union, as well as other political leaders, were arrested and detained. The KAU was made illegal the following year, and the activities of other nationalist movements were severely restricted, although trade unions were largely allowed to continue their activities.
Despite the fact that Kenyatta had repeatedly denounced Mau Mau publicly and advocated peaceful change (see his speech “The Kenya Africa Union is not the Mau Mau” from 1952), the British remained convinced that he was the man behind Mau Mau.
He was put on trial for subversion and incitement, which – as the copies of official documents now displayed at Kapenguria Museum show – was nothing other than a farce, as there was no direct evidence whatsoever implicating his involvement in any illegal act. Nonetheless, Kenyatta was found guilty and spent seven years in hard labour, periodically being moved from one remote corner of the country to another: Lodwar, Maralal, Kapenguria, and even Lamu.
The myth of Kenyatta as the founding father of Kenya stems from this period of detention, as aptly described in the dramatic (if somewhat exaggerated) words of Greet Kershaw in Mau Mau from Below (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1997):
“After months of anxiety and at times horror, after having suffered curfews, suspicions and being accused of crimes because they took oaths, land poor, landless and many landed exploded into joy… Kenyatta’s arrest, charged with being the leader of Mau Mau, changed fear and anger into hope. The landed had not given him a great deal of credit for leadership; they had seen him more and more as someone trying to become a landed Kiambu elder. Land poor and landless had seen this growth and sadly concluded that he had little to share now and offered even less for the future. No one doubted that he was in favor of resistance and his brand of Mau Mau, but the overwhelming opinion had been that he was not in control of Githunguri, nor of other Mau Mau. If in spite of what they had thought, he had secretly been in control, outwitting them and the colonial government for years, then he was far more astute than they had given him credit for. The time of secrecy was over; Kenyatta might be arrested, but freedom had never been so close. Those who had, against Kenyatta’s will, offered their multiple oaths, should cease to do so and acknowledge him. All people should send Kenyatta a sign that they had understood and would follow: the time for umoja (unity) was now”.
The Guerilla War, 1952-56
The State of Emergency did nothing to repress the movement for independence, and several bitter years of fighting the whole might of the British and colonial army followed. Between 1952 and 1956, the LFA/Mau Mau engaged in a campaign of terror against highland settlers and Kikuyu loyalists.
Other than firearms captured from raids on police stations, their weapons were traditional – clubs, knives, spears and arrows. As these would have been no match in a open confrontation with the colonial army, the Mau Mau engaged in guerilla warfare and terrorism. Based in the thick jungly forests of Mount Kenya and the Aberdares, they launched raids on neighbouring settlers’ farms, post offices, police stations, as well as on Kikuyu perceived as being loyal to the regime. The Mau Mau were composed of urban workers, agriculturalists, the unemployed, World War II veterans, labourers, and unionists. They also included women, apparently often enough women with powers of prediction, who worked directly with platoon commanders. Dedan Kimathi, the forest fighters’ general, recommended the admission of literate women into the forest fighting force. Other women joined Mau Mau fighters to avoid being sold off by their fathers as wives to pro-British ‘homeguards’ or ‘loyalists.’ Mau Mau were also supported by civilians who supplied them with food, medicine, arms and intelligence.
The British response was as swift as it was brutal. The forests of Mount Kenya, where the LFA had their base camps, were designated a “prohibited area” and were heavily bombed. People living on the fringes of the forest were evicted from the land, their animals confiscated and crops and huts burned to clear the way for the “free fire zone”. Other settlements suspected of harbouring Mau Mau were burned, and suspects were routinely tortured for information and confessions. In the “free fire” zones, any African could be shot on sight, and rewards were offered to army and police units that produced the largest number of ‘Mau Mau’ corpses, the hands of which were chopped off to make fingerprinting easier.
But the brunt of the British response was borne by the ordinary Kikuyu. Thousands were herded into overcrowded and heavily militarized “protected villages” as part of a policy of “villagisation”. Supposedly intended to be “purely protective and beneficial for the Africans”, in reality the program was merely intended to make the Kikuyu easier to control – otherwise, why enforce a 23-hour curfew?
Ten days into the start of emergency rule, almost 4,000 Africans had been arrested, but that was only the start. On 24 April 1954, the police rounded up all the African inhabitants in Nairobi – around 100,000 people. The 70,000 Kikuyu were separated and screened. Of them, up to 30,000 men were taken to holding camps, and the families of the arrested were pushed into the already overcrowded native reserves.
By the end of 1954, one-third of all Kikuyu men were said to be in prison. These detainees had not been convicted of any crime and were held without trial.
Dreadlocks and oathing
See also the article about the Mûngîkî ’sect’ of the 1990s
It is said that when, in 1953, the Mau Mau uprising was covered across the world’s media newsreels showing dreadlocked forest fighters defying the white man, Jamaican Rastafarians adopted dreadlocks as a symbol of brotherhood in the fight against racial injustice.
The symbolism of long hair and dreadlocks has a long and complicated history, which I won’t try to explain here.
As far as I know, in Kenya many peoples traditionally considered long hair to be a symbol of transition, for example as worn by Maasai and Samburu junior warriors. Long hair was also mentioned in Luo and Luhya stories in connection with rebirth, in that people in those stories got lost on Lake Nyanza (Victoria), during which their hair grew long, and when they finally arrived ashore, the foreign people who took them in and adopted them saw these people as being akin to spirits. Hair was also a symbol of unmarried bachelor status, of the past, of wildness, and of spirits and violence. Important oaths between the Kikuyu and Dorobo reportedly took place through the exchange of hair to end feuds or seal friendships. Louis Leakey reported that a Kikuyu and Dorobo would shave hair from their heads, affix it to stools with honey, and then sit on one another’s stools to bind their friendship.
Ritual oathing was a crucial component of Mau Mau participation, as they called on the old God – Ngai – to witness the oath that people would swear to be united in their fight against the colonial enemy, and would take back the land that the white man had stolen. Jacob Njangi, a former fighter, explained:
“We used to drink the oath. We swore we would not let white men rule us forever. We would fight them even down to our last man, so that man could live in freedom.”
The oaths were a cultural symbol of the solidarity that bound Kikuyu men, women and children together in their opposition to the colonial government. But they were also feared, as the taboos that traditionally surrounded the breaking of oaths were still very much current. Those who took the Mau Mau oaths were taught that their violation would be instantly lethal, and in practise it was indeed so: not because of the wrath of Ngai, but because of bloody reprisals by the Mau Mau themselves, for whom refusing to take the oath was the same as siding with the colonial regime.
Nonetheless, the British were scared by the oath, for they knew full well that for the Kikuyu (or any other Kenyan, in fact), an oath was a deadly serious matter, and could never be broken. As a result, the British made taking the Mau Mau oath a capital offence. Between 1953 and 1956 more than 1,000 Africans were publicly hanged for alleged Mau Mau crimes – in Britain, public hangings had been outlawed for over a century.
The British also screened Mau Mau suspects and forced them to take a ‘cleansing oath’, a strange instance of colonialism ‘gone native’. Concocted by the anthropologist Louis Leakey and rich Kikuyu landowners who stood to lose their British-granted privileges if independence came to be, the Kikuyu were to swear upon githathi (sacred stones) for a reversal of the Mau Mau oath.
Many, of course, refused, so alternative means had to be found to ‘convince’ people to abandon their oaths. John Nottingham, a district officer in the colonial service from 1952 to 1961, explains, “The way that it found was that if you beat them up enough then they would confess an oath. So what you do is beat them up and then you give them a bit of paper and a piece of blunt pencil and say, ‘Confess! I took it! I took it! I took it!’ You are now a human being again.”
Ironically, this was probably the first time that any of the suspects had ever been called ‘human beings’ by the wazungu.
The Hola Massacre, 1959
On 3 March 1959, 85 prisoners were marched out to a site from Hola Detention Camp, near the Tana River in the far east of the country, and ordered to work. One of the detainees, John Maina Kahihu, speaking with quiet dignity described what happened:
“We refused to do this work. We were fighting for our freedom. We were not slaves. … There were two hundred guards. One hundred seventy stood around us with machine guns. Thirty guards were inside the trench with us. The white man in charge blew his whistle and the guards started beating us. They beat us from 8 am to 11.30. They were beating us like dogs. I was covered by other bodies – just my arms and legs were exposed. I was very lucky to survive. But the others were still being beaten. There was no escape for them.”
Afterwards, eleven men lay dead and sixty were seriously injured. The prison officials attempted a cover-up by claiming that the men had died from drinking contaminated water. But the story found its way back to London and the truth could not be suppressed.
The Winds of Change, 1960-63
The capture and subsequent execution of ‘General’ Dedan Kimathi in October 1956 was almost the last blow for the Mau Mau (for a long article about the arrest, detention and execution of Kimathi from the point of view of one of the British Kenya Police officers who was detailed to guard him, see The Death of Dedan Kimathi).
Although Mau Mau were defeated militarily, the cost to the British for quelling the uprising was staggering, not just in terms of money and numbers of troops which had to be permanently stationed in Kenya, but in terms of public opinion in Europe. Reports of brutality by the British forces had periodically appeared in the British press. The Daily Worker carried a report under the headline: “Officer who quit says, ‘It’s Hitlerism’”. The officer concerned was 19-year-old Second Lieutenant David Larder, who after killing an African, chopped off his hand. Afterwards he wrote home in anguish asking, “What has happened to me?”
Other reports told of officers who paid their men five shillings a head for every ‘Mau Mau’ they killed. One soldier testified in court that his officer had said he could shoot anybody he liked as long as they were black, because he wanted to increase his company’s score of kills to fifty.
It has been estimated that by the time the State of Emergency was lifted, in 1960, almost 58% of Kikuyu had taken the Mau Mau oath. Over this time, between 80,000 and 100,000 Kikuyu had been imprisoned in concentration camps, more than a million Kikuyu and Embu civilians had been shifted into “secure” areas, and around 11,500 suspected Mau Mau were killed (of which 1,000 were hanged). If you also count deaths from disease and starvation in the “protected villages”, the total death toll was nearer 150,000. The Mau Mau for their part killed around 2,000 people, most of them Kenyans: of the 95 Europeans who lost their lives, 32 were civilians.
The perverse truth is that more white settlers died in road accidents on the streets of Nairobi during the emergency than at the hands of the LFA.
Despite the figures, though, Mau Mau had triggered change. Painfully slowly, the realization dawned on the British that the colony was coming to an end. The Jewel in the colonial crown, India, had already achieved her freedom through peaceful means, and one-by-one the other African possessions of the empire were demanding self-rule. The only rational option remaining was to cede to the demands.
By 1957, African members were elected for the first time to the Legislative Council, albeit from a restricted franchise. The Luo trade unionist Tom M’boya, together with other Africans promoted to ministerial posts, refused to assume their official responsibilities, and pressed for a new constitution which would guarantee the rights of all Kenyans: independence was almost inevitable.
From the time of State of Emergency being lifted to independence in 1963, things moved quickly. The British Government, pushed along by Harold Macmillan’s ‘Wind of Change’ speech, opened negotiations that had always been inevitable with the African leaders. A constitutional conference was held at Lancaster House in London in January and February 1960, that led to a transitional constitution legalizing political parties 
and giving Africans a comfortable majority on the Legislative Council. The Kenya African National Union (KANU) – the successor to the KAU – was subsequently inaugurated, adopting a firm stance on land resettlement in the highlands. M’boya and James Gichuru became the leaders of KANU because Kenyatta remained in detention. Other African politicians, who were wary of Kikuyu-Luo domination, favoured a more federalist government; to this end, they formed the Kenya African Democratic Union (KADU).
When Kenyatta was released in August 1961 (the same month the Berlin Wall went up), he formed an all-party government and accepted the KANU presidency. At the legislative elections in May 1963, KANU triumphed over KADU with 124 seats opposed to 83, and Kenyatta was elected prime minister. The country’s first internal self-governing administration was formed on 1 June 1963 amid scenes of unparalleled joy, and Kenya was formally declared Independent on the 12th of December, 1963.
Independence
For a more general introduction on the Kenyan nation, read the contextual essay on Kenya’s History
Most of the 50,000 Europeans chose to remain in Kenya, and Kenyatta, who ruled first as prime minister (1963-64) and then as president (1964-78) was realistic about the difficulties that lay ahead. In his first speech as president he warned of the hard work which lay ahead and the need to save Kenyans from poverty, ignorance and disease, to educate their children and to have doctors, to build roads and to improve or provide all day-to-day essentials. He talked of harambee – the ‘coming together’ of all Kenyans in a spirit of brotherhood and unity. All fine words.
But is it really human nature for the powerful to deceive hope so cruelly? Does power always corrupt? Following independence, Kenyatta began increasingly to give preferential treatment to his own Kikuyu group, at the expense of others. The Kikuyu obtained much of the fertile land in the process of the Africanization of the White Highlands, and effectively became the political and economic elite of independent Kenya (they certainly retain their economic power to this day). They also received a lot of Maasai land, who were not represented in the new government.
Then, in 1969, Tom M’boya, then the KANU secretary-general, was assassinated by a Kikuyu in circumstances that have never been satisfactorily explained. The Luo population saw his death as an ethnic affront and as an attempt to intimidate it politically. Luo-Kikuyu enmity escalated rapidly over the next few months, reaching a point in October, 1969, when the KPU was banned, and its principal leaders, including Odinga and seven other party representatives, were detained. The banning of the KPU in effect brought a return to the single-party system, which lasted until the early 1990s.
Unsurprisingly, with the Kalenjin President Moi in power since 1978, things have changed somewhat, and the Kikuyu now find themselves in opposition, and have been the primary targets of ethnic violence since the 1990s. Of course, the government is still corrupt – in fact, corruption has never been more widespread or blatant. The country is financially on the brink of ruin (thanks largely to the illegal expropriation of its resources and finances by politicians), the infrastructure has either collapsed or is in a mess, and I really could go on and on and on for pages.
Yet for all its abuses, the seeds of Kenya’s presently parlous state were laid during Kenyatta’s reign, through his ultimate refusal to place the interests of the Kikuyu second to the interests of the new country. All that has happened since is merely repetition of that simple formula.
As a Nakuru farmer who had fought in the Mau Mau said in 1978 (a comment that could just as easily apply now):
“The land, which we expected to be distributed free to the poor and landless, was grabbed by the former homeguards and the big politicians… most of the beneficiaries from our glorious struggle are the former collaborators, and not the legitimate freedom fighters… if the situation continues to worsen, our children will be forced to fight – to fight for the same things we fought for.”
In Maina wa Kinyatti (ed), Kimathi’s Letters. Nairobi, Kenya: Heinemann, 1986; London UK: ZED Press, 1986
Maina wa Kinyatti himself, in Kenya: A Prison Notebook (1982), wrote:
“Fifteen long years of Kenyatta’s undemocratic rule left neo-colonial Kenya impoverished, depoliticized and disunited. He made way for Moi to misrule us. A rule of talk, talk, talk and do the opposite. The nauseating demagogy which Moi and the traitorous clique around him employ to mask their unpopular rule has failed to hide the all-around suffering of the Kenyans. One notices the intensified pauperization of the Kenyan people, as evidenced in ever rising unemployment, sky-high inflation, famine and starvation, wage freezes, forced cash contributions (under the pretext of Harambee), to the already wealthy ones.”
I’m sad to say that I agree.
Posted in Our lives | No Comments »
Posted by kikuyusworld on July 26th, 2007
The Kamba and the colonial army
The First World War affected East Africa as much as it did Europe, as Germany also had colonial interests to preserve in the shape of Deutsch Ostafrika, which comprised much of modern-day Tanzania, Rwanda and Burundi. The border between the rival colonies followed the same frontier which today separates Kenya from Tanzania, and much fighting took place both along it, and deeper in Tanzania.
Before the Native Poll Tax of 1910 came into being, the Kamba themselves had scant interest in military service for their colonial masters, and little need for money or wage labour, as even without long-distance trade, local trade in beeswax, honey, and iron goods was sufficient for survival, and much of the Kamba herds were still intact.
So when the war came, the Kamba actively resisted conscription into the much hated and ill-fated Carrier Corps, a military labour unit in which Africans were used as little more than forced labour. When colonial officials resorted to conscription in 1916 to meet the army’s growing demand for porters, entire Kamba villages “took to the bush” to escape recruiting parties. By 1917 desertion had become such a problem that some men were recaptured as many as three times and sent back into service. Nonetheless, by the end of the war in 1918, colonial officials in Machakos and Kitui estimated that roughly three-quarters of all eligible men in Ukambani had been conscripted.
Needless to say, the war affected most Kamba families, both directly (and negatively) in the form of casualties and the famine of 1917-18 which was partly caused by a lack of cultivators (who had been conscripted), and more positively in the form of wages which found their way back to Ukambani and bought flour to relieve the worst of the famine. Living – and dying – with British soldiers also gave the Kamba insights into the ways of the Europeans who now ruled them, and in a sense made it easier to accept British rule. Better the devil you know than the one you don’t…
Nonetheless, the inter-war years saw a huge influx of Kamba into the armed services and the Kenya police, especially into the King’s African Rifles, which drew soldiers from all of Britain’s African colonies. Between 1943 and 1946, nearly one-third of all employed Kamba males were in the military, and were represented in the King’s African Rifles at a rate of three to four times their percentage of the overall Kenyan population.
Why this sudden change? One of the primary reasons was the gradual economic transformation of the Kamba Reserves during the 1920s, which had started with the famine of 1917-18 and the decimation of herds. Throughout East Africa, new commercial opportunities and an appetite for material goods – coupled with rising bridewealth costs, the imposition of hut and poll taxes, and a growing land shortage – led to increased interest in (and a reliance on) money and wage labour. Equally important was that in addition to providing a reliable source of income – the colonial army offered the highest wages for unskilled African labour – military service also granted askaris an exemption from taxation and forced labour. A further reason was the collapse in the traditional trade of the Kamba, which was made impossible by the restrictive nature of the native reserve system.
From 1928 through the mid-1930s, both Machakos and Kitui reserves experienced severe famine resulting from locust plagues and the interruption of established rainfall patterns. To make matters worse, the Depression stagnated trade and virtually eliminated the demand for beeswax, honey, and other locally produced commodities. As a result, the Kamba sold most of their remaining stock to buy food and pay taxes, which in turn led to a sharp plunge in the value of cattle. These climatic and economic disasters drove large numbers of Kamba into the labour market, a trend accelerated by a nearly 30 percent jump in Ukambani’s population during the inter-war era (by 1937 there was almost no unclaimed land left in the district, and more and more young, unestablished men were forced to turn to paid employment and military service). By the mid-1930s, military service had emerged as the most popular form of waged labour in Ukambani, and when the King’s African Rifles expanded after the Italian invasion of Ethiopia in 1935, the Kamba provided the largest number of recruits.
Even during the Mau Mau uprising, the Kamba were described in a press release by the East Africa Command as loyal “soldiers of the Queen”.
Resistance
Kamba resistance to colonialism was widespread but mostly non-violent, though even as early as 1911 a movement of total European rejection had emerged. Led by a widow named Siotune wa Kathake, it channeled opposition to colonialism into frenetic dancing, during which teenage girls became “possessed” by an anti-European spirit and preached radical messages of non-compliance with the government.
By the 1930s, resistance had become more focused, and saw the formation of the Ukamba Members Association (UMA), one of whose leaders was Muindi Mbingu who became a hero in the struggle for independence. The association was founded by a number of wealthy Kamba cattle owners, to pre-empt efforts to settle Europeans in Ukambani and reduce Kamba herds by compulsory purchase (”destocking”), an unfair proposal which the Maasai similarly refused.
Things came to a head in Iveti, when wealthy Kamba refused to accept payment for 2,500 seized cattle on the grounds that it constituted a mere quarter of the animals’ true market value. When the government forced the sale of the cattle, between 1,500 and 5,000 men, women, and children marched to Kariokor (”Carrier Corps”) Market in Nairobi to petition Governor Sir Robert Brooke-Popham to halt the auctions. Once there, they camped near the racecourse grounds for six weeks (standing as a group to salute the governor whenever he passed) until the governor held a public meeting in Machakos town to discuss their complaints. Not surprisingly, Kamba members of the police and army sympathized with the protesters – as comparatively wealthy members of Kamba society, senior askaris had large herds. The protest, from a people who had ‘loyally’ fought for the British King and country in the First World War, and who were now being unfairly treated, made front page news back in Europe, and the colonial authorities eventually relented, returning the stock.
But the campaign was just the first in a long fight that eventually led to independence. A few years later, the UMA joined forces with other popular anti-colonial organizations such as the Luo Thrift and Trading Corporation, the Kikuyu-dominated KAU, the Luhya North Kavirondo Central Association (NKCA) and Taita Hills Association in the struggle for freedom, and considerably weakened the colonial state.
The Second World War was crucial in galvanizing Kamba opinion against the British. Serving once more in the colonial army – this time as the vast majority – the Kamba veterans came back to bitter disappointment: instead of a hero’s welcome, things remained exactly as they had been before the war: the Kamba were still hemmed in by the reserves, destocking was still on the agenda, the white man was still in power. As signaller Anakleti Mathuba wrote to a Captain F. O. B. Wilson, member of the “European Committee of Advice” in Machakos: “You Europeans of Ukambani land why do you like to curse us black people? Why do you call us apes? Why Bwana Wilson, are the wages which you pay your servants so small? In what, Effendi, are you helping the native?”
In fact, the Effendi was helping the native in nothing. Among the whites in Kenya, things after the war were supposed to carry on exactly as they had before. Their privileges were to be preserved, and the ‘native’ was to remain loyal. But enough was enough. By the time the Kikuyu-dominated Mau Mau freedom fighters came into existence in the early 1950s, and began their guerilla war against the regime, they found widespread support among the Kamba. There was a Mau Mau “Central Committee” for the Kamba in Nairobi, and by 1954 the government estimated that at least two thousand people in Machakos had taken a Mau Mau oath.
So much for being “loyal soldiers of the Queen” – the Kamba finally became loyal to themselves.
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Posted by kikuyusworld on July 26th, 2007
RIGHTS-KENYA:
Past Not Yet History for Veterans of Independence Struggle
Joyce Mulama
NAIROBI, May 23 (IPS) – Mau Mau veterans in Kenya have vowed to continue fighting for reparations from the British government for abuses perpetrated during colonial rule in the East African country — this after Britain dismissed the compensation claim.
“We will not be silenced,” Gitu wa Kahengeri, a member of the Mau Mau War Veterans Association (MMWVA), told journalists Tuesday in the Kenyan capital of Nairobi. “We are determined to go ahead with filing a case in the British courts, not for money, but…to show that human rights should not be violated.”
Assisted by the Kenya Human Rights Commission (KHRC), the veterans made a formal demand for compensation in October 2006.
Certain estimates have it that about 13,000 Mau Mau died in a crackdown which ensued after the movement launched a rebellion against the colonists in the 1950s, while a further 80,000 persons associated with it are believed to have been kept in detention camps. Most Mau Mau were members of the Kikuyu, Kenya’s largest ethnic group.
The abuses meted out to the movement and its alleged supporters included sexual violations by African troops serving under the British.
Britain replied to the demand last month.
“These claimants, you say, will be able to adduce medical evidence which is consistent with their cases, but the FCO (Foreign and Commonwealth Office) is unlikely to be in a position to adduce any contradictory evidence from those individuals allegedly responsible for what the claimants say happened to them well over 50 years ago now,” says the Apr. 2 letter, in part.
“We cannot accept that the Foreign and Commonwealth Office…or any other department of State, has any legal responsibility in respect of the matters which you allege,” it states.
The letter further notes that the veterans’ claims exceed the statute of limitations laid down by Britain’s Limitation Act of 1980, a claim disputed by Mbugua Mureithi — legal advisor to the Mau Mau veterans.
“Vindications of human rights abuses were never limited by time,” he said Tuesday, noting that there also needed to be an acknowledgement of constraints on legal action being taken earlier.
A ban on the Mau Mau that was imposed during colonial rule continued after independence in 1963, and was only lifted four decades later after current head of state Mwai Kibaki took power — enabling the MMWVA to be formed.
“The Mau Mau group was banned by the colonial regime and it remained banned even after independence. How would the survivors of Mau Mau meet to discuss their concerns if their movement was considered an illegal one?” asked KHRC Acting Executive Director Mwambi Mwasaru.
For the veterans, there can be no statue of limitations on memory.
“We really suffered at the hands of our colonial masters. We were arrested and taken to detention camps where we were tortured to the point of death. The mzungu (Swahili for “white man”) would clip our genitalia with pliers, and would laugh as we felt pain,” recounts Jimmy Rugunya.
Notes MMWVA Secretary General Augustine Kamunde: “I had 120 people under me; 111 were shot, nine of us fled. As we disappeared into the thick forests, the mzungu took our land.”
“Women were raped and objects inserted in their private parts as their children watched. This was horrific.”
A team of technical experts from the KHRC is scheduled to gather additional information about the case in London, while the suit is to be filed by November. (END/2007)
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Posted by kikuyusworld on July 26th, 2007
By DANIEL BERGNER
IMPERIAL RECKONING
The Untold Story of Britain’s Gulag in Kenya.
HISTORIES OF THE HANGED
The Dirty War in Kenya
and the End of Empire.
By David Anderson.
Focusing on the final decade of British rule in Kenya (ending in 1963), both writers evoke a period when, especially in Elkins’s view, the colonial pretense of civilizing the dark continent gave way to the savagery of imperial self-preservation. Some 40,000 whites lived in Kenya by the early 1950’s, drawn by promises of long leases on fertile land and native labor at low wages.
”Whatever his background,” Anderson, a lecturer in African Studies at Oxford, writes, ”every white man who disembarked from the boat at Mombasa became an instant aristocrat.” But by midcentury, many of the natives, particularly those of the Kikuyu tribe, refused to play their assigned role.
The Kikuyu had been put off their most arable land by white farmers. They, like other Kenyan tribes, had been banished to ethnic reserves too small to sustain them. They were forced to carry passbooks as they searched for work from the governing race. In 1952, stirred partly by their displacement and partly by British efforts to prohibit traditional Kikuyu customs, a Kikuyu secret society, the Mau Mau, launched a rebellion, attacking white-owned farms and brutally killing perhaps a hundred whites and 1,800 of their African supporters. In retaliation, the British carried out a campaign that, Elkins suggests, amounted to genocide.
Anderson’s book, meant as a kind of requiem for the ”as yet unacknowledged martyrs of the rebel cause: the 1,090 men who went to the gallows as convicted Mau Mau terrorists,” never manages to render a vivid martyr.
Examples of colonial judicial corruption and hypocrisy are thoroughly explored, but little room is left for character. Elkins, a history professor at Harvard, also neglects individual portraits, but she develops an unforgettable catalog of atrocities and mass killing perpetrated by the British.
”Imperial Reckoning” is an important and excruciating record; it will shock even those who think they have assumed the worst about Europe’s era of control in Africa. Nearly the entire Kikuyu population of 1.5 million was, by Elkins’s calculation, herded by the British into various gulags.
Elkins, who assembled her indictment through archives, letters and interviews with survivors and colonists, tells of a settler who would burn the skin off Mau Mau suspects or force them to eat their own testicles as methods of interrogation.
She quotes a survivor recalling a torment evocative of Abu Ghraib: lines of Kikuyu detainees ordered to strip naked and embrace each other randomly, and a woman committing suicide after being forced into the arms of her son-in-law. She quotes an anonymous settler telling her, ”Never knew a Kukuyu had so many brains until we cracked open a few heads.” Her method is relentless; page after page, chapter after chapter, the horrors accumulate.
We should all say Never again!
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Posted by kikuyusworld on July 26th, 2007
The Kikuyu People
A Historical Overview
The Kikuyu come from Bantu-speaking people who migrated from Lake Chad (Nigeria, Cameroon area) to Southern Africa before migrating upward to North and East Africa.
They entered the Nyeri area where the Kikuyu villages are around 1000 A.D. Because of previously acquired iron working skills they tamed the area quickly, settling along the ridges. Each ridge formed a community or sub-clan. There were ten clans that had all, at one point, been named after women an indication that the Kikuyu culture has not always been patriarchal. The ridge pattern of settlement played a large role in the formation of their culture, specifically their religion.
Because the land was so fertile the people prospered greatly. The result: believing God was smiling at them from the largest mountain in Kenya, MT. Kenya. The mountain, visible from the ridges, has a white patch which the Kikuyu people once believed to be a sign God was watching them.
The mountain and country got its name because, when speaking to colonists, the Kikuyu pronounced Kiri Nyaga (white patch in Kikuyu) as Kiinyaa (the people did not pronounce r’s clearly). The result: the colonists thought it was Kenya. Thanks to the fertile soil of the ridges, the Kikuyu people had very good fortune.
They thus came to developing their culture around their religion. The Moral Economy Concept also quickly formed a belief that those who are poor are poor because they are lazy- because the Kikuyu were generally successful. Because they believed one could not talk directly to God, a religious hierarchy fell into place. When communicating with God one spoke through those higher up in the hierarchy. The following, from most to least in importance, was the hierarchy: God, spirits, elders, parents, individuals. Religion influenced all other aspects of Kikuyu culture.
The Kikuyu governmental system also developed as a result of the ridge settlement pattern. Prior to colonization the Kikuyu were very democratic. If you experienced problems, they were solved within your own place in the hierarchy. If that did not work you would go to those one-step higher, and so on.
The hierarchy, from most to least in importance, was as follows: community, ridge, inter-family, family. The family unit was the most basic political unit. To become a member of the community you had to be initiated. Initiation included a period away from home with formal schooling and, finally, circumcision. The warriors, elders, or statesmen would lead the different political units respectively. The hierarchy of warriors is as follows: Junior Warrior, Senior Warrior, Junior Elder (marry to go higher up), Senior Elder, Elder, and Statesman.
The elders were in charge of justice, religion, and administration. Every group had a spokesperson chosen on merit or performance. In such a system of government no system of prisons or policemen was necessary because, when men were initiated, they were taught to control one another and solve problems at their own level.
Although religion and government developed into a relatively formal structure, education remained informal. Education was based on hands on experience. Fathers would teach sons and mothers would teach daughters. Children would learn how to do the necessary house chores and how to behave themselves. The only formal schooling that occurred was during Initiation, away from the homes, where the children were taught what was expected of them as adults.
In 1895 when Britain took over, everything changed. Determined to prevent other European countries from getting the area, the British wanted to get to the source of the Nile. To do this they walked through Kenya to Uganda. In trying to keep the region, they built a railway line where they had walked from Mombassa, Kenya to Uganda (1897-1902). This was no easy task. The natives refused to help build it because they didn’t measure wealth in work with iron but in the number of animals and children a person had. The British solved this problem by bringing thousands of Indians and other Asians (then known as Coolies) to work. Because of their light skin, a color the animals had not seen before, many of the animals thought they were good meat, eating them in large numbers. Once finished with the railroad, many Asians remained, setting up small businesses. The railroad became known as the Lunatic Express because it was a railroad that carried nothing and went nowhere. The British soon got tired of paying for it, introducing European settlers as quickly as possible to speed up the development/Westernization of Kenya.
The Europeans transformed Kenyan society through Western technology, Western ideas, and the creation of a new economy. The first thing the new settlers did was establish a new administration structure. The hierarchy of government became, from most important to least, as follows: Queen, Colonial Secretary, Governor, Provincial Commissioner, District, District Officer, Chief.
This undemocratic new government was a problem to the Kikuyu people because they had no chiefs. The British solved this by choosing the chiefs for the Kikuyu people completely destroying the Kikuyu government structure and, as a result, destabilizing the entire culture.
Soon realizing the Kenyan land had to be worked, a job they wouldn’t do themselves, the British demanded labor of the natives. They did this through forced labor, sharecroppers, and creating a poorly paid workforce. Kenyans refused to work for money, something that was not valued in their culture, until the government created taxes.
Taxes forced the people to end their barter economy and find work with the British. In a continued effort to Westernize Kenyans, Christianity was introduced through formal Western education (the structure of slave schools in the deep South in America was studied and copied).
As soon as the Kikuyu people learned to read and write, they realized much of what the missionaries were saying was not mirrored in the book they preached, the Bible. The result: not believing in Christian teachings. There soon came a serious clash between tribal beliefs/customs and Christianity so the Kikuyu established their own churches and schools (education soon led to the end of the Kikuyu practice of female circumcision).
From the 1920s onward the Kikuyu people were at the forefront of the anti-colonial struggle. It was from among them that the Mau warriors came (the warriors that led the struggle for independence from Britain). In 1962 the struggle of independence succeeded and Kenya returned to the hands of the natives.
Despite general rebellion against colonial ways, colonization left a large impression on Kenya. The cultures of the natives were shattered through the forced introduction of new people and new ways of life. One example of the impact of colonization on Kikuyu society is theorized to be the current imbalance of division of labor between the sexes.
Before the colonization, Kikuyu men and women had a relatively equal set of jobs around the home. The men worked in the fields with certain types of crops, for example, while the women would cook. When money was introduced into the economy the men had to leave home and find a job to pay taxes. While the men were away the women had to do the men’s jobs in addition to their own.
With so many men going to the city there were not enough jobs. Currently, unemployment is still very high, and men find themselves without jobs very often. The men never picked up doing the chores they had left to the women when they went away. The result: the women often work much harder than the men. The inequality in regards to the workload of women versus men is not, therefore, an innate aspect of the Kikuyu culture but, at least partially, a result of colonization.
Today the Kikuyu culture is a combination of colonization, new customs, and newly revived pre-colonial culture.
This piece is from http://www.kukummi.org/Stories/kikuyuhistory.html
Please give us more about these Kikuyus.
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Posted by kikuyusworld on July 26th, 2007
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