Bittersweet freedom after fighting for Independence

In It’s Our Turn to Eat, an evocative book about corruption in Kenya, Michela Wrong says, “Nothing smarts quite like the dashing of raised hopes.” No hopes could have been higher than those of the men and women who put their lives on the line to free the country from colonialists only for land-grabbing and dictatorship to prevail, and for the regime they paved the way for to turn against them.

Bildad Kaggia was mocked as a man who had fought for Independence yet had no wealth to show for it. Makhan Singh was ignored even in death despite staying longest in detention (nearly 15 years) after unifying Indian and Kenyan trade unions.

Pio Gama Pinto was martyred in a hail of bullets despite championing the cause of freedom in international press. JM Kariuki, who famously said, “We do not want a Kenya of 10 millionaires and 10 million poor people,” met an even more inglorious end. His body was found in the forest with the hands chopped off, eyes gouged out and face burnt with acid and left on an ant’s nest.

They were all friends of veteran trade unionist Maina Macharia, the custodian of Mau Mau documents, who himself endured five years in detention. But more importantly, they and other freedom fighters had been to hell and back for one man to become President.

A man whose oratory skills had captured the imagination across the continent even as it ruffled feathers among white settlers in Kenya. A man born Kamau wa Muigai in the 1890s, Christened in 1914 as John Peter, which he changed to Johnstone, before again rebranding in 1938. A man thereafter known by the Kikuyu word for ‘burning spear’ and the Maasai word for the bead belt he often wore. The man called Jomo Kenyatta, who would go on to be given the honorary title ‘Mzee’ (Elder).

“Kenyatta betrayed us,” Maina says, losing his cool for the first time in a two-hour-long interview.

But where bitterness abounds in other veterans, Maina has taken the anti-climax in his stride. As a lifetime trade unionist, he sought to work with all governments. He also notes that Kenyatta never took the Mau Mau oath and had once publicly denounced the group before elders warned him against it.

Mau Mau itself remained illegal until the Mwai Kibaki government lifted a ban on the movement in 2003, and survivors started preparing a class action lawsuit. “Before that, we could not talk about Mau Mau, we could not organise into groups,” Maina says.

CONSOLIDATING POWER

This was politically motivated since Independence as the interests of the Mau Mau collided with those of the powers that be. Sidelined during constitutional negotiations at Lancaster House in the UK and excluded from ‘settlement committees’ back home, the Mau Mau were reduced to spectators as land changed hands from the British elite to the Kenyan elite.

Kenyatta retained colonial legislation that protected title owners, embracing a willing-buyer-willing-seller arrangement that priced out many of those who had been displaced by white settlers. Some Mau Mau got scraps, such as those allotted plots in a bushy settlement in Timau, Meru county, that was unfit for farming, while their loyalist foes reaped big.

The Ndung’u Land Report in 2009, the Truth, Justice and Reconciliation Commission report in 2013 and a CIA report declassified in 2017 after being prepared in 1978, shortly after Kenyatta died, all pointed to a culture of land grabbing to benefit the first family and reward political allies. The TJRC report, however, was allegedly censored as its release in 2013 came a month after the ascension to presidency of Kenyatta’s son Uhuru Kenyatta.

Back in 1965, one of the last Mau Mau leaders, Field Marshal Simon M’Marete, alias Baimungi, could not stand the turn of events. He mobilised his forces and returned to the forest. Kenyatta hosted a peace meeting in Gatundu and offered him Sh600 (a lot of money at the time) and some land. Baimungi saw it as a ‘bribe’, however, and rejected it, demanding ‘egalitarian justice’ to the citizens. Kenyatta warned that he would resort to military action.

“Mūthee, don’t you see what you are doing?” Baimungi asked him, using the Kikuyu word for Mzee.

He said the rebels did not want war “unless it is forced on us”, and that they would not be party to Kenyatta’s government or be bound by the deal with the British. Voicing, in the process, what many people thought but dared not say out loud:

“I don’t know whether you are aware that it is our courage and persistency, our heroism and sacrifice that freed you from the enemy prison and gave birth to national Independence.”   

Fuming, Kenyatta walked out. And the Field Marshal returned to the forest, declaring, “A luta continua!” The struggle continues.

This time, though, it would be a losing battle for the Mau Mau. Kenyatta unleashed the full force of the government on Baimungi’s unit. Baimungi was killed and his body paraded in Meru town for several days, in what set the tone for political assassinations that were to follow.

“Kenyatta did not want to hear about other organisations, other than Kanu,” Maina says. Kanu being the party Kenyatta came to power through after a merger of three parties, soon to be four after Kadu followed suit, leaving Kenya under single-party rule.

To further consolidate power ahead of a General Election in 1969, the first since Independence, Kenyatta’s inner circle forced the Gikuyu, Embu and Meru (Gema) communities together through oathing ceremonies, and allegedly killed the man seen as Kenyatta’s heir apparent, Tom Mboya, who was a Luo and growing in popularity around the country. 

By then, Vice President Jaramogi Oginga Odinga had resigned after favouring ties with the East while Kenyatta leaned West, and formed an opposition party, Kenya People’s Union. Kenyatta ventured into his stronghold in Kisumu for a function three months after Mboya’s fatal shooting in Nairobi. Emotions were still raw, the crowd got restless, Kenyatta threatened to ‘crush’ them. To add insult to injury, he told Jaramogi, “You are hungry because you do not want to work. I, Kenyatta, am self-sufficient.”

Riots erupted. Presidential guards and police fired into the crowd. Eleven people were shot dead, some reports say more than 100. And it gave a convenient excuse to eliminate the President’s other competition by banning KPU. Jaramogi himself was subsequently detained for 18 months in Hola, the same camp where 11 detainees were clubbed to death by guards in the colonial era. Upon release, he remained under house arrest until Kenyatta died in office.

QUEST FOR JUSTICE

Left out of the political conversation, the Mau Mau remained a footnote of history until the opposition united under Kibaki and ended 40 years of rule by Kanu, whose autocratic rule Kenyatta’s successor Daniel Moi had faithfully retained, even introducing the infamous Nyayo torture chambers.

A Kalenjin, Moi escaped assassination by Kenyatta’s insiders before his swearing in, but his initially promising reign turned ruthless after an attempted coup in 1982, which landed Jaramogi back under house arrest, and his son, Raila, in prison.

Kibaki, whose regime is what inspired Michela Wrong’s book after succumbing to the same trappings of power, nonetheless set himself apart in matters Independence. He recognised the role Mau Mau had played and erected a statue of their leader, Dedan Kimathi, in Nairobi in 2007.

“We are honouring a great man who not only sacrificed his life for the liberation of Kenya but also inspired others to fight against oppression,” he said while unveiling it.

As an illegal entity, the Mau Mau could not fight for justice, but now things had changed. Their quest was given further impetus by the discovery of 1,500 hidden files about Britain’s dirty little secrets in Kenya.

The information began trickling down in 2003, when the first scholars, Colin Murray and Peter Sanders, gained access to colonial archives in Hanslope, UK, before the Pandora’s box was opened in 2011. Tireless efforts by historians Caroline Elkins, author of Britain’s Gulag, David Anderson (Histories of the Hanged) and Huw Bennett (Fighting the Mau Mau) shone the light on systematic torture of the Mau Mau.

In 2013, the British government pre-empted an ugly court case by settling with 5,000 members of the Mau Mau War Veterans Association, led by Gitu wa Kahengeri. Foreign Secretary William Hague condemned the violations of human dignity, saying the government “sincerely regrets that these abuses took place”.

Legal disputes have since delayed the £19.9m (Sh2.6 billion at the time) dished out from reaching the old and dying veterans. Moreover, many veterans were left out, including Maina, who was a member of the technical committee helping with the case in the initial stages. “We don’t know what happened,” he says.

He and other omitted persons, led by the wife of Mau Mau leader Dedan Kimathi, Mukami, hired other lawyers and initiated a separate lawsuit. But when they went to London, they were told their case could not be accepted because the government had already accepted another case before. “So our case died a natural death.”

Maina blames a lack of unity among the Mau Mau for this predicament. Different factions have emerged instead of uniting to speak in one voice, and nobody wants to leave the position of the group he is leading. This makes it hard for them to even go to see the President as he cannot meet several groups each purporting to represent the Mau Mau.

But Maina is unworried about imposters masquerading as Mau Mau. “We know each other,” he says of the genuine veterans.

PRESIDENTIAL RECOGNITION

Maina helped to design Kenya’s National Flag. But when asked what his best achievement is, he cites his hard-fought negotiations through Kudheiha, a workers’ union he served for 37 years, saying it is one of the best unions, with one of the best constitutions. He organised workers’ education, seminars and even helped set up labour colleges.

Many Mau Mau veterans went into politics after Independence, but not Maina. Several sought his blessings, in fact. But Maina is frank when asked why he himself did not go into politics. “I did not have money.”

It is the same reason his ambitions to write a memoir have stalled, as everyone he requests to help asks for money. Maina has not been employed since he left Kudheiha in 2001, and is not pensionable. He decided not to look for employment and instead has been searching for records at the National Archives, and is now a facilitator of researchers on trade unions and Mau Mau history.

Maina belatedly got recognition in December 12, 2020, during Jamhuri Day celebrations at Nyayo Stadium, after the Central Organisation of Trade Unions (Cotu) fronted his name. He was awarded the Head of State’s Commendation in absentia as he was out of town and had not been notified. But he is proud of his achievements and the role he has played in history.

“I live on four pillars that made me to be what I am,” Maina says. “Honesty. Trustfulness. Truthfulness. And faithfulness to God.” After all, he believes it is God who saved him when he was sentenced to death in 1953 during the crackdown on Mau Mau.