Alongside the National Council of Churches of Kenya, the LSK emerged as a credible voice for human rights, while the government did all it could to either infiltrate and co-opt it or suppress it through lawfare and brutality.
According to Paul Mwangi’s ‘The Black Bar: Corruption and Political Change
within Kenya’s Legal Fraternity’, first published in 2001 and reprinted this
year, the legal profession endured hell from the hands of then-President Daniel
Moi’s Kanu administration.
Here are excerpts from the book.
The Emergence of the Black Bar
Chapter 3
It was six o’clock in the evening on the slopes of the Aberdare forests. Smoke from the scattered grass-thatched mud houses rose into the sky and diffused into the descending evening mist. The area was quiet, the silence broken only by the occasional moo of the cows or clucking of the chickens. It was a concentration area, build by the Colonial Government under the emergency regulations. It was surrounded by a barbed wire fence and a 10-foot trench in which sharpened stakes had been erected. Such concentration areas littered the country that was known as Kikuyu land and were meant to isolate the Mau Mau freedom fighters. Everyone not within the concentration area during curfew hours was shot on sight. To filter the traffic were several armed African askaris (soldiers) at the sole entrance.
Although the year was 1958 and the inhabitants of this concentration area had lived under these conditions since 1952 when the State of Emergency was declared, they had not yet recovered from the trauma of being transported from their homes and being re-settled in the camps. They had had to dig the trenches themselves under armed supervision. Several had been arrested and taken to detention camps. Others had been shot dead. The camp was so crowded that they had to graze their cattle in the forest during the day and be sure to be back by 6 p.m or risk death. For a people who told time by the sun, this was not always possible. But they were a religious people and they thanked God for small mercies: That they lived on the equinox and sunset varied only slightly.
Before 1952, an evening such as this would have brought a bustle of activity to the homestead. There was dinner to prepare, cows to milk and feed, cow feed to be fetched from the farms to keep the cows full through the night, chicken to chase and lock up, water to fetch from the river down the valley, and all in time for the children to eat and go sit on granny’s lap for a bedtime story or two. In the traditional division of labour system that was so rigidly adhered to by the Kikuyu people, the women undertook all the tasks that were in any way connected to the kitchen and the children. The young boys locked up the chickens, milked and fed the cows while the young girls helped their mothers, especially to draw water from the river. The men sat under a tree or in a hut and discussed politics. Every evening was thus also an assemblage of age-groups according to their gender. The result was spectacular, an electric atmosphere of camaraderie.
But on that day, September 7th 1958, there was no electricity in the air. Everyone moved around discharging their duties in a low-key glum atmosphere, their emotions spent from days of oppression. The State of Emergency was nearing an end but they didn’t know. All they knew was that it had been six years since they were bundled up like prisoners, despite having done nothing wrong, that Kenyatta had been jailed and silenced, that their pre-emergency homesteads had been razed to the ground and their land alienated, and that this deplorable state could go on forever. Their hearts were shattered. But the heart of one 13-year-old boy was thumping strongly and incessantly against his heaving chest as he lay on his bed, panting. The sweat kept flowing from his body, soaking into his already wet khaki shirt and shorts. Despite his fright, thoughts raced across his mind, building up anger in him. What if he had actually been sick?
The boy’s name was Lee Gacuiga Muthoga. He had just escaped being run over by a white colonial administrator driving a Land Rover. The near fatal incidence had occurred as part of a mischievous practical joke conceived by him and an age-mate friend. It was about five O’ clock and they were taking the six mile walk back home from school. Although they walked the distance in the morning, having woken up at five to make it to school by eight, the distance was especially disheartening at the end of the day. The school being down the valley, they had to walk uphill every evening, and this, combined with eight hours of learning with nothing to eat all day, got their delinquent minds working when they saw dust rising behind them on the road to the camp.
“I wish I had a car,” Muthoga told his friend as they trudged along the dusty road, dragging their school bags on the ground.
“Would you carry me, if you had your own car?” his friend inquired. ‘’Yes, why not?”
“Well, I’m sorry but I couldn’t carry you if I had the car. I’d have to carry my mother, my father, grandpa, grandma, my eleven brothers and sisters, I mean there’d always be a relative to carry.”
“Oh yes, I hadn’t seen it that way. But my father is in detention, so I guess you could take his seat when you need a ride.”
“It’s not that I wouldn’t want to do the same for you, I hope you understand. I’m sorry but ...”
“Hey, hey, hey,” Muthoga interrupted. “Why don’t we get the car first? You are... what did the teacher call it? Do you remember this saying about a cart and a horse?”
“Putting the cat behind the horse. I don’t understand it. Why shouldn’t you put a cat behind a horse? I thought horses are more important because Englishmen ride on them, therefore they should always come first.”
“It’s not cat. It’s cart, C-A-R-T,” Muthoga corrected his friend. And the saying is that you shouldn’t put the cart before the horse. You know why?”
“Lee give me some Leeway until we get to the leeward side.” They both burst out laughing.
“What do you say we hike a lift from this car?”
“Lee, we are in enough trouble already. Your mother has yet to punish us for frying eels in her cooking pan. Not to mention the egg-shells she found buried in the garden.”
“All we are doing is simply asking for a lift home. What is wrong with that? We are not stealing the car.”
“No white man is going to give two black boys a lift. It has not happened before and it will not happen now.”
“You expect us to get it voluntarily? Get serious. I’ll lie down and pretend to be sick. You come over me and wave to the car. They’ll stop. When we get to the dispensary, tell them you are going to call my mother. I’ll find my way out.”
“Muthoga, you’re out of your mind.”
“The car is almost here. Come on, quick.” He quickly dropped to the ground, pulling his friend along. As his friend struggled to stand up, the Land Rover rounded the bend and came into their full view. It was a police car.
“Holy Mother of God,” Muthoga cursed. In the driver’s seat was an Englishman dressed in the brown colonial administrator’s uniform. At the back of the car were several African soldiers with rifles. The car was driving directly towards them and from the sound of it, at an increasing speed. The two boys remained transfixed in their positions as the car came roaring towards them.
“I’m out of here. Let go of me, Lee.” The boy did not wait to be released by his comrade but lashed out and whipped Lee’s hand off from the hold it had on his shirt-front. He rose from his kneeling position, spontaneously followed by his friend and the two boys skirted into the bushes beside the road.
Behind them the Land Rover screeched to a halt. The white administrator shouted at them as they disappeared into the bushes.
“If you boys ever stop my car again I will run you over.” But the boys were
long gone.
***
Readers can order and/or buy The Black Bar at:
1. Nuria Books
0794 233 261
2. LawAfrica
0723 413 744
3. Amazon
https://www.amazon.com/Black-Bar-Corruption-Political-Fraternity-ebook/dp/B0FL2H8BRZ/
4. Price of book - Sh1,500/-
© Paul Mwangi, 2025
