Analysis: Compensation may be right this time - but Mau Mau waged a brutal civil war

When Sir Evelyn Baring, the governor of Kenya, declared a state of emergency across the British colony in October 1952, he reassured his aides that the crisis would end in a "few weeks".

Sir Evelyn Baring, who declared a state of emergency in Kenya in 1952

By David Blair

Jun 2013

Almost 61 years later, that decision still reverberates, not least in the courts where legal action has compelled Britain to agree to compensate surviving victims.

Sir Evelyn imposed emergency rule after an armed movement, which came to be known as the Mau Mau, emerged from the lush highlands of a country still dominated by 29,000 white settlers.

The Mau Mau began its campaign by murdering Africans who held jobs in the government or worked for white farmers – or simply refused to take the oath of membership. Their uprising lasted not weeks, but for almost eight years and perhaps 25,000 people died.

Yet few episodes of recent history are more misunderstood. Instead of being a simple anti-colonial rebellion, the Mau Mau insurgency was also a civil war within the Kikuyu people.

Many Africans bitterly opposed the Mau Mau and, throughout the emergency, Africans were its principal victims. During eight years of fighting, the Mau Mau killed 32 white settlers – and as many as 5,000 Africans. In the Lari massacre of 1953, perhaps 120 African "loyalists" who backed the British were hacked or burned to death.

Suspected Mau Mau terrorists under police guard. (AP)

"The opponents of the Mau Mau were those who did not share the values of the rebels, who rejected violence and armed struggle as a way forward, and who questioned the moral basis of the claims made by the rebels," wrote David Anderson in "Histories of the Hanged", a study of the uprising. "As the conflict went on, these divisions made it appear more and more like a civil war."
This fratricidal conflict triggered a draconian response: at least 150,000 Kikuyus were interned in British detention camps during the emergency, where many suffered torture. If the Mau Mau killed 5,000 Africans, Britain's counter-insurgency campaign might have claimed 20,000 lives.
Yet Britain left Kenya barely three years after crushing the Mau Mau – and the new independent country did not hail these fighters as liberators. On the contrary, they were often regarded with embarrassment: Jomo Kenyatta, the first president of Kenya, publicly called the Mau Mau "scum".
This complicated story has no heroes and many villains. The only certainty is that wholly innocent people suffered terribly. A compensation settlement will, perhaps, help to right that wrong.