Book explores the Mau Mau war and the never-ending quest for freedom

Tackling the emotive issue of independence has never been easy for Kenyan academics

By KWENDO OPANGA

FRIDAY JULY 1 2016

 

In a file picture taken in October 1952 soldiers guard suspected Mau Mau fighters behind barbed wire in the Kikuyu reserve at the time of the Mau Mau uprising against British colonial rule in Kenya. PHOTO | AFP 

In Summary

• Historian points out the mistakes the freedom fighters made and why the spirit of defiance still haunts the country.
• Mau Mau helped strengthen rather than weaken the colonial state and that that way it shaped the road to independence in the coloniser’s perspective, which when it came, was no more than a handing over of the state, intact, to Jomo Kenyatta & Co. 
• Indeed, from January 1964, just months after internal self government and 11 more months to full independence, there were marchers in Nairobi demanding jobs, there were numerous letters to Prime Minister Kenyatta decrying the way he was working in amity with collaborators and keeping freedom fighters at arms length. 

When I separately told three friends last month that there is a new book on Mau Mau and invited each to its launch at the Goethe Institute on June 23, each asked me the same question, albeit in different ways: What does it say that has not been said before?
I will give my answer straightaway, and it is to be found in the first chapter where the author lays out the subject of the book and how he tackles or executes it in the following pages. 

Nicholas Githuku’s Mau Mau Crucible of Wartreats the Mau Mau war as a pivotal turning point in the struggles of the people of Kenya against oppression by the colonial state and in shaping the post-colonial state and its relations with Kenyans.

It is Githuku’s argument that Mau Mau was a critical stage in the continuing, on-going, opposition and defiance to the colonial state and that this struggle was not confined to the Mau Mau theatre, but that it was countrywide and its antecedents include Dini Ya Msambwa in Bungoma and its Kolloa corollary among the Pokot, the Kanyakwar Clan, Piny Owacho, the Kavirondo Taxpayers Welfare Association and the North Kavirondo Taxpayers Association in western Kenya.

The thread that runs through Githuku’s book is that Kenyans of today, through the Coast-based Mombasa Republican Council, the Sabaot Land Defence Force, Mungiki, the struggle against single party rule of the 90s and the Mwakenya and December 12 Movement of the 80s, are continuing struggles that go back to the 1920s and reach their militant, organisational and military apogee in the Mau Mau.

MISSED OPPORTUNITY

So, hear Githuku: “Hitherto, the war has not been adequately examined as a conflict fought over the construction of the state going backward to the dawn of colonialism, and forward to assess its post-colonial legacy and significance.”

And again: “Instead, it (book) views the struggle as an emblematic representation and culmination of all anticolonial opposition, and a precursor of postcolonial political dissent, social movements and rural and urban militia in Kenya.” Therein lies the uniqueness of Mau Mau Crucible of War; the past and present are interwoven.

But Mau Mau, says Githuku, failed because it “represented a missed opportunity to reconfigure the socioeconomic formation of the state: The political order within it; and its power structure... it failed to produce far-reaching policy, constitutional and institutional changes.”

It is why the author posits that “Kenya’s post-colonial experience, particularly the last 15 years, and its entire post-colonial political history are, more or less, contiguous.” Put another way, it is possible to draw a connection between the Mau Mau rebellion and the more recent “sociopolitical phenomena such as the violence meted out by, and against, ethnic militia in the 2000s such as Mungiki, Sabaot Land Defence Force and the political schism along ethnic lines played out in intermittent ethnic clashes.”

But why would that be the case? Because, says Githuku, an assistant professor of history at City University of New York, Mau Mau helped strengthen rather than weaken the colonial state and that that way it shaped the road to independence in the coloniser’s perspective, which when it came, was no more than a handing over of the state, intact, to Jomo Kenyatta & Co. 

But, says Githuku, the colonial state was an illegality built on forcible seizures of African-owned lands; their subjugation and denial of rights.
By inheriting the colonial state, Kenyatta & Co, therefore, legalised an illegality, for the independent government was not going to return land to Africans but now subtly told Kenyans that they had to work hard to savour the fruits of independence (uhuru na kazi) and that way acquire back their land on a “willing buyer, willing seller” basis.

NEW MASTERS

Here then is the paradox presented the reader by the author. Mau Mau fails but the fighters know and believe it is their war that brought about independence. 

Indeed, from January 1964, just months after internal self government and 11 more months to full independence, there were marchers in Nairobi demanding jobs, there were numerous letters to Prime Minister Kenyatta decrying the way he was working in amity with collaborators and keeping freedom fighters at arms length. 

Indeed tales abounded about the only change there was between colonial and independent Kenya being that the new masters were black. In 1964, MPs in meetings in Kirinyaga and Nyeri were emphatic that independence has changed the fortunes of a few at the top and abandoned the rest, especially the freedom fighters. 

The voices of dissent, stare back, as Githuku calls defiance, that greeted the colonial state and expressed themselves through the Mau Mau, were now directed at Kenyatta; confronted his successors Daniel Moi and Mwai Kibaki and now are directed at Uhuru Kenyatta. 

Githuku’s book is a refreshing read about a hugely controversial and emotional issue in Kenya’s history and politics and it, too, will be controversial, especially for regarding Mau Mau as part of, and not the only movement for Kenya’s freedom.