Memories of Mau Mau in Kenya: Lessons for Nation and Neighbours

8/2/2019 Memories of Mau Mau in Kenya: Lessons for Nation and Neighbours

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Memories of Mau Mau in Kenya:

Lessons for Nation and Neighb ours

[Cortona Workshop p aper : Violence & Memory]

Caroline Elkins (Harvard) & John Lonsdale (Cambridge)

Introduction

Ernest Renan long ago rem arked that nation-states had good reason for selective

amnesia. They were often born ou t of acts of violence that might have brough t political

liberation but w ere nonetheless no basis for national identity. Their par tisan memories,

split between militant p atriots and craven collaborators with an alien or ancien regime,

wou ld d ivide rather than unite a citizenry. True of most European states, that is doubly

tru e of Kenya. The Mau Mau movemen t of the 1950s shook the grip of British rule over

Kenya; to what degree it d id so continu es to be mu ch dispu ted. Mau Mau s activists,

however, were recruited overwhelmingly from one ethnic group only, the Kikuyu , who

constituted then , as now, about one fifth of the coun try's total pop ulation. What th is

minority status of the insurgents has meant to the subsequent politics of the Kenya

nation is one theme of this pap er. How ever, Renan's reflection is just as relevant to the

Kikuyu themselves, living together as close neighbou rs on their thickly pop ulated

hillsides or in city slum s. They too have their reasons for silence. Most fun damen tally,

since hoe-wielding peasant women and men have to depend on mu scle-power and the

blessings of nature for their well-being, they are inclined to believe that too m uch

reflection up on, and recrimination abou t, past setbacks will both paralyse the hum anwill and offend the ancestors and other unseen forces. Facing the un certainties of the

present, it can be a kind ness to forget disasters in the past. For many Kikuyu , Mau Mau

was just such a catastrop he, as will become plain.1 It also divided Kikuyu into militants

and loyalists. Some fought as Mau Mau guerillas or were detained as sympathisers;

others of them fought against Mau Mau as 'Homeguards', or as prison warders, in

British pay. Both sides comm itted atrocities. Mau Mau divisions often followed the

recent faultlines of social d ifferentiation, as the rising value and scarcity of landed

prop erty induced pow erful men to repu diate the claims of jun ior kin and clients. These

fissures between neighbours remain to this day, silently for the most part . Silence is

par t of any political cultu re, not least ethn ic cultures. Africas ethnic group sKikuyu

are no exceptionhave genera lly variegated origins that their myths of ethnogenesis

conceal.2 In Kenya, Mau Mau is thus tw ice cond emned to an em ollient oblivion, both

by the fragile politics of a mu lti-ethn ic nation and by the w ary cultu re of close

neighbours w ho share th eir Kikuyu ethnicity.

Mau Mau was largely a Kikuyu m ovement that other Kenyan Africans helped

their British colonial rulers to supp ress, by service in arm y, police, or prisons. It was

nonetheless not a tribal rising; it d ivided Kikuyu most bitterly of all, between fighters

(or terrorist thu gs), and loyalists (or hom eguard thugs). Such intimate violence is

both m orally painful at the time and can, unless cleansed in some way, remain


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politically destructive in memory. But it also has its factional uses in mobilising

constituencies of sup por t, wh ether in the Kenyan nation or within Kikuyu land . In

contrad iction to the tendencies toward s an anodyne amnesia, therefore, both nationa lly

and among neighbours, comp eting memories of Mau Mau have remained, dorman t forthe most part, but on ly too capable of being stirred into life. At the national level they

have been periodically resurrected, for manipulation in current factional strife.

Between Kikuyu neighbou rs, it app ears that feelings remain as yet too raw to be trusted

in the open . Neither Kenya nor Kikuyu land seem likely to escape the dispu tatious

memories that both have good reason to forget. Memory can drum up dem ands either

for social order and renewed silence on the one hand , or for retribu tion on the other.

Active steps tow ards healing and reconciliation, howeveras distinct from anaesthetic

exhortation to forget and forgivehave only recently begun to app ear. Neither Kenyan

political cultu re nor Kikuyu m oral econom y seem receptive to challenging catharsis.

These are some of the issues this paper explores. Their nature has changed

greatly over time. We investigate three different contexts. At the beginning, in the

1950s, Mau Mau an d its opp onents fough t in dead ly earnest, initially by word , then in

battle, and finally in detention camp s and in th e fortified villages in wh ich a whole rural

pop ulation was corralled. In the imm ediate aftermath , in the 1960s, the contest w as

transferred to the fields of political ideology, par ty organ isation, and p ublished m emoir.

The issue was the unequal distribution of the fruits of freedom that some asserted, but

others denied, had been bou ght w ith the sacrifice of Mau Maus blood and suffering.Since independence, at the national level comp eting mem ories of Mau Mau have been

evoked as political imagesof radical democracy and its fight against injustice, or of

ethnicity and its selfishness or heroism, or even of a prou dly resistant past in wh ich all

Kenyas nationalities can claim some share. This is the per iod and field that h as been

most d iscussed in the p revious literature and will for that reason be merely sketched in

here. 3 Among Kikuyu neighbours those who have done w ell still have good reason to

forget, while those who have suffered have ever more to remember, if rarely to speak

about . We conclude with a brief reflection on the present and future. Elkinss recent

research has focused on th e relations between Kikuyu neighbou rs. Lonsdale has for

many years worked on the history of nationhood, both Kikuyu and Kenyan.

1: What there is to forget in the beginn inga) At the 'national' level: the origins of Mau Mau were deeply divisive. On the one

hand th ere was the open, pan-ethnic, ru rally-based, 'teachers' par ty' of the Kenya

African Un ion (KAU), foun ded in 1944, a loose 'congress'-type par ty of modera te views

that achieved little for Africans in face of the British need for colonial suppor t in p ost-

war reconstruction and to close the dollar gap . In Kenyas case these metrop olitan

needs gave priority to white settler farm ing for export. KAUs failure to impress the

British at the national level, however, d id not prevent creative African politics in more

local arenas. Each of the KAU's ru ral ethn ic bases witnessed a socially conservative

struggle for African social order in face of increasing d ivision between richer and


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poorer peasants, the unedu cated old and the literate young, rural parents and their

migran t or urban children. In almost all areas the elders mainta ined control, and some

semblance of social progress, in alliance with the British colonial administration.4 The

exception w as Kikuyuland . Here Jomo Kenyatta (retu rning from 16 years exile inBritain in 1946) became cham pion of the elder's project. He an d his age-mates swore

them selves to solidarity with an oath m odelled on a legal ordeal, available only to

household heads and prop erty owners, which ordinarily cleared m en from accusations

of sorcery. This became known as the first Mau Mau oath , the oath of un ity, uiguano, a

guaran tee of mu tual political trust that the rivalries of petty rural capitalism d id not of

themselves encourage. By 1950 they had lost control of their jun iors, wh o had lost

pat ience with their elders. There were two reasons for this, in the Kikuyu diaspora and

within the reserves. About one fifth of Kikuyu lived outside their reserves. Most of

them lived as labour tenants or farm squatter families on the white farms that had

been established , for the most par t, on the former pastoral prairies once grazed by theMaasai people. After the Second World War w hite settlers enforced new squatter

contracts that cut down on their tenants customary rights to dom estic cultivation and

pasturage. Kenyatta and his colleagues could d o nothing to prevent this app alling drop

in status from tenant-peasan try to farm labou rer. In the reserves, Kikuyu gentry

behaved in m uch the same w ay as wh ite farmers towards their poorer clients.

Migrating from both the White Highlands and the reserves, land less Kikuyu sough t

surv ival in self-emp loyment, or crime, in Nairobi. It was there that the oath ofuiguano,

also called Muumbi after the moth er of the Kikuyu , or ithaka na wiyathi, land and

freedom (or freedom through land ), became, sham efully, the oath of the property-less,

and thus non-adu lt, thu s irresponsible, poor. Their seniors thought them greedy andthu s Mau Mau.5 Mau Mau fighters seem to have acknowledged their jun ior status by

calling themselves itungati, a rearguard for their leaders; while describing their Home

Guard opp onents as kamatimu, both spear carriers and senior w arriors of an age entitled

to be marr ied, as itungati were not. As within the KAUs nationalism these militants

app eared to be an ethnic sect, so too in conservative Kikuyu cu lture there was no reason

for pr ide in a jun ior but too pushy Mau Mau.

Nationally the d ivisiveness of what became the Mau Mau counter-insurgency

war w as comp oun ded by the British use of other Kenyans in the Kings African Rifles

the Police, and Prison service. Nor is it at all clear that w hat w as in par t an African civil

war achieved Kenyas freedom . Mau Mau was defeated militarily. It is true that as an

important elemen t in the civil coun ter-insurgency strategy, the second prong as it was

known, the British conceded a limited African franchise in 1957. African legislators,

with Tom Mboya as their strategic genius, then man aged to achieve rap id constitutional

change with the simple and bloodless weapon of boycotting th e offer of executive office

that would alone have lent internationa l legitimacy to constitutional change. However,

the African franchise would have been bound to come, if not in the late 1950s then in

the early 1960s, along with constitutional advance elsewhere in British Africa. The

British were clear that Kenya could be no exception to the general African ru le. And

one could certainly argue that had there been no Mau Mau th ere might also have been


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no later split between the Kenya African N ational Union (KANU) on the one hand an d

the Democratic Union (KADU) on the other, and far less inter-regional distru st or

majimbo as it was known , either before indep endence or more recently.

(b) At the local level, among neighbours in Kikuyu land, Mau Mau was a bru tal civil

war. The struggle erup ted within the intimate link between household conflict, the

politics of collaboration, and settler colonial rule. Private debate within the Kikuyu

dom estic sphere turned on issues of produ ction and reproduction, and became m ore

heated in the 1940s. For many men, colonial ru le un dermined masculine autonom y;

they no longer had a free hand in making decisions relating to their household

economies.6 Young u nmarried men, along w ith many of their married coun terparts,

embarked on labour migrancy largely out of necessity. Access to land throu ghou t the

reserves became increasingly contested, and with it a mans ability to feed his family

and meet his colonial obligations. As a former Mau Mau ad herent later recalled, I left

my home in Nyeri for Nairobi to look for work. That was in 1943. I could no longer

feed m y family and pay m y taxes from m y small shamba. Later, I shou ld have gotten

more land from m y father, but it was taken from us. Everything was different for me

and my brothers than from the time of our ancestors. Our grand fathers and their

fathers never w orried for their land; they could always feed their families.7 Times had

changed . The land frontier had closed , and social order was collapsing und er the

weight of colonial authority.

Landlessness was anathema to Kikuyu notions of social being. Friction grew.

Fingers were pointed at neighbours for profiting at the expense of others. Kikuyuwealth had never been d istributed equally, but access to resources had formerly been

guaran teed by tenancy, fission, and migra tion when necessary. But the politics of

settler colonial rule underm ined Kikuyu prod uctive autonom y. Nairobi and its settler

dependants needed African sup porters to carry out the imperial will. Later known as

loyalists, these collaborators stepped into the colonial framew ork in retu rn for

preferred access to land , trad ing licenses, markets, edu cation, and other oppor tunities.

Local resources dwindled as loyalists and white settlers took more than their share;

social d ifferentiation took on new m eaning as men lost their pow er to prod uce and

provide. Gakaara wa Wanjau, du ring his years of detention, collected histories from th e

elders detained with him. He found th at many wazee had joined Mau Mau because theycould no longer contain the forces of pr ivate dissent. Not only young men but also

married m en trapped in labour m igration demanded that they intervene to defuse the

conflict. As Wanjau later remembered :

There are ten Kikuyu clans. I had all of these ten clans [in detention w ith me].

Their characteristics are quite d ifferent. You find a clan like the Anjiru clan. One

person w hose clan is Anjiru m ay come from N yeri, another from Kiambu or

Muran ga, and they happ en to meet in detention camp, or wherever else Kikuyus

may meet, and they wou ld enquire from each other, which is your clan. If you

come from the same clan you are brotherssame clan, same blood. In detention,


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Ngai [God] gathered for me all of those old p eople from the ten different clans.

Those were old peop le, the KCA [Kikuyu Central Association] peop le. They

were the age of our fathers and older. In detention, I gathered from all of them

the different histories from the ten clans. They told me how times had changed,how they could not control the Kikuyu like their fathers, and their fathers. They

were und er great pressure. That is why th ey took the oath, to bring the Kikuyu

back to the way they w ere. To restore the house of Gikuyu and Mu um bito

take back control.8

Private debate over Kikuyu ness was not limited to males. Household conflict

extended to wom en who also debated issues of gend er and generation in the context of

tum ultu ous socio-econom ic and political change. Some found liberation in towns

wh ere the market economy, prostitution, and prop erty ownership offered escape from

rural opp ression.9 Yet, many of these wom en were ostracised, part icularly by their

rural sisters and elders; instead of being seen as urbane and mod ern, they were thought

loose and susp ect. As an informan t from Kiambu noted, My sister went to N airobi

after the war . She never marr ied, though she has two children. She hasnt been back

hom e in many years, because of the sham e.10 Such u rban w omen, however, were a

minority. Most women remained in the reserves, or as squat ters in the settled areas.

They resented their households increased d ependence up on their labour. Many of

their husband saway at work, or locally resident but und eremployedwere u nable to

provide for their families by their own labou r. So wom en laboured seasonally on the

settler coffee estates for extra cash; and were compelled to w ork for the governm ent on

terracing programs and other pu blic works. Women resented these burd ens; they

compromised their ability to reprod uce their own families. The sentiments of a Mau

Mau p rotagonist from Muranga were echoed by m any other w omen informants: We

told our husband s that we were unhapp y, we had ou r ways. They didnt have enough

land for us to feed our families, and we women had to work hard er than anyone. This

was not how m y marriage was supp osed to be.11 Moreover, their anger extend ed

outw ards, into the households of their loyalist neighbours. Women w hose husbands

were active loyalists benefited at the expense of their futu re Mau Mau counterp arts.

Their pr ivileged p osition meant they had amp le land to cultivate; their grain stores

were filled ; they w ere exemp t from commu nal p rojects; in fact, their perceived id leness

was their badge of loyalty. We hated the loyalist wom en, one wom an recoun ted,

they took advantage of us. It was on our backs that they prospered and raised their

children.12 Most of the wom en wh o joined Mau Mau did so in the hope that ithaka na

wiyathi or Land and Freedom would h elp them become better wives, mothers, and

providers. Womens pow er rested not in formal political, social or religious institutions,

but in their roles of produ cing and controlling domestic resources, and ultimately in

reprodu cing Kikuyu society. These were the bases up on wh ich they wou ld fight as

Mau Mau , and up on which they wou ld ultimately lose the struggle.

The insurgency was much more than a guerilla war. Britains white and black

troops wore dow n the insurgents in the Mount Kenya and Aberdare (Nyand arwa)


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forests by 1955, but they d id so in par t by taking the war out of the forests and into

deten tion camps and fortified villages. Mau Mau changed from a military conflict into

a civilian ordeal. The British army d efeated the guerillas but then handed the civil Mau

Mau p roblem over to the Kenya governm ent. Indeed , to see the Emergency as only aguer illa war is to overlook the heart of the battle. By late 1955through coordina ted

policies of repatriation, detention, imprisonment, and villagisationMau Maus civilian

war was u nfolding in two detention arenas: the Pipeline of camp s and prisons scattered

through the colony, and the Emergency villages that dotted Kikuyu land and some of

the settled areas. Here a bitter struggle unfolded between European tru stees and

African loyalists on the one han d an d, on the other, the estimated n inety percent of the

one and a half million Kikuyu who had taken the first Mau Mau oath.

Governm ent justified its civilian counter-insurgency policies in the liberal

rhetoric of reform. This official myth of Mau Mau represented a benevolent colonial

state intent on reconstructing Kikuyu society. Behind the barbed w ire of detentionin

camp, pr ison or villagethe oath-takers would be offered citizenship training in return

for their cooperat ion, show n above all by confessing the oath. The first year of the

Emergency, how ever, saw the developm ent of an official structure and men tality that

compromised any liberal vision of a hearts and minds campaign. Governor Baring

and his officers sought , first and foremost, to contain and control the entire oath-taking

pop ulation. To this end, they legislated a totalitarian state into existence, passing

dozens of Emergency Regulations to ensure absolute control over their subjects. Arm ed

with p owers to enforce comm unal punishments, curfews and pass controls,

government took steps toward s detaining the entire oath-taking p opu lation. First, all

Mau Mau suspects were repat riated from the settled areas, Nairobi, Tanganyika and

elsewhere to Kikuyu land via temp orary Transit Camp s. Cond itions in these were

dep lorable; d isease and m alnutrition were widespread. Screening teams were

established to separate the sheep from the goats, but did mu ch m ore than d ivide

loyalist from oathed Kikuyu . Soldiers, Special Branch an d CID allied w ith the District

Administration to extract intelligence and confessions dur ing screening sessions that

could last for hours, even days. Former Mau Mau su spects constantly reiterated th is

complaint from an inform ant arrested early in the Emergency: I am asham ed to tell

you what those askaris did to us. They beat us and beat u s trying to get information on

Mau Mau. Sometim es if we didn t coopera te, they forced u s to do terrible things to

ourselves and to each other .13 By early 1953, a crisis was brew ing. With a weekly

average of 2, 500 Kikuyu being moved out of the Transit Camp s back to the reserves,

the understaffed dep artm ents could not cope with the waves of squat ter evictions. Yet

the Kikuyu returnees increased through 1953, and continued to do so throughou t the

Emergency. Even repatr iation to the reserves offered peop le little relief; they w ere

already overcrowd ed and wou ld soon become w ired in, in new villages.

Meanw hile, the campaign to arrest, interrogate, and somehow d ispose of the

alleged Mau Mau leadership and militants grew in intensity. With the start of the

Emergency on the 20th October, 1952, the colonial government arrested and detained


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without trial 181 previously identified leaders of Mau Mauinclud ing Jomo Kenyatta ,

the alleged mastermind . Baring anticipated permanent exile for the leaders, preferably

in some remote part of the Emp ire. The decapitated m ovement wou ld surely then

collapse and ord er be restored. The governm ent, how ever, overestimated the role of thesupp osed insurgent leaders and underestimated the comm itment of ordinary Kikuyu .

Nairobis dependence on extraord inary measureslike massive repatriationexposed

its weakness; as, too, d id its grow ing use of detention w ithou t trial. By July 1953, over

100, 000 Mau Mau su spects had been p icked u p. The cour ts could not try them all.

Detention without trial was the only solution. Together with the known Mau Mau

leaders and activists, Baring issued d etention orders for hund reds of other susp ects

against whom prosecut ion, even und er Emergency rules, was impossible. By July 1953

he had signed 1,550 detention orders with the num ber increasing exponentially in the

years ahead.14 In 1954 the civilian war began to transform Kikuyu land and , with it, the

natu re of Mau Mau . Of seismic imp ortance was Operation Anvil. General Erskineintended Anvil to erad icate Mau Mau from Nairobi,15 and to imprison the citys

insurgency behind detention camp wire. While detention did help to regain control of

Nairobi, the governmen t scarcely controlled its own camp s. It expand ed the so-called

Pipeline capacity to hold an additional 20, 000 Mau Mau suspects, but th is soon

became insufficient. Three weeks after the start of Anvil there w ere over 24, 000 Mau

Mau suspects in the three main camps alone. Detention figures rose thirteen-fold from

January to May 1954, and increased by 2, 500 per cent by the year s end .16 The Pipeline

pop ulation exploded in 1954, and the government was left to find th e means to screen,

classify, and rehabilitate these tens of thou sands of fresh suspects. By the end of the

Emergency, the government reported that some 80, 000 men and wom en had passedthrough the Pipeline. The actual num ber appears to have been between twice and four

times the official figure, or between 160, 000 and 320, 000 detainees.17

The expansion of the Emergency Pipeline heralded a new battlegroun d . As the

secur ity forces won the initiative over the forest insurgents, so the struggle behind the

wire gained momentu m. Overwhelmed by the influx, the governm ent frustrated its

own proclaimed liberal efforts at rehabilitation. Mau Mau ascend ancy grew at an

alarming pace behind the wire. Camps and p risons provided a new venue for the civil

struggle. Detainees seized the initiative. Reaffirming their insurgent comm itment, they

adap ted its strategy and ritual to their new circumstances. Nairobi turned increasingly

to violence and coercion to regain control over the Pipeline. Governm ent and detainees

became locked in a bitter struggle. By 1956, a time when many Kenyan h istorians

declare the insurgency well ended, Mau Mau was raging in the d etention camps and

pr isons while the colonial governm ent searched for a means to re-establish its au thority.

With man y able-bodied m en in d etention, government also faced th e need to

regain control over the vast num ber of women, children and elderly wh o had taken the

Mau Mau oath. In Jun e 1954 the War Coun cil mad e the fateful d ecision to enforce

villagisation throughou t the Kikuyu reserves. The removal of all Kikuyu from their

scattered homesteads into concentrated , barbed-wire villages was the cornerstone of the


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civil counter-insurgency campaign . Villagisation became a new form of detention. Like

camps or prisons, villages offered a controlled environmen t where government could

confine the inhabitants behind barbed w ire and trenches, control their movements,

extract their labour, and pun ish them for non-cooperation. With the introd uction of theEmergency villages officials could , in particular, send all but the worst women back to

the reserves. In effect, the British instituted a policy of sending men to the Pipeline, and

women and children back to Kikuyu land , into the Emergency villages.18

By late 1955less than eighteen m onths after the War Coun cil decisionover

one m illion Kikuyu were herd ed in to some 800 villages with a total of nearly 230, 000

huts.19 Though European officers directed the operations, the Home Guardsthe corps

of Kikuyu loyalistsperform ed the actua l removal of Kikuyu from their hom esteads.

This new civil dimension of the w ar, following the earlier forced removals, generated a

wave of confusion and terror throu ghout the reserves. Hom esteads were burned w hile

inhabitan ts fled with whatever valuables they could carry . The loyalists in charge often

confiscated livestock for their own benefit, or destroyed un dernou rished cows and

goats in the bu rning bomas.20 In the growing disorder, families were often separated;

many you ng children were never recovered. A wom an from Rugu ru location in Nyeri

recalled h er forced rem oval in a man ner that was rep eated in m ost Kikuyu locations:

the Kamatimu just came and started bu rning the hou ses, and everything in

them. You w ould on ly see smoke billowing from the houses on the next ridge as

they were burn ing, and you w ould try to remove whatever you could from

yours before they reached th ere. We were in confusion because we d id not know

wh ere to go and ou r children were wand ering and m any were lost. There wereno hou ses in the village area, and so we could not save much of our p roperty or

tell our children how to find u s. The Home Guards would then carry off any

goats, sheep or chicken which w ere left a home, which they w ould later feast on

at the Home Guard p ost, because they had been given power, and w e could d o

nothing to prevent themWe wou ld just go to the village and h ud dle together

for warm th, after having lit bonfires to keep us warm . You see, there was

now here to live. From there, we wou ld be taken daily to the forest, wh ere we

wou ld cut the construction m aterials, and in one day several houses could be

builtIt went on like this for some time, and then the H ome Guard mad e us

start the trenches. Oh, those were terrible days!21

The wanton destruction and illegal appropriation of prop erty, together with the

perverted atm osphere of retribu tion and seeming loyalist glee, reflected the bitterness

of the struggle between neighbours. Villagisation soon acquired a mu ltitude of

pu rposes. Government had started enforcing commu nal labour and confiscating

property and land in 1953. Villagisation facilitated and expanded both.22 The physical

confinement of the Kikuyu p opu lation also helped to cut the intelligence and sup ply

netw ork between passive wing and forest fighters. The removal of Kikuyu from their

scattered homesteads thus gave government a new sense of control. Yet, even as the

governm ent tightened its grip on the Native Land Units, so the barbed-wire villages,


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forced comm un al labour, and confiscation of prop erty only fanned the flame of civil

discontent an d exacerbated the continu ing struggle.

Despite the hard ships of village life, many w omen remained loyal to the ideals of

Gikuyu and Mu um bi. They sang the praises of their creator god,Ngai, during

comm unal labour, and recited the Kikuyu Creed in the evening in their hu ts. During

interrogation or at m oments of extreme physical violation, some women recalled th e

words of the Creed to give them strength . Several informants also repor ted tha t their

oath or oaths kept them boun d to the movement, and some insisted that oathing

continued long after villagisation was comp leted. Some were oathed for the first time,

and those targeted as potential waverers could be re-oathed . In Kiamariga Village in

Nyeri, one informan t explained that those targeted w ere asked if they w anted to

take the oath, so that they m ight be like all the other Kikuyu wh o wan ted to ask for

their wiyathi. Even if they did n ot want to take it, it was adm inistered to them anyw ay.

One was also asked w hether one had agreed to un ite with the rest of Gikuyu and

Muu mbi... If one refused to take the oath, then something bad w ould be done to them.

They were usu ally beaten.23 Enforced or volun tary, the oath was equally binding .

Ingesting the m eat of the sacrificial goator in the case of the impoverished villagers,

the blood of their Mau Mau compatriotsand repeating their commitment to Gikuyu

and Mu um bi brought one into the insurgent fold. The meat and blood travelled w ith a

woman wherever she w ent; it became part of the initiates body; one could not escape

its pow er. Even today many people feel bound by their Mau Mau oath or oaths. A

wom an from Nyeri district captu red a common sentiment w hen she emph asised that

it was very difficult to confess the oath. I only did so because of the beatings. Even

today, I cannot be able to confess everyth ing [her emp hasis] about that oath . I still feel

that I am boun d by it. The oath was for our soil, which we were fighting for, and even

today, I feel bound by the vows I made when I took the oath.24

Oath taking divided w omen both d uring and after the Emergency. The Loyalists

were considered traitors, or not true Kikuyu . Revealingly, Mau Mau wom en

disparaged th em as thata or barren . The thata refused to join other wom en in

their stru ggle to reproduce Kikuyu society; their perceived loyalty to the colonial cause

mad e them infertile and u np rodu ctive. As one informant emp hasised, Those women

loyalists were referred to as thataThe farm s of those thata were the ones which were

harvested by those women w ho were said to be Mau Mau. Those who were doingcomm unal w ork, whose husbands w ere either in d etention or in the forests, were forced

to labour on thata farms. The thata wou ld u se the food for themselvesthey did that

because they were evil people. They were not really Kikuyu."25 Not all loyalists,

how ever, were the sameat least for the Mau Mau adherents. Whereas British officials

thought anyone not actively fighting for the government was a priori a Mau Mau

adherent, the Kikuyu judged each other differently.26 A minority of devout Chr istians,

for instance, refused not only to take the Mau Mau oath, but also to fight on the

governmen ts side. The British deemed such people Mau Mau ; Kikuyu w omen called


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such Christian adherents karegeirie, or one who is not a comp lete Kikuyu . A

Revivalist from Kiambu recalled the Emergency as a time of ostracism an d fear:

We lived together [Mau Mau and Christians], and even w orked together on

comm unal projects. But those people who had n ot taken the oath were shunned by

the others who had taken it, and were insultingly being referred to as karegeirie.

You could always hear abusive remarks being made, in parables, wh enever such a

person w as passing near those who had taken the oathYou see, a wom an w ho had

not taken the oath was being excluded from the usual wom en gathering when they

performed chores together, or when they w ent to congratulate a mother w ho had

newly given birth. A woman who had n ot taken the oath was treated by the others

as an outcaste. She was a karegeirie. She was not a tru e Kikuyu , at least not to

them One felt fear all the time; because you could never know th e time or hou r

wh en they [Mau Mau ] would d ecide that you should be either oathed or

eliminated.27

Female debate over the meaning of Kikuyuness in the context of household and

commun ity provided the ideological context for the civil struggle. Oath ing provid ed

un ity toand instilled fear inMau Mau s rural forces. Arm ed with their pledge the

villagers waged a form idable battle against the governm ent forces. Despite its hopes,

Nairobi foun d that to isolate Mau Mau s passive wing was not the sam e as breaking it.

Thanks to their enforced labour on village construction, trench d igging, and Hom e

Guard Posts women gained a collective, men tal blueprint of the cordoned -off area.

They continu ed their passive wing efforts by sup plying the remaining gu erilla forces

with intelligence, weapons, and food stolen from the Home Guard. Some repairedclothing and blankets for the fighters, others performed minor su rgery on w ound ed

guerrillas. An intricate female network carried sup plies, sometimes with the assistance

of Home Guard s who w ere also Mau Mau agents. In their village-building work, some

wom en loosened the labyrinth of sharpened stakes orpanjis that lined the bottom of the

trenches to allow for their easy removal and replacement dur ing transfers of goods and

peop le after dark. Detection and death were nightly possibilities. Sup plying the

fighters further depleted the villagers scarce food stocks. Women struggled between

maternal duties, meeting their children s barest needs wh ile also nourishing the forest

fighters. Despite dw indling food sup plies and the spread of disease, few wom en

confessed their Mau Mau oath s. An informant from N yeri said, It was the way wewere forced to live that was killing us. When people amoun ting to more than thirty

lived in one hut, people could d ie from anything. Many old people and the children

died because we couldn t care for them. The strong would leave in them m orning for

comm unal labour, and retu rn at night to find the weak dead . We found strength in

each other. Those were the days of Mau Mau w hen we were all un itedDespite

everything, I refused to confess theneven when I w as beaten.28 Yet continu ed

loyalty to Mau Mau worsened and p rolonged the villagers plight, as daily bru tality

reflected the governments increasing frustration.


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By 1956 Nairobi had d etained nearly the entire Kikuyu pop ulation either in

camps or villages. Far from ensuring cooperation such sup posed control only evoked

further anti-colonial sentiment an d civil d iscontent . In the Pipeline, violent p rotests

became widespread. The hard core camps were the sites of the most organisedresistance. There, Mau Mau adherents contested their continu ed detention without

trialand their deplorable conditionsthrough work stoppages, hunger strikes and

riots. Behind the wire ascendancy oscillated between governmen t and Mau Mau. The

detainees foun d little reason to cooperate w ith camp officials, as liberal reform was

hard ly standard camp or prison practice. Letters and p etitions add ressed from

detainees and convicts to H is Excellency the Governor of Kenya and Her Majesty the

Queen, among other recipients, provide a w indow into the Pipeline struggle.29 Mau

Mau adherents detailed the beatings and capricious violence that dom inated their daily

lives. Some detainees described rand om beatings with weapons such as permabox

handles and rifle buts [sic], as well as vicious at tacks by police dogs.30 Others wrote ofthe small cellscovered six foot pits or wind owless roomswhere the comman dant

pu t u s ineven wh en there is no reason.31 In Langata Cam p, it was noted that Some

European Officers open d etainees cages and give ord ers to Askaris to beat up every

detainee whereas they have not done anything w rong.32 The indiscriminate natu re of

the bru tality w as emp hasised: We are severely p un ished by corpral [sic] pu nishment

when one does a slight m istake.33 In add ition to random p un ishment , British officers

and their askari sometimes emp loyed calculated bru tality to force confession. An

informant wh o had spent six years in d etention w as not alone in m aintaining that

Kikuyu askaris in the camp s knew what they were doing. They were torturing us in

unspeakable ways, trying to make u s be lesser men.34 The tortu rers were not strangersbut potential neighbou rs. In Janu ary 1957 detainees in Athi River Camp had w ritten in

the same vein, that pliers is also app lied to w ork as the apparatus of castrating the

testicles, and also the ears. All this is done so as to make everyone attend ed to confess,

whether true or not, to oblige them to agree to what has been alleged against someone

whether it is tru e or not. As a result that none can resist these deeds some do confess

and say yes so as to safe themselves from the trou bles and hard ships35 Similarly at

Embakasi Prison, Mau Mau adherents complained of the Custration [sic] of Men, and

queried, Where does custration [sic] of man come from? Is that the dem ocratic law?36

Mau Mau camp committees offered d etainees far more in the way of rehabilitation,

protection, and hope for future betterment than the pr ison and rehabilitation staffs.

Whereas social reform behind the w ire was sup posed to includ e literacy and civics

classes, it was the detainees themselves who offered ed ucation to their fellow Mau Mau

adherents. As a man from the Mugoiru location in Muranga recalled , There was a

camp leader, who had been selected by the detainees. His du ty was to oversee the

cleanliness of the compoun d, keep ord er, and help organise the edu cation classes. You

see, Mau Mau held classes for those people w ho w anted to learn, especially the illiterate

peop le, who d id not even know th eir A, B, Cs. They were assigned a teacher to instru ct

them. Sometimes we were able to get books and other materials, other times we

learned by w riting in the sand ...37 As the Emergency p rogressed, detainees did m ore


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than organise their own rehabilitation classes. Band ing together within their locked

comp ound s Mau Mau adherents found solidarityand safetyin numbers, and

together lived in open d efiance of the camp au thorities. In time, few ward ers ventured

within the comp oun d wire. As one detainee remembered of life in Mackinnon RoadCamp , The guard s could not come close to our cages. After they had locked the doors,

they could not come near us. Even wh en we shouted ou r prayers to Kirinyaga and sang

our Mau Mau songs. They were afraid that we would kill them, and they were right.38

Far from reforming Mau Mau the detention camp s further embittered its adherents.

Colonial rule and Mau Mau reached an imp asse behind the wire. Nairobi would have

to rethink its strategy if it hoped to defeat insurgents in the cage.

Systematisation of bru te force became th e final solution to b reaking Mau Mau

allegiance. In the early years of detention, Nairobis tacit app roval of camp brutality

had only provoked resistance. A new app roach called the dilution technique now

brou ght abou t a chan ge in the official use of force. In December 1956, John Cowana

prisons officerdescribed an experiment that had taken p lace in one of the camps.

After transferring a small group of fifty detainees in leg-irons from on e camp to

another, he reported that:

[The white officers] isolated a sm all number of uncooperative detainees who w ere

surrou nd ed by p rison staff. [The detainees] were ordered, and refused, to carry out

some simple task, and were then forced p hysically to comply by th e preponderance

of ward ers, thu s submitting, however symbolically, to hitherto resisted d iscipline.

They were then harangu ed w ithout respite, by rehabilitation staff and selected

detainees working together, until finally they confessed their oaths.39

The success of this dilution technique rested on tw o pr inciples. First, prison staff had

to separate detainees from the hard core camps into small, manageable, groups. They

then had to use bru te force and other forms of persuasion to overpow er these small

batches of recalcitran ts. Physical domination became the key to cooperation. As

Cowan later recollected, there was no other way. The men were obdu rate and very

dan gerousyou h ad to knock the evil out of a p erson.40

The d ilution technique depended on the systematic disp lay and u se of force. In

Apr il 1957 Terence Gavaghan took charge of breaking Mau Mau in the Pipeline. His

Operation Progress in the Mwea camp s turned dilution into a system. No longerwou ld d egrading violence be capricious. Detainees would n o longer be permitted to

join forces behind the wire in defiance of authority. Gavaghan aimed to reclaim all the

camp s, one by one. Dilution never aspired to w in detainees hearts and mind s.

Indeed , Gavaghan disdained the earlier campaign for liberal reform. His views owed

someth ing to the stress of the Emergency, bu t also to his own ideology. He never

endorsed liberal reform and later recalled that, I must ad mit that I dont like going on

[record ] saying such things, but I think honestly if peop le said hearts and minds to me

I simp ly said yuck.41 Instead, with N airobis full suppor t, the d ilution technique

aband onedfor the first timeany hope of detainees moral reform. The governm ent


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now relied on coercion to control the Pipeline. Detainees must either confess and

cooperate, or suffer the brutal consequences. A former Mau Mau general who spent

three years in d etention pr ior to undergoing dilution recalled th at:

Mwea w as where people were being forced to confess du ring screening. That was

where detainees were being tested by the White Mans Governm ent. It was a very

bad p lacewh en a detainee arrived his clothes wou ld be removed , and cold water

wou ld be pou red onto his naked body, as he was being wh ipped . Sometimes one

would be hun g by his feet, leaving just a few inches between the floor and his head ,

and he wou ld be left like that until he agreed to confess It was the askaris who

were doing this, on the wh ite command ants orders. While hanging like that, a

detainee would have very cold water pou red on h is body u ntil he could not even

feel his legs, and then he w ould be whipped It was a form of punishment, to

make detainees confess the oath, and confess what they had d one.42

In face of the d ilution techniqueand its well-coordinated use of forceMau Mau

resistance did ind eed begin to break.

The Emergency villages also became sites of destruction rather th an reform.

Here, womens experiences were similar to those of men in the Pipeline: confinement

behind barbed w ire and spiked trenches; enforced labour; capricious and pervasive

violence. But there were also important d ifferences that reflected both the natu re of the

rural civilian w ar, and the wom ens position in that stru ggle. Their battleground was

the heart of Kikuyu land . The field of battle was home, their homes were a battlefield.

The people whom the women challengedtheir neighbou rs, the loyalist village

guardsbecame, in effect, their camp w arders. But w ith the men aw ay, wives and

moth ers were expected to feed their children, protect their land and cattle from thieving

Loyalists, and maintain their family legacies. In an extreme form of the gender relations

found in migrant-labour comm unities throughou t Africa, women were expected to

defend the home front w hile the men w ere gone.

Women became the d omestic riigi in Kikuyuland, the hou sehold doorw ay, despite

the m asculine claims of Stanley Mathenge and his forest followers. (see below) The

Kenya riigi could hard ly defend the home front from their forest hideouts. It was their

wives, mothers, sisters and dau ghters who struggled to p rotect home and family while

the men were aw ay, in forest or Pipeline. Women end ured a daily routine of forcedcomm unal labour p unctuated by ind iscriminate p hysical and psychological assaults.

Rape, sexua l violence and gruesome sodomy were common place. Taken to a Home

Guard Post for interrogation, a woman told how I was badly beaten and tortured, and

a bottle and later a snake were inserted into my private par ts. The loyalist screeners

also squeezed my breasts with p liers to get me to confess about Mau Mau and the oath,

but I refusedI have never been able to have children, and I think it is because of these

days.43 While some w omen w ere unable to protect their rep rodu ctive powerwhich

they traditionally controlled and to which their absentee husbands had claimothers

went to extreme lengths to save children alread y living. Some women sacrificed


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themselves for their children, knowing their offspring w ould not survive the ordeal of

villagisation withou t them. As one former villager recalled:

when the soldiers came into the village for pa trols, they would take wom en and

youn g girls by force, and rape them. The Hom e Guards also did such things. And

you could not dare to refuse, because sometimes it wou ld be at gun p oint, and other

times they could even fabricate a charge against you, and have you arrested . We felt

that we would rather allow them to rape us, than get killed. We had small children

depend ent on u s, with their fathers and our husbands away in d etentionIn fact,

du ring those times, a lot of women gave birth to nusu-nusu babies. Some were

half-white babies, after such rap e ordeals. Others got child ren fathered by askaris of

various African tribes like the Kamba and N and i. But many more gave birth to the

children of their neighbours, who w ere the loyalists who rap ed them in the H ome

Guard Posts.44

For m any w omen, the w orst pu nishment w as not sexual assault, beatings, or forced

labour, but hunger. I agonised over what to d o in order to get food for my children,

one informan t sobbed.45 Another was adaman t, Food w as the worst problema

wom an w ould be shot trying to go to her farm to get food to feed her starving

children.46 Over again, the same sentiment that hunger was the worst p roblem, it

was killing so many of our people was expressed by former villagers.47 Many held

that the governm ent deliberately used starvation to defeat Mau Mau. Such allegations

are difficult to prove from the official record . However, Nairobi certainly d id little to

stem the crisis. The government refused to allocate fund s for famine relief bu t relied on

the Red Cross to assist with soup kitchens and d ried milk sup plies. Yet Red Cross reliefoften went not to areas in most urgen t need, but to locations where loyalists were

demand ing more government sup port. The colonys Medical Departm ent angrily

reported the Alarming nu mber of deaths occurr ing amongst children in the pu nitive

villages and the p olitical considerations that blocked Red Cross relief efforts. Not

surp risingly, epidem ic and nu trition-related illness broke out throughout the reserves.

Rapid villagisation and crowded hu ts made for squalor. This, combined with the

famine, led to untold numbers of deaths. Informan ts who lived in Kiambu , Fort Hall

and Nyeri villages repor ted d eath rates of up to 50 persons a week at the height of the

Emergency. While these figures seem high, thousands of people did u nd oubtedly

perish from starvation and disease. In retrospect, it is surpr ising how man y, in fact,survived the ord eal of villagisation. Those who d id owe m uch to the dom estic riigi who

out of necessity assum ed the role of protector of and provider for their hou seholds and

comm unities while their men w ere in the forests or the camp s.

Government w on the civilian struggle against Mau Mau only it had physically and

psychologically decimated the Kikuyu pop ulation. In the camps Operat ion Progress

was sum med up years of loathsome brutality behind the wire. Castrating detainees,

forcing mu tual sodomy an d other horr ifying acts even seemed to be par t of the official

battle plan.48 To force oath-takers to confessintegral to defeating Mau Mauthe

governm ent had to shatter their belief system. Instead of enticing detainees to confess


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by offering a colonial world sup erior to anything offered by Mau Mau , Nairobi chose

the opp osite tack. Coercion replaced reform, its success dep endent on destroying the

ideals of Gikuyu and Muu mbi, the powers ofNgai, and the world they defined.

Similarly, only wh en villages had obliterated the domestic landscape d id women beginto confess their oaths and desert Mau Mau . The home front turned ou t to be the last

line of defence. To maintain vestiges of the dom estic sphere had provided women w ith

the strength of pu rpose to support Mau Mau . It therefore took the annihilation of

everything of domestic imp ortancethe atomisation of families, death of children,

violation of social beliefs, violation of their bod ies, the d estruction of homesteads and

loss of land and livestockto force the women to subm it. These were the tactics the

government needed to w in the civilian war. Over and again women recalled w hy they

finally confessed their oathsan act they had so fearedand began to cooperate with

their villages colonial authorities. One spoke for many w hen she recalled: Everything

was gonemy mother, my co-wife. I lost our cows. They took my husbands land . Ihad no shamba. Only two of my child ren survived . We had been shamed . I felt like I

was no longer Kikuyu. How could w e keep fighting for Mau Mau? Many of us

confessed our oath sI did . We prayed for it all to be over. We beseechedNgai, Please,

please undo these terrible things.49 Pipeline and v illage were therefore disasters to

forget. The fight in the forest was no better.

c) D ivision s w ith in th e forest:50 Sup erior British force was bound in the end to

win the forest war. Mau Mau fighters showed courage and exemplary fieldcraft in

delaying the end so long. But to some extent their eventual defeat was brought u pon

them by their own gendered sense of failure and by un resolved conflict over the natu re

of authority. Mau Mau fighters were well aware that their wartime absence mad e them

poor husbands and fathers. Their self-reproach can be painfully sensed in their

mem oirs. But they also failed to agree to serve under a single au thority that m ight have

preserved the un ity of those who survived the w ar. Mau Mau forest guerilla veterans

were thus quite unable to act subsequ ently as a politically influential interest group,

even a par ty, to participate in and shape subsequent national politics. The problem of

authority and its abuse was at its most explosive in the m ale comp etition for female

compan y. Women never mad e up more than fifteen per cent of the forest armies, at

most. There were supp osed to be strict rules to prevent sexual jealousy from w recking

military discipline. They d id not work. And one of the worst offenders was felt to be

Field-Marshal Sir Dedan Kimathi. His jun ior comm and ers accused him of

monop olising w omen. He w as eventually betrayed to the British by a man found gu ilty

of sleeping with a w oman an d flogged on the orders of Kimathi. Guerillas had many

other complaints against the Field Marshal. The nu b of the argumen t was not sex but

the legitimacy of authority. Kimathi and his sup porters maintained that in modern

times, when the pen w as mightier than the sword (and Mau Mau forest bureaucracy

was formidable), au thority mu st rest up on the efficiency of literate management. His

opponents lined up behind Stanley Mathenge (who never took a m ilitary title) under

the nam e of Kenya riigi, as already noted . They argued , as was natu ral in a chiefless

society, that authority stemmed from repu tation, and that m ale repu tation rested in


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particular on the married mans management of his household. Nobody could u surp

that au thority; nobody but the householder could close his door, his riigi, to protect his

dep endants against the perils of the wilderness and the dark. The claims of literate

management were insolently dictatorial. Mau Mau armies must continue to operateautonomously, und er leaders know n to their men face-to-face, not foisted on th em by

some overall framew ork of command . How much this knowledge of factional failure

still haunts the veterans mem ory it is hard to say, but it is noticeable that they still find

it impossible to speak w ith one voice.

Women informants recall their roles in the forest more as nu rtu rers and

sup por ters of the struggle than as active participants. None boasted of any decision-

making role; they took directions from m en. Those who h ad then been young girls

remembered with pride th eir ability to evade d etection when moving between village

and forests. These couriers were known by their single clipped earlobe. All those

interviewed in Nyeri reported th at their second earlobe was clipp ed w ith their first

menstruation, to show that th ey were no longer members of a forest gang. But if

mature wom en could thus not be respectable adu lts in the forest, it seems, above all,

that it was the mens failure to protect their women against the horrors of villagisation

that was the most shameful reproach to their manhood. Both genders have nightmare

Emergencies to forget.

2) What there i s to forget in the immedia te af termath

(a) Among neighbours the civil dimension of the war had had a devastating impact

on Kikuyu society. By the end of the Emergency in 1960, nearly the entire oath-taking

pop ulation had succum bed and confessed their allegiance to Mau Mau . By 1959, most

of the men had returned from their own harsh experiences of detention or p rison to find

yet more disruption among wives and families. For some, their land and other property

had been confiscated an d reallocated to neighbouring loyalists; loved ones were

missing or d ead, often buried in large, unm arked graves; wives and dau ghters had been

sexually assaulted and raped ; entire comm unities had been decimated by famine and

disease. Instead of return ing to the normal world they imagined and dreamt of in the

Pipeline, detainees found a Kikuyu domesticity destroyed.51 The impact of this is to be

seen in the hand ful of mem oirs from former guerrilla fighters and detainees. Feminist

scholars criticise these texts for their omission of the w omens contribution to themovement.52 That there are so few w omen in th e male narrat ives, how ever, reveals

mu ch about the nature of the civilian w ar. Destruction of households and the rape of

their women were shamed the m asculinity of returning d etaineesand in many ways,

as we have shown , gender was at the heart of the Mau Mau struggle. They had failed

as protectors of prod uction and reprod uction. Women reproached them for this. Some

feminist narratives want to d epict these women as assertive, independent of men;53

Kikuyu women tell a different story. During the war they resented the absence of their

menfolk and the consequent hardships they had to endure. A Nyeri woman recalled

what happ ened to her after her hu sbands detention:


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My husband , who had been detained , used to sell bicycles before his arrest. When

he w as arrested , I had to continue to take care of his business as well as all of mine.

When v illagisation hap pened, our shop w as demolished , and all of those bicycles in

the shop w ere looted by the Hom e Guards. I tried, but wh at could I do, I was justone wom anIn the villages we did ou r best to survive on our own, but so man y

died. The Loyalists and w hite officers used to make us pass by the dead bod ies.

They wou ld say, Hey! Look carefully, theres your wiyathi. Savour it! Other

dead Mau Mau wou ld be strapp ed onto the front bump er of a Land rover jeep,

length wise, and they would be taken arou nd the villages, so that the people could

savour their wiyathi which they were fighting for! Imagine, they used to do that

with the bodies of women! That was not how it should have been.54

Another wom an recalled how, my hu sband w as arrested from where he was

working on a farm in the Rift Valley and detained. I had a lot of problems, struggling

alone. I had to struggle with the building of the villages, alone. I had to struggle with

feeding our children, alone. My husband was away d uring those times. I just trusted

Ngai for help, what else could I do?55 Testimonies from former male detainees also

illuminate the silences of the Mau Mau narratives. When they returned home they

realised they had failed as protectors, that life would never be the same for them as

men , or for their families and comm un ities. You can imagine it yourself, implored

one informant, a w oman w ho w as accustomed to having someone to rely on, someone

earning the daily bread for her, who had now been left alone amongst enemies [i.e.

loyalists] wh ile we men w ere away. Most of the people wh o were Hom e Guards u sed

to mistreat women by forcing them to do what they did n ot want, even some of them

were being raped by those people. By imagining it, you can un derstand how life was.

It was a very harsh life for the women, and w e men could do nothing. I was so

ashamed of myself when I returned, and am sometimes now w hen I think about it

all56 This is scarcely the basis for a lasting Mau Mau self-assertion . But others recall

the process of return as d isorienting at first, wand ering about the Emergency villages

looking for their families in the un familiar land scape. Such confusion, how ever, often

gave way quickly to anger at the loss of wealth in people, things and know ledge; an

anger that was d irected at their pr ivileged neighbou rs, the loyalists. Most of the former

detainees interviewed shared a sentiment similar to that of an informan t from N yeri:

Detention pu shed m y affairs backward s. Before detention, I was progressing very

well. When I cam ou t of detention, I was very bitter. The peop le whom I had left

behind , the loyalistsso many of whom I had actually been ahead of econom ically

because of my hard workhad imp roved so much that I felt insignificant before

them. I had lost everything wh en I got detained . Then, after release, the only way I

could earn som e money w as by hiring my services to those same loyalists, digging

their land or plant ing coffee for them. It was very degrad ingyou could nt

un derstand . But, it was the only way to get by, as it was almost imp ossible to get a

good job, having been a Mau Mau detainee.57


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The colonial governmen t had d irectedor tacitly condonedthe obliteration of a

familiar Kikuyuland , and w as hardly p repared to help in the healing process. Public

rhetor ic to the contrary, there were virtually no rehabilitation or reintegration program s

to facilitate reconciliation in the reserves. As early as 1955, the Christian Council ofKenya presented a series of sociological reports from var ious villages throu ghou t

Kikuyu land to the government, and recomm ended that:

One p roblem brought to our notice was th at of the psychological adjustment of

detainees on their resettlement in the new villages. We felt it wou ld be a great help

if this problem could be brough t to their notice while they are still detained. If

possible the Rehabilitation Program me m ight be more closely geared into p reparing

the men for the changes they will find and the ad justments wh ich w ill be required

for fitting into the new comm unitiesMore might be d one among men detainees in

preparing their mind s for life in the new villages and for rejoining their w ives andfamilies in such a completely new environm ent.58

Such a p rogram w as hardly on N airobis agenda. Government policy indeed

enervated those struggling to heal families, and exacerbated h ostility between former

Mau Mau and loyalists. Nairobi undermined any re-accum ulation of wealth, with its

sup por t for a continu ed loyalist ascend ancy at the expense of ex-Mau Mau renewal.

Even after confession and so-called rehabilitation, no suspect Kikuyu enjoyed the

rights of a citizen until after the Emergency end ed early in 1960. Only a Loyalty

Certificatesignifying steadfast suppor t for governmentallowed Kikuyu to move

freely about th e colony, to engage in wage employment ou tside the reserves, and toreceive equal pay. A certificate exemp ted one from payment of Kikuyu, Embu and

Meru Special Taxes, and entitled to sp ecial considerat ion any app licant for comm ercial

pr emises or licences.59 In effect, ex-detainee labour w as required to contribute to the

developm ent of the colony, but w ithout full economic rights. With the fruits of the

agricultural revolu tion slow to ap pear, the p rospects of a subsistence incomelet alone

a full-time jobremote, and the burdens of commu nal labour a d rain on ones earning

capacity, many m en had to defy movement restrictions and pass laws, to find a job

elsewhere.60 Thousands w ere arrested m onthly, imp risoned an d fined, and eventually

sent back to the reserves where they began th e futile process all over again.

Together, ex-Mau Mau from various generations had to begin the difficult process of

reconstituting marriages, kinship relations, and comm un ity. They did not speak of past

horrors but silently grieved over loss, and gendered sham e. A detainee who returned

to Mugoiru location in Fort Hall recalled that On e could not talk to the peop le at home

about his experiences in detention. That was not allowed. We used to warn each other

not to take our d etention days to the people. How could it have helped them?61 Many

women also recalled bittersweet moments of joy, shame, and anger, when husband s,

fathers and sons returned. The horrors of the Emergency dashed hopes of taking up

what they remembered as norm al life. Silence was the most widespread rem edy for the


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difficulties of reunification. The civilian war had destroyed social reproduction on the

battlefield of home. Many men returned to find a w ife rearing nusu-nusu offspring

some clearly part mzungu, others strikingly like a loyalist neighbour. Most accepted the

un acceptable and raised these child ren as their own. A stoical father asked, Whatchoice did I have? What else could I do? We were just trying to start over again.62

Many chose to focus on w hat they had managed to save rather than on w hat they had

lost. Despite the obstacles, they concentra ted on creationmarr iage, child rearing, and

rebuild ing other forms of wealth. But civil antagon isms were not laid to rest. Most ex-

Mau Mau recalled their past hatred of loyalists. We had to start over, recalled a

villager from Nyeri, but that d idnt mean if you d id anything bad to me, I could just

forget it like that. It still remained d eep in my heart, just like it does today. Oh, how I

hate th ose people.63 How ever, rebuilding households took priority over renewal of

civil war. But there was no reconciliation. The struggle to find a new nat ionalism in the

twilight of colonialism on ly exacerbated ex-Mau Mau and loyalist tensions, andKenyattas independ ence ed ict, to forgive and forget, stifled any sp eaking ou t

about recent horrorswithou t which, we believe, there can be no forgiveness.

(b) At the national level: contrad ictory mem ories of Mau Mau and continuing

activity by som e ex-Mau Mau militants greatly comp licated efforts to constru ct political

alliances capable of guaran teeing access to state power, and even the surv ival of such

state pow er, in the w ake of the British decision, announ ced early in 1960 to d ecolonise

Kenya und er African majority rule. On the one hand , inter-ethnic susp icion raged over

Mau Mau and its successor organisations claims on behalf of former Kikuyu squatters

on the White Highlands. A movement known as the Kenya Land Freedom Armythreatened to resort to v iolence should members of other ethnic groups, with deeper

historical claims, try to make good their entitlement to resettle white farms at Kikuyu

expense. This dispute was the main cause of the split between KANU (representing

mainly Kikuyu and Luo) and KADU (at whose core were the Kalenjin highland ers). On

the other hand , there existed bitter susp icion at the core of the KANU party w hose

leadership the returning p rison-graduate and national martyr Kenyatta inherited

shortly after his release in 1961. Even before his release he had imp lied that Mau Mau

were gangsters. Soon after his return he d eclaredin face of repor ts that former

militants had sworn to kill him if I disobey themthat he wou ld not allow hooligans

to ru le Kenya, since Mau Mau w as a disease which had been erad icated , and mu stnever be remembered again.64 Yet almost all KANU branches in Central Prov ince,

Kikuyu land w ere in the hands of ex-detainees and their atangiri as they were known,

helpers in time of trouble.65 Kenyattas political base appeared to have been captu red

by the youn g men w hose disrespect for him he had kn own of since 1950. It is not

surp rising that he took care never to organise KANU more thorough ly. It would have

raised a storm of recrimination. He chose instead to rule throu gh the Provincial

Administration, whose senior members had been the first African cadets in the colonial

service, and wh ose early experience had been in fighting the Mau Mau w ar in British

un iform. This was the institutional memory with which independ ent Kenya was ruled.


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Mau Mau memoirs were sough t out, edited, and p ublished by radical or liberal

westerners, withou t w hose initiative Mau Mau might have remained silent in p rint.

Nobod y thought to ask the Loyalists for their memories. They were not academically

fashionable. But they had pow er. They had the pow er to remain silent. It was they, notthe Mau Mau memoirists, wh o controlled pu blic memory in Kenya.

3) M au M au an d th e Ken yan N ation State

(a) At the national level our analysis has to distinguish, as perhap s scholars

have not yet been sufficiently careful to d o, between academic or literary ou tpu t on

Mau Mau an d popu lar memory. What follows is a mere outline of the issues. The first

scholars, at the tim e of independence, wrote cleansing h istories for self-governm ent.

They proved that Mau Maus militants were neither savages nor mad men, as British

propaganda had p ortrayed them, but ordinary people, driven to extraordinary lengthsof political commitment, clearly fit for self-rule.66 There was m uch conscious

connection between this era of scholarship and the produ ction of Mau Mau memoirs

that p rotested against the blanket of national forgetting u nd er which the memory of

their sacrifice app eared to be suffocating. But the memoirs them selves gave a far more

ethnic, Kikuyu, rendering of the struggle than scholarship had imp lied . Thereafter

historians add ressed what they saw as the failings of the new 'Kenyatta state'. They

followed intellectual fashion in the Western academic world at large, wh ich w as in the

1960s mu ch more resonan t with Kenyas own internal debates. Accord ingly, scholars

first saw Kenyattas Kenya as a neo-colonial depend ency, mu ch as did Oginga Od inga

and h is opp osition par ty, the Kenya Peoples Union. Later scholars then saw the

regime as a corrup t ethn ocracy, as Kenyattas smashing of the KPU in the late 1960s had

evoked first a renewed movement of Kikuyu oathing, to keep the nations flag in the

house of Gikuyu and Muu mbi and then a m assacre by his bodyguard of Luo

dem onstrator s in Kisum u. What is important for us is that each type of successor state

was held by scholarly critics, now increasingly Kenyan rather th an expatr iate, to have

betrayed its tru e parentage, an app ropriately contrad ictory Mau Mau. In the first of

these retrospective narratives the m ovement had acted as the cutting edge of a national

working class. The Kenyatta state had clearly supp ressed, or ideologically cleansed,

that rad ical story in the interest of the new ru ling alliance, between th e national petit

bourgeoisie and international capital.67 In the second , ethnically charged but still class-conscious, view Mau Mau became a Kikuyu p easants arm y. These, as is the common

fate of peasant rebels, had been d um ped by their patrons w hen the latter no longer

needed , indeed, had come to fear, their plebeian battering ram.68 Certainly, politicians

app ear to have retained considerab le freedom in their choice of when and w hy to call

up the mem ory of Mau Mau . In 1969, that fateful year wh ich saw Tom Mboya

mu rdered, Kikuyu oath-taking revived to retain pow er in the 'house of Muum bi, and a

massacre amon g Kenyatta's Luo au dience at Kisum u, this last view seemed to be

confirmed in the popular imagination. Many Kenyans now remembered Mau Mau as

an elite bid for Kikuyu dom inionas the British had also once warned . In the 1990s,


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however, the new arap Moi successor regime overtu rned Kikuyu privilege, sometimes

with a force that recalled early-colonial pu nitive exped itions. Within the 'peop les

repu blics of the matatus (Kenyas minibuses) many reacted by rem embering Mau Mau,

once again, as rad ical democracy in action. Its healing image was different now ; itstood for the poor in general, wh o in tu rn had become the su ffering people of God.69

Here, for the first time, popu lar memory has far outrun scholarly analysis or indeed the

pow er of establishment politicians to manipu late in their own interest. We are far from

clear that such a religious tinge to mem ory has transcendent political pow er. Mau Mau ,

therefor, appears condemned to remain an indelible symbol round wh ich Kenya's

antagon istic, but d ivisive rather than reformative, afterthou ghts will continu e to swarm.

b) Neighbourliness and Memory in Kikuyu land : In many respects, the Mau

Mau stru ggle still continues in Kikuyuland today. In Nyeri, Muranga and Kiambu,

former Mau Mau w ill not speak, share a beer, or allow their children to inter-marry ,

with ex-Loyalist neighbours. In some areas, local shambas are known as either Mau Mau

or Loyalist. No one knows how mu ch we have sufferedHow m uch we continue to

suffer, is a familiar refrain echoed th roughou t man y Kikuyu areas.70 From the 1960s

un til today there has been no public reckoning. For their part, the Loyalists continue to

wield economic and p olitical pow er, and have yet to confess any misdeeds. What

incentive have they? Moreover, there is noth ing in the Kikuyu p ast that wou ld indicate

any predisposition to a pu blic pu rging of guilt. As Wole Soyinka has pointed ou t in his

reflections on post-Apartheid South Africa, there exists both a mora l and material link

to reconciliation;71 In post-Mau Mau Kikuyuland , we find neither. Morally, the

Loyaliststhe p erceived victorshave not recognised, let alone apologised for, their

past bru talities. There has been little material comp ensation for lost property and lives

du ring the years of independ ence. Moreover, those cur rently seeking comp ensatory

retribu tion in the sum of three billion poun ds sterling Britain have a qu estionable

record of Mau Mau par ticipation, at best.72 Indeed, many ordinary Mau Mau wanainchi

refer to these litigants as hungry dogs, or opp ortunists. Clearly, the ex-Mau Mau

have had little incentive to reconsider their hat red of their Loyalists neighbours, and to

become reconciled w ith the d ivisive past.

Reconciliation, insofar as it exists in Kikuyuland , has taken p lace almost

exclusively within the chu rches. With forgive and forget remaining official state

policy, the Christian institutions have p rovided Kikuyu land w ith the only real venuefor coming to terms with the past. Yet there has been no speaking out or pu blic

confession centring on the Mau Mau era . Instead, parishioners are told to live together

because they are all Christian. When asked if they were still Mau Mau, man y

informan ts respond ed, I am a Christian. The same response was generally given

when asked w hy there is no public fighting or disputing over the past. How ever, there

was not a single ex-Mau Mau who said they forgave their Loyalist neighbou rs. Their

Christianity clearly has its limitations.

Within ex-Mau Mau hou seholds, the catastrophe of the Emergency is still not

d iscussed , at least between the genders. For many former detainees and villagers, their


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interviews with Elkins were the first time they had p ublicly revealed their past horrors.

The catharsis appeared, how ever, to have a liberating effect for m any, as initially

halting responses gave way to hours and hours of testimony. Moreover, the imp act of

this process was shared w ith other ex-Mau Mau , many of whom d emand ed to beinterviewed. When asked why they came, many replied that it was time. Whether

Loyalist revelations would have p romp ted m ore pu rgings of shame or guilt from ex-

Mau Mau is a question w e cannot answ er. Nor, one imagines, could the former villager

in Nyeri district wh o asked, wh y has no one acknowledged wh at happ ened? Look

at the d ogs who still live near m e [the Loyalists], and w ho still remain in this country

[the Europ ean settlers].73 There is also the question as to what impact this continued

antipathy will have on future generations. Will it die out w ith the passing of the Mau

Mau generation? At the local level, the lack of public revelation, the failure of ex-Mau

Mau to imp art their stories to younger generations, the urban concerns of many

younger Kikuyu, and the continued efforts of the churches may well damp en futurelocal conflict. How ever, Mau Maus recent rebirth w ithin the peoples republics of the

matatu mini-buses and its continu ed sym bolic form w ithin Kenyas broader political

conflicts mean that it w ill not pass away easily. Moreover, the recent p ublic revelations

in the Kenyan press regarding the Mau Mau Pipeline, and the bru tal human rights

violations of the Emergencycoup led w ith continu ing litigation over stolen Mau

Mau land smay well be a start in informing Kenyas youn ger generations. Indeed,

nearly fifty years after Mau Mau , this may be the first hint of a pu blic pu rging. One is

only left to imagine that genies impact if released from her bottle. Our conclud ing

reflection suggests tha t the bottle of memory is more likely to remain firmly corked.

Conclusion: Neighbours and Nation

Is the pa lliative local peace between n eighbours bought a t the cost of a critical

national debate about citizenship and governance? To us it seems that that is so. The

local peace, as just described , is largely illusory. It is the fru it of silence, that secret

know ledge or kirira with wh ich Kikuyu elders h ave for generations supp ressed

poten tially disrupt ive argu ment. If there were to be a nationa l debate on citizenship, as

opp osed to clientage, and on socialas distinct from ethnicdistributive justice, it

wou ld be imp ossible to avoid a confrontation between Kikuyu neighbours about the

bitter roots of their differentiation in property and p ower. Kenya can well withstand itsperiod ic crises of memory over Mau Mau, since they do not fund amentally challenge

the bargaining p olitics of ethnic feud alism that underwrites the regional comp romises

of elite pow er. Public mem ory may question the equity of relative ethnic shares; but in

so doing it reinforces the principle of ethnic bargaining. Ethnicity, the crises remind

Kenyans, is what their politics is, and ough t to be, about. A conscious cleansing of

neighbourly relations in Kikuyuland w ould be a totally different matter. It wou ld force

peop le to confront issues of persona l morality, failures in prop er gender relations, the

betrayal of age-mates, the theft of property and repu tation, and all without the h elp of

any intermed iary authority such as is in Zimbabwe provided by ancestral spirit cults or


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the shrines of Mwali. When p ressed on the question of forgiveness and reconciliation

those Kikuyu w ho call them selves Christian have noth ing to say. One suspects that

their churches are too embedded in local society to provide the alternative authority

that is needed to evoke catharsis. While the association of memories of Mau Mau andthe p oorof all ethn icities and nonehas begun to app ear in Kenya, the p olitical

system is in no position to respond . It would m ean a root and branch examination of

the socio-economic and p olitical structures that arebarelyholding the country

together. The memory of Mau Mau thu s seems likely to remain an ethnic bargaining

counter rather than an avenue of national and social transformation.

1 Greet Kershaw, Mau Mau from Below (Oxford , Nairobi and Athens OH ; Currey,

EAEP, and Ohio UP: 1997), 15-18.2 For the Kikuyu case, see John Lonsdale, Contests of Time: Old and New in

Kikuyu Historiography, ch. 9 in Axel Harneit-Sievers (ed),A Place in the World: New

Local Historiographies from Africa and South Asia (Leiden, Brill: 2002), 201-54.33 This pap er is written in the shadow of other stud ies of Mau Mau in Kenyas

mem ory, in par ticular: Atieno Odhiambo, The Produ ction of History in Kenya: The

Mau Mau Debate, Canadian Journal of African Studies 25, 2 (1991), 300-07; Robert

Buijtenhuijs,Mau M au Twenty Years After: The Myth and the Survivors (Mouton , Leiden),

1973; Marshall S. Clough,Mau M au M emoirs: History, M emory and Politics (Rienner,

Bolder CO, 1998); idem, Mau Mau and the Contest for Memory, forthcoming in Atieno

Odhiambo & John Lonsdale (eds.),Mau Mau and Nationhood: Arms, Authority and

Narration (Currey, Oxford , 2002); Franois Grignon , La dmocratisation au risque du

dbat? Territoires d e la critiqu e et imaginaires politiqu es au Kenya 1990-1995, in Denis-

Constant Martin (ed.),Nouveaux langages du politique en Afrique orientale (Karthala &

IFRA, Paris & Nairobi, 1998), 29-112; Bethwell A. Ogot, History, Ideology, and

Contemporary Kenya, Presiden tial Add ress to the H istorical Association of Kenya

(Nairobi, 1981); Galia Sabar-Friedman, The Mau Mau Myth: Kenyan Political Discourse

in Search of Dem ocracy, Cahiers dtudes africaines 35, 1 (1995), 101-31. It d iffers from

these, first, in p aying greater attention to the political circum stances in w hich national

myths of Mau Mau w ere first constru cted and , more particularly, in its neighbourly

Kikuyu p erspective, an area hitherto scarcely d iscussed at all.4 John Lonsdale, 'KAU's Cultu res: Imaginations of Comm un ity & Constructions of

Leadership in Kenya after the Second World War',Journal of A frican Cultural Studies 13

(2000), 107-124.5 But for evidence that some elders felt morally able to supp ort Mau Mau see the

remarks of Gakaara wa Wanjau qu oted below.6 John Lonsdale, Authority, gender an d v iolence: the w ar within Mau Maus fight

for land and freedom, in Atieno Od hiambo and Lonsdale (eds.),Mau Mau and

Nationhood; and Cristiana Pugliese, Complementary or Contend ing Nationhoods?

Gikuyu Political Pamph lets and Songs: 1945-1952, in ibid.7 Interview N o. 1, Nairobi, Kenya , 16 December , 1998. Note that all interviews

were cond ucted by Caroline Elkins.


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8 Interview, Gakaara wa Wanjau, Karatina, Nyeri District, 22 February, 1999.9 Luise White, The Comforts of Home: Prostitution in Colonial Nairobi (Chicago:

Chicago Un iversity Press, 1990); Claire Robertson , Trouble Showed the Way: Women,Men, and Trade in the Nairobi Area, 1890-1990 (Bloomington : University of Indiana Press,

1997); and Berida N dambuki and Claire Robertson, We Only Come Here to Struggle:

Stories from Beridas Life (Bloomington: Ind iana University Press, 2000).10 Interv iew No. 84, Kiambu District, 28 March, 1999.11 Interview No. 2, Kiambu District, 16 December, 1998.12 Interview No. 5, Muranga Distr ict, 16 Janu ary, 1999.13 Interview No. 1, Nairobi, 16 December , 1998.14 PRO, CO 822/ 489/ 83, Baring to Lyttelton , 13 July, 1953; CO 822/ 489/ 80, Baring

to Lyttelton, 14 July, 1953.

15 PRO, WO 236/ 18, General Sir George Erskine, The Kenya Emergency, 25Apr il, 1955; CO 822/ 796 and WO 276/ 214, Outline Plan for Op eration AN VIL, 22

February, 1954.16 Our statistics are based on a comparison of official figures produ ced in Janu ary

and May 1954, before and after Anvil. See, PRO, CO 822/ 794/ 1, Memo by Thomas

Askwith, Rehabilitation, 6 Janu ary, 1954; and CO 822/ 796/ 36, R.G. Turnbull to

Secretary of State for the Colon ies, 11 May, 1954. See footnote 17 for fur ther d etails on

da ily average nu mbers of detainees, intake and release rates, and their relation to the

officially reported nu mber of detainees passing along the Pipeline.17 Figures for d etermining the net nu mber of detainees come from intake, release,

and d aily average figures. See especially: KNA, AH 9/ 19/ 12, Eggins minute, WorksCamp s, 4 Augu st, 1954; AH 9/ 32/ 251, Minister of Defence Memo to the Resettlement

Comm ittee, Movement of Detainees from Reception Centres to Works Camp s, 4 May,

1955; AH 6/ 3, Ministry of Defence, Monthly Reports, May 1954 to Janu ary 1958; PRO,

WO 276/ 428/ 103, Heyman, Chief of Staff, Brief for C-in-C on Detainees, 9 September,

1955; PRO, CO 822/ 798/ 53, Council of Ministers, Resettlement Committee, Releases

from Custod y and Rate of Absorption of Landless KEM, 25 Apr il, 1956.18 KNA, MAA 7/ 813/ 65/ 1, R.O. Henn ings, Memo, Reconstruction Committee -

Repor t: November 1953 - June 1954, 30 Jun e, 1954; MAA 7/ 755/ 39/ D, Memoran du m

by D Force, 25 August, 1954; and DC GRSS 3/ 13/ 37/ 8, H.S. Potter, memo, Return

of Kikuyu , Embu, and Meru ex-Convicts and Mau Mau Suspects to their Reserves, 12August, 1953.19 KNA, VQ 16/ 103, Central Province, Annu al Report 1956.20 For example, Interview No. 65, Nyeri Distr ict, 20 March, 1999; Interv iew N o. 77,

Nyeri Distr ict, 22 March, 1999; and Interv iew No. 85, Kiambu District, 28 March, 1999.

Every inform ant h ighlighted th eir lack of forewarning of villagisation, the burning of

hom es and possessions, and the loyalists illegal confiscation of property .21 Interview No. 46, Nyeri d istrict, 22 Febru ary,

Memories of Mau Mau in Kenya: Lessons for Nation and Neighbours

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