Imperial Reckoning

by Caroline Elkins

  Kenya was also a relatively small place for the European population, both settlers and colonial administrators, who lived and socialized there. Weekends were often spent together in places like the Muthaiga Club or Thacker’s trial residence, the Kitale Club, where all local whites drank, ate, danced, and enjoyed themselves long into night. Social ties between the Administration and the local European population were also strengthened through bonds of kinship, as many young officers married settler daughters. John Nottingham, who was a young district officer at the start of the Emergency, remembers how influential settler racial extremism was and how many members of the Administration, already colored by a sense of racial and moral superiority over the local African population, easily slipped into its logic. “All we heard was how savage Mau Mau was, shoot to kill. You can’t imagine how often I heard, ‘The only good Kuke is a dead Kuke.’ There was this idea that Mau Mau was savage, just completely atavistic, and somehow had to be gotten rid of, regardless of how it was done. This idea was everywhere.”41 During a brief stop in Nairobi in the spring of 1954, journalist Anthony Sampson likewise observed what he later called the “dehumanization of the enemy” by local settlers and colonial officials. “I heard it everywhere I went,” he said. “How many Kukes had to be gotten rid of, how many Kukes did you wink today. [It was] almost like they were talking about big game hunting.”42 The historical record is littered with lengthy descriptions from settlers and colonial officials of Mau Mau “vermin,” “animals,” and “barbarians,” who lived in the “untidy, sprawling heaps…hovels, with seething mud and animals in the huts,” or in the “bush” with other wildlife. Like other predatory animals, they were “cunning,” “vicious,” and “bloodthirsty.”43 Thus Mau Mau became for many whites in Kenya, and for many Kikuyu loyalists as well, what the Armenians had been to the Turks, the Hutu to the Tutsi, the Bengalis to the Pakistanis, and the Jews to the Nazis.44 As with any incipient genocide, the logic was all too easy to follow. Mau Mau adherents did not belong to the human race; they were diseased, filthy animals who could infect the rest of the colony, and whose very presence threatened to destroy Kenya’s civilization. They had to be eliminated.

  The Colonial Office christened this extremism in Kenya the “Emergency mentality.”45 British colonial officials in London, including the colonial secretary, were well aware of the radical threat to Kikuyu society posed by local whites. Less than two weeks after the start of the Emergency Lyttelton flew to Kenya, where he met with several groups, including the European Elected Members, as the settler block in Kenya’s Legislative Council was called. Michael Blundell, fast becoming a voice of moderation among the extremists, called for “drastic action” against the “80% to 90% of Kikuyu [who had no] mental or moral fibre,” and advocated granting all policemen a shoot-to-kill policy. Major Keyser, an archconservative and Blundell’s predecessor as leader of the European legislators, reminded Lyttelton that Kenya was “bush country” and implied that only the locals knew how to deal with the natives: “Having lived for thirty-two years in this country, I am quite sure that [shooting down the Mau Mau] is the action that should be taken.” But it was the grandstanding of Humphrey Slade that could have left no doubt in Lyttelton’s mind about the prevailing sentiment among the “White Mau Mau” in Kenya who were by all accounts gaining control over local opinion.

  Sir, in this matter we are not only speaking for ourselves, we are speaking the views of the people we represent, 40,000 Europeans. It is our view, Sir, rightly or wrongly, that these Mau Mau men are rebels who work by terrorism. They are fighting a war against this country’s Government, the European and the Asians in this country. You can only defeat them by aggressive action against them. You cannot afford to sit back and wait for them to hit you here and there, and only, in return, try to arrest a few of them. They are men who when they have their Mau Mau meetings are actually concentrating for murder and I do submit to you, Sir, and everyone of us feels that the only way of dealing with those men is to treat them as men with whom you are at war. And if you cannot arrest them, as you cannot, the only alternative is to kill them. When you know they are our enemy, it comes to this, that you have to consider the white population here and the real danger that arises from that angle. 46

  How much did senior colonial officials believe in the local characterization of Mau Mau? On this score, Lyttelton hardly equivocated. In his memoirs the colonial secretary wrote, “The Mau Mau oath is the most bestial, filthy and nauseating incantation which perverted minds can ever have brewed….[I have never felt] the forces of evil to be so near and so strong as in Mau Mau…. As I wrote memoranda or instruction…I would suddenly see a shadow fall across the page—the horned shadow of the Devil himself.”47 Baring, though more circumspect, certainly felt that Mau Mau was an “atavistic savage sort of affair” that had to be removed at all costs.48 Both stopped short of advocating, at least at the start of the war, any kind of officially sanctioned violence. Lyttelton had admonished the settler representatives of the long-term consequences of summary justice: “That is the law of the jungle, and if you fight the law of the jungle with another law of the jungle, you will end by being run out.”49 In the years to come, neither he nor his men on the spot would heed this prescient warning.

  Six months after the start of the war things were going from bad to worse in Kenya, and Baring and Lyttelton knew it. Kenyatta’s trial, for all of its drama and political grandstanding, did little to release the mounting pressure of the local eliminationist mentality. Secret documents exchanged between their two offices described the security force’s “trigger happy” attitude, and allegations of misconduct, which included kill competitions complete with “five shillings a nob” bounties for Mau Mau guerrillas and “scoreboards.”50 The colonial government did its best to keep a lid on the situation as General Brian Robertson, the commander in chief of the British forces in the Middle East, was quick to point out after an inspection of Britain’s troops in Kenya. “The most immediate anxiety of the Governor,” he reported, “is that some of the settlers will take the law into their own hands, and indeed there have been cases already, fortunately hushed up, of their doing so.”51

  There was little in Granville Roberts’s hundreds of press handouts, or in Baring’s or Lyttelton’s speeches, that mentioned these irregularities, as the colonial government euphemistically called the ongoing atrocities perpetrated against Mau Mau. There was no mention, for instance, of the vengeful aftermath of Lari, when white and black members of the British security forces massacred as many as four hundred suspected Mau Mau adherents. In one case where a British-directed massacre at Kiruara was reported, the murders were apparently justified because “the Police partly opened fire in self-defence.”52 On November 23, 1952, in the marketplace of this small village located in the heart of Fort Hall District, several hundred Kikuyu had gathered to listen to the prophecies of a young man who claimed to have had a vision of the end of colonial rule. According to numerous eyewitnesses, several white police officers arrived on the scene, along with a few dozen black policemen and local loyalists. They ordered the crowd to disperse. When no one moved, the white police officer in charge ordered his men to open fire. “We were all standing there, listening to this young man, and the next thing people were falling down around me,” remembers Naftaly Mang’ara. “I just fell to the ground and covered my head. When the shooting was over I rose, only to collapse because the police officers began shooting again.”53 There are various recollections of the precise sequence of events from different Kikuyu men and women who were in the marketplace that day, but they are all in agreement that the police fired several rounds with automatic weapons, nearly one hundred unarmed people were murdered, and many of their bodies buried in a nearby shallow grave.54 At the time, colonial officials claimed only fifteen Kikuyu were murdered and twenty-seven wounded. Even if these figures are correct, no white or black member of the police force was tried for the crimes committed at Kiruara. This stands in contrast to the
Lari massacre, for which over three hundred Mau Mau adherents were tried and scores convicted and hung for their alleged murderous deeds.55

  In May 1953, General Sir George Erskine, better known as “Bobbie” Erskine, was called in to bring an end to the violence and restore order to Kenya. A short, rather rotund man, Erskine had led troops in World War II and in colonial operations in India and Egypt. A personal friend of Winston Churchill, then the prime minister, Erskine was a no-nonsense commander who, unlike his predecessor, Hinde, was given full operational control over all of the security forces in the colony, including the King’s African Rifles, the settlers in the Kenya Regiment and Kenya Police Reserve, and the loyalists. One of his first moves was to reform the security forces, and in June he issued an order to all its members, reminding them that they represented the British government and the forces of civilization, and that they were to stop “‘beating up’ the inhabitants of this country just because they are the inhabitants.” Further, he ordered the military to “stamp at once on any conduct which he would be ashamed to see used against his own people.”56 Erskine’s directive hardly brought the violence to an end; in the months and years ahead there would be countless episodes of similar behavior on the part of the security forces, including the British army. The mere existence of the directive, however, was a strong indication that everyone, including the men at the top, knew that all was not right with Britain’s colonial forces of law and order.

  As far as Erskine was concerned, Kenya was a political disaster. He made the immediate decision to act as independently as possible, largely because he loathed the local settler population and their virulent racism, with demands for summary justice, and their butting into military policy making. While in Kenya, Erskine could hardly contain his feelings toward them, writing to his wife, “I hate the guts of them all, they are all middle-class sluts. I never want to see another Kenya man or woman and I dislike them all with few exceptions.”57 The feeling was mutual, the settlers equally disliking Erskine’s abrupt personality as well as his politics. The general felt that Mau Mau did, in fact, have some basis for legitimacy, declaring, “[The Africans] hate the police and absolutely loathe the settlers. It is not difficult to realize how much the settler is loathed and the settler does not realize it himself….[Mau Mau was rooted in] nothing but rotten administration…in my opinion they want a new set of civil servants and some decent police.”58 Erskine was irritated that he had to participate in the War Council, which was composed of himself, Governor Baring, and Michael Blundell, the settler representative. Established in March 1954, the War Council was responsible for formulating Emergency strategy and, in theory, reaching some kind of consensus on military and civilian operations. The general was outraged that settler interests had a privileged place on the council and took every opportunity to snub Blundell. He also tried to ignore the governor, believing that Baring was in such poor health and lacking in decision-making skills that he was close to incompetent.

  Erskine never declared martial law in Kenya, a critically important decision since it meant that he would be responsible only for military operations—in other words, for suppressing the Mau Mau guerrillas. He had no responsibility for dealing with the rest of the civilian population, including settlers, except as it might relate to his military operations. The State of Emergency declared in Kenya was unlike that in Malaya, where General Sir Gerald Templer was directing the British battle against the communist insurgents and had full command of both the military and civilian forces. Had Erskine been granted the same martial-law power, not only would he have had to assume responsibility for the hundreds of thousands of Mau Mau adherents who had taken the oath but remained outside the forests, but he would also have had to contend with the settlers, something he was loath to do and something the settlers wanted to avoid as well. Nevertheless, he carried the ultimate trump card. Erskine had a letter from Churchill authorizing him to declare martial law and assume control of the government at any time. The general kept this handy slip of paper in his glasses case, and whenever he felt the settlers or members of the colonial government were getting out of line, he would stop them in their tracks by snapping the case open and then shutting it.59

  The Mau Mau guerrilla war has all the ingredients of a stirring military drama, and there are several publications that explore various aspects of the fighting.60 Erskine and his successor, General Sir Gerald Lathbury, oversaw the deployment of three British battalions, four battalions of King’s African Rifles, the Kenya Regiment, an artillery battery, and an armored car squadron—all with the support of Royal Air Force squadrons of Vampire jets and heavy bombers. Their mission was to defeat a Mau Mau force of some twenty thousand men and women armed largely with homemade weapons. Despite their clearly superior firepower, the British initially could not gain the upper hand in guerrilla combat inside the seemingly impenetrable forests, replete with wild animals and the ubiquitous “African unknown” that seemed to be lurking behind every impenetrable thicket. The British military had to fight for nearly two years before gaining the initiative in late 1954, and then gained the upper hand only after Erskine took his British troops out of the forests and sent them to lock up the perimeter. He replaced them with members of the King’s African Rifles, as well as young settlers from the Kenya Regiment who became part of the infamous pseudogangsters. Black-faced, and often Kikuyu-or Kiswahili-speaking, these forces went into the forests with Africans, including captured Mau Mau turned government informants, where they hunted down the last remaining guerrillas platoon by platoon.

  Directing the pseudogangster operation was Ian Henderson—a man whose name would become synonymous with brutality, not just in Kenya but elsewhere in Britain’s empire as well. Henderson is credited with transferring the torture techniques he perfected as a member of the Kenyan Criminal Investigation Department to the pseudogang military operations that he oversaw in the forests. Guerrillas who were captured alive later recalled stories of unspeakable interrogation methods employed by Henderson and his minions.61 But in the eyes of the local settler population, the pseudogangsters were Kenya’s finest—proving they could pierce the heart of Kenya’s forests to hunt down those remaining “savages” who were threatening civilization. Henderson and his crew’s most glorious moment came when they captured the famous and elusive Mau Mau guerrilla leader, Field Marshal Dedan Kimathi. The ultimate symbol of Mau Mau resistance, Kimathi was interrogated after his capture and eventually tried and hung. For his role, Henderson won the George Medal and was later dispatched by the British government to Bahrain, where he served for some thirty years as the head of that tiny protectorate’s state security.62

  If Mau Mau was largely a military war, fought between British security forces and the Mau Mau guerrillas, a war that was winding down as soon as late 1954, then why didn’t Kenya’s governor lift the State of Emergency until January 1960? Given a postwar international climate that was increasingly hostile to colonialism, the extension of the Emergency six years beyond the end of overt military hostilities is even more incredible. If we keep in mind that there was an absence of martial law in Kenya, the answer becomes clearer. Erskine may have won the military war in 1954, but Baring was knee-deep in a vast civilian war, one that was far more complex than anything that had taken place in the forests. According to official government estimates, there were some twenty thousand insurgents in the Mount Kenya and Aberdares ranges. Yet roughly 90 percent of the 1.5 million Kikuyu had taken the oath for land and freedom. Erskine and his military forces were responsible for defeating about 2 percent of the Mau Mau insurgents. Baring and his men were responsible for breaking the Mau Mau allegiance of well over a million Kikuyu. The assault against the Mau Mau civilian population—orchestrated and executed by Governor Baring with the approval of the Colonial Office—was far more significant in scope and impact than the military’s campaign against the guerrillas.

  This historical revision compels us to acknowledge that the colonial government in Kenya was
willing to go to extraordinary lengths to reestablish and maintain its control of the colony. The maintenance of power and authority drove British colonial decision making not only during Mau Mau but throughout Britain’s imperial occupation of Kenya, and in much of Africa and Asia. As with its other colonial territories, the British colonized Kenya first and foremost to exploit its resources, particularly the land and local labor. Like all colonial governments, Kenya’s was illegitimate, as it derived its power not from democratic consensus but from a host of repressive laws that forced the local population to obey, using taxation, pass laws, imprisonment, legal floggings, and terror. In its struggle to maintain control over the African majority, the colonial government became ever more dependent on increasingly arbitrary and oppressive laws, which, in turn, reaffirmed its illegitimacy in the eyes of many Africans.63