When Wang’ombe sent a report that he had cleansed all the fighters, Kimathi and his wife to be, followed by Ndururi Vindo and Macaria Kimemia, entered the hall. When they were all seated, Abdullah and I, Wandere my advisor and two other elders who carried the paraphernalia required, entered the hall. All the warriors stood up as we slowly walked the 120 feet along the narrow path between the standing columns. On our arrival at the platform, I filled a horn with beer from the gitete, purposely letting it flow over to the ground. I held the horn in my right hand and the little fat gourd in my left. Facing Kirinyaga (Mount Kenya), I asked the audience to attend prayers:
Our Heavenly Father, I beseech you; draw nearer and hear our prayers. (Thaai! audience). Our merciful Father, forgive us all our sins and wash our hearts, hands and minds as it satisfies thy will, so that we may be clean in your eyes. (Thaai!). Oh God! defend and guide us for we are your children, your own creation. We believe that you are our leader, general and King of Kings, and we humbly pray you to lead and supervise our ceremony. (Thaai!) I now present to you fat and honey (pouring a little to the sides and front), our best produce, your own choice, and which you have instructed our forefathers to present to you in all ceremonies.
Now God, I pray you power and wisdom to enable me to accomplish this ceremony in your name, Father, I present Dedan Kimathi to you, the man you chose to lead us in this forest. We have gathered here today to pray you to glorify Kimathi, fill him with power and wisdom, defend and keep him, and let him lead us to victory in your home. (Thaai thathaiya Ngai thaai – three times).
All sitting down, Kimathi and his party standing, I turned to Kimathi and, pouring fat and honey on his head, I said: “May this be the sign that we all here accept and witness Dedan Kimathi as the Head Leader of all our armies. May God bless this head, fat and sweet honey help it to grow and rise above all heads in the name of our god. Thaai.”
I sipped the beer and made a spitting gesture on my both shoulders and sipped again, spraying Kimathi and his girl with it from my mouth. I said: “May you have power to defeat the enemy, long life, many children and popularity.”
Karari Njama then made a long speech of praise which ended:
“Kimathi, my son, for your good service to your country, your willingness to sacrifice your life for your people, your bravery, your industriousness, your good conduct and leadership has made the Kenya Parliament, which is the people’s eyes, to promote you today, 6 March 1955, to become the first Prime Minister of the Kenya African Government (amid cheers) and knight you Sir Dedan Kimathi, Knight Commander of the East African Empire. Here (handing him the envelope containing a letter and 500s.), in the name of Gikuyu and Mumbi and the Kenya Parliament’s authority. You will now be leader of the leaders, an elder of the first order who only advises and settles down quarrels. Let another warrior rise as much as you have done in the army. This is the elder’s honour (handing over the muthegi, mataathi and flywhisk) which marks that you have passed the warriors stage (shaking hands and exchanging greetings – ‘Wanyua,’ ‘Wanyua wakini’).”
But, for the Knight Commander of the East African Empire, the bell had already tolled.
News from the reserves was not pleasing, for Government had greatly increased its forces and arms, forced all people in the Central Province into villages which were strongly supervised as prison camps. We had been cut off from Nairobi supplies and communication and worse still from our supporters in the reserves. For the last two months I had noted and notified our Nairobi base that the (little) ammunition we had could only be used for defending or fighting for food. We couldn’t make any more offensive attacks. Over 30,000 Kikuyu, Embu and Meru had become loyal Home Guards to the Government, most of whom were previously our strong supporters. After their surrender they accused other supporters whom they beat and tortured badly until they confessed and became converted in their faith. In addition, our itungati (warriors) who had either surrendered or were captured had given the enemy sufficient information about the forest fighters and, worst of all, (some) had joined the enemy’s pseudo-platoons and had become their guides to our mbuci (forest camps). In fact the wind had changed, this time against us.
Mau Mau From Within Donald Barnett and Karari Njama.
The final meeting of the “Kenya Parliament” was held in July 1955, after which the gangs dispersed and operated without central authority. Hope of victory gave way to a personal struggle for survival. The hunt was on for Dedan Kimathi.
From information supplied by former gangsters, a picture was pieced together of Kimathi’s daily habits. Every morning he prayed to his God while resting his head against a mugumo tree, the wild fig sacred to the Kikuyu God. The police officer in charge of the hunt reports.
By the evening of 8 August 1956, all the large mugumo trees in the “Kimathi Area” had been plotted on our map. These trees are not common in the forest of the Aberdares, and they are quite rare in our hunting ground. Jeriko had said that there were at least forty, but we only found eighteen and ten of these were in spots which Kimathi would certainly not visit because the approaches were unsafe. We turned to the remaining eight.
That same night, eight well-armed teams made their way to the trees. The march was a taxing exercise in bushcraft. Our teams had to avoid open spaces where an alert sentry could see them; they had to avoid the likely resting places of bushbuck and duiker, for if Kimathi found the hoof-marks of a running antelope, he might suspect that his enemies were at hand; our men also had to avoid those birds or animals which raise an alarm as soon as they see human beings, such as the Sykes monkeys, whose loud warning calls can be heard for miles through the forest. Then there is the tiny little brown ndete or call bird. Whenever they see something move they fly over and perch themselves on a nearby bush where they jump frantically from branch to branch and make as much noise as they can to tell the forest of their discovery. He is a most difficult creature to get rid of. Fortunately he chatters whenever he sees anything move so he is a far less reliable “alarm bell” than the less excitable Sykes monkey and it can often be a pure waste of time to check up on his warnings. But nothing was ever too tiring or troublesome for the timid Kimathi. Whenever he heard the ndete, he would study the situation from afar for some time in the hope of identifying the cause of the bird’s alarm, then, if he could not see anything, he would dart away.
Some of the wild fig trees were several miles up the slopes of the mountain and it was not until the afternoon of 9 August that all our teams were finally in position….
Our men took up the best positions they could find and after covering their legs with their animal-skin coats to shield them from the hard-biting horse flies, which can sting a man to the border of frenzy, the long wait began. Here they were to lie for four days and nights unless Kimathi favoured them with a visit. Rain, heat, cold, wind, ants, caterpillars, wild animals, snakes, and all the other dangers and discomforts of the forest would have to be endured as they lay there. In those same positions the calls of nature would be answered by turning slowly onto their backs and scraping a small hole in the soft, forest soil with their fingers. They would lie there as still as death, but all the time they would be alert and sensitive for the faintest rustle in the bushes, a suspicious sound or a movement in the trees….
I had often watched our teams on operations in the forest. They would lie absolutely motionless for so long that I wondered whether they would ever be able to move their cramped limbs again. All the time their chins would be resting on their clenched fists and they would be staring at some particular spot where they believed they would first see something coming. They were, curiously enough, seldom wrong. Their stare would be so intense you would think they had seen something and you would try to see for yourself, but without looking at you they would sense your curiosity and slowly shake a finger to show there was nothing there. Sometimes you would hear a rustle in the forest and look at them inquiringly, but they would still be staring at the spot they had been watching for hours. P
erhaps they had not heard it, you would think, but before you could move, they would quietly whisper “Ngima” (“Sykes”) or “Thwara” (“Buck”) or “Kanyoni” (“Bird”) and you would lie back feeling ignorant and a bit embarrassed. In the forest they knew the answers to everything, outside to nothing. In the forest it was always safest to leave everything to them. After operating with them a few times you would very quickly realize when something unusual was in the vicinity. Instinctively they would pull their fists away from their chins and their heads would drop an inch or two. This was a reflex action developed in the days when they were often under fire. Then their heads would turn very slowly in the direction from which they suspected the intruder was coming and by tapping a little twig on the ground or on a dry leaf, they would signal messages to one another. Their bodies would curl up. And then one man would give the signal to attack. A low in-drawn whistle meant “Fire”; two sharp clicks with a finger meant “Rush”; and when they fired, or when they rose to their feet and rushed, they would react with surprising speed, darting through the tangled, forbidding undergrowth with a grace and ease that were fascinating.
Four days and nights passed in this tormented fashion but God had warned Kimathi in a dream and he escaped the trap. Nevertheless the pseudo-gangs were closing in and Kimathi’s followers were reduced to thirteen. Every day they moved on.
At the first glimmer of dawn, Kimathi rose and set off alone to study the behaviour of the partridges. He believed, as did most other Mau Mau, that if partridges took to wing and scattered as soon as human beings came upon them, the day would end in tragedy. On the other hand, if they scurried along the ground for a few yards before flying away, they would be showing the muirigo or the way and this was an omen of good fortune. When he returned to the hide-out, he was in a better frame of mind and his followers knew that the partridges must have scurried….
Some time that night – nobody had any idea what time it was – Kimathi ordered his gang to break camp and move on. They crossed the Kinaini river, and then the Muringato river, on their way to a cave once used by Juma Abdalla as a food store. But when they reached it they found it was empty. All the food had been cleared out by our teams some time before. So on Kimathi and his followers went until they reached that part of the jungle which they called Mathakwa-ini.
During the next few days when new game traps were being laid, the gang grew more and more hungry. The few fruit-yielding trees were bare. Most of the bees had eaten their honey during the misty period and had not replenished their hives. Meat was, as yet, unobtainable as their traps were only now going up. What little food they did find was given to Kimathi and Wanjiru (his female companion). Three hyrax were caught in an ingenious but cruel way. When their holes in the trees were discovered, a long, pliant stick, spliced at the tip, was thrust up the hole until the hyrax felt the tip boring into their bodies and screeched. Then the terrorists turned the stick so that the soft woolly hair of the animals was wound round the tip. They were then pulled down, clubbed to death and given to Kimathi and Wanjiru. For the other members of the gang, lack of food soon became a desperate problem. Old buckskin garments were boiled and eaten after the hair had been scraped off, rats were welcome morsels, while some roots were dug up and boiled for their juices. The gangsters took it in turn to sit near their game traps to make sure that, when a buck was caught, it would not be eaten by hyenas or leopards. Spurred on by hunger, Kimathi’s men were sitting in pairs by their widely-scattered traps. They were still sitting there when our operations began again after the abortive operation of Rurimeria hill and in the first week of September we caught four more of Kimathi’s men. All four were sitting beside game traps when the teams found them and none had eaten any food for several days.
Soon afterwards, Kimathi’s last remaining followers were captured and then he was alone. He fled without direction until he collapsed near the forest’s edge after covering nearly 80 miles in just under 28 hours. A little after sunrise on 21 October 1956 he was spotted by several Kikuyu tribal policemen, challenged, and wounded in the thigh as he fled. He was taken to hospital, recovered, tried for murder, sentenced and hanged. Ian Henderson concludes the story.
After visiting Kimathi in the hospital at Nyeri, I went straight back into the forest to unwind our operation and stand down the oddest army that ever fought for Queen and country in the history of the British Empire. Runners were sent out to bring all our teams back to Kinaini Camp. During the next forty-eight hours they trickled into camp tired out and weary. Gati was almost the last to arrive, lagging far behind the rest of his men, walking slowly, picking at his teeth with a piece of stick. He was deep in thought.
When I saw him coming, I went over and took him aside. We sat beneath the shade of a big tree to talk. “Well, it’s all finished, Gati,” I said. “Yes, Kinyanjui,” he replied, “it finished as Kingori prophesied – in the tenth month before the rains for millet planting began.” Then I remembered Kingori’s words in prison some six months before. The prophecy had been fulfilled.
The last ambush team from the prayer trees was now coming into our camp. Of all Kimathi’s prayer trees, those mugumo trees to which he had made his pilgrimages in search of his god Ngai, there was one which had attracted him more than the rest. Perhaps its shape or its surroundings fitted more accurately with the mugumo tree he had seen in his dream when “god had taken him by the right hand and led him to it”.
This tree stood in the part of the forest which the Mau Mau called Kahiga-ini. It was an enormous tree with a huge trunk and heavy, hanging branches which reached almost to the ground. It had stood there for many years, probably since the turn of the century. Now our team came over to make their last report – the mugumo tree had fallen.
The Hunt for Kimathi Ian Henderson and Philip Goodhart.
There are always two points of view. A patrol led by Major Owen Jeoffreys had surprised a forest gang and captured a number of weapons. In retaliation, “Brigadier” Karari Njama had raided Jeoffreys’ farm, burnt the buildings, sacked the house and abducted three servants.
The following day, I wrote a letter to Major Owen Jeoffreys:
Dear Jeoffreys,
I visited your home on the previous night and found that you were absent. I had come for the nineteen guns, clothing and utensils you took away from our fighters at Ruthaithi last week. Though I did not get the guns, I managed to get a radio, sewing machine, camera, utensils, clothings, food and medicine.
Your servants are now our active fighters. What I have done is just to make you feel what I and my colleagues felt last week for your actions. Your unfriendly action resulted in a revenge. I wonder how much you expect to live in Kenya while you spend most of your time and energy in destroying the Kenya Africans and creating enmity with us.
If I had revenged as I had been ordered by Kimathi, I would have put your living house on fire, but I spared it in order to prove to you that we are not so destructive as you might think. In fact, you must have seen that I stopped one warrior from tearing your books. All we want is freedom to form an African Government which will ban all discriminatory bars and extend individual freedom in movement, press and speech, give better pay and conditions to the workmen and most important eliminate European’s selfishness and pride. We do not hate the white man’s colour, but we cannot tolerate seeing a foreign settler with 50,000 acres of land, most of which only the wild game enjoy, while thousands of Africans are starving of hunger in their own country. Nor can we accept the white man to remain as a master and the African as a servant.
Your only alternative is either cooperate with the Africans as equal human beings by creating friendship and good relationship which your bombs and guns will never achieve – for they only increase enmity; or quit Kenya and leave the African to manage his own affairs. I intend to make it clear to you through this letter that the more you fight the Africans, the more you endanger your future in Kenya. You cannot kill ideas by killing people. Since the declaration of emergency
almost two years ago you have killed thousands of people, but you have neither killed the idea nor won the battle. Our battle is really between right and might. The six million Africans standing for right will definitely beat sixty thousand Europeans standing for the might, irrespective of your army strength. I am afraid that your Government had so many clever and wise men that are all blind to see the simple facts I have written you.
Your New Kenyan
Brig. Gen. Karari Njama
Chief Secretary, Kenya Parliament
September 1954
Mau Mau From Within Donald Barnett and Karari Njama.
The State of Emergency ended officially in January 1960, although after the capture of Dedan Kimathi in 1956 the fighting virtually came to an end. Jomo Kenyatta was still restricted in his movements, although his seven-year prison sentence for “managing a proscribed society” had ended. In 1961 he was finally released to lead his country into Independence.
Kenyatta’s period in prison gave him time for reflection away from the turmoil of politics. He could read, rest on his oars and think. Instead of being warped by prison, he seemed to find a new stability. At a press conference just before his final release he said, half jokingly, “We have been in a university. We learned more about politics there than we learnt outside.”
After Kenyatta became “First Minister” as a prelude to his presidency, he made two important speeches – more than two, of course, but these were crucial. Most European farmers were frightened, depressed, and could see no hope for the future. For four years many of them had lived under siege, locked in at night with their revolvers for fear of gangs bursting in to hack them to pieces; the personal friends of some had died in this gruesome fashion, and many more had seen their cattle hamstrung or poisoned. The price of land had slumped to next to nothing, and a million acres had already been compulsorily bought to be split up into African shambas. Now the arch-enemy whom they believed to be responsible for all this was to become the ruler of their country.
Nine Faces Of Kenya Page 28