David Lloyd George British Premier Downing St London
Four-hundred million negroes through the Universal Negro Improvement Association hereby register their protest against the brutal manner in which your government has treated the natives of Kenya, East Africa. You have shot down a defenceless people in their own native land exercising their rights as men. Such a policy will aggravate the many historic injustices heaped upon a race that will one day be placed in a position to truly defend itself not with mere sticks, clubs and stones but with modern implements of science.
All these eruptions of brutality between the introduction of colonial culture in 1895 and its flowering in blood in the 1950s were not aberrations of an otherwise humane Christian culture. They were its very essence, its law, its logic—and the Kenyan settler, with his sjambok, his dog, his horse, his rickshaw, his sword, and his gun, was its true embodiment.
Barbara Castle and the antiwar activist Fenner Brockway were not the true representatives of the empire and the culture it was exporting and nurturing in the colonies. Its true representatives were Ewart Grogan, Baron Delamere, Richard Meinertzhagen, Francis Hall (a leader of military raids against the resisting Gĩkũyũ fighters), and the gun-toting Peter Poole. They alone understood and tenaciously clung to the primary goal of that culture—inducing submission by terror. They were impatient with the more deceitful methods of the missionaries and administrators, who were trying to educate Kenyans into submission. They differed in the method, not in the aims. No, at least these men were honest; in that fact lay their crude vigor and fascinating simplicity. They saw into the heart of their culture and understood and embraced its brutality, whereas others dressed the same predatory logic in biblical homilies, literary flourishes, and empty rhetoric about the rule of law.
Gabraith Cole, who shot the Maasai national, insisted he had shot to kill his victim, whereas the judge, the prosecutor, the defense counsel, and the jury were united in trying to find moral cover for themselves in declaring him innocent. In refusing to give them moral cover, Cole was more honest, for the hypocrites had to acquit him anyway. Of course, honesty doesn’t absolve Cole of the crime; it just lets his actions and words open a window into the heartless heart of the entire colonial system.
Cole and his lot knew that the law was their law, not anybody else’s, written to protect their interests by suppressing those of Kenyans, and they said it openly.
Long before Meinertzhagen came onto the scene with a sugar-coated bullet, a British military commander named Jackson tried and failed to subdue Koitalel’s Nandi army. Jackson became almost insane and equated political defiance and military resistance with savagery. In a dispatch of May 4, 1897, he tried to cover his military humiliation with words, which nevertheless reveal the “aesthetic” goals of that culture—submission, acceptance, and silence.
I have carefully investigated, as far as possible, the reasons for their restlessness and it appears the great cause of the trouble is the hostile attitude assumed by the Chief Lybon, or medicine-man against the government. This man, who has apparently enormous influence over the various surrounding tribes, has declared (war) against the government, and is now busying himself in exhorting the tribes to expel the British. From reliable native information, I find he is endeavouring to bring about a movement against the administration, and numerous pieces of information clearly indicate that combined hostile action against us will undoubtedly begin on the cessation of the present rainy season. The Lybon has lately taken to sending insolent and defiant messages to the Fort, and the fact that no action has hitherto been taken against him has a very bad effect in the eyes of the natives, who say we are afraid of him. I have used every effort to conciliate the tribes and have exercised the greatest forbearance in dealing with them, and at their own request have even gone so far as to make blood brotherhood with many of them; but the ignorance of the people is so extreme that it is impossible to convey to such savages that the occupation of their country is not harmful to them. [italics mine]
Really, Mr. Jackson! Would you have said with similar equanimity that the occupation of Britain by Hitler’s Germany would not have been harmful to Britons? In the same way, Hitler was surprised at the savage ignorance of other Europeans to whom it was impossible to convey that the occupation of their countries by blue-eyed blond vampires was not harmful to them.
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The oppressed were to obey the oppressor. There was to be peace and harmony between the exploited and the exploiter. Slaves were to love the master and pray that God grant the master a long reign over them. These were the ultimate goals of colonial culture imposed by nailed boots, truncheons, and bayonets and carefully nurtured by the carrot of a personal heaven for a select few. The end was to teach Kenyans the beauty of submission and blind obedience to authority, reflected in the refrain of the Christian hymn “Trust and Obey”:
Trust and obey,
For there’s no other way
To be happy in Jesus
But to trust and obey!
Revelry in their own slavery: it was an ethic meant to make Kenyans readily accept, in the words of Jackson, that the occupation of their country by foreigners was not harmful to them.
Even in the 1950s, the colonial authorities were still busy trying to educate Kenyans into accepting Jackson’s ethic. In his book Mau Mau Detainee, J.M. Kariũki has described the kind of education they were being given in concentration camps:
Attend education classes in their compound. These consisted mainly of the history of Kenya, with especial emphasis on the terrible state of tribal conflict before the arrival of the white man, followed by the story of the arrival of the white man and how he has saved us from barbarism, and finally an explanation of the great benefits he has brought to our country, especially in recent years.
Great benefits indeed! Kenyans received the sword and the bullet, got blood, repression, brutality, and starvation, watched the country’s wealth carted off to keep Britain Great, and in return were expected to rejoice or cower in fear and silence.
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Colonial Lazarus Rises from the Dead
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Detention without trial had always been central to the colonial culture of fear. As early as 1897, barely two years after the East Africa Protectorate (Kenya) was established, the commissioner, Sir Arthur Hardinge—the philosopher of control by sword and the bullet—armed himself with powers of preventive detention and restriction of movement of any Kenyan disaffected with the government, or one about to commit an offense against the state, or any conducting themselves in a manner deemed by the colonial regime to be dangerous to peace and good order. There was no appeal against the governor’s exercise of those powers. Thus was laid the legal groundwork for the fascist tradition of crimes of thought and intention.1
But even before colonial fascism was given its legal cover and formulation, it was already in operation, and it had claimed the freedom and lives of many Kenyan leaders. Waiyaki wa Hinga, the leading figure in the resistance against the British invasion and occupation of southern Gĩkũyũland—Kabete, as the Kĩambu District was then known—was among the earliest victims of preventive detention.
Waiyaki was one of several chiefs who were emerging toward feudal lordship status in Gĩkũyũland in the nineteenth century. But Waiyaki also loved his country. Combining political shrewdness and military brilliance, he and his army for many years thwarted British attempts to penetrate and occupy Dagoretti, Gĩthĩga, and Gĩthũngũri, eventually overrunning fortifications at Kĩawariũa. The British were forced to evacuate but managed a safe retreat with the guidance of the treacherous Kĩnyanjui wa Gathirimũ, later rewarded for this betrayal of his people by being made “their” paramount chief. The British forces came back in larger numbers and built Fort Smith, a bigger and stronger garrison, at Kanyarĩrĩ near the present Kikuyu station. Immediately Waiyaki’s army besieged Fort Smith. W.P. Purkiss, the commanding officer, now resorted to that ol’ British colonial treachery, which proved fa
tal to many a Kenyan nationalist whenever they assumed the colonials were dealing with honorable men. He invited Waiyaki to peace talks and had him arrested inside Fort Smith on August 14, 1892. Though now alone and surrounded by bayonets and Maxim guns, Waiyaki resisted and even bloodied one of his captors.
They could have killed him there and then, but he was more valuable to them as a hostage. The British plan worked. Waiyaki’s army lifted the siege of Fort Smith.
Without scruples, the British decided to keep him a political hostage: on August 17, they sent him to detention in a prison on the coast. This too worked. Waiyaki’s army held back, fearing that any action would bring injury to their beloved leader.
Then the British saw his value as a permanent hostage. Thinking that no native from the interior would ever know the truth, they shot Waiyaki and buried him, still breathing, still alive, at Kibwezi. It was sadistic sport, but his killers didn’t know that some hingas2 had followed the convoy and were sending back intelligence reports.
Waiyaki’s arrest and murder rekindled the fire of militant nationalism and resistance. His army regrouped and laid another siege of Fort Smith. A visitor to the fort, Sir Gerald Portal, later wrote:
At Kikuyu the European in charge dare not venture from the stockade without an armed escort of at least 30 to 50 men with rifles. He is practically a prisoner with all his people; and maintains the company’s influence and prestige by sending almost daily looting and raiding parties to burn the surrounding villages and to seize the crops and cattle for the use of the company’s caravans and troops.
Pillage, plunder, and murder. That was the colonial way. But that’s another bunch of atrocities. Here we are looking at the early political prisoners and the traditions and forces they embodied in their actions and lives. Waiyaki, one of the first political prisoners in Kenya, was also among the first to die in detention. To the very end, he remained splendidly proud and defiant. Clearly he had rejected an enslaved consciousness!
Ngunju wa Gakere was another. He was the leading force in the struggle against the British occupation of Nyeri. He fought brilliant battles against the invaders, compelling Meinertzhagen to admit in his diary that “I never expected the Wakikuyu to fight like this.” On December 6, 1902, during a fierce battle to capture Nyeri Fort and dislodge the enemy forces, father (Gakere) and son (Ngunju) were captured. Ngunju wa Gakere was deported to Kismayu from 1902 to 1905. Then he was transferred to Mbiri, in Mũrang’a, where he died, in 1907. Like Waiyaki and Koitalel before him, he rejected an enslaved consciousness and remained proud and defiant to the end, thus joining the long line of resistance heroes leading to Kĩmathi in the 1950s.
Kenyan women played their part, too, and the most remarkable of them all was Me Katilili, the leader of the Giriama people’s resistance to the British occupation. She was already advanced in years when she organized Giriama youth into a fighting force that took the British military machine three years to subdue. Old as she was, she saw very clearly the political character of the armed struggle. After talking to them about the theft of their land and labor and other evils of foreign occupation, she emphasized that the only solution was a united people’s armed struggle against the foreign enemy.
She set up her own government and installed Wanji wa Mandoro as its head. She administered oaths of loyalty and unity among the Giriama people and then between them and the other related nationalities to forge oneness behind her administration. In the anti-imperialist oathing ceremonies, the youth swore loyalty to her government. They pledged to never again pay taxes to the colonial regime or accept the call of forced labor and swore to remain steadfast and unwavering in their aim to drive out the British enemy from coastal Kenya.
Inspired by her vision and courage, the Giriama fought so bravely that the British, refusing to see the political basis of this unity and courage, could only describe this remarkable feat in supernatural terms. Me Katilili had to be a witch who cast a spell over her primitive followers. Otherwise, how could Kenyans find the nerve to reject foreign rule, domination, and oppression? This would seem to have been the outlook of the assistant district commissioner, Arthur M. Champion, who on November 23, 1913, wrote thus to his superiors:
The witch Me Kitilili and the witch-doctor Wanji wa Mandoro about the end of June, 1913, did stir up sedition amongst the natives of Gallana and Marafa in the district of Malindi and with this object held a large gathering of men determined to make a common cause with disaffected natives of Biria to meat a spell or “Kiroho” for the purpose of defeating a successful government administration. . . . When arrested, Wanji wa Mandoro asserted that he had been appointed chief elder of the Gallana to take precedence over all government appointed headmen. He further asserted that . . . he had held his own council of elders who came from all parts of Gallana to discuss matters and try cases, and that they took fees. . . . I would therefore recommend that both the woman Me Kitilili and Mandoro be deported from the district and be detained as political prisoners at His Majesty’s pleasure.
The two were detained in November 1913 and deported to Gusiiland, hundreds of miles from the coast, where they faced death by starvation and cold.
C.E. Spenser, the colonial district commissioner of what was then South Kavirondo, was sufficiently moved by their miserable prison conditions to appeal to the provincial commissioners of Kisumu and Mombasa to ease the torture:
These prisoners are old and unable to maintain themselves. I would suggest that they be allowed 10 cents a day each to provide themselves with food. . . . I cannot very well return the blankets they are wearing to Mombasa prison until they have been provided with others as I conceive that to leave them without covering in an altitude of 5,500 above sea-level, after a lifetime at the coast, would be equivalent to passing a death sentence on them.
Now comes an even more remarkable feat by this woman. On January 14, 1914, Me Katilili and her fellow political prisoner escaped and, with help from friendly compatriots of the other Kenyan nationalities, walked all the way back to the coast to continue the resistance. Rewards were announced for any person or persons who would assist in the recapture of this brave Kenyan. She was eventually caught on August 7, 1914, and imprisoned again. Me Katilili rejected the colonial culture of fear and the enslaved consciousness it sought to instill in Kenyans. She remained proud, defiant, and unrepentant to the very end.
The detention saga of Arap Manyei, the son of the legendary Koitalel, extends from 1922 to 1962. Manyei had continued his father’s tradition of uncompromising resistance to foreign domination and oppression. He worked tirelessly to forge political unity among the Nandi and the related Kalenjin peoples. He also sent out feelers for a possible alliance with Luo and Gusii nationalists. It is possible that he may have also tried a working alliance with Harry Thuku’s East African Association. Right from the start, he saw the necessity for armed struggle and, toward that end, administered an oath binding the Nandi people with other nationalities to wage a new war to drive out the British from Kenya. He was, however, arrested at Kapsabet in 1922 and was locked up in a prison in Meru for ten years.
He was unrepentant. In the 1950s, he established contact with the Kenya Land and Freedom Army. He started oathing and training parallel Nandi guerrilla units. He was arrested and imprisoned on Mfangano Island in Lake Victoria from 1957 to 1962, just a year before independence. He too remained defiant to the end. Not for him the enslaved mentality of the colonial culture of fear.
Manyei’s detention was an important link in a chain that stretches from those of the early militant leaders of the armed resistance at the turn of the century through those of the early nationalists in the 1920s and thence to the mass detention and imprisonment of Kenyans in general and especially alleged members of the Kenya Land and Freedom Army (Mau Mau) in the 1950s.
The legal link was the Emergency Powers Colonial Defence Order in Council of 1939, under which the colonial governor could imprison or deport and exclude anyone from Kenya without recourse to the le
gislature or the courts.
When Governor Evelyn Baring invoked this order on October 20, 1952, the colonial culture entered its high noon and flowered in blood. The regime embarked on a ten-year program of herding Kenyan peasants and workers into concentration camps, such as those in Mackinnon Road, Langata, Manyani, Mageta, Hola, etc., while gathering the remaining millions into fortified concentration villages. So obnoxious were the colonial detention laws, regulations, and rules that their immediate abolition by the independent government was one of the top priorities in the 1961 Kenya African National Union (KANU) Manifesto:
Much of the current legislation denies the African people their rights and severely restricts their freedom. The Deportation of British Subjects Act has been invariably used to deny the African political and trade union leaders their freedom. Under this Act, the governor is empowered to make a deportation or a restriction order either in lieu of or in addition to the sentence imposed by a court of law against “undesirable persons.” The Preservation of Public Security Ordinance (1959) and the Detained and Restricted Persons (Special Provisions) Ordinance (1959) are other legislation currently employed to detain Africans for eight years without trial. Not only are these leaders detained without trial but they are also detained under conditions which are inhuman. The restriction of our leaders at Lodwar, Lokitaung, Marsabit, Hola, Manyani, suggests that, not only are they to suffer the deprivation of their liberty, but are deliberately confined to areas which are extremely hot, mosquito-ridden and deserted.
The KANU of 1961, as an instrument of Kenyan nationalism, was totally opposed to the sixty-year colonial culture of repressive violence and mass terror, so at independence in 1963, the Emergency Powers (Colonial Defence) Order in Council (1939) was repealed—although in reality the word “Emergency” was the only one deleted. As a spokesman for the new nationalist government explained, the word had, “for us the most distasteful associations of memory. . . . We prefer to talk about our public security.”3
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