Was the so-called 'Mau Mau' insurrection forward-looking or backward-looking? Was it a modern nationalist or a traditional ethnic movement ? The historiography of Mau- Mau provides considerable scope for argument on these two issues. The Historical Survey of the Origins and Growth of Mau- MauThe Myth of 'Mau Mau' (1966) portrays the movement as forward-looking and Kenya-nationalist rather than Kikuyu-sub-nationalist in orientation. Bethwell A. Ogot, formerly professor of history in the University of Nairobi, has presented Mau- Mau as both forward-looking, insofar as it fought for political freedom and an end to colonial rule, and sub-nationalist, in as much as it evidenced a strong sense of Kikuyu nationalism as opposed to Kenya African nationalism- In his study of Mau- Mau hymns,2 Ogot claims that the hymn texts reveal the Mau- Mau movement as a Kikuyu nationalist movement, though not necessarily a backward-looking 'tribal' movement. The hymns strongly emphasize land (Kikuyu land), and Kikuyu traditional religion. One line read: or 'Corfield Report' (I960), the official account of the revolt published by the colonial administration, portrays it as backward-looking and 'tribal'. Rosberg and Nottingham's

God will send a sword from Kirinyaga.

Kirinyaga is Mount Kenya,

the home of God to traditional Kikuyu.

The hymns constantly exhort the

Kikuyu to recover the land:

Which was left for you long ago by Gikuyu and Mumbi.

Gikuyu and Mumbi are the mythical founders of the

Kikuyu people. Many lines illustrate these themes:

Mumbi's household . . . has been disturbed.

They will be asked by Kikuyu - why did you sell our land?

Blessed-is the Kikuyu household.

We shall all be glad - we of the household of Mumbi,

when we get our land which was sold for chieftainship.

The application of these symbols from Kikuyu legends and history had an integrative function in binding many Kikuyu to the revolutionary movement; however, the use of these symbols tended to exclude non-Kikuyu.

Mau- Mau has been interpreted as basically a peasant revolt. The argument has been to the effect that land hunger in Kenya created a situation of peasant grievance, and that this initiated a revolt. But much of the agitation behind Mau- Mau was not by peasants (people who owned modest pieces of land) but by people who were landless, living as squatters on estates owned by Europeans, and by urban radicals in Nairobi. They could see large tracts of land - sometimes uncultivated and unused, sometimes richly cultivated, but foreign- owned - all beyond their capacity to acquire. As Donald Barnett put it:

It is not only the brute fact of landlessness, land hunger, and insecurity of tenure which conditioned Kikuyu involvement in the nationalist movement and peasant revolt; it is also the fact that for a people who attach such sacred meaning to the land the areas alienated remain within their field of experience, unattainable yet in considerable measure unused by its new White owners.3

The final outcome was the revolt of the rural dispossessed - and the long years of the state of emergency in the 1950s. Mau- Mau in Kenya had the garb of traditionalism which was at times almost primeval. The nature of Mau-Mau Oaths administered as a way of commanding loyalty indicated a profound traditionality in Kikuyu nationalism. But, as long as the battle was directed against the elimination of colonial rule and the British settler presence, the Kikuyu uprising had the reputation of being a radical, even a revolutionary, movement.

The Mau- Mau movement was originated by a radical militant group in the Kenya African Union (KAU). composed of Kikuyu radicals who had lost their faith in KAU's constitutional methods of fighting for independence. The militants in KAU, who opposed the party's moderate strategy, were often ex-servicemen connected with the Anake wa 40, or 40 Group, which played a central role in politics in Nairobi from the late 1940s. The 40 Group was founded in Nairobi as an urban movement of petty traders, the unemployed and the lumpenproletariat of the city.

From 1947 the 40 Group began to resort to physical intimidation. A supply of arms began to be built up by armed robberies and protection money was obtained from Asian and African merchants. The militants soon outflanked the moderate KAU politicians who were the more Westernized elite. The British government assisted the militants when it disregarded a KAU memorandum on the land question presented by its representatives Mbiyu Koinange and Achieng Oneko, whom the Colonial Secretary refused to see. This rebuff to KAU Stimulated the militants into making preparations for an armed rebellion. The KAU office in Kiburi House in Nairobi became the centre of the radical wing of KAU planning the rebellion, in the laic evenings after the moderate and uninitiated officers had gone home. The radical militants became stronger from early 1952 when they managed to take over the Nairobi KAU branch.

The elections to the African Advisory Council proved to be a victory for the newly radicalized Nairobi branch of-KAU led by Bildad Kaggia, ex-serviceman, Independent Church founder and trade union leader, as Secretary, and the ex-serviceman trade unionist Fred Kubai as Chairman. The militants formed a secret central committee of 12 members, most of whom were KAU members.

Figure 95: JOMO KENYATTA with "Field Marshal" Mwariama, a Mau Mau Mau leader who came to Kenyatta's home with a group of followers.

The Chairman was Eliud Mutonyi and the Secretary was Isaac Gathanju, but Kaggia and Kubai were extremely active. The militants stepped up the collection of guns. ordered the killing of informers and recruited by organizing oathing (initiation) on a larger scale. Oath administrators and their work Spread across Nairobi and to rural Kiambu. Muranga, Embu, Nyeri and later Meru.

Membership of a chosen secret few was replaced by mass membership. Popular song books and hymn books, mostly in Kikuyu, helped to spread the message of revolt. The rural Kikuyu districts were ripe for rebellion. Opposition to forced soil conservation in the over-crowded reserves alongside white farms was mounting to crisis point in 1952. Thus Mau-Mau linked urban and rural revolt.

The assassinations of leading KAU moderates such as Tom Mbotela, a Nairobi city councillor, and Senior Chief Waruhiu by militants, provoked the Governor Sir Evelyn Baring into declaring a state of emergency on 20 October 1952. The government arrested the most prominent of the KAU leaders, in the process eliminating the moderate leadership of Jomo Kenyatta. Few of the 40 Group were arrested as most of them were by now operating underground. Kenyatta was a Kenya nationalist, not a Kikuyu nationalist, the leader of KAU, not the militant radical revolutionary wing which came to be called Mau- Mau; but he was regarded as the leader of the revolt by the Mau- Mau rebels themselves and by the colonial government. The trial of Kenyatta at Kapenguria in 1953 on a charge of managing Mau- Mau was farcical not only for the injustice of the proceedings but because of the colonial government's ignorance of Kenyatta's role in the nationalist movement.

Kenyatta represented the wing of KAU which had as its political objectives Uhuru and the return of land and had as its strategy non-violent constitutionalism and gradualist reform.

Mau- Mau, on the other hand, whilst its political aims were identical to KAU's, had a different strategy of violence and revolution. Mau- Mau came to be composed of KAU and non-KAU members, and many KAU members did not Join Mau-Mau. There was no organized link between the Mau- Mau central committee and the KAU central committee, though Kaggia and Kubai were members of both central committees.

 

Kenyatta, the KAU President, knew little of what went on in the Mau- Mau central committee. Kenyatta's only act of co-operation with the Mau- Mau committee had been to agree, at a secret meeting with them at KAU headquarters, to discontinue holding public meetings to denounce Mau- Mau.

The declaration of the Emergency and the arrest of Kenyatta fanned the rebellion instead of weakening it. Thousands of Kikuyu took the oath and many went to the forests and began, to organize themselves into guerilla bands. Few of the 40 Group were arrested in October 1952 as most of them by then were operating underground; they were thus able to supply ammunition, medical supplies and recruits for forest fighters. The arrival in Kenya of thousands of British troops, far from cowing the Kikuyu, won new supporters for the rebellion.

Two kinds of people went into the forests: the convinced freedom fighters, who were the majority; and less politically conscious Kikuyu who simply fled to escape anti-Kikuyu sweeps or recruitment into the security forces and who formed gangs for survival. The Land Freedom Army (the official name for Mau- Mau) was composed largely of smallholders and landless men who in turn were younger men, who rejected the authority of the elders and opposed the demands of the colonial government for communal labour.

Among the leaders of the forest fighters were several ex-servicemen who had campaigned in the Second World War in the jungles of Burma next to China, for instance Waruhiu Itote, who took the code name 'General China' and led the fighters in the Mount Kenya forest. At the height of the rebellion in early 1954 there were an estimated 20 000 to 25 000 fighters in the forests of the Nyandarua Mts (formerly Aberdare Mts) and Mount Kenya. Geographical factors greatly assisted the resistance. The Nyandarua Mts and Mount Kenya with their steep hills, deep valleys, and thick bamboo forests offered almost impenetrable natural hiding places.

 

Who ran Mau- Mau during the course of the rebellion? The Nairobi central committee or war council regarded itself as the overall co-ordinating body of the revolt; with some justification, perhaps, in the early stages when Nairobi served as a vital supply centre for the men in the forests. The Mau- Mau headquarter at Mathare valley, one of the African locations of Nairobi, directed the supply to the forests of recruits, medicines, pistols and improvised guns made from water piping, until 1953 when it was discovered and destroyed by government forces. Thereafter the forest fighters had to rely more on their own workshops to make guns and grenades. Inevitably, as the colonial government and British troops secured their hold over Nairobi and the reserves, the forest fighters became more self-reliant in leadership as well as equipment.

Dedan Kimathi, a Mau Mau freedom fighter in Nyeri Hospital after being shot in the bush in October 1956.

Dedan Kimathi, an ex-teacher and theatre organizer, emerged as the leader of the Nyandarua fighters. Kimathi combined organizing ability with a warm and charismatic personality. Throughout 1953, 1954 and this young man of towering vision attempted to centralize and unify the resistance, by touring guerilla camps, discussing aims and ideology, and holding meetings of the 'Kenya parliament'. Kimathi's parliament, set up in February 1954, composed sometimes of leaders, many of them elected; arid at other times of several hundred delegates from different camps, provided a vehicle for him to express his political ideology. This was similar to KAU's, with its call for justice, for the right' to self- government, and for reconciliation between ethnic groups and races. Kimathi, from his writings and speeches in Nyandarua. seems to have felt acutely the colonial government allegations that the Struggle was a Kikuyu ethnic affair; he sent ambassadors to neighbouring communities to recruit them to the resistance.

The Mau- Mau fighters achieved some military successes in the first stage of the war, from October 1952 to April 1954. During this period Mau- Mau was able to go on the offensive, using the forests as bases for raids mainly on loyalist guard posts', chiefs, head- men and tribal police in the reserves, and to some extent on European farms. The most famous action at this time was the daring raid on Naivasha police station in March 1953 when 173 prisoners were released and much ammunition was seized.

Slowly but surely, however, the colonial forces got on top. Government policy until mid-1954 was to concentrate on destroying support for Mau- Mau in the towns and reserves. From Nyeri in the north to Kiambu in the south, several hundred thousand Kikuyu were forcibly resettled, in new fortified villages under the control of the security forces. In the farmland at the edge of the forests villages were razed and trees were cut down to provide a free-fire zone and cut off the forest fighters from the reserves. In the new villages the people lived under a regime of curfew and forced labour. In Operation Anvil in Nairobi in 1954, 26 000 soldiers and police rounded up over 100 000 Africans and detained all Kikuyu aged between 16 and 35, about 24 000 in all. Altogether 90 000 Africans, nearly all Kikuyu, were held in detention camps, the most notorious being Hola where several dozen detainees were tortured and eleven killed.

 

Figure 96: Amin fought the Mau Mau on behalf of the British in KAR

By mid-1954 the colonial forces had consolidated their hold on the towns and reserves and were able to launch a full-scale offensive on the forest guerillas, using British troops, local security forces' and Lancaster bomber-planes. The colonial government could count on the support of African loyalists. Many Kikuyu became Home Guards. The Kikuyu loyalists were generally older, traditional leaders, opposed to violence, usually men with land. Many of them were Christians (though there were also Christians among the forest fighters). These were the sincere loyalists. Then there was that large body of men conscripted into the Home Guard, or who joined in order to avoid suspicion and detention. The colonial government also recruited many non-Kikuyu into the King's African Rifles.

 

Mau Mau was a secret society of Kenyans who wanted an end to British rule. The movement adopted violent guerrilla tactics in the early 1950s. Thousands of people, mostly Africans, were killed before the British suppressed the Mau Mau Rebellion in 1956

The government offensive into the forests made co-ordination between guerilla bands, which had been difficult enough because of the geographical obstacles, less and less possible. If the terrain helped the forest fighters to hold out longer against British attacks, it also made the search for unity among the fighters a major problem, which they were never able to overcome. The different guerilla bands had increasingly less contact with one another, and the campaign soon developed into a series of local battles, ridge by ridge. The Mau- Mau shrank in numbers as a result of deaths in battle and from wounds, of desertions and of being captured. Bands became increasingly isolated and independent of each other and of the reserves, living off roots and berries, fish and game. The forest fighters were infiltrated by 'pseudo-gangs' of captured and surrendered fighters sent back by the police. They suffered from the loss of their leaders. Itote was captured in February 1954. Kimathi was captured in October 1956 and subsequently hanged. The Mau- Mau never overcame their lack of anything but the most rudimentary military technology; many of the fighters, far from having even a home-made gun, often had no more than the ordinary rural blade of East Africa, the panga.

The results of the Mau- Mau rebellion were political, economic and social. The British government had to send British troops to defeat the rebellion and now instituted a programme of constitutional change designed to prevent another costly uprising. Britain and Kenya had lost £50 million in suppressing Mau- Mau. From late 1955 the government had used the resettling of Kikuyu villagers as an opportunity to enforce the Swynnerton Plan, a scheme of land consolidation designed to help the Kikuyu emerge as prosperous cash crop farmers with an economic stake in the colonial regime. Between 1954 and 1959 African coffee planting rose from 4000 to 26 000 acres, and in 1959 89 000 Africans were growing coffee. The Plan benefited mainly Home Guards. Freedom fighters in the forests and captured and suspected fighters in detention camps were unable to present their cases before land consolidation committees. In their absence these men were allocated the worst land or none; many former land owners were rendered destitute. Likewise non-loyalists failed to be taken into the civil service, local government, army or police. A serious Jesuit of the rebellion and of its suppression was the tragic loss of life. Official casualty figures for the dead up to the end of 1956, when the rebellion had effectively been defeated, list 11 503 Mau- Mau, 1920 'loyal' Africans including about a thousand government troops, 66 European soldiers, 29 European civilians and 29 Asian civilians. These figures exclude the uncounted thousands of Kikuyu, including many women and children, who died of starvation or disease in the overcrowded and insanitary fortified villages.

To sum up: the Mau- Mau was the most self-reliant of all major guerilla movements in Africa since the Second World War. The fighters were not in a position to obtain either sophisticated modern weapons from outside sympathizers or even any substantial amounts of external capital. Indeed, the Mau- Mau movement had hardly any external diplomatic arm of the kind which enabled Ferhat Abbas to speak for the National liberation Front of Algeria in the capitals of the world. Neto, Roberto and Savimbi of Angola were able to serve both as direct leaders of their movements and international spokesmen in diplomatic circles. They could negotiate for arms, equipment and capital from external sources, while directing operations in the war in Angola.

The Mau- Mau movement, on the other hand, consisted of forest fighters with some of the most rudimentary forms of military technology. Militarily the Mau- Mau movement was defeated, but politically it was triumphant to the extent that if broke Britain's will to continue ruling in Kenya for the interests of a white minority and firmly laid the foundation for African self-rule in the country. The forest fighters were not necessarily the direct beneficiaries of their own war. but without them the era of Kenya under the domination of white settlers might have been substantially prolonged.