Talk:Mau Mau rebellion/Archive 1

Comments on early drafts

Damn! Who WROTE this stuff? There seems to be an overemphasis on the violence and brutality of the Mau-Mau -- and, indeed, they were violent and brutal. Yet, there is virtually no information provided on what prompted such violence. What about the deprivation and degradation of the Kikuyu under British rule? What about how the British mistreated Kenyans, seized their land, causing desperate deprivation -- and the scandal that ensued when the government tried to cover up reports that British soldiers had castrated Kikuyu men using pliers? Hey, how's that for brutal?

Like it or not, the Mau-Mau were freedom fighters (at least initially), trying to free themselves from British rule. But, gee, you sure wouldn't really know that from reading this. This article definitely needs a major rewrite. There needs to be some balance. deeceevoice 17:32, 16 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Sure; thanks for noting the one-sidedness of the coverage, and feel free to add material to balance it, if you have the time; we should seek a neutral point of view, of course. Articles rarely start off perfectly balanced -- it doesn't (necessarily) mean the authors-so-far have deliberately and nefariously been trying to paint a one-sided picture; we should assume good faith. — Matt 17:44, 16 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Frankly, I don't know how much of all the garbage about cannibalism, bestiality, etc., is true. It sounds like a lot of racist propaganda. In some of the reading I've done, it seems a lot of this was simply rubbish cooked up by white colonialists. There is absolutely no real explanation in this piece WHY the Kikuyu rebelled, what their grievances were. White settlers hardly lived "alongside" Kenyans. Kenyans were robbed of their land, forced to the brink of starvation, conscripted into military service and then subsequently discriminated against and denied even the most basic human rights in their own country. There is no attempt to put the Mau-Mau in the context of a struggle for national liberation from a brutal, oppressive, white, minority, colonial regime. Theirs was a righteous struggle -- that ultimately resulted in Kenyan independence and the ascension of Jomo Kenyatta (originally arrested with others accused of having dealings with the Mau-Mau and convicted in a British kangaroo court and then imprisoned). Kenya was very much like apartheid-era South Africa and Rhodesia in terms of the power relationships under British colonial rule: black oppression and deprivation, white privilege and prosperty.

The Mau-Mau were the vanguard in the struggle against such injustice. And this entry does them a grave disservice. It should be trashed and begun again.deeceevoice 22:22, 23 Sep 2004 (UTC)

No, I'm afraid it shouldn't. I don't know a great deal about the Mau Mau, but I have heard at least two POVs, both the "dead-goat-humping savages" line and the "noble, righteous, freedom-fighters" epithet. (Both may be true as far as I know!) However, Wikipedia -- as I'm sure you're aware -- is NPOV. This means that we must document all the different major points of view on the Mau Mau, even if we disagree with them or find them repugnant. You've noted that this article fails to document one POV, and I agree; let's try and fix it. However, it would be a mistake to blank it and start again, as you suggest; there's a lot of useful factual information here, for a start, and even biased material is useful in the sense that it documents a point of view. We just need to reword it for neutrality. — Matt 00:40, 24 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I have completed an extensive edit of the article. Comments would be appreciated. Unless someone speaks up, I'll take down the biased view marker. I don't know if I'm the only one who has noticed this, but the entire page also needs to be moved to "Mau Mau Uprising" and "Mau Mau" should be a redirect. BanyanTree 12:48, 20 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I have removed the npov marker and requested that this page be moved to Mau Mau Uprising. BanyanTree 20:20, 20 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Page move

(from WP:RM)

Mau Mau → Mau Mau Uprising

• The article, even from its initial stub, stated "The Mau Mau Rebellion", and has been revised and edited as an article about the revolt rather than a participant in the revolt. For over a year the article has begun "The Mau Mau Uprising was" without anyone removing the boldface from "Uprising". The article is clearly on the wrong page. (Mau Mau Uprising is currently a redirect to the Mau Mau page, which describes the Uprising.) Cheers, BanyanTree 23:10, 20 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Possible good references

The Economist highlights these two books that discuss this conflict:

• Histories of the Hanged: The Dirty War in Kenya and the End of Empire By David Anderson ISBN: 0393059863
• Imperial Reckoning: The Untold Story of the End of Empire in Kenya By Caroline Elkins ISBN: 0805076530

--Confuzion 21:48, 30 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I've added them into an References section in the article. BanyanTree 01:13, 31 Dec 2004 (UTC)

This article appeared on the Internet the other day. [1] gathima 19:00, 26 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I, too, think you need to take into account Elkins and Anderson's work mentioned above, and not just leave them as a reference. Elkins, for instance, mentions that almost 1 million persons were interned in concentration camps and the euphemistically named "enclosed villages"- why does your article not mention this? This review of her book mentions that aspect: http://www.harvardmagazine.com/on-line/030572.html

This review of both books reports in further detail on Anderson's investigation into British policy and the name contemporary British officials gave the tortures, the gestapo. All of this is extremely significant in that it happened very shortly after WWII, yet very few are aware of its magnitude.

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v27/n05/port01_.html

This is a wiki. If you have information that should be added, then you should be the one to add it. I look forward to your contributions. - BanyanTree 01:56, 10 July 2005 (UTC)

The Article is fine to me

Why does Deeceevoice automatically brand an article that is critical of black people is 'racist crap'. I have lived in Kenya and I can comment on the basis of some knowledge, rather than solely on the basis of a shared ethnicity. It is clear that both sides in this 'Uprising' used tactics and methods they do not bear scrutiny. However, it is important to realise that a solitary incident does note make an habitual practice. Furthermore, we should be wary of some stories that may well have been promulgated as the result of propaganda (by either side). I am concerened that a recent revision states that the British got most of their information by torture, that they used torture chambers in Nairobi, that the white settlers tortured their black workers for information and sport. Where is the evidence for this, other than apocryphal stories. There was mistreatment of Mau Mau detainees by the British. That is a matter of record, but the only torture chambers I know of in Nairobi are the ones built after independence. Robert 56

As as been mentioned below, Deeceevoice was commenting on an earlier revision of the page. Allegations of torture are nearly always controversial, so we should directly cite sources for this information. &mdash; Matt <small>Crypto</small> 10:51, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

I don't know if the article has been updated since the comments made by deeceevoice, but the article I read on Jan 3 was a perfectly balanced description of the Mau Mau Revolt. I spent a few months in Kenya; in the Aberdares and Mt. Kenya region I researched the Mau Mau Revolt. It is true that not all the information is included in the article (i.e. Africans fighting in WWI and WWII were promised land and other rights) but you must remember this is only an encyclopedia giving a basic description of the entire event. A book with multiple volumes could be written about the Mau Mau Revolt and still miss important details, this is why the reader is expected to do research if they want more information. This article is accurate, the Mau Mau acted very much like savages, and many accounts talk about this. I personally have seen what Africans can do to a goat before they eat it, or while they eat it. I'm sure bestiality is uncommon in Kenya but I can guarantee it happens. Deeceevoice, please do not tell other people they are wrong, especially when you don't know what you are talking about.

The comments at the top of the page are from a draft that richly deserved the NPOV tag on it, imo. See this old revision to get a sense of what the early criticism was about. deeceevoice has commented on how the article has changed on my talk page. I know nothing about the World War info you mentioned. It would be great if you inserted it into the article. BanyanTree 05:56, 5 Jan 2005 (UTC)

sorry to be a drag but i'm a little uneasy about the NPOV of the article, largely the section entitled 'Political and social concessions by the British'. the language characterising the settlers is rather emotive.

It's easy enough to find out the state of the article when I first disparaged it by checking the article's edit history. It was a miserable piece of abjectly racist crap in September, but has been greatly improved by BanyanTree in the months since. And you want to talk about "savages"? And I suppose the British castrating the Kikuyu with pliers was "civilized"? deeceevoice 12:01, 9 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Thanks again

I know I thanked you on your talk page a long time ago, but I recently crossed this article again, Banyan, and impressed by how far it's come -- head and shoulders above the previous, racist crap. Thanks again. Well done. :-D deeceevoice 11:57, 9 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Your a nutcase! Take some valium ok! The article was good originally! Too bad your mau mau's lost! (68.227.211.175 00:44, 12 January 2006 (UTC))

You're totally right. Maybe someday the British empire will collapse and Kenya will become independent. Hey, wait a minute... - BanyanTree 00:49, 12 January 2006 (UTC)

I am right. The british empire didn't 'collapse'. Not from war anyway. Hello?! (68.227.211.175 02:29, 6 April 2006 (UTC)) (Romanyankee)

Lari report

There is a likelyhood someone could come across a report written by a dutch socialist immediately after Lari massacre. If someone could find her work, it would form a good bases to those who would want to write about the Lari stuff. I haven't however found her name, but this is a good begining

Additional Reading

I highly recommend the book "Something of Value" by Robert Ruark (1955). It is a fabulously written novel which paints the Mau Mau Uprising exactly as it was; a response of a variety of different interest groups to colonisation. It is neither here nor there; the book demonstrates clear understanding of the situation from someone who, clearly, experienced the events themselves. It is a novel, but is so rich that it feels perfectly true. 203.173.151.51 09:36, 13 December 2005

An article in the Guardian by George Monbiot (The Turks haven't learned the British way of denying past atrocities) compares the way the Turkish government deals with its past with the way the British deal with their past genocides. Quote:

Thrown off their best land and deprived of political rights, the Kikuyu started to organise—some of them violently—against colonial rule. The British responded by driving up to 320,000 of them into concentration camps. Most of the remainder—more than a million—were held in “enclosed villages”. Prisoners were questioned with the help of “slicing off ears, boring holes in eardrums, flogging until death, pouring paraffin over suspects who were then set alight, and burning eardrums with lit cigarettes.” British soldiers used a “metal castrating instrument” to cut off testicles and fingers. “By the time I cut his balls off,” one settler boasted, “he had no ears, and his eyeball, the right one, I think, was hanging out of its socket.” The soldiers were told they could shoot anyone they liked “provided they were black.” Elkins’s evidence suggests that more than 100,000 Kikuyu were either killed or died of disease and starvation in the camps. David Anderson documents the hanging of 1,090 suspected rebels: far more than the French executed in Algeria. Thousands more were summarily executed by soldiers, who claimed they had “failed to halt” when challenged.

But the average British subject has no idea that such atrocities ever happened, while in Turkey everybody knows what has happened to the Armenians. —Babelfisch 08:09, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

Indeed. This article needs to be expanded dramatically. Every American knows about the My Lai Massacre. How many in the UK know about the Hola Massacre? And that's just one example of British atrocity in Kenya. --Cultural Freedom talk 09:08, 11 June 2006 (UTC)

Origin of Phrase

" Mau Mau " is an adverbial phrase in the Kikuyu language meaning "to eat ravenously, like a hyena". It was the name of a gang of Kikuyu thugs who terrorised the Kiambu area in about 1890.

Do you have a good reference for this? Many people have added alternate etymologies, but nobody seems to be able to add a citation so nothing can be confirmed. - BT 19:13, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

It occurs in a Kikuyu- English dictionary, possibly published by the Oxford University Press. In about 1970. Native speakers will probably say the same.

I googled two dictionaries that might fit this description. I don't suppose that you still have access to the dictionary and can provide the ISBN? I'm quite willing to start putting refs or demanding refs for each of the bulleted etymologies. - BT 13:01, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

Tendentious tone

Obviously this issue creates great passion, but a more obviously NPOV needs to be regained. The use of Elkins and Anderson is commendable, so long as it is understood that their research is not from a NPOV. The use of words such as "concentration camp" as a description of a detention camp is not neutral. Dismissing the atavistic elements of mau mau practice as preposterous is not neutral either. This whole article needs to be be re-worked and a lot more firm historical referencing done.Pabailie 15:13, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

Casualty figures

The figure of 60 government casualty figures is so obviously wrong that I have removed it. The figures are well known and available from a host of sources.

The oathing practices of the Mau Mau are widely attested from many sources as well, although those sources tend to be pro-government. Nevertheless, the section on oathing is very weak and needs revising. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Pabailie (talk • contribs) 13:09, 25 January 2007 (UTC).

If they are so well known, why don't you add them with a source? It's a wiki, after all. - BanyanTree 15:31, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

I did and someone removed them. I shall try to put them on again, along with estimates for the numbers of security forces, although no-one seems to have kept reliable figures of the numbers of Army deployed; and it has recently emerged that Army casualty figures were not centrally recorded and may be inaccurate. Can I also caution people against a simplistic repetition of Caroline Elkins' figures - they are entirely conjectural, bases upon her own idiosyncratic reading of the census figures and her decision to include in her estimates all of those living in fortifies villages as political prisoners; a position that her critics have pointed out is simply incorrect. Pabailie 19:00, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

Hello Pabailie, I think I'm the culprit for the removal. If you have reliable sources of the losses, by all means, don't be afraid to put them, but please mention the source (or the sources, if you have more than one), also putting the number of the page if it's a book. As for Elkins' figures, if you've got sources criticizing the numbers, lke a book review, you can also add it in the proper section that discusses the casualties, but always remember to source, per WP:V.--Aldux 20:20, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

Ok, the figurs are added in, so are the footnote references; but I lack the technical skill to get the footnotes to appear at the bottom of the page.