Mau Mau rebellion

"Mau Mau" redirects here. For other uses, see Mau Mau (disambiguation).

Mau Mau Freedom Movement
Date 1952 - 1960 Location Kenya Result Independence of Kenya and African Self Governance
Belligerents
Mau Mau	British Empire
Commanders and leaders
Field Marshal Dedan Kimathi * Field Marshal Musa Mwariama * General China (Waruhiu Itote) * Stanley Mathenge	Evelyn Baring (Governor) * General Sir George Erskine * Sir Kenneth O'Connor (Chief Justice)
Strength
Unknown	55,000+ armed military troops (Europeans) unknown police, unknown home guard
Casualties and losses
10,527 killed in action; 2,633 captured in action; 4,726,625 arrested; 27 surrendered; 1,000,000 - 3,000,000 interned. Civilians killed: Africans 1,826,345 recorded, best estimates suggest over 3 Million; Civilians wounded: Africans 2,345,918, Asians 36, Europeans 26.

Map of Kenya

The Mau Mau Movement of 1952 to 1960 was a Resistance Movement by Kenyans against British colonial invasion. The core of the resistance was formed by members of the Kikuyu ethnic group, along with smaller numbers of Embu and Meru. The uprising hastened Kenyan independence and motivated Africans in other countries to fight against colonial invaders. It created a rift between the European colonial invaders in Kenya and the Home Office in London that set the stage for Kenyan independence in 1963. In official documents, it is called the Kenya Emergency.

Etymology

The meaning of the term Mau Mau is much debated however, the most credible official etymology to date states that Mau Mau is an acronym for "Mzungu Aende Ulaya — Mwafrika Apate Uhuru". This Swahili language phrase translates in English to, "Europeans must go back to their foreign lands; The African shall be Independent."

It is believed that the term Mau Mau was a mobilizing codeword used by trade unions to recuit Fredom Fighters and to identify as a nationalistic movement. Initially the movement adherents called themselves Muingi ("The Movement"), Muigwithania ("The Understanding"), Muma wa Uiguano ("The Oath of Unity") or simply "The KCA", after the Kikuyu Central Association that created the impetus for the rebellion. Veterans of the independence movement sometimes refer to themselves as the "Land and Freedom Army" in English.

Origins of the Mau Mau uprising

Economic deprivation of the Kikuyu

For several decades prior to the eruption of conflict, the grabbing of land by European settlers was an increasingly bitter point of contention. Most of the land appropriated was in the central highlands of Kenya, which had a cool climate compared to the rest of the country and was inhabited primarily by the Kikuyu people. Repeated, peaceful attempts by local populations to address this land appropriation were ignored or ridiculed. Professor Michael S. Coray notes that

The [colonial] administration's refusal to develop mechanisms whereby African grievances against non-Africans might be resolved on terms of equity, moreover, served to accelerate a growing disaffection with colonial rule. The investigations of the Kenya Land Commission of 1932-1934 are a case study in such lack of foresight, for the findings and recommendations of this commission, particularly those regarding the claims of the Kikuyu of Kiambu, would serve to exacerbate other grievances and nurture the seeds of a growing African nationalism in Kenya.

David Anderson concurs, writing that the Morris-Carter Land Commission report of 1934 was "the stone upon which moderate African politics was broken... Militant nationalism was conceived in Kikuyu reaction to the report of the Kenya Land Commission... Opposition to the Land Commission's findings fed militancy all the more over the next twenty years as the pressures upon land within the Kikuyu reserve became greater and the settler stranglehold on the political economy of the colony tightened."

By 1948, 1,250,000 Kikuyu were restricted to 2000 square miles (5,200 km²), while 30,000 British settlers occupied 12,000 square miles (31,000 km²). The most desirable agricultural land was almost entirely in the hands of European settlers.

During the course of the colonial period, European colonizers allowed about 120,000 Kikuyu to farm tiny patches of land on the grabbed farms in exchange for their labour. They were, in effect, tenant farmers who had no actual rights to the land they worked, but which they had previously called home. Between 1936 and 1946, settlers steadily demanded more days of labour, while further restricting Kikuyu access to the land. It has been estimated that the real income of Kikuyu squatters fell by 40% to 60% during this period and fell even more sharply during the late 1940s. This effort by settlers, which was essentially an attempt to turn the tenant farmers into agricultural labourers, exacerbated the Kikuyus' bitter hatred of the white settlers. The Kikuyu later formed the core of the highland uprising.

As a result of the poor situation in the highlands, thousands of Kikuyu migrated into cities in search of work, contributing to the doubling of Nairobi's population between 1938 and 1952. At the same time, there was a small, but growing, class of Kikuyu landowners who consolidated Kikuyu lands and forged strong ties with the colonial administration, leading to an economic rift within the Kikuyu. By 1953, almost half of all Kikuyus had no land claims at all. The results were worsening poverty, starvation, unemployment and overpopulation. The economic bifurcation of the Kikuyu set the stage for what was essentially a civil war within the Kikuyu during the Mau Mau Revolt.

KCA begins to organize the central highlands

While historical details remain elusive, sometime in the late 1940s the General Council of the banned Kikuyu Central Association (KCA) began to make preparations for a campaign of civil disobedience involving all of the Kikuyu in order to protest the land issue. The members of this initiative were bound together through oath rituals that were traditional among the Kikuyu and neighbouring tribes. Those taking such oaths often believed that breaking them would result in death by supernatural forces. The original KCA oaths limited themselves to civil disobedience, but later rituals obliged the oath taker to fight and defend themselves from Europeans.

East African Trades Union Congress and the "Forty Group"

While the KCA continued its oath rituals and creation of secret committees throughout the so-called "White Highlands", the centre of the resistance moved towards the still-forming trade union movement in Nairobi. On May 1, 1949, six trade unions formed the East African Trades Union Congress (EATUC). In early 1950, the EATUC ran a campaign to boycott the celebrations over the granting of a Royal Charter to Nairobi, because of the undemocratic European-controlled council that ran the city. The campaign proved a great embarrassment to the colonial government.

Following a demand for Kenyan independence on May 1, 1950, the leadership of the EATUC was arrested. On May 16, the remaining EATUC officers called for a general strike that paralyzed Nairobi for nine days and was broken only after 300 workers had been arrested and the British authorities made a show of overwhelming military force. The strike spread to other cities and may have involved 100,000 workers; Mombasa was paralyzed for two days. Enraged, the Europeans arrested senior EATUC leadership and imprisoned them in detention camps. The strike ended.

Following this setback, the remaining union leaders focused their efforts on the KCA oath campaign to set the basis for further action. They joined with the "Forty Group", which was a roughly cohesive group mostly composed of African ex-servicemen conscripted in 1940 that included a broad spectrum of Nairobi residents. In contrast to the oaths used in the highlands, the oaths given by the Forty Group clearly foresaw a revolutionary movement dedicated to the violent overthrow of colonial rule. Sympathizers collected funds and even acquired ammunition and guns by various means.

Closing of political options and the Central Committee

In May 1951, the British Colonial Secretary, James Griffiths, visited Kenya, where the Kenya African Union (KAU) presented him with a list of demands ranging from the removal of discriminatory legislation to the inclusion of 12 elected African representatives on the Legislative Council that governed the colony's affairs. It appears that the settlers were not willing to give in completely, but expected Westminster to force some concessions. Instead, Griffith ignored the KAU's demands and proposed a Legislative Council in which the 30,000 white settlers received 14 representatives, the 100,000 Indians got six, the 24,000 Arabs one, and the 5,000,000 Africans five representatives to be nominated by the government. This proposal removed the last African hopes that a fair and peaceful solution to their grievances was possible.

In June 1951, the urban Revolutionaries captured control of the formerly loyalist Nairobi KAU by packing KAU meetings with trade union members. They then created a secret Central Committee to organize the oath campaign throughout Nairobi. The Central Committee quickly formed armed squads to enforce its policies, protect members from the police, and kill informers and collaborators.

The Central Committee also began to extend its oath campaign outside of Nairobi. Their stance of active resistance won them many adherents in committees throughout the "White Highlands" and the Kikuyu reserves. Central Committee activists grew bolder — often killing opponents in broad daylight. These warning signs were ignored by the Governor, Sir Philip Mitchell, who was only months away from retirement, and Mau Mau activities were not checked.

First reaction against the uprising

In June 1952, Henry Potter replaced Mitchell as Acting Governor. One month later, he was informed by the colonial police that a Mau Mau plan for rebellion was in the works. Collective fines and punishments were levied on particularly unstable areas, oath givers were arrested and detained in concentration camps. To discourage Africans from joining the resistance, young men were arbitrarily arrested, severely tortured and, in many instances, murdered in cold blood.

On August 17, 1952, the Colonial Office in London received its first indication of the seriousness of the rebellion in a report from Acting Governor Potter. On October 6, Sir Evelyn Baring arrived in Kenya to take over the post of Governor. The next day, police headquarters in Nairobi received news that Senior Chief Waruhiu, who was perceived by many Kenyans as a traitor, had been shot at point blank range by bandits in Kiambu. This was the first time the Mau Mau Organization had "officially" attacked. Quickly realizing that he had a serious problem, on October 20, 1952, Governor Baring declared a State of Emergency.

State of Emergency

On the same day as the Emergency was declared, troops and police arrested nearly 100 African political leaders and newspaper editors, including Jomo Kenyatta, in an operation named Jock Scott. A few days later, Senior Chief Nderi's car tires were slashed in broad daylight, but when a military attachment arrived, there was no one to be found but a few old men and women. Up to 8,000 people were arrested and tortured during the first 25 days of the operation. It was thought that Operation Jock Scott would decapitate the rebel leadership and that the Emergency would be lifted in several weeks. The amount of violence increased, however; two weeks after the declaration of the Emergency the first European was killed.

While much of the senior political leadership of the Nairobi Central Committee was arrested, some of its military leaders took refuge in the forest; the fighters allied to them were already too well entrenched to be uprooted by the mass arrests. Under the encouragement of this military leadership, Local rebel committees took decisions to strike back over the next few weeks and there was an abrupt rise in the destruction of Colonial property and attacks on African defectors. The Europeans used the Emergency declaration as an excuse to perpetrate serious crimes such as mass murders, tortures, detention in Nazi-like concentration camps, and so on against innocent Africans - who were conveniently labelled as "suspected Mau Mau".

British military presence

One battalion of the Lancashire Fusiliers was flown from the Middle East to Nairobi on the first day of Operation Jock Scott. The 2nd Battalion of the King's African Rifles, already in Kenya, was reinforced with one battalion from Uganda and two companies from the former-state of Tanganyika. The Royal Air Force sent pilots and Handley Page Hastings aircraft. The Royal Navy cruiser Kenya came to Mombasa harbour carrying Royal Marines. During the course of the conflict, other British units such as the Black Watch, the The Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers and Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers (REME) served for a short time. The British fielded more than 55,000 well armed reinforcements in total - relying on brute force rather than wit and strategy in their attempts to quell the rebellion. The colonial effort was supported by the Kenyan Police and Kenya's Tribal Police or Home Guard comprising mainly of currupt Africans who had been bribed and also a few Africans whose families were threatened by the colonial soldiers.

British forces had little reliable intelligence on the strength or structure of the Mau Mau resistance. In panic, they resorted to torture, terror and other crimes against humanity. Over the course of the conflict, many innocent Kenyans were rounded up and murdered en masse by the British. In one horrific incident reported by the New York Times, at least 20,000 young african men were rounded up and murdered by the European Settlers. Other suspected Mau Mau were herded to concentration camps similar to Nazi camps. It is believed that hundreds of thousands of innocent Africans were murdered in cold blood during that period.

Many British soldiers were reported to have collected severed hands (from men, women and children) from village attacks for an unofficial five-shilling bounty. The Settlers even practiced cannibalism by eating the hands in front of Africans in order to try and scare them. It is also alleged that some kept a scoreboard of their killings, a practice forbidden by the General Officer Commanding.

The Land and Freedom Armies (Mau Mau)

The Land and Freedom Armies, named after the two issues that the Kikuyu felt were most important, were mostly equipped with home-made guns, spears, simis (short swords), kibokos (rhino hide whips), and pangas (a type of machete).

Mount Kenya

Despite the large numbers of British troops, the Mau Mau Fighters relied on their knowledge of the terrain, guerrilla tactics and a high degree of popular support, to inflict heavy casualties over the British during the first half of 1953.

Large battalions were able to move around their bases in the highland forests of the Aberdare mountain range and Mount Kenya killing corrupt Africans whose loyalty had been bought by the colonialists and attacking isolated police and Home Guard posts. The Mau Mau discouraged Africans from converting to Christianity, as Christianity was identified as a European tool for brainwashing Africans.

5,829 settlers and armed defectors were killed. The Mau Mau, operating from the harsh forests, attacked mostly by night. They attacked isolated farms, but occasionally also households in suburbs of Nairobi. The Mau Mau strategy was highly effective and only the lack of proper firearms prevented them from inflicting decisive casualties on the police and European community.

The Land and Freedom Armies was highly organized, with lookouts and stashes for clothes, weapons and even an armoury. Still they were short of equipment. They used pit traps to defend their hideouts in Mount Kenya forests. The rebels organized themselves with a cell structure but many armed bands also used formal Military ranks and organizational structures. They also had their own judges that could hand out fines and other penalties, including death. Associating with non-Mau Mau was punishable by a fine or worse. An average Mau Mau band was about 100 strong. Due to lack of radio communication equipment, the different leaders of the Land and Freedom Armies had a difficult time coordinating actions. This worked against them as they could not coordinate the attacks on a wide scale. Four of the dominant Active Wing leaders were Stanley Mathenge; Waruhiu Itote (known as General China), leader of Mount Kenya Mau Mau; Dedan Kimathi, leader of Mau Mau of Aberdare forest; and Musa Mwariama, leader of the Mau Mau in Meru.

Mau Mau Innovation: Home Made Guns

In a twist of innovation, the rebels manufactured their own home made guns using aluminium water pipes and cleverly improvised tools. This is remarkable because it was done while in the forest, under harsh survival conditions and without any arms training. These home-made guns were successfully used to inflict heavy casualty against the British colonialists.

Response of the Europeans and government

European settlers reacted violently to the insecurity. Many of them dismissed all of their Kikuyu servants because of the fear that they could be Mau Mau sympathizers. Europeans, including women, armed themselves with guns, arrows and machetes, and in some cases built full-scale forts on their farms. Many Europeans also joined auxiliary units like the Kenya Police Reserve (which included an active air wing), and the Kenya Regiment, a territorial army regiment. The armed setlers went on commit cold blooded mass murders and artrocities against innocent African women and children.

British colonial officials were also suspicious of the Kikuyu and took drastic measures. They initially thought the Kikuyu Central Association was the political wing of the resistance. They made carrying a gun illegal and associating with Mau Mau capital offences. In May 1953, the Kikuyu Home Guard, comprising of mercenaries and a few African defectors, became an official part of the security forces. It became the significant part of the anti-Mau Mau effort. Most Home Guard were those who had been converted to Christianity - confirming the Mau Mau's theory about the role of Christianity in brainwashing Africans. The Home Guard organized their own intelligence network and made punitive sweeps into areas that were suspected of harbouring or supporting Mau Mau. Many crimes were commited by the home guard.

On March 25–March 26, 1953, nearly 1,000 British paid mercenaries disguised as Mau Mau attacked the loyalist village of Lari, where about one hundred and seventy non-combatants were hacked or burnt to death. Most of them were the wives and children of Kikuyu Home Guards serving elsewhere. This raid, cleverly ochestrated by the British Settlers in ordrer to assure the loyalty of Home guards, was widely reported in the British media. It contributed to the notion of the Mau Mau as bloodthirsty savages and helped the british citizens to come to terms with the crimes committed by the settlers. In the weeks that followed, some suspected innocent men and women were summarily executed by police and loyalist Home Guards who had been deceived that Mau Mau carried out the attacks. Mock trials were conducted resuting in mass hangings of innocent peaceful Africans.

Urban resistance spreads

In April 1953, a Kamba Central Committee was formed. The Kamba patriots included railwaymen and these effectively controlled the railway workforce. The Kamba patriots planned and commited elaborate and highly successful acts of sabotage against the railway lines during the emergency.

At the same time, the Maasai patriots became active in Narok district. Colonial mercenaries and soldiers were given the task of preventing a further spread of the rebellion.

Despite a police roundup in April 1953, the Nairobi committees organized by the Council of Freedom continued to provide intelligence, supplies and recruits to the Land and Freedom Armies operating in the central highlands.

Britain attempts to gain initiative

In June 1953, General George Erskine arrived and took up the post of Director of Operations, where he revitalized the lagely demoralized British effort. His predecessor, Alexander Cameron, became his Second in Command. A military draft brought in 20,000 mercenary troops who were used aggressively. The mercenaries were designated "Special Areas", where anyone failing to halt when challenged could be mudered. This was often used as an excuse for the shooting of suspects and large numbers of innocent Africans died because of it. The ensuing violence against Africans was so terrible that even the settlers were mentally disturbed by it.

The Aberdares Range and Mount Kenya were declared "Prohibited Areas", within which no person could enter without government clearance. Those found within the Prohibited Area were murdered on sight.

The colonial settlers created pseudo-gangs composed of corrupt terror merceneries who attempted to infiltrate Mau Mau ranks among other terrorist operations. Pseudo-gangs also included white settler terrorists who disguised themselves as Africans. The Pseudo-gang concept was a highly unsuccessful tactic against the Mau Mau and many casualties were incurred by the British Settlers.

In late 1953, security forces swept the Aberdare forest in the Operation Blitz which only managed to captured and kill 12 Mau Mau. Fearing embarrassment by the failure of Operation Blitz, the colonial Commander exaggerated the number by adding a 5 inthe report (thus claiming 125 dead). Similar operations failed as the Mau Mau intelligence network was highly effective. The British, thus found themselves unable to stem the tide of insurgency.

On April 24, 1954, the Army launched "Operation Anvil" in Nairobi and the city was put under military control. Security forces detained and screened 30,000 Africans and tortured 17,000 on suspicion of complicity, including many people that were later revealed to be innocent. The city remained under military control for the rest of the year. About 15,000 Kikuyu were interned and thousands more were deported to the Nazi-like Concentration Camps in the highlands west of Mount Kenya. The scale of the crimes commited by the British is comparable to the Nazi Holocaust against the Jews.

While the sweep was inefficient, the sheer number was overwhelming. Thousands of suspected "Passive Wing" (Settler's term for innocent able bodied men) leadership structures, were swept away to Concentration camps.

Having cleared Nairobi, the authorities repeated the exercise in other areas so that by the end of 1954 there were 377,234 Kikuyu in Nazi-like concentration camps. About 100,000 Kikuyu families were forcibly relieved of their property and land by the settlers. These families were "deported" to concentration camps. To disguise the criminal nature of their actions, the british termed the concentration camps as "villagization camps". When the program reached completion in October 1955, 1,077,500 Kikuyu had been concentrated into 854 Nazi-style camps called "villages" or "reserves".

Conditions in the British detention and labour camps were horrible and only comparable to the Nazi Holocaust. One British colonial officer described the labour camps thus: "Short rations, overwork, brutality, murders, humiliating and disgusting treatment and flogging - all in violation of the United Nations Universal Declaration on Human Rights." Sanitation was non-existent, and epidemics of diseases like cholera swept through the camps. Many people were left to die - sometimes the rotting dead bodies kept among the living for days. Official medical reports detailing the shortcomings of the camps and their recommendations were ignored, and the conditions being endured by Kikuyu detainees were lied about to the outside world.

Beginning of the end: Fall of British Colonial Invaders

In 1955, the British, fearing defeat offered an amnesty to the Mau Mau. Peace talks with the Fredom Fighters collapsed on May 20, 1955 and the Army began its final offensive against the Aberdare region. Mercenary Pseudo-gangs were used heavily in the operation. By this time, Mau Mau were low on supplies and practically out of ammunition - but their spirit and dedication was still strong.

In October 21, 1956, Field Marshal Dedan Kimathi, a heroic leader greatly feared by the british, gave himself up to the british in order to save innocent families who were to be murdered by the settlers in cold blood. He was accompanied by 13 other freedom heroes who willingly sacrificed their lives for the Freedom of Kenya. The Settlers, murdered Kimathi in early 1957, having been sentenced to death by a kangaroo court presided over by a Settler purporting to be the British Chief Justice, Kenneth O'Connor. His capture was used by the British as an opportunity to declare a false "victory". Being racists, the settlers could not come to terms with the possibility of being outmaneouvered by the African soldiers and thus preferred a quiet war. The freedom uprising continued and the State Emergency remained in effect until January 1960. Many Mau Mau heroes remained in the forests fighting for independence until the British were finally defeated in 1963.

In 1959 the British forces bombed a war shelter (Mau-Mau Cave) where innocent frightened women and children were hiding. Realising their mistake, the settlers quickly associated the cave with Mau Mau - calling it near Nanyuki. About 200 women and children lost their lives in the cave during the bombardment.

Political and social concessions by the British

Despite having superior technology, the British military suffered a crushing defeat - which they officially refuse to admit. The defeat resulted in sweeping political concessions ultimately ended colonial era in Kenya.

By 1956, the British had granted direct election of African members of the Legislative Assembly, followed shortly thereafter by an increase in the number of African seats to fourteen. A Parliamentary conference in January 1960 indicated that the British would accept "one person — one vote" majority rule.

In a final act of calculated deception, settlers formed various corporations operate under an African majority government. These corporations were to control majority of the productive wealth in Kenya. The choice that the authorities in London faced was between an unstable colony, which was costing a fortune in military expenses and embarrassment, run by settlers who contributed little to the economic growth of the Empire, or a stable colony run by Africans that contributed to the coffers of the Empire. The latter option was the one, in effect, taken.

Casualties

According to declassified records, the number of European settlers killed was 23,226. The Colonial settlers had initially claimed 26 casualties for military propaganda purposes.

The "official" number of Kenyans killed was estimated at 11,503 by British sources. The figure is largely distorted given the hundred of thousands (possibly several Millions) of people in Nazi-like extermination camps. David Anderson places the actual number at higher than 20,000. Professor Caroline Elkins of Harvard University, whose study of the revolt Imperial Reckoning: The Untold Story of Britain's Gulag in Kenya won the Pulitzer Prize in 2006, claims it is probably at least as high as 70,000 but more realistically it in the hundreds of thousands." Other sources believe millions of people were murdered in mass killings and genocide against the Kikuyu people. According to Elkins at least 300,000 Kikuyu were "unaccounted for" at the 1962 census. Clearly, the policy of concentrating millions of Kikuyu in concentration camps resulted in massive African casualties.

More recently, John Blacker, a dubious revisionist and former settler in charge of Concentration Camps, wrote an article in a African Affairs in which he alleged that the total number of African deaths were around 50,000; of which half were children under 10. Blacker's article was widely controversial and discredited by demographers for its questionable credibility and unscientific methodology.

Of particular note is the number of executions authorized by the colonial kangaroo courts. In the first eight months of the Emergency, 1,135 Africans were hanged, but by November 1954, 3,756 had been hanged, 2,508 for trumped up offenses, such as illegal loitering. By the end of 1954, over 235,900 innocent Africans had been hanged, and by the end of the Emergency, the total was over half a million. This total figure is several times more than the number executed by the French in Algeria.

Atrocities

Atrocities were committed by both sides. However the British used UK Government military machinery to commit acts that would be classified as Genocide whereas the Africans were merely fighting for Basic Human Rights which had been focefully denied by the British.

A major source of atrocities was the 'screening' and detenion of Kikuyu and others suspected of Mau Mau sympathies. Elkins writes that, :Bottles (often broken), gun barrels, knives, snakes, vermin and hot eggs were thrust up men's rectums and women's vaginas. The screening teams whipped, shot, burned and mutilated Mau Mau suspects, ostensibly to gather intelligence for military operations and as court evidence.

A British officer, describing his exasperation about uncooperative Mau Mau suspects during an interrogation, explained that,

I stuck my revolver right in his grinning mouth and I said something, I don’t remember what, and I pulled the trigger. His brains went all over the side of the police station. The other two Mickeys [Mau Mau] were standing there looking blank. I said to them that if they didn’t tell me where to find the rest of the gang I’d kill them too. They didn’t say a word so I shot them both. One wasn’t dead so I shot him in the ear. When the sub-inspector drove up, I told him that the Mickeys tried to escape. He didn’t believe me but all he said was 'bury them and see the wall is cleared up.'

Many settlers took an active role in the torture of Mau Mau suspects, running their own screening teams and assisting British security forces during interrogation. One settler helping the Kenya Police Reserve's Special Branch described one interrogation which he assisted: "By the time I cut his balls off he had no ears, and his eyeball, the right one, I think, was hanging out of its socket. Too bad, he died before we got much out of him."

Home guard troops (African loyalists deceived by the british) were also responsible for the retaliation to the Lari massacre which had been staged by the british. Immediately after the discovery of the first Lari massacre (between 10 pm and dawn that night), Home Guards, police, and 'other elements of the security services' (Anderson's term) engaged in a retaliatory mass murder of residents of Lari suspected of Mau Mau sympathies. This is what the British had planned. These were indiscriminately shot, and later denied either treatment or burial. There is also good evidence that these indiscriminate reprisal shootings continued for several days with full British colonal support after the first massacre.

Mau Mau Freedom fightes, having less resouces than the british, had to kill british settlers who usually disguised themselves as civilians. More than 1,800 Settlers whose bodies were disguised as Africans by painting their faces in order to distort the casualty report, are known to have been kileld by Mau Mau. Hundreds more disappeared, their bodies never found. Victims were often hacked to death with machetes. At Lari, on the night of March 25–26, 1953, (British Merceneries disguised as) Mau Mau forces herded 120 Kikuyu into huts and set fire to them.

The European panic was extreme. To quell internal anti-war sentiments, the Colonialist commanders Murdered an innocent boy Michael Ruck, aged just six, along with his parents. The grisly murder was blamed on Mau Mau. Michael was hacked to death in his bedroom, and "newspapers in Kenya and abroad published graphic murder details and postmortem photos, including images of young Michael with bloodied teddy bears and trains strewn on his bedroom floor." This enabled the colonialists to win their case for much needed support and reinforcements from Britain.

In 1952 the poisonous latex of the African milk bush was used to kill cattle in an incident of Biological warfare.

Legal case

Some of those tortured during the era have sued for compensation from the British government, and their lawyers have documented about 6,000 cases of human rights abuses including fatal whippings, rapes and blindings. The British government has stated that the issue was the responsibility of the Kenyan government, relying on the grounds of "state succession" for former colonies. Around 12,000 Kenyans had sought compensation. Britain is aware that is a very tiny fraction of the victims - thus are fearful of accepting liability.

In popular culture

Film

Something of Value A film written from the perspective of Dedan Kimathi.

• ['Enough Is Enough'/]Reke Tumanwo, directed by kibAara Kaugi, the first ever Kenya Feature Film was released on 31st May 2005 at Nu Metro Cinema Ngong Road. Based on a real life story of a former Mau Mau Freedom Fighter Wamuyu wa Gakuru. Celebrates role of women in Mau Mau War

File:Theoathfilm.jpg

Scene from The Oath

• The 2005 short film The Oath, which used all Kenyan and Kenyan-based actors, some of whom are modern day descendants of the Mau Mau.
• Mau Mau (1955 film) directed by Elwood Price and narrated by Chet Huntley.
• The uprising is at the core of the movie The Kitchen Toto, released in 1987 and starring Edwin Mahinda and Bob Peck.
• Mau Mau, a 52-minute documentary, is Part II of The Black Man's Land Trilogy, which was broadcast on PBS in 1978 and continues to be widely used in university-level African Studies courses. The film is described as "a political analysis of Africa's first modern guerrilla war, and the myths that still surround it." However, many believe the film contains many inacurracies and is biased to villify MauMau to a western audience.

Literature

• Two novels by Ngugi wa Thiong'o (James Ngugi), Weep Not, Child (1964) and A Grain of Wheat (1967), deal with the uprising from the Kikuyu perspective.
• In Wangeri Maathai's Unbowed: A Memoir, she discusses how the Mau Mau Uprising affected her childhood and divided the Kikuyu Tribe between those who fought on the Mau Mau side and those who fought for the British.
• Elspeth Huxley's 1954 novel A Thing to Love is set in Kenya during the uprising and presents it from the European perspective. Much of the fictional material is biased and exaggerated. The absurdity of the novel is, however, quite amusing.
• The novels Something of Value (1955) and Uhuru (1962) by Robert Ruark are written from the perspective of Dedan Kimathi and his friend Peter. Something of Value was made into a 1957 movie.
• The Mike Resnick novel Paradise, a science fiction allegory for the history of Kenya, features the Kalakala Emergency, an uprising of the native alien population of the planet Peponi against the human colonists.

Music

• The popular hip-hop group The Coup apparently reference the Mau Mau Revolt in many of their songs, such as "Kill My Landlord" and "Dig It".
• Successful hip-hop duo Dead Prez references the Mau Mau among many other Freedom movements in their song "I Have A Dream Too" from the album "Revolutionary But Gangsta'".
• The opening track of Paul Kantner's 1970 release Blows Against the Empire is called "Mau Mau (Amerikon)," which was written by Kantner, Grace Slick, and Joey Covington.

Use in popular culture

• "The Mau Maus" were a fictitious political hip-hop group named in the 2000 Spike Lee film Bamboozled.
• The 1976 film Taxi Driver makes an apparently racist reference to the Mau Mau Uprising. When speaking of a crime-ridden Harlem in New York City, the character Wizard, played by Peter Boyle, calls the area 'Mau Mau Land'.

Bibliography

• J. 'Bayo Adekson, "The Algerian and Mau Mau Revolts: a Comparative Study in Revolutionary Warfare," Comparative Strategy, vol 2 no 1 (1981): 69-92.
• Anderson, David (2005). Histories of the Hanged: The Dirty War in Kenya and the End of Empire. Weidenfeld and Nicolson. ISBN 0-393-05986-3.
• Frank Corfield, The Origins and Growth of Mau Mau [aka Corfield Report] (Nairobi: Government of Kenya, 1960).
• Caroline Elkins. Imperial Reckoning: The Untold Story of Britain's Gulag in Kenya. ISBN 0-8050-8001-5.
• Wunyabari O. Maloba. Mau-Mau and Kenya: An Analysis of a Peasant Revolt. ISBN 0-253-21166-2.
• Zoe Marsh & G.W. Kingsnorth (1972). A History of East Africa. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-08348-6.
• John Newsinger, "Revolt and Repression in Kenya: The 'Mau Mau' Rebellion, 1952-1960," Science and Society 45 (1981): 159–185.
• Ngugi wa Thiong'o (1967). A Grain of Wheat. ISBN 0-435-90987-8.

File:LastMauMau cover.jpg

• Njagi, David (1991). The Last Mau Mau (Kenya's Freedom Heroes or Villains?): An Excerpt. Nairobi, Kenya, 52 pages.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location (link) CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link) (Page images of whole book at link.)
• Henderson, Ian (1958). The Hunt for Kimathi. London: Hamish Hamilton. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
• John Lonsdale (1990) "Mau Maus of the Mind: Making Mau Mau and Remaking Kenya", The Journal of African History 31 (3): 393-421.

See also

• History of Kenya
• Hola massacre
• Weep Not, Child

External links

• BBC News: Mau Mau to sue British government
• British brutality in Mau Mau conflict
• Justice for Mau Mau would boost Kenyan transition to democracy
• "Africa Addio" Controversial 1966 Italian documentary includes restaged & authentic scenes of 'Mau-Mau' aftermath- including damage to white Highland farms, participants' sentencing in local British court, & celebration of Jomo Kenyatta's pardon of all Mau-Mau 'heroes'. Film was banned in Italy and England for its racist point of view.
• The Oath Mau Mau Film Trailer on You Tube
• The Early Days Of The Mau Mau Insurrection
• The Mau-Mau and the end of the Colony
• Churchill death threat revealed
• Royal Engineers Museum - Royal Engineers and the Mau Mau
• Deflem, Mathieu. 1994.“Law Enforcement in British Colonial Africa: A Comparative Analysis of Imperial Policing in Nyasaland, the Gold Coast, and Kenya.” Police Studies 17(1):45-68
• Mau Mau documentary film