Some pretty interesting articles came my way and I've added them to the "interesting reads" seciton on the left. A story about the very interesting history of the boardgame Monopoly, how praise for smarts may be more damaging than helpful for children (and by extension, adults?), and remember all of those famous quotes you thought people said? Guess what, they never actually said them!
Update: Another good link about how internet is changing the next generation.
Monday, February 26, 2007
The British "Civilizing" Mission in Kenya: Terror, Torture, Murder
There's an old TV show that's regularly shown on KBC (government-owned; one of the four local tv stations) that is a comedy about Britain's colonial "civilizing mission" in Kenya. While sitting in an office with some Deaf Kenyans, one of the episodes came on. I missed the beginning, but figured out that there was a thief loose and the friendly, fair British colonial officer, along with his African policemen, were having difficulty tracking him down.
Apparently the show also involves a lion—one that in this case happened to take control of a land rover and was driving it around the camp. I think a monkey was also involved. Somehow the lion discovered the thief, managed to get a rope around the his legs and dragged him all over the camp, finally leaving him at the feet of the African police officers who took him into custody.
Everyone had a great laugh.
Those images immediately shot through my mind when I came across this passage in Imperial Reckoning: The Untold Story of Britain's Gulag in Kenya:
"On other occasions members of the security forces would take captured Mau Mau fighters, rope them to the back of Land Rovers, and drive them around the villages, leaving bits of body parts in their wake."
The joke on the TV show—consciously or not—was based on a horrific reality.
Reading this book has been absolutely shocking for me. I've lived in Kenya for a total of almost three years now, and this book has made me look at this country through different eyes. The systematic, brutal, inhumane, and outright sadistic torture inflicted on Mau Mau “suspects” is so chilling, so disturbing, that it seems beyond belief.
The British colonial government, acting through its own agents, Kikuyu loyalists, and the white settler population, was complicit in it all. Its detention facilities, "interrogation" and "rehabilitation" tactics, and overall “counterinsurgency” bare a shocking resemblance to Nazi Germany.
I wish this was exaggeration. It is not.
The colonial government did not outright try to exterminate the Kikuyu population, which would have been genocide. Instead, it split the Kikuyu population into “loyalists” and “Mau Mau.” These “loyalists” traded their support for the colonial government for land, wealth, and power. The Mau Mau was a group of fighters who argued that their land and freedom had been stolen from them by the whites. (The Kikuyu were most affected by the British land grabs.)
After a couple brutal attacks on whites and a number of vicious attacks against loyalists, panic spread through the white settler community and the colonial government was forced to act. The Mau-Mau fighters, with no real technology, were no match for the British. Most were overcome in the forests in just two years. They had no real technology and were no match for the British military.
The colonial government then turned its attention to the civilian population. Many Kikuyu still supported the Mau Mau movement and they were seen as real threats to the settlers and the Kikuyu loyalists. The government decided that to end Mau Mau, one had to crush it forcefully.
Elkins's book reveals how British colonial officials (and, to some extent, the top levels of British government, including the champion of liberty, justice, and Western values: British Prime Minister Winston Churchill) explicitly approved, defended, or implicitly supported the following methods for dealing with Mau Mau:
1) summary executions
2) random murders (i.e. group 100 detainees Mau Mau together; randomly choose 30 and kill them to instill fear in the remaining 70)
3) torture by rape (also gang-rape, public rape), sodomy, sexual mutilation and sexual violence (castration, use of foreign objects designed to inflict pain or damage sexual organs)
4) torture by relentless unprovoked physical beatings often resulting in death
5) awful health standards in the camp that spread infectious disease
6) humiliation to individuals and groups (forcing people to eat feces, be covered in feces)
7) slave labor
8) forced starvations and severe water deprivation
The list goes on and on.
Reading this book is like reading a story about genocide. It begins with a massive and effective dehumanization campaign. The enemy becomes inhuman: they are barbaric animals, filthy scum that need to be eliminated.
Once the enemy is dehumanized, societies morph. The previously unthinkable becomes possible, necessary, or even desirable. In such circumstances, a handful of individuals unleash the sheer evil that lurks inside of them. Then this becomes infectious. More people find themselves doing and acting the same. Society tolerates it, seeing it as necessary for the larger cause: keeping the British colony, protecting the white settler population and its supporters, and “civilizing” the filthy, uncivilized, barbaric Mau Mau.
What's shaken me isn't just that the British colonial government did these awful things, or even that they managed to cover it up so well and portray Kenyan colonialism as a success story in its civilizing mission. What really gets me is how much this explains Kenya today.
When Jomo Kenyatta came to power, there was no Truth and Reconciliation trials. No one—black or white—was held accountable for what happened. Kenyatta said forgive and forget. Coming from a man who was widely (and falsely) seen as the leader of Mau Mau and who had been imprisoned under inhospitable conditions for eight years, even Mau Mau supporters heeded his call.
But Kenyatta never did support Mau Mau. He had spoken out against the movement a number of times before his imprisonment and during his prison time did nothing to support the movement and gave his approval to his son Peter, who “confessed” his Mau Mau sympathies, became employed in the security forces, and brutally tortured Mau Mau detainees.
Kenyatta inherited the colonial government that was held together by corruption and loyalty and earned legitimacy not through fairness, justice, or trust, but rather terroristic violence against the people. He did nothing to change it. People got rich not for their talent or skills, but for their thuggery and loyalty. And the average person was left with nothing.
It deepens my understanding of why the Kikuyu are so closely linked all across the country with violence, corruption, and opportunism. Why the police are more feared than trusted. Why force is more important than justice. Why loyalty to people is more important than loyalty to principle. Why corruption is so ingrained in Kenya.
More so, it explains why Kenyans aren't taught these stories. Why they don't learn about the horrific injustices they endured. Because it's an indictment of the country's founding father and the national myth this country was built on. Because it's a danger to white settlers. Because it's a danger to Kikuyu loyalists. Because it reveals the sad truth that this was not a country built on the backs of freedom fighters, but a government built on murder, torture, lies, deceptions, corruption, and opportunism.
This does not mean all Kenyans should hang their heads in shame. As Elkins clearly demonstrates, throughout the Mau Mau conflict there were numerous heroes. People who endured extraordinary torture and refused to die, refused to give up or give in, all in the hope of freedom. From the loyalist guards who covertly helped detainees pass letters to British politicians and newspapers to those who found themselves doing whatever they could to help, at great personal risk.
At the end of it all, it's clear that the detention and rehabilitation centers killed thousands of people and left the Kikuyu population decimated, not to mention completely traumatized. Elkins estimates that, while no complete records exist, population figures suggest that the Kikuyu population was anywhere from 100,000-300,000 smaller than could be normally expected (not only through death, but through a lower reproductive rate due to sexual mutilation, nutritional deficiencies, separation of women from men, disease, etc).
Elkins won a Pulitzer for her work and she deserves it. As she makes clear, however, neither the British nor Kenyan governments have any desire to rekindle this tragic history. For the thousands who died under the ruthless, sadistic terror and torture of the British colonial government and the thousands more who survived, only to see their torturers continue to lord over them, justice will never be theirs.
Disclaimer: This is a summary of a very complex event. I'm skipping over tons of details and simplifying a lot. Don't write a homework report based on this. This is a blog.
Apparently the show also involves a lion—one that in this case happened to take control of a land rover and was driving it around the camp. I think a monkey was also involved. Somehow the lion discovered the thief, managed to get a rope around the his legs and dragged him all over the camp, finally leaving him at the feet of the African police officers who took him into custody.
Everyone had a great laugh.
Those images immediately shot through my mind when I came across this passage in Imperial Reckoning: The Untold Story of Britain's Gulag in Kenya:
"On other occasions members of the security forces would take captured Mau Mau fighters, rope them to the back of Land Rovers, and drive them around the villages, leaving bits of body parts in their wake."
The joke on the TV show—consciously or not—was based on a horrific reality.
Reading this book has been absolutely shocking for me. I've lived in Kenya for a total of almost three years now, and this book has made me look at this country through different eyes. The systematic, brutal, inhumane, and outright sadistic torture inflicted on Mau Mau “suspects” is so chilling, so disturbing, that it seems beyond belief.
The British colonial government, acting through its own agents, Kikuyu loyalists, and the white settler population, was complicit in it all. Its detention facilities, "interrogation" and "rehabilitation" tactics, and overall “counterinsurgency” bare a shocking resemblance to Nazi Germany.
I wish this was exaggeration. It is not.
The colonial government did not outright try to exterminate the Kikuyu population, which would have been genocide. Instead, it split the Kikuyu population into “loyalists” and “Mau Mau.” These “loyalists” traded their support for the colonial government for land, wealth, and power. The Mau Mau was a group of fighters who argued that their land and freedom had been stolen from them by the whites. (The Kikuyu were most affected by the British land grabs.)
After a couple brutal attacks on whites and a number of vicious attacks against loyalists, panic spread through the white settler community and the colonial government was forced to act. The Mau-Mau fighters, with no real technology, were no match for the British. Most were overcome in the forests in just two years. They had no real technology and were no match for the British military.
The colonial government then turned its attention to the civilian population. Many Kikuyu still supported the Mau Mau movement and they were seen as real threats to the settlers and the Kikuyu loyalists. The government decided that to end Mau Mau, one had to crush it forcefully.
Elkins's book reveals how British colonial officials (and, to some extent, the top levels of British government, including the champion of liberty, justice, and Western values: British Prime Minister Winston Churchill) explicitly approved, defended, or implicitly supported the following methods for dealing with Mau Mau:
1) summary executions
2) random murders (i.e. group 100 detainees Mau Mau together; randomly choose 30 and kill them to instill fear in the remaining 70)
3) torture by rape (also gang-rape, public rape), sodomy, sexual mutilation and sexual violence (castration, use of foreign objects designed to inflict pain or damage sexual organs)
4) torture by relentless unprovoked physical beatings often resulting in death
5) awful health standards in the camp that spread infectious disease
6) humiliation to individuals and groups (forcing people to eat feces, be covered in feces)
7) slave labor
8) forced starvations and severe water deprivation
The list goes on and on.
Reading this book is like reading a story about genocide. It begins with a massive and effective dehumanization campaign. The enemy becomes inhuman: they are barbaric animals, filthy scum that need to be eliminated.
Once the enemy is dehumanized, societies morph. The previously unthinkable becomes possible, necessary, or even desirable. In such circumstances, a handful of individuals unleash the sheer evil that lurks inside of them. Then this becomes infectious. More people find themselves doing and acting the same. Society tolerates it, seeing it as necessary for the larger cause: keeping the British colony, protecting the white settler population and its supporters, and “civilizing” the filthy, uncivilized, barbaric Mau Mau.
What's shaken me isn't just that the British colonial government did these awful things, or even that they managed to cover it up so well and portray Kenyan colonialism as a success story in its civilizing mission. What really gets me is how much this explains Kenya today.
When Jomo Kenyatta came to power, there was no Truth and Reconciliation trials. No one—black or white—was held accountable for what happened. Kenyatta said forgive and forget. Coming from a man who was widely (and falsely) seen as the leader of Mau Mau and who had been imprisoned under inhospitable conditions for eight years, even Mau Mau supporters heeded his call.
But Kenyatta never did support Mau Mau. He had spoken out against the movement a number of times before his imprisonment and during his prison time did nothing to support the movement and gave his approval to his son Peter, who “confessed” his Mau Mau sympathies, became employed in the security forces, and brutally tortured Mau Mau detainees.
Kenyatta inherited the colonial government that was held together by corruption and loyalty and earned legitimacy not through fairness, justice, or trust, but rather terroristic violence against the people. He did nothing to change it. People got rich not for their talent or skills, but for their thuggery and loyalty. And the average person was left with nothing.
It deepens my understanding of why the Kikuyu are so closely linked all across the country with violence, corruption, and opportunism. Why the police are more feared than trusted. Why force is more important than justice. Why loyalty to people is more important than loyalty to principle. Why corruption is so ingrained in Kenya.
More so, it explains why Kenyans aren't taught these stories. Why they don't learn about the horrific injustices they endured. Because it's an indictment of the country's founding father and the national myth this country was built on. Because it's a danger to white settlers. Because it's a danger to Kikuyu loyalists. Because it reveals the sad truth that this was not a country built on the backs of freedom fighters, but a government built on murder, torture, lies, deceptions, corruption, and opportunism.
This does not mean all Kenyans should hang their heads in shame. As Elkins clearly demonstrates, throughout the Mau Mau conflict there were numerous heroes. People who endured extraordinary torture and refused to die, refused to give up or give in, all in the hope of freedom. From the loyalist guards who covertly helped detainees pass letters to British politicians and newspapers to those who found themselves doing whatever they could to help, at great personal risk.
At the end of it all, it's clear that the detention and rehabilitation centers killed thousands of people and left the Kikuyu population decimated, not to mention completely traumatized. Elkins estimates that, while no complete records exist, population figures suggest that the Kikuyu population was anywhere from 100,000-300,000 smaller than could be normally expected (not only through death, but through a lower reproductive rate due to sexual mutilation, nutritional deficiencies, separation of women from men, disease, etc).
Elkins won a Pulitzer for her work and she deserves it. As she makes clear, however, neither the British nor Kenyan governments have any desire to rekindle this tragic history. For the thousands who died under the ruthless, sadistic terror and torture of the British colonial government and the thousands more who survived, only to see their torturers continue to lord over them, justice will never be theirs.
Disclaimer: This is a summary of a very complex event. I'm skipping over tons of details and simplifying a lot. Don't write a homework report based on this. This is a blog.
Sunday, February 18, 2007
Kamangu and His Yellow-Checked Suit
Bishop Wanjiru was supposed to get married to her South African fiancee on February 10th. The courts stepped in and blocked the wedding, saying that James Kamangu's case had to be heard first.
Kamangu, as I've already noted, is a simple man: a cobbler and potter, who wanted nothing more than to have Wanjiru admit that she used to be his wife, and to stop dragging his name through the mud.
That was the old Kamangu.
The new Kamangu wears a yellow-checked suit, slick tie, walks into the courtroom with an army of lawyers, and now declares that he wants the courts to recognize his marriage to Wanjiru and give him his "marital rights" (i.e. bedroom rights).
How did old Kamangu become new Kamangu? Politics!
A group calling itself Maendeleo ya Wanaume (The Development of Men), rushed to his side and started talking about legal action. Some commentators argued that Kamangu had a legal case and he should take action, despite him publicly saying that he wasn't interested.
And, one can't help but wonder, did Wanjiru's political opponent, Maina Kamanda, who obviously has a stake in seeing this drama stretched out for as long as possible, have anything to do with it? While I haven't seen any reports explicitly linking Kamanda with support for Kamangu's case, there can be no doubt that he privately supports the mess, trying to keep Wanjiru's name dirty before the election.
The residents of Starehe constituency find themselves choosing between the troubled minister of sports and the over-scrutinized bishop. Voters seem stuck between a rock and a hard place. And that, my friends, is politics!
Kamangu, as I've already noted, is a simple man: a cobbler and potter, who wanted nothing more than to have Wanjiru admit that she used to be his wife, and to stop dragging his name through the mud.
That was the old Kamangu.
The new Kamangu wears a yellow-checked suit, slick tie, walks into the courtroom with an army of lawyers, and now declares that he wants the courts to recognize his marriage to Wanjiru and give him his "marital rights" (i.e. bedroom rights).
How did old Kamangu become new Kamangu? Politics!
A group calling itself Maendeleo ya Wanaume (The Development of Men), rushed to his side and started talking about legal action. Some commentators argued that Kamangu had a legal case and he should take action, despite him publicly saying that he wasn't interested.
And, one can't help but wonder, did Wanjiru's political opponent, Maina Kamanda, who obviously has a stake in seeing this drama stretched out for as long as possible, have anything to do with it? While I haven't seen any reports explicitly linking Kamanda with support for Kamangu's case, there can be no doubt that he privately supports the mess, trying to keep Wanjiru's name dirty before the election.
The residents of Starehe constituency find themselves choosing between the troubled minister of sports and the over-scrutinized bishop. Voters seem stuck between a rock and a hard place. And that, my friends, is politics!
Friday, February 09, 2007
A Rough Week
Ugh. When it hits Friday and you find yourself saying "Ugh," you know it's been rough.
Monday I became sick with what a doctor diagnosed in about 8 seconds as pharyngitis: a nasty sore throat that left me with a fever, dizziness and a headache. I was a little worried it could have been Rift Valley Fever, which last broke out in 1997, but has claimed more than a hundred lives in the past three months. (CDC says 32 cases have been reported by MOH. Funny 'cause the local media has gone way past that figure!)
(Incidentally, RVF's been mostly centered in the far north-eastern part of the country... which is actually near Halako's home of Hola. Check out this map: Hola's half way between Garissa and Garsen.) Clarification: RVF has been mostly centered in Garissa, which is near Halako's home, Hola.
Tuesday, Halako and I found ourselves hiding under our bed, convinced that our apartment complex was being ransacked. Turned out it was a couple of thieves who stole a phone and purse. They just made so much noise, we began imagining gangsters with AK-47s.
Today I ran around town trying to get some last minute information for a web site that we're creating. Didn't really succeed in much of anything except getting my phone stolen. In the scramble to squeeze on the bus that heads down Ngong Road, I barely made it to my seat. A quick check of my pocket showed that my phone didn't.
At least it wasn't the wallet with IDs and credit cards. (I've been meaning to not carry all my valuables in my wallet, but somehow circumstances made me put them all together and I just forget to separate them all over again.)
Monday I became sick with what a doctor diagnosed in about 8 seconds as pharyngitis: a nasty sore throat that left me with a fever, dizziness and a headache. I was a little worried it could have been Rift Valley Fever, which last broke out in 1997, but has claimed more than a hundred lives in the past three months. (CDC says 32 cases have been reported by MOH. Funny 'cause the local media has gone way past that figure!)
(Incidentally, RVF's been mostly centered in the far north-eastern part of the country... which is actually near Halako's home of Hola. Check out this map: Hola's half way between Garissa and Garsen.) Clarification: RVF has been mostly centered in Garissa, which is near Halako's home, Hola.
Tuesday, Halako and I found ourselves hiding under our bed, convinced that our apartment complex was being ransacked. Turned out it was a couple of thieves who stole a phone and purse. They just made so much noise, we began imagining gangsters with AK-47s.
Today I ran around town trying to get some last minute information for a web site that we're creating. Didn't really succeed in much of anything except getting my phone stolen. In the scramble to squeeze on the bus that heads down Ngong Road, I barely made it to my seat. A quick check of my pocket showed that my phone didn't.
At least it wasn't the wallet with IDs and credit cards. (I've been meaning to not carry all my valuables in my wallet, but somehow circumstances made me put them all together and I just forget to separate them all over again.)
Sunday, February 04, 2007
TV: Africans in America
A couple weeks ago Halako and I met with our friend Janis, who has lived in Nairobi for thirty years or so. Her home is New London, Wisconsin. Which, of course, is my home too. Now that we're both in Nairobi, we meet up every few weeks. When we last met with her, she told us that her daughter-in-law is working on filming a 60-segment television series.
The series is about Africans living in America, and the whole mess of cultural/procedural problems they encounters. Sounds interesting. While I don't have the bandwidth to enjoy this, you might: http://www.yamaafrika.com.
The series is about Africans living in America, and the whole mess of cultural/procedural problems they encounters. Sounds interesting. While I don't have the bandwidth to enjoy this, you might: http://www.yamaafrika.com.
Saturday, February 03, 2007
A Painting's Absence
Every morning on the way to work, I jump out of a crowded matatu, sling my black bag over my shoulder and walk along a dirt path that leads to our office.
This is an uneventful walk. Trees, grass, mud, litter, a women selling bananas and peanuts out of a small green basin, and the guys painting the large clay pots that are sold alongside the road. Along the dirt road in front of our office, is something of a nursery with a couple dozen people watering plants, or haggling with prospective buyers.
Last week Monday, I had something of a surprise, when I walked by the Paresian Center—home to a dentist firm, a World Vision office, and a couple other organizations/businesses—and found a large white rectangle of paint on the surrounding wall.
I looked at it for a second, trying to understand what happened. There used to be a nice large painting there of a man in a hospital bed with a quote next to it. It was one of the best public paintings I'd seen in Nairobi—in Kenya.
When I first looked at the painting, back in August, I was ignorant. The painting seemed loud, like it was making a statement, and struck me as too specific in its detail to be just another sick person in a hospital bed. But I couldn't make the connection. Could it really be just another painting about HIV/AIDs?
On October 20th, I discovered who it was. The 20th is a national holiday in Kenya, called Kenyatta Day, after Kenya's first President Jomo Kenyatta. The holiday was originally meant to invoke the (intellectual) heroes of Kenya's liberation from British colonialism: a group that included Kenyatta and his eventual successor Daniel arap Moi.
What the holiday (under Moi and Kenyatta) did not emphasize were the people who violently fought the British during the Mau-Mau rebellion. These people, generally from an “ethnic group” called the Gikuyu, hid in the forests, swore secret oaths, launched attacks on white settlers, and created enormous panic for the colonial rulers. Among their numerous frustrations, perhaps the chief one was that the colonial settlers stole their land.
The rebellion led to the declaration of an eight-year state of emergency, imprisonments of hundreds of thousands Gikuyu, and tens of thousands of deaths. Locally, it's seen as what triggered the British to give up its colonial rule of Kenya. (Though, since this was replicated all across Africa with all of the colonial powers suddenly granting independence roughly around the same time, it's unclear that the Mau-Mau rebellion caused or even speeded up Kenya's independence.)
When Kenyatta came to power, he was quick to distance himself from the Mau-Mau fighters, calling them a bunch of thugs and criminals. This might seem ironic since the British imprisoned Kenyatta as one of the leaders of the rebellion. In fact, it was strategic: he wanted to portray himself as a national leader, a national hero; not someone who would be held ransom to the demands of Mau-Mau fighters, or even one ethnic group. (Kenya says it has 42.)
As Kenyatta's increasingly dictatorial regime gave way to Moi's overwhelmingly corrupt one, Kenyans, especially Gikuyu decendents, began to mythologize Mau-Mau fighters as brave and creative warriors who fought for Kenya's independence—a struggle that was now continuing against their own rulers to bring democracy and justice to a country that failed to live up to pre-colonial rhetoric.
No fighter is more remembered or more mythologized than Dedan Kimathi. Once captured in 1952, he escaped with the help of local police. A year later he became a field commander, coordinating the Mau-Mau forest fighters for three years. The British labeled him a terrorist and finally shot and captured him. An ailing Kimathi lay in a hospital bed, awaiting his death sentence.
That, of course, was the painted-over image on the wall that I saw. That painting may be lost, but Kimathi's legacy lives on. The Kenyan government has now commissioned for a statue of him to be built; he's already the central character in Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o 's play “The Trial of Dedan Kimathi”; and he has a street named after him in Nairobi. Since Kenyatta Day is meant to remember national heroes, the media includes Kimathi among the ranks, showing this famous image.
I don't know if Kimathi is actually the national hero that he's now portrayed to be. His added prestige these days may involve more than a little white-washing: click here for a colonial police officer's less favorable remembrance of Mau-Mau, with its own share of vicious, brutal internecine warfare.
I'll miss Kimathi on that wall, not because I think he ought to be praised, as I'm sure the artist intended, but because that image reminded me of something else. The British labeled him a terrorist, Mau-Mau fighters called him their martyr, and the Kenyan elites dismissed him as a leader of criminals. In death, Kimathi is all of these things and none of them. That's the Kimathi I saw looking out at me, someone who lost control of his own destiny.
This is an uneventful walk. Trees, grass, mud, litter, a women selling bananas and peanuts out of a small green basin, and the guys painting the large clay pots that are sold alongside the road. Along the dirt road in front of our office, is something of a nursery with a couple dozen people watering plants, or haggling with prospective buyers.
Last week Monday, I had something of a surprise, when I walked by the Paresian Center—home to a dentist firm, a World Vision office, and a couple other organizations/businesses—and found a large white rectangle of paint on the surrounding wall.
I looked at it for a second, trying to understand what happened. There used to be a nice large painting there of a man in a hospital bed with a quote next to it. It was one of the best public paintings I'd seen in Nairobi—in Kenya.
When I first looked at the painting, back in August, I was ignorant. The painting seemed loud, like it was making a statement, and struck me as too specific in its detail to be just another sick person in a hospital bed. But I couldn't make the connection. Could it really be just another painting about HIV/AIDs?
On October 20th, I discovered who it was. The 20th is a national holiday in Kenya, called Kenyatta Day, after Kenya's first President Jomo Kenyatta. The holiday was originally meant to invoke the (intellectual) heroes of Kenya's liberation from British colonialism: a group that included Kenyatta and his eventual successor Daniel arap Moi.
What the holiday (under Moi and Kenyatta) did not emphasize were the people who violently fought the British during the Mau-Mau rebellion. These people, generally from an “ethnic group” called the Gikuyu, hid in the forests, swore secret oaths, launched attacks on white settlers, and created enormous panic for the colonial rulers. Among their numerous frustrations, perhaps the chief one was that the colonial settlers stole their land.
The rebellion led to the declaration of an eight-year state of emergency, imprisonments of hundreds of thousands Gikuyu, and tens of thousands of deaths. Locally, it's seen as what triggered the British to give up its colonial rule of Kenya. (Though, since this was replicated all across Africa with all of the colonial powers suddenly granting independence roughly around the same time, it's unclear that the Mau-Mau rebellion caused or even speeded up Kenya's independence.)
When Kenyatta came to power, he was quick to distance himself from the Mau-Mau fighters, calling them a bunch of thugs and criminals. This might seem ironic since the British imprisoned Kenyatta as one of the leaders of the rebellion. In fact, it was strategic: he wanted to portray himself as a national leader, a national hero; not someone who would be held ransom to the demands of Mau-Mau fighters, or even one ethnic group. (Kenya says it has 42.)
As Kenyatta's increasingly dictatorial regime gave way to Moi's overwhelmingly corrupt one, Kenyans, especially Gikuyu decendents, began to mythologize Mau-Mau fighters as brave and creative warriors who fought for Kenya's independence—a struggle that was now continuing against their own rulers to bring democracy and justice to a country that failed to live up to pre-colonial rhetoric.
No fighter is more remembered or more mythologized than Dedan Kimathi. Once captured in 1952, he escaped with the help of local police. A year later he became a field commander, coordinating the Mau-Mau forest fighters for three years. The British labeled him a terrorist and finally shot and captured him. An ailing Kimathi lay in a hospital bed, awaiting his death sentence.
That, of course, was the painted-over image on the wall that I saw. That painting may be lost, but Kimathi's legacy lives on. The Kenyan government has now commissioned for a statue of him to be built; he's already the central character in Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o 's play “The Trial of Dedan Kimathi”; and he has a street named after him in Nairobi. Since Kenyatta Day is meant to remember national heroes, the media includes Kimathi among the ranks, showing this famous image.
I don't know if Kimathi is actually the national hero that he's now portrayed to be. His added prestige these days may involve more than a little white-washing: click here for a colonial police officer's less favorable remembrance of Mau-Mau, with its own share of vicious, brutal internecine warfare.
I'll miss Kimathi on that wall, not because I think he ought to be praised, as I'm sure the artist intended, but because that image reminded me of something else. The British labeled him a terrorist, Mau-Mau fighters called him their martyr, and the Kenyan elites dismissed him as a leader of criminals. In death, Kimathi is all of these things and none of them. That's the Kimathi I saw looking out at me, someone who lost control of his own destiny.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)
