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.