Luo, Luhya and different communities that took Mau Mau oath

On this file image taken in April 1953 captured suspected Mau Mau fighters are marched in the direction of Githunguri courtroom in Central Kenya. PHOTO | AFP

Final week I attended a three-day worldwide convention on the College of Nairobi celebrating the seventieth anniversary of the British declaration of a State of Emergency in Kenya in October 1952. The theme of the convention was “Recasting Mau Mau Discourse: Reflections on the Declaration of the State of Emergency 70 years later.”

The declaration adopted the necessity to crush the rise of an armed Mau Mau motion, an anti-colonial battle primarily within the colony’s central and Rift Valley areas. It gave the colonial authorities energy to reply heavy-handedly and legitimised the ban on Mau Mau as a terrorist organisation and the mass detention of adherents, suspects, and sympathisers.

Relying on the storyteller, all sides demonises the opposite facet, however info are cussed, and the reality is there was brutality on either side as is the case in lots of warfare eventualities.

From 1952 to 1956 (when the emergency was lifted), the federal government meted out harassment, detentions with out trial, assassinations, crude brutality, sexual violence, and a myriad of different atrocities in opposition to Africans. The variety of African deaths throughout this era is estimated by some historians to be between 50,000 and 100,000.

Conversely, the Mau Mau visited terror on their very own individuals together with homicide in chilly blood, rape, torture, and different strategies, instilling concern on those that refused to take the Mau Mau oath, perceived loyalists, and collaborators of the colonial authorities. It’s estimated that the Mau Mau killed 1,800 African civilians. It’s also on document that the Mau Mau murdered 32 European civilians in the middle of the emergency.

The Mau Mau motion is usually depicted as a spontaneous rebellion of savage Kikuyu peasants utilizing primitive and brutal strategies to agitate for the return of their land and liberation from the yoke of British colonialism.

The Mau Mau oath could be traced again to as early as 1943 in Olenguruone the place the federal government presupposed to resettle surplus Kikuyu squatters overflowing from White-owned farms within the Rift Valley. The Olenguruone Kikuyu refused to signal the oppressive settlement settlement after a gathering with the Chief Native Commissioner, Hosking, and refused to go away the realm as ordered.

To cement resistance, most Kikuyu within the space got the Kikuyu Central Affiliation (KCA) oath resulting in a widespread motion of protest which unfold to neighbouring White-owned farms the place they maimed settler livestock and set hearth to property in a sequence of wildcat strikes. The Olenguruone Kikuyu initiated a brand new oath of unity, one which subsequently fashioned the idea of the Mau Mau oath. It represented a dedication to defy the federal government and had been taken by the complete inhabitants of Olenguruone by 1946.

Later that yr, informers suggested the federal government the extent of the oath-taking, and the authorities heightened the extent of harassment in Olenguruone, confiscating livestock, harvest, and finally arresting their leaders. Lastly, poor, hungry, and really offended, many had been deported to Yatta in Ukambani whereas others had been sentenced to jail. Because the detainees had been awaiting their deportation orders to be processed, they had been held on the Nairobi Remand Residence within the Industrial Space the place they’d meet members of the clandestine post-war freedom fighter Forty Group and alternate notes.

The principle affect of the Olenguruone squatters was not a lot to radicalise KCA however to accentuate their combativeness. The brand new militants who emerged in consequence, would later turn into the core of the motion referred to as Mau Mau.

My important takeaway from the convention was that the Mau Mau was not solely a Kikuyu affair nor was it restricted to central Kenya and the Rift Valley. David Anderson in his presentation detailed how some Kikuyu had fled to Moshi and Arusha and fashioned Mau Mau cells there, administering the oath to residents who supported the trigger. A lot to the chagrin of the Governor of Tanganyika on the time, Sir Edward Francis Twining, Kenya established detention camps in Loliondo and different outposts in his territory.

Elsewhere, the listing of detainees who died in the course of the Hola Bloodbath included Taitas, coastal individuals and different non-Kikuyus. A report by the Kenya colony intelligence alleged that round 1,000 Luo and Luhya tribesmen had taken the Mau Mau between 1953 and 1954 in Nairobi.

The colonial authorities contrived the Kikuyu-only narrative to demonise the Kikuyu and to dissuade different tribes from becoming a member of in an try and weaken the motion. Later at independence, and the interval that adopted, sure Kikuyu components used this narrative to realize a bonus for themselves.

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