Kenya Colonialism and Resistance
Civilised or Savages: Natives or Terrorists?
The terrorists who refused to cooperate with the Imperial occupier forced the brutal colonial regime out of Kenya
How history will judge current world leaders and their actions: Putin? Netanyahu? Biden? Others?
And what about the people currently called terrorists? Will the world’s bad guys get a make over and become heroes after all?
When history is written by the victors — are we on the right or wrong side of history.
I can’t predict the future but I know what’s happened in the past.
You don’t have to go too far back in history to find many examples of lies and corruption at the highest levels that eventually become exposed.
And many criminals, trouble makers, and “terrorists” are celebrated when they are redefined as heroes, freedom fighters, and national leaders such as Ho Chi Minh, Sukarno, Michael Collins in Ireland, Garibald in Italy, Begin in Israel, Suu Kyi, Gandhi, and Mandela
Nelson Mandela in South Africa
Nelson Mandela might be the most famous man of the twentieth century who rose through the ranks from terrorist to the elevated position of President of South Africa. He didn’t change, but society did. He spent 27 years in prison and international pressure, including sanctions and boycotts forced Africa to abandon apartheid.
Mehdi E. wrote about Mandela the terrorist here:
https://medium.com/lessons-from-history/why-was-nelson-mandela-considered-a-terrorist-3d3034ffbe14
Jomo Kenyatta in Kenya
You’ve heard about Mandela and apartheid.
But you probably haven’t heard about the resistance fighters who sought to overthrow the brutal British colonial regime in Kenya.
In 1953, the Kapenguria Six were (wrongly) sentenced for leading the Mau Mau uprising. One of the convicted men was Jomo Kenyatta, who, in the 1960s, became the Prime Minister and then the President.
British Occupation meant Violence in Kenya
It can’t be overstated just how awful the British were in Kenya or how many people they killed. The transatlantic slave trade is well known, but few people are aware of the shameful behavior of the British on the African continent.
The British conquered the Kenyan land in the late nineteenth century “scramble for Africa”. A few years later, settlers arrived, taking great swathes of land — the prime agricultural land — into their own private ownership, thereby disrupting traditional ways of living and land usage..
The British ruthlessly imposed a new way of life as if the natives had no right to use the land as they had previously done. With lives uprooted and land fenced in, the indigenous people were forced to work for low wages.
The African Reserves and Rise of Mau Mau
Over time, the people were gathered into “reserves” (the African Reserves formalized in 1926), where the imperialist masters governed their entire lives and movements. They were enslaved on the African continent.
The Mau Mau were an outlawed resistance movement.
The Mau Mau were not one or two leaders but thousands of people — rural peasants who wanted control over their live and access to land.
In the new British Channel 4 documentary, A Very British Way of Torture, we see how, at the time, the British described the Mau Mau as terrorists and devils, using language that demonized and dehumanized them, which also helped to make violence against them tolerable.
The Mau Mau fought back against brutal oppression for years, but by the late 1950s, depending on your viewpoint, they appeared defeated, and it seemed hopeless.
It turned out this wasn’t true.
Terrorists made the African Colonial Project Too Costly
Keeping the rebels down was costly, and the relentless resistance over many years made lasting occupation an unattractive and unviable proposition.
Eventually, the financial burden of suppressing the Kenyans simply didn’t stack up. In addition, pressure was mounting inside the British government because it knew an unacceptable torture regime was being used in Kenya’s prison camps, which resulted in injuries and deaths.
Public Face and Moral High Ground
They were sitting on a potentially huge damaging scandal if it came out the the British was behind systematic torture. People were tortured to death. Men were castrated. People were blinded.
There were thousands of people, in concentration camps suffering inhuman torture, and it’s estimated 20,000 Kenyans died. It isn’t possible to come up with a true figure for the numbers who died.
Legitimacy
All this torture was because some people rejected the legitimacy of the British to seize all the land and they refused to cooperate in the imperial project.
The British withdrew, and Kenya achieved independence on 12 December 1963.
Freedom Fighters Won In Africa
From around the world, resistance fighters against colonial oppression can draw encouragement from the Mau Mau because it shows results are possible from a seemingly hopeless position. It show what can be achieved by sticking together.
They certainly aren’t the only natives who eventually drove out the occupiers.
The impact of colonialism and resistance has been huge and lasting.
In Kenya, the land was only under colonial rule for seven decades. It was long enough to
- destroy how people had once lived;
- wipe out families and communities;
- murder countless people;
- displace people
The new independent nation was built by people suffering the most awful trauma.
In 2013, Britain finally agreed to pay compensation to 5,228 elderly Kenyans who had suffered torture and abuse at the hands of the British.
Britain paid an out-of-court settlement and admitted no liability.
Keeping the case out of court helped to keep much of the details of the barbaric torture camps out of the focus of the media and the public. Full details are in the Channel 4 video, A Very British Way of Torture.
I’d encourage you to read these by Kenyan writers on Medium:
Of Mau Mau Rebellion and my mother’s birthday | by Judy Wanjiku Jørgensen | Medium
Kenyan Independence: Appreciating the Mau Mau | by Diva Shah | Medium
Myself, I studied Kenya as a university student in 1980s London. That’s also when I came across the fiction of Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, in the public library. Hungry for insight, I devoured his novels and I have since bought my own copies of them. He wrote vivid stories set in those times.
CONCLUSION
I am delighted the dark days of Kenya under colonial rule isn’t getting forgotten or brushed to one side.
The details are being explored and shared so that we can understand why such terrible events took place and guard against such evils occurring again.
Living through events is very different than viewing thing them from a far off distant place.
It appears that certain sadistic people are attracted to those posts where they can torture without any restraint and people higher up are willing to cover up such horrific deeds if it will reflect badly on them or their organisation.
We must reject the bland sanitizing of Kenyan history.
- There was a brutal invasion at the end of the 19th century.
- The British stayed by force and manipulation.
- They had cruel sadists in key positions who would do things most people couldn’t.
- They had a divide and rule strategy of promoting a few natives to do the dirty work and labelling a section of people as “loyalists” when they were not.
- The rebels were too great to silence. Thousands stood together in the face of torture and death because life under colonial rule was that bad.
- The colonizers were forced out by the continued resistance.
The British did not willingly end their colonial project. They didn’t willingly end the occupation of Africa. They didn’t graciously hand over power to local people.
The British were forced out of Africa by the heroic resistance of thousands of ordinary local people who were expected to exist in intolerable conditions. If you know Kenyan history, there is no other way to read it.
