KENYA@50: ENJOY IT, YOU FOUGHT FOR IT

What history say

By John Blanshe Musinguzi

As Ngugi and Githae Mugo writes, the girl wondered how Britons arrested Dedan Kimathi. She believed that he was not the one arrested. She retells the story of how once Kimathi wrote a letter to the governor. He said he would dine with the governor at the state house. The collected all the police in Nairobi to come and arrest him. But Kimathi disguised himself as a police officer and went there. The next day, he wrote a letter to the governor thanking him for the dinner and it was signed by Kimathi himself.

The boy too wondered how a man who would turn himself into aero plane could be arrested. This is how far the struggle for independence in Kenya reached. I took interest in reading this play because my brother who studied from a better school, Kitabi Seminary used to tell us stories from novels and plays they read.

  The first struggle was led by Harry Thuku to protest against the white-settler dominance in the government. He was the leader of the East African Association. Thuku was arrested by the colonial authorities in 1922 and was exiled for seven years. His arrest resulted in the massacre of twenty-three Africans outside Nairobi's Central police station. He was later released after accepting to work with the colonialists.

Jomo Kenyatta joined the struggle in 1924 where he became involved in early African protest movements, joining the Kikuyu Central Association (KCA).  In 1929 and 1931 Kenyatta visited England to present KCA demands for the return of African land lost to European settlers and for increased political and economic opportunity for Africans in Kenya, which had become a colony within British East Africa in 1920. Following World War II (1939-1945), Kenyatta became an outspoken nationalist, demanding Kenyan self-government and independence from Great Britain. With other African nationalists such as Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, Kenyatta helped organize the fifth Pan-African Congress in Great Britain in 1945. The congress, modeled after the four congresses organized by black American intellectual W. E. B. Du Bois between 1919 and 1927 and attended by black leaders and intellectuals from around the world, affirmed the goals of African nationalism and unity. In September 1946 Kenyatta returned to Kenya, and in June 1947 he became president of the first colony-wide African political organization, the Kenya African Union (KAU), which had been formed more than two years earlier. KAU's efforts to win self-government under African leadership were unsuccessful, however, and African resistance to colonial policies and the supremacy of European settlers in Kenya became more militant. The Mau Mau Movement began among the Gikuyu who shared the same grievances with all other Kenyan peoples. At the same time, land shortages among the Gikuyu were particularly bad. There were many settler farms in Gikuyuland and a lot of Gikuyu land had been taken for European settlement. In 1952 the Mau Mau began advocating violence against the colonial government and white settlers. Kenyatta did not advocate violence but the colonial authorities arrested him and five other KAU leaders in October 1952 for allegedly being part of Mau Mau. The six leaders were tried and, in April 1953, convicted. While Kenyatta was confined the Mau Mau were fighting a guerilla war. Most of the fighting took place in the Central Province, Aberdares (Nyandarua), around Mt. Kenya and in Nakuru District. There were attacks on police stations and other government offices as well as on settler farms. Dedan Kimathi, the feared leader of the Mau Mau guerrillas led the violent struggle. His capture on 21st October 1956 in Nyeri signified the ultimate defeat of the Mau Mau. He was captured in 1956 and executed in February 1957, his body was buried in an unmarked grave whose location has not been revealed even up to today. Though Mau Mau was defeated, it made it perfectly clear that the Africans in knew their rights and were prepared to fight and die for them. It also brought Kenya to the attention of the world through press and media reports. It became Impossible for the British to continue claiming that most Kenyans were happy and content under their rule.  After nine years, in August 1961, Kenyatta was released as Kenya was moving towards self-government under African leadership. Kenyatta was embraced as the colony's most important independence leader and he assumed the leadership of the Kenya African National Union (KANU), a party founded in 1960. He led the party to victory in the pre-independence elections of May 1963 and was named prime minister of Kenya in June. He led Kenya to formal independence in December of that year. Kenya was established as a republic in December 1964, and Kenyatta was elected Kenya's first president the same month. Kenya’s struggle was not as how Uganda struggled, for us the struggle was not as tough as you fought. No wonder impacts of the struggle still remain fresh in minds independence heroes. Fighters were raped, castrated, beaten and so on as they struggled to liberate the nation. Compensation by the British government even after many years cannot for example restore the manhood of those castrated. Enjoy it, you fought for it.   John Blanshe Musinguzi is a Journalism and Communication student at Makerere University