Thread by @Owaahh

The Mau Mau was a class war that played out, as these things often do, as a generational war. Almost any actual leader you can think of was in their 30s and 20s in 1952.

Kimathi was 32,
Mwariama was 24,
Matheng’e was 33,
Itote was 30,
Muthoni was 19...

Even among the Kapenguria 6, Jomo might as well have been a grandfather.

The true Mau Mau and radicals among them were in the same age bracket as those in the forest.

Kaggia was 31,
Kubai was 35,
Ngei was 29,
Oneko was 32...

Lukas Pkech, who led the Pokot uprising shortly before the Mau Mau, was also in the same age demographic.

Their small acts of protest were also subversive and daring.

Ngei punched a white cop.
Kimathi and his bro left a “come at me bro!” letter outside a military barracks.

Chotara was a minor convicted of murder, who had escaped prison once before and now had to be kept with the “world’s most dangerous men”, when he tried to shank Kamau wa Ngengi in prison.

The Mau Mau esp. were basically eating the rich, who just happened to be the old folks they had grown up seeing acquire wealth and power for themselves and their kids. That explains this massacre, for example,

nation.co.ke/news/Lari-mass…

The Second Liberation was also a class war that played out in part as a generational one. The people we celebrate now, all of them bar a few, were in their 20s and 30s in the 1970s-1990s.

They might mythologize it now but Moi knew what was happening. His reaction was replenish his own ranks with people from the same demographic.

@skmusyoka was 32 when he first became MP.
@MusaliaMudavadi was 32 when he became minister of finance, after a brief internship.

Jirongo was 30 when he led YK’92.

Ruto was 31 when he first became MP.

Uhuru was just 36 when Moi started preparing the way for him.

This was the reaction to what had happened from the late ‘70s when the telling signs of a class war escalated.

Ngugi wa Thiong’o was 39 in 1977. His co-author in the famous play, (and the one who probably wrote most of it) Ngugi wa Mirií was 26 at the time.

Another example is the 1982 coup.

Ochuka was 29. I can’t find Oteyo’s age but he should have been roughly the same age. The bulk of the Air Force must have been around the same age because it (the AF) was founded just 18years before and (cont...)

(cont...) and the Air Force, unlike the army, mostly required specific skills only young people had in abundance, or had the youth to learn them. It explains why Moi disbanded the entire unit after the coup, and then incubated it within the army until its ranks were older...

The problem with the coup actually now looks like an inter-demographic fight, with class elements. The ages of the jet pilots who subverted plans to bomb State House, and fought on the streets under Gen. Mohammed, fell roughly in the same demographic (20s and 30s)

I forgot to point out that Kamlesh Pattni was just 26 when he did the thing with ghost gold.