Thread by @wmnjoya

To start this thread on a fascinating article on the history of the Mau Mau in the early 60's, I'm going to contextualize it with these two articles by Grace Musila and Dan Ojwang.

In this one, Grace Musila argues that because crimes and injustices are never resolved in Kenya, we resort to rumors as our source of information and news.
academic.oup.com/afraf/article-…

In this one, Dan Ojwang says that information in Kenya is so inaccessible. The government doesn't say what it's doing, the media doesn't ask questions, and education system crushes arts & humanities) and GoK (thru guys like Ezekiel Mutua) censors the arts. ajol.info/index.php/ai/a…

Ojwang says that lack of information and creativity leads to impotent intellectuals and public amnesia, so that politicians keep moving us from deadly election conflict, through a period of corruption and misrule, till the next deadly election conflict. ajol.info/index.php/ai/a…

That is the background against which I read this article by Anais Angelo about how the British and the Kenyatta bureaucrats effectively disarmed the Mau Mau movement.
tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.10…

.@angeloanai's argument is quite fascinating. The British government and Kenyan bureaucrats used tactics to help Jomo use Mau Mau for its symbolic power while crushing the Mau Mau political power.

For Jomo to use the symbolic power, this is what they did:

1. Jomo associated himself with the Mau Mau by inviting some of its former generals and detainees to be part of government. These included

a. Waruhiu Itote, known as General China, who was "rehabilitated" to work under Griffin in NYS

b. Jackson Angaine as Minister for lands. Angaine had been arrested by colonial authorities in 1954, and it's not clear whether it was for murder or for supporting Mau Mau.

And that's the point: everything must remain unclear. The authorities must never take a clear position.

The appointment of Angaine was not a coincidence. Angaine was from Meru, where the Mau Mau resistance remained military until General Baimungi was killed by Kenyatta's forces in 1965.

Meru, not Kikuyuland, was the "last bation of the Mau Mau resistance AFTER independence."

2. The second tactic of Jomo was to isolate Mau Mau leaders. He did this with Field Marshall Mwariama whom he received in Gatundu in the glare of international media in December 1963.

Before I get to what Angelo says about Mwariama, let's recall these facts.

Dedan Kimathi was killed in 1957. KLFA (Kenya Land Freedom Army) did not disband.

Jomo was released in 1961. The persistence of KLFA was awkward for KANU which was trying to win power "constitutionally."

So Jomo needed to silence Mau Mau for the British, without being seen to do so by Africans.

The 1963 meeting with Mwariama was therefore called to offer amnesty to the "gangsters" in the forest and demobilize Mau Mau in the name of accepting independence.

But KLFA refused to demobilize. They remained in the forest under General Baimungi, with two demands: free distribution of land, and integration of veterans in the Kenya army. Jomo wanted neither.

In 1964, the government arrested Mwariama, who was later jailed, and then released

And this is where the ambuigity tactic began.

- The central government told nobody, not even its own local authorities, that it released Mwariama.

- The media started reporting that Mwariama was a "moderate" unlike Baimungi, essentially isolating Mwariama from the movement

Both media and government were essentially in a propaganda war to persuade people to leave the forest and support the government.

By 1964, Jomo had not yet visited the Embu-Meru region, and rumors (!) circulated that he was afraid of the forest fighters.

So in July 1964, Jomo made some tightly staged visits to the area. @StandardKenya reported that Jomo was "warmly welcomed."

Jomo promised goodies for development, and again distinguished Mwariama as a moderate, from Baimungi who was "spoiling Meru's reputation."

@StandardKenya But Baimungi would not surrender.

So in January 1965, General Baimungi and General Chui were killed in a government swoop on the forest. The explainations (reported by media) are familiar.

"the men opened fire on the police after their forest camp was ambushed and surrounded."

@StandardKenya The police operation "followed a fresh wave of intimidation, terrorism and cattle thefts in the Meru district."

The order for the operation was never written directly. It was kept vague and untraceable to Jomo.

@StandardKenya Eliud Mahihu, Eastern PC, said that their meeting decided to use "appropriate methods to disperse" but not what specific methods they were.

He warned that "*whatever method* was decided upon, care must be taken not to expose the President to political criticism."

@StandardKenya "Mahihu wrote to Duncan Ndegwa, PS Office of the President, that he wished ‘to explain in greater detail what exactly happened on the nights of 25th and 26th January, 1965" but with no specifics, "arguing that Ndegwa had already taken note of their *previous conversation*."

@StandardKenya Angelo concludes:

Jomo's politics on Mau Mau was

1. "to be both Mau Mau and anti-Mau Mau at the same time."
2. to "silence Mau Mau but not completely forget"
3. to crush "the Mau Mau as a movement" [collective] by disorganizing and isolating individuals

@StandardKenya 4. to always remind his critics that he had Mau Mau links

5. manipulate Mau Mau symbols to his benefit

6. violently repress the Mau Mau "in order to deprive freedom fighters of their leaders and to force them to retreat into silence."

@StandardKenya 7. to "refrain from intervening personally [in the government's interactions with the Mau Mau] to preserve the ambiguity that surrounded his relationship to the Mau Mau, and that his trial in 1952 had, although unwillingly, established."

@StandardKenya END of Angelo's article.

This takes me back to my comments on Musila and Ojwang's article.

Ambiguity has always been the tactic of this colonial state. Whatever they do is not put on record. GoK always maintains silence or simply denies, denies denies any time it's questioned.

@StandardKenya This was my experience of GoK when I was asking about CBC. To this day, they have not availed the documentation indicating who made the decision to pick CBC or why. From April 2017 when I started asking questions, KICD stayed mum until December 2017.

@StandardKenya Any questions about the foreigners involved, the feedback of teachers, is always met by denial. They just say "no," and "I don't know what you're talking about." I challenge them to a debate with the Kenyan scholars whom KICD says wrote CBC, they never show up.

@StandardKenya CBC therefore came from heaven or was brought by the wind. No one is responsible.

This means that we Kenyans have to have very specific ways to fight the corruption and misrule.

We have to hold people to account and refuse to be bullied by the question "where is the evidence?"

@StandardKenya Answers like "Kenya is you and me" or "sasa mnataka nifanye nini" are not acceptable. If money is stolen and no one is convicted, we should not accept the Waiguru defense of "even I don't know." Politicians & civil servants should be answerable for what happens under their watch.

@StandardKenya And Kenyans should refuse this vague association of Kenyatta's with Mau Mau. Even if kumira kumira people don't mind ambiguity, we Kenyans should refuse it. And we should stop personality politics and do what Baimungi demanded: a specific position on land and the economy.

@StandardKenya Any politician claiming to be support his people traumatized by the colonial state should be asked not whom they like, but what their stand is on
1. inequality
2. universal social services
3. the end of land feudal economy.
We must stop being seduced by freedom credentials.
END.