Thread by @historykenya101

THE MAU MAU AND THE KENYATTA BETRAYAL.

Like a daredevil holding the tiger by the tail, Jomo Kenyatta lived through revolutions making friends and discarding them at his convenience.

Was Kenyatta the national hero or a villain? Was he a nationalist or an opportunist?

Jomo Kenyatta, the young man who fled Kiambu at the onset of the World War II to avoid conscription, had a sharp mind and exploited the earliest opportunity that came his way and he had a knack for spotting trouble.

Kenyatta’s name evokes different memories in different people with some dismissing him as a sellout, who used his comrades-in-arms as ladder to climb to power and later kicked them aside.

To apologists, he is the greatest freedom hero,Kenya ever produced for his sacrifice in the liberation struggle.Whatever their standpoints,foes & friends agree Jomo was charismatic & his life, pains struggles & triumphs are entwined with the country’s destiny for better or worse.

By 1963, Kenya became independent with Jomo Kenyatta as founding leader. The new government was made up of so-called “moderates”, rather than the “radicals” who had supported Mau Mau claims.

When Kenya’s last Governor Sir Patrick Renison denounced Kenyatta as leader of darkness and death in 1960, he was misinformed, for if was privy to intelligence reports, he would have known better.

This was like a crown on a man who had been threatened with death by a group of hardcore Mau Mau militants, shortly before he was arrested in 1952, because he was too moderate and had even denounced their guerilla tactics.

Kenyatta’s relationship to the movement was ambiguous. The British arrested him in 1952 on suspicion of being one of its leaders. But after independence his pleas to “forgive and forget the past” were often accompanied by a clear dissociation from the Mau Mau.

He continued to describe them as a “disease” and they remained banned under Kenyatta and his successor Daniel arap Moi.

Kenyatta's moderate approach toward the whites would put him at loggerheads with the Mau² radicals who plotted to kill him. The plot to assassinate him had been hatched by a group operating within the KAU party to disguise its activities but was secretly code-named ‘Muhimu’.

So secret was this group that Mau Mau survivors feign ignorance or simply describe it as the name of their last oath before entering the forest. Nobody was and has ever been willing to talk on the secrets of the Muhimu group to date.

“These militants were Kenyatta’s enemies and he feared them. He spoke against the violence of Mau Mau during 1951 and 1952 because he saw it as uncontrolled and undisciplined,” writes David Anderson, in his book, ‘The Histories of the Hanged.’

The task of eliminating Kenyatta was assigned to Fred Kubai, a member of ‘Muhimu’, which was led by Eliud Mutonyi, JD Kaggia, James Beuttah and Paul Ngei. Kaggia alluded to this plot in his book, ‘Roots of Freedom’.

But Kubai while in detention delegated this assassination duty to a teenage called Kariuki Chotara who was caught by the prison guards on his way to accomplish the mission.

The violent group had been started by a group of veterans who participated in the World War II, only to return home to joblessness and poverty in Nairobi’s Eastlands.Code-named ‘Anake a Forty’ (Young men of forties),some veterans drifted into crime and later plunged into politics

Earlier, the militants, who had electrified the whole country with sessions of mass oath administration and killing suspected traitors, had humiliated Kenyatta during KAU elections in Nairobi.

During the KAU elections on June 10, 1951 at Kaloneni, Nairobi, they wrestled the party leadership from Kenyatta’s group, who they considered cowardly.

Kenyatta was indeed lucky he and other freedom fighters (the famous Kapenguria six) were arrested during the Operation Jock stock on October 20, 1952. Others who opposed the Mau Mau met violent deaths.

Kenyatta was lucky in the sense that, the arrest helped him raise his bar among the ignorant Kenyans who saw him as the true nationalist and the arrest kept him away from the radical Mau Mau who wanted him dead for what they saw as signs of weakness in him.

Kenyatta’s friend, Henry Mworia was to write in the book White Man’s Fury that Mau Mau was a creation of the former enemies, who wanted to antagonise the Kikuyu community by spreading hate and violence.

Such was the plight meted on Chief Nderi of Nyeri when he stumbled on a group of Mau Mau administering oaths in his location in broad daylight.He was hacked to pieces after he attempted to disperse them.

Kenyatta had earlier stoked controversy, when he was sent to Britain by the Kikuyu Central Association, but had to be recalled after he overstayed and literally slept with the enemy.

He married a white woman (Edna Clarke) and even sired a kid with him (Peter Magana), according to the radical Mau Mau fighters and sympathizers, this was an action of betrayal. What they termed as a general going to bed with the daughter of the enemy.

Mworia, who had acted as Kenyatta’s bridge with Kenya by publishing his letters in ‘Mumenyereri’, explains that Kenyatta had been prevented from returning to Kenya.

“At one time when I was staying in London,I asked those in authority to let me return home for six months & talk to my people & then kill me if they wanted,but they refused,” Mworia writes about one of Kenyatta’s letters in his book.

When he came back in 1946, he married, Senior Chief Koinange’s daughter, Wanjiku, startling mau mau extremists who treated all provincial administrators as traitors.

In his usual two faces, he then joined his brother-in-law, Mbiyu Koinange in running Githunguri Teachers College, funded by all age groups of the Gikuyu community. Yes,FUNDED BY KIKUYU PEOPLE

Mr Karanja wa Kiondo,82, recalls this was the genesis of Kenyatta’s bid to unify people

“He was fond of administering oaths.I remember he would ensure everybody involved in running the college was sworn to loyalty to the community & public,” he recalls.

Another elder, James Karanja recalls how Jomo would receive contributions from each age group in Central Province

“You could not be appointed by the elders to take money to Githunguri if you had not taken an oath. On arrival at Githunguri, another oath had to be administered to bide you with the others,” Waweru adds.

Waweru recalls how on in April 1952, KAU leading politicians Kenyatta, Kubai, Kaggia, Ngei and Kung’u Karumba attended a meeting in Ol’Kalou and later retreated to Peninah Wambui’s house.

“Kenyatta gave instructions that oath be administered to some new members he later left. Later that night the six men were arrested and taken to Naivasha. Their case became significant because the name Mau Mau had gained prominence,” he adds.

Long after the last of the Mau Mau seven generals had crawled out of the forest, a group of 3,000 former freedom fighters visited President Kenyatta at Gatundu, seeking compensation for the money they had contributed earlier when he was at Githunguri with Koinange.

“We were led by our chairman Ezekiel Tumbo Mwai, and upon listening to us, Kenyatta told us he had no money as he had used our compensation to settle the landless in parts of the white highlands. He said he had nothing to give us,” Waweru adds.

You can imagine the shock that befell on this group that was seeking what was rightfully theirs. For this and his address in Nakuru where he told panicking white farmers that Kenya was large enough to accommodate blacks and whites, Mau Mau freedom fighters felt betrayed.

But the MAU MAU group that suffered the greatest betrayal was the Meru group led by their leaders Field Marshal Musa Mwariama, General Baimungi Marete (second in command after Dedan Kimathi) and General Chui.

Meru district stood out as a particularly sensitive area. There, Mau Mau fighters holed up in the forests refused to surrender. Whereas virtually all Mau Mau leaders had either been killed or coopted in what was then Central Province, fighters in Meru held firm & stayed in forest

After independence, Their actions were closely monitored by govt officers. The govt’s fear was that if not dispersed from the forest, the remaining fighters & recently released Mau² detainees would form a separate mvmt. The revival of Mau² was a threat to the new political order.

Archival files documents how the govt was trying to neutralise resilient Mau² fighters. Ministers & govt officials repeatedly toured Meru district offering amnesty for those who would surrender. Police action to clear the forest risked being highly unpopular & even unproductive.

In the end the government chose to coopt remaining leaders, or target them. Mwariama finally surrendered early in 1964. The government hoped to use him as an intermediary to negotiate with Baimungi and Chui—in vain. The two remained firm on Mau Mau demands for free lands.

This resilience risked strengthening the voice of the populist opposition, led by Jaramogi Oginga Odinga and Bildad Kaggia whose main demand was that land alienated by colonisers be redistributed for free.

The government, on the other hand, was driving its land policy of “willing buyer, willing seller”.

Nobody knows where Kenyatta expected the MAU MAU fighters would get money from after spending 10 years in the forest

On 26 January 1965 Baimungi & Chui were both killed by police.

The history of general Baimungi Marete who took over the leadership of Mau Mau following the death of Dedan Kimathi was & is still to date an ignored one. Going through history books taught in our schools, there is no mention of the Meru group because they irked the govt wrongly.

The MAU MAU history is very limited in our schools. A closer look at history curriculum in schools reveals that MAU MAU history is given three pages shallow explanation in form three, while the "nationalists" are given a whole topic that describes their "good" deeds for kenya.