Thread by @Owaahh

Have you ever heard of "Kamau Maithori" the secret group that emerged around independence, complete with oathing and such, to demand settlement for displaced Kikuyus in Central Province, or permanent settlement in R. Valley?

Also, anyone have or know where I can get a copy of "A Love Affair with the Sun: A Memoir of Seventy Years in Kenya" by Michael Blundell?

I am willing to buy a second hand copy.

In Kikuyu "Kamau Maithori" means "Kamau in tears" or something close to that. It could be (and most likely was) "Kamau who makes people cry."

The main issue in the lead up to independence was land, land held by white farmers who wanted to ensure they could still hold it in a new Kenya.

They chose Jomo Kenyatta because he assured them he wouldn't interfere with their holdings.

It is only after this assurance that the colonial government moves Kenyatta from Lodwar to semi-detention in Maralal (Where @UKenyatta was conceived).

The problem is that the deal Kenyatta made, and his subsequent choice of Bruce Mackenzie as Lands Minister, favored white settlers over the landless millions in KE.

...thousands of now landless Mau Mau detainees were also released in the early 1960s, placing even greater pressure on Kenyatta, and also building Moi's position as President of R. Valley.

As it became clear there would be no 'free land', here meaning spaces to settle within C. Province or even an assurance of permanent settlement in the R. Valley, people started taking oaths again.

This is where "Kamau Maithori" comes in, as a secret organisation whose members were bound by an oath.

We know little about them, their leaders, or even the extend of their intentions.

On both sides in R. Valley, this land question would keep resurfacing, and would build Moi's stature as, in many ways "the gateway to peace in the RV."

But Moi didn't want to solve the problems, he wanted to use them as a tool against his political enemies. As he would to Seroney in the late '60s, and to Kikuyus in R. Valley in the '90s.

Note here that contrary to our collective history, the Mau Mau as a fighting force, although subdued, survived until at least 1964. It was Jomo who actually killed the revolution, through murder, bribery, and cajoling.

Independence, and the lead up to it, created even more landless people as squatters were kicked out of farms as their former employers sold their landholdings.

Slowly, several new organisations surfaced with the same aims the Mau Mau had had a decade before.

Kamau Maithori was just one of several. Others were Kiama kia Muingi (different from the pre-Mau Mau one) and Kiama kia Hathara (Society of Loss).

The solution to this was diabolical, if nothing else. Outside of the military and political solutions, the British government gave Kenyatta and Co. money to buy farms to resettle the landless.

What the emerging elite came up with benefitted them by requiring new farm owners to repay land, meaning those who were already economically disillusioned remained poor, and in many cases, landless.

This is how. Those who could afford such things in the early '60s were collaborators who had survived the darkness of the '50s. They had money and connections, which the landless didn't.

In many ways, how Jomo handled the land question made independence meaningless for the majority beyond its sentimental value.

Was there a better way to handle this, given the realities of the day? I think so.

(Several people have pointed out that "Kamau Maithori may either have been an open threat to or lamentation about Jomo, using his 'Kikuyu' name.)