Kenya SK Booklet
SK Booklet- Kenya(1952-63)
Causes for the Mau Mau Rebellion- (The emergence of Militant Nationalism):
Land shortages and evictions
From 1901, European settlers had simply taken land that they wanted in Kenya, even though the Kenyan concept of githaka (ancestral ownership) led Kenyans to believe this was theirs.
This was formalised in the 1915 Crown Land Ordinance, which divided up land by race – the whites were granted the most fertile land, the so-called ‘White Highlands’ and the Kikuyu were limited to their own reservations.
The1932 Land Commission rejected Kikuyu claims that 60,000 acres of white land be returned to Kikuyus.
Before WW2, 1 in 8 Kikuyu were ‘squatters’ or tenants on white land.
By 1948 1.25 million Kikuyu were restricted to landholding in 2,000 square miles of tribal lands, while 30,000 settlers occupied 12,000 square miles, including most of the land worth cultivating.
The modernisation of white agriculture and an economic boom caused by wartime demand led to Europeans kicking Kikuyu off their land in the 1940s/50s.
100,000 Kikuyu were forcibly evicted between 1946 and 1952. This exacerbated the problem of land hunger in the Kikuyu homelands as evicted squatters
sought a new home. Conservative Kikuyu chiefs made themselves unpopular by taking advantage of the situation and increasing rents.
Political representation:
In 1944 Kenya became the first East African territory to include an African on its Legislative Council. The number was increased to two in 1946, four in 1948, and eight in 1951, although all were appointed by the governor from a list of names submitted by local governments. This, however, did not satisfy African demands for political equality.
5 million Africans lived in Kenya in 1945, compared to 97,000 Asians and 29,000 Europeans. By 1951, the constitution fundamentally served European interests: the Legislative Council was made up of 11 elected white settlers but only 4 Africans, who were not elected but chosen by the European government.
A group of KAU activists – known as the Kiambaa Parliament – met regularly to discuss strategies of opposition to British rule and leading Kenyan resistance. However, increased white immigration after World War II – leading to white settler confidence that Kenya could become a ‘New Australia’ – made African political advancement seem unlikely.
Poverty/Unemployment:
The land issues meant there was a huge increase in the number of Kikuyu migrating to the cities; leading to poverty, unemployment and overpopulation
The Kikuyu would earn on average only a fifth of the payment which white workers would earn for the same amount of work.
Coffee growing was a rewarding industry due to the fertile land held by the Kikuyu. However, the prohibition of coffee growing imposed by the colonial government crippled the Kikuyu.
The Native Grown Coffee Rules of 1934 set regulations which meant no Kenyan could grow coffee unless he had been granted a permit.
80,000 Africans lived in the squalid slums of eastern Nairobi. This population was poor, usually supporting itself through organised crime, and highly
unionised. This alarmed the moderates: Kenyatta and the KAU frequently made public statements distancing themselves from the unions.
Therefore, when a general strike called by the East African Trade Union Congress in May 1950 was brutally suppressed by British authorities, angry Kikuyu turned to militant union leaders such as Fred Kubai.
WWII:
75,000 Kenyans fought in World War II. These men returned to Kenya with high expectations and wartime savings ready to invest.
However, they found each opportunity blocked off by conservative chiefs who wanted to save all political and economic opportunities for themselves and their allies.
War veterans therefore turned to crime and militant politics in order to get ahead. As one member of the criminal gang The Forty Group commented: “We felt that the KAU was going too slow and that the only way to change things was through violence.”
Social tensions:
From the early twentieth century, European missionaries began to establish themselves in Kenya. The education provided by these organisations led to the emergence of young, educated Kenyans who challenged traditional tribal rule. However, the missionaries campaigned against traditional Kikuyu practices they found repugnant – an aim that alienated the new breed of moderate Kikuyus.
When the missionaries launched a campaign against female circumcision during the 1930s, the moderates campaigned against them.
Crucially, they broke the missionaries’ monopoly on education, meaning that education was now controlled by the moderates, in the form of the Kikuyu Independent Schools Association.
Nature of the Rebellion:
The Looming Rebellion
Oathing was central to Kikuyu culture. By 1950, Kikuyu militants were using a new oath – the ‘Killing Oath’ – which pledged its takers to rid Kenya of Europeans and, crucially, to kill Africans who stood in the way. Those taking the oath were often told that by doing so they would be entitled to land on their farm when the Europeans were thrown out of Kenya.
On 4th April 1952, Governor Baring approved the Collective Punishment Ordinance, giving local officials authority to punish whole villages for the Mau Mau’s acts. British officials regularly confiscated the whole population’s cattle and imposed fines on the whole population. In Nairobi, the meat market – Burma Market – was burnt down to punish the Kikuyu population.
In September 1952, Joseph Kabunja and his wife refused to take the Mau Mau oath.
Kabunja was beaten and then throttled to death with a rope. Twelve days later, the Mau Mau forced other members of his village to dig up his body and hack it to pieces. They were then forced to rub his bloody flesh on their bodies. The Mau Mau wanted to show there were bloody consequences for not joining their movement
9th October: Senior Chief Waruhiu was stopped by the police whilst being driven in his car.
The Mau Mau adherents, masquerading as policemen, stopped his car, shot him in the mouth and then three times in the torso before shooting the car's tires and escaping.
A State of Emergency/ British Response
20th October: A State of Emergency is declared in Kenya by the Governor, Sir Evelyn Baring.12 aircrafts carrying the first contingent of British ground troops landed at Nairobi’s Eastleigh airfield. The soldiers drove their military vehicles through the streets of the capital to reassure the local Europeans, and intimidate the Mau Mau.
The Emergency Powers Regulation extended the crimes punishable by hanging from murder to include administering the killing oath or being a member of Mau Mau. Between 1952 and 1958, 1090 Kikuyu were hanged.
21st October: Operation Jock Scott: This code named assault was directed at Kenyatta and 180 other identified leaders of the Mau Mau. On the morning of 21st October, Kenyan policemen. Black and White, carried out arrest orders and sent identified Mau Mau leaders to Nairobi police station. This included Kenyatta.
Kenyatta was charged with five others with “managing and being a member of the Mau Mau.” The evidence was unconvincing but the judge – Judge Thacker – was paid £20,000 to provide a guilty verdict. The court sentenced Kenyatta on 8 April 1953 to seven years' imprisonment with hard labour and indefinite restriction thereafter.
In late October the farming plateau above Naivasha, the disembowel corpse of Eric Bowker, a settler and veteran of both world wars, was found in his home.
Many Kikuyu – especially conservative chiefs who had benefited from British rule –opposed Mau Mau. Facing Mau Mau attacks, they formed a Kikuyu ‘Home Guard’. The British formally acknowledged the Home Guard in December 1952 and, by January 1953, there were 7,600 recruits. The Home Guard were very effective due to their local knowledge. They were responsible for 42% of all Mau Mau killed.
The Rebellion Intensifies:
On 24th January 1953, the most sensational murder at the hands of the Mau Mau took place. The Ruck family- Roger, Esme and their small boy, were hacked to death by their trusted servants, one of whom had tenderly carried home the child, six year old Michael, after he fell from his pony, just days prior to the attack.
Newspapers in Kenya and abroad published graphic murder details with post-mortem photos. The next day, over 1,500 settlers marched on Government House in Nairobi, demanding justice and the elimination of the Mau Mau.
Lari Massacre: Mau Mau attacked the homestead of chief Luka- a loyalist and beneficiary of vast land concessions from the colonial government. They then attack the village of Lari because it was a centre of loyal Kikuyu and Home Guard organising. They burnt down the loyalists in their huts and hacked to death those who tried to escape. In total, 97 Lari residents were killed.
400 Mau Mau were killed by security forces- British and African soldiers, local police officers and loyalists, during a vengeful reprisal.
Between January and April 1953, Baring empowered his government with dozens of Emergency Regulations. These included: provisions for communal punishment, curfews, control of individual and mass movements of people, confiscation of property, censorship and banning of publications, disbanding of African political organisations, and detention without trial.
Baring introduced screening of all Mau Mau suspects in search of intelligence. Suspects branded as dangerous were shipped to detention camps, while others were sent for deportation to the Kikuyu reserves. Mass deportations of Kikuyu to the reserves started early in 1953.
Teams made up settlers, British officers, and loyalists. Demanding confessions and intelligence to coax this, they used: broken bottles, knives, snakes, vermin and hot eggs were thrust up man's rectum and women’s vaginas.
The Mwathe Conference:
Harassed by the British, Mau Mau fighters fled for the forest. By late 1953 there were some 24,000 fighters in the Land and Freedom Army.
Following increased British use of detention from April 1953, many women and children joined Mau Mau fighters in the forest. In some instances, women would wrap bullets around the thighs of their infants, tie the young children onto their backs with a cloth, and make a delivery to the forest edge. Dedan Kamathi’s camp in the Aberdares mountains was home to over 400 women.
After about eight months of armed warfare, during which valuable military and guerrilla warfare experience had been gained, it was decided to call a representative meeting of the various units. The meeting was held in August 1953 and came to be known as the Mwathe Conference.
A decision was made to form the Kenya Defence Council as the highest military and political organ of the armed struggle.
The Kenya Defence Council resolved the contradictions between a central authority and the need for local units to have a certain amount of autonomy so as to become more effective in the war situation.
The other important task of the Mwathe Conference was the election of the leadership of the Kenya Defence Council and the organisation of all the fighting forces into eight armies.
Kimathi was elected the President of the Kenya Defence Council.
To give the correct picture and to achieve a greater unity among the freedom fighters, it created the Kimathi Charter. Some of the demands included:
We demand African self-government in Kenya.
We demand to know who hands over the money for land from Settlers and where the money goes.
We demand to know why many different Christian missions with different laws are brought to Kenya.
We reject imprisonment over Mau Mau.
We reject criminal or death cases to be judged by foreigners.
We condemn the dropping of poisons from the air as the colonialists in Kenya are doing to the African population.
We reject the foreign laws in Kenya, for they were not made for Kenya and are not righteous.
We reject being called terrorists when demanding our people’s rights.
In response to British harassment of Kikuyu businesses in Nairobi, the Mau Mau announced a boycott of the city’s buses from September 1953.
Africans walked to work for eight months, and the loss of revenue forced the British to back down. Mau Mau also organised boycotts of European beer and cigarettes.
As the Mau Mau grew in power, the educated middle-classes who worked for the colonial government– Tai-tai, as the Mau Mau called them – were targeted. For example, Tom Mbotela – a senior official on the African Advisory Council – was hacked to death in Nairobi on 26th November 1953 by Mau Mau fighters.
A meeting of the Kenya Defence Council was held in February 1954.Eight hundred delegates attended the meeting and after intensive discussions, a decision was taken to replace the Kenya Defence Council by a new body - the Kenya Parliament.
Screening and Detention:
Aware that Mau Mau’s base was in the Eastlands slums of Nairobi, British General Erskine launched Operation Anvil: in April 1954, the entire population (50,000) was moved to temporary camps. Here, they were screened by anonymous hooded gikunia (loyal informers) to check whether they were Mau Mau. Anvil worked: 700 ‘hard core’ Mau Mau were identified, and the organisation had been destroyed, but 50,000 ordinary Kikuyu had been removed from their homes and 24,000 men imprisoned without trial.
In June 1954, the British decided to enforce villagization: the enforced resettlement of Kikuyu into tightly controlled villages. Approximately 1 million Kenyans were forced to burn their homes and rounded up for six years in 854 villages fenced with barbed wire where acts of brutality by colonial guards were widespread.
From the inception of the detention camps, the Colonial Administration engaged in widespread acts of brutality. Detainees were subjected to arbitrary killings, severe physical assaults and extreme acts of inhuman and degrading treatment.
Prisoners at Hola frequently refused to perform their work or take part in ‘rehabilitation’ exercises. The camp commandant outlined a plan that would force 88 of the prisoners to work.On 3 March 1959, the camp commandant put this plan into action – because of which 11 of the prisoners were clubbed to death by British guards. Despite attempts of a cover up, news of the massacre reached Britain following a Time magazine expose.
Results of the Mau Mau Rebellion:
In early 1955, British forces began a series of sweeps through the forests in an attempt to drive out the remaining Mau Mau, who by now were suffering from a lack of food and ammunition.
The government turned out the entire African population of some districts – in one case as many as 70,000 people – to work their way through the forest and kill any Mau Mau they found.
By the end of 1955, there were only an estimated 1500 Mau Mau fighters left in the forests, and they were in such a wretched condition that any further organised military campaigns were out of the question. Although the declared state of emergency was to continue until 1960, the rebellion was effectively over.
The number killed in the uprising is a subject of much controversy. Officially the number of Mau Mau and other rebels killed was 11,000, including 1,090 convicts hanged by the British administration. Just 32 white settlers were killed in the eight years of emergency. The Kenya Human Rights Commission has said 90,000 Kenyans were executed, tortured or maimed during the crackdown, and 160,000 were detained in appalling conditions.
Uhuru = Swahili for freedom:
Results of the Mau Mau Rebellion- Economic:
Swynnerton Plan:
The main objective of the Swynnerton plan was to create family holdings which would be large enough to keep the family self-sufficient in food and enable them to practise alternate husbandry to develop a cash income.
It was envisioned that 600,000 African families would have farming units of approximately 10 acres of land a family, which would raise their average productivity in cash sales from £10 to £100 a year after providing for their own needs.
They would also remove remaining restrictions against African production of cash crops,such as coffee, tea and dairy products.
The results were dramatic: the value of recorded output from the small-holdings rose from £5.2 million in 1955 to £14 million in 1964, coffee accounting for 55 percent of the increase.
The Carpenter Committee Report:
After Operation Anvil had crushed the movement in Nairobi, the way was clear for concessions. The Report of the Carpenter Committee on African Wages in 1954 prepared the way for substantial rises in African wage rates and proposed minimum wages.
Between 1955 and 1964 the annual average wage for African workers doubled from £52 to £107.
This strengthened the hand of moderate union organisations like the KFRU
One Million Acre Scheme:
The One Million Acre (1962) scheme differed from the previous ones as it was designed to accommodate masses of landless families; it was not designed for relatively small numbers of carefully selected farmers.
The scheme would see the purchase of about one million acres of land, bought in large block locations in the periphery of the reserves.
80,000 hectares were to be bought each year for a period of 5 years.
The land would then be used to settle 35,000 families on more than one million acres of land.
The scheme cost £25 million
This was expected to offer European settlers who wanted to sell their land a market to sell it
on. In order to attract the settlers, the administration improved the terms of payment to make
they are generous and attractive. From July 1962, a new policy was introduced underlining full cash payment at the time of buying the land with the settlers having the right to choose where to be paid; London or Kenya.
Results of the Mau Mau Rebellion- Political:
1954 Lyttleton Constitution
3 Europeans, 2 Asians, and 1 African acquired executive position (Council of Ministers)
Establishes a Council of Ministers and a Legislative Council to advise the Governor. The government provided for elections of 8 Africans to the legislative Council Africans were allowed to form political organisations whose functions were confirmed to district levels.
1957 Lennox-Boyd Constitution
Increased the number of African Ministers to two
On March 10th Kenyans celebrated the first election of Africans to the Legislative Council- the poll averaged 83%
African representation on the Legislative Council raised to 14, equal with Europeans.
Africans given two ministerial posts.
1960
African political organisations were allowed again in 1960. The Kenya African National Union (KANU), founded in May of that year and favouring a strong centralised government, was built around Kenyatta, who was still in detention.
1960 First Lancaster House Conference
Establishes principle of majority rule (i.e. one person, one vote) and therefore gives Africans a majority in both the Council of Ministers and the Legislative Council.
1961: Kenyatta was finally released in August 1961
1962 Second Lancaster House Conference
A framework for self-governance was negotiated
A coalition government of the KANU and KADU was formed in 1962, and after elections in May 1963 Kenyatta became prime minister under a constitution that gave Kenya self-government.
1963: Third Lancaster House Settlement
Kenya became fully independent on Dec. 12, 1963
A year later, Kenya became a republic (with Kenyatta as its first president)
Why did British policy change from detention to freedom?
Decolonization elsewhere (e.g. India, Ghana, Uganda)
Domestic politics: Humiliation of Suez Crisis, 1956 => Conservative
adoption of gradual and managed decolonisation
Economic costs
Pressure from US government to stop the brutality/segregation because it
gives the Soviets a propaganda opportunity
Obama story shows that US wants to build a positive relationship with
Kenya, not a punitive one
Civil rights context > Malcolm X et al show that Mau Mau and CRM are tied
closely together, US politicians are being put under pressure by CRM and so
wouldn’t want to condone racism abroad; note that CRM has its own Cold
War context