Mau Mau War

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Memorial to the Mau Mau General Dedan Kimathi in the center of Nairobi. Kimathi was hanged in 1957.

The fight of the anti-colonial independence movement Mau-Mau in the colony of Kenya against the rule of the white settlers and the colonial power of Great Britain is known as the Mau Mau War . In the 1950s he shook the foundations of British rule in the East African settler colony. With the fight against the Mau-Mau, the British fought their bloodiest and longest war in the decolonization process of the British Empire .

The term Mau-Mau is of British origin. Its etymological origin is unclear. The insurgents called themselves the Land and Freedom Army . In the Kikuyu language, the term also means land through freedom .

The struggle of the Mau-Mau was mainly carried out by the rural Kikuyu in the central region of Kenya, who had suffered from enormous land expropriations for the benefit of white settlers since the beginning of the 20th century. The movement fought with guerrilla methods against white settlers and members of the British colonial administration, but also against Africans who supported colonial rule or who opposed armed struggle and radical demands for land restitution. As it progressed, the Mau Mau War increasingly took on the character of a civil war , its fronts not only moving along the obvious division between blacks and whites, but also dividing the African communities.

The British colonial power reacted to the rebellion with a dense network of internment camps in which almost the entire African population of central Kenya was crammed together. At the same time, from 1952 to 1957, she waged a war against the guerrilla fighters in the forests and in the capital Nairobi with immense military effort .

Though the Mau-Mau were defeated in the late 1950s, their struggle resulted in Britain having to give Kenya independence in 1963 .

Kenya in the 1950s

The political climate on the African continent at the time the Mau-Mau was created

The 1950s were the decade of the great African dawn of independence. This departure took place in a global political reorganization. Colonial empires dissolved and a large number of new nation states emerged. The British colonial power, which had already given up India , Pakistan and Palestine and was preparing to hand Malaysia over to a local government, was also increasingly losing influence in Africa. When Kwame Nkrumah was elected Prime Minister of the Gold Coast Crown Colony in 1952 , African and Western observers saw this as an indication of the imminent handover of the African colonies to local governments.

At the same time, however, the settler groups in Africa formulated their claims more decisively. In South Africa in 1948, the National Party, a political movement that established an apartheid system , came to power. Southern Rhodesia , Northern Rhodesia and Nyassa Land were to be connected with each other, which was understood by African observers as the planning of a gigantic white settler state modeled on South Africa. In view of this development, the 30,000 or so white settlers in Kenya also saw the future of the country in a strengthened settler state and intensified their efforts to concentrate political decision-making power on themselves and to deny the Africans any opportunity to have a say in politics.

Prehistory of the War of Independence

Land expropriation and squatters

Kenya seemed firmly established as a British settler colony by the middle of the 20th century. It was a colony for wealthy Europeans who could buy large areas of fertile land cheaply here and who were guaranteed cheap labor and the political support of the colonial government. In Europe, the Kenyan settler society was known for its dissolute lifestyle as well as hunting and sporting events. The highlands around Nairobi, which were firmly in the hands of European farmers, were also known as the "Happy Valley" because of its joyful white residents and their carefree life.

The success of this settlement society was based on a brutal land grab. Large parts of the fertile land, especially in central Kenya and the Rift Valley, had been stolen from the local population at the beginning of the century and sold at bargain prices to white settlers from South Africa, Europe and Australia. The Africans who had previously resided there, mainly Kikuyu , Kamba and Maasai , were resettled in demarcated reserves. Further waves of expropriations followed after the First World War - Nandi and Kipsigis in particular were affected by these expropriations - and the Second World War.

Since then, Africans have not been allowed to own land outside the reserves. The expropriation turned countless families into landless beggars who were forced to move to the white farms to earn a living there. In return, this ensured cheap labor for European landowners and eased the scarcity of land. Indeed, many Kikuyu families encouraged young men to move to European farms in the Rift Valley and start a new life there.

The Africans who lived on white farms were squatters . They were allowed to build houses there, cultivate a piece of land and let their cattle graze on unused land. In return, all Africans over the age of 16 had to work up to 180 days a year on the farmland of the European owner. From a material point of view, many squatters were doing better than the Africans in the reservations. They earned better than Africans on the reservations and, far from their families, they were freed from many traditional duties and relatively independent. At the same time, there were hardly any schools on the farms like those opened by the missions on the reservations, which offered the squatters far fewer educational opportunities. At the end of the 1930s, about 150,000 Kikuyu were squatters on white farms, an estimated 15% of the population.

Elimination of the Africans as economic competition

Coffee picker on a "white" farm in the central highlands of Kenya, 1936

Market regulations and bans also prevented those Africans who had land from participating in the market. The residents of Central Kenya in particular, who had produced large quantities of food for centuries and supplied huge caravans with provisions in the 19th century, were skilled and experienced farmers. When the African farmers became serious competitors for white farmers in the early 20th century, the settlers exerted heavy pressure on the colonial administration. As a result, a number of laws were passed prohibiting African farmers from producing cash crops such as coffee , tea and sisal . After the Second World War, other agricultural products such as maize or grain could only be brought onto the market at a fixed price.

The colonial administrative elite

Since the administrative forces within the colonial administrative apparatus were always very scarce, colonial rule was based on the system of indirect rule ("indirect rule"). Africans were used as chiefs and police officers, charged with collecting taxes, recruiting for work, and punishing them for breaking the law. In the mid-1920s, the Local Native Councils were set up, councils made up of loyal local elders but chaired by the district official. This thin layer of Africans benefited from colonial rule. They have been rewarded for their loyalty with privileges such as large portions of the fertile land within the reserves, specialty seeds, licenses for trading activities, and access to cheap labor. Thus a privileged wealthy class emerged among these political climbers within the colonial hierarchy.

The model students of the missions

At the same time, a group of young, Western-educated, Christian Africans grew up in the mission schools, expressing bitterness and anger at the conditions in political organizations. Thus, at the beginning of the 1920s, a number of political groups emerged that spoke out against taxation, compulsory labor on “white” farms and land expropriation. The most prominent among them was the Kikuyu Central Association (KCA), which was led by Johnstone (Jomo) Kenyatta from 1926 . These politically active groups were not integrated by the colonial government, but persecuted with all severity. Some groups, including the KCA, were banned during the war after numerous members had been deported in the 1920s. Until the end of the Second World War, Africans were completely denied participation in political decision-making processes.

Origin and expansion of the Mau-Mau

The general situation after the Second World War

The Second World War worsened the contradictions within the colonial society of Kenya. The high number of African war participants increased the workload in the countryside, those who remained were increasingly forced to work on the white farms in order to meet the demands of the war economy. When the combatants returned home after 1945, the narrowness and scarcity of land became all the more apparent. In addition, there were a number of government measures aimed at developing the soil in the reserves. Women in particular were forced to work on terracing to prevent soil erosion. This led to increasing resistance, as it left even less time to work on their own land.

The African participants in the war had had experiences as part of the Allied forces that broadened their horizons enormously. They returned with a new national self-awareness that had been affirmed and strengthened by meeting people from other British colonies, especially India. They had fought side by side with white Europeans and had seen bloody hostility among Europeans. However, while the white veterans were compensated, awarded and provided with cheap land, the situation in Africa was even worse than that in which they had left Kenya to go to war. They were not welcome either in the extremely overpopulated reservations or on the white farms.

By the 1940s, the number of landless Africans had grown significantly. The population had recovered from the devastating famine in central Kenya at the turn of the century and was growing very rapidly under the influence of Western medicine and falling death rates. This led to considerable social upheaval among the Kikuyu. Land was not only of great importance as an economic basis. In addition, it was valued highly as a social and cultural resource: in order to grow up, a man needed land that allowed him to raise livestock. In turn, livestock was needed to raise a bride price for starting a family. With the fertile land occupied by huge farms run by European immigrants, young men could no longer find uninhabited land on which to start a new family. The majority of the landless population in the 1940s and 1950s were therefore young, embittered Africans who had realized that their land offered them no prospects for life. The lack of their own farmland to support families and taxation forced many young Africans to work on European farms as cheap labor.

Eviction of the squatters and soil conservation measures

The land problem worsened particularly drastically. Even before the Second World War, many white farmers were upgrading their technology. As a result, African workers were becoming less and less attractive as workers; instead, the land occupied by the squatters owned by white farmers became more valuable as possible usable land. While the African squatters had assumed that the agreement between them as tenants of the land and workers for the farmer guaranteed them a customary right to the land they used and lived in, the colonial government finally clarified after the Second World War that Africans had no living, Rights of use and ownership on white farms.

Reserves and “White Highlands” in Central Kenya in 1952

After the war, agreements made as early as 1940 were implemented to forbid squatters from owning cattle, as this was said to bring cattle diseases into the farms. Since livestock was an important source of income for the squatters, their standard of living deteriorated rapidly. Other farmers drove the squatters off their farmland entirely. In Nakuru, Naivasha or Gilgil in the Rift Valley, droves of Kikuyu were loaded onto trains like cattle and "repatriated", namely sent to their region of origin, Kiambu near Nairobi. Because of the expropriations around Nairobi, the scarcity of land in the reserves in this area was particularly high.

After the government's plans to return small parts of the White Highlands to the Kikuyu met fierce resistance from the settlers, the colonial administration launched a large-scale campaign against soil erosion in the reservations. The aim was to counter the scarcity of land and enable more intensive use of the land. The African chiefs were instructed to recruit workers for terracing and to closely monitor other operations. Most of the workers were women who did not know how to avoid forced labor. Many of the measures aroused violent resistance. The forced labor left little time for necessary work on their own fields, other measures such as vaccination regulations for cattle and goats were expensive and ruined the already impoverished farmers.

The coincidence of the "repatriation" of squatters to the reservations and the land protection programs led to bitter unrest, arson and threats to white chiefs.

In the early 1950s, the political debates in central Kenya were dominated by land, land grabbing and land restitution. The population can be roughly divided into three different camps: on the one hand, the conservative Kikuyu landowners and entrepreneurs, who had developed into a wealthy group during the colonial period through their loyalty to the government and an administrative career; Furthermore, an educated political elite, shaped by Christianity, the education conveyed by missionaries and nationalist ideas - they understood that only a small number of Africans were offered opportunities for advancement in the settler colony. And finally, a young, radical current for which both the conservative and the progressive elites did not go far enough in their endeavors for peaceful reforms.

The power of the oath

The decisive means of mobilizing the people, however, developed in Olenguruone (now Nakuru County , then in the Rift Valley Province ). Several thousand Kikuyu, who were resettled from the White Highlands in 1941, lived here. Threatened by resettlement, they began around 1943 to turn the traditional practice of the oath into a political instrument. In the pre-colonial Kikuyu society, oaths were of central importance, especially in the legal system. An oath had a sacred power that exposed liars, traitors, and wizards, and firmly bound those who swore it together. Women have traditionally been excluded from this. Women and children could also take the new form of the oath. This oath united everyone in a promise to fight the injustice of British rule. British authorities assumed during the war that around 90% of the 1.5 million Kikuyu had taken the rebels' ceremonial oath at least once.

The ceremony of the oath quickly spread in the farms of the "White Highlands", where the squatters, threatened by displacement, looked for opportunities to show solidarity. When the Kikuyu from Olenguruone were resettled again in 1950, this time to Nairobi, the oath and its effects also reached central Kenya and the urban center of Nairobi.

Radicalization in the cities

In 1944, former members of the KCA founded the Kenya African Union (KAU) in Nairobi , a new organization that wanted to stand up for the interests of the African population across the country. However, the leadership, called Kiambaa Parliament , consisted exclusively of Kikuyu. Jomo Kenyatta , who was a veteran of the political elite from the KCA and returned from London in 1946 , and his friend, political companion and brother-in-law Peter Mbiyu Koinange , also belonged to the core of this circle .

From 1947 this inner circle of the KAU tried to win new, influential members who should strengthen the reputation of the KAU. These carefully selected individuals, usually elderly, experienced and wealthy Kikuyu, were admitted to the Kiambaa Parliament through an oath ceremony . The fee of 60 schillings that had to be paid ensured that this group remained exclusive. The KAU also tried to find political supporters among the rural and poor Kikuyu. Kenyatta enjoyed enormous popularity among the Kikuyu because of his political commitment and his writings. His return electrified the population. He traveled the country, his fiery speeches drew thousands of listeners. On the one hand he defended the rural Kikuyu against displacement and the coercive measures in the context of the soil conservation campaign, on the other hand he tried to mediate and win the population for slow, cautious reforms under the leadership of the KAU.

In the years after the Second World War, resentment and despair grew in the African population. Landless young people flocked to the cities, especially Nairobi, where street trading, beer brewing and prostitution became the main livelihoods. The official, demarcated residential areas for Africans were soon dramatically overpopulated, illegal quarters grew rapidly and housed around 80,000 people around 1950. In Nairobi, small trade union organizations had been set up to politically represent the interests of taxi drivers, small traders, street vendors and servants. Political discontent, poverty and unemployment led to a rapid rise in crime in the neighborhoods east of the city center where the African population lived in the late 1940s. Large parts of the African quarters were not under any official administration. Numerous gangs were formed that extorted protection money, ensured a certain level of public order and allied with the militant leaders of the trade unions.

One of these gangs was the Anake a forti , consisting largely of veterans of the Second World War. They were characterized by a high level of political awareness, supported the squatters' resistance to the resettlement actions, but also always operated on the verge of crime, robbed shops and raided farms. Soon they also played an important role within the trade union associations, and their support among the destitute Kikuyu was great. From this combination of political, militant resistance and crime, a group of radical like-minded people emerged that came to be known as the Muhimu .

Liberals and radical nationalists

The Muhimu flatly rejected the moderate way of the KAU politicians. While Kenyatta and his comrades in arms saw politics as a matter of well-established, wealthy, older men with life experience, the young generation gathered around the Muhimu , who suffered particularly from the expulsions, the corruption of the African chiefs and the scarcity of land and who were impatient for changes, if necessary also urged with force. They too sought to bind followers to themselves with oaths.

Around 1949 Peter Koinange sought contact with members of the Muhimu , whose influence on the Kikuyu increasingly led to a loss of authority for the KAU and its members. Attempts were made to regain popularity by integrating the followers of the Muhimu into the KAU. In fact, the opposite happened. After leading members of the Muhimu took the oath of the KAU and thus became a member of the innermost circle of the KAU, they held their own oath ceremonies and invoked Kenyatta. The young, militant opposition members had boarded the KAU and took possession of it, but they still used the popularity of the old leaders.

Kenyatta was hugely popular throughout the Kikuyu area and beyond. He had been the eloquent chairman of the KCA in the 1920s, had become known as the editor and author of a Kikuyu- language newspaper and, as the representative of the KCA, had negotiated with the colonial power in the land commission on the return of expropriated land. For long-time participants in the political scene like Kenyatta, the situation was difficult. They feared not only the loss of their political supporters, but also the radicalism of the young Muhimu , who saw the liberal and moderate KAU as a political enemy and an obstacle to the struggle for freedom. Indeed, between 1951 and 1952, Kenyatta spoke out publicly several times against the growing violence of what he saw as undisciplined and uncontrolled young gangs. In the spring of 1952 he was visited by a member of the Muhimu inner circle , Fred Kubai. He threatened Kenyatta with death if he did not abandon his public condemnations of the armed struggle.

However, it is not entirely clear to what extent old members of the KAU supported the growing violence from the ranks of the Muhimu and the goal of armed resistance. In fact, there was an arsenal in the basement of the Koinange estate, the seat of the Kiambaa Parliament , but this was not found when the Koinange family was arrested. What is certain is that both Muhimu and the Kiambaa Parliament , the inner circle of the KAU, collected weapons. In February 1950 the Kiambaa Parliament, consisting of old and new, young members of the Muhimu, made the decision to collect weapons and discussed the possibility of carrying out a series of attacks on important personalities.

What is certain, however, is that at the beginning of 1950 the majority of the old members of the Kiambaa Parliament hardly attended the meetings, such as Kenyatta, or were only present as spectators. They vehemently rejected the violence of the “gangsters” and “criminals”, who damaged the reputation of the nationalist movement that had grown over decades and threatened its longstanding, respectable members who swore in indiscriminately new members with what they saw as an unworthy oath.

The development of a climate of violence

In August 1950 the government took the first steps to ban the "Mau-Mau" (as the activists of the oath ceremonies were now called) as an unregistered and therefore illegal organization. At that time, mass swearing-in sessions were in progress in many regions of the Kikuyu Reserve and in the White Highlands. The practice of the oath spread rapidly in Nairobi as well as in the country, especially in the independent schools of the Kikuyu the oath ceremonies found many followers. The swearing-in ceremonies were usually organized by the local offices of the Kenyan African Union , which in many regions were already dominated by the militant young men from Nairobi. The oath ceremony was presided over by Muhimu men who traveled from area to area. In the oath ceremonies, the participants undertook to act mercilessly against the colonial power, all their representatives and traitors from their own ranks, and to absolute secrecy of all activities and the swearing-in itself. At the ceremonies, those present were often filled with great bitterness. Opponents of the swearing-in, such as the African employees in the administration, Christians from the mission churches, wealthy Kikuyu who feared unrest and the loss of their belongings, or people who viewed the increasing activity of radical, violent young men in public with mixed feelings, were intimidated with threats or beaten. Individuals, for example on farms, were often forced to take the oath in order to prevent information about the oaths from leaking out.

In April 1952 the government took a counter-initiative. On the advice of Louis Leakey , the son of a missionary who learned Kikuyu as a child, Kikuyu elders loyal to the government organized cleansing rituals to detach participants from the obligations of the Mau Mau oaths. This hardened the fronts, the Mau-Mau fought with increasing severity for their supporters.

In May 1952 the Kirichwa washed the first bodies onto the bank near Nyeri . The dead were Kikuyu: a chief and a police informant. Both had been shot and their bodies mutilated, presumably because they had been unreliable witnesses to an oath ceremony. Witnesses who testified about her murder disappeared or were themselves killed in the weeks that followed. By September, 23 further murders were known, mostly African employees of the administration or informants of the police, but also members of other ethnic groups who were feared might lead to traitors. In addition, a number of people disappeared without a trace.

The inability of the police to protect the witnesses of murders until a trial was started created an atmosphere of lawlessness and violence. The white settlers felt they were entitled to take the law into their own hands, and if they didn't chase all African workers off their property anyway, they responded with severe flogging as soon as they heard of oaths on their property. Kikuyu who refused to take oath ceremonies were intimidated, beaten and murdered, and the corpses were often cruelly violated. Loyal Africans who opposed the Mau-Mau avoided reports so as not to fall victim to acts of revenge.

When the violence reached its peak, Kenya Governor Sir Philip Mitchell resigned from his post. Mitchell had seen no reason to react to what had happened and had drawn displeasure from settlers, the administration and the British government. With the arrival of the new governor, Evelyn Baring , a new phase in Kenyan colony politics began.

State of Emergency, Operation Jock Scott, and Prep for War

One of the first official acts of the new governor was to attend the funeral of Waruhiu wa Kungu, Paramount Chief of the Central Province and thus the highest African representative of the colonial administration. Waruhiu, rich landowner, Christian and most influential African in central Kenya, was the victim of an organized attack on October 7, 1952, carried out according to the instructions of the Mau Mau leaders. The attack shocked Kenyan society; it showed the determination with which the Mau-Mau was ready to act against high-ranking people in the country. The trail led to the Koinange family, but it has always remained unclear to what extent the established politicians of the KAU had anything to do with it. The Kenyan government, however, came to the conclusion that the KAU and Mau-Mau were identical to one another. In fact, the two were very different. Although the young militants took action on behalf of the KAU, the affluent African political elite feared the Mau-Mau, especially after the attack on Chief Waruhiu, as did the white settlers and the Kenyan government. However, the government's radical reaction in the wake of this attack led to a real confrontation.

On October 20, Baring announced a state of emergency . At the same time, on the night of October 21, during Operation Jock Scott, all known members of the Kiambaa Parliament and high-ranking members of the KAU were arrested, including Kenyatta and ten members of the Koinange family. Some of those threatened by arrest were able to flee and hide in the woods, including Dedan Kimathi and Stanley Mathenge , both later leaders of the Mau Mau army in the woods. In fact, it was mainly the moderate leaders of the anti-colonial Kikuyu who were arrested during this action, while the more radical ones probably learned of the planned wave of arrests from spies among the African government employees. Almost all of the more than 180 people arrested were sentenced to five to seven years in prison. The trial of Kenyatta as the main suspect turned into a show trial despite its prominent star lawyers . Only selected journalists were present, all information for the public was strictly monitored. Despite thin evidence, Kenyatta was also sentenced to seven years in a prison in northern Kenya, in Lodwar .

The operation Jock Scott was the Mau Mau take the act and the police, supported by the military, should provide for the reintroduction of peace and order. Three battalions of the King's African Rifles were relocated to Kenya from Uganda , Tanganyika and Mauritius . Together with the two existing battalions, 3,000 African soldiers were stationed in Kenya. In addition, British troops were relocated to Nairobi with the First Battalion of the Lancashire Fusiliers from Egypt .

The Mau Mau fighters, on the other hand, were hardly organized at that time, their structure was based on the connections between the Nairobi-based Muhimu and the individual districts. Weapons and ammunition had been collected in their ranks for some time, and a spy network worked surprisingly well. However, there were hardly any quarters or a military structure that allowed a united and organized approach. However, the Mau-Mau responded to government activities with more determined planning. The primary goals were the procurement of weapons and ammunition and the establishment of a military organization in the forests, in the reservations, in the "White Highlands" and in Nairobi.

In addition to the government and the Mau-Mau, the civilian fronts were also arming. The white settlers, many of them British veterans who felt they had been left alone by the government even before the state of emergency was declared, organized themselves into the Kenya Police Reserve , an auxiliary force of the police. When the state of emergency was declared, the number of members in the reservist group rose sharply. In principle, it was a militia that offered protection to one another on the widely separated European farms and vigilantly arrested, abused and killed Mau Mau suspects.

Following this example, African chiefs, landowners, elders and businessmen on the reservations began to set up militias with their own resources. The so-called Home Guards were supposed to protect businesses and private individuals, farms and crops from arson, looting and murder and to ensure the maintenance of public order. The Home Guards also proceeded with great brutality against Mau Mau suspects.

With this development until the end of 1953, fear, brutality and the determination to act uncompromisingly grew more and more, especially since all parties still considered the government to be unable to get the Mau-Mau under control.

The fight of the Mau-Mau

Growing resentment of the Kenyan population against the land appropriation of European settlers led to an uprising against the British colonial power. After the colonial authorities had ignored numerous complaints from representatives of the African ethnic groups, the first violent riots broke out in 1951. A year later, the Mau-Mau secret society, to which mostly members of the Kikuyu ethnic group belonged, began the armed struggle against the Europeans. The British declared a state of emergency in October 1952 and sent troops to Kenya. Moderate nationalist Jomo Kenyatta , chairman of the Kikuyu-dominated Kenya African Union , was arrested, charged with inciting the uprising, and sentenced to seven years in prison in 1953. By the time the uprising was finally put down in 1956, around 7,800 Mau Mau fighters and 470 Africans and 63 Europeans from the security forces were killed. 90,000 Kikuyu were interned in camps. The political organizations remained banned, the state of emergency was only lifted on January 12, 1962. For Kenya, the Mau Mau uprising was the beginning of a development that ended with independence (December 12, 1963).

Mau-Mau in the reservations

The heart of the Kikuyu areas was formed by the reservations made up of the districts of Kiambu , Murang'a and Nyeri , a region between Nairobi, the center of colonial power, and Mount Kenya , and the areas of Meru and Embu east and north of Mount Kenya . At the same time, revolutionary trade union movements and parties such as the Kenya African Union (KAU) formed in the capital, Nairobi , and later led the uprising. The Forty Group was also formed from this . They were concerned with more far-reaching goals such as independence and the withdrawal of British military and settler power. This radicalized the resistance movement, which then began to attack white farms and take action against political opponents.

Mau-Mau in the capital Nairobi

The violence forced the leader of the KAU, Jomo Kenyatta , to make several statements in which he publicly renounced the radicalism of the Mau-Mau. One of the questions asked again and again and ultimately probably not fully answered is that of his real role in the Mau Mau freedom struggle. For this he was eventually sentenced to seven years in prison and later house arrest. What is certain is that he was not an operative - not even a secret - leader of this military struggle. He did not agree with the methods of this struggle, but was also close to this part of his people, because these fighters also wanted to end the colonial rule of the British. In this respect, they had common goals, just not the same paths. However, he always knew how to use the attacks of the Mau Mau fighters politically, which, for example, did not weaken the will of the population after the collapse of the Mau Mau. The Mau Mau fighters were never compensated in any way, nor were they allowed to participate in power by Kenyatta.

The answer of the colonial power

Fight against the Mau Mau troops

After the appointment of the new governor Evelyn Baring (1952), the British government decided to counter the resistance more resolutely. They gathered troops and declared a state of emergency on October 20, 1952. On the same day, Kenyatta was arrested along with other Kikuyu leaders and later tried. Armies of Kikuyu freedom fighters then went into the forests of the Mount Kenya massif and the Aberdares to wage a guerrilla war against the European settlers. They received support from the cities and from the rural population. Farms and police stations were attacked, and settlers and collaborators were killed. The British responded with attacks on rebel hideouts and resettlement operations designed to destroy the movement's support. In 1956 the last rebel leader, Dedan Kimathi , was caught with a few remaining supporters, and in 1957 he was hanged. The state of emergency remained in force until January 12, 1962.

Special Emergency Assize Courts

In April, special courts, the Special Emergency Assize Courts, were established to convict Mau Mau fighters. Between April 1953 and December 1956 there were 1,211 trials involving 2609 people in Mau Mau crimes. Approx. 40 percent of the defendants were acquitted and sentenced to death by hanging in 1574. 1090 convicts were publicly hanged after the negotiations without the right to appeal, more than 400 were pardoned, often because they could prove that they had not yet reached the age of 18. Both pardoned and acquitted were usually arrested again after the trial and taken to one of the concentration camps for minor offenses or for no reason. Trials against Mau Mau suspects continued until 1958.

Internment of the civilian population

In total, over 8,000 people were arrested in the first days of the state of emergency. Tens of thousands of suspects were also held in detention centers, the inmates of which were often tortured and some were executed. The human rights violations in the internment camps, which the British government still officially denied until 2012, which can no longer be concealed, ultimately triggered the British withdrawal from Kenya. Although the Mau Mau rebellion had been militarily defeated, the camps were preserved and only closed in 1959 under pressure from the British public, particularly some Labor MPs in Parliament. The scandal surrounding the murder of two prisoners in the Hola camp in 1959 and the attempts to cover up by official bodies up to and including the governor led to even conservative MPs increasingly distancing themselves from the white settlers and the colonial regime and advocating independence. The enormous cost of the war against Mau-Mau and the suppression of liberation movements in other parts of the Empire certainly also contributed to this decision.

Victim

The exact number of victims is unknown due to the removal of many documents. On the British side, 63 soldiers and 33 settlers died, as well as more than 1,800 local police and support personnel. The official figure for the losses on the part of the rebels is 11,500; Current research estimates range between 20,000 and 100,000. The British historian David Anderson estimated the number of internees at around 150,000; Caroline Elkins on the other hand to 1.5 million, in principle this was the entire Kikuyu population classified as "non-loyal".

International reactions to Mau-Mau

From the start of the war in October 1952, the Mau-Mau had a reputation for savagery and cruelty among white settlers in Kenya as well as in Great Britain. Photos, which discredited and ridiculed the fight of the Mau-Mau, played a particularly important role. Mau-Mau was portrayed in the press as a barbaric, anti-European and anti-Christian sect that practiced cruel rituals and resorted to the tactics of primitive terror in an irrational resistance to the British civilization mission in Kenya. In the early 1950s in particular, Mau-Mau caught the attention not only of the press in Great Britain and the Commonwealth of Nations, but also in the United States , Western Europe, and socialist countries. Large magazines displayed photos juxtaposing the ferocity of the terrorists and the law and order of the European settlers. The Mau-Mau were considered gangsters, criminals and terrorists, and few comments in the press took their concerns seriously. Even critical reports about the colonial style of the British in Kenya and the settlers mixed with picturesque details of creepy oath ceremonies that turned the Mau Mau fighters into bizarre terrorists. For example, the German news magazine Der Spiegel wrote shortly before Kenyan independence in 1963 about the Mau Mau rebels, "who after night oaths with ox blood and dead cats chopped up cattle and women of white settlers and massacred black Mau Mau enemies".

In parts of the Federal Republic of Germany, due to the Mau Mau uprising in Kenya, social slums were called Mau Mau settlements . The slum dwellers were pejoratively referred to as Mau-Maus by their medium-sized neighbors . One thought to recognize behavior similarities like the destructiveness. The term Mau-Mau for anti-social people was used in the Rhineland, the Ruhr area, Hamburg and Berlin until the 1970s.

From war to independence

Before independence, some changes were made: as early as 1957, eight African members were elected to the Legislative Council and in 1959, the turning point of African representation, 25 Africans, 15 Asians, 5 Arabs and 46 Europeans were elected. The number of African members increased compared to the non-African delegates. The Kenya African National Union (KANU) and the Kenya African Democratic Union (KADU) were formed from the Kenya African Union . Both campaigned for the release of Kenyatta, who was finally released from captivity in 1961.

In May 1963 the first elections were held with equal voting rights and on December 12, 1963 Kenya was granted independence (in the local language Swahili Uhuru , German "freedom"). The following year the republic was proclaimed with Jomo Kenyatta as its first president.

Historiographical, legal and social processing of Mau-Mau

Mau-Mau in the Kenyan culture of remembrance

Mau-Mau has become a central place of remembrance in the history of the Kenyan nation . In public life, in political discourses as well as in scientific historiography, Mau-Mau was always a subject of debate and retained a constant fascination. Controversial newspaper articles and books, but also political disputes, ensured that the topic was constantly dealt with.

The political elite of post-colonial Kenya tried to use a rhetoric of reconciliation and generalization to make people forget the rifts that Mau-Mau had dug in Kenya. Under the motto “Forgive and Forget”, Kenyatta called for forgiveness and the forgetting of violence, but at the same time condemned the Mau-Mau's oath practice as well as their fighting methods as lawless. Also, Daniel arap Moi , from 1978 Kenyatta's successor as president, advocated in the interest of a unified nation an undifferentiated image of the past, in the just "all Kenyans" had fought for independence. Despite the general Nyayo course, Moi tried to instrumentalise Mau-Mau in power politics in the early 1980s.

In addition to this political course, a lively public discussion developed among former Mau Mau fighters, writers and scientists. Veterans' associations campaigned - if they were allowed - for the recognition of the crucial role Mau-Maus in achieving Kenya's independence. A rich autobiographical literature was created by Mau Mau veterans who wanted to see their sacrifice for the independence of Kenya honored. Mau-Mau was to become the heroic episode in Kenyan history.

Writers and historians interpreted Mau-Mau as the culmination of the nationalist struggle of the Kenyan masses. They viewed the early postcolonial years as a neocolonial betrayal of Mau-Mau. This led to a polarizing, exclusive idea of ​​a nation in which Mau Mau fighters and sympathizers claimed a privileged role in the nation. This memory-political camp suffered from severe repression at times.

The legal processing of the uprising

The British government first admitted in July 2012 that there was torture in the internment camps during the Mau Mau uprising. On October 5, 2012 decided Supreme Court in London that three Kenyans who were imprisoned in the 1950s in British camps and tortured, may bring an action for damages against the British government to court in spite of the time elapsed since then. The three plaintiffs - Paulo Muoka Nzili, Wambuga Wa Nyingi and Jane Muthoni Mara - viewed themselves as substitutes for many other Mau Mau veterans who still saw themselves as the forgotten fighters for the freedom of Kenya, despite their sometimes old age received no support from the Kenyan government. The plaintiffs' attorney was hoping for an out-of-court settlement in which a support system for victims of colonial violence would be created prior to a trial that may not begin a year after the verdict. For the first time, the court had access to over 8000 files of the colonial government at the time, which were otherwise still subject to confidentiality. In early May 2013, it became known that the UK government was negotiating compensation with the victims, but details of the secret negotiations were not disclosed. At the same time, the UK government was still able to appeal the October 2012 ruling. On June 6, 2013, Foreign Secretary William Hague admitted on behalf of the British government that Kenyans had suffered under the colonial government and acknowledged that people had been tortured. Hague announced that the remaining 5,228 Kenyans who had been imprisoned by the British colonial government in connection with the Mau Mau War would receive compensation of nearly £ 3,000 each . This equates to a grand total of 19.9 million pounds sterling (£). While he acknowledged the suffering, Hague also said that the government still refuses to accept legal responsibility for the events, since with the independence of Kenya in 1963 the responsibility for the torture processes had also passed to the new state. The response in Kenya to this statement was cautious. Attorneys announced that more than 8,000 other Kenyans would be entitled to compensation. At the same time it became known that the British government would support the erection of a memorial to the victims of the uprising in Nairobi .

Processing in film and literature

The 2010 British film The World's Oldest Schoolboy, directed by Justin Chadwick and starring Oliver Litondo and Naomie Harris, tells a biographical drama about Mau Mau veteran Maruge, who won the right to an education at the age of 84 he fought. Flashbacks show his memories of the uprising and years in torture camps.

The image of a progressive anti-colonial liberation struggle with a socialist orientation conveys the widely read novel General Afrika by W. Ivanov-Leonow in the GDR .

Robert Ruark gives a vivid impression of this period in his two novels The Black Skin (1952) and Uhuru (1962). Several of the novels by the Kenyan author Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o also deal with the war and its effects.

Mau-Mau as an object of historical research

Until the early 1960s, the image of the Mau-Mau persisted as a fanatical, backward-looking movement of disoriented peasants who, manipulated by unscrupulous demagogues and frightened by religious superstitions, fled into irrational violence. The cause of the uprising was seen in the Kikuyu's mental inability to adapt to modern living conditions, which made them seek a return to primitive traditions. Sociologists and historians did not deal with the movement; instead, it became the subject of ethnological works and popular scientific literature.

In the 1960s this interpretation was questioned and doubted from various sides. Memoirs of political Kikuyu actors, books by Kenyan politicians from other regions and the first fundamental historical and social-anthropological studies exposed the previous interpretation as a pretext for the colonial power not to recognize the socio-economic and political roots of the movement. Instead, the early post-colonial work focused on the colonial power structures and emphasized the national character of the movement. Subsequent work largely held the Marxist perspective, which it embedded in theories of revolution and collective resistance.

Even the historians based in Kenya dealt with Mau-Mau repeatedly and in controversial debates from the early 1970s, despite the sometimes restrictive political climate. They interpreted Mau-Mau as a generation conflict, as a tribal movement or as the climax of the organized anti-colonial, nationalist resistance in Kenya. The researchers moved in a sensitive political environment, which could mean repression or even arrests.

In the late 1980s there was a certain arrangement of the various camps. Marxist interpretations also found their way into more conciliatory positions. In general, most historians endeavored to present the contradicting results of Mau-Mau and to acknowledge the multiple causes.

The discussion about Mau-Mau continued unabated in the 1990s. For example, in September 1992, the Historical Association held a conference in Kisumu on the subject of Mau Mau After 40 Years . Among other things, the panic reaction of the colonial rulers and the declaration of the state of emergency were emphasized as one of the causes of Mau-Mau.

Research in recent years has worked on other new aspects of the Mau Mau War. The focus of the work of the American historian Caroline Elkins was on the internment camps. Shortly before Kenyan independence, the British administration destroyed many documents that could have provided information about the concentration camps. Elkins, who began working on a dissertation on the Kenyan concentration camps in 1997, found that the British archives had also been "cleaned up". On the one hand, many documents about the rural internment camps had been removed; on the other hand, references to the death toll and inmates had been removed. Overall, the still existing British documents gave the impression of camps in which handicraft and hygiene courses were educated and trained, in short that they were educational and civilization camps for the benefit of the colonial population. Most recently, the British historian David Branch brought a new tone to the history of research. He drew attention to the "loyal" Kikuyu and worked out their role as opponents of the Mau-Mau and anti-colonial nationalists at the same time. Branch emphasized what critics of nationalism research had already addressed before him: the civil war character of this historical phase, that not only colonial power and settlers fought against Kikyuyu and Mau-Mau, but above all conservative-national Kikuyu in alliance with the British against the Mau-Mau won.

literature

  • Abiodun Alao: Mau-Mau warrior . Osprey, Oxford 2006, ISBN 1-84603-024-2 .
  • David Anderson: Histories of the hanged. The dirty was in Kenya and the end of Empire . Norton, New York NY 2005, ISBN 0-393-32754-X .
  • Robert Buijtenhuijs: Mau Mau, 20 years after. The myth and the survivors . Mouton, The Hague 1973 ( Afrika Study Center Communications 4, ZDB -ID 416831-8 ).
  • Anthony Clapton: The killing fields of Kenya, 1952-1960 . Transafrica Press, Nairobi 2006, ISBN 9966-940-37-5 .
  • AS Cleary: The myth of Mau Mau in its international context . In: African Affairs 89, 1990, 4, ISSN  0001-9909 , pp. 227-245.
  • Caroline Elkins: Imperial Reckoning. The Untold Story of Britian's Gulag in Kenya . Henry Holt and Co., New York NY 2005, ISBN 0-8050-7653-0 .
  • W. Ivanov-Leonow, General Africa, transl. Ad Russ. v. H. Wiegershausen, Berlin 1961.
  • Louis Leakey : Mau-Mau and the Kikuyus . Beck, Munich 1953.
  • Wunyabari O. Maloba: Mau Mau and Kenya . Currey, Oxford 1998, ISBN 0-85255-745-0 .
  • David Njeng'ere: Dedan Kimathi. Leader of Mau Mau . Saga Sema Publications, Nairobi 2003, ISBN 9966-951-18-0 .
  • Carl G. Rosberg, John Nottingham: The Myth of Mau Mau. Nationalism in Kenya . Praeger et al., New York NY et al. 1966, ( Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace Publications ZDB -ID 197478-6 ).
  • Robert Ruark : The black skin . Novel. Blanvalet, Berlin 1957.
  • Winfried Speitkamp: Late Colonial War and Politics of Remembrance. Mau Mau in Kenya . In: Helmut Berding , Klaus Heller, Winfried Speitkamp (eds.): War and memory. Case studies on the 19th and 20th centuries . Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2000, ISBN 3-525-35423-1 , pp. 193-222.

Web links

Commons : Mau Mau War  - Collection of Pictures, Videos and Audio Files

Remarks

  1. ↑ Martin Shipway: Decolonization and its Impact - A Comparative Approach to the End of the Colonial Empires , Oxford 2008, p. 148.
  2. ↑ David Branch: Defeating Mau Mau, Creating Kenya. Counterinsurgency, Civil War, and Decolonization . Cambridge 2009.
  3. ↑ David Anderson: Histories of the Hanged. Britain's Dirty War in Kenya and the End of Empire . London 2005, pp. 2-4.
  4. ↑ Formally, however, Rhodesia was the last British colony in Africa. The settler colony of Rhodesia declared its unilateral independence from Great Britain in 1965 and was accepted into the community of African states as the independent Zimbabwe in 1980.
  5. ↑ David Anderson: Histories of the Hanged. Britain's Dirty War in Kenya and the End of Empire . London 2005, pp. 2–3, 9.
  6. ↑ The American journalist James Fox portrayed this lifestyle in his book: James Fox: White Mischief . London 1982. On the basis of this term, the British historians John Lonsdale and Bruce Berman gave their two-volume work on Kenya's way to Mau-Mau the title Unhappy Valley . See Bruce Bermann & John Lonsdale, Unhappy Valley. Conflict in Kenya and Africa, 2 vols., Oxford 1992.
  7. ↑ Tabitha Kanogo: Squatters and the Roots of Mau Mau . London 1987, chapter 1.
  8. ↑ David Anderson: Registration and Rough justice: labor law in Kenya, 1895-1939 . In: Paul Craven, Douglas Hay (Eds.): Masters, Servants, and Magistrates in Britain and the Empire, 1562–1955 . Chapel Hill 2004, pp. 498-528
  9. ↑ Tabitha Kanogo: Squatters and the Roots of Mau Mau , London 1987, Chapter 3.
  10. ^ Caroline Elkins: Britain's Gulag. The Brutal End of Empire in Kenya . London 2005, p. 16.
  11. ↑ Bruce Berman: Control & Crisis in Colonial Kenya. The Dialectic of Domination . Athens 1990, pp. 216-217.
  12. ^ Caroline Elkins: Britain's Gulag. The Brutal End of Empire in Kenya . London 2005, p. 19.
  13. ^ Caroline Elkins: Britain's Gulag. The Brutal End of Empire in Kenya . London 2005, pp. 21-22.
  14. ^ Caroline Elkins, Britain's Gulag. The Brutal End of Empire in Kenya, London 2005, pp. 22-23.
  15. ^ Caroline Elkins: Britain's Gulag. The Brutal End of Empire in Kenya . London 2005, pp. 23-24.
  16. ↑ David Anderson: Histories of the Hanged. Britain's Dirty War in Kenya and the End of Empire . London 2005, pp. 10-11.
  17. ^ Robert MA van Zwanenberg: Colonial Capitalism and Labor in Kenya, 1919-1939 . Nairobi 1975, Chapter 8 and pp. 225-229.
  18. ↑ Anthony Clayton, Dobald C. Savage: Government and Labor in Kenya, 1895-1963 . London 1974, p. 130.
  19. ↑ David W. Throup: The Origins of the Mau Mau . In: African Affairs 84, 1985, p. 414.
  20. ^ Caroline Elkins: Britain's Gulag. The Brutal End of Empire in Kenya . London 2005, pp. 22-23.
    David W. Throup: Economic and Social Origins of Mau Mau, 1945-1953, Oxford 1987, pp. 140-159.
  21. ↑ David Anderson: Histories of the Hanged. Britain's Dirty War in Kenya and the End of Empire . London 2005, pp. 33-35.
  22. ↑ David Anderson: Histories of the Hanged. Britain's Dirty War in Kenya and the End of Empire . London 2005, pp. 11-13.
  23. ↑ Tabitha Kanogo: Squatters and the Roots of Mau Mau , London 1987, pp. 105-120.
  24. ↑ Martin Shipway: Decolonization and its Impact - A Comparative Approach to the End of the Colonial Empires , Oxford, 2008 p. 149
  25. ↑ Anderson, pp. 28-30.
  26. ↑ John Spencer: KAU: Kenya African Union . London 1985, pp. 179-182, 205.
  27. ^ Caroline Elkins: Britain's Gulag. The Brutal End of Empire in Kenya . London 2005, p. 24.
    Anderson, pp. 33-34.
  28. ↑ Anderson, pp. 35-37.
  29. ^ John Spencer: The Kenya African Union . London 1985, pp. 167-168.
  30. ^ John Spencer: The Kenya African Union . London 1985, pp. 227-228.
  31. ^ Rosberg, Nottingham: Myth of Mau Mau . Pp. 271-274.
  32. ↑ Bildad Kaggia: Roots of Freedom . Nairobi 1975, p. 114.
  33. ↑ David Anderson: Histories of the Hanged. Britain's Dirty War in Kenya and the End of Empire . London 2005, pp. 37-41.
  34. ^ Spencer: Kenya African Union . P. 234.
    Koinange: Koinange-wa-Mbiyu . Pp. 84-85.
  35. ↑ David Anderson: Histories of the Hanged. Britain's Dirty War in Kenya and the End of Empire . London 2005, p. 42.
  36. ↑ David Anderson: Histories of the Hanged. Britain's Dirty War in Kenya and the End of Empire . London 2005, pp. 44-46.
  37. ↑ David Anderson: Histories of the Hanged. Britain's Dirty War in Kenya and the End of Empire . London 2005, pp. 46-47.
  38. ↑ David Anderson: Histories of the Hanged. Britain's Dirty War in Kenya and the End of Empire . London 2005, pp. 47-51.
  39. ↑ Throup: Economic and Social Origins , pp. 33–63.
  40. ↑ David Anderson: Histories of the Hanged. Britain's Dirty War in Kenya and the End of Empire . London 2005, pp. 54-61.
  41. ↑ David Anderson: Histories of the Hanged. Britain's Dirty War in Kenya and the End of Empire . London 2005, pp. 5-6.
  42. ↑ Mau Mau case: Government accepts abuse took place on BBC News July 17, 2012
  43. ↑ Elkins: Britain's Gulag . P. Xii.
    David Anderson: Histories of the Hanged. Britain's Dirty War in Kenya and the End of Empire . London 2005, p. 4.
  44. ^ Caroline Elkins: Britain's Gulag. The Brutal End of Empire in Kenya . London 2005, p. Xii.
    David Anderson: Histories of the Hanged. Britain's Dirty War in Kenya and the End of Empire . London 2005, p. 5.
  45. ^ Film by a British journalist on YouTube
  46. ↑ Seven sips of blood . In: Der Spiegel . No. 47 , 1952 ( online ).
  47. ↑ Mau Mau or Harambee? In: Der Spiegel . No. 51 , 1963 ( online ).
  48. ↑ Here after Hartmut Bergenthum: History in Kenya in the 2nd half of the 20th century . Münster 2004, pp. 286–288.
  49. ↑ Jomo Kenyatta: Suffering Without Bitterness. The founding of the Kenya Nation . Nairobi 1968, p. XV.
  50. ↑ Jomo Kenyatta: Suffering Without Bitterness. The founding of the Kenya Nation . Nairobi 1968, pp. 154, 166, 167, 183, 189. Cf. on the reserved Christian attitude Mois Andrew Morton: Moi. The Making of an African Statesman . London 1998, pp. 21, 20.
  51. ↑ Robert Buijtenhuijs: Mau Mau: Twenty Years After. The Myth and the Survivors . Mouton 1973, pp. 129-132.
  52. ↑ Wunyabari O. Maloba: Mau Mau and Kenya: An Analysis of a Peasant Revolt . Bloomington 1993, p. 176. David Njagi: The last Mau Mau field marshals (Kenya's Freedom War 1952-1963 and beyond). Their own story . Ngwataniro Self Help Group and D. Njagi, Meru 1993, Acknowledgments.
  53. ↑ BM Kaggia et al .: Preface , in: Donald L. Barnett, Karari Njama: Mau Mau from Within. Autobiography and Analysis of Kenya's Peasant Revolt . MacGibbon & Kee, Letchworth / London 1966, pp. 9–11, here p. 9.
  54. ↑ Maina wa Kinyatti: Mau Mau: A revolution betrayed. 2nd Edition. Mau Mau Research Center, Jamaica 2000, pp. 95, 111-114.
  55. ^ Mau Mau case: Government abuse took place on BBC News July 17, 2012.
  56. ↑ Mau Mau uprising: Kenyans win UK torture ruling on BBC News October 5, 2012 and Dignity sought in Mau Mau ruling on BBC News October 5, 2012.
  57. ↑ Kenyan Mau Mau victims in talk with UK government over legal settlement The Guardian, May 5, 2013, accessed May 6, 2013
  58. ↑ Mau Mau torture victims to receive compensation - Hague on BBC News June 6, 2013, accessed June 7, 2013.
  59. ^ For example, in the work of the psychiatrist Carothers, who had worked in the Nairobi mental hospital, see JC Carothers: The Psychology of Mau Mau. Nairobi 1954, or in the publications of the official Kikuyu expert LSB Leakey: Mau Mau and the Kikuyus. London 1952, and Defeating Mau Mau. London 1954.
  60. ↑ Bruce Bermann: Bureaucracy & Incumbent Violence. Colonial Administration and the Origins of the 'Mau Mau' Emergency. In: Bruce Berman & John Lonsdale: Unhappy Valley. S, 227-264, p. 227.
  61. ↑ See e.g. B. Carl Rosberg & John Nottingham: The Myth of Mau Mau. New York 1966; Donald Barnett & Karari Njama: Mau Mau from Within. London 1968.
  62. ↑ Hartmut Bergenthum: History in Kenya in the 2nd half of the 20th century . Münster 2004, pp. 284-302.
  63. ↑ So Bethwell Ogot 1971 in Bethwell A. Ogot (Ed.): Hadith 4. Politics and Nationalism in Colonial Kenya . In: Proceedings of the 1971 Conference of the Historical Association of Kenya , Nairobi 1972.
  64. ↑ So Tabitha MJ Kanogo: Rift Valley Squatters and Mau Mau . In: Kenya Historical Review 5, No. 2, 1977, pp. 243-252.
  65. ↑ So Maina wa Kinyatti: Mau Mau: The Peak of African Political Organization in Colonial Kenya . In: Kenya Historical Review 5, No. 2, 1977, pp. 285-311.
  66. ^ BA Ogot: The Politics of Populism . In: BA Ogot, WR Ochieng '(Ed.): Decolonization & Independence in Kenya 1940-93 . London 1995, pp. 187-213, here p. 199.
    Maina wa Kinyatti: Mau Mau: A revolution betrayed . 2nd Edition. Jamaica 2000, pp. XIV, 55-77.
  67. ↑ For example Bethwell A. Ogot, Tiyambe Zeleza: Kenya: The Road to Independence and After . In: Prosser Gifford, Roger Louis William (Eds.): Decolonization and African Independence. The Transfers of Power, 1960-1980 . Yale University Press, New Haven 1988, pp. 401-426.
    Gordon Obote Magaga: The African Dream: 1920-63 . In: BA Ogot, WR Ochieng '(Ed.): Kenya: The Making of a Nation. A Hundred Years of Kenya's History, 1895-1995 . Institute of Research and Postgraduate Studies, Maseno University, Maseno 2000, pp. 79-90.
  68. ↑ Bethwell A. Ogot: Mau Mau and the Fourth Estate 1952-1956 . In: ders .: Building on the Indigenous. Selected Essays 1981–1998 . Anyange Press, Kisumu 1999, pp. 39-61.
  69. ^ Caroline Elkins: Britain's Gulag. The Brutal End of Empire in Kenya . London 2005, pp. X-xi.
  70. ↑ Branch: Defeating Mau Mau . Cambridge 2009.