The Mau Mau Uprising

The social conditions under colonial Kenya were one of the most influential factors leading to the Mau Mau uprising. The British colonial government imposed their culture upon the Kenyans way of life, which led to native resistance. The Africans understood the diversity of their country but thought they should be the ones to run it. With the arrival of educated young Africans such as Jomo Kenyatta, there was a new force to be reckoned with and the British saw their domination in Kenya slowly slipping away.

In September 1952, there began in Britain's East African colony of Kenya an uprising that was put down only after four years of hard fighting and over twelve thousand deaths. This uprising by African dissidents was known as the Mau Mau which is pig latin for the word “uma uma” and means “out out.” This movement eventually brought colonialism to an end in Kenya, though its legacy survived after Kenya gained its independence in 1963.

In Kenya, white settlers held a virtual monopoly over the commercial agriculture of the fertile land. They also possessed and controlled some of the country's secondary light industry. The balance of the secondary and most of the tertiary industry - wholesale and retail distribution - was in the hands of Kenya's second settler community, the Asians. On the third and lowest rung of this colonial ladder were the Africans, who supplied the labor.

The Europeans colonized Kenya and in the process attempted to destroy the African culture in order to better suit their economic pursuits. The Kikuyu had a specialized civilization and were in the process of expanding to the south when the Europeans arrived. The Mbari was a system of land distribution in which the githaka (land) was given to different land owners who could trace their lineage to a common ancestor. Each mbari had a leader called a muramati who was obliged to maintain the land initially and develop a communal system once the population grew. “Any member of the mbari had the right to utilize any part of it so long as no one else had made prior claim to it and, more important, provided the head of the mbari, the muramati, was informed.”

In Kikuyu society there was also a substantial landless population. The difference between pre-colonial times and post-colonial times is that the landless population in pre-colonial times were not thrown into economic disaster. There were important social institutions which prevented this population from becoming destitute. The landless people were known as the ahoi and they were very important to the society although they had no land. They basically rented land from a mbari and in return gave a portion of his crops to the muramati. The ahoi was also obliged to join the military and assist in the protection of the Kikuyu lands. They were extremely important to the preservation of this fragile system of land ownership and it was this group who would eventually initiate the Mau Mau movement. This was an ancient system that had worked efficiently for the Kikuyu but when the Europeans tried to break it up, it resulted in detiorating social conditions and equally as important, it alienated the ahoi.

In 1920, Kenya was founded in order to better stimulate economic growth in the region through the linkage to the Uganda railway. Because Kenya lacked minerals, the only profitable expenditure was the production of agriculture, mainly coffee. The British government initially wanted to colonize Kenya with a Jewish population to accomadate the urgency of the Zionist movement. Some Europeans wanted to make Kenya an “America of the Hindus” by colonizing it with Indians. Once Europeans settled in Kenya, the idea of non-whites sharing land with them became greatly opposed. The effort to encourage non-whites to colonize Kenya ended when there was considerable anti-semitic outbursts on the part of the resident white settlers.

The idea that the Kikuyu could assume the task of commercial farming was out of the question because the Europeans believed they were too primitive, ignoring the fact that the Kikuyu had engaged in subsistence agriculture for centuries. Sir Charles Eliot held the view of many Europeans when he stated: “the African is greedy and covetous enough….he is too indolent in his ways, and too disconnected in his ideas, to make any attempt to better himself, or to undertake any labour which does not produce a speedy visible result. His mind is far nearer the animal world than is that of the European or Asiatic, and exhibits something of the animal’s placidity and want of desire to rise beyond the stage he has reached.”

This racist attitude led to Kenya becoming a “white man’s country” modeled specifically on South Africa. The Africans were deprived of their ancestral lands and forced into a situation where they would become wage-laborers to benefit the well being of the European settlers. In the view of the Europeans, Africans were no more than tenants of the imperial government and therefore had no rights to land whatsoever. This effectively destroyed African economic independence and made way for a colony based on cash-crops whereas the Africans would break their backs for the rich white land owners accumulating vast wealth.

The solidification of this situation occurred in 1896 with the passing of the Land Acquisition Act which allowed the colony to acquire any land near the railroad they needed to make a profit. The Land Ordinance of 1902 soon followed which enabled settlers to acquire land on a ninety-nine year lease. The 1915 Land Ordinance is the most significant because it increased the lease year from ninety-nine year to nine hundred and nine years. This was an extraordinary amount of time and made it obvious that the Europeans planned to make the fertile lands of Kenya their permanent homes.

The problem of the encroachment of Europeans was not that they were taking all of the land (it is estimated that overall the Europeans took the land of only four percent of the Kikuyu population) but that the Africans’ population was increasing dramatically. The Kikuyu adopted European medicine which led to a sharp population increase but the Kikuyu had always been accustomed to this trend. In historical times, the Kikuyu had expanded far to the south and were halted only by the colonization of South Africa. Another major problem was that the scarcity of land led to extensive land erosion on the reserves. Therefore the fertility was not proportionate to the land available for cultivation and the higher demand for food led to an urgent situation.

Although the British colony had a plethora of information about the crisis, they failed to admit that there was a problem with soil erosion or population growth and nothing was done about the situation. The official response to this urgent situation was to encourage migration to Tanganyika, “civilize” the Africans thereby increasing their production by giving them more advanced farming tools, and lastly the Africans were encouraged to begin growing cash crops so that they can began to buy their food instead of grow it. The option of opening land to the Kikuyu was out of the question because the Europeans believed they would only ruin the land with their primitive farming techniques. This was an obvious impossibility for many Africans because people like the ahoi had no land to begin with.

To make matters worse, the missionaries began instilling a sense of individualism in the Kikuyu population, which led to widespread corruption. The traditional chiefs tried to follow the traditional social rules but when the process of individual land ownership was placed instead of communal ownership, they were doomed. The important tribal unity that had lasted for centuries was now being rapidly disintegrated. The new chiefs now accepted bribes in exchange for their ancestral lands and intimidated anyone who spoke out against them.
The traditional chiefs had lost their power to younger men who had been appointed by the British. These new chiefs were tempted with their newfound power and had been corrupted with Westernization. It was now possible for these new chiefs to neglect their traditional duties without fear of being punished. The British control had been felt and the power of the traditional elders was quickly diminished. This led to a clash between the older and younger generations. The old people insisted upon continuing their culture and the social roles held within but the young people felt it impossible or undesirable to maintain such traditions in this new fast changing society. According to Jomo Kenyatta, the problem lay in the complete annihilation of “the tribal democratic institutions which were the boast of the country, and the proof of tribal good sense, have been suppressed.”

The Africans were placed on reserve lands in order to create more land for settlers and also to force them into seeking a livelihood as laborers on European farms. This had disastrous effects for the entire population but it hit the ahoi the hardest. Because the ahoi had no formal rights to land, they had no right to live on the reserves. They were thus left landless and their former symbiotic relationship with the mbari had now completely disappeared. The ahoi were now forced to choose between becoming servants of the land owners or go to the cities and become laborers in slums. According to the Carter Land Commission, by 1934, 110,000 Kikuyu were living outside the reserve and by 1948, this number increased to 294,146.
The ahoi and the Kikuyu with too little land to support their families began swarming to the city of Nairobi. In the cities, an urban laborer’s lot was low pay and appalling living conditions. In the country, colonial farmers employed African labor either on monthly terms or under a system that resembled medieval villeinage. In this second system, 'resident laborers' or 'squatters' worked for a settler for two hundred days a year in return for a meager wage and the use of a plot of land to grow their own food. The remainder of the African population was engaged in subsistence agriculture in ethnic 'reserves', growing cheap food for the urban workers.

“By 1948 there were 28,886 Kikuyu living within the municipality of Nairobi, 45% of the total African population in the city.” The industrial development in Kenya overall was too limited to provide for this incredible influx and most remained either unemployed or were absorbed in low paying manual work. The colonial state justified these low wages by claiming the African laborers did not depend on them to survive which was a far cry from reality. The highest paid African male worker earned about one-tenth of the wages received by the lowest-paid male European worker. These were desperate people, mostly men who hoped to earn enough money to buy land on the reserves or at least for a suitable bride price. Another large population of demobilized ex-servicemen who had served in World War II came to Nairobi because unlike their white counterparts, the government had not provided them with land or aid.

Not unlike the Africans in America, the Kikuyu were forced into slums where the housing was inadequate for the crammed population; often lacking even sanitary requirements. The Africans became stuck in these slums unable to accumulate enough wealth to buy land back home. They even failed to earn a living wage due to incredible inflation and the government’s reluctance to raise their wages.

All of this culminated into the first social movement in rebellion against the colonial state in Kenya. The choice was non-violent resistance with the facilitation of trade unions. Led by Chege Kibachia the urban Kikuyu began the African Worker’s Federation, an all-African trade union seeking immediate solutions to the plight of thousands of African workers. After several attempts at peaceful striking, it became apparent that the colonial government was not willing to succeed to any African demand. Kibachia’s trade union soon collapsed and in its place came the East African Trade Union Congress (EATUC) founded by Fred Kubai a Kikuyu activist and Makhan Singh, an Asian communist. The colonial state responded to the EATUC general strikes with a considerable show of force and in 1950, the organization was banned; leaving the workers with no trade union to resolve their economic plight.

The repression of their trade unions led many activists to believe that the colonial government would not respond to non-violent resistance and the road to peaceful negotiations was effectively closed. The urban Kikuyu instead turned to violence and crime in order to survive in their increasingly hostile environment. Criminal groups using their kinship ties as gang identities appeared all over Nairobi. After 1947, the incidence of crime in Nairobi increased dramatically and there were not enough police powers to stop its growth. These gangs easily took control of the many areas lacking an adequate police force. Racial hostility rose and Africans began to develop a local hatred against the colonial state.

Education before the coming of the Europeans was undertaken by parents and elders in the society. An ingenious form of games, riddles, stories and instructions concerning the correct behavior to adopt was taught emphasizing the importance of personal relations. The basic knowledge that was taught to the children was necessary to ensure that the identity of the tribe would be passed on.

The first missionaries came to Kenya in 1844, even before the British government claimed it as their own. Their style of education was vastly different and focused on basic literacy for reading the Holy Bible, and manual tasks were implemented for their “moral” value. The missionaries attempted to create self-sufficient Christian communities who would spread the word to the surrounding population through their example. Although the settlers attempted to convert the Kikuyu to Christianity they were not very successful. The Kikuyu relied heavily on their native religion and their concept of Ngai. Many of the African societies resisted the missions and the missionaries found they had to turn to the idea of recovering slaves that the British had captured in their campaign to stop the slave trade.

A powerful new force came out of these missionaries and foreign schooling. A growing number of Western educated Africans were rising up to represent their impoverished brethren in the name of nationalism. They had learned of the colonial structure, they could speak the settlers’ language, and most importantly they could write in the settlers language. These young Africans were in a position to create a powerful new force the colonial government would have to deal with.

Led by such leaders as Harry Thuku and Jomo Kenyatta, new organizations appeared varying in their philosophies. Some were led by Christians and were conservative, others were led by Africans activists and were extremely radical. Organizations such as the KA, EAA, KCA, NKCA, UMA, and KAU were instrumental in illustrating the plight of Kenyans and proposing solutions for the problems. They were all for the most part separate organizations but in 1950 they decided to unite using oaths which would instill courage into the initiates. Many of the dispossessed in Nairobi and the squatters in the Rift Valley Province were eager to take the oath as it was their last hope.

The forty thousand white settlers lived among some 5.6 million Africans whom they alternately patronized and feared. They did not see it as their role to encourage the Africans' economic and political aspirations, which had been raised during World War II when many Kenyans had fought for 'king and country'.

In addition, the whites could not see that the failure to implement long-promised land reform was, in the postwar years, placing an intolerable burden on the African population. It fell most heavily on the pastoral Kikuyu, the largest of Kenya's tribes, whose land was wholly inadequate to accommodate either a growing population or returning squatters.

Colonial rule, while not overtly oppressive, operated through 'agreement' with white settlers. African political representation was all but ignored. This complacent climate led to what was, in effect, a peasant revolt, an uprising of the poor and dispossessed that shook the colonial structure to its foundations.

The Mau Mau did not constitute a national uprising, as only members of the Kikuyu and two smaller related ethnic groups, the Embu and Meru, took part. The other Kenyan African peoples remained indifferent or opposed to the aims and the methods of the Mau Mau. And the educated elite among the Kikuyu opposed the strategy of the movement even if they sympathized with the aim of changing the colonial order.

Although conceived in the early 1940s, it was not until 1952 that the Mau Mau launched attacks on white farmers - the first wave was, in fact, targeted against African chiefs and headmen who were loyal to the British. In October 1952 - when there were some twelve thousand African guerrillas in the field - a state of emergency was declared by the governor, Sir Evelyn Baring.

Simultaneously, British troops began arriving by air from Egypt and the United Kingdom to reinforce the British-officered King's Africa Rifles. Eventually dispatched to Kenya were naval, artillery engineer and Royal Air Force (RAF) elements, the last equipped with light bombers. The Kenya Regiment, whose ranks were filled with the sons of white settlers, was also mobilized, and the Kenya police reinforced until they were as heavily armed as the army regulars. At its height, the campaign involved five British infantry battalions, six battalions of the King's Africa Rifles, two RAF bomber squadrons and a greatly expanded police force.
The colonial administration's next step was to arrest Jomo Kenyatta, a British-educated African who, on the publication of his book Facing Mount Kenya in 1938, had become the spokesman for Kenyan nationalist aspirations. The British believed that Kenyatta was the master strategist behind the Mau Mau, when, in fact, he was opposed to violence. Following a trial at which (it is now freely admitted) both the judge and the chief witness were bribed, the British sentenced Kenyatta to seven years' imprisonment - and, at a stroke, removed from the scene the one man who might have prevented the situation worsening.

In January 1953, the settler community was convulsed by the murder of a white farmer, Roger Ruck, and his wife and small son. All three had been hacked to death by pangas. A crowd of one thousand five hundred settlers marched on Government House in Nairobi to demand the use of any and all means to crush the Mau Mau. Most white settlers took to carrying guns at all times, and their wives and teenage children were instructed in their use. 'Loyalist' Africans were formed into 'Home Guard' units to defend isolated farms, which were turned into fortresses.

Two months later, the killing of the Rucks was followed by the massacre at Lari of at least seventy four loyalist Kikuyu, including the elderly Chief Luka. 'Home Guards' returning from a patrol found their homes destroyed and their families dead.

By now, word of Mau Mau oath-taking ceremonies had reached the ears of the settlers. Although these were later described by a white former official in Kenya as the equivalent of taking a Boy Scout oath, the fact that they involved certain things sacred to Kikuyu culture - for instance, goat meat and blood - appalled the white population, and wildly inaccurate stories spread.

The two massacres completed the demonisation of the Mau Mau in the minds of the settlers, and the white community was seized with a desire for revenge at any cost. The Mau Mau, with what the whites saw as their grisly oath-taking ceremonies, were seen as the incarnation of the settlers' fear of unbridled native savagery.

In the spring of 1954, British troops launched a major search and cordon operation, codenamed 'Anvil', in and around Nairobi. In the course of six weeks, most of the city was searched and some twenty thousand Kikuyu arrested and detained without trial. The operation succeeded in severing permanently the links between the political arm of the Mau Mau in Nairobi and the guerrilla groups operating to the north, in the dense forests of the Aberdare range and around Mount Kenya.

From their secret forest bases, Mau Mau raided settler areas throughout central Kenya, especially those containing loyalist Kikuyu, most of whom were eventually herded into protected settlements - a policy known as 'villageisation'. In the Mau Mau units, women fought alongside men, sometimes leading the men into battle. The women were crucial in the organization and maintenance of the supply lines, which directed food, supplies, medicine, guns, and information to the forest forces. Those women who joined the men in the forest were responsible for cooking, water hauling, and knitting sweaters among many other important roles.

Large British sweeps, operating at first with very little intelligence, failed to inflict heavy damage on the Mau Mau in the forests. The latter were, in the main, poorly armed, but their fieldcraft was superb, enabling them to melt into the trees when threatened. Later, the British employed more effective methods, using smaller units guided by African trackers. But it was two big sweeps in 1955-6 - 'Hammer' and 'First Flute' - which broke the back of the Mau Mau in the forests.

The British also employed terror. In an anticipation of the 'free fire zones' of Vietnam, 'prohibited' areas - the Aberdares, Mount Kenya and a mile-wide strip around them - were established in which any African could be shot on sight; these areas were also bombed by the RAF. Rewards were offered to the units that produced the largest number of Mau Mau corpses, the hands of which were chopped off to make fingerprinting easier. Settlements suspected of harboring Mau Mau were burned, and Mau Mau suspects were tortured for information.

In 1956, the charismatic Mau Mau leader, Dedan Kimathi, was wounded and captured. Kimathi was an intriguing figure, a self-styled 'field marshal', who maintained discipline through the gun and the garrotte. He always carried with him the Bible and a copy of Napoleon's Book of Charms, which he used as an oracle. He was hanged in January 1957, despite having converted to Catholicism. His death brought an end to organized Mau Mau resistance.
For the colonial administration, the problem remained of what to do with the thousands of Mau Mau in detention who refused to break their blood oaths, which, for the whites, had taken on an almost mystical significance. Psychological pressure was brought to bear, including staged confrontations with tribal elders that sometimes turned violent. In spite of these efforts, the men detained at Hola Camp refused to repudiate their oaths. In 1959, with the approval of their officers, British soldiers severely beat some 80 of these men, an incident that led to the deaths of eleven and seriously injured dozens more.

The British attempted a cover-up, claiming that the men had died after drinking tainted water. But in the House of Commons, there was a dramatic debate on the Hola deaths in which the Conservative government's explanations were clinically destroyed by MPs Barbara Castle and Enoch Powell.

In the wake of the Hola scandal, the camps were closed, the detainees released and the state of emergency lifted. No more was heard of the Mau Mau oath. The Lancaster House conference of 1960 was followed by a greater measure of democracy for the Africans, heavy government aid for African agriculture and improved wages for urban workers. In anticipation of independence, the coming of which had been accelerated by the Mau Mau uprising, increasing numbers of Africans were promoted within the public service.

In 1963, Kenya achieved independence, with Jomo Kenyatta as its first president. The men and women who had taken to the hills after Kenyatta's arrest may not have heard Prime Minister Harold Macmillan's 1960 'wind of change' speech in South Africa, but they had certainly influenced it.

However, most of these same men and women who had fought for the Mau Mau gained little benefit. In newly independent Kenya, they were excluded from public life and preferment, the spoils of independence going to the wealthy and educated Africans who had a vested interest in marginalizing them. A black elite simply replaced the white one.

In the Mau Mau uprising, thirty European and twenty-six Asian civilians were killed. Of the Kenyan security forces, five hundred and ninety were killed, of whom sixty-three were European. At the height of the emergency, civilian deaths ran at about one hundred a month, the great majority of them loyalist Kikuyu. Mau Mau deaths are estimated at eleven thousand and five hundred.

The main causes of the Mau Mau uprising was the harsh restrictions placed upon African way of life. The social conditions were so appalling that after awhile there was nothing left to do but uprise against the oppressor. The Africans in Kenya did this with the help of leaders such as Jomo Kenyatta who attacked the wretched social conditions his people were forced to live in under British domination.

The detrimental social conditions in Kenya and specifically among the Kikuyu precipitated the Mau Mau movement. The British occupation of Kenya led to a systematic destruction of the African way of life. The introduction of white settlers, missionaries, and land acts had a detrimental effect on the diverse cultures living in Kenya. This extreme tension caused by the oppressive settler government was insurmountable and eventually led to the Mau Mau uprising.

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