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  However, it was neither Kenyatta nor KAU who discovered a means for mobilizing the masses, but rather a group of several thousand Kikuyu squatters who had been forced to leave the White Highlands and resettle in an area called Olenguruone. Threatened by the colonial government with yet another eviction, sometime around 1943 the Olenguruone residents radicalized the traditional Kikuyu practice of oathing. Typically, Kikuyu men had taken an oath to forge solidarity during times of war or internal crises; the oath would morally bind men together in the face of great challenges. But at Olenguruone the oath was transformed by the changing political circumstances of British colonialism, and local Kikuyu leaders administered it not only to men but to women and children as well. This oath united the Kikuyu at Olenguruone in a collective effort to fight the injustices of British rule.42

  Mass oathing spread rapidly as African politicians quickly recognized its potential for organizing, though it was largely limited to the Kikuyu population. Initial grassroots support for oathing largely came from members of the Kikuyu independent schools and churches, which had been formed in the wake of the earlier female-circumcision crisis. By 1950 the scale of the oathing campaign made the movement’s detection unavoidable, and the colony’s African Affairs Department noted that “secret meetings were being held in which an illegal oath, accompanied by appropriately horrid ritual, was being administered to initiates binding them to treat all Government servants as enemies, to disobey Government orders and eventually to evict all Europeans from the country.”43

  The movement that would be popularized as Mau Mau44 was quickly seen by colonial officials as a unified force. In reality, however, its leadership, pulled from KAU and other groups, came to be divided over several issues, most notably the methods by which African grievances should be addressed. By 1950 the young militants—many of them drawn from the ranks of the ex-soldier community—began splitting from the moderate political elite of KAU. These radicals assumed control over the oathing campaigns, many of which were now being imposed by force. They introduced several different oaths, each representing a deeper pledge of loyalty to the movement and a deeper commitment to violent action. The militant wing was able successfully to link Kikuyu urban and rural discontent. Preferring violent means, they began to replace earlier constitutional methods of reproach, such as those advocated by Kenyatta and his moderate compatriots, with calls for active, armed resistance. In spite of the August 1950 government ban on Mau Mau, the pace of violence quickened not only in the White Highlands, where the remaining squatters, frustrated at every turn, saw hope in the militants’ demands for land and freedom, but also in Nairobi, where the conditions of the urban poor steadily eroded, and in the Kikuyu reserves, where members of the chiefly community were already being murdered by Mau Mau adherents.45

  Oathing ceremonies, so crucial to the solidarity of ordinary Kikuyu, could number well over one hundred participants. Mau Mau initiates often would enter into a liminal state by passing through an arch of banana leaves and stripping naked, in effect shedding their former status in the community and preparing themselves for their symbolic rebirth as Mau Mau adherents. With some variation, an oath administrator would direct the slaughtering of a goat and then lead the initiates in a ritual. He would sometimes begin by asking them, “[Do you] agree to become a Kikuyu, a full Kikuyu, free from blemish?”46 The initiates would answer in the affirmative, and they would then bite and ingest a piece of the goat meat. The oath administrator would go on to inquire if the candidate wanted to know the “secret” of the Kikuyu people, and again the initiates would answer in the affirmative and receive instruction in the history of the Kikuyu people and Mau Mau’s goals of land and freedom.47 Various vows were then repeated, followed by the refrain “may this oath kill me.” Two of the most common pledges were “If I know of any enemy of our organization and fail to kill him, may this oath kill me,” and “If I reveal this oath to any European, may this oath kill me.”48 Following each vow, the initiates would again bite and ingest pieces of meat from the slaughtered goat.

  The oath not only created a new status for the Kikuyu as reborn members of Mau Mau but also served as a moral contract. A genuine fear of reprisal infused most of the oath takers, regardless of whether they were willing participants in the ceremony or not. Forced oathing did not make the pledge less binding, and in fact the bind of the oath often prevented them—even under torture or threat of death—from betraying the movement. Just as a Kikuyu one hundred years earlier believed he could not elude the power of an oath, so many Mau Mau adherents believed in the repercussions of breaking their pledge. In an interview one former Mau Mau adherent insisted, “It was a very strong oath, in the Kikuyu belief, just like during the old days when the Kikuyu elders, after having slaughtered a goat, they used to hit the ground with their sticks while uttering the words, ‘He who divulges information about the kiama [council], may he fall down like this!’”49 In effect, the Kikuyu believed that if an oath taker violated his or her pledge, then loyalty to Mau Mau would be broken. If someone confessed having taken the oath, that person would suffer the wrath of the Kikuyu creator god, Ngai. His punishment would come in the form of injury—or, more likely, death.

  Such beliefs render research into oathing an enormous challenge. To this day, most former Mau Mau adherents believe in the power of the oath and the fatal consequences of divulging its secrets. For example, while traveling in the area of Mathira near the foot of Mount Kenya, I asked Lucy Mugwe, an elderly Kikuyu woman whom I had been interviewing for some time, what had happened to one of her neighbors who was missing. She replied, “Oh, she was walking back up the hill carrying water [which was roughly a fifteen-gallon container strapped around her forehead and swung over her back] when her cow walked in her path and knocked her over. She died not long thereafter.” Lucy then leaned over and in a hushed voice reminded me, “But you know it was to be expected…that woman confessed the oath years ago.”50 Only after considerable time living in the field did I begin to explore the issue of oathing with former Mau Mau adherents, and even then I only scratched the surface of its history and meaning.

  The British colonial government estimated that the first Mau Mau oath, or the oath of unity, was administered to nearly 90 percent of the 1.5 million Kikuyu people.51 As the movement progressed, the Mau Mau leadership devised seven different oaths, with each successive level representing greater commitment to the movement. Accompanying each new oath was a new ritual that incorporated the drinking of animal and even human blood, and the biting or eating of various animal parts. In one account of the fourth oath, a Kikuyu was bound together with his fellow initiates using a goat intestine, was cut on his arms by the oath administrator, then compelled to lick blood from the fresh wounds of his fellow oath takers. According to the initiate, “After taking the blood, one felt how a woman feels towards her harvest of maize or beans [e.g., protective]. That was how someone who had taken [this] oath felt about his land. He could do anything to protect it, even if it meant death.”52 The seventh and final oath was called the batuni, or killing oath. It would become more widespread after Kenya’s governor declared a State of Emergency in the colony, and was administered only to those who were prepared to fight in the forests.

  Indoctrination into the Mau Mau movement drew upon this adaptation of traditional Kikuyu oathing for the new explosive circumstances of the postwar period. Whereas the colonial government, and certainly the local settlers, viewed oathing as barbaric mumbo jumbo and further evidence of the backwardness and savagery of the Kikuyu, the practice had logic and purpose. It was the rational response of a rural people seeking to understand the enormous socioeconomic and political changes taking place around them while attempting to respond collectively to new and unjust realities.

  On the eve of the Mau Mau war, there were hundreds of thousands of Kikuyu who had taken an oath of unity, pledging their lives for Mau Mau and its demand for land and freedom. When the European settlers and the colonial government learned of
the movement, land and freedom were clearly understood as demands for the return of disputed land and an end to British colonialism. But for those Kikuyu who pledged themselves to Mau Mau, the meanings of land and freedom were less defined and much more complex than merely tossing off the British yoke and reclaiming the land of their ancestors. In part, the specific meaning of Mau Mau tended to reflect the age, gender, and birthplace of the oath taker. For some of them, land and freedom meant a rejection of the colonial-appointed chiefs and their policies of self-aggrandizement.53 For many men in the younger generation, it was a demand for a return of the frontier where they could once again earn their adulthood, often with the help of an elder Kikuyu patron.54 For some Kikuyu women, land and freedom represented an end to the backbreaking terracing projects and other forms of forced communal labor.55 For others, the slogan represented a future hope of finding farms in the overcrowded reserves that were large enough to feed their children.56 It was as much the ambiguity as the specificity of Mau Mau’s demand for land and freedom that made it so appealing to the Kikuyu masses and such a powerful and difficult movement for the British to suppress.

  By 1950 Kenya was on the verge of one of the bloodiest and most protracted wars of decolonization fought in Britain’s twentieth-century empire. Mau Mau had enormous grassroots support, and it was clearly directed at both the white and black faces of British colonial rule, notably the settlers and the colonial-appointed chiefs. For their part, the settlers reacted with predictable hysteria and with demands for a draconian response on the part of the colonial government. Though the settlers were by no means a unified ideological force—there certainly existed a spectrum of European opinion in the colony on all issues—they quickly coalesced around the issue of Mau Mau. Whereas for years the proverbial “conservative tail wagged the moderate dog”57 in Kenyan settler politics, with the onset of Mau Mau settler conservatism and overt racism would harden, and local European opinion would collectively move farther and farther to the right.

  Alongside the settlers stood the other target of Mau Mau hatred, the colonial-appointed chiefs and their followers who in the upcoming war would be called loyalists. These men became enormously wealthy and powerful at the expense of their fellow Kikuyu. Some even earned the status of senior chief, overseeing vast portions of the Kikuyu reserves, with all the inherent potential for self-aggrandizement. For the Kikuyu masses, senior chiefs like the soon-to-be-famous Waruhiu represented everything that was corrupt about Britain’s civilizing mission. The backbone of loyalist support during Mau Mau would come from these men, along with the lesser chiefs and headmen, and their coteries. Importantly, loyalist would come to have a very specific meaning for the colonial government and for those who considered themselves loyalists, of which there would ultimately be several thousand. Quite simply, loyalist was a term for any Kikuyu who would actively fight on the side of the British government against the Mau Mau movement and who in return would be granted privileges that would far outweigh anything that previously had been granted to the chiefly community during the years leading up to the war.

  For Mau Mau followers, those who betrayed their movement had to be eliminated. This included not just the loyalists but also the small minority of devout Kikuyu Christians who were neither Mau Mau nor loyalist, and who suffered persecutions from both opposing factions. The local Christian missionaries would fight endlessly with the colonial government to expand the official definition of loyalism, claiming that their Christian flock comprised the most loyal and Western-leaning Kikuyu in the colony. They would have very limited success. Throughout the war these missionaries would play a pivotal role, as many witnessed the atrocities that would unfold in the detention camps and barbed-wire villages. The degree to which they would intervene against—and in some cases abet—colonial violence would be a reflection of their own self-interests and their loyalty to the colonial government.

  Overseeing the unfolding Mau Mau drama was Kenya’s governor, Sir Philip Mitchell, and the colonial secretary in London, Oliver Lyttelton. Mitchell was a short, pudgy, and by all accounts rather unlikable man who, on paper, appeared to be the governor best suited to take on the job in Kenya in late 1944. He was at the end of a long and distinguished career in Britain’s colonial service, which presumably made him the ideal candidate. He was, though, staunchly determined to retire with a spotless record, a goal which took on new meaning when his colony became the new jewel of the British Empire after Britain’s loss of India in 1947. When Mau Mau began to emerge as a real force in 1950, Mitchell downplayed its significance and scope to the Colonial Office, as well as the escalating violence and disorder.58 Anything less would have been an admission of his failure to govern. Right up to his retirement in June 1952, he sent memo after memo to London inaccurately reporting the peace and progress of his colony. In reality, violence was already reaching serious proportions, with Mau Mau hamstringing settler cattle, burning crops, and murdering Kikuyu loyal to the British. Had he alerted Colonial Secretary Lyttelton, London would surely have intervened, and several senior officials on the spot would have been held accountable and their careers tarnished. Remarkably, Mitchell successfully managed to retire with honor, though his charade would soon be unveiled. During the long summer of 1952, as Kenya awaited its new governor, the situation continued to deteriorate. It was now clear to those on the spot that Mau Mau was preparing to launch an anticolonial and civil rebellion, though few at the time foresaw the level of destruction that lay over the horizon.

  • Chapter Two •

  Britain’s Assault on Mau Mau

  Senior Chief Waruhiu lying dead in his Hudson

  IN THE LATE AFTERNOON OF OCTOBER 9, 1952, SENIOR CHIEF WARUHIU stepped into the backseat of his spotless Hudson sedan for what would become a most fateful journey. His driver whisked him and two of his friends away from the controlled order of downtown colonial Nairobi en route to the village of Gachie not far from the White Highlands. The journey along winding, narrow roads would take them past the graceful pink stucco buildings and manicured grounds of the Muthaiga Club. Partway through the journey a gentle rain began to fall as the Hudson climbed the foothills, reflecting the vibrant green of the local coffee plantations and the ever-present banana trees with their tremendous, oval-shaped leaves. As the driver made a sharp turn, three men wearing British colonial police uniforms waved the car to a stop. One of them approached the car, leaned in, and asked for Senior Chief Waruhiu. The senior chief no sooner identified himself than the man drew a pistol and shot him in the mouth and then three more times in the torso. The Mau Mau adherents, masquerading as policemen, shot out the car’s tires before making their escape. Despite three eyewitnesses—the driver and the other passengers were left unharmed—the real assassins were never apprehended.1

  The murder of Senior Chief Waruhiu came just ten days after Sir Evelyn Baring arrived in Kenya to assume his new role as governor of the colony. The settlers had greeted him with hysteria and irrepressible demands to take action against the Kikuyu who were reportedly ravaging the countryside. In fact, there could be no doubt that in the months leading up to Baring’s arrival Mau Mau had struck on numerous occasions, destroying settler property and murdering several Kikuyu loyalists. The local police also suspected Mau Mau of claiming its first white victim on October 3 when Mrs. A.M. Wright was stabbed to death by unknown assailants near her home in Thika, only ten miles from Nairobi. But Baring had received no warning from either the Colonial Office or his predecessor, Sir Philip Mitchell, about the escalating violence, despite the fact that both men were fully aware of the deteriorating situation in Kenya.2 For his part, Mitchell could not bring himself to admit the severity of the situation and thus shatter his dream of retiring with a spotless colonial record. But Colonial Secretary Lyttelton had received numerous reports in the summer of 1952 from Kenya’s acting governor, Henry Potter, as well as cables from several outraged settlers, that Mau Mau savagery was increasing at a dangerously fast pace. Lyttelton and his staff d
ismissed these accounts, even those coming from his administrative officers in the field, as exaggerated and alarmist. Mau Mau, Lyttelton felt, could be checked with a few pieces of hard-nosed legislation and some tougher policing. There was no need to panic.3

  Baring had yet even to unpack at Government House when he was confronted with the realities of his new post. Awaiting him on his desk was a memorandum from the colony’s chief native commissioner concluding that Mau Mau had gained control over the three Kikuyu districts, that it was anti-European and atavistic, and that it was spreading rapidly. Worse, the colony’s security was deteriorating, despite the fact that Potter, the acting governor, had imposed curfews and collective punishments, and had increased the size of the police force in the months before Baring’s arrival. Jomo Kenyatta, according to the report, was the mastermind behind the Mau Mau movement, though there was no direct evidence to implicate the Kikuyu leader as directing either the oathing campaign or the escalating terror.4 Other colonial officers with firsthand knowledge of the situation in the Kikuyu reserves and Nairobi soon briefed Baring, warning him of the savagery of Mau Mau and of the ominous threat it presented. But the new governor decided he had to see for himself, and immediately after his swearing-in he set off on a tour of the Kikuyu areas outside of Nairobi. Of his stop in Kandara, he later recalled, “I’ve never seen such faces, they were scowling, they looked unhappy, they were intensely suspicious. It was an expression I saw a great deal during the early years of Mau Mau.”5 There is no record of Baring ever suggesting during his introductory tour or at any time during the Emergency that the Kikuyu people might have had a genuine social or economic grievance. From the time he arrived in Kenya, he accepted uncritically the notion that Mau Mau was a completely illegitimate movement. On his tour he spoke with no one suspected of Mau Mau sympathies. Instead, he had meetings with Kikuyu chiefs and headmen, all colonial-appointed officials, as well as with teachers from the mission schools. They all painted a desperate picture of a breakdown in law and order, and all emphasized, as Baring remembered, that “if you don’t get Kenyatta and those all round him and shut them up somehow or other we are in a terrible, hopeless position.”6