Imperial Reckoning

by Caroline Elkins

  Whether conscious or not, sexual violence was a method of regaining masculine control. Indeed, how better to assert British male domination than to emasculate, literally, the enemy? The most grotesque form of this tactic was castration. Accounts of men’s testicles being forcibly removed are widespread in various written and oral sources. J. M. Kariuki discussed castrations in his memoir, as did detainees in their illicit letters.55 Men like those at Athi River referred to the castration pliers that were used throughout the Pipeline, as well as in the Kikuyu reserves. Apparently, this was an instrument devised to crush the men’s testicles before they were eventually ripped off. In their oral accounts, other detainees also discussed castration pliers, along with other methods of beating and mutilating men’s testicles. Colonial officials knew this was an ongoing practice, not only from the detainee letters but also from reports sent to them by the missionaries who were preaching in the camps. In one memorandum delivered to Governor Baring, the Christian Council of Kenya stated that British colonial agents were castrating Mau Mau suspects, and that on one occasion a man “had his private parts laid on a table and beaten till the scrotum burst because he would not speak.”56

  Detainee letters refer often to their “naked” conditions. In one account sent to “the Honourable Secretary of the States for the Colonies,” John Gitiri wrote, “When we reached the camps, they robbed the money we had and our shoes and clothes. We were left nacked [sic] as we were born. Some of those things were given to the Home Guards and Askaris and they burnt the rest.”57 In another letter, signed “Black African Detainees in Manyani Camp,” colonial officials were asked to “please urge them [the Manyani officers] not to take our clothes…. We are detainees. We are not animals to remain naked.”58 In Gatundu works camp, one of the down-Pipeline camps in Kiambu District, camp warders were notorious for stripping the detainees while they went out to work on the agricultural projects, for all of the locals to see.59

  Reduced rations, forced starvations, lack of meat and vegetables, and the countless diseases caused by these deprivations were also the subjects of many letters.60 Detainees wrote asking colonial officials to “go and urge the man who is supplyer [sic] of meat here [at Manyani] that we do not want him to supply us with heads and feet and stomachs of cattle nor we do not want the feet, heads and stomachs of pigs, we want meat itself to avoid bad diseases. They are very horrible meat.”61 Another letter, addressed to Kenya’s chief secretary, Richard Turnbull, stated: “The food we are getting can not supply the energy required for a day’s work…. Recently detainees have been punished by forced fast and work without break for lunch. This leads to the deterioration of the already poor health of poor detainees and should be discontinued.”62 But a reduction of food rations to the point of enforced starvation was one of the coercive tactics most favored by camp officials. It was never abandoned in the Pipeline. Instead, as the Emergency wore on, the British colonial government took deliberate steps to expand its use.

  “CAMP CLEANLINESS is the worst nature since detainees use same buckets for lavatory uses and for bathing uses.”63 This was one of several issues voiced by “All the detainees from Aguthi Works Camp” in their letter to Governor Baring. The problem of hygiene, disease, and the lack of medical treatment was foremost in many detainee letters. On Mageta Island several men wrote, “We are very amazed to see ourselves being kept in a very dirty and entirely anti-hygiene Camp. The camp contains no water, we are to draw water from the lake, the same place we draw drinking and cooking water, the same place we wash our latrine buckets.”64 Detainees from all over the Pipeline asked for insecticide to help control the flies breeding around the drains and the toilet buckets, for shoes to prevent the spread of disease when they walked over human waste in their barracks, for a removal of the rats infesting their compounds, and for a modicum of medical care to address the “dangerous diseases” that were afflicting many of them.65 In another letter, from Mageta Camp, the men wrote: “More than thirty (30) detainees are bloodly [sic] suffering diarrhoea, dysentery, which afterwards turns to Typhoid. Those with such sort of disease are kept in Compounds without treatments. This sounds in our mind as if we were brought here to be tortured, and if not we are kindly crying on you. Those diseases were mainly increased by lock-up and denial of food for eighty-six hours (86 hours) as from 21st to 25th of June, 1956. We have reported all these occurrences to both Commissioner and Deputy Commissioner of Prisons during visits to Mageta last month.”66

  Many detainees wondered how much longer they were going to survive. Some simply asked that they be shot rather than hung in the camps. Others requested that their leg irons be removed when they were shipped by boat to the island camps, to prevent any further “accidental” drownings. They begged colonial officials “to tell the Commandant to remove the hard labour he has planned to keep us in pain and misery” and to end the deadly cycle of starvation and forced labor.67 They wanted relief from the small cells or the “dirty holes,” as the men at Langata called them; according to other letters, such as one from Thiba Camp, detainees were punished and tortured in these cells for weeks on end.68 From the reception camps, they asked that the commandants’ guard dogs be restrained from biting and thrashing them. This was a problem in other camps as well, something noted not just by the detainees but by the community development officer at Mara River Camp, J. Bischoff. In a letter to Askwith, Bischoff wrote: “On their arrival at Mara River they [the detainees] were taken in front of the Officer in Charge who not only beat them badly but also had his Alsatian dog biting them on their legs. I would like to know whether the Officer in Charge is allowed to do this without the Commissioner’s approval and also without having the detainees medically examined by the Station Medical Officer so as to see if they are fit to receive such treatment.”69

  Death was a fact of life in the Pipeline, something the detainees conveyed repeatedly to colonial officials. Lennox-Boyd was informed in one letter that “most of us are sick and people are dying daily and we are badly treated.”70 According to other detainees, men were dying from “head injuries,” beatings, and the combined effects of torture, overwork, disease, and exhaustion.71 At South Yatta Camp the irrigation furrow claimed numerous lives, including that of Karumbi Mugenda, also known as detainee number 2017. One man in his labor gang wrote to Taxi Lewis apprising him of the situation.

  I should mention to you that, the entrusted people to chase people from the camp to work are warders who often send out very sick detainees to work. I remember it was on the 23rd January, 1957 when a detainee by name of Karumbi s/o Mugenda no. 2017 of Kiambu District was forced to go to furrow digging and was very sick. After having knocked off, this man was in a serious condition. He was sent to Thika N.G.H. [Native General Hospital] and admitted. He then died the following day. I am certain that, if you sympathetically trouble yourself and visit the mentioned Hospital, you will undoubtedly be satisfied and agree with me. 72

  Clearly, some camps were worse than others. Oral testimonies from former detainees, when compared to detainee letters, suggest that death rates were higher in the hard-core up-Pipeline camps, where, as the Emergency continued, the colonial government would officially endorse rationing further, as well as the use of more force and violence. But death was a reality everywhere.

  What did the colonial government do about these letters and the information they contained? First, colonial officials went to extreme lengths to try to stop the illicit letters. In fact, the volume of letters arriving directly to Jake Cusack and various members of his Defence Ministry was so heavy that he ordered Taxi Lewis to get control of the problem, writing, “This office is being inundated with a number of petitions from inmates of various detention camps. I fully realize the difficulties involved in controlling this illegal flow of correspondence, but wonder whether tighter measures could not be introduced—if not to stop it, at least to reduce it.”73 Colonial officials also took it upon themselves to alter unofficially the Emergency Regulation that permitted detainees
to both write and receive one censored letter per month by revoking this privilege in many camps. According to Askwith, detainees were managing to slip coded messages past camp censors. In the case of the politicals at Mageta Island, the camp library was disbanded, and all correspondence courses ended in the spring of 1956. Lennox-Boyd was informed that these actions were necessary not just as a punishment for the “generally uncooperative attitude” of the hard-core detainees but because the Mau Mau suspects were using the books as conduits for posting letters.74

  African warders were also targeted. It was well known that they were the linchpin in letter-smuggling operations, offering their services in return for a bribe or, in other instances, because they were sympathetic to the detainees’ plight. Increasingly, these warders were also subjected to frequent and unannounced searches and were punished and threatened with immediate dismissal and prosecution if found shepherding a letter out of the camps.75 Several former detainees recalled camp officials making an example of those warders who were caught sneaking out mail. In Manyani Camp, a man living today in Nairobi recalled, “There was this Luo warder who was helping us. He had been caught several times and finally the commandant took him and buried him in a hole up to his neck. The soldier ants and scorpions crawled on his head and face biting him. It was very terrible to see this…. After that our correspondence stopped for awhile.”76

  The first priority for the colonial government was obvious. Yet despite the efforts to prevent letters from coming out of the Pipeline, detainees managed to keep circumventing the tighter restrictions and the “illegal flow of correspondence” continued. Of course, had these letters reached only colonial officials, perhaps there would have been less cause for British concern. But the letters came to a host of other recipients beyond the purview of Lennox-Boyd and Governor Baring. Among them was Barbara Castle. In one instance she would have received a letter postmarked Manyani Camp, and upon opening it the first thing the Labour MP would have seen was “S.O.S.” printed boldly across the top. Six men from the camp stated, “Prison and rehabilitation officers are ferocious and treat detainees indecently.” They went on:

  The record shows that many of our detainees who were physically fit by the time of their arrest have already been maimed for life by both prison and rehabilitation officers. To induce self-incrimination, the ministry of defence and ministry of community development resort to, (a) Hanging detainees head downwards and vice versa and inflicting pains of any nature ranges from putting soap lather, snuff, salt, D.D.T. and soil in the eyes. (b) To scare detainees completely some detainees are hanged and killed…. (c) Incessant pouring of the water on the face thus preventing a person from breathing in and out, e.g. the recent case of KARIUKI s/o MURITHI who was killed with these process in the night of 17th July 1957 by confessed detainees under instructions of camp commandant and rehabilitation officers. (d) Medical treatment is hardly given unless one confesses, (e) Starving and giving insufficient meal one time daily. (f) Organise riot squad to make unreasonable onslaught on detainees. (g) Forcing detainees to co-operate and to work under duress. (h) Trials of ordeal. (i) Running gauntlet. (j) Regular letting detainees survive without food or water for a complete fortnight. 77

  Many such letters reached Castle and other members of the Labour Opposition. Labour MPs took to the floor of the Commons and demanded impartial inquiries into their government’s conduct in Kenya. For the most part, they got nowhere. At every turn the Opposition was stonewalled and misled by Lennox-Boyd and his Colonial Office, compelling Castle, years later, to comment, “The number of letters we received was really heart rending. I always sent it to the Secretary of State, of course for verification, but what was so infuriating was that he always had an administrative enquiry which meant that the very people who were in charge of the security forces who were committing these atrocities were the ones who sat in judgment on the case and the whole instinct of the Europeans and those in charge was to cover up, always cover up.”78

  The colonial government dismissed the majority of these letters out of hand, claiming their stories were made up. In response to one posted from Aguthi Camp, the officer in charge wrote to Taxi Lewis, “The anonymous letter appears to me to be the usual attempt at complete distortion of the facts of detention camp routine, for the purpose of eliciting unwarranted sympathy. I have no reason to believe that any of the complaints in the letter have any substance.”79 The key word in this colonial officer’s statement is “anonymous.” The letter in question, like countless others, went uninvestigated because Governor Baring and the colonial secretary insisted upon “identifiable details” if allegations were to be investigated.80 Colonial officials demanded that the detainees provide their names, the date and time of specific claims of abuse, and the person or persons responsible for perpetrating the alleged brutalities or deprivations.

  But at the same time, the colonial government enacted regulations punishing detainees who smuggled letters out of the camps. In January 1954, according to a government decree, it became a major offense if “a detainee was found guilty of communicating with people outside of the detention camps by unauthorized means.”81 Thus if a detainee provided all of the details necessary for an investigation, including his name, by law he could be punished with up to fourteen days of solitary confinement with reduced rations and twelve strokes with a cane. In fact, there were actually reported cases of this happening. In one instance a delegation went to investigate the specific claims of a detainee at Aguthi Camp, and in a subsequent meeting with Lennox-Boyd one of its members. T. George Thomas, told the colonial secretary:

  It had come to his notice that at Aguthi camp the detainee who had smuggled out a letter to Mrs. Castle about the death of Kabui had been awarded 12 strokes for a breach of Prisons Rules. He [the member of the investigation team] had not told any of his colleagues about this since he returned, but he wished to point out that in these circumstances it was not very surprising that so many complaints emerging from the camps were anonymous. 82

  Time and again camp officials broadly interpreted the punishment for many so-called infractions in the Pipeline, including letter smuggling. In one oral account a detainee from Mara River reported the camp commandant making an example of one of their scribes. The letter writer was paraded in front of the other detainees and his fingers cut off by the askaris with a panga, or machete, before he was taken to the makeshift gallows in the middle of the camp and hung.83 In his memoir J. M. discusses several instances of being tortured as a direct result of his letter-writing campaign. In one case his “buttocks swelled considerably” after Mapiga ordered an askari to give him sixty strokes with a cane. The following morning, according to J. M.,

  [Mapiga] took me outside “C” Camp to a place near the Forest and said that he would shoot me unless I wrote down on a piece of paper that I would not send any more letters to England, that I would co-operate with the Government and that I would help to type in the screeners’ office. Although the thought of death was still not wholly desirable, I refused. He then took from his car a piece of three-ply wood about three feet by two feet and told me to hold it up above my head at arm’s length. He walked five yards away and said that he was going to kill me if I did not agree to write the sentences. Still, not imagining he could be serious, I refused. To my horror he raised his gun and shot at me.

  Mapiga did this three times. On the first two attempts he missed, though not without sending J. M. to the ground in fear. The third time he hit the detainee’s right hand. Freshly wounded, J. M. was taken back to the camp and put into solitary confinement in a small cell. Several days later the camp commandant brought him in front of the rest of the detainees and shouted in Kiswahili, “Here is your leader. He wants to show you he is God. You follow him because he writes letters to the Colonial Office. Do not follow him any more. If you do you will get into the same trouble as he is in today. [J. M.] take off your clothes and lie down on the bench.” At that point J. M. received another twelve cane strokes, and
when he still refused to stop writing letters, he was taken to the notorious Compound 6 for some more roughing up. It was there, according to J. M., that “the Riot Squad was always coming in and they would make everyone take off their clothes and beat them all round the compound, young and old naked together, which is shameful to my people. But they did not disturb me in my isolation, although I could feel that the place was becoming like a mental home.”84

  There were several inquiries made into detainee allegations similar to the one at Aguthi. Governor Baring, Jake Cusack, Taxi Lewis, and Thomas Askwith took the lead, often personally touring the camp in question. After their inspections there were instances, according to detainees, where life for them improved, albeit temporarily. More often than not, nothing was done, perhaps because few members of the inspection committees actually bothered to speak with detainees. Camp officials were prone to hiding the most outspoken detainees in small cells, which were apparently beyond the view of the investigating teams. Nonetheless, there were other men who wanted to present their grievances, but they were never heard. In one letter the men held in Fort Hall Camp stated, “We do not see any officer entering into the compound to investigate our troubles,” while those at Aguthi Camp remarked in a section of their letter titled “Visitings of Officials in Camps,” “It is a curious thing to acknowledge to you that when the Mother Govt or the Kenya Govt. depute members for sifting rights of laws, they do not see the opposing side [i.e, the detainees].”85 In the case of Manyani Camp several detainees wrote to Baring asking him the purpose of his visit since it was clearly not to investigate the allegations of brutality that they had previously sent to him. In a letter to the governor following one of his tours of the camp the detainees had several questions for him.