The detainees nicknamed Gavaghan Karuga Ndua, or the Big Troublemaker. 47 They feared him not just because of “his enormous body and eyes that would stare through you,” as one man recalled, “but because of the terror he directed.” 48 Samson Karanja was particularly well placed to observe the British officer, having served as his personal launderer. It was a job that Samson, in his own words, coveted as it “saved me from the brutal labor in the rice fields.” Today he remembers washing and pressing Gavaghan’s clothes and the “neat creases that the Big Troublemaker so liked.” He then went on to say, “Gavaghan evoked in me the idea of a dog in someone’s home. The way the owner of a house can order the dog to attack someone. That was the same way Gavaghan used to use the sergeants and corporals under his charge. He used to order them to beat the Mau Mau detainees, though he himself did not beat anyone. But it was according to his orders that detainees were beaten.” 49
Gavaghan seldom admitted to losing control but did on occasion come close. Detainees like Maingi Waweru, who had been captured in the forest by the pseudogangsters and was known by his alias, General Kamwamba, would “play dumb” in order to avoid the relentless physical and psychological pressure to confess. Kamwamba recalled the forced starvations at Mwea, the rancid meat, and the upside-down tortures when men would be beaten on the testicles with “special instruments.” “I decided to play dumb,” he said. “I even refused to walk, pretending I was lame, and the guards used to have to carry me everywhere. This worked for a time, but then they just started beating me more knowing that I was tricking them. They meted out their anger on me during the screening.” 50 Detainees like General Kamwamba brought out the worst in Gavaghan. The British officer described such men as “hypnotized,” with one detainee in particular refusing to respond even after he was struck several times. It was at this point that Gavaghan could not help himself. He decided to have a go and, in his own words, “drove his open hand backwards across the slack mouth face in an overpowering urge to force entry into the locked mind and evoke some response—any response.” 51 Still unresponsive, the “uninhabited husk” was then, according to Gavaghan, just left alone. Perhaps this case was an exception, because more often than not, according to former detainees who were under his authority, uncooperative behavior of any kind meant a trip to the screening cell or, worse, a ride behind the Land Rover. “There was this one detainee who kept stealing food even though he would be punished severely for it,” recalled Charles Mwai. “Finally one of the white men in charge tied his foot with a rope, and then tied the other end to the Land Rover vehicle he was driving. Then he drove off, dragging the poor detainee along.” 52
Public torture was not unusual at Mwea. Sometimes after refusing to confess, “a detainee would have all his clothes removed,” according to Wachira Murage. “Then [he] was taken to a field, where he would have a wet cloth sprinkled with salt placed on his wet and naked body, and then whipped. The whipping would tear off pieces of flesh after every stroke. Mwea was a terrible pace during [Gavaghan’s] time. He and Mr. Isaiah Mathenge were very cruel to the detainees. They always walked together…. Mathenge was a very bad man, but his commandant was even worse, because he used to order everything that Mathenge was doing.” 53 Many recall the rafter technique, hanging upside down until blood ran from their eyes, ears, noses, and mouths. “Mathenge would be standing there with the man we called the Big Troublemaker,” recalled another man now living in Nairobi. “They would be yelling at us as we hung from our feet to confess, but I just couldn’t. It seems impossible to understand now, I know, but I had been beaten for so long that I was steeled to anything. I preferred to die rather than give in, and eventually they got tired of me and sent me to Hola. But some men died from such ordeals, and there were several who committed suicide because they couldn’t take the endless punishment but still didn’t want to confess.” 54
The majority of hard-core detainees did confess in Mwea. For many the relentless assaults and tortures came after years of forced labor and brutality, and Mwea simply became their breaking point. Each detainee caught in Operation Progress had his own story of confession. For some it came during castration, for others when they were being whipped or hung upside down for hours. Still others broke during Mwea’s version of rehabilitation. “It was compulsory that every detainee had to go out and join in those activities,” Nderi later recalled. “But since some of us had been so badly beaten that we could not sing or dance to the music, we would only sit and nod our heads to the music as one had to show that he was participating. If one failed to do that, he would be beaten again.” It was not unusual, according to Nderi, for men to raise their hands for confession during the song and dance of rehabilitation. “I think it was because they had been so abused, and sitting there unable to sing and being beaten for it, they just couldn’t take it anymore.” 55
One distinct voice of protest during this period was Thomas Askwith. Along with Griffith-Jones, Cusack, and others, he had gone to observe Gavaghan and his version of the dilution technique. Askwith witnessed the militialike operation and the beatings incredulously. 56 He saw Gavaghan’s men, many of whom were technically part of his own department, beat detainees senseless with clubs and truncheons, shove mud into their mouths, and, to finish off the “kind of rape,” strip them naked, shave them down, and throw them into the barbed-wire compounds. 57 This was directly witnessed by the man who had championed liberal reform, and who had been publicly promised by the governor that his hearts-and-minds campaign would be the centerpiece in redeeming Mau Mau adherents and brokering a future, peaceful Kenya. For years Askwith was blinded by his idealistic liberalism, but Mwea would shake him out of his naive stupor. He complained bitterly that Gavaghan’s appointment as district officer in charge of rehabilitation, directly reporting to Johnston and thus circumventing the chain of command, “was not only invidious but irregular.” 58 Askwith’s own rehabilitation staff was removed from his direct control in Mwea and was now answerable only to Gavaghan. But Johnston was hardly sympathetic; bypassing Askwith was exactly what he wanted. By the end of 1957 Askwith had submitted several reports to Johnston and the chief secretary, Richard Turnbull, “the gist of which was [he] considered that the violent treatment to which the detainees were subjected to obtain their obedience and submission might well by misfortune lead to death or serious injury.” 59
For his troubles, Askwith was sacked in late December 1957. He appealed to the colonial secretary, who rejected his representations—“so I was dismissed from my [rehabilitation] post.” 60 The governor then transferred all responsibility for the detainees and their so-called rehabilitation to Monkey Johnston, and through him to Gavaghan. It was the characteristically unreflective Cowan who later summed up events behind the shake-up: “Askwith left a disgruntled man—got no honor—most people of his rank get one—he was a nuisance at the end. The government had their hands full with the Emergency, and he went on with rehabilitation and the brutal methods at Mwea. Government was hard-pressed and didn’t need pressure from within…though I admire him for sticking to his guns the way he did.” 61
After his dismissal, Askwith remained as the commissioner for community development, arguably one of the most impotent positions in the colony. Even today, Gavaghan revels in Askwith’s sacking. In interviews and discussions over the years, Gavaghan rarely failed to express his “deep dislike of this pathetic man who needed some good sex and who had this ridiculous idea that you could solve the problem with land.” 62 The animosity was mutual, though Askwith refrained from discussing Gavaghan’s sex life. Just prior to his death Askwith recalled his “unending need to convince this man [Gavaghan] that what he was doing was wrong, that this ran against everything the British colonial service was built upon. You couldn’t just beat people up and call it a success.” 63
But it was Askwith who was wrong about the character of British colonial rule in Kenya. Once he and his liberal conscience were out of the picture, the entire Pipeline was redesigned around G
avaghan’s version of the dilution technique. Strictly from the standpoint of expediency, this made perfect sense. Systematized brutality had already been proven to do the trick, breaking down the hard core and making possible release figures of up to seventeen hundred detainees per month. 64 By the summer of 1957 Aguthi and Mweru camps in Nyeri District, Mariira Camp in Fort Hall, as well as Athi River Camp were all practicing dilution and had accordingly been renamed filter camps, the colonial government’s code name for those places using officially sanctioned violence. Manyani continued to hold most of the hard core who were slated for dilution, and Gavaghan recommended that a softening-up policy be instituted there, prepping the detainees for what was to come. “It must be considered,” he wrote at the time, “that the Officer in Charge [of Manyani] must have at his disposal until the end a trained and powerful force sufficient to ensure continuing obedience, that this force must have a high morale and be suited to local conditions, and that it must be followed up by sustained propaganda, supporting a policy laid down in writing that Manyani should be a ‘conditioning’ camp for movement [down] the Pipeline.” 65
Not all rehabilitation officers were willing to join Operation Progress. At Athi River, Askwith described how “the Minister [Johnston] had instructed [Breckenridge] personally to use a certain amount of violence to induce the detainees to confess to the screening teams.” 66 Breckenridge had flatly refused, according to Askwith. Indeed, to have agreed with systematized brutality would have been out of character for Askwith’s point man at Athi River. In interview after interview with detainees held at this camp, “Breckenridge’s humanity” is mentioned time and again. He “was the one person in my five years in the Pipeline who tried to treat us like human beings, though he couldn’t always stop the beatings,” one former detainee insisted. 67 Johnston must have thought Breckenridge would come around, because he soon started sending scores of hard core from Mageta Island and Lodwar to Athi River. But without systematized force the detainees refused to cooperate. Instead, they launched a riot in August 1957. 68 The target of their anger was Robert Harrison, the camp commandant and assistant prisons superintendent, who as prisons officer in charge had the upper hand over Breckenridge, a senior rehabilitation officer. Apparently, Harrison and his prisons staff were known to have “severely beaten a number of detainees for refusing to work” at least that is what is said in Colonial Office files. Nevertheless, neither Harrison nor any other officer at Athi River was ever convicted of abusing detainees. In contrast, the detainees at Athi River who attacked the camp commandant were executed, and their fellow rioters were sent to Embakasi prison. 69
It was not long before Breckenridge was pushed aside. Johnston brought in Hugh Galton-Fenzi, who had worked with Gavaghan and the dilution technique in Nyeri District and therefore knew what had to be done. Like Gavaghan, he was given a new title, administrative district officer in charge of rehabilitation, and reported directly to Johnston. He too was given a free hand to use systematized violence to break the hard core. In practice, this translated into torture techniques similar to those being used in the other filter camps throughout the Pipeline. 70 Paul Mahehu, one of hundreds of detainees who had been transferred into Athi River from Mageta Island, recalled what happened after his initial intake.
The day after our arrival, some of us were sent for. We had all been mentioned by some people who had confessed. The intention was to take us to Compound No. 9, where detainees were subjected to the worst punishment to make them confess. There, detainees were hung by their feet, with their heads facing downwards. The rafters where detainees were hung were high, and one detainee would need about five people to lift him up there. Bad things would be done to the detainees. Some detainees would start bleeding from their noses and ears after a prolonged stay in that hanging position. It was during the cold month of July, and cold water would be poured on the hanging detainee to worsen the punishment…. When the askaris came to get us, we resisted, and the other detainees in the compound joined in to prevent the askaris from dragging us out, and that was when the askaris were sent to beat us. We fought back, and fortunately, despite having been in chains, no one was killed. 71
In other cases detainees were not so fortunate. Munyinyi Githiriga was one of several former detainees who later described yet other instances of torture and death. “People were being beaten,” he said. “I remember that three people in our group died from beatings at Athi River after we had come from Kisumu. Athi River is sometimes a very cold place. One of those who died had been badly beaten during screening and was later thrown into a cell full of water. He died from the cold. It was the screening team and rehabilitation officers [who were doing this]…. We knew other things like this were happening because we could hear the screaming [from the other cells], but we could do nothing about it.” When asked if anything was done about these deaths, Munyinyi replied, “Nothing. That was nothing to the white officers.” 72 He also recalled sending out letters, which he called “help cries.” Today, a few of these remain in the British colonial files—letters like the one sent on August 7, 1957, which began, “We detainees from Mageta and Kisumu are harshly treated [at Athi River Camp]. From 9th July 1957 it was arranged a special compound whereby eight or seven detainees from other compound are sent to be tortured till he says he has taken the oath whether he has or not. Some detainees have made false statements as far as one detainee died there called Kariuki Murithi on 18th July 1957 the very day another detainee was sent to hospital unable to speak, he died later.” 73
Internal visiting committees did come to observe, though often they wrote glowing reports about the successful run-down rates, mentioning little about the tactics used to achieve them. After one visit to Athi River, for instance, the committee recorded: “Mr. Galton Fenzi described the present methods briefly as ‘hustle generally, demonstrate strength and immediate and strict discipline on first arrival of new batches…’To sum up, we were considerably impressed by the astonishing improvement in every respect in this camp which appears to coincide with the take-over of Rehabilitation by ‘African Affairs.’” 74 Exactly how much these committees actually saw is unclear. It is unlikely that they would have been taken into screening huts or through detainees’ compounds. There were other reports of filter camps, in one case Thiba, where members of the visiting committees expressed their approval of the intake procedure but concern over its potential consequences. “I witnessed all the trouble which…[District Officer Gavaghan] undertook to persuade these people to enter the camp,” wrote David Wanguhu, “but to no avail.” The visiting observer then went on to say:
However, persuasion having failed, there was no alternative but to resort to force, and this was exactly what was done. When an attempt was made to have them wear the camp’s uniform, they resisted it, and they eventually had to change into the uniform by force. I happened to know a few of these people, and I succeeded in persuading some to take the uniform but still a number of them refused completely. I believe that those concerned were quite justified to employ force. However, I think if this has to continue as being the only way of dealing with such people, it appears as if eventually some incidents will end tragically. 75
There were also the observations of Henri Junod, an old friend of Baring’s from his South Africa days, and a delegate to the International Committee for the Red Cross. In February 1957 Junod came to Kenya for an official, two-month tour of the detention camps and Emergency villages. The governor apparently sought counsel from the delegate on the issue of dilution, writing to the colonial secretary, “I privately discussed this question [a phase of violent shock] with Dr. Junod of the International Red Cross, who I knew well in South Africa and who has spent his whole life working with Africans and most of it with African prisoners. He has no doubt in his own mind that if the violent shock was the price to be paid for pushing detainees out…we should pay it.” 76 After touring the Mwea camps and witnessing dilution firsthand, Junod turned to Gavaghan and said, “Ne vous inquietez
pas [Do not distress yourself]. Compared to the French in Algeria, you are angels of mercy.” 77 Interestingly, in Junod’s final report for the International Committee for the Red Cross dilution is nowhere to be found, despite the fact that he obviously witnessed the technique in practice and counseled the governor on its merits. 78
Dilution was also brought to the Mau Mau prisons, starting with Embakasi. For years, the prison held thousands of men tried and convicted of Mau Mau offenses in one of the many kangaroo courts set up under Emergency Regulations. On the backs of the convicts the Embakasi airport had been built, and it was not until the project was nearly completed in the summer of 1958 that the Public Works Department was prepared to send them to the Pipeline for eventual release. 79 Those who were cooperative were Form C’ed and issued Delegated Detention Orders, or DDOs, and sent on to South Yatta Camp and eventually to a works camp in their districts. As for the hard core, they were first sent to Mara River and Ngulot camps before being forwarded to Gavaghan at Mwea. 80 Then, in order to step up the rate of release from prisons like Embakasi, the Review Committee of Mau Mau Prison Sentences, chaired by S. H. La Fontaine, began for the first time to hear hundreds of parole cases, recommending nearly 95 percent of them for eventual release. All of these former prisoners were also Form C’ed and sent to works camps in their districts for final softening up before they were handed over to the chiefs in their home locations. 81
The rapid pace at which the detainees and former Mau Mau prisoners were being broken down and released was astounding. Governor Baring was ecstatic, attributing to Gavaghan this success in breaking down the hard core and forcing confessions. As the governor wrote to Lennox-Boyd in the spring of 1958, “I recently visited the Mwea camps and was enormously impressed by the remarkable work done during the period of exactly one year by Mr. Gavaghan. It is his work in these camps that has been the key to the flow out of detainees. It is due to this work above all else that we are no longer faced with the danger of having tens of thousands of people on our hands, who would be dangerous to release but whose retention would gradually become a political impossibility.” 82 Not long after, Gavaghan left his post and later noted, “In March 1958 we came to the point where the Special Commissioner, Monkey Johnston, declared the job sufficiently done to cope with the remaining few hundred [in the Mwea camps].” 83 For his efforts, Gavaghan took over as district commissioner of Kiambu, a prestigious position for a young man of thirty-five. One of his first duties would be to break the remaining 120 or so women from Kamiti Camp who, impervious to Warren-Gash’s order to confess, also seemed to need a heavier hand. 84 As for the Mwea camps, Cowan stayed on, overseeing the continuation of dilution for the several thousand hard core remaining in the Pipeline. Finding a replacement for Gavaghan, however, was not so easy. Johnston first approached John Nottingham, then posted as district officer in Nandi. Nottingham later recalled, “[I flatly refused] to be involved in such a despicable and unlawful procedure, whose notoriety throughout the colony for its brutality was unprecedented. I told him this, and he told me in not so many words to be quiet.” 85 Eventually, there was a taker; Denis Lakin, who had been implementing the dilution technique along with Galton-Fenzi at Athi River, stepped in to fill Gavaghan’s large void. And later Hugh Galton-Fenzi himself was brought in from Athi River to mop up what remained of Operation Progress.
Imperial Reckoning Page 45
