Imperial Reckoning

by Caroline Elkins

  23. KNA, AH 9/13/7/1, memorandum from the director of medical services, “Medical Estimates: Works Camps,” 11 May 1954.

  24. See, for example, PRO, CO 822/703/13, directive from Governor Baring, “African Agricultural Development and Reconstruction,” 2 November 1953, where Baring writes, “For operational reasons, it has been found necessary to control the repatriation of further Kikuyu, Embu and Meru of certain classes to their Native Land Unit, since disgruntled repatriates without the means of subsistence form ready recruits for the gangs…. It has been decided to employ the persons, and probably also part of the surplus Kikuyu population in Nairobi, on Government projects in organized camps. It is the intention that these projects should as far as possible form part of the programme of African agricultural development and resettlement.”

  25. PRO, CO 822/728/31, telegram from Lyttelton to Baring, 12 March 1953.

  26. Federation of Malaya Government Gazette, Supplement, 23 July 1948, no. 13, vol. 1, notification federal no. 2032.

  27. PRO, CO 822/728/31, telegram from Lyttelton to Baring, 12 March 1953.

  28. PRO, CAB 128/27, 9 (8), “17 February, 1954—Kenya, Detention of Mau Mau Supporters.”

  29. KNA, AH 9/36/59, minute from Cusack to Tatton-Brown, 20 November 1954.

  30. It is difficult to adjust figures on a month-to-month basis prior to the end of 1954 as the Kenya government did not begin publishing monthly figures until December of that year. In this instance, the numbers provided by Nairobi at the time of Askwith’s “Rehabilitation” memorandum in early January 1954 are compared with the Kenya government’s reported figures to the Colonial Office in the wake of Operation Anvil. See PRO, CO 822/794/1, memorandum from Thomas Askwith, “Rehabilitation,” 6 January 1954; and PRO, CO 822/796/36, telegram from R. G. Turnbull to secretary of state for the colonies, 11 May 1954. Included in the post-Anvil detainee figures are all those picked up during the sweep of Nairobi, along with those picked up in the “Pepper-pots,” or post-Anvil mopups (see PRO, WO 236/18, General Sir George Erskine, “The Kenya Emergency,” 25 April 1955). They also include all of the Kikuyu government employees who were sent directly to Langata from Nairobi (see, for example, PRO, CO 822/796/48, minister of African affairs, “Control of the African Population in Nairobi,” 11 August 1954), as well as the numerous female domestic servants who were, because of their close proximity to potential supplies, rounded up and sent to Langata as well. Eventually, over seven thousand of these women would be rounded up and sent either to detention or back to the reserves, despite the fact that they had valid employment contracts. See PRO, WO 236/18, General Sir George Erskine, “The Kenya Emergency,” 25 April 1955; PRO, CO 822/796/59, War Council extract of minutes of eighty-seventh meeting, 1 March 1955; and PRO, CO 822/796/61, Nairobi Extra-Provincial District Emergency Committee, “Security of Nairobi—Selective Pick-up of KEM Domestics,” 6 April 1955.

  31. KNA, VQ 1/32/4, memorandum from Governor Baring, “Movement of Kikuyu,” 28 September 1953.

  32. These numbers are government figures and are not adjusted for intake and release rates as those that are extant are not reliable enough to make the adjustment.

  33. Fitz de Souza, interview, Nairobi, Kenya, 11 August 2003.

  34. PRO, WO 428/276/110, memorandum from Lieutenant Colonel Hope, “Mau Mau Convicts,” 20 October 1955; and PRO, WO 428/276/111, memorandum from Major General W. R. N. Hinde, “Mau Mau Convicts,” 21 October 1955. For a commentary on the numbers of prisoners being “Form C’ed,” see the Rehabilitation Advisory Committee, which queried in 1955, “Have any Mau Mau convicts been completely released at the end of their sentences?” (emphasis in original). KNA, JZ 2/26/44, “Notes from Rehabilitation Advisory Committee Meeting held on 10 September, 1955.”

  35. Gathigi, interview, 20 February 1999.

  36. Kibicho, interview, 8 February 1999.

  37. Ibid.

  38. Ibid.

  39. Karega Njoroge, interview, Mugoiri, Kahuro, Murang’a District, 16 January 1999.

  40. Communal detention without trial—regardless of the State of Emergency—was a violation of the Third Geneva Convention, Article 87. In an attempt to get around this issue, the Colonial Office allowed Baring to issue the Emergency (Control of Nairobi) Regulation, 1954, which permitted him to round up Mau Mau suspects without individual detention orders, though only for the purposes of the operation. In the wake of Anvil, the Colonial Office had no alternative—other than releasing those held under communal orders—but to grant an extension of the Emergency (Control of Nairobi) Regulation, 1954 until such time as individual orders could be drafted for all those in the Pipeline. See PRO, CO 822/796/57, telegram from secretary of state for the colonies to Governor Baring, 19 February 1955; KNA, JZ 8/8/188 and JZ 8/12, memorandum from N. A. Cameron, “Expiry of Anvil Order,” 31 May 1955. For an example of detainees yet to be issued individual detention orders over a year and a half after their arrests, see KNA, AB 1/87/12, letter from Martin to Lewis, 9 February 1954. In Manyani Camp, there were still detainees without individual orders two years after Operation Anvil; they were labeled, “U-Anvil Greys.” See KNA, ARC MAA 2/5/222II/340, memorandum from Ministry of Defence, “Movement of Detainees,” 27 April 1956.

  41. PRO, CO 822/794/42, letter from Governor Baring to Lennox-Boyd, 27 September 1955.

  42. Anonymous, interview, Kariokor, Nairobi, 14 December 1998. Note that this former detainee consented to my interview on the basis of anonymity, in large part because of his “continued embarrassment” over his experience in Manyani.

  43. PRO, WO 276/428, “Minutes of a Meeting at the Secretariat to Consider the Disposal of Certain Kikuyu, Embu, and Meru males arrested during Operation Anvil and Subsequent Operations,” 22 May 1954.

  44. PRO, CO 822/801, Colonel W. G. S. Foster, director of medical services, “Manyani and Mackinnon Road Camps,” 25 May 1954.

  45. KNA, AH 9/5/5 minute from Turnbull, “Notes on Public Health and Public Works at Manyani,” 15 May 1954.

  46. KNA, AH 9/5/16, memorandum from Lewis to minister of defense, “Prisons Department Emergency Expenditure Sanitation Mackinnon Road and Manyani,” 21 May 1954.

  47. PRO, CO 822/801/2, Press Office, handout no. 568—“Medical Arrangements at Detention Camps,” 10 May 1954; and PRO CO 822/801/6, Reuters report, 16 August 1954.

  48. PRO, CO 822/801, internal memorandum, “Points made in discussion at Manyani,” no date. For an example of a government press release on the typhoid outbreak and sanitary conditions of the camps, see PRO, CO 822/801/17, Granville Roberts, “Typhoid at Manyani,” 29 September 1954.

  49. PRO, CO 822/801/35, War Council brief, “Numbers of Detainees,” 15 October 1954.

  50. PRO, CO 822/801/15, letter from Fenner Brockway to Alan Lennox-Boyd, 28 September 1954.

  51. PRO, CO 822/801/18, letter from Socialist Medical Association to Lennox-Boyd, 28 September 1954.

  52. Winston Churchill speech at the Lord Mayor’s Day Luncheon, London, November 10, 1942.

  53. Viscount Boyd [Alan Lennox-Boyd], “Opening Address,” in The Transfer of Power: The Colonial Administrator in the Age of Decolonisation, ed. Anthony Kirk-Greene (Oxford: Committee for African Studies, 1979), 5; see also Frank Heinlein, British Government Policy and Decolonisation, 1945–1963—Scrutinising the Official Mind (London: Frank Cass, 2002), passim. Askwith was an exception to this, as were some of his supporters.

  54. Kirk-Greene, The Transfer of Power, 5, 8; and Michael Blundell, So Rough a Wind (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1964), 261–62.

  55. Barbara Castle, Fighting All the Way (London: Macmillan, 1993), 262.

  56. Philip Murphy, Alan Lennox-Boyd, a Biography (London: I. B. Tauris, 1999), 102.

  57. House of Commons Debates (HCD), vol. 531, col. 1192, 20 October 1954.

  58. David Githigaita, interview, Kirimukuyu, Mathira, Nyeri District, 1 February 1999.

  59. HCD, vol. 531, col. 1192, 20 October 1954.

  60. Harun Kibe, interview, Murarandia, Ka
huro, Murang’a District, 31 January 1999.

  61. Phillip Macharia, interview, Kariokor, Nairobi, 25 January 1999.

  62. Members of the Working Party included representatives from the Treasury, the Medical Department, the African Land Development Board, the Administration, and the Ministry for Defence.

  63. Note that this figure of approximately one thousand new pickups per week is based upon estimates provided by the Kenya government. In August 1954 the Defence Ministry reported that these estimated pickup figures had been recorded for the months of May through July; it projected a continuation of these pickup numbers through mid-November. See KNA, AH 9/32/79, memorandum from the minister of defense for the Resettlement Committee, “Works Projects for Detainees Screened ‘Grey,’” 9 August 1954.

  64. KNA, VQ 1/49/42, memorandum from district commissioner, Nyeri, to provincial commissioner, Central Province, “Supervision of Works Camps,” 26 March 1954.

  65. Note that the district commissioner of Fort Hall, J. Pinney, opted to have the works camps in his district right from the start. Though he assumed a great deal of the fiscal and administrative responsibility, he was also able to dictate the nature and pace of the detainee releases and their reabsorption back into his district. He developed what was called the “Fort Hall Pipeline,” whereby all “grey” detainees returning to Fort Hall were first sent to Fort Hall Reception Camp, where they would be rescreened and then dispatched to a works camp closer to their home location, where screening teams of loyalists and members of the Administration would presumably be more familiar with their histories, including their past involvement in Mau Mau. In time, the Fort Hall Pipeline would serve as the model for Kiambu and Nyeri districts. See KNA, AH 9/20, “Works Camps–Fort Hall” KNA, VQ 1/49/14, memorandum from district commissioner, Fort Hall, “Repatriation Policy 1 March, 1954” and Fort Hall District, Annual Report, 1958, 28–31. For reference to the Fort Hall Pipeline providing the later model for Kiambu and Nyeri districts, see, for example, KNA, AH 9/25/21, Lewis, “Proposed Detainees Works Camps at Gitwe in Kiambu District,” 19 October 1954. See also Berman, Control and Crisis, for an outline of the Administration’s increased influence in Kenya’s colonial bureaucracy during Mau Mau, of which the works camps in their districts are one example.

  66. KNA, AH 9/32/56, minute from E. C. Eggins to minister of defense, 19 July 1954. Robert L. Tignor provides an excellent analysis of Ernest Vasey’s successful struggle to keep Kenya fiscally afloat during Mau Mau in his Capitalism and Nationalism at the End of Empire: State and Business in Decolonizing Egypt, Nigeria, and Kenya, 1945–1963 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998).

  67. Ibid.

  68. KNA, AH 9/32/88, memorandum, “Emergency Expenditure—Works Camps,” 17 August 1954.

  69. Anonymous, interview, Murarandia, Kahuro, Murang’a District, 31 January 1999.

  70. Kang’ee, interview, 16 January 1999.

  71. For example, KNA, AH 9/13/7/1, memorandum from the director of medical services, “Medical Estimates: Works Camps,” 11 May 1954.

  72. KNA, MAA 7/813/49/3, letter from Wilfred Havelock to Governor Baring, 7 June 1954.

  73. KNA, AH 9/13/43, H. Stott, “Report on Health and Hygiene in Emergency Camps,” 9 November 1954, 1.

  74. KNA, AH 9/19/22, memorandum from H. Stott to Lewis, “Central Province Works Camps,” 4 September 1954.

  75. KNA, MAA 7/813/39, memorandum from the hydraulic engineer, Public Works Department, to Johnston, “Emergency Camps—Water Supplies,” 28 May 1954; and KNA, AH 9/13/43, H. Stott, “Report on Health and Hygiene in Emergency Camps,” 9 November 1954, 5.

  76. KNA, JZ 18/7/29, A. L. Brown, officer in charge, Waithaka Works Camp, to commissioner of prisons, Annual Report, 1955, 13 January 1956.

  77. KNA, MAA 7/813/36/1, memorandum from T. F. Anderson, director of medical services, to the commissioner of prisons, “Pulmonary Tuberculosis in Prison and Detention Camps,” 18 May 1954.

  78. For details on the repatriation of detainees with infectious diseases or other chronic illness, see KNA, AB 9/4/110, memorandum from the director of medical services, “Disposal of Chronic Sick,” 9 June 1955; KNA, AH 9/8/63, J. J. Delmege to the district commissioners of Fort Hall, Kiambu, Meru, and Nyeri, “Chronically Sick Detainees,” 9 June 1956; and KNA, OP/EST 1/1391, memorandum from the secretary of defense to the district commissioner, Kipini, 6 March 1956.

  79. KNA, AH 9/13/43, H. Stott, “Report on Health and Hygiene in Emergency Camps,” 9 November 1954, 33.

  80. Pellagra results from niacin deficiency, which is common in grain-dominated diets. Symptoms include diarrhea, inflamed mucous membranes, mental confusion, and delusion. Kwashiorkor results from protein malnutrition. Its most visible symptom is a protracted belly. Skin conditions like dermatitis, changes in pigmentation, and thinning of hair occur frequently. Fatigue and lethargy are also common. Death is often the result if left untreated.

  81. Note that the effects of scurvy, and its impact on the spread of infectious diseases, was also a concern of Dr. Stott’s. He noted, “It is my opinion that the Vitamin ‘C’ level of detainees in many Works and Transit camps is likely to be low, and that this is likely to reflect itself in a reduction in the general health level of the inmate of these camps and particularly to an increased susceptibility of the inmates to infection.” (KNA, AH 9/27/31, H. Stott, medical adviser, Labor Department, “Scurvey at Yatta Camp,” 4 June 1954.) See also KNA, AH 9/10/55/3, John D. Russell, officer in charge, Manda Island Special Detention Camp, “Health-Detainees,” 16 September 1955; KNA, AH 9/27/240, memorandum from the secretary of defense, “Camps on the Yatta Furrow,” 28 May 1956; and KNA, AH 9/27/252, minute from Cusack to Baring, 11 June 1956.

  82. Pascasio Macharia, interview, Mugoiri, Kahuro, Murang’a District, 17 January 1999.

  83. Alan Knight, interview, Nairobi, Kenya, 21 January 1999.

  84. In numerous interviews former detainees recall hearing the European commandants in charge of their camps saying this to the guards.

  85. Eric Kamau, interview, Mugoiri, Kahuro, Murang’a District, 16 January 1999.

  86. Wolfgang Sofsky, The Order of Terror: The Concentration Camp, translated by William Templer (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997), 130.

  87. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn discusses this in The Gulag Archipelago, 1918–1956, translated by Thomas P. Whitney and Harry Willetts (New York: HarperCollins, 1985). For a comparative analysis of collaboration within the Soviet gulag, see Anne Applebaum, Gulag, A History (New York: Doubleday, 2003), 360–69.

  88. PRO, CO 822/970/3, memorandum from Governor Baring to secretary of state for the colonies, “The Development Programme, 1954–57,” 5 April 1955.

  89. “New Development Plan for Kenya—Keeping Law and Order,” Liverpool Post, 6 April 1955.

  90. KNA, AB 17/7/6, letter from Askwith to the Right Reverend the Lord Bishop of Mombasa, 12 November 1953.

  91. Annual Report of the Ministry of Community Development, 1956, 2.

  92. KNA, AB 4/120/23, Jos Dames, “Report of Rehabilitation Manyani Special Camp,” 9 August 1956.

  93. For example, Dr. Alfred Becker—one of the more conservative rehabilitation officers—reported from Manda Island Camp, “It is obvious that as we start rehabilitation in earnest we will become increasingly a nuisance to the prison-authorities…. I have come to the conclusion that serious rehabilitation can only be successful if and when the place [i.e., detention camp] is under our department.” KNA, AB 1/87/60, memorandum from Becker to the commissioner of community development and rehabilitation, 2 August 1954. Note that the files from the Prisons Department and the Department of Community Development and Rehabilitation are filled with notations outlining the interdepartmental conflicts and rivalries. This also extended to the Administration, which was operating for the Prisons Department by proxy in the district works camps. While not always advocating the same form of “rehabilitation” as other members of the Prisons Department, the Administration jealously guarded its a
scendancy in the districts and did not welcome any encroachments made by the rehabilitation and community development officers. See, for example, KNA, JZ 6/26, “Rehabilitation Advisory Committee, 1954–57” KNA, AB 1/90, “Rehabilitation, Administration, Prisons, Embakasi, 8/6/54–17/1/58” KNA, AH 9/19/17, memorandum from J.H. Lewis, “Procedure for the General Administration of Works and Transit Camps (Revised),” 6 August 1954; and KNA, JZ 18/7, Reports Annual—Works Camps, 1955–1956.

  94. KNA, AH 9/17/83, memorandum from T. G. Askwith to W. Magor, 2 May 1956.

  95. KNA, AH 9/19/16, minute from Secretary of Defence Magor to Minister of Defence Cusack, 10 August 1954.

  96. The most useful sources from the British colonial files in determining the number and names of the camps and prisons in the Pipeline were KNA, JZ 2/16/48, memorandum from commissioner of prisons, “Headquarters and Provincial Organisation,” 3 February 1956; KNA, AB 9/5/53, “Note Community Development Conference,” 14 January 1957; KNA, JZ 6/26/45, “Minutes of the 17th Meeting of the Rehabilitation Advisory Committee held on Monday, 10th September, 1956” KNA, AB 2/49/33, memorandum from commissioner of prisons, “List of Prison Establishments,” 30 June 1956; and PRO, CO 822/801/75, “Review of Works Camps and Reception Centers,” 24 February 1956.

  97. Sofsky, The Order of Terror, 21. Daniel Jonas Goldhagen makes a similar argument in Hitler’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust (New York: Knopf, 1997), part 4.

  Six: The World behind the Wire

  1. Nderi Kagombe, interview, Ruguru, Mathira, Nyeri District, 24 February 1999.

  2. Numerous detainees discussed Wagithundia during their oral testimonies. The most detailed descriptions of this camp guard came from interviews with Pascasio Macharia, Mugoiri, Kahuro, Murang’a District, 17 January 1999; Hunja Njuki, Ngorano, Mathira, Nyeri District, 23 January 1999; Paul Mahehu, Kirimukuyu, Mathira, Nyeri District, 23 January 1999; Phillip Macharia, Kariokor, Nairobi, 25 January 1999; Wilson Ruhoni, Kirimukuyu, Mathira, Nyeri District, 1 February 1999; David Githigaita, Kirimukuyu, Mathira, Nyeri District, 1 February 1999; Nelson Macharia Gathigi, Murarandia, Kiharu Murang’a District, 20 February 1999; Kagombe, 24 February 1999; and Muraya Mutahi, Aguthi, North Tetu, Nyeri District, 25 February 1999.