Imperial Reckoning
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140. PRO, CO 822/1261/211, secret memorandum by Harold Macmillan, Africa, 8 June 1959. The prime minister and his men were helped along by the final report of the internal investigation into Shuter’s allegations, conducted by A. P. Jack. Though former Manyani camp commandant, H. F. H. Durant, admitted that many of his officers “ill-treated” the detainees, and medical officers confirmed several of Shuter’s allegations, Jack concluded that brutality was due to a few “bad” officers and was not endemic to the camps. He also finished off the character assassination on Shuter, and asserted that he misrepresented the truth. In the end, he dismissed all charges. See Administrative Enquiry into Allegations of Ill-treatment and Irregular Practices Against Detainees at Manyani Detention Camp and Fort Hall District Works Camp (Nairobi: Government Printer, 1959).
141. Horne, Macmillan, 175.
142. Harold Macmillan, Riding the Storm, 1956–59 (London: Macmillan, 1971), 734.
143. As quoted in Philip Murphy, Party Politics and Decolonization: The Conservative Party and British Colonial Policy in Tropical Africa, 1951–1964 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), 164.
144. As quoted in Philip Murphy, Alan Lennox-Boyd, a Biography (London: I. B. Tauris, 1999), 215.
145. As quoted in ibid., 216.
146. Lord Lambton, MP, “When Loyalty Is Not Enough,” Evening Standard, 9 June 1959.
147. Report on the Nyasaland Commission of Inquiry, Cmnd. 814 (1959).
148. Castle, Fighting All the Way, 288.
149. HCD, vol 610, col. 231, 27 July 1959.
150. Ibid., col. 237, 27 July 1959.
151. Ibid.
152. Macmillan, Riding the Storm, 735.
Epilogue
1. Charles Douglas-Home, Evelyn Baring: The Last Proconsul (London: Collins, 1978), 311–12.
2. Michael Blundell, So Rough a Wind (London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1964), 266.
3. Frank Heinlein notes that in late 1959 Colonial Secretary Macleod “did not think Kenya independence was likely to be granted in the near future” but a few months later conceded “it was no longer possible to ignore the black majorities.” According to Heinlein, Macleod realized the “most important thing was not to lose the Africans’ goodwill by delaying constitutional advance too long” if the British were to have any hope of safeguarding their commercial and strategic interests. Frank Heinlein, British Government Policy and Decolonisation, 1945–1963—Scrutinizing the Official Mind (London: Frank Cass, 2002), 196, 237, 243.
4. RH, Mss. Brit. Emp. s. 527/528, End of Empire, Kenya, vol. 2, John Wainwright, interview, 223–25.
5. Blundell, So Rough a Wind, 277; and RH, Mss. Brit. Emp. s. 527/528, End of Empire, Kenya, vol. 2, John Wainwright, interview, 225. Note that at first even Macleod believed decolonization would be another ten years, but by the time of the first Lancaster House talks he realized that such a delay did not fit, in his words, “[with] the facts of life in Africa today.” Instead, he argued to the settlers and Macmillan, who believed his colonial secretary to be moving too quickly, that only rapid decolonization would ensure stability and safeguard British investments. Gradualism, in Macleod’s mind, would lead to African frustration, possibly violence, and surely a loss of their much needed goodwill. Heinlein, British Government Policy, 255.
6. RH, Mss. Afr. s. 1574, Lord Howick (Sir Evelyn Baring) and Dame Margery Perham interview, Oxford, 19 November 1969, 20–21.
7. Historical Survey of the Origins and Growth of Mau Mau, Cmnd. 1030 (London: HMSO, 1960).
8. Jeremy Murray-Brown, Kenyatta (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1972), 300–301.
9. When Rawson Macharia submitted a sworn affidavit in October 1958 that he and others had been bribed to give false evidence at the Kapenguria trial, the British government responded by charging him with swearing a false affidavit. D. N. Pritt and Achhroo Kapila defended him; not surprisingly, they were unsuccessful. By the prosecution’s reasoning, Macharia had lied for his own purposes and not with the knowledge of the Crown. Therefore, according to the British government’s reasoning, the Kapenguria trial had not been rigged. For further details, see John Lonsdale, “Kenyatta’s Trials: Breaking and Making an African Nationalist,” in The Moral World of the Law, ed. Peter Cross (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 235–36.
10. Murray-Brown, Kenyatta, 304–5.
11. Hunja Njuki, interview, Ngorano, Mathira, Nyeri District, 23 January 1999.
12. Jomo Kenyatta, Harambee! The Prime Minister of Kenya’s Speeches, 1963–64 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1964), 2.
13. Jomo Kenyatta, Suffering without Bitterness: The Founding of the Kenya Nation (Nairobi: East African Publishing House, 1968), 189.
14. East African Standard, 13 April 1963, as quoted in Robert B. Edgerton, Mau Mau: An African Crucible (London: I. B. Tauris, 1990), 217.
15. PRO, CO 822/1230, Macleod to Renison, 10 November 1959.
16. PRO, CO 822/1337/10, draft memorandum by secretary of state for the colonies, “Colonial Policy Committee, Kenya: Proposed Amnesty,” November 1959.
17. John Cowan, interview, London, 24 July 1998.
18. For Enoch Powell’s later comments on accountability and the need for Governor Baring and Alan Lennox-Boyd to assume blame, see RH, Mss. Brit. Emp. s. 527/528, End of Empire, Kenya, vol. 3, Enoch Powell, interview, 119.
19. Harold Macmillan, Pointing the Way, 1959–1961 (London: Macmillan, 1972), 156.
20. Channel Four, “Secret History—Mau Mau,” interview, John Cowan.
21. BBC Correspondent, “Kenya: White Terror,” interview, Terence Gavaghan.
22. Thomas Askwith, From Mau Mau to Harambee (Cambridge: African Studies Centre, 1995), 118.
23. T. G. Askwith, interview, Cirencester, England, 9 June 1998.
24. Christopher Browning engages in a similar consideration with regard to the actions of German “ordinary men” during the Second World War. See Christopher Browning, Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland (New York: HarperCollins, 1992).
25. Fitz de Souza, interview, Muthaiga, Kenya, 11 August 2003. For a similar recollection, see RH, Mss. Brit. Emp. s. 527/528, End of Empire, Kenya, vol. 1, Fitz de Souza, interview, 118.
26. The British colonial government undertook censuses of the African population in Kenya in 1948 and 1962. In 1948 the census recorded 1,554,925 Kikuyu, Embu, and Meru; in 1962 there were 2,215,805. The figures for the Kamba, Luo, and Luhya are as follows:
The average growth rates of these three groups fell between 3 percent and 3.5 percent. When these growth rates are applied to the Kikuyu, Embu, and Meru 1948 population figure of 1,554,925, the projected range of growth for 1962 is found to be between 2,351,964 and 2,516,949. When this is compared to the actual 1962 population figure of 2,215,805, there is a difference ranging from 136,159 to 301,144. The colonial censuses of 1948 and 1962 are considered to be reasonably reliable, unlike earlier censuses. In fact, they have been used for backward projections of earlier African population sizes in Kenya (see Bruce Berman, Control and Crisis in Colonial Kenya: The Dialectic of Domination [London: James Currey, 1990], 94–95). Taking into account imperfections in the census taking/reporting and margins of error, I believe the data are suggestive when read alongside the empirical evidence of death rates and lowered fertility rates presented in this book. For 1948 population figures, see African Population of Kenya Colony and Protectorate: Geographical and Tribal Studies (Nairobi: East African Statistical Department, 1953), 6. For the 1962 population figures see Ministry of Economic Planning and Development, Kenya Population Census, 1962, vol. 3 (Nairobi: Ministry of Finance and Economic Planning, 1964), 36. I am grateful to Ulla Larsen, Heike Trappe, and John Lonsdale for their advice in assessing these figures.
27. The British government’s official figure for “terrorist casualties” was 11,503 as reported in F. D. Corfield, Historical Survey of the Origins and Growth of Mau Mau, Cmnd. 1030(1960), 316.
28. Mary Wambui Mbote, interview, Thigio, Kikuy
u, Kiambu District, 13 August 2003.
Note on Methods
1. It was clear to me as my research progressed that the British colonial government’s official figure of some 80,000 Mau Mau suspects detained during the Emergency was incorrect. When the government began publishing monthly detainee figures in 1954 it published “daily average figures,” or net figures rather than gross figures. I therefore realized that if I could track the intake and release rates and apply them to the “daily average figures” provided by the colonial government I could get a more accurate sense of the numbers of detainees that passed through the Pipeline. In addition, I also had to determine how many of the Mau Mau suspects tried, convicted, and sent to prison were “Form C’ed” at the end of their sentences and sent to the detention camps in the Pipeline. Ultimately, I determined an adjusted range for the detainee figures; that is, I found that the actual number of detainees passing through the Pipeline was between two and four times the actual figure, or between 160,000 and 320,000. The following documents were the most useful in calculating this estimation: Documents relating to the death of eleven Mau Mau detainees at Hola Camp in Kenya, Cmnd. 778 (London: HMSO, 1959); KNA, AH 6/8, Ministry of Defence, “Monthly Reports, 1954 to 1959” KNA, AH 6/9, Ministry of Defence, “Monthly Reports, January 1959 to September 1959” KNA, AH 9/19/12, minute from Eggins, “Works Camps,” 4 August 1954; KNA, AH 9/32/251, memorandum from the minister of defense to the Resettlement Committee, “Movement of Detainees from Reception Centres to Works Camps,” 4 May 1955; PRO, WO 276/428/103, memorandum from Heyman, chief of state, “Brief for C-in-C on Detainees,” 9 September 1955; PRO, CO 822/798/53, memorandum from the Council of Ministers, Resettlement Committee, “Releases from Custody and Rate of Absorption of Landless KEM,” 25 April 1956; 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.
2. Musila Musembi, Archives Management: The Kenyan Experience (Nairobi: Africa Book Services, 1985), 17–22.
3. See John D. Barbour, The Conscience of the Autobiographer (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1992); and James Goodwin, Autobiography: The Self-Made Text (New York: Twayne, 1993). For a specific consideration of Mau Mau memoirs, including those written by former detainees as well as by forest fighters, see Marshall S. Clough, Mau Mau Memoirs: History, Memory and Politics (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 1998).
4. Of the handful of memoirs in existence, I found the most comprehensive to be Josiah Mwangi Kariuki, “Mau Mau” Detainee: The Account by a Kenya African of His Experiences in Detention Camps, 1953–1960 (London: Oxford University Press, 1963); Karigo Muchai and Donald Barnett, The Hardcore: The Story of Karigo Muchai (Richmond: Liberation Support Movement, 1973); and Gakaara wa Wanjau, Mau Mau Author in Detention (Nairobi: Heinemann, 1988).
5. My study of oral history and its methods first began under the tutelage of Leroy Vail, whose own research and writing engaged many of the same practical and theoretical issues that I have dealt with in the course of working on this book. For one of the most recent discussions of oral history, see Luise White, Stephan F. Miescher, and David William Cohen, eds., African Words, African Voices: Critical Practices in Oral History (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2001).
6. Daniel L. Schacter, Searching for Memory: The Brain, the Mind, and the Past (New York: Basic Books, 1996), 10.
7. The way in which people remember or cannot remember traumatic events has been considered extensively by a variety of social scientists and writers, including Paul Antze and Michael Lambek, eds., Tense Past: Cultural Essays in Trauma and Meaning (New York: Routledge, 1996); Cathy Caruth, Trauma: Explorations in Memory (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995); Jennifer Cole, Forget Colonialism?: Sacrifice and the Art of Memory in Madagascar (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001); E. Valentine Daniel, Charred Lullabies: Chapters in an Anthropology of Violence (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996); Saul Friedlander, When Memory Comes, translated by Helen R. Lane (New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1979); Liisa Malkki, Purity and Exile: Violence, Memory and National Cosmology among Hutu Refugees in Tanzania (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995); and Alan Parkin, Memory and Amnesia (Oxford: Blackwell, 1987).
8. Schacter makes this point in Searching for Memory as well as in The Seven Sins of Memory (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2001), chapter 7.
9. Stephen Macharia Kinyanjui, interview, Kariokor, Nairobi, 16 December 1998.
10. Mary Nyambura, interview, Banana Hill, Kiambu District, 16 December 1998. Lawrence Langer confronted similar issues when collecting and analyzing testimonies from “former victims,” as he calls them, of the Nazi Holocaust. See Lawrence Langer, Holocaust Testimonies: The Ruins of Memory (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991).
11. When one considers the usefulness of individual memories of specific events or periods of time, they must always be examined within the broader context of collective discourse. In other words, to what degree are these memories specific to an individual, and to what degree do they represent a society’s collective memory of the past? All societies are susceptible to varying degrees to collective myth making, and the Kikuyu are no exception. Certainly, some individuals and events from the Pipeline have taken on mythical proportions over time. I do not believe, though, that this justifies dismissing oral testimonies as mere reflections of collective myths. Rather, I continue to be struck by the particularity in detail of these testimonies, especially given the nature of communication and the degree to which the state-imposed silencing prevented public, and to some extent private, discussions about detention camp experiences. However, even if one considers some or all of the oral evidence as collective myth, then the wide scale and brutal violence contained therein must still be explained. In considering the issues of individual and collective memories, I benefited greatly from the presentations and discussions at the conference “Violence and Memory,” sponsored by Fondazione Giangiacomo Feltrinelli in Cortona, Italy, in June 2002. The conference proceedings are forthcoming in an edited volume by Alessandro Triulzi. Additional works on collective memory include: David Bakhurst, ed., Collective Memory: Theoretical, Methodological, and Practical Issues: Proceedings of the Small-Group Meeting, European Association of Experimental Social Psychology (Bari: Department of Psychology, University of Bari, 1997); Paul Connerton, How Societies Remember (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989); and David Middleton and Derek Edwards, eds., Collective Remembering (London: Sage, 1990).
12. Ngugi wa Thiong’o, A Grain of Wheat (London: Heinemann, 1967); Writers in Politics (London: Heinemann, 1981); Homecoming: Essays on African Caribbean Literature, Culture and Politics (New York: Lawrence Hill, 1973); and Petals of Blood (London: Heinemann, 1977). Also note that Robert Edgerton, in his book Mau Mau: An African Crucible (London: I. B. Tauris, 1990), suggests, like Ngugi wa Thiong’o, that the brutality perpetrated against Mau Mau was more widespread than the British government would like to admit. Edgerton stops short, however, of providing any kind of comprehensive investigation into the ruse of rehabilitation.
Index
The index that appeared in the print version of this title does not match the pages in your eBook. Please use the search function on your eReading device to search for terms of interest. For your reference, the terms that appear in the print index are listed below.
Entries in italics refer to captions.
Aberdares mountains
Advisory Committee on Detainees
Africa, Scramble for
Africa Bureau
Africa Inland Mission
African Affairs Department
African District Council
African independent churches
African Land Development Board (ALDEV)
African National Congress
agricultural production
African, limited by colonial government
repatriation and
&
nbsp; white settlers and
agricultural reconstruction projects
Aguthi Camp
letters from detainees on
Algeria
Allen, Petal Erskine
Alliance High School
Amin, Idi
Amin, Sheikh
amnesty for crimes prior to 1955
Anderson, T. F.
Anglican Church of Britain
Anglican Church of Kenya
Anglican missionaries
apartheid
Askwith, Thomas Garrett
barbed-wire villages and
detainee allegations and
dilution and
Fletcher exposé and
funding cuts and
inspection committees and
land issue and
rehabilitation plan of
rehabilitation teams and
sacked, during Operation Progress
Astor, David
Athi River Camp (“Queen’s Lodge”)
dilution and
letters from detainees on
riot of 1957
women’s compound
Atlantic Charter
atrocities and brutality. See also beatings; deaths; massacres; murders; screenings; sexual violence; torture
Anglican Church protests
barbed-wire villages and
Bewes report on
British, vs. Mau Mau
bureaucratic manipulation and
cigarette burns
condoned by officials
cover-ups and leaks protesting
debate over Hola and
dilution and
effect of, on Kikuyu