Abstract
Politics of nationalism, Mau Mau, and surveillance. A detailed consideration of the causes of the Mau Mau peasant revolt and Kenyatta’s supposed role. The state of mass nationalism and the determined efforts by the colonial security forces to spy on Kenyatta and the nationalists; frustrations of mass nationalism and the outbreak of Mau Mau. A consideration of the question of Communism and Mau Mau. The arrest, trial, and imprisonment of Kenyatta and his radical colleagues; failure of the colonial government to subdue the revolt even after this. The basic aims of African nationalism as articulated by Kenyatta.
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Notes
- 1.
Murray-Brown, Kenyatta, p. 228.
- 2.
TNA, KV 2/1788, Correspondence with Kenya police on Kenyatta’s marriage to Edna. There were several memos exchanged between London and Nairobi on this matter in the period immediately after Kenyatta’s return to Kenya in 1946. In the end, it was confirmed that Kenyatta had married Edna legally.
- 3.
TNA, KV 2/1788, Memo from Lt. Col. P. Perfect to Sir Percy Sillitoe, Colonial Office, on Edna Grace Kenyatta.
- 4.
TNA, KV 2/1788, Correspondence between Lt. Col. P. Perfect and the Colonial Office and Passport Office (UK) on Edna Kenyatta’s travel plans.
- 5.
TNA, KV 2/1788, Urgent secret telegram from Intelligence Office, Nairobi, to the Colonial Office on Kenyatta’s education and qualification from LSE.
- 6.
TNA, KV 2/1788, Correspondence between the Colonial Office and Kenya Intelligence Office on Kenyatta’s educational attainments in Britain.
- 7.
Delf, Jomo Kenyatta, p. 125.
- 8.
Maloba, Mau Mau and Kenya, p. 37.
- 9.
Nairobi, Kenya National Archives, PC/Coast/2/1/80, p. 325. This report, written on the eve of the Mau Mau revolt, still held on to the unrealistic claim that there was no current danger of starvation for Africans, “since employment is not difficult to get for any man of reasonable intelligence who is honest and prepared to work.”
- 10.
Kenya Annual Report, 1949 (London: HMSO, 1950), p. 4.
- 11.
Nairobi, Kenya National Archives, PC/Coast/2/1/80, p. 325.
- 12.
Sir Philip Mitchell, African Afterthoughts (London: Hutchinson Publishers, 1954), p. 276.
- 13.
Mitchell, African Afterthoughts, p. 259.
- 14.
Delf, Jomo Kenyatta, p. 134.
- 15.
Mitchell, African Afterthoughts, p. 253. After the outbreak of the Mau Mau revolt Mitchell refused to accept any responsibility for it. His book African Afterthoughts (1954) was written in part to provide details of his career, which he continued to see as very distinguished, and in part to show that, indeed, there was no discord or trouble in Kenya on the eve of his retirement. “I have no intention whatsoever of offering any explanation or defence of myself or my government for what we did or did not do; if it gives any one any satisfaction to believe that what has happened since I retired is all my fault, he is welcome to do so.” p. 252. Mitchell’s friend, Lord Hailey, wrote a Foreword to the book. He supported Mitchell’s position and stated that, “it is the more regrettable therefore that the success which seemed by general consent to have attended Sir Philip’s long tenure of office as Governor should have been overclouded by the events of the Mau Mau outbreak which occurred not long after his retirement.” Lord Hailey went on to argue that the outbreak of Mau Mau and the violence associated with it is not, and cannot, be taken to be a “sign of widespread conspiracy.” Outbreaks of violence in different parts of the British Empire show that it is “misleading to read signs of widespread conspiracy in outrages committed in the first instance by a small criminal group, but which have subsequently taken a wider and more dangerous range owing to the connivance of others who have either been in general sympathy with it or have been terrorized into joining its activities,” p. xv.
- 16.
Maloba, Mau Mau and Kenya, p. 54. In the annual report for Central Province (1947) the colonial government restated this position: “The events of 1947 in the Central Province conformed to a pattern—most marked in Nairobi and the Kikuyu districts but discernible in different degrees elsewhere. The pattern which can also be traced in other parts of the Colonial Empire and the world is one of political unrest fomented by unscrupulous agitators working often consciously against the common good and thriving financially on the troubles created … At the beginning of 1947 the stage had been reached where a handful of African agitators backed by a virulent vernacular press were extending an undesirable influence over the thoughts and feelings of a large portion of the Kikuyu tribe.” Nairobi, Kenya National Archives, PC/CP/4/3/2, p. 374.
- 17.
TNA, KV 2/1788, Kenya Colony Intelligence Summary report to the Colonial Office, November 19, 1946.
- 18.
TNA, KV 2/1788, Kenya Intelligence Office memo to the Colonial Office, January 14, 1947.
- 19.
Michael Blundell, A Love Affair with The Sun: A Memoir of Seventy Years in Kenya (Nairobi: Kenway Publishers, 1994), p. 103.
- 20.
TNA, KV 2/1788, Report from the Intelligence Office, to the Colonial Office, August 22, 1947. The report covered the KAU’s mass rally held at Fort Hall on April 20, 1947.
- 21.
TNA, KV 2/1788, Report from the Intelligence Office on financial irregularities in KAU, August 2, 1947.
- 22.
TNA, KV 2/1788, Memo from Lt. Col. Peter Perfect to Director General, Intelligence Services, November 11, 1947. The Annual Report (1947) for Central Province also sought to demonstrate that KAU was no longer a national organization. “The Kenya African Union started the year with a fairly general support from leaders of all tribes, but later was racked with internal dissension which resulted in quarrels in public and resignations; but by the end of the year it was little more than an association of Kikuyu.” Nairobi, Kenya National Archives, PC/CP/4/3/2, p. 376.
- 23.
TNA, KV 2/1788, Report from the Intelligence Office, January 7, 1948. The report referred to the KAU meeting called in November 1947.
- 24.
TNA, KV 2/1788, Reports from Intelligence Office, on KAU’s general meeting held in Nairobi, July 4, 1948.
- 25.
Delf, Jomo Kenyatta, p. 176.
- 26.
Ndegwa, Walking in Kenyatta’s Struggles, p. 255.
- 27.
Daily Express, September 2, 1952 (contained in KV 2/1788).
- 28.
Nairobi, Kenya National Archives, PC/Coast/2/1/80, Annual Report, Central Province, 1951, p. 328.
- 29.
Nairobi, Kenya National Archives, PC/Coast/2/1/80, Annual Report, Central Province, 1951, p. 330.
- 30.
Maloba, Mau Mau and Kenya, p. 70.
- 31.
Maloba, Mau Mau and Kenya, p. 70.
- 32.
Murray-Brown, Kenyatta, p. 235.
- 33.
Maloba, Mau Mau and Kenya, p. 77.
- 34.
Peter Abrahams, “The Blacks,” in The World of Mankind. Edited by Ted Patrick (New York, NY: Golden Press, 1947–1962), p. 166. For added analysis of Abrahams’ encounter with Kenyatta in Kenya see Carol Polsgrove, Ending British Rule in Africa: Writers In a Common Cause (Manchester and New York, NY: Manchester University Press, 2009).
- 35.
Peter Abrahams, Return to Goli (London: Faber and Faber Ltd. 1953), p. 206. In the article, “The Blacks” in, The World of Mankind, Abrahams also observed that Kenyatta was “the victim both of tribalism and of Westernism gone sick. His heart and mind and body were the battlefield of the ugly violence known as the Mau Mau revolt long before it broke out in that beautiful land. The tragedy is that he was so rarely gifted, that he could have made such a magnificent contribution in other circumstances,” p. 166.
- 36.
See Murray-Brown, Kenyatta, p. 243.
- 37.
Ndegwa, Walking in Kenyatta’s Struggles, p. 255.
- 38.
TNA, KV 2/1788, Memo from the Kenya Intelligence Office on the deteriorating security and political situation in Kenya, September 11, 1952.
- 39.
See Durham, UK, University of Durham Archives, GRE/1/18/4-5, Baring Papers. The report entitled “Current Kenya Politics” did not touch on political unrest in the country nor the KAU. There was no discussion of the political and economic grievances driving the African political agitation. Sir Evelyn Baring was the son of Lord Cromer, “whose name was firmly identified with the British occupation of Egypt. In the days when Cairo and Calcutta represented the twin poles of the British power in Asia and Africa, Cromer’s commanding presence and Curzon’s brilliance, seemed to radiate the essential spirit of imperial rule … The real ruler of the country [Egypt] for almost a quarter of a century, 1883–1907, he stands four-square across the period as someone British writers have come to terms with and the man most Egyptians have been taught to love to hate.” See Roger Owen, Lord Cromer: Victorian Imperialist, Edwardian Proconsul (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2004), Preface.
- 40.
George Delf, Jomo Kenyatta, p. 171.
- 41.
Maloba, Mau Mau and Kenya, p. 76.
- 42.
Murray-Brown, Kenyatta, p. 258.
- 43.
Murray-Brown, Kenyatta, p. 258.
- 44.
Charles Douglas-Home, Evelyn Baring (London: Collins, 1978), p. 246.
- 45.
Maloba, Mau Mau and Kenya, p. 99. Also see Douglas-Home, Evelyn Baring, p. 8.
- 46.
Maloba, Mau Mau and Kenya, p. 99. Also see Douglas-Home, Evelyn Baring, p. 247.
- 47.
This referred to Kenyatta living in permanent exile in some remote section of Kenya far from Central Province or any other heavily populated area. It was envisaged that any area chosen for Kenyatta’s internal exile would be not only remote but also inaccessible. As for Thacker, after delivering the expected sentence, he “was immediately flown out of the country.”
- 48.
TNA, KV 2/1788, Response to a question from the South African Intelligence Office on Kenyatta, August 21, 1951.
- 49.
TNA, Cmnd. 9081, Report to the Secretary of State for the Colonies by the Parliamentary Delegation to Kenya, January 1954, p. 4. In his memoirs Oliver Lyttelton restated his views on the Mau Mau and Kenyatta. Mau Mau oath was “the most bestial, filthy and nauseating incantation which perverted minds can ever have brewed.” As a result, he could not recall any instance when he had felt the forces of evil “to be so near and so strong as in Mau Mau … As I wrote memoranda or instructions, I would suddenly see a shadow fall across the page—the horned shadow of Devil himself.” As for Kenyatta, Lyttelton maintained that he was “a daemonic figure with extreme left wing views.” See Oliver Lyttelton, The Memoirs of Lord Chandos (New York, NY: New American Library, 1963), pp. 379–380.
- 50.
The Foreign Office, for example, issued a corrective statement, TNA, DOS 35/5352, to “certain of Her Majesty’s Representatives,” in March 1954. The Foreign Office sought to reassure foreign governments that “despite the Emergency, Kenya has continued to make progress with its plans for economic and social development.” The official policy in Kenya was, among other things, “to prosecute the fight against terrorism with the utmost vigour and to ensure the maintenance of law and order in Kenya; to build within the British Commonwealth a strong and prosperous Kenya owing loyalty to the British Crown; to promote racial harmony and friendliness and to develop opportunities for all subjects, irrespective of race or religion, to advance in accordance with character and ability.”
- 51.
Cmnd. 9081, London: HMSO, 1954. Report to the Secretary of State for the Colonies by the Parliamentary Delegation, January 1954, p. 4. This delegation pointed out that indeed (by 1954), the influence of the Mau Mau “in the Kikuyu area, except in certain localities, has not declined; it has on the contrary, increased; in this respect the situation has deteriorated and the danger of infection outside the Kikuyu area is now greater; not less, than it was at the beginning of the State of Emergency … The Government of Kenya has not succeeded sufficiently in rallying the mass of the Kikuyu to the side of law and order. This is due in some part, we believe, to the feeling among these people that adequate protection will not be forthcoming if they openly oppose Mau Mau, fight and inform against Mau Mau gangsters, refuse food, shelter and succour, and generally play a defensive energetic role on the side of law and order. To deal with this situation African leadership will certainly be required and means of developing this are, we believe, indispensable,” pp. 5–6.
- 52.
In The Memoirs of Lord Chandos Oliver Lyttelton, former Colonial Secretary, insisted on advancing the mistaken and discredited view that the Mau Mau guerillas had received financial and logistical support from the Soviet Embassy in Addis Ababa, p. 384.
- 53.
TNA, FO 371/96745, Memo from the British Embassy, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, to the Africa Department, Foreign Office, London, on “Ethiopia, Soviets and Mau Mau,” December 19, 1952.
- 54.
TNA, FO 371/96745, Memo from the British Embassy, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, to the Africa Department, Foreign Office, London, on “Ethiopia, Soviets and Mau Mau,” December 19, 1952. Busk added that he had very close personal contact with “the Ethiopian Vice Minister of the Interior and we meet frequently to discuss these matters. He can be relied on to ensure that all their activities are as closely watched as possible. We shall continue to do our best in this direction.”
- 55.
TNA, FO 371/96745, Confidential Telegram from the Foreign Office, London, to Africa Department, Middle East Secretariat, Regional Advisers, Information Policy Department, and Information Research Department. In this memo, the Foreign Office pointed out that there were rumors and reports seeking to link the Soviet Embassy in Ethiopia and the Mau Mau revolt. Such reports had, for example, appeared in the Daily Mail, December 1, 1952, and Time. December 8, 1952.
- 56.
TNA, FO 371/96745, Confidential Telegram from the Foreign Office, London, to Africa Department, Middle East Secretariat, Regional Advisers, Information Policy Department, And Information Research Department.
- 57.
TNA, CO 822/461, p. 21.
- 58.
The Colonial Office “also determined that although Kenyatta had visited Moscow in the 1930 s, there was nothing since then ‘to suggest any link with communist theory’.” See Maloba, Mau Mau and Kenya, p. 112.
- 59.
TNA, KV 2/1789, Kenya Intelligence Committee Appreciation, January 26, 1954. Charles Chenevix Trench, in his book, Men Who Ruled Kenya: The Kenya Administration, 1892–1963 (London and New York, NY: The Radcliffe Press, 1993), observed that during Kenyatta’s trial, the “settlers favoured hanging him from the nearest tree or, failing that, he should be detained indefinitely without trial; the worst possible outcome was that he should be brought to trial and acquitted,” p. 234.
- 60.
TNA, KV 2/1789, Kenya Intelligence Committee Appreciation, January 26, 1954.
- 61.
Murray-Brown, Kenyatta, p. 280.
- 62.
Bloch and Fitzgerald, British Intelligence and Covert Action, p. 81.
- 63.
Murray-Brown, Kenyatta, pp. 287–295.
- 64.
Ndegwa, Walking in Kenyatta’s Struggles, p. 255.
- 65.
Trench, Men Who Ruled Kenya, p. 291.
- 66.
Charles Chenevix Trench adds, “It is widely surmised that Kenyatta’s change of heart was due to Leslie Whitehouse”; that Kenyatta’s later inclination to be accommodating to British and settlers’ interests in Kenya can be traced to this unique friendship with the DC while still in prison at Lokitaung. p. 291.
- 67.
Murray-Brown, Kenyatta, p. 292.
- 68.
TNA, CO 822/1247, Memo to the Colonial Secretary from Sir Evelyn Baring, July 2, 1958.
- 69.
TNA, CO 822/1247, Reply from the Colonial Secretary to Sir Evelyn Baring’s request regarding Kenyatta, July 16, 1958. The Governor was supposed to notify the Colonial Office before making the announcement.
- 70.
TNA, CO 822/1247, Letter from Ministry of Defence, Nairobi, to the Colonial Office, April 15, 1959.
- 71.
TNA, CO 822/1247, Letter from Ministry of Defence, Nairobi, to the Colonial Office, April 15, 1959.
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Maloba, W.O. (2018). Back Home: Politics of Nationalism, Mau Mau, Prison, and Surveillance. In: Kenyatta and Britain. African Histories and Modernities. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-50895-5_5
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