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One Voice Speaking for Many: the Mau Mau Movement and Kenyan Autobiography

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 November 2008

Carol E. Neubauer
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Extract

In most traditional African societies, the relationship of the individual to the community is clearly defined from birth. Each child soon comes to understand his special relationship to his extended family, and to the historical founders of his ethnic group. Hereditary lines trace ancestral origins, and names reflect ties to past generations as well as those yet to come. From the very beginning the child understands that he is not alone, and that he is an integral member of a distinct group with traditional responsibilities and expectations. He perceives himself not as a solitary individual who must discover his own meaning in life, but rather identifies with the legendary history and social values of his clan. These inherited ties to the past, present, and future prove to be of tremendous benefit to the individual, and provide a shared sense of order and security.

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Articles
Information
The Journal of Modern African Studies , Volume 21 , Issue 1 , March 1983 , pp. 113 - 131
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1983

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References

page 114 note 1 Africans traditionally value each person's relation to his ancestors and ethnic groups far more than the status of the individual, whose rôle is, in fact, de-emphasised because the meaning of each life emanates from one's sacred ties to the past. James Olney presents this fundamental concept in African culture by citing Kenyatta, Jomo in Tell Me Africa (Princeton, 1973), p. 11: as opposed to Europeans and Americans, for whom ‘individuality is the ideal of life’, Africans believe ‘the ideal is the right relations with, and behaviour to, other people’.Google Scholar

page 115 note 1 As Olney points out, ibid. p. 27, one motive of African autobiographers is ‘to describe a representative case of a peculiarly African experience’.

page 115 note 2 All quotations from my three primary texts will be followed by the page numbers in parentheses. Brown, D. A. Maughan states in his article, ‘Myth and the “Mau Mau’”, in Theoria (Pietermaritzburg), 55, 1980, p. 66, that since independence at least ‘nine autobiographies of members of the movement have been published,Google Scholarstarting with Kariuki's, J. M.Mau Mau Detainee. No autobiographies of Kenyans who fought on the government side have been published to date’.Google Scholar

page 115 note 3 The membership of this proscribed secret organisation was based on an oath of unity, and by the early 1950s thousands of Kikuyu had pledged their support in order to regain their ancestral lands. The origin of the name ‘Mau Mau’ is not entirely certain, although Kariuki, op. cit. pp. 23–4, suggests that it actually meant ‘go go’, and was used by guards to warn members of the approach of police or the enemy, just as in a children's game the pronounciation of common words is altered to disguise their meanings to outsiders. For other versions of the origin of the name, see Brown, Maughan, loc. cit. p. 77;Google ScholarRosberg, Carl G. Jr, and Nottingham, John, The Myth of ‘Mau Mau’: nationalism in Kenya (Nairobi, 1966), p. 331;Google Scholar and the foreword by Mazrui, Ali A. in Buijtenhuijs, Robert, Mau Mau. Twenty Years After: the myth and the survivors (The Hague, 1973), pp. 11–12.Google Scholar

page 116 note 1 According to Gikoyo, Gucu G., We Fought For Freedom: Tulipigania Uhuru (Nairobi, 1979), p. 320, one of the chief aims of the Mau Mau was to ‘win back the land from the foreign usurper’, and then to ‘divide up the land to the landless’.Google Scholar Keith Cole, a teacher in Kenya for the Church Missionary Society, offers another explanation for the shortage of land among the Kikuyu in his Kenya: hanging in the middle (London, 1959), p. 47, namely: the ‘enormous growth in population as the result of the cessation of intertribal warfare and the expansion of education and medical services’.Google Scholar

page 116 note 2 The therapeutic nature of autobiographical writing is explained by Wanjala, Chris, The Season of Harvest: a literary discussion (Nairobi, 1978), p. 93: Kenyan writers who were displaced by the Mau Mau conflict used the ‘autobiographical form as a purgation of their sufferings as detainees in the colonial Nazi-like camps’.Google Scholar

page 116 note 3 For opposing views on the connection between the Kikuyu Independent Schools and Mau Mau supporters, see Wamweya, Joram, Freedom Fighter (Nairobi, 1971), p. 47,Google Scholar and Cole, op. cit. p. 48. Rosberg and Nottingham, op. cit. p. 127, describe the K. I. Schools ‘as a venture in self-help’ whose ‘interest was educational within a Christian environment yet outside white control’.

page 116 note 4 Brown, Maughan, loc. cit. p. 70, states that up to 90,000 Kikuyu were confined in detention camps, generally compounds surrounded by barbed-wire fences with an armed militia guard. Another disciplinary tactic, enforced villagisation, was designed to cut off the ‘forest fighters from their sources of supply in the reserves’, and often involved curfews for up to 23 hours a day, as well as ‘widespread famine and death in the reserves’. On the other hand, Cole, op. cit. p. 50, speaks of the advantages of ‘village settling’, since ‘Homes can be inspected and standards of cleanliness demanded. Christians are able to live more closely to each other.’Google Scholar

page 117 note 1 See Olney, op. cit. p. 271, for the autobiographical necessity to connect different periods of one's life and to illustrate the influence of one period on another.

page 118 note 1 Muriuki, G., ‘The Kikuyu in the Pre-Colonial Period’, in Ogot, Bethwell A. (ed.), Kenya Before 1900 (Nairobi, 1976), p. 119.Google Scholar

page 120 note 1 ‘The missions excluded any possibility of selective change, by which the Kikuyu might absorb some elements of Western culture while rejecting others as unacceptable to their values or social institutions’. Rosberg and Nottingham, op. cit. p. 105.

page 120 note 2 On the conflict between Kikuyu and Christian customs, see Wood, Susan, Kenya: the tensions of progress (London, 1962), p. 33, and Rosberg and Nottingham, op. cit. pp. 17–18.Google Scholar

page 121 note 1 In his autobiography, Waruhia Itote (‘General China’) describes his conversations with Kenyatta, Jomo in detention camps as ‘the greatest source of happiness’; ‘Mau Mau’ General (Nairobi, 1967), p. 213.Google Scholar Kenyatta was arrested in October 1952, on charges of managing the Mau Mau organisation. Along with five other members of the K.A.U. executive committee, he was brought to trial in the remote setting of Kapenguria (280 miles from Nairobi), and in April 1953 was convicted and sentenced to seven years of hard labour at Lodwar, in a distant northern district. During his imprisonment, and until his release in 1961, Kenyatta retained his position as the most popular political figure in Kenya, despite the Government's attempt to destroy his influence.

page 122 note 1 See Muriuki, loc. cit. p. 130: ‘Circumcision was not merely a mutilation of the body, as the missionaries would have had them believe, but also a vehicle for the transmission and perpetuation of the norms and values of the Kikuyu cultural traditions’. Also Wanjala, op cit. p. 68.

page 122 note 2 On the conflict between the Kikuyu Central Association and the Church of Scotland missionaries over the issue of female circumcision in 1929, see Brown, Maughan, op. cit. p. 67, and Rosberg and Nottingham, op. cit. pp. 120 and 127.Google Scholar

page 123 note 1 Africans traditionally participated in initiation rites involving circumcision during their early teens. Girls were generally circumcised when aged 14, and this symbolised the ‘separation from childhood and incorporation into adulthood’. For a more complete description of initiation rituals, see Mbiti, John S., African Religions and Philosophy (Garden City, N.J., 1970), pp. 165–71.Google Scholar

page 123 note 2 Mboya, Tom, Freedom and After (Boston, 1963), p. 11:Google Scholar ‘There was as well the church's hostility to those tribes which practiced female circumcision. Even among those Africans who agreed the practice should be abandoned, the church presented its views in a high-handed manner and tried to change the custom overnight and dealt ruthlessly with any African who practiced it, instead of educating the people to understand why it should be stopped. In some cases they even threatened to excommunicate Africans who practiced female circumcision.’

page 125 note 1 Kariuki, op. cit. p. 21, emphasises the importance of the land to the Kikuyu, ‘without which they could have no religious or social security’. See also, Sorrenson, M. P. K., Origins of European Settlement in Kenya (Nairobi, 1968), pp. 178, 180, and 187.Google Scholar

page 125 note 2 The conflict over the land between the Kikuyu and the British colonial régime is explained by Mboya, op. cit. pp. 41–2: ‘Many families were removed from their land to give way to white settlement, and Africans never accepted the settler argument that the land had been found empty and uninhabited… Most Africans argued that although it was not our system to fence land, each piece of land was claimed by some tribe, even if at the time they were not actively using that land.’

page 126 note 1 For opposing views on villagisation, see Muriithi, J. Kiboi as told to Ndoria, Peter N., War in the Forest (Nairobi, 1971), p. 58, and Wood, op. cit. p. 34.Google Scholar

page 127 note 1 In addition to the estimated 80,000 detainees, the Mau Mau conflict caused very heavy casualties, especially among the Kikuyu: by the end of 1956, there were 11,503 killed, 1,035 captured wounded, 1,550 captured unwounded, 26,625 arrested, and 2,714 surrendered. On the side of the Government, there were 95 Europeans killed and 127 wounded; 29 Asians killed and 48 wounded; and 1,920 Africans killed and 2,385 wounded. See Corfield, F. D., Historical Survey of the Origins and Growth of the Mau Mau (London, H.M.S.O., 1960), p. 316.Google Scholar

page 127 note 2 According to Kariuki, op. cit. p. 33, Mau Mau followers and sympathisers often gave false admissions under torture. On the other hand, Cole, op. cit. p. 45, views these confessions as the first step in rehabilitation, and finds them particularly successful because they allowed ‘Christian workers to minister the Gospel of forgiveness and peace to those who not only repented but who also put their whole trust in the Lord’.

page 128 note 1 Wamweya, op. cit. p. 178, mentions in his autobiography that while he was detained, Kariuki served as an inspiration for him and his fellow prisoners.

page 128 note 2 Itote, op. cit. pp. 196–7.

page 128 note 3 Buijtenhuijs, op. cit. p. 47, discusses Kariuki in relation to the African myth of Mau Mau which claims that the movement was ‘modern and rational’.

page 130 note 1 Mbiti, op. cit. pp. 27–34, 208, and 212–16.

page 130 note 2 Kariuki, Josiah Mwangi was killed in a political assassination in 1975.Google Scholar