Book explores the Mau Mau war and the never-ending quest for freedom
In a file picture taken in October 1952 soldiers guard suspected Mau Mau fighters behind barbed wire in the Kikuyu reserve at the time of the Mau Mau uprising against British colonial rule in Kenya. PHOTO | AFP
What you need to know:
Historian points out the mistakes the freedom fighters made and why the spirit of defiance still haunts the country.
Mau Mau helped strengthen rather than weaken the colonial state and that that way it shaped the road to independence in the coloniser’s perspective, which when it came, was no more than a handing over of the state, intact, to Jomo Kenyatta & Co.
Indeed, from January 1964, just months after internal self government and 11 more months to full independence, there were marchers in Nairobi demanding jobs, there were numerous letters to Prime Minister Kenyatta decrying the way he was working in amity with collaborators and keeping freedom fighters at arms length.
When I separately told three friends last month that there is a new book on Mau Mau and invited each to its launch at the Goethe Institute on June 23, each asked me the same question, albeit in different ways: What does it say that has not been said before? I will give my answer straightaway, and it is to be found in the first chapter where the author lays out the subject of the book and how he tackles or executes it in the following pages.
Nicholas Githuku’s Mau Mau Crucible of War treats the Mau Mau war as a pivotal turning point in the struggles of the people of Kenya against oppression by the colonial state and in shaping the post-colonial state and its relations with Kenyans.
