History of Kenya
Mrs.
Nardi's 9th Grade World History Class
Lenox Memorial High School, Lenox, Massachusetts
British
Response to Mau Mau Uprising
Just before
the outbreak of violence from the KLFA, Kenya welcomed a new governor.
Govenor Evelyn Baring arrived
in Kenya in October of 1952. Chief Waruhiu would be assassinated
ten days later. This event was Mau Mau’s welcoming salvo
to Baring’s administration. Certainly, Baring felt equal to the
job since he had had administrative experience in both Southern Rhodesia
and South Africa, “where he took the office of high commissioner”
(Elkins 33) before he came to Kenya. However, he was the typical colonial
official with requisite Oxford education, a “carefully measured
and methodical style of governance” (33) and with early experience
in India; however, he had no time for reflection after he arrived in Kenya.
Within a month, Baring had ordered Operation Jock Scott
where 180 “identified” leaders of Mau Mau were arrested including
Jomo Kenyatta. Unfortunately, arresting Kenyatta enraged
the Kikuyu and made Kenyatta a symbol of British oppression. However,
this political faux pas by Baring revived Kenyatta’s weaken image
but, unfortunately, left the Mau Mau movement to its own devices.
While Operation Jock Scott was being planned and executed, British troops
were deployed into Kenya.
With Baring’s arrival
came the First Battalion of Lancaster Fusiliers, six battalions of King’s
African Rifles, and the building up of the Home Guard (Kikuyu loyalists).
The maximum number of battalions would reach 12 by November of 1953. A
show of such force, it was thought, would certainly quash any resistance.
Yet, neither the Declaration of the State of Emergency nor
the rounding up of the radical and moderate leaders of the KAU would do
anything but incite more insurrection and push the militant radicals into
the forest. As Lonsdale notes, “At this point, the situation
in Kenya moved rapidly to a new level of large-scale collective violence”
(Lonsdale 252). However, the show of force and arrests did enhance the
authority of the administration and quell some of the rancor within the
settler community.
The British had long ago inherited a culture of racism and white superiority confirmed by Social Darwinist, Herbert Spencer . This inherited brain washing allowed no possibility for Africans to be fully human, independent and mature. Sadly, the colonial mind could not grapple with such a revolutionary concept. Therefore, the colonial administration’s responses and solutions to the crisis in Kikuyuland failed due to lack of imagination and commitment to human rights. Their strategy of overwhelming force, intimidation and brutality were as bankrupt as their “civilizing mission” would be in the end.
If the British government's stated goal was to retain a colonial presence in Kenya which held legitimate authority and fostered the concept of caring for their African subject with British rule of law, they failed on all counts. Here are three examples of this failure: first, the blatant prejudice and illegal activities of the colonial courts system especially with regard to Jomo Kenyatta; second, the brutal “rehabilitation” of the detainees in detention system known as the “Pipeline” which used all forms of inhuman treatment, and third, the detention of 1.5 million Kikuyu, without due process, in the “villiagization” scheme
In 1954, with information gleened from the interrogation of General China, the British forces instituted Operation Anvil in Nairobi which was noted by Wunyabari Maloba's book Mau Mau and Kenya as “shock treatment with a vengeance”; it targeted guilty and innocent, women, children and the aged with impunity. Tens of thousands of Kikuyu were rounded up “Gestapolike” with loudspeakers shouting orders. In the panic, children were separated from parents, husbands from wives with no recourse to due process or basic human rights. A few lucky ones were later freed but the vast majority was identified as Mau Mau by an informant or gakunia who was draped from head to toe for protection. Most were hustled off to Langata Screening Camp.
Let it be noted that within the British Parliament in London, the Labour Party expressed its outrage at the discovery of the abuses and violations of human rights. Citing Barbara Castle MP, in the Tribune article September 30, 1955, " In the heart of the British Empire there is a police state where the rule of law has broken down, where the murder and torture of Africans by Europeans goes unpunished...(Elkins, 275)".