Is Britain writing Mau Mau's final chapter?

The construction of a Mau Mau monument by Britain in the Freedom Corner at Uhuru Park leaves more questions asked than answered. How and why could Britain ever do so at this time; the construction being part of a private Sh1.8 billion compensation package, with about 5,000 Mau Mau combatants who fought Britain for freedom in Kenya, long before any other country did so for African freedom.

The Mau Mau had found their way to the Royal Courts of Justice in London at their cost, pursuing the matter of reparations and reconciliation, begging the question: where is the Kenyan government in all this? Isn’t international relations, especially with the former colonial power in Kenya, a subject of diplomacy and a treaty? But this is not the case in Kenya.

How could Britain be so kind, at this time, to go out of its way to honour their erstwhile Mau Mau adversaries, who led Africa in the freedom fight in the 1950s? I always give recognition to the British for their love of freedom and democracy and they could in their own way be telling off the Kenya government over the way it has dealt with the Mau Mau since the country’s freedom in 1963. The act is loaded and is not just an act of benefaction.

Yet, the British are not friends of Robert Mugabe and ZANU-PF. Other than for the differences with Mugabe on his land reform programme, Britain thinks that the heroes of the liberation war in Zimbabwe have been deified too much by Mugabe, who continues to celebrate his country’s liberation heroes, with many of them being integrated in the Zimbabwe army, and all of them being awarded pension, gratuity and free land.

While Britain was not prepared to admit at the time that the Mau Mau had a cause worth fighting for, and for which many Britons had fought and died for in the past, they are now ready and have come round to admit that to fight for freedom for an African is no crime.

For many, the freedom fighters brought honour and recognition to the whole of colonial Africa after about a century of British, French, Portuguese, Belgian, Spanish and German colonisation of Africa. In the war of freedom and self-rule, the Mau Mau led Africa; a point memorably declared by Nelson Mandela after he was freed from the Robben Island Prison in the early 1990s.

In the post 2nd World War period, when the Mau Mau fought the British, the Vietnamese fought the French in Vietnam, the Malays in Malaysia and the Yemenis in the Aden Protectorate did as much. The British have not however built a monument for their former adversaries in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia or in Aden City in the former South Yemen.

By the late 1950s, there was a war of liberation in Algeria. But the French have not built a monument for the FLN freedom fighters in Algiers. The same case applies to the the Portuguese, who are the former colonial masters in Mozambique, Guinea Bissau and Angola, among other similar cases.

Africans’ freedom

Now the question  begs: Why have the British done a first one in Kenya to honour in money and kind the Mau Mau Mashujaa? Is this a bill of indictment against the Kenya government with regard to how it has waged a relentless cold war against the Mau Mau adherents, such that even Great Britain has taken pity?

The Mau Mau wanted the liberation of the White Highlands and freedom for the common Africans. They wanted all Africans empowered and liberated from illiteracy, ignorance and disease, yet this has become too much of an aberration with time. They envisioned Kenyans putting their destiny in their hands by producing agricultural and manufactured goods. Rich people do not fight; increasing poverty breeds violence.

It is now clear that nothing on the Mau Mau agenda has ever taken root in Kenya or has been accepted by any of Kenya’s post-colonial African-led governments. Look at the shambolic state of the Kenyan lands with the latent and active conflict wars. We are still at the mercy of the elements and dread the possibility of El Nino.

The country is yet to produce its own heroes’ monument, a freedom acre or a Mashujaa list; six years after the creation of the day and 60 years after the end of the State of Emergency. Maybe power, corruption and tribalism cannot allow us to develop a universally acceptable criteria on who is and who is not.

Notwithstanding, since the British have re-entered the fray with the construction of the Mau Mau Monument, long overdue from our government. It is time for the Government to step in and compile a posthumous list of mashujaa like Dedan Kimathi, Baimungi, ole Kisio, ole Ngapien among others, who are now long dead and do not threaten anybody. The sooner this is done, the better, so that the next Mashujaa Day will stop looking like a day of fiction and wishful thinking.