Why Jamhuri Day was marked at Uhuru Gardens

President Uhuru Kenyatta at Uhuru Gardens for the Jamhuri Day rally. [Wilberforce Okwiri, Standard]

Kenya’s Jamhuri Day was this year marked at the Uhuru Gardens in Nairobi.

President Uhuru Kenyatta, in his speech, said the founding fathers chose Uhuru Gardens as the place to celebrate Independence Day in 1963 and the republic status in 1964.

They wanted generations to memorize history, the untold atrocities visited upon the people and the evil associated with colonial rule, Uhuru said.

“The grounds on which we sit here today were also known as the Lang’ata Concentration Camp. During the liberation war, this concentration camp was the most notorious clearinghouse for our liberation fighters.”

It is estimated that up to 10,000 of the gallant and most feared liberators were confined in the camp at some point or another.

Most of them did not survive the wrath of the coloniser.

Lang’ata Camp has been described in the books of history as resembling the Nazi Camps in Germany, both in its psychological warfare and its methods of brutality.

Uhuru said, “using ‘quack scientists’, the colonisers argued that devotion to the cause of Mau Mau was a mental illness.”

He said that the only way to deal with it was by creating mass detention camps where ‘shock therapy’ and torture would be administered as a cure. And that was part of the logic they used to create the Langata Concentration Camp.

By creating the garden as a place of remembrance, Uhuru said founding fathers wanted generations to recall the darkness of the colonial past, but not to be stuck in the pessimism that dark memories can breed.

“They wanted us to turn darkness into positive energy the way they did it in the concentration camps.”

Uhuru said each time Kenyans gather at the gardens, they face national fears and demons with courage.

“More so because, no condition is permanent. They wanted us to “…never question in the dark, decisions we made in the light”. Mainly because the long walk to freedom was a walk of faith.”

Uhuru said apart from being a place of remembrance and healing, Uhuru Gardens will be an arena where the past, the present and the future will converge.