Resolve land question, Mau Mau freedom fighters ask State

By STEPHEN MAKABILA

KENYA: Mau Mau war veterans now want the government to address the land question in the country that has remained emotive for the last five decades.

Such a move, they argue, would be the only way of ensuring justice for all Kenyans as the country celebrates 50 years of independence from British colonialists.

Speaking at the just concluded international conference on Mau Mau and other liberation movements at Karatina University, Mau Mau War Veterans Association Secretary General Dr Gitu wa Kahengeri noted those who fought for the country’s independence had been left landless and ignored by successive governments.

“We had over 100,000 Mau Mau war veterans. Some have died but their families are landless in a country where their fathers fought hard to secure freedom from the British,” said Kahengeri.

The conference co-hosted by the university and the National Museums of Kenya (NMK) was themed The Mau Mau and Other Liberation Movements: 50 Years After Independence.

Speakers at the two-day conference included history scholars from public and private universities.

American historian from Harvard University Prof Caroline Elkins gave the keynote address while other speakers included Prof Munene Macharia of the United States International University in Kenya.

Several Mau Mau veterans gave their personal testimonies of how they suffered during the war.

“The British compensated us the little we have received and we are to construct a Mau Mau memorial monument at Jamhuri Gardens at a cost of Sh12 million. But what has our own government done for us?” posed Kahengeri.

Prof Elkins noted that the British government could be looking at a sea of litigation over human rights violations during the last days of its colonial empire.

The American historian who wrote a book Imperial Reckoning: The Untold Story of Britain’s Gulag in Kenya, told the conference that 7,000 boxes of previously unknown documents from 36 former colonies of Britain might be the powder keg that will trigger the litigation.

Prof Elkins, whose book is credited with helping the Mau Mau make a breakthrough in their case against the British Government, said the 7,000 boxes of colonial documents which were found hidden at Ellis Park have already triggered lawsuits from Malaysia, Cyprus and Palestine.

“The documents have proved that the British Government carried out a systematic campaign of violence against liberation movements in most of its 36 former colonies in the world, including Kenya,” said Prof Elkins, a professor of History and African American Studies at Harvard University.

Searching for evidence

Elkins said searching for the evidence even after the discovery of the Ellis Park archives was like searching for a pin in a haystack.

Apparently, the 300 boxes from Kenya were mixed up with 7,000 from other former colonies and when they were eventually found, her research team had to scour through 20,000 pages of documents within a year.

Although the Mau Mau case was the first reparations case against the British in its courts, Prof Elkins told the conference that it would definitely not be the last because it had persuaded likely victims spread all over the world to pursue justice.

Elkins had personally testified during the case filed by the Mau Mau veterans against the British, and the success of the case is partly due to her researched evidence.

At the conference, she added that the original work plan to defeat the Mau Mau litigation by the British involved an admission that massive colonial records about the liberation struggle had been destroyed prior to independence and therefore there was no substantial evidence to prove that violence had been employed against the liberation movement.

“For the last 50 years, the strategy of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office was to put off historians seeking to explore this field. The answer was always that documents related to that era had been destroyed by departing colonial officers,” added Elkins.

And true to her prediction, already another case by Mau Mau veterans who missed out in the first compensation is in the offing.

Kahengere noted Mau Mau veterans who want to seek round two of compensation from the British were justified because they missed out in round one of the pay out.

“They missed because they had not registered. Only those who had registered benefitted. We are fully supportive of them and we are praying for them as well,” added Kahengeri

Peter Kirui from the School of Education and Social Sciences at Karatina University notes the issue of reparations to the Mau Mau veterans for crimes committed by the British colonialists has elicited fresh debate.

“As expected, the precedent set by the court in the United Kingdom for granting compensation to the Mau Mau victims is likely to create impetus for the same claims by other Kenyan communities that suffered the brunt of the brutal colonial military,” explained Kirui.