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Informe de Seminario para optar al grado de Licenciado en Historia. / El objetivo que perseguimos en la presente tesis, es intentar demostrar la existencia de un mito que nace de la lucha desplegada por el movimiento Mau Mau de Kenya, en contra de la administración colonial. Paradojalmente, en este movimiento de liberación parecen interactuar dos mitos que surgen de la realidad socio cultural del país. Uno de ellos nace desde la propaganda ejercida por la autoridad colonial -y nativos que la apoyan-, temerosa de perder sus prerrogativas y que por lo mismo busca destacar los aspectos más negativos del grupo, postura que se mantendrá, por razones similares, con los gobiernos post independentistas.

Zugl.: München, Univ., Diss., 2007

Diss. Univ. München, 2007.

The rise of the Mau Mau secret society can be attributed to underlying political, social, and economic causes. Politically, it was caused by lack of training of Africans in democratic methods of government and lack of legitimate outlets for political activities. Socially, it was caused by the clash of the old and new civilizations in Kenya; the disruption of tribal institutions and authority; the inadequate educational facilities for Africans; and above all, the pronounced racial discrimination, both legal and customary, dominating society in the Colony. Economically, it was caused by land-hunger, urbanization, poverty and destitution of the African people. The Emergency legislation of October 20, 1952, was passed for the purpose of suppressing the Mau Mau Society and restoring law and order. By 1958, though law and order had been restored, most of the Emergency legislation was still in effect and though some attempts had been made to alleviate the underlying causes of the disturbances, fundamentally the situation had not changed. The main grievances of the African people have not been dealt with courageously, with the result that the present situation is full of potential danger. / Arts, Faculty of / History, Department of / Graduate

The outbreak of Mau Mau hostilities in Kenya was the culmination of a series of grievances which had developed among the more politically conscious Africans. The lack of political opportunities and the inability to promote economic and social integration fomented frustration and antagonism among these Africans. Yet, the violence and the imposition of the Emergency restrictions failed to disrupt the country's political, economic, and social development of the post-World War Two period. The struggle between the Colonial Office, the European settler, and the African nationalist in the nineteen-fifties, won political concessions for the Africans, divided the European political movement, and created a dilemma for the Colonial Office, particularly following the independence of Ghana. Throughout the Emergency it was apparent that the Colonial Office had seriously underestimated the rapid growth and strength of the nationalist movement in East Africa. By 1959, constitutional advancement in Tanganyika foretold a change in British policy in Kenya. As a consequence, African nationalism triumphed and the European hope for a 'white man's country' was dashed forever. While the political evolution of the African continued, Kenya enjoyed its greatest economic development during the nineteen-fifties. Social institutions also experienced a similar period of expansion. By the nineteen-sixties, owing to adverse weather conditions, poor world markets, and a loss of investment capital arising out of the growth of African nationalism, the country's economy collapsed. At the same time, the political disruption of the early nineteen-sixties brought a sharp rise in unemployment, and a shortage of educators and medical practitioners, which hampered the transition of the African from his traditional society to the modern world. With independence came some economic recovery, but continued recovery will be dependent on the maintenance of political stability and national unity. For Kenya's leaders the need to create a new unifying force to replace the old nationalism, built on a common anti-white hostility, is their most urgent task. / Arts, Faculty of / History, Department of / Graduate

This dissertation argues that works of literature offer a valuable critical supplement to historical and legal accounts of colonial violence, due to the common investment of literary texts in thematizing moral complexity and complicity, and by drawing attention to intimate and social forms of harm that might otherwise go unaccounted for. Following the recent successful lawsuit against the British government by elderly Kenyans who survived torture in the 1950s, as well as recent historical scholarship on the colonial government's brutal counterinsurgency, I argue that the paradigmatic anticolonial event commonly referred to as the “Mau Mau” uprising has been reframed in terms of a series of grave human rights abuses. I examine the diverse ways in which the Mau Mau struggle has been figured in narrative fiction, focusing on works by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor, Marjorie Oludhe Macgoye, and the white supremacist Robert Ruark. The dissertation shows literary texts to be sites of distinct forms of knowledge concerning the harms of political violence. My readings demonstrate that fictions of Mau Mau have figured that crisis as both a crime that demands urgent redress and an event whose damage is permanent and irreparable, each text staging in distinct ways the structuring paradox of historical reparation as an impossible ethical demand that must nonetheless be insisted upon. I think of reparations claims as radical decolonizing demands, countering recent critiques of the “politics of reparations” as a liberal departure from properly emancipationist thinking.

The Kikuyu, the largest ethnic group in Kenya, resisted colonial authority, which culminated into what became known as Mau Mau, led by the Kenya Land Freedom Army. During this time, the British colonial government imposed laws limiting their access to land, politics, and independence. The turbulent 1950s in Kenyan history should be considered a revolution because of its violent nature, the high level of participation, and overall social change that resulted from the war. I compared many theories of revolution to the events of the Mau Mau movement. Then, I explained the contention for land in the revolution, the role of women, and the place of Mau Mau in modern historiography. I concluded that Mau Mau should be considered a revolution even though its representation during the war and misunderstandings after independence did not classify it as such.

This thesis examines the lives of Senior Chief Koinange wa Mbiyu and his eldest son, Peter Mbiyu Koinange. It joins with the growing rise of biographical work within African Studies. It challenges the historical understanding of late colonial rule in Kenya and the role of official myth in pre- and post-independence historical narratives. Koinange wa Mbiyu was the patriarch of one of the most respected, wealthy, and politically influential Kikuyu families of Kenya's colonial and post-colonial period. His eldest son, Peter Mbiyu, received a prestigious education abroad and returned to Kenya where he became a prominent leader for African independent education African political action. Koinange and Peter bear frequent mention in academic discussions of collaboration, discontent, nationalism, and militancy in Kenya's colonial era. This thesis challenges the widely held narrative that Koinange and Peter embraced militant politics opposing colonial rule during the 1940s. While fitting larger understandings of decolonisation, it is not an honest depiction of the Koinange's political actions. As a result, this thesis is intentionally a work of revisionist history that looks to the profound changes in the culture and nature of colinal rule during the 1940s, rather than a political shift in the Koinanges. In addition to challenging the prevalent understanding of Koinange and Peter's political action, this thesis raises a number of areas - gender, wealth, elite and family dynamics, to name a few - where the Koinange family history would further illuminate the historical understanding of the colonial era. This thesis is a dual biography, crafted as a work of narrative history. It challenges a breadth of current scholarship, utilizing the largest collection of pre-Mau Mau archival records to date. This thesis engages with a number of historiographical challenges related to biography, the individual, the family, and the challenges of oral history shaped in the crucible of cultural crisis.

This study examines the origin, the manifestation and impact of the direct taxation of Africans in Kenya. While the state had several reasons for imposing taxation on Africans, the basic factor weighed on the need for a definitive source of revenue. For most of the colonial period, this aggregated to about 37½ percent of the total revenues. The thesis shows how taxes were collected from Africans, how this led to participation in the cash economy and how they continually resisted and evaded such taxation. Tax collection was synonymous with colonialism and this was manifested through the central role of chiefs, who used taxes and force to coerce Africans into migrant wage labour. Through taxation policies, legislation and African resourcefulness, migrant wage labour served the needs of a colonial capitalist settler economy. In this way, the colonial state revealed its capacity for dominance, power and exploitation. Evidence has been adduced to show that African taxation was an important factor in Kenya’s administrative, political and economic development. The policy of African taxation, land loss and poor working conditions are remembered as having interfered with African mechanisms for accumulating wealth. One of the main objections of the payment of taxes was the manner of its collection. Those unable to pay were imprisoned or detained while many took to instant flight at the sight of the tax collector. The thesis shows that in spite of all these harsh tax collection methods, peasants remained largely resilient and industrious. The Mau Mau movement was the culmination of various peasant grievances in which the colonial state used steep taxation as a counter-insurgency measure. Kenya’s independence in 1963, however, never altered the predatory nature of the state. Subtle, opportunistic and overt ways continued to be used to extract taxes from the peasants and the working class. It was not until 1973 that the much-hated colonial poll tax that had been renamed as graduated poll tax was abolished and replaced by indirect taxation. Finally, taxation like other colonial legacies has endured and has become one of the most important sources of revenue for the government to manage its fiscal policies.