Six - The Post-Mau Mau Period: The Independence Bargain and the Plight of the Squatters, 1955-63

Summary

Among the many intriguing aspects of Mau Mau is the length of time that the freedom fighters survived in the thick forest environment of Mount Kenya and the Nyandarua range. Without prior preparations or established arrangements for the supply of provisions, ammunition and firearms, thousands of discontented Kikuyu, Embu and Meru peasants trekked to the forests to strengthen the swelling numbers of Mau Mau freedom fighters. Faced with the sophisticated weapons of the British and loyalist troops, the freedom fighters’ only advantage was the forest environment within which the war was fought. Camouflage was easy and the thick vegetation made further penetration by the official troops difficult.

Amidst the struggle to improvise shelter and to obtain food and weaponry, the freedom fighters persevered in adverse conditions throughout the period of active armed confrontation between 1952 and 1956. Several hundred peasants had entered the forest before 1953 and some of these were still in the forest long after the achievement of formal independence in 1963. Mau Mau was a traumatic experience for both the British and the Africans. Among the peasants it precipitated many hardships, including thousands of deaths, loss of property and indeterminate stretches of detention and imprisonment. The lives of the majority of Kikuyu, Embu and Meru were seriously dislocated, both in the urban centres and in the rural areas.

While it lasted, the Mau Mau struggle proved far more difficult to quell than the colonial government had anticipated. What had initially appeared as a localised uprising became a fully-fledged war that lasted over three years and necessitated the importation of British troops, advanced artillery and an extensive expenditure from the British treasury. The war rocked the very foundations of the colonial regime in Kenya and forced British colonial officials and Whitehall into rethinking the whole colonial policy. Whereas before there had never been a policy on the socio-economic and political progress of Africans, colonial administrators were now having to restructure the whole administrative machinery in such a manner as to ensure that an experience such as Mau Mau never happened again. In other words, Britain was awakened to the urgency of bringing Africans into the mainstream of the country's economic and political developments.