Tortured, beaten, castrated by soldiers from his own army - for joining Mau Mau
In the eyes of many historians, the campaign against Mau Mau fighters was the bloodiest British suppression of any of their colonial uprisings anywhere in the world
When Mwangi Kanyari returned to Kenya in 1946 after fighting for the allies in Egypt in World War II, he expected land and freedom; to live peacefully on a small farm with his wife and family amid the fertile White Highlands that the British had occupied for 100 years.
Within a decade Kanyari had been tortured, beaten and castrated by soldiers of the same army he had been proud to serve with. His crime? Taking the secret oath and joining the underground liberation army known as Mau Mau. Fighting for independence, Mau Mau attacked police posts and assassinated Kenyans loyal to the Crown.
Assaulting remote farms, they struck fear into the white community, killing 32 settlers and making Mau Mau a byword in Britain for what was then termed ‘savagery.’ In 1952, a State of Emergency was declared and the full might of British forces rained down on the Mau Mau. Tens of thousands of Kenyans died. Exact numbers are hotly contested, but the Kenyan Human Rights Commission say up to 90,000 Kenyans were killed in the eight year struggle.
Thousands were tortured or raped and starved. Many thousands more were put into ferocious detention camps. Over 1,000 alone were hanged after summary ‘justice’ was meted out by special courts. In the eyes of many historians, the campaign against Mau Mau was the bloodiest British suppression of any of their colonial uprisings anywhere.
That’s the legacy that King Charles walked into with his State visit this week. That’s why many wanted him to apologize for what the British and their allies did to crush the rebellion. Some argue that the 70-year old struggle is all ancient history and should be forgotten. But in Kenya the horrors of the colonial past are a living nightmare for many families who saw their parents or grandparents suffer. Unless amends are made, they feel they’ll never be able to move on.
A decade ago, Tory Foreign Secretary William Hague stood up in the House of Commons and sensationally admitted that torture had been used and that thousands had died. Speaking as the government paid £20 million reparations to Mau Mau victims, Hague said the government regretted the abuses and unreservedly condemned the torture as a violation of human dignity.
But worried the floodgates might open to further settlements, Hague’s statement stopped short of an apology and refused to accept liability for the actions of the colonial administration. Twenty million pounds was apparently the ceiling of what the Conservative government was prepared to pay for the killing and torture it admitted to.
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That’s the legacy that King Charles walked into with his State visit this week. That’s why many wanted him to apologize for what the British and their allies did to crush the rebellion. Some argue that the 70-year old struggle is all ancient history and should be forgotten. But in Kenya the horrors of the colonial past are a living nightmare for many families who saw their parents or grandparents suffer. Unless amends are made, they feel they’ll never be able to move on.
A decade ago, Tory Foreign Secretary William Hague stood up in the House of Commons and sensationally admitted that torture had been used and that thousands had died. Speaking as the government paid £20 million reparations to Mau Mau victims, Hague said the government regretted the abuses and unreservedly condemned the torture as a violation of human dignity.
But worried the floodgates might open to further settlements, Hague’s statement stopped short of an apology and refused to accept liability for the actions of the colonial administration. Twenty million pounds was apparently the ceiling of what the Conservative government was prepared to pay for the killing and torture it admitted to.
It is true there were killings on both sides and it must be acknowledged that Mau Mau performed some terrible acts – the massacre of 100 civilians at Lari was one example - but the truth is that the British behaved badly systematically and then lied about it afterwards, concealing documents to hide their crimes.
The grim scoresheet at the end of the conflict was overwhelmingly lopsided with Kenyans suffering far worse than the British or the settlers. In order to understand the depth of hurt many Kenyans still feel today and why they are so keen on a formal apology, it’s important to delve beyond statistics and look at the true human cost of what British forces did.
Take the awful story of Susan Nyareri. Like thousands of Kikuyu women and children, she was forced to live in a guarded village, locked in with barbed wire and overseen by brutal Loyalist guards as they made her work on construction projects. Thirty to a hut, the women were constantly beaten and semi starved.
When their small children went outside at night to relieve themselves, they were shot at by guards. If a woman was late for a shift she was thrown into a hole in the ground with snakes and red ants. The guard huts were not places the women wanted to go. Sexual violence was rife and many women were raped there or had unimaginable things done to their bodies.
But Susan did need to go once because she wanted medicine for her sick baby. Instead of getting it, guards whipped her and the baby she carried on her back. “I felt a lot of pain in my heart,” she told me in an interview in 2002. “Because all through the beating, the child never uttered a cry, not even once. He was probably too sick and weak from the pain of being whipped. He did not live long afterwards.”
While the women and children were suffering in the closed villages, their menfolk were rounded up and put into detention centres with names like Mwea, Embakasi, Thiba and Gathigirri. These men had been incarcerated in what became known as the Pipeline, moving up and down different camps depending on how ‘clean’ they had become.
When they went in, they were considered ‘black’, half way through they became ‘grey’. Only when they were deemed – without irony - ‘white’ were they released. This system known as the dilution technique was based on torture. In order to achieve this ‘white’ status, it was not enough to only confess being in Mau Mau. The interrogations conducted by guards overseen by white officers, required men to recant the Mau Mau oath – something that went across their entire belief system.
If a man did not confess or recant, he was beaten and tortured until he did. This was the systematic nature of the abuse, sanctioned by top British legal officers. In the end, most confessed. Although a hardy knot of prisoners refused right up to the last – until they beaten to death in the infamous Hola camp massacre of 1959.
Mwangi Kanyari’s screening involved being put in a cell where he was repeatedly tortured and abused. He said he confessed immediately yet was still tortured for eight days in a row. The worst of it was being placed upside down and being beaten so hard on his testicles that he lost them and the ability to start the family he’d always dreamed of.
“We just wanted to die and would plead with them to shoot us instead of punishing us,” he told me. Over the years I have interviewed dozens of Kenyan victims of torture and imprisonment like Mwangi Kanyari and have always been struck by their extraordinary dignity. Most, if not all, are dead now, but when I asked what they wanted from speaking out, all said they just wanted to be heard and understood.
They wanted their agony recognised; for someone to say the simple word ‘sorry.’ Yes, some wanted financial recompense – these, after all, were some of the poorest Kenyans – but it was not the main aim. As Elton John sings in a very different context, ‘sorry seems to be the hardest word’. Our new monarch, known for his empathy, not being able to say the word to the victims’ families surely is another insult to add to the grievous injuries already sustained by so many.
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