REVIEW ESSAY: MAU MAU AND NATIONHOOD: ARMS, AUTHORITY, AND NARRATION

The twelve essays in this edited collection consider the place of the various Mau Mau events, between 1947 and 1965, in Kenyan national history. The chapters each contend with a different aspect of Mau Mau ranging from issues of gender, representations of Mau Mau in written and oral histories, British perspectives on Mau Mau, and the multiple experiences of Kenyans during Mau Mau. The editors assert, that “what this book begins to show . . . is that Mau Mau is by no means the only narrative through which Kenya can come to terms with its past and thus with itself.”[1] The important first question that must be posed is why these articles have been published together in a collection. Would they have generated greater attention from a wider audience if published individually as articles in journals or even as chapters in edited volumes that look at similar issues of nationalism, terrorism, psychological impacts of liberation struggles in other contexts? The editors provide reasonable justification for a single volume on Mau Mau: Memories and retellings of Mau Mau must be demystified and defocused within the narratives of Kenyan independence and nation building, a collection of essays in a single volume is the means of achieving this.

A second question that must be asked of an edited volume is whether the essays have been ordered effectively. In the case of Mau Mau and Nationhood, the volume has an inexpedient arrangement. The logical order for the first two chapters is reversed. Chapter two, by Odhiambo, gives an overview, and as such, should be first in the volume. Chapter one, by Ogot, should be placed second. The first three chapters written by Ogot, Odhiambo, and Lonsdale stand at the beginning of the book as an unofficial unit. These first chapters lay the groundwork providing the basic background on Mau Mau in Kenyan national history and popular memory. The remaining chapters examine a variety of important new issues and pose meaningful questions about Mau Mau drawing upon a variety of primary and secondary sources. Chapters four, five, ten, and twelve would have been better placed together forming a section on writing, literature and popular culture in relation to Mau Mau. While the chapters on military aspects, which include chapters six, seven, eight, and nine are well clustered together. Chapter eleven would have best been placed as the last chapter, since it addresses contemporary uses of Mau Mau history in politics. Lonsdale and Odhiambo fail to provide a conclusion to the volume to redirect and emphasize how these articles fit together, which is unfortunate. This volume would benefit greatly from a concluding chapter, not to create a seamless history of Mau Mau, but to assess the ways scholars might study Kenya’s national history, without placing Mau Mau at the center. The implied response of the editors is that Mau Mau must be viewed as multi-dimensional and involving many members of society. The question remains whether a multifaceted examination is enough to move Mau Mau out of the center of nationalist discourse. A conclusion might have explained how the editors perceive this solution playing out.

The history of the invention of Kenya as a nation has for forty years concentrated on championing or, on the contrary, denying the importance of Mau Mau and the Kikuyu. Much of the scholarship on the late colonial period has been reductive in dealing with Mau Mau, because of its charged and even uncomfortable memory. In an effort to reclaim Mau Mau and reduce it to its proper proportion in history, the editors of Mau Mau and Nationhood remind readers in the introduction that “all states that claim to be nations have skeletons in their cupboards, stained with fratricidal blood” (1), Kenya is not unique in this. Building on the notion of decentering Mau Mau the editors push us to see the movement as much more than Kikuyu forest-fighters taking oaths. Official state endorsed histories tend to be the stories of the status quo and they must be recognized as such, distinct from the multiple realities that accompany nationalist movements. This seems to be the repeated conclusion throughout the text. Nations are made by multiple, varied, and even contradictory constituencies that have a multiplicity of dimensions created by the varied gender, generation, class, and ethnic status of participants.

With the larger aim of the volume being to recount the range of narratives, experiences, and actors interconnected in the context of Mau Mau, the authors of the various chapters explore diverse topics. The topics include independent schooling, survival craft, locally produced songs and pamphlets, intra-Mau Mau conflicts, and the press and literature, all of which should motivate scholars to reconsider some of the previous literature on Mau Mau and the British counter-insurgency. Each of the chapters in this book is on its own an important contribution to our deeper understanding of Mau Mau and Kenya’s twentieth century history.

The first chapter, “Mau Mau and Nationhood: The untold story,” by Bethwell Ogot, focuses on the death of Oginga Odinga and the controversy over whether or not Odinga should be remembered as a national hero and be buried in the anticipated Uhuru Garden national hero cemetery. This contest of memory and space emerged as part of the “national project” debate, which Ogot implies created a populist version that favored the 1950s forest-fighters as the national heroes and heroines while excluding those who did not participate in physical combat (9, 34). Ogot contends that Mau Mau is the idiom and symbol of Kenya’s independence, and as such, the movement should not be viewed as merely the work of one ethnicity or region of Kenya, nor should independence be seen as the work exclusively of militants. In line with this argument Ogot raises the important question of Kenyatta’s function in Kenyan history. Was Kenyatta a nationalist as he eventually came to be viewed symbolically or was he a Kikuyu ethnicist (11)? This is a question that has been posed in other contexts, but is uniquely positioned in this collection to shed a critical light on how nationalist histories are remembered as the result of a few specific individuals’ activities. Was nation building the result of Kenyatta alone? Was it the result of Kikuyu alone? Was it the result of the tens of thousands of Kenyans from all walks of life who took action in their own small and significant ways?

Ogot is astute to point out that Kikuyu ethnicity was not the only ethnicity constructed in the quarter century leading up to the series of incidents referred to as Mau Mau. In fact, in the mid-1920s a variety of regionally based associations, with a primarily ethnic focus, were emerging among the Luo of western Kenya, the Pokot, Maasai, and others. Ogot points to evidence that on the part of the Pokot “violent confrontation and total rejection of European rule were happening a few months away from the outbreak of Mau Mau” (15). Whether or not the Kikuyu were merely following in the footsteps of the Pokot is contentious, but certainly the resistance/insurgency extended beyond the vicinity of Nairobi, Kikuyu discontent, and white settler transgressions. Mau Mau is part of a larger anti-colonial, nationwide movement spurred by sub-nationalisms. The novel idea put forth by Ogot is that Mau Mau may not have been a consciously unified country-wide nationalist movement, but it also was not only a Kikuyu event.

Ogot’s chapter has some broader applications through his demonstration of the intricate and far-reaching network of relationships among a large cast of characters, which reached far beyond the Kikuyu in Kenya. Important actors included not only African Kenyans, but also Kenyan Indians such as Pio Gama Pinto and Girdhari Lal Vidyarthi, who supported and assisted in the movement of Kenyan nationalism (24-25). Beyond Kenya, there were connections that reached as far as the AFL-CIO leadership in the United States. George Meany, A. Philip Randolph, and J. Ernest Wilkins invited Tom Mboya to speak in 1956 and awarded a $35,000 grant to Kenya’s Federation of Labor to build its headquarters in Nairobi. Ogot’s principal primary sources, which are newspaper articles from the 1940s through 2001 (not all included in the footnotes), yield an interesting genealogy of Kenya’s independence movement. Ogot’s extensive experience and background in the field allows for an interesting argument for expanding the criterion for inclusion in Kenyan hero-hood. Ogot’s argument is noteworthy and sure to stir counter arguments and perhaps several dissertations.

The important question in the case of Ogot’s essay is not the value of the debate posed, nor the credentials of the author, but why it is placed as the first chapter of this volume. Considering the brief introduction and the lack of a conclusion for the book, chapter two by E.S. Atieno Odhiambo “Seven Theses on Nationalism in Kenya” would have made for a much more compelling first chapter. The objectives stated in the introduction indicate that the editors wanted to avoid creating a unified and well-integrated history of Mau Mau, which glossed over the reality of the disjointed nature of the experiences of the 1940s and 1950s in Kenya. Ogot’s summary of the seven common interpretations of Mau Mau would have made for a better first chapter to orient the non-specialists and those new to Mau Mau studies. Ogot’s chapter would have provided background on the widespread and more common arguments surrounding nationalists, nationalism, “badges of honor,” and Mau Mau, while still serving the goal of the editors in avoiding the creation of a simplistic, seamless history of Mau Mau.

Odhiambo reiterates that this is the fifth decade of scholarly studies of Mau Mau and the fifth decade also for national discourse in Kenya to ripen. Over the past half century the question of who is and isn’t a nationalist continues to be significant (38). In such a climate, those who ought and ought not reap the Matunda (fruits) of Uhuru (freedom) is unambiguous in the minds of individual Kenyans, but is quite ambiguous in actuality and discourse. The nationalist imagination and discourse emerged from the efforts of those who fought, and Odhiambo’s chapter seeks to clarify the ambiguity as to who fought by laying out the seven basic theses on Kenyan nationalism. The value of the seven theses Odhiambo summarizes is that they remind us how subjective history can be when truth is a tension as Mudimbe puts it “simultaneously uniting and separating conflictual objectives of systems constituted on the basis of different axioms and paradigms, truth is neither pure idea nor a simple objective.”[2] The multiple experiences of Kenyans complicate Mau Mau history. Kenyans were simultaneously rural and urban; Christian-educated and locally trained; Somali, Meru, Luo, Kikuyu, Luyia, Masaai, Asian, Anglo, and Swahili; collaborators, forest fighters, loyalists, and constitutionalists. People fought through a variety of methods but all were part of a territory that came to be known as Kenya. Exclusion of any ethnic group or social class from the benefits of freedom was not an option when virtually all had paid the price and bore the burdens of colonial control.

In Odhiambo’s argument, one thesis put forth by the Kenya African National Union (KANU) constitutionalists claims that those who formed political parties fought most effectively for Uhuru, and these politicians should eat the fruits of freedom. A second thesis asserted argues that the forest-fighters are the only rightful inheritors of the nationalist fruit. A third view is an amalgamated tradition, which acknowledges the multiple forms of fighting as home-guards, detainees, constitutionalists, and freedom fighters. Those who fought overtly, covertly, and provided support all are heirs to the fruits of freedom. The fourth argument is that put forth by those of the ultra-ethnic perspective who imagine the Kikuyu and those closely associated, such as the Embu, Meru, and other Thagicu people as the ones who fought the hardest battles. This is the type of argument put forth by those who see ethnicity as the driving force behind Mau Mau. A fifth thesis traces its lineage deeper than the 1940s and 1950s. In this tradition, elders, who had the foresight to send their children to mission schools in the early colonial period, are seen as the genuine nation builders. It was those educated children who became the Kenyan leadership.

The fifth thesis explained by Odhiambo may be the larger argument that led to the constitutional case in thesis one. The difference being that thesis five focuses on class formation, as the result of elders who saw the long term possibilities of seizing the tools of education for creating their own wealth and bourgeois status. While thesis one turns thesis five on its head and looks not to the parents and grandparents, but the actual constitutionalists. In these two cases, Odhiambo draws Mau Mau and Kenyan nationalism into the larger realm of African ‘politics of the belly’ argued by Bayart in the early 1990s, where the elites avoided the issue of equality for all.[3] It was through their alleged prescience and accompanying intelligence that made the educated elite the movers behind nationalism, the dedicated long-term fighters and rightful benefactors of Uhuru’s Matunda.

Proponents of the sixth thesis contend that the true heirs and rightful leadership are the ordinary men and women who fought on a daily basis against misguided colonial policies, and hence it is the masses who in the post-colonial period should have their needs addressed. In this perspective, the immediate post-independence period leadership should have seen to the masses that were landless, freedom-fighting Mau Mau. They argue that the leadership should have worked against the emergence of neo-colonialism and acted to define foreign policy outside the control of Cold-war politics (an issue discussed in greater detail by Percox in chapter six). The seventh and last broad category of theses is a variant of thesis six, and argues that the peasants and workers fought the battle for independence. This theory has been greatly espoused in literature and particularly by Ngugi wa Thiong’o. Odhiambo is particularly critical of the sixth and seventh theses as socialist propaganda that needs to be challenged for historical accuracy.

Odhiambo asks, in conclusion, “where does all of this take Kenyan scholarship” (44)? His response is “not too far,” leading this chapter down the nihilistic road or back to his 1971 “radical Fanaonesque pessimism” (37) charged by Ranger. Odhiambo quickly pulls out of this cynicism and reminds the reader, that there was not a single Kenyan nationalist movement. Reminiscent of what was stated in the introduction to the book, Odhiamba argues that if Kenya is to come to terms with its past, Mau Mau must be decentered from scholarly discourse and the Kenyan public psyche. His implied solution for defocusing Mau Mau seems to be that since each of the seven theses are valid, all Kenyans participated in Mau Mau, therefore it does not need to continue to be a contested and bitter memory.

The third chapter, John Lonsdale’s “Authority, Gender, and Violence,” opens a discussion distinguishing history and memory. Lonsdale points to the axiom that history has already been lived and exists only in the past while memory exists in the present, thus historians have the unfair advantage of hindsight in recounting events while memory is the product of what people remember. For Lonsdale the tension between history and memory is particularly acute in the case of Mau Mau in Kenya, which leads to the provocative question of the chapter: what exactly is Mau Mau beyond its mythic presence in Kenyan politics (47)?

Lonsdale identifies household histories as the missing link in our understandings of the Mau Mau era in Kenya. The micro-history approach is especially interesting and yet problematical. The argument is promising because it addresses the dilemma of shifting away from forest centered Mau Mau histories that eclipse the assorted events that transpired in the Mau Mau era. The household approach broadens the historical lens and attempts to integrate gender, generation, and honor in private life redistributing focus across a spectrum of topics beyond the political top-down history. The approach may prove to be problematic in the manner that micro-studies tend to be unwieldy. Lonsdale himself poses this method of household study as a future endeavor while he in fact continues to focus on the “big men” and, in particular, Oginga Odinga in his examination. Lonsdale abandons an examination of gender in the history of Kenya and substitutes a narrative of male power over land, labor, and other resources in Kenyan history (50-51). Lonsdale does briefly examine the ways in which British colonial policy impinged upon fatherly rights and fatherhood thus spurring a household solidarity against the British across gender and generational lines (57). His chapter is one of the few chapters that raises the issue of gender within Mau Mau even if the approach is not particularly fresh or penetrating relative to gender.

Lonsdale’s conclusion confirms more vociferously what Ogot and Odhiambo hint of in terms of post-colonial realities “‘Birds that land together [to feed] fly up separately [when satisfied]’” (A Kikuyu saying, 70). Regardless of any unities that were attained to counter British colonialism, Kenyan nation building suffered the same follies of all other nation building processes it is difficult to merge individual notions and imaginations of what a nation ought to be.

Beyond the first three chapters, three seem particularly thought provoking: one by Kennell Jackson on survival craft; Marshall Clough’s article on memory; and James Ogude’s article on literature. These chapters add a fresh perspective to studies of Mau Mau. Jackson looks at Mau Mau not merely in the context of violence and war, but in terms of social creativity and technical skill. Jackson not only examines the movement in new ways, from the perspective of “survival craft”, but also pushes for examination of new sources. This chapter is an excellent example of interpreting Mau Mau as a complex affair that required intricate planning, abundant resources, and a whole infrastructure. While this is the shortest article in the collection it is well worth reading. Further work on the particulars of survival craft and Mau Mau would make for a worthwhile study.

An overarching message of Mau Mau and Nationhood seems to follow Pierre Nora’s arguments in relation to French history and memory, that nationalism is made by multiple, varied, and even contradictory constituencies based on identities grounded in gender, generation, class, political ideology, and ethnicity. Therefore, all of these entities ought to be examined. In fact, Marshall S. Clough who invokes the name of Pierre Nora writes a particularly interesting chapter, in the collection. Clough’s chapter entitled “Mau Mau and the Contest for Memory,” examines the 1990 visit of Nelson Mandela to Kenya. This chapter brings together public memory, amnesia, and history. For Mandela who had been imprisoned for twenty-seven years, Mau Mau, embodied in Kenyatta and Kimathi, was an important example of resistance to colonial rule, which gave South Africans hope in their own struggles. Clough’s analysis is particularly interesting because he demonstrates the ways in which the past can be re-invoked in the present, not only by insiders but also by outsiders.

For an outsider, like the non-White South Africans, the symbols of Mau Mau take on an entirely different significance because they could focus on what they admired in the Mau Mau and were not privy to the follies and conflicts. Mandela’s public reference to the past leaders was made in the context of new political struggles against Moi’s single-man politics, so Mandela’s statements may have had altogether different meanings for the speaker than for the audience members. Mandela, in 1990, acknowledged Kenyatta and Kimathi as models for the South African struggle that continued through the 60s, 70s, and 80s. The audience likely saw insurgents as models for the 1990s and resistance to Moi politics. History is invoked to comment on contemporary politics, but history can also be erased (even by men like Kenyatta) to promote particular political agendas.

Clough, like others, points out that Kenyatta himself once in power used language to create an impassable chasm between his past and Mau Mau. In the interest of satisfying multiple constituencies, the status quo felt threatened by their past which might be construed as pro-Kikuyu. The amnesia of Mau Mau might protect the Kenyan state from those who used Mau Mau in the manner that Mandela and other South Africans did, as a positive symbol of righteous freedom-seeking-fighters. The amnesia of Kenyatta himself, Clough points out, is well represented in the ex-leader’s statement that “it is the future, my friends, that is living, and the past that is dead” (256). Clough’s piece is an empirical analysis that uses post-Mau Mau politics as a lens onto the complexity of how Kenyan people identify and react to Mau Mau. There is not a simple reaction or identification, even within a single individual like Kenyatta.

Ogude’s chapter “Narration and Nation” examines memory of Mau Mau as represented in fiction. Ogude focuses on the theme of nationhood being mirrored in homelessness, exile, and abandonment. Ogude’s chapter, like the others in this volume, demonstrates the many perspectives from which Mau Mau can be viewed. The essay is significant because it gives a sense how influential and even real history can be in the present through fiction.

Of the remaining essays, the one written by Percox is worth mentioning because it places Mau Mau in a long-term context. Percox provides an interesting analysis of Kenyan history from British military conquest in 1895 to independence in the Cold War era. Percox divides Kenya’s colonization under the British into three colonial occupations. This periodization puts Mau Mau into a larger context that creates continuity from pre-Mau Mau politics, to Mau Mau revolution, to decolonization, and the Cold War. Percox’s notion that Africa had no chance in Cold War politics is a useful extension of underdevelopment theory. One flaw in Percox’s analysis is that he fails to define what he means by “moderate politics”. Are moderate politics synonymous with Kenya remaining “in line with Britain’s vital interests” (122)? It is critical that the reader understand how Percox is using the term moderate politics because this is his justification for why the British were arming and rearming the Kenyan state. Percox’s most compelling question comes towards the end of the chapter when he asks “quid pro quo or status quo” (142)? Here Percox is looking beyond the 1952-56 emergency, into the 1963-5 period to demonstrate how Britain used military assistance and Kenyatta as a means of keeping Kenya within its sphere of influence in the Cold War. The argument is that Mau Mau was like other periods where the British used force. Mau Mau merely gave Britain a publicly justifiable reason for the use of military and police control over the population.

For those interested in nationalisms globally, psychology of independence movements, Kenya’s past, or Eastern Africa’s political histories there are well written chapters in this collection that contribute analytically to these discussions. These articles about Mau Mau will be of importance not only to historians of Kenya, but also to political scientists, sociologists, scholars of memory and history, and ps chologists. While the volume is not ideally organized it contains informative articles in a single volume that have a level of nuance in interpretation and examine a wide range of primary materials, all in one collection. The reader does not have to search for the articles in a slew of journals. Unlike some of the scholarly books published on Mau Mau, this edited volume’s chapters make clear that Mau Mau was not a single movement, event, or experience but rather multiple processes that people dealt with and participated in a widely varied manner. Accordingly, Mau Mau should be examined from new perspectives but not to the exclusion of other events of Kenyan history and nation building.

For most readers a single article in the text will serve as an important resource for example on gender and nationalism, education and nationalism, violence and nationalism, memory and nationalism, or some other specific topic covered by one of the articles. For those determined to read this volume cover to cover, one would be well advised to read through the lens of the editors’ final comments in the introduction. Mau Mau is important and must be understood through the multiple experiences people lived between 1947 and 1965, but like in other nations, this single moment or example of nation building should not ominously overshadow all other histories. Kenyans and outsiders alike should not view Kenya solely through the narrative of Mau Mau. Perhaps that is this volume’s greatest value, in focusing on Mau Mau it encourages scholars that there is much more to be researched. We ought to look beyond Mau Mau and examine issue of gender, generation, education, household histories, and social life.

References

1. E. S. Atieno Odhiambo and John Lonsdale, (eds.), Mau Mau and Nationhood: Arms, Authority, and Narration, Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 2003, 6.

2. V. Y. Mudimbe, The Idea of Africa Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994, 39.

3. Odhiambo and Lonsdale, (eds.), Mau Mau, 41.

E. S. Atieno Odhiambo and John Lonsdale, eds., Mau Mau and Nationhood: Arms, Authority, and Narration, Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 2003, xiv +306pp, Cloth, ISBN 0-8214-1483-6. Price: US$ 49.95

References