2.3. The struggle for Constitutional Independence
2.3.2. The State of Emergency
us to be docile subjects of Her Majesty the Queen. Yet they expected us to respect them. Rather than winning respect, they instilled fear in us. While accepting the Gospel, we rejected its ideological misappropriation by the missionary establishments. Thus long before I began to study theology I knew and understood the difference between oppression and liberation.4
Throughout the war of liberation, the young Mugambi was able to reason out the views that were being expressed by the agitators for freedom and dignity. He would listen quietly as they discussed the injustices that were being perpetrated by the local colonial administration. He could read logic in their agitation, especially where they decried the overt racism, denial of full human dignity through torture, and the grabbing of large tracts of land by then colonial authorities. Such changes were occurring in young Mugambi, although his zealous Christian father was not joining in the political agitation; he was busy preaching. Zablon Nthamburi, his contemporary, explains the environment that prevailed during the colonial era:
I remember growing up as a small child in one of the small towns in Kenya. There was a "white only" restaurant in town with the inscription "Africans and dogs are not welcome." From the very beginning you were made to understand that you are not fully human. You were classified with the dogs, and that is the treatment you got (1991:5).
For Mugambi and his contemporaries, colonialism became a stigma that African people could not forget.
Emergency Regulations. These included, communal punishment, curfews, influx control, and as Elkins can relate:
The confiscation of property and land, the imposition of special taxes, the issuance of special documentation and passes, the censorship and banning of publications, the disbanding of all African political organisations, the control and disposition of labour, the suspension of due process, and detention without trial (Elkins 2005:55;
cf. Wanjau 1988; Odhiambo and Lonsdale 2003).
It was clearly a state organised reign of terror in a state sanctioned police state. In addition, emergency legislation controlled African markets, shops, hotels, and all public transport, including buses, taxis, and bicycles. In addition, Baring created concentrated villages in the African reserves, and barbed-wire cordons in African towns, including the city of Nairobi. He also established mini-detention camps on Settler farms in the so-called White Highlands. Above all, he sanctioned treatment of Mau Mau suspects devoid of any humanity (Elkins 2005:55).
Anderson contends that, "the most punitive measure of all was surely villagisation" for by June 1954, the War Council took the decision to enforce villagisation throughout Kikuyuland. By villagisation, Anderson means "the compulsory resettlement of people from their scattered, ridge-top farms, into centralized, regulated villages, situated at key points along the busier roads" (Anderson 2005: 294). While some villages were principally meant to protect the loyalists, most of the 854 established villages or camps were in reality, mass detention camps intended to punish Mau Mau sympathisers.
The speed by which the villages or camps were established was astonishing and suspicious. Between June 1954 and October 1955, a period of just fifteen months, 1, 077, 500 Africans were resettled in 854 villages. Kenyans were forced to abandon their farming projects to settle in overcrowded environments where life was extremely difficult to manage. Upon setting in these villages, punishments and rewards would be applied depending upon one's willingness to cooperate. Villages that did not cooperate would have curfews imposed, while those that did collaborate received certain benefits, including:
Agricultural services, the reopening of shops, and the lifting of curfews to allow (some) night-time activities. More than anything else, villagisation allowed the government to stamp its authority on the countryside, destroying the last elements of passive wing support for the forest fighters (Anderson 2005: 294).
In these concentrated villages women suffered greatly. In a bid to impress their white superiors, the Home Guard (Black patrollers in the village) would do anything to hurt African women especially during the daily forced labour sessions. As one elderly woman (Ruth Ndegwa) who underwent such an ordeal explains:
If you delayed in the hut after the whistle to report outside the village for work had been blown, maybe because you were preparing the porridge to leave for your children, the Home Guards would come kicking doors down, and if you were found inside, they would kick and overturn the porridge and you would be beaten because of being late (Elkins 2005:242).
When digging the long and deep trenches, that prevented Mau Mau fighters from gaining entrance to the villages by night in order to source food, Home Guards would be standing on either side, brutally hitting those who lifted their heads or who sought a break from their hard labours, treating them as ancient slaves. It was meant to remind a person that
"you should always be working without rest" (see, Elkins 2005: 243 cf. Wachanga 1975, 1978). As Elkin contends the forced labourers were prohibited from singing, drinking, talking, eating or any other activities while working in these trenches.
African women, who were brutalised on a daily basis, would compose songs late into the night, in the relative safety of their huts. They would compose stanzas mocking the brutality of the Home Guards and white "Johnnies" (as the British soldiers were generally called). In their songs, they would point out the colonial injustices and beg for humane treatment. When the white colonial District Officer {Hereafter, DO), visited Gatung'ang'a village, in the Nyeri District of Central Kenya, the women would compose daring and risky songs in, asking him why he had detained their husbands at Manyani detention camp and left them to die while digging the trenches (Elkins 2005:243). One such song was:
Women tell Kariuki (the headman)
So that Kariuki may tell Gatoto (the sub chief) And Gatoto may tell Karangi (the chief) And Karangi may inform the DO
That this trench digging is going to kill the women (Elkins 2005:243).
This confirms Hilary B P Mijoga's assertion that such songs form an essential part of African traditional practice and culture (2001:157). It also agrees with Patrick A.
Kalilombe's contention that the role of music and singing in Africa should not be thought of simply as a means of entertainment, for it
Serves to express interior values and reinforce values, to praise or ridicule, to exalt or to debase. In ritual and religion, singing is often used as a means of arousing and communicating appropriate attitudes of mind and soul.... The song is also a vehicle of
information and teaching... Traditional ritual singing was a favourite tool for instruction, for admonition, and for passing on traditional lore: history, customs, or the art of living (1991:397-411).
Songs constitute the rich heritage of the African people, through which they express their inner fears or joys. Mugambi demonstrates the importance of songs in African religiosity in his major works, including, African Christian Theology: An introduction (1989);
African Heritage and Contemporary Christianity (1989); From Liberation to Reconstruction: African Christian Theology after the Cold War (1995).
Another dimension on the war of liberation is that women who were suspected of continuing to feed the Mau Mau guerrillas, were sometimes brought into the village square and shot or hung as a warning to the rest. Sometimes, they would be beaten with clubs and rifle butts and even raped by the military. These soldiers were also called "British savages" including the Kenya Police Reserve, the King's African Rifles, and the Kenyan Regiment (Elkins 2005: 247). Sometimes, captured Mau Mau fighters would be roped to the back of the Land Rovers and be driven around the concentrated villages to scare those women whose husbands had been detained in other parts of the country. As a result, various body parts would be left strewn on the roads (Elkins 2005:246).
Both white and black members of the security forces would rape women, together with their daughters in the same hut. They would be asked at gunpoint to choose between death and rape. As one victim, Margaret Nyaruai, could recall:
We felt that we would rather allow them to rape us than get killed, especially those who had small children depending on them (Elkins 2005: 247f).
Women would therefore be raped in full view of their helpless children and family - a serious source of stigma in African society, sometimes leading to the birth of illegitimate children. Women would also be assaulted on their way to or from forced communal labour, while others were assaulted in their working places.
Apart from rape, beatings, forced labour and being striped naked irrespective of the ages of people present, women also had to watch their own children being "slaughtered and their remains skewered on spears and paraded around the village squares by the Home Guards" (see Elkins 2005: 247f; Kanogo 1987; Clough 1998; Kershaw 1997;
Likimanil985). In addition, the use of excrement-based torture was also widespread. As one woman who experienced this ordeal relates, "The Johnnies would make us run around
state without such coup d'etats that have beset surrounding African nation states. Kenya is not only a stable country politically, but is also stable economically, as was evidenced by the fact that, after forty-two years of constitutional independence, the finance Minister, David Mwiraria, in June 2005, could deliver the national budget without factoring in any
"donor" support!
Jesse Mugambi entered the formal education system at KIgaari in January 1954, following the Colonial Administration fierce and brutal enforcement of the state of emergency.
Consequently, his movement was restricted from dusk-to-dawn, and even during the daytime. This made Mugambi's school overcrowded as Kenyans were forced to move from their ancestral homes. Indeed, this had introspective effects upon his life.