Not yet Uhuru

Monday Column by Emmanuel Yawe

royawe@yahoo.com | 08024565402

This article published earlier on this page is being rerun as a reminder to readers following the cancellation of the election of Uhuru Kenyatta as president of Kenya – Editor

Nigerian secondary school students in the 60’s and 70’s are mostly familiar with Weep Not Child, the first East African novel to be published in English and a literally classic of decolonisation in Africa. Published in 1964, it was written by James Ngugi who later became Ngugi wa Thiongo.
Weep Not Child is a moving story about the Mau Mau, a liberation movement that was principally responsible for the British granting nominal independence to Kenya in 1963. The heroic role and the martyrdom of the Mau Mau is not in doubt. Even the British colonial government that brutally tortured its members later repented and in 2013 paid compensation to those surviving members it brutalised.
Ironically, Jomo Kenyatta, who emerged as the first post independent leader of Kenya and the chief beneficiary of the sacrifices of the Mau Mau movement was until his death its most virulent critic. . In a speech in April 1963, he described the Mau Mau as “a disease which had been eradicated, and must never be remembered again.” In his memoirs, he casually referred to it as a civil war amoung the Kikuyu tribe and not a struggle for the liberation of Kenya from foreign domination. Additionally, Mau Mau was suppressed as a subject for public discussion in Kenya during the periods under his rule and his hand picked successor, Daniel Arap Moi.
But was the Mau Mau a disease? No. A major grievance that led to the formation of Mau Mau was land and the enslavement of the colonised Africans. Kenya was a settler colony and a feature of all settler societies during the colonial period was the ability of European settlers to grab a disproportionate share of land. Kenya was no exception. The plan from 1902 was to have a settler economy pay for the recently completed Uganda Railway through the availability of land, labour and capital. For the next three decades, the colonial government and settlers consolidated their forceful control over Kenyan land – seizing 7,000,000 acres (28,000 km2; 11,000 sq mi) of land, some of it in the especially fertile hilly regions of Central and Rift Valley – and ‘encouraging’ native Kenyans to become wage earners on their land.
The Mau Mau waged a very savage war to recover the confiscated land in response to which the British government demonstrated a higher degree of savagery in suppressing the uprising. In the Mau Mau and other movements for independence, there were four discernable tendencies: conservatives, moderates, nationalists and radical nationalists. It later turned out that Jomo Kenyatta who was thought to be a radical nationalist and on whose shoulders the leadership of the country fell after independence was after all a conservative. One of his comrades in the struggle -from the Kikuyu tribe – with whom they went to prison together for their anti colonial activism by name Kaggia a committed Mau Mau operative was a radical nationalist; and so was Oginga Odinga from the Luo tribe.
Their differences became crystal clear soon after independence in 1963. In less than two years of independence, President Kenyatta travelled to Kondura the hometown of Kaggia and could not hide his disappointment that the man was living a Spartan life on his legitimate income. In a spontaneous display of oratory, he denounced Kaggia, now a member of parliament.
“Kaggia”, he thundered, “we were together with Paul Ngei in jail. If you go into Ngei’s home, he has planted a lot of coffee and other crops. What have you done for yourself?
“Kaggia, if you go to Kabais home, he has a big house and has a nice shamba. What have you done for yourself?
“Kaggia, we were with Kungu Karumba in jail, now he owns buses. What have you done for yourself?”
Evidently Kenyatta saw the independence of Kenya as a means to unlimited wealth for those who were in its vanguard. It was meant to make sure they had big houses, big farms and many, many buses. As far as he was concerned, Kaggia was a failure since he appeared not to be interested in the rat race for wealth.
Mzee, the wise old man had to look for new friends and abandon the ‘foolish’ ones like Kaggia. The greedy old British colonial masters who had expropriated the land of poor Kenyans by force of arms came in handy.
These were the days of the cold war and the British and Americans were scared of increasing Soviet penetration of the East African sub region. With socialist Obote in Uganda and socialist Nyerere in Tanzania, Kenya had to be secured. The Americans and the British closed in on Kenyatta and they both had a deal. The British and the World Bank provided funds for the newly independent country to buy some of the land forcefully seized from poor natives for redistribution back to the poor. Where Kenyatta and his henchmen pocketed the money and or bought the lands for themselves, Britain, the World Bank and America turned a blind eye.
Kenyatta and his men did not only amass wealth; they became the power of powers. People like Kaggai and Odinga his Vice President were soon rendered redundant or eased out of government completely. Aided on his path to tyranny by British intelligence and military experts, he was able to crush all his opponents. What mattered to the British and Americans was that their investments in Kenya were protected and that the country did not come under the communist orbit.
In frustration, Oginga Odinga left his government to go into opposition, proclaiming in his well- written memoir that the independence of Kenya was ‘Not Yet Uhuru.’
It is the same old song today. Last Tuesday, Raila Odinga, son of Oginga Odinga made his fourth and last attempt to get the Presidency of Kenya. He failed against his formidable opponent, Uhuru Kenyatta, son of Jomo Kenyatta. It is increasingly becoming impossible to uproot by peaceful means the seed of injustice planted by Jomo Kenyatta.
Uhuru was recently reported as the richest African President by Forbes. He owns at least 500,000 acres of prime land spread across the country. The land was acquired by his father in the 1960s and 1970s under the fraudulent scheme that enabled government officials and wealthy Kenyans acquire land from the British at very low prices. Uhuru and his family also own Brookside Dairies, Kenya’s largest dairy company, as well as stakes in popular television station K24 and a commercial bank in Nairobi, among other interests.
When such a wealthy man is backed by western powers with heavy investments in a country, you can see why it becomes difficult for the opposition to defeat him in an election. But in the words of President JF Kennedy, “those who make peaceful change impossible make violent revolution inevitable”
In the past few years, Kenya has had to deal with multiple violent upheavals. Something tells me the country is sitting on a time bomb. Somebody should tell the newly reelected President of Kenya that regardless of what he calls himself, it is not yet uhuru.

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