Kenya Has Betrayed the Heroes of Its Independence Movement
In the 1950s, Kenya’s Mau Mau fought against foreign rule — but its victories were claimed by a reactionary cabal after independence. Jacobin spoke to several Mau Mau fighters, many now in their 80s and 90s, about their guerrilla war waged against the British.
Mau Mau fighter Taracisio Waweru Kihia with his wife. (Jaclynn Ashly)
When he was still a teenager, David Nginga Wambugu, along with thousands of others, rushed to the mountain forests in the 1950s to take up arms against the British and their African supporters.
The Kenya Land and Freedom Army (KLFA), or the “Mau Mau,” issued their British rulers, who had controlled the area since 1895, with two demands: ithaka na wiyathi, land and freedom.
Armed with mostly homemade weapons, spears, and machetes, about twenty thousand men and women, mostly from the Kikuyu ethnicity, waged an intense guerrilla war against the British and their African supporters, who became known as “loyalists.”
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