Mau Mau: an African Crucible. - book reviews

National Review, March 19, 1990 by Harry W. Crocker

Mau Mau: An African Crucible, by Robert B. Edgerton (Free Press, 304 pp., $22.95)

WHEN THE Mau Mau rebellion made news in the mid-1950s, it was because of the barbarity of the movement: its ghoulish oathtaking ceremonies (which included drinking a mixture of blood, soil, and fecal material from a goat's intestines, the placing of one's penis in a goat's vagina, and the pledging of death to the white man) and the bloodthirsty way in which the Mau Mau hacked or burned to death innocent civilians, especially women and children.

Robert Edgerton confesses all this, but is eager to spread the blame around. He excuses the Mau Mau partly on the grounds

that most of the rebels had little if any

knowledge of European ideas about the

kinds of violence that should be

permissible in warfare. In traditional

Kikuyu battles, older women, men, and

boys were always killed; only young

women and girls were spared, to be

taken as captives. With this conception of

combat as their cultural heritage, it is

remarkable that the majority of the Mau

Mau rebels showed as much restraint as

they did.

That may be true, but should the Mau Mau be congratulated for not having raped settlers' wives? And if traditional Kikuyu culture was so barbaric, was the Mau Mau struggle for freedom and land just, or should not the more civilized Europeans have continued to rule? Are global democrats, so vocal in their support for wars of national liberation, willing to accept men (and women) like the Mau Mau? As Edgerton says, in one of his most even-handed moments:

All of Kenya's peoples who were

touched by Mau Mau showed courage, all

made sacrifices and all suffered. Yet no

faction, neither the rebels, nor the

loyalists, nor the whites, should be glorified.

They all behaved in ways that are as

horrifying now as they were then, and they

all fought for their own interests. . . .

[But if] political freedom, economic

opportunity, and social justice are laudable

goals, then the rebels were laudable in

ways that those who fought to defend the

colonial regime were not.

But, of course, a fair modicum of political freedom, economic opportunity, and social justice did exist under colonial rule. Perhaps not enough, but how much freedom should one give to people capable of the Mau Mau atrocities, especially when one has to live with the results? If order, civilized values, and a hierarchical sense of liberty are worth defending, then maybe the backers of the colonial regime were laudable in ways that the Mau Mau were not.

All of which is not to deny that the defenders of order and civilized values were brutal themselves. Edgerton quotes a former officer of the Kenyan police who said of the Mau Mau:

At first they weren't human to me,

they were black animals who had done

inhuman things to women and children.

. . . I hated them and sometimes I

wanted to kill them. A few times I did

. . . [Then one] morning I realized that

they'd won. I hated myself for what I was

doing more than I hated them. I finally

had to admit that they were brave men

who believed in what they were doing

more than I believed in what I was

doing. I resigned and got out of Kenya as

fast as I could.

That is the colonial dilemma in a nut-shell: finding that brutality is necessary to defend one's position, and not having the heart to go through with it--especially as long as one has someplace like England to go home to.

For those whites--and Indians and African loyalists--who wanted to stay in Kenya, things were more difficult. Most Indians knew that a native uprising like that of the Mau Mau boded ill for their position in Kenyan society, where they enjoyed much wealth, if not social equality with the whites. The African loyalists, often moved to loyalty by a comparatively well-to-do economic position, Christian beliefs, or tribal animosity, were on the front lines. It was upon the blacks that the pressures to join or to fight the Mau Mau--and to fear retribution from the other side--were greatest. For whites, there was no safety in having a reputation for being kind-hearted and caring toward black Africans. In several celebrated instances, such people were deliberately targeted for gruesome murder: a doctor who gave free medical treatment to African children, her husband, and their son were hacked to death; Gray Arundel Leakey, the cousin of Dr. Louis Leakey, who spoke fluent Kikuyu and was a ritual blood-brother of the tribe, was taken captive, tortured, and buried alive, his feet protruding from the soil. All of this was done by rebels led by men and women who called themselves by such noms de guerre as General China, General Hitler, Knight Commander of the Gikuyu and Mumbi Empire, and Mother of God. It is easy enough to see why the white settlers thought they were dealing with cruel, conscienceless children--the sort who would find it amusing, as some Mau Mau did, to make British prisoners kneel while they shot at them, trying to make the bullets pass directly from the anus through the mouth.

The Mau Mau rebellion did not have much, if any, material support from outside powers, and it was eventually defeated by the British and loyalist forces. But there is no doubt that the rebellion accelerated the timetable for Britain's withdrawal and helped bring about Kenyan independence. This did not, however, enhance the Mau Mau's prestige. When Kenya gained independence in December 1963, it was largely the loyalist Africans who moved into the positions of power. Kenya's president was Jomo Kenyatta, who had spent the Mau Mau years in prison as the suspected mastermind behind the movement. After he was freed, he went out of his way to mollify white opinion, which was, naturally, hostile toward him. He also denounced the Mau Mau, saying at one point: "We are determined to have independence in peace, and we shall not allow hooligans to rule Kenya. We have no hatred toward one another. Mau Mau was a disease which has been eradicated, and must never be remembered again."