An Inconvenient Truth
In Shakespeare's "Julius Caesar", there is a famous quote:
"There is a tide in the affairs of men which, taken at the flood, leads to fortune..."
It seems to me that this country is going through a phase similar to the famous scene during the falling apart of the Caesar's empire of the Roman times and, for us, it may be appropriate to ask questions like: Just when did the rain start falling on our heads?
I have just finished reading a book by Juliet Barnes seductively titled "Ghosts of the Happy Valley". It is, to me, a remarkable book because it has helped to clear a lot of cobwebs in my mind about the true British colonial history in Kenya and, more particularly, the Mau Mau rebellion.
The Happy Valley Set
For those not familiar with the origins of the title, there is a valley in present day Nyandarua County between the Aberdares and Kipipiri mountains known as the Wanjohi Valley but christened by the colonial elites of the 1920s as the "Happy Valley". To know the nature of the alleged happiness, the reader will have to read James Fox "White Mischief" or see the movie by the same name.
It is the story of white Kenya at the pit of moral decadence of unimaginable proportions. It is also a story that a lot Wazungus living in Central Kenya at the time did not want the natives or the world to know about. And they might have succeeded were it not for two unrelated events.
Juliet Barnes: “Ghosts”
The first one involved the murder in January 1941 of one of the most notorious playboys of the time known as Lord Erroll. The dashing Erroll was the lady "killer" par excellence and his flamboyance was a source of envy among the rich and the powerful in Kenya. He was also a closet fascist and Nazi admirer at a time when Britain was locked in mortal combat with Germany during World War II. His murder at the site of today's Karen Shopping Centre remains a mystery to this day. Or until the "expose" by Juliet Barnes which I find the most credible of all theories about this socialite's gory end.
The second involves some untold facts about the Mau Mau rebellion. I have for many years been disturbed by our so-called historians inability or, is it unwillingness, to tell the truth about that "untidy" part of our history. Having lived my youth in the thick of it at a place called Ndakaini and having witnessed aspects of the bestial brutality meted to the so-called "terrorists" by the British "Johnnies", I can appreciate the need for the colonialists and its adherents to keep the facts about the horrors under lock and key.
But, I asked myself time and again: Why have our erstwhile historians, some of whom I met at university, appear to be unwilling co-conspirators? Until now, I did not know the answers but, with Juliet Barnes book, I believe I have the key, if not the answer, to the real story.
Barnes' book now makes it all too clear. One, at the colonialists level, the extent of decadence on the whole was such that they may not have wanted to pass on their life-styles and those of running the colony, to anyone else. If they had their way, the solution would have been what they meted out to the Aborigines of Australia or the Red Indians of North America. But, there were too many Africans for this approach to be effective(the Germans, though, did try to do it in Namibia to the Hereros and the British in Kenya to the Maasai).
The true brutality of the British in Kenya is captured in two books: “Imperial Reckoning” by Caroline Elkins and “Histories of the Hanged” by David Anderson. Just how bad the story was became evident after publication of the two books in 2005. I had heard rumours that they could only be found at a bookshop at Yaya Centre called Bookpoint but when I went there to buy them, the Indian bookseller looked me over and told me they were sold out.
When I told him I was also a bookseller like him and did not believe his story, he called me aside and told me a most amazing story about them. Presumably, the British High Commissioner to Kenya, Sir Edward Clay - he of the vomit fame - was under orders from Whitehall to make sure that those books did not get into the “wrong hands”. So, as soon as a shipment arrived at his bookshop, someone would come in and buy all the books in cash - obviously for destruction.
When he learned what was happening he started hiding the books and selling them only to “trusted buyers”. And that is how I got both books and read about the horror stories therein this time written by mzungus. - curiously, one English and one American.
But the true Mau Mau story is actually quite different. There were some British and other European people living in Kenya who did not like the colonialists’ style of handling the natives. In Barnes book, there are three very telling anecdotes.
Friends and Foes
The first regards an English lady who was living on the edge of the forest up in the slopes of the Aberdares near the northern end of Happy Valley. Her name was Mary Miller and it is clear that she was a Mau Mau sympathiser. She actually allowed oathing by the Kikuyus to be done on her farm and was, in fact a Mau Mau informant and clandestine supporter.
At one time, we are informed by Barnes, none other than Dedan Kimathi, came to her with a badly fractured finger which, as a nurse, she cut off, bandaged and sent him off back to the forest. Anyone looking at Kimathi lying in capture with his dreadlocks will notice that he does indeed have a finger on his left hand that has two missing digits.
The final gory detail is of a literal spook called Dr Anne Spoerry. This psycho-doctor was being used in the 1950s by the white farmers around Ol Kalou(many of them Boers) to inflict on Mau Mau suspects some of the most hideous tortures that she could conjure up. These she had learned as a Jew torturer in Ravensbruck where she sent many Jewish women and girl-children to their horrible deaths. Some of those tortured by her in Kenya are still alive today in Nyandarua but, I am afraid, not for much longer.
After time as a flying doctor, she died in 1999 and was buried somewhere at the coast.
The story of how Anne Spoerry found her way to Kenya in 1948 after being found guilty of Nazi atrocities is one of the better kept secrets in colonial Kenya. As well as of how she opened a “medical clinic” at Ol Kalou near Nyahururu where she practiced her evil medicine during the emergency period - castration of men and bestial treatment of Gikuyu women. Some stories are too horrible to be repeated.
End of Empire
The worst bit is how, after independence, she sanitized herself and became a leading member of the Flying Doctor service. She finally died in 1999 at age 80 and was buried on Lamu island.
As you can see, there is much NOT good to tell about the awful colonial period which the Mau Mau brought to a bloody halt. Of all the massacres and official lies upon lies. No wonder to many - the perpetrators and their sympathisers - it is a story not worth telling and, even now, that must continue to be an inconvenient truth.
As for those who were at the raw end of the suffering in all its myriad forms, yes, it is time to celebrate our heroes or Mashujaa. But be careful whom you throw into that bag: There are all sorts of liars, charlatans and downright glory thieves pretending to be shujaas.
The big question is: For how much longer are we going to keep on accepting a story that was designed to trick the simple-minded among us.
Happy Mashujaa Day.
JH Kimura
Shimoni, Kwale,
3rd April 2015
Kimathi’s missing digit
Flying Doctor Services
Anne Spoerry “Mama Daktari”