In the early 1970s, Donald Barnett - who worked with Karari Njama to produce Mau Mau From Within (published by Daraja Press) - also worked with three militants of the Kenya Land and Freedom Army to enable them to tell the story of their experience in fighting for freedom and against British colonialism. These rarely acknowledged militants were Karigo Muchai, Ngugi Kabiro and Mohamed Mathu. Their stories were published in 1973 by LSM Information Center (Richmond, British Columbia, Canada) as part of a series entitled Life Histories of the Revolution, as The Hardcore: The Story of Karigo Muchai;…mehr
In the early 1970s, Donald Barnett - who worked with Karari Njama to produce Mau Mau From Within (published by Daraja Press) - also worked with three militants of the Kenya Land and Freedom Army to enable them to tell the story of their experience in fighting for freedom and against British colonialism. These rarely acknowledged militants were Karigo Muchai, Ngugi Kabiro and Mohamed Mathu. Their stories were published in 1973 by LSM Information Center (Richmond, British Columbia, Canada) as part of a series entitled Life Histories of the Revolution, as The Hardcore: The Story of Karigo Muchai; The Man in the Middle by Ngugi Kabiro; and The Urban Guerrilla by Mohamed Mathu. As part of its mission of Nurturing reflection, sheltering hope and inspiring audacity, Daraja Press is please to republish the three booklets as a book that will help a new generation of activists - Kenyan and international - reflect on a history that might inspire audacious struggles to continue the struggle for freedom that was the goal of the Kenya Land and Freedom Army. Donald Barnett's introduction to each booklet contained the following text: The life histories in this series have been recorded and prepared as historical documents from the revolutionary struggles of our time. The techniques and methods employed at each stage of the process, from initial contact to final editing, have therefore been chosen or fashioned with the purpose of guaranteeing the authenticity and integrity of the life history concerned. These stories, then, to the best of our ability to make them so, constitute a body of data and testimony as revealed by a few of those history-makers normally condemned to silence while others speak on their behalf.
The story of Karigo Muchai, militant of the Kenya Land and Freedom Army (otherwise known as the 'Mau Mau') reveals in simple unreflective terms the experiences, struggles and sacrifices of a Kikuyu peasant, son of a squatter on a white settler farm, who joins the peasant-based revolt for Land and Freedom, fights for these objectives until captured, then spends six cruel years as a hardcore in over a dozen detention (i.e. concentration) camps. It is the unrecognized and unrewarded sacrifices of men like Karigo which Karari Njama refers to above. In 1962 Karigo could still hope for "... a decent job or a piece of land to cultivate" in order to provide for his family after independence. "These are the things we Kikuyu fought and died for," he said. "I only pray that after independence our children will not be forced to fight again." This text was recorded by Don Barnett. Ngugi "Solomon" Kabiro, aged 17, entered Nairobi in 1947 seeking employment and ameans to further his education. Working first as a dispatching clerk, briefly trying his hand at a South African correspondence course, living in over-crowded rooms, Ngugi drifted through a number of jobs and periods of unemployment over the next few years, eventually settling into the con-jobbing work of an insurance salesman. Racial abuse, the "culture" bar, discrimination in wages, and that pervasive and unsurpassed contempt with which the British relate to "inferior races", moved Ngugi toward a hatred of the Europeans which was combined uneasily with a craving for the outward material comforts and privileges of that dominant class-caste vis-a-vis the masses of African peasants and workers. And it is this contradiction, this colonized mentality embracing resistance to a hated and oppressive colonial-settler system alongside a narrow petty-bourgeois self-interestand opportunism, which led Ngugi to "join" the underground movement in 1950, play out his role as gun-runner, petty broker and go-between for "Mau Mau" guerrillas after the fighting started, and finally to accept employment as a member of a government "rehabilitation" team in a detention camp. After completing two years of high school (much more than most Africans), Mathu gained employment as an apprentice draftsman in 1950. He was working for the Nairobi City Council when the Emergency was declared and held his job right through April 1954, when the British "Operation Anvil" was launched in Nairobi and forced him into full-time guerrilla activity. In the intervening period, Mathu had become active in one of the several guerrilla groups operating in and around the capital city. Disorganized when its top, and much of its middle, leadership was removed at the outset of the struggle, the underground movement entered a period of confusion and decentralization - a period from which it never fully recovered. It was thus unable to take advantage either of its own potential strengths or the enemy's numerous weaknesses. Mathu, who became secretary of the Kenya Parliament at the time of its formation, both shared and mirrored the movement's frailties and inadequacies. From the time of his first oath in June 1950, Mathu was plagued by doubts and fears. He tells us that he "... found certain aspects of the oathing ceremony ugly and resented having been tricked into attending it;" also of his "doubts about the future," which "... buzzed noisily around in my head. Guns and ammunition meant violence. What would this bring to me and my people?"
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