Obama, the African Colonial
. . . . Catching up again.
Posted on 06/24/2009 10:54:57 PM PDT by neverdem
Grandma was a unitarian communist and ran in very leftist circles. She was the smart one of the gang and got the delayed certificate of birth based on her 'word of honor' that her grandson was born in Hawaii.
From WIkipedia:
From Kansas, the family moved to California, Texas, and in 1955 to Seattle, Washington where Stanley Dunham worked at the downtown Standard-Grunbaum Furniture store. A year later they moved to nearby Mercer Island to enroll their daughter at Mercer Island High School that had recently opened. Both parents would commute to Seattle; by this time Madelyn was an escrow officer at a bank. [2]
Mercer Island High School was a hotbed of radical indoctrination with ties to the Communist Party. Some parents protested the school’s politics, but not the Dunhams. They had abandoned their conservative religious ties and began attending a Unitarian church which the locals called ‘the little Red church on the hill.’
You hit the spot... But rememeber he,(the One) is the “Chump” for the powers that be.
CORA WEISS - HARRY BELFONTE - MARXIST REVOLUTIONS AFRICA
* Institute for Policy Studies :
Phyllis Benning of the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) appeared on a TV talk show a few months ago during which she claimed that no link between Al-Qaeda and Iraq was established. Yet, a couple of days earlier I watched an edition of CBS’ 60 Minutes in which an Israeli intelligence official was interviewed who claimed that the Israelis have captured documents that do establish such a relationship. ... What do all of these organizations [IPS, IPB, PAN, & HAP] have in common? Cora Weiss.
Cora Weiss is the daughter of Faberge millionaire and Soviet-phile Samuel Rubin. She is the president of the Samuel Rubin Foundation, which finances a host of communist causes. As well as president of her father’s foundation, Cora is president of the IPB, president of the HAP, an international representative of the PAN, and the principal financier of the IPS, which was founded by a grant from the Rubin Foundation. ...
In 1983, [Cora] Weiss was a delegate to an IPS sponsored US-USSR confab for disarmament. Delegates included members of the Riverside Church, which is allied with the National Council of Churches (NCC) and World Council of Churches (WCC). ...
The anti-Americanism of Riverside, the NCC and the WCC is well known. All three organizations were advocates for the North Vietnamese. All three organizations were advocates for Marxists revolutions in Africa. (Indeed, the WCC contributed to Robert Mugabe’s Marxist army.) All three organizations were advocates for the Marxist revolutions in Central America in the 1980’s. All three protested the deployment of Pershing missiles in Europe. All three condemned the Gulf War. All three condemned US military action against the Taliban.
Weiss is definitely plugged in to the good old comrade’s network. For example, the IPS Board of Directors contains such liberal luminaries as Harry Belafonte, Time magazine journalist Barbara Ehrenreich, and editor of The Nation magazine Katrina vanden Heuvel (who was formerly the director of the IPS’s Transnational Institute).
Each of these people are well known for their unrepentant leftwing commitments. Ehrenreich is the Vice–Chair of the Democratic Socialists of America. [Katrina] vanden Heuvel, is a staunch apologist for socialism. Belafonte was a founding member of the Hollywood chapter of SANE, a precursor of PAN. In December 2000, he received an honorary degree from Cuba’s Higher Arts Institute. Radio Havana reported that Belafonte said Cuba has always been an artistic haven for people who struggle for the liberation of humanity.
Cora’s old comrade network is incestuous as well. Peter Weiss, Cora’s husband, was the first chairman of the IPS, and is a member of the HAP board. He is a member of the National Lawyers Guild (NLG) and the Center for Constitutional Rights. The NLG is a communist proxy group. Both it and the Center for Constitutional Rights litigate government counter-intelligence activities.
‘Red Queen of “Peace”,’ By Michael Tremoglie, FrontPageMagazine.com, December 11, 2002
20 posted on Monday, May 01, 2006 2:04:15 PM by piasa
PAUL ROBESON
Early 20th Century actor, entertainer, and athlete
Dedicated Stalinist
Born in Princeton, New Jersey on April 9, 1898, Paul Robeson was the fifth and last child of Maria Louisa Bustill and William Drew Robeson, the latter of whom was a former slave. Paul attended Rutgers University, where he earned Phi Beta Kappa honors, and lettered in football, baseball, track, and basketball. He graduated as the valedictorian of his class in 1919.
Robeson went on to earn a law degree from Columbia University Law School in 1923. Deeply influenced by the Harlem Renaissance and the black cultural awareness that it had sparked in African Americans, he pursued a career in music and drama rather than jurisprudence. In 1924, he was cast by Eugene O’Neill in his play, All God’s Chillun Got Wings, and would later star in yet another O’Neill play, Emperor Jones. Robeson’s most important role was that of Othello in the Broadway play of the same name. His films included Emperor Jones (1933); Sanders of the River (1935); Showboat (1936); Song of Freedom (1937); Jericho (1938); Proud Valley (1939); and Tales of Manhattan (1942). From the 1920s through the 1940s, he was one of the world’s leading stage and film performers.
From 1927-1939, Robeson lived in London, where he was introduced to socialist ideals by his friend Bernard Shaw and several leaders of the British Labour Party. He read the classic Marxist writings and became a devoted Communist, though he never formally acknowledged being a Communist Party member.
In 1935 Robeson and his wife Eslanda Goode visited the Soviet Union, where they encountered William Patterson, a leader of the American Communist Party. The Robesons also met with two of Eslanda’s brothers, John and Frank Goode, who had decided they preferred life under Joseph Stalin to life in America. Said Robeson of his stay in the USSR: “Here, for the first time, I walk in human dignity.” He soon became a dedicated Stalinist, the first world-renowned performer to become a political activist during the peak years of his show business career.
Like other Communists, Robeson condemned British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain for his appeasement of Adolph Hitler in 1938 but vigorously defended Stalin’s signing of the Nazi-Soviet nonaggression pact, whose terms divided Poland between Stalin and Hitler and allowed the Nazi dictator to begin World War II.
In 1941, Robeson joined Elizabeth Gurley Flynn and Vito Marcantonio in a campaign to free Earl Browder, the leader of the American Communist Party and the head of a Soviet espionage ring, who had been imprisoned for passport violations.
At the beginning of World War II, Robeson argued against U.S. intervention in the conflict. But his opinion made an abrupt about-face on June 22, 1941, when Germany launched a surprise invasion on the Soviet Union; his first loyalties were to the Soviets.
In 1948 Robeson worked for the presidential campaign of Progressive Party candidate Henry Wallace, who had served in the cabinet of President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
During a concert tour of the USSR in 1949, Robeson learned of Stalin’s planned liquidation of Soviet Jews (a liquidation that would aborted by Stalin’s death in 1953). He asked to see with the imprisoned (and soon-to-be-executed) Russian Yiddish poet Itzhak Feffer, who he had met in the United States six years earlier. When Robeson saw Feffer — in a room bugged with Soviet government listening devices — Feffer, without speaking aloud, drew his fingers across his throat, indicating that he and others would soon be murdered (which they were).
Robeson chose not to tell anyone about Feffer’s fate or what he had learned about Soviet anti-Semitism, since to do so would have hurt the Soviet cause in the Cold War. Upon returning to America, he told the press that he had seen Feffer in good condition; that he had seen “Jewish people [living freely] all over the place”; that he had heard “not one word about” Soviet anti-Semitism; and that the rumors of Yiddish writers being executed were utterly false. He did not even tell his comrades in the American Communist Party what he knew of the USSR’s treatment of Jews.
Stalin recognized Robeson’s loyalty and thus awarded him the Stalin Peace Prize in 1953. After the dictator died later that year, Robeson wrote him a tribute entitled “To You, Beloved Comrade,” which included these sentiments: “Forever will his name be honored and beloved in all lands. In all spheres of modern life, the influence of Stalin reaches wide and deep. … his contributions to the science of our world society remains invaluable. One reverently speaks of Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Stalin — the shapers of humanity’s richest present and future. … Yes, through his [Stalin’s] deep humanity, by his wise understanding, he leaves us a rich and monumental heritage. ... How consistently, how patiently, he labored for peace and ever increasing abundance, with what deep kindliness and wisdom.”
During a Soviet-sponsored World Peace Congress meeting in Europe, Robeson asserted that black Americans — because of their bitterness over the racism they faced on a constant basis — would refuse to fight on the side of their own country if the United States and the Soviet Union ever went to war. This claim became the subject of a House Un-American Activities Committee hearing, where baseball legend Jackie Robinson openly condemned Robeson. Eleanor Roosevelt also criticized Robeson, whose passport was taken away during the Cold War years so that he could not perform abroad.
One night in 1961 Robeson attempted suicide by slashing his wrists with a razor blade in his Moscow hotel room, but he survived. His son, Paul Robeson, Jr., alleged that this event was caused by CIA operatives who had slipped some synthetic hallucinogens into his father’s drink at a party — and thereby had caused him to become delusional.
In April 1973, more than 3,000 people gathered in New York’s Carnegie Hall to celebrate Robeson’s 75th birthday, though Robeson himself was unable to attend, due to illness. Among those on hand were Ramsey Clark, Pete Seeger, Angela Davis, Dolores Huerta, Sidney Poitier, Harry Belafonte, James Earl Jones, Zero Mostel, Ossie Davis, Ruby Dee, and Coretta Scott King.
Paul Robeson died of a stroke in Philadelphia on January 23, 1976.
http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/individualProfile.asp?indid=1544
Obama, the African Colonial
. . . . Catching up again.
Thanks for the ping this is a great thread.
Thanks - this one needs a monthly bump...
One of my favorite articles.
I like to call O’Bozo a ‘POS’ African Colonial... but that’s just me. :)
Thanks for reposting this!
STE=Q
I didn't. This is the original thread!
“This is the original thread!”
Ah So!
STE=Q
August 1951 Information is filtering back about secret meetings being held in the forests outside Nairobi. A secret society called the Mau Mau, believed to have been started in the previous year, requires its members to take an oath to drive the white man from Kenya. Intelligence suggests that membership of the Mau Mau is currently restricted to members of the Kikuyu tribe, many of whom have been arrested during burglaries in Nairobi's white suburbs.
24 August 1952 The Kenyan government imposes a curfew in three districts on the outskirts of Nairobi where gangs of arsonists, believed to be members of the Mau Mau, have been setting fire to homes of Africans who refuse to take the Mau Mau oath.
Although there is little mention in the literature of the actual oath, it is known that the ceremony began with the new members taking a vow to honor the old religion of their tribal ancestors. Once past that stage, it is impossible to know how much of the oath is real and how much is British propaganda. The colonial secretary, Oliver Lyttelton, wrote in part:
The Mau Mau oath is the most bestial, filthy and nauseating incantation which perverted minds can ever have brewed. I have never felt the forces of evil to be so near and as strong as in Mau Mau. As I wrote memoranda or instruction, I would suddenly see a shadow fall across the page – the horned shadow of the Devil himself.
Major Frank Kitson (later General)
In Gangs and Counter-gangs, Barrie and Rockliff, London, 1960, Major Frank Kitson mentions a Mau Mau raid where body parts of an old African were taken to be used in the oathing ceremony later:
The gang, frenzied by the thought of blood, slashed around with their simis (a Kikuyu sword) and fired their guns. One old man, slower than the rest, was caught and hamstrung. He fell at the feet of his pursuers, covering his face with his arms to protect it from the slicing swords, but a mouse in a mechanical mincing machine would have had a better chance of survival. One terrorist hacked off a foot, and another sliced off his testicles to use later in an Oathing ceremony. A third gouged out his eyes with a staple and put them in his pocket for the same purpose. When they had finished, most of the gang came by to cut and stab the twitching corpse. They then licked the blood off their simis and moved off into the night, having first set fire to all the huts they could see.
7 October 1952 Senior Chief Waruhui is assassinated in Kenya -- he is speared to death in broad daylight on a main road on the outskirts of Nairobi. He had recently spoken out against increasing Mau Mau aggression against colonial rule.
19 October 1952 The British government announces that it is to send troops to Kenya to help the fight against the Mau Mau.
21 October 1952 With the imminent arrival of British troops, the Kenyan government declares a state of emergency following a month of increasing hostility. Over 40 people have been murdered in Nairobi in the last four weeks and the Mau Mau, officially declared terrorists, have acquired firearms to use along with the more traditional pangas. As part of the overall clamp down Jomo Kenyatta, president of the Kenya African Union, is arrested for alleged Mau Mau involvement.
30 October 1952 British troops are involved in the arrest of over 500 suspected Mau Mau activists.
14 November1952 Thirty-four schools in Kikuyu tribal areas are closed in the continuing clamp down on Mau Mau activists.
18 November 1952 Jomo Kenyatta, president of the Kenya African Union and the country's leading nationalist leader is charged with managing the Mau Mau terrorist society in Kenya. He is flown to a remote district station, Kapenguria, which reportedly has no telephone or rail communications with the rest of Kenya, and is being held there incommunicado.
25 November 1952 The Mau Mau has declared open rebellion against British rule in Kenya. British forces respond by arresting over 2000 Kikuyu suspected of Mau Mau membership.
18 January 1953 Governor-general Sir Evelyn Baring imposes the death penalty for anyone who administers the Mau Mau oath - the oath is often forced upon Kikuyu tribesmen at the point of a knife, and calls for the individual's death if he fails to kill a European farmer when ordered.
26 January 1953 Panic has spread through Europeans in Kenya after the slaying of a white settler farmer and his family. Settler groups, displeased with the government's response to the increasing Mau Mau threat have created their own Commando Units to deal with the treat. Sir Evelyn Baring, the Governor-general of Kenya has announced that a new offensive is to begin under the command of Major-general William Hinde. Amongst those speaking out against the Mau Mau threat and the government's inaction is Elspeth Huxley, author (who wrote The Flame Trees of Thika in 1959), who in a recent newspaper article compares Jomo Kenyatta to Hitler.
1 April 1953 British troops kill twenty-four Mau Mau suspects and capture an additional thirty-six during deployments in the Kenyan highlands.
8 April 1953 Jomo Kenyatta, known to his followers as Burning the Spear, is sentenced to seven years hard labour along with five other Kikuyu currently detained at Kapenguria.
17 April 1953 An additional 1000 Mau Mau suspects have been arrested over the past week around the capital Nairobi.
3 May 1953 Nineteen Kikuyu members of the Home Guard are murdered by the Mau Mau.
29 May 1953 Kikuyu tribal lands are to be cordoned off from the rest of Kenya to restrict movement of potential Mau Mau terrorists.
July 1953 Another 100 Mau Mau suspects have been killed during British patrols in Kikuyu tribal lands.
15 January 1954 General China, the second in command of the Mau Mau's military efforts is wounded and captured by British troops.
9 March 1954 Two more Mau Mau leaders have been secured: General Katanga is captured and General Tanganyika surrenders to British authority.
March 1954 The great British plan to end the Mau Mau Rebellion in Kenya is presented to the country's legislature -- General China, captured in January, is to write to the other terrorist leaders suggesting that nothing further can be gained from the conflict and that they should surrender themselves to British troops waiting in the Aberdare foothills.
11 April 1954 British authorities in Kenya admit that the 'General China operation' revealed previously to the Kenyan legislature has failed.
24 April 1954 Over 40,000 Kikuyu tribesmen are arrested by British forces, including 5000 Imperial troops and 1000 Policemen, during a widespread, coordinated dawn raids.
26 May 1954 The Treetops Hotel, where Princess Elizabeth and her husband were staying when they heard of King George VI's death and her succession to the throne of England, is burnt down by Mau Mau activists.
18 January 1955 The Governor-general of Kenya, Sir Evelyn Baring, offers an amnesty to Mau Mau activists -- the offer means that they will not face the death penalty, but may still be imprisoned for their crimes. European settlers are up in arms at the leniency of the offer.
21 April 1955 Unmoved by Kenya's Governor-general's, Sir Evelyn Baring, offer of amnesty the Mau Mau killings continue -- today two English schoolboys are murdered.
10 June 1955 Britain withdraws the offer of amnesty to the Mau Mau.
24 June 1955 With the amnesty withdrawn, British authorities in Kenya can proceed with the death sentence for nine Mau Mau activists implicated in the death of two English schoolboys.
October 1955 Official reports suggest that over 70,000 Kikuyu tribesmen suspected of Mau Mau membership have been imprisoned, whilst over 13,000 people have been killed (by British troops and Mau Mau activists) over the last three years of the Mau Mau Rebellion.
7 January 1956 The official death toll for Mau Mau activists killed by British forces in Kenya since 1952 is put at 10,173.
5 February 1956 Nine Mau Mau activists escape from Mageta island prison camp in Lake Victoria.
July 1959 The deaths of 11 Mau Mau activists held at Hola Camp in Kenya is cited as part of the British opposition attacks on the UK government over its role in Africa.
10 November 1959 The state of emergency is ended in Kenya.
18 January 1960 The Kenyan Constitutional Conference being held in London is boycotted by African nationalist leaders.
18 April 1961 In return for the release of Jomo Kenyatta, African nationalist leaders agree to take a role in Kenya's government.
14 July 1961 Jomo Kenyatta, now aged 71, is finally released from house arrest in Gatundu, 22 kilometres outside Nairobi.
21 August 1961 All restrictions on Jomo Kenyatta's movements are lifted following his release from prison last month.
27 May 1963 Jomo Kenyatta is elected prime minister in Kenya's first multi-racial elections.
12 December 1963 Kenya becomes the 34th African state to achieve independence.
16 December 1963 General amnesty is announced for Mau Mau activists.
12 December 1964 Kenya is declared a republic. Jomo Kenyatta is to be its first president.
1 September 2003 After more than 50 years the Mau Mau, who fought for independence in Kenya, is finally unbanned.
Mau Mau time line.
Begin at # 712 for alot of information, and photos.
Thank you for all your hard work and diligence, Fred Nerks. Your research is fantastic, and we are so fortunate to have you posting on Free Republic.
Barack Obama’s grandfather ‘tortured by the British’ during Kenya’s Mau Mau rebellion
By Mail Foreign Service
Last updated at 11:32 AM on 3rd December 2008
Sarah Onyango, Barack Obama’s grandmother has revealed Mr Obama’s grandfather was tortured by the British during the Mau Mau rebellion
Barack Obama’s
We Need a Mau Mau in Mississippi: Malcolm X’s Political Lessons for Today
http://georgehartley.blogspot.com/2009/01/we-need-mau-mau-in-mississippi-malcolm.html
Jomo Kenyatta, Oginga Odinga, and the Mau Mau will go down as the greatest African patriots and freedom fighters that that continent ever knew, and they will be given credit for bringing about the independence of many of the existing independent states on that continent right now. There was a time when their image was negative, but today they’re looked upon with respect and their chief is the president and their next chief is the vice president.
I have to take time to mention that because, in my opinion, not only in Mississippi and Alabama, but right here in New York City, you and I can best learn how to get real freedom by studying how Kenyatta brought it to his people in Kenya, and how Odinga helped him, and the excellent job that was done by the Mau Mau freedom fighters. In fact, that’s what we need in Mississippi. In Mississippi we need a Mau Mau. In Alabama we need a Mau Mau. In Georgia we need a Mau Mau. Right here in Harlem, in New York City, we need a Mau Mau.
I say it with no anger; I say it with very careful forethought.
Roundup: Kenya’s ex-freedom fighters to sue Britain for war crimes
Kenya’s ex-freedom fighters said on Friday they would institute legal proceedings against the British government for reparations.
Addressing a news conference in Nairobi, a high-powered legal team based in Nairobi and London said they were working to ensure that the Mau Mau fighters are compensated for war crimes committed by the British.
“There is no question that the Mau Mau have strong case against the British in terms of the terrible things that happened to them back in the 1950s. I am very pleased that the Kenyan people are giving their support to enable this case to be brought,” said Martyn Day of Leigh Day and Co. Advocates, one of the London-based legal teams.
Speaking during a news conference in Nairobi to launch the fund- raising for the ex-fighters legal fee, Day said there was overwhelming evidence to win the case, which will be filed in a London court on October 20 of this year.
The Mau Mau, drawn largely from Kenya’s biggest tribe, the Kikuyu, launched their rebellion against colonial rule in 1952, especially in the “white” highlands favored by settlers, waging war from the Aberdare and Mount Kenya forests.
According to official figures, more than 11,000 rebels were killed, along with up to 100 Europeans and up to 2,000 African loyalists, many from the Kikuyu Home Guard.
The ex-freedom fighters said they intended to sue the British government for an unspecified sum of money that will be used to pay reparations to survivors of British colonial brutality in Kenya.
“We are primed and ready to go with the legal case; the only thing we are waiting for is our Kenyan team to find the funds to enable the case to be brought,” Day told reporters.
“We remain hopeful we can get the case off the ground here in the near future. There are many legal hurdles for us to overcome in the months ahead but I am optimistic that justice in the end will prevail,” he said.
http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/200605/06/eng20060506_263297.html
TIME FROM 1954
TANGANYIKA: Invasion by Lion-Men
Tom Marealle, the tall, cheerful king of 300,000 Chagga tribesmen, was one of the first to recognize that Kenya’s Mau Mau terrorists were spilling over the border into Tanganyika Territory. Last week one of Tom’s ebony tribesmen had seen something moving among his coffee trees and, thinking it was a mere lion, he had charged it with his spear. Instead of a lion, a lion-man sprang out and pointed a pistol at the charging Chagga. The pistol misfired, and the Chagga’s spear drove through a Mau Mau terrorist, whose hair was plastered with red clay into the shape of a lion’s mane.
Chief Marealle, whose peaceful, prosperous tribe owns 12 million coffee trees on the southern slopes of Mt. Kilimanjaro (19,500 ft.), picked up his telephone and flashed a warning to the British authorities. Then the chief drove off in his car to interview mountain villagers, who had frightened tales to tell of other lion-men, slinking through the forests in the direction of Arusha, a town that lies exactly halfway between Cape Town and Cairo.
Pursuit by Posse. To Tanganyika’s able governor, Sir Edward Twining, 54, the news came as no surprise. Last fall, when Mau Mau “missionaries” began administering their bloodcurdling oaths to the Kikuyu tribesmen who live on the border of Kenya and Tanganyika, Twining’s police rounded up 6,500 suspects and packed them off to detention camps. The Mau Mau vowed revenge, and last week’s invasion was their way of getting it.
The lion-men got more than they bargained for. Tanganyika’s Africans (who own all but i% of the land in the territory) oppose the Mau Mau. King Marealle’s warning roused the coffee farmers, black and white alike; they quickly formed a posse, which was soon reinforced by a contingent of Masai nomads who came up from their grazing grounds among the salt lakes and craters of the Great Rift Valley. Posse and terrorists met head-on near Arusha.
The Chagga did most of the fighting, and the Mau Mau ran away, leaving rifles, pistols and five prisoners behind. After them went the Masai. They caught one terrorist on a bus bound for Kenya; he had cut off his lion mane, but the telltale scars of Mau Mau oathtaking could plainly be seen on his arms.
“Pretty Mean Savages.” At week’s end Governor Twining flew to Arusha, proclaimed martial law in three frontier forest reserves. “We are dealing with desperate armed gangsters,” the governor said. Tanganyika’s whites agreed, but unlike their blimpish neighbors in Kenya Colony, some of them understood that the Africans themselves (notably, the prosperous Chagga) are equally interested in keeping the terrorists out. “The Mau Mau made a big mistake in sending this invasion force,” said one white official, and a Chagga farmer agreed. “They looked like savages to me,” he said.
Read more: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,819915,00.html#ixzz0sJUTormb
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,819915,00.html
In all that information that you have shared it keeps saying that Kikuyu tribesmen were arrested for being involved in the Mau Mau activities. 0’s alleged grandfather was Luo. There was no mention of Luo in what you shared. Could this story about the grandfather be just another piece of the 0 mythology? Have you come across anything that indicates that Luo members were also part of the rebellion?
As recruits poured into the woods, Kimathi assigned them to gangs and appointed leaders. Frequently, he re-grouped his forces into military companies and regiments and gave his leaders military titles among the lines of British army regulations.
During the first few months, the Mau Maus in the woods had an easy life. Each day, trucks loaded with food, guns, and ammunition rolled out of Nairobi for secret destinations along the edges of the Aberdare Forest. Nightly forays were made, and herds of stolen cattle were brought back for food.
Then Royal Air Force planes were called in. They swooped low over the trees and peppered the area with bombs. Hundreds of May Mau fell under the rain of explosions, but the bombing did not limit deaths to tribesmen. The bursts had also wounded and killed thousands of animals, from antelopes to elephants. The bombings had to be called off, but--partly because of the bombings and partly because it was convenient to Kimathi’s plans--raids against white settlers increased, and in February, 1953, the first mass mutilation-murders began.
One settler told me how he was awakened in the night by a scream. He leaped out of bed, grabbing his Weatherby rifle, and threw open the door. One of his plantation workers, a member of the Luo tribe, was running toward the house. He never made it. As a knife thunked into his back, he pitched headlong into the doorstep. The settler stood entranced by the sight of his worker laying at his feet, the blood gushing around the edges of the blade. A volley of bullets splintering into the door awakened his senses, and he dropped to the floor and put his rifle into action. He saw only dark shadows moving in the fields, but he poured round after round in their direction. From the natives’ quarters, he heard more cries of anguish as the Mau Mau made mincemeat of his helpers. His wife and his young son were crawling on the floor behind him, choked in fear.
Then a thumping of feet along the side of the house told him that a Mau Mau was attacking on his left. He scrambled to his knees and backed into the house, shutting the door just as a dark hand brought a blade into view. He fired a quick succession of shots into the closed door and heard a groan and thump as the warrior crumpled on the step.
His wife had hugged him around the waist, and his son was crying when he ordered them under the bed. Windows were shattering from bullets, and walls were absorbing shots with small explosions of wood.
Then, as suddenly as the fighting had begun, it stopped. Silence. Then a few moans from outside. He crawled up to the door and opened it a crack, peering out into the darkness. The shapes were moving away.
Others were not quite so lucky. There were plantations completely destroyed by the terrorists, men and children shot and dismembered, women raped and mutilated, stock killed, buildings burned.
The British government began an all-out campaign against the Mau Mau to be directed particularly against Kimathi, the mass executioner who was, at this time, considered by his followers an invincible god. The C.I.D., in 1953, devised a plan to break the power of the Mau Mau. Troops were sent into the area, but achieved little success. Meanwhile, raids continued, and the death toll mounted.
Kimathi had become imbued with an insatiable lust to kill. For every settler murdered during this period, a hundred of his own men were wantonly slaughtered if they disagreed with him or failed to back his movement. Young Kikuyu girls were captured in their villages and brought back for his pleasure. At one time, he had a harem of over 100 women, but during the four years he remained in hiding, he strangled all except one: Wanjiru, a 20-year-old, sloe-eyed, dusky beauty who adapted herself easily to a jungle existence.
It was at this point that “Operation Anvil” was put into effect by the British Constabulary. Late one night in August, 1954, an army of police surrounded Nairobi, and over 80,000 Kikuyus were arrested, taken out of the city, and detained in isolated areas for five years. This mass arrest had an immediate effect upon Kimathi and his followers. Now that he had lost contact with his sympathizers, supplies were cut off, and the Mau Mau were forced to depend on the jungle for sustenance. Their tattered clothes were discarded, and they began wearing skins of wild animals. Kimathi gave his top leaders forest names such a “General Lion,” “Colonel Cheetah,” “Captain Zebra,” and so on. Kimathi, himself, wore a garment of leopard skin and became known as “General Leopard.” With cordons of troops surrounding the area, food raids were halted, and because fires would reveal their location, they ate the raw flesh of beasts. Their hair grew long and matted and was plaited to facilitate the catching of lice and other vermin with which they became infested. To conserve ammunition, they depended on their pangas, long knives, as weapons of attack.
It was not long before the weak surrendered to the British. They were quickly taken to Nairobi, where they were rehabilitated and sent back into the forest as “pseudo gangs” for the purpose of killing or capturing Mau Mau.
The “pseudo gang” movement caught fire and brought consternation into the hearts of Kimathi’s followers. It quickly reached the point where those hiding in the woods never knew whether or not their companions were Mau Mau or paid agents of the British. Kimathi was infuriated that his once-faithful, oath-taking subjects had surrendered--and then had returned to hunt him down. He soon hated and suspected everyone.
Kimathi’s end was inevitable. On October 21, 1956, while raiding a nearby plantation for food, he was trapped by the Constabulary and severely wounded. He was quickly tried, found guilty, and hanged.
Kimathi was dead! And with him died the immediate threat of the Mau Mau. The thousands of prisoners were released and returned to their villages.
Strangely, while the Mau Mau lost the battle of the bamboo forest, the organization won the war for independence. During the past few months, Jomo Kenyatta received British assurances that Kenya would gain its freedom within the next year. http://www.janedolinger.org/page16.php
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