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.
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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