Historical Reflection of Selected Women's

HISTORICAL REFLECTION OF SELECTED WOMEN’S INVOLVEMENT IN THE STRUGGLE FOR KENYA’S INDEPENDENCE, 1920-1963

OGAMBA ZACHARY OTEKI

(KENYATTA UNIVERSITY, BACHELOR OF EDUCATION ARTS)

A THESIS SUBMITTED TO THE SCHOOL OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS OF THE DEGREE OF MASTERS OF THE FACULTY OF ARTS AND SOCIAL SCIENCES, DEPARTMENT OF HUMANITIES, KISII UNIVERSITY

NOVEMBER, 2017 DECLARATION AND RECOMMENDATION

DECLARATION This research thesis is my original work and has not been presented in any other University for the award of a degree.

Name Signature Date Ogamba Zachary Oteki Reg/No/ MAS11/60056/14

RECOMMENDATION BY THE SUPERVISORS This research proposal has been submitted for examination with our approval as university supervisors.

Name Signature Date Dr. Evans Nyamwaka, PhD Department of Humanities Kisii University

Name Signature Date Dr. Evans Mecha, PhD Department of Languages and Literature Kisii University

PLAGIARISM DECLARATION DECLARATION BY STUDENT

i. I declare I have read and understood Kisii University Postgraduate Examination Rules and Regulations, and other documents concerning academic dishonesty. ii. I do understand that ignorance of these rules and regulations is not an excuse for a violation of the said rules. iii. If I have any questions or doubts, I realize that it is my responsibility to keep seeking an answer until I understand. iv. I understand I must do my own work. v. I also understand that if I commit any act of academic dishonesty like plagiarism, my thesis/project can be assigned a fail grade (“F”) vi. I further understand I may be suspended or expelled from the university for academic dishonesty.

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i. I/we declare that this thesis/project has been submitted to plagiarism detection service. ii. The thesis/project contains less than 20% of plagiarized work. iii. I/we hereby give consent for marking.

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DEDICATION To my dear Daughter June Zawadi Ogamba and lovely son, Gustavo Mogambi Ogamba and the entire Oteki family.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

First and foremost, I wish to thank Kisii University for offering me a chance to pursue my Masters degree. I sincerely extend much thanks to the entire University staff for their moral support and encouragement. Secondly, I acknowledge my able supervisors Dr. Evans Nyamwaka and Dr. Evans Mecha for their dedication and sparing their time to take me through this work. Indeed it took much sacrifice to guide me from scratch to this level. I wish also to thank my dedicated lecturers who saw me through the course work. Their encouragement and advice was inspiring. In the same vein I can’t forget my colleagues in the department of history for the wonderful time we spent together in carrying out this noble venture and more so during group discussions. More importantly, I acknowledge the work done by Mrs Lucy my secretary in the preparation of this document. The effort of Mr. Erick Onyancha in the languages department of Amabuko Secondary School need special acknowledgement for the carefully editorial of this work without which it could not have made the current shape.

Special thanks to my mother who always said “Mosombano’nguru (a servant is energetic). This Kisii phrase gave me a lot of courage whenever I faced challenges. I am indeed grateful to my brothers and sisters for their encouragement to yearn for more and work hard in my studies. To those who assisted me and are not mentioned here, may God bless them abundantly. Lastly, thanks goes to my lovely daughter June Zawadi Ogamba and my bouncing son Gustavo Mogambi for their understanding while away and patience during my studies and the final compilation of this document, God bless them all.

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ABSTRACT Women have been known to have played important role in the struggle for independence in the world, yet only men are applauded for this noble venture. There is scanty historical information with regard to women, more especially in Kenya. This study therefore investigated the history of women’s involvement in nationalistic politics and struggle for independence in Kenya; 1920- 1963.It focused on some selected women personalities from Kenya, that is Moraa Ng’iti among the Abagusii, Mekatilili wa Menza among the Giriama, Muthoni wa Gachie, Field Marshal, Muthoni Kirima, Virginia Wambui all among the Agikuyu, Taibagoi Bartiony among the Talai of the Nandi, and Sutunewa Kithuke among the Akamba. This study examined the position played by these selected women in the struggle for self-government in Kenya, how these women saw the Kenyan situation during the years of colonialism and liberation struggle. This study also unmasked the reasons behind Kenyan womens’ participation in the struggle for independence and finally their level of involvement during the struggle for independence in Kenya. This study was guided by the feminist theory because of the existence of gender parity in most of the African nations. The study covered the entire country on selected women who participated for Kenya’s liberation struggle. The study employed both qualitative and descriptive research designs. This study was library based more particularly but also oral interview information which was very useful was obtained from the field on Kenyan women involvement in the nationalistic struggle in Kenya, 1920-1963. On carrying out this study, purposive sampling was used because it had the required information with respect to this study. This study used questionnaires with closed and open-ended questions which were used to source data that was analysed and chi- square analysis was used to test whether Kenyan women really participated in the political liberation. This study found out that women acted as armed combatants, suppliers, spies, managed local operations, and also participated in oath taking. The findings from this study will be used to provide useful information for further research on women’s roles in shaping the political landscape of our country. The findings also will give very useful information towards achieving gender equity in our country and even the entire of Africa which has lagged behind on women issues, and for policing on gender inequalities on the global scene. Finally, the findings will assist in propelling women towards leadership roles who have been neglected for a long time due to the prevailing patriarchal structures in most of African countries.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

DECLARATION...... ii PLAGIARISM DECLARATION...... iii DECLARATION OF NUMBER OF WORDS FOR MASTERS THESIS ...... iv COPYRIGHT ...... v DEDICATION...... vi ABSTRACT ...... viii TABLE OF CONTENTS ...... ix LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS ...... xi LIST OF MAPS………………………………………………………………...... xii LIST OF PLATES ...... xiii CHAPTER ONE 1.1BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY ...... 1 1.2 Statement of the Problem ...... 3 1.3 Purpose of the Study ...... 3 1.4 Objectives ...... 3 1.5 Research Questions ...... 4 1.6 Basic Assumptions of the Study ...... 4 1.7 Justification and Significance of the Study ...... 4 1.8.0 Delimitation and Limitations of the Study ...... 4 1.8.1 Definition of Operational Terms ...... 5 2.0 Theoretical Framework ...... 12 3.0 Research Design and Methodology ...... 13 3.1 Research Design ...... 14 3.2Area of study ...... 14 3.3 Target Population ...... 14 3.4 Sampling Techniques ...... 15 3.5 Data collection procedures ...... 15 3.6 Data analysis and presentation ...... 16

4.1 THE POSITION OF WOMEN IN KENYA DURING THE COLONIAL PERIOD...... 17 CHAPTER THREE ...... 23 4.2THE IMPACTS OF COLONIAL POLICIES ON KENYAN WOMEN ...... 23 CHAPTER FOUR ...... 30 4.3 THE ROLE PLAYED BY SELECTED WOMEN IN THE STRUGGLE FOR INDEPENDENCE IN KENYA...... 30 CHAPTER FIVE ...... 40 4.4 ROLE OF WOMEN IN THE STRUGGLE FOR KENYA’S INDEPENDENCE ...... 40 CHAPTER SIX ...... 44 4.5 COLONIAL ADMINISTRATION’S REACTION TO WOMEN’S STRUGGLE FOR INDEPENDENCE IN KENYA...... 44 CHAPTER SEVEN ...... 61 5.0 SUMMARY, CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS...... 61 5.2 Conclusion ...... 62 5.3 Recommendations ...... 63 BIBLIOGRAPHY ...... 64 APPENDICES ...... 68 APPENDIX i. Student Introduction Letter ...... 68 APPENDIX ii: INTERVIEW SCHEDULE...... 69 APPENDIX iii: QUESTIONNAIRE ...... 70 APPENDIX IV ...... 71 PLATES ...... 71 Appendix: Popular Mau Mau women songs ...... 80

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS OMA- Organization of Angolan Women

MPLA- Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola

PAIGC- Africa Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde

FLN- National Liberation Front

DRC- Democratic Republic of Congo

KCA- Kikuyu Central Association

KAU- Kenya African Union

LIST OF MAPS………………………………………………………………82

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LIST OF PLATES PLATE I – Freedom fighters- men and women………………………………………………….70

PLATE II- Statue of Mekatilili wa Menza………………………………………………………71

PLATE III- Woman accompanying freedom fighters…………………………………………...72

PLATE IV- Field Marshal Muthoni……………………………………………………………..73

PLATE V- Wanjiku Muthoni, Njeru Ritho and Lucy Njeri Freedom Heroines………………...74

PLATE VI- Stinging nettle and safari ants used to torture Mau Mau Women………………..…75

PLATE VII- Woman taking an oath……………………………………………………...... 76

PLATE VIII- Detention camp in Mukurwe-ini………………………………………………….77

PLATE IX:Phograpgh of Jane Muthoni Mara Mau Mau Freedom Heroine……………………78

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CHAPTER ONE

1.1BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY Throughout history women have been known to participate in war liberation struggle. It should be noted that not only men went for war during the liberation struggle, but also women participated actively and passively. Therefore this perception should be relooked at to also include women in freedom struggle in Kenya. In any struggle, female cadres are not just fatalities of the situation but also actively worked together with men in the liberation struggle. When discussing liberation wars, it should be looked at from the side of women and men at the same time without ignoring the role of women. Liberation struggle should therefore be looked from the point of view of men and women at the same time. This research unmasked that Kenyan women had resilience and bravery, even in harsh environments like women in any part of the world who were involved in freedom struggles. Satwinder1, has studied the role of Women in India’s Struggle for Freedom and who have been forgotten for example Raj Kumari Gupta and Tara Rani Srivastava all of India. Marcela Castro, wife of Marcos Tupac Amaru, took part in the fighting in Americas struggle for independence. In the same tone, women in Zimbabwe played a very key role to their nation’s liberation struggle. Traditional gender roles were subverted as many women were recruited as freedom fighters and were active participants in the armed warfare, Gann2. Therefore Gann asserts that not only did women motivated men to soldier on with the war of independence but also actively participated in liberation struggle. Henda has also written on the role played by women in the freedom struggle in Angola. In his work Henda writes on Organization of Angolan Women that was a women liberation movement. She notes these move,ment that was formed in 1962 by women as a wing for women of the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola, played a significant role in supporting men during the struggle in Angola.

1 K. Satwinder, (2013) Role of Women in India’s Struggle for Freedom: GhaggerSarai, India. 2 L. Gann, (1981) The Struggle for Zimbabwe, Praeger Publishers: New York. 1

In Kenya many scholars have tried to unmask women’s participation in the struggle for freedom. Historical scholars of the recent times have just quoted the role of women’s participation in Mau Mau movement without giving an inside about their participation in the Mau Mau war. These historical scholars have outlined the role of men in the Mau Mau activities but hardly do they mention the role played by women in the movement. Kershaw3 has written about women and their involvement to the issue of land where he also notes the roles girls played in the bartering price of land. Kanogo4 has researched on women squatters among the Agikuyu, and though scanty mention of them, she says that women’s place in Mau Mau was of great deal in the Mau Mau war. Women were the Mau Mau stronghold according to her in families as their male counterparts had to either take an oath along with them or remain quiet about their beliefs. Kanongo also notes from the Western Kenya there was Mang’ana Ogonje Nyar Ugu, the first African female colonial chief in Western; Moraa Moka Ng’iti, a female freedom fighter from Kisii and Eiokalaine OM’barugu an assistant chief in Eastern part of Kenya. Needless to say, women were never indifferent to the colonial regime and took to constantly feeding the armed warriors as well as hiding perceived enemies of the Colonial government. However, these contributions have never been recognised for their worth in the fight for independence. Among the Agriama of Kenya the heroine, Mekatilili wa Menzas’ contributed immensely in creating awareness among her people. She was one of the first women in Kenya to rise up against the British in 1913. Mekatilili had good oratory skills, was charismatic and brave. These skills earned her a huge following and saw her rally the Giriama to take oaths and sacrifices to restore their autonomy. Charles Hobley, who was the Coast provincial commissioner from 1912 to 1919, accredited most of the duty for Giriama battle against colonial policies to “an old blind rascal named Ngonyo” who “instigated a half-mad woman named Katilili to tour the country preaching active opposition to Government.” It is therefore against this backdrop that this study sought to undertake a historical study of selected women involvement in nationalist politics and struggle for Kenya’s independence.

3 G. Kershaw, (1997) Mau Mau From Below, James Currey. 4 T. Kanogo, (1987) Squatters and the Roots of Mau Mau, London.

1.2 Statement of the Problem Despite the immense contribution of women during the struggle for independence in Kenya, their role in shaping Kenya’s historiography is seldom written by scholars. During the independence struggles, only the pursuits of male fighters were captured. This was so because of the prevailing patriarchal structures. Women hardly take up key decision making positions owing to the lack of education and information, triple domestic roles, negative cultures, and poor policies and therefore their historical contribution may be forgotten. The study Kenyan women have been approached from psychological, anthropological and sociological perspectives. Study of women’s participation is not only important but necessary to establish the role of women in historical domain in time and space. Therefore this study is worth undertaking as there are few works focusing on the roles women played in the struggle for independence in Kenya and in such works they are only mentioned.

1.3 Purpose of the Study The purpose of this study was to establish the involvement of selected women in the nationalistic politics and the struggle for independence in Kenya, 1920-1963.

1.4 Objectives Specific objectives were;

i. To examine the position of women in Kenya before the period of colonialism. ii. To establish the impact of colonial policies in Kenya and how they affected women. iii. To find out the role played by selected women in the struggle for Kenya’s independence. iv. To examine colonial administration’s reaction to women’s struggle for independence in Kenya.

1.5 Research Questions The study was guided by the following questions.

i. What was the position of women in Kenya before the period of colonialism? ii. How did colonial policies affect women in Kenya during the colonial period? iii. What role did women play in the struggle for Kenya’s independence? iv. How did colonial administrators react to women’s struggle for independence in Kenya during the colonial period?

1.6 Basic Assumptions of the Study The basic assumptions of this research were; that the respondents in the field during data collection were to be present to respond to the questions. Secondly, the respondents are assumed to be honest in giving out the intended information and be precise and accurate in giving their answers.

1.7 Justification and Significance of the Study Findings from this study will form a basis for policing on the part of the government, for academic purposes, further research on women and gender inequity and also underscoring women’s potentiality in historical perspectives in economic, political and social pillars.

1.8.0 Delimitation and Limitations of the Study The study covered the involvement of Kenyan women in nationalistic politics and the struggle for independence in Kenya, 1920-1963.The study took 1920 as a starting point because this was a period when the initial struggle for independence commenced, 1963 was the terminal period because it is the period which Kenya got independence. The participation of women in Kenya’s historiography has come about with the changing trends in global politics. Women have occupied top positions as leaders in various parts of the world and even in Kenyan politics. Therefore these changing trends in our society were captured in this study historically.

1.8.1 Definition of Operational Terms Patriarchy- the dominance of men in society, and the oppression of women for men’s gain.

Gender stereotypes – negative generalizations/ misconceptions about women. Economic dependency - women giving up work to take care of childcare/housework responsibilities, thus become dependent on their husbands for money. Emotional work - women are expected to do the majority of emotional care for their family, on top of their job and housework; the so-called ‘triple shift’.

1.9 Literature Review

A lot of work has been written and covered on women’s involvement in the war of liberation in various parts of Africa. While all this has been done a historical study on women’s involvement in the struggle for self-determination in Kenya has not been done to its logical end. There are few written documents concerning the history of women participation in the struggle for independence in Kenya. These documents give us some background information to our study.

Adamu5 has discusses on the role of Yoruba and Igbo women in southern Nigeria and their involvement in freedom struggles within dual‐sex systems of female and male authority during the colonial era. Women were able to organize themselves through associations like the Market women to fight a collective cause. The colonialists had introduced certain policies and regulations which curtailed the pleasure of social, economic and political privileges of women. Women’s appointments to public offices were very low even though women were granted the right to vote in the 1950s in the South and in the North in the 1980s. Women's War of 1929 “also known as the Aba Women’s Riots”, in which Igbo market women protested British taxation, was a notable example of women using their traditional power against colonial rulers.

Stuck in their responsibilities as mothers and providers of the family, women together defended their complementary sphere of authority within the extended family and wider community.

During the colonial time when mostly all the men and very many women were either in the forest fighting, in custody, there were some few who were left at home alone as wives and

5 F, Adamu, (2006) “Women’s Struggle and the Politics of Difference in Nigeria”.

5 mothers. The colonial government gave an order to destroy the homes and to build huts in one isolated camp so that they could watch over the Kenyans’ every movement.

Women in these camps were beaten up by the colonial security forces, raped, harassed, and overworked in the European plantation farms. Therefore women saw themselves as the victims of circumstance and victims of the colonial oppression, these motivated them to either directly or indirectly join the freedom struggle. Women in Kenya were on the receiving end during the colonial period when their men ran away to urban centres to look for employment. Women experienced brutality from the Europeans including rape, torture, land alienation and imposition of tax (poll tax, breast tax and hut tax). Women also were forcefully recruited to work on European farms when their men were away, and due to this kind of oppression they were motivated to join their male counterparts in the liberation struggle.

According to Chogugudza6 the link between the rebellion and the involvement of women in colonial struggles can be easily understood. During the colonial era, Women in Zimbabwe under traditional and colonial patriarchal rule had no control over the economy. Their powerlessness was grounded in traditional African cultures as well as in Colonial concept of woman. First, the customary law practices such as marriage and motherhood put women at a disadvantage side. Traditional practices largely dictated what became culturally accepted rights and duties of spouses. Because of various marriage rituals in African tradition such as gift marriage, widow inheritance, forced childhood marriage, polygamy, bride-wealth and inheritance all favoured men. Women were regarded as wives and mothers, then as individuals according to African customary law.

In addition Chogugudza says that the arrival of the British encouraged the migration of African men to urban areas as workers, but controlled the movement of women, hence shifting the sharing of power and economy in favour of men. Women were kept away from the cash flow, but also as African men entered settler employment in towns, women who were left behind had to fill in as heads of households.

6 P. Chogugudza, (2011), “Gender and War”.

This led to increased in workloads for women but low wages. During the pre-colonial and colonial period, African women “become an extension of African male bodies.” This made women to live in circumstances that were different or worse than those of the men. Women did not participate in the cash economy which shifted their traditionally circumscribed power to positions in which autonomy was almost impossible. Additionally, to the perception of what was “womanly” in the traditional culture, the “cult of domesticity,” a premise put forward by Victorian Christian also entrenched what became perceived as the woman’s role. The “cult of domesticity” envisioned women as compliant, modest creatures, good mothers and wives, the gender that was supportive of its mate. A woman was supposed to be confined at the home, and this showed a mark of “gentility,” and of a man’s ability to support his family. Hence African men and women, aspiring to be at the level of their colonial masters, began to encourage women’s docility as a mark of civilisation. The concept of “leisured” wife as proof of “gentility” explains, why most women of African leaders did not compete to rise the social and political hierarchy at the same time as their husbands. It is against this background therefore that at the beginning of the revolutionary struggle, Zimbabwean women, like their counterparts in Guinea Bissau, Mozambique and Angola joined the war of liberation. Women’s’ intention was that with the revolution, gender equity would be achieved on both men and women. Women who could not obey the rules to tradition saw the revolution as a prospect to escape difficult situations. But feminist critique that at the end of the struggle, women’s place in the society actually fell as nationalist leaders and nationalist-oriented societies. In the quest of preserving tradition, women were expected to be guardians of culture and respectability, mistresses of the emerging ruling elites, wives and mothers, recruiters for political parties, and labourers for the new market economy. As women were viewed from this angle, men were engaged in competition for political power in the state and the accumulation of wealth.7

Therefore Zimbabwe’s liberation struggle was based on Marxism, and contemporary Marxism ideologies which encouraged the participation of women in the revolutionary vanguard, arguing that women’s subjugation was a result of the class-based and colonial exploitation against which such movements would struggle.

7P. Chogugudza, (2011), “Gender and War”. 7

Zimbabwean guerrilla movements, in acceptance of this ideology, meant that women’s rights would be a self-evident part of a future democratic society.

Urdang notes that Marxist ideologies which advocated for equality helped women to see themselves as advancing into traditionally male-controlled spheres such as those of decision- making. It can be understood that what women hoped to achieve through the struggle, is gaining equal rights for themselves.

Ironically, a feminist critique of women and war will show, that we cannot overlook the fact that women also participate in war for personal gains. The Zimbabwean war offered a way out both for the suppressed groups of people and for individuals, including women. The inclusion of women in a guerrilla war, therefore, is not just a way to increase the number of soldiers in general and to have them serve in roles exclusive to women as male leaders might see it. But also joining the liberation war is also for women an act of seeking their own liberation. Thus, on the eve of independence the post-colonial government downplayed the promises of freedom and liberty and this made Zimbabwean women fighters feel betrayed. This will yet again form the basis of this study, that Kenyan women participated in Kenya’s liberation struggle but their contribution and reasons for joining the war seem to be swept to the periphery. The above reasons also inspired Kenyan women to involve themselves in nationalistic liberation and struggle for independence.

According to Woodard8 notes that women in Guinea Bissau’s actual participation in fighting hand-to-hand battle against the Portuguese forces existed on various occasions. But when the PAIGC entered its phase of nationalist armed struggle, women were not encouraged to carry arms and fight because this stage of the struggle was so powerful and risky that it was limited to men. These men had been trained more thoroughly, to fight. Instead of fighting, women supplied the guerrillas with food and other essentials. Women were also trained as nurses, teachers, and cadres to mobilize more women and other villagers for the liberation movement. This yet again formed the background of our study. The reasons cited by Chogugudza as to why women participated in political liberation in Zimbabwe will also be of benefit to this study.

8 S. J. Woodard, (1986), Women in Guinea Bissau and Cape Verd Island; ETD Collection, Atlanta. 8

Such factors are; to improve the conditions for themselves and for their families, others like Nhamo joined the movement to uplift herself as she theard that some were being educated by the nationalists. Women in Zimbabwe actively were involved in armed struggle and acted as combatant as well as suppliers to the fighters. Women in Kenya fought alongside their male counterparts in Kenya the same way women did elsewhere in Africa and hence Chogugudza’s assertion is relevant to this study. According to Nakanyike and Marie 9 they assert that during the colonial period, women in Zimbabwe were directly involved in colonial resistance. One woman in particular Charwe played a major role during the first Chimurenga war in 1896-97. Charwe, the female medium possessed by the spirit Nehanda, is notable in Zimbabwe today as the leader of the uprisings. Some claim that she took up arms herself and was a military adviser to the people. She was detained for the killing of Native Commissioner Pollard and was sentenced to be hanged. On the scaffolding she refused to submit and stated that her bones would rise again in the fight against colonialism. Several years later, during the second Chimurenga war, spirit mediums claiming to be possessed by Nehanda advised and inspired guerrilla fighters. Charwe’s name was invoked by the nationalist parties to encourage young women to join the armed struggle. Nakanyike’s assertion also formed the basis of our study. According to Myenzi10 asserts that before independence in Tanzania, records indicate that women were part of the struggles for national liberation. They were assigned with responsive roles for example security of the party, staffing of new members, fundraising and mobilization of mass support. Myenzi adds that the late Bibi Titi Mohamed is frequently referred to as one of those women who moved around to mobilize women constituency. This constituency was believed to constitute additional values in the liberation struggles without which the mission could not have been accomplished as planned. However, the mainstream party leadership remained an exclusive domain of men as reflected in the list of the seventeen (17) founding members of the party. From the above cases it can be concluded that women played key roles in the liberation of their countries and this is

9 M. Nakanyike, (1992), Colonial and Missionary Education: Women and Domesticity in Uganda. 10 Y.E Myenzi, (2004), “Women in Politics in Tanzania”: Karimjee Hall, Dar es Salaam. 9 going to form the basis of this study. One of the remarkable responsibilities Mau Mau women in Kenya did was to continue to educate their children. Women would raise money and do all they could to smuggle the brightest children out of Kenya to study overseas through Sudan, Ethiopia and Egypt. These women did so with the hope that their children would come home to be the future leaders of their government of which they did. (Turner, Teena and Leigh )11.

According to Urdang12, the question of equality between women and men in the training camps is problematic when we consider the differences between what most women were actually engaged in during the war, and the expected criteria that are used to indicate whether women had actually been men’s equals, or whether they had been successful soldiers. Research on women and war, from Africa and other parts of the world, has pointed out that only a few women are given the privilege, in war situations, to operate formally in traditionally male domains. The majority women’s work tends to be consisting in assisting men to be the armed forces they wanted to be. Hence women in war situations simply help men to achieve their goals. Accordingly, most women are compelled to fill all kinds of supplementary functions so that the war can proceed. Thus, in the Zimbabwean revolutionary movement, women fighters were to make sure that supplies reached the fighters in the forest by providing the supply line, a very important role. This role is often unrecognized, or at least treated as secondary. Urdang and Myenzi were critical to our study also.

In Kenya women participated in all phases of the ant-colonial war in Kenya as early as 1950s. Women joined the secret Mau Mau organization that emerged after 1948. The new recruits were required to take an oath of loyalty. Though swearing to abide by a solemn promise was traditionally reserved for males, when the Mau Mau movement began women also took oaths and were often able to administer oaths to male and female recruits. Mau Mau women adherents were therefore breaking an important gender barrier from their introduction to the movement by giving and taking oaths.

11 E. Turner, J. T. Neal, and Brownhill L. S., (1993), Every Tool is a Weapon if you hold it Right; Oni Difranco. 12 U. Stephanie, (1989), And Still They Dance: Women, War, and the Struggle for Change inMozambique London: Earthscan.

Gender barriers were also broken in the area of leadership roles and combat roles. The women’s wing of Mau Mau had a prominent female leader, Rebecca Njeri Kari. Another leader, Wambui Waiyaki (later Otieno), developed a system of women spies who collected data on British installations and operations.

Women also emerged bas leaders at district and village levels. During the rebellion, British political and military forces arrested, imprisoned, and detained Mau Mau leadership and rank-and-file members. Women were among those who were arrested and detained. Prominent women leaders, including Kari, Waiyaki, and Wambui Wangarama, spent years in prison for their political beliefs.

Many women were also put under detention because they were armed combatants, as well as non-combatants who performed support functions for the rebels who lived in guerilla camps in the inaccessible forest zones in Kenya’s Central Province. Many other women experienced short-term detention and interrogation because they were Mau Mau rebels or accused of being Mau Mau rebels. During their imprisonment, detainees experienced abuses that included physical assault, sexual assault, food deprivation, and other acts of torture.

Outside of the prisons, the Mau Mau rebellion was ultimately crushed in 1954 through massive roundups, interrogations, and a program of "villagization." Villagization involved the destruction of tradition villages and the forced relocation of the Kikuyu population to new villages that were surrounded by barbed wire fences and armed guards. Although the villagization policy had the ostensible goal of land consolidation, its real aim was to cut off the support Mau Mau rebels obtained from village populations. A crucial part of that support comprised the network of women who smuggled food and arms to the rebel camps in the forested areas of the three Kikuyu districts. With this regard therefore women participated in all spheres of the armed struggle in Kenya. They participated from being active armed combatants to partial participants and that is by supplying food and weapons to the Mau Mau fighters in the forest among other supplies.

However, it should be noted that few women took part in actual fighting. Mostly women acted as spies, suppliers and mobilizers during the armed struggles in most of the countries in Africa and to a larger extent Kenya.13

2.0 Theoretical Framework When studying women, various feminist theories are used. Feminism is a systematic movement which promotes equity for men and women in political, economic and social areas. According to feminists they assert that women are oppressed due to their sex and this is based on the dominant ideology of patriarchy. Eradicating society of patriarchy will result in empowering women. Patriarchy is the structure which oppresses women through its social, economic and political institutions. Throughout history men have had greater power in both the public and private spheres. To maintain this power, men have created boundaries and obstacles for women, thus making it harder for women to hold power. One of the famous proponents of feminism is Oakley14. Oakley notes that the theory of Feminism is centrally focused on the status difference of men and women and the dominance of the former. Oakley suggests that the society is patriarchal and that all the social institutions act to serve the interests of men. Feminists want to women more power to fight against the patriarchal institutions in order to achieve true gender equality, what is famously known as a conflict theory. In nutshell Oakley says that the driving force since its emergence in the 1960’s, feminism theory has become part and parcel within sociological study. Wallace15 says that the defining characteristic of feminism is the view that women’s subordination must be questioned and challenged. This involves a critical examination of the present and past situation of women. It challenges the dominant patriarchal assumption that seeks to validate women’s subordination as natural, universal and therefore inevitable. It also challenges knowledge that is put forward as universal and demonstrating that this ‘knowledge’ views the world from the perspective of men. What is important is a world view from the position of women, who have been put to the periphery from the production of knowledge.

13C. Robertson and r I. Berge, (eds.), Women and Class in Africa. Africana Publishing Company. 14 A. Oakley, (2011), “Feminism”, History Learning Site.co.uk. 15 C. Wallace, (1997), An Introduction to Sociology: Feminist Perspective. London.

Such a world view will provide more adequate knowledge because it will seek to explain what patriarchal knowledge does not recognize as existing. According to these scholars, there are five major concepts impeded in the feminism theory: patriarchy, prejudice, gender stereotypes, economic dependency and emotional work. These five concepts will form the basis for this study and therefore the theory is best suited in finding out the involvement of Kenyan women in nationalistic politics and the struggle for independence in Kenya and also to this study. As much as feminists don’t agree on their divergent view overall, they do seem to focus on the theme of patriarchy. One most important critique of feminism is that it focuses too much on gender divides without giving much emphasis to other forms of inequality such as class struggle and ethnicity. Women and women’s organizations were highly involved in the struggle for self- determination in many nations in the world. Despite this, their efforts were usually not rewarded in the shape of more rights for them. When the modern governments were formed, there was apparently no need to separate women’s agenda, since the ideal state was to bring freedom and improvement for men and women alike. This led to the loss of the traditional double gender structures. The discrimination against women witnessed in the above analysis will form the backbone of this study as it will try to uncover the reasons why women heroines have not been applauded in Kenya’s historiography. This theory will try to unfold also whether patriarchy is solely to blame for gender discrimination and in writing the role played by women in the struggle for independence in Kenya.

3.0 Research Design and Methodology This chapter focuses on the research design, variables, location of the study, population, the sampling frame, sample size and sampling techniques, research instruments, reliability of the study, validity of the study instrument, data collection procedures, data analysis and logistical and ethical considerations.

3.1 Research Design During this study qualitative and descriptive approaches were used to collect data from respondents in the participation of women in the struggle for independence in Kenya, 1920-1963. This kind of approach seeks information by looking closely at people’s words, actions and records. It involves close observation of the subject that is being studied. Qualitative approach will be used in this study because it gives participants the opportunity to directly answer in their own words, rather than forcing them to choose from fixed responses.

Qualitative research will also be used in this study because it is more flexible, it is conducted in most cases in the natural settings, it produces rich and indebt (detailed), and it is subjective.

Through the use of descriptive survey design the study surveyed women’s involvement in nationalistic politics and struggle for independence in Kenya, 1920-1963. The descriptive design was relevant due to its ability to identify various methods employed by women in Kenya during the struggle for independence in Kenya.

3.2Area of study The study took the entire country but on selected women’s involvement in the nationalistic politics and the struggle for independence in Kenya.

3.3 Target Population The study took place in Rift Valley, Nyanza, coast and Central Kenya as its study area. Kenya, whose capital and largest city is Nairobi lies on the equator and overlies the East African Rift covering a diverse and expansive terrain that extends roughly from Lake Victoria to Lake Turkana and further south-east to the Indian Ocean. Kenya borders Uganda to the west Tanzania to the south, South Sudan to the north-west, Ethiopia to the north and Somalia to the north-east. It covers 581,309 km2, and had a population of roughly 45 million people as per July 2014.

There are over 70 sub-tribes in Kenya, ranging in size from about seven million Kikuyu to about 500 El Molo who live around Lake Turkana. Kenya's ethnic groups can be divided into three broad linguistic groups, that is, Bantu, Nilotic and Cushite speakers.

While no ethnic group constitutes a majority of Kenya's citizens, the Kikuyu, makes up only twenty percent of the nation's total population, The five largest tribes- the Luo, Luhyia, Kikuyu, Luo, Kamba and Kalenjin- account for seventy percent. 97.58% of Kenya's citizens are allied with its 32 major native groups. Of these, the Kikuyu, who were most actively involved in the independence and Mau Mau movements, are excessively represented government, public life,professions and business. The Luo people are mainly traders and artisans while the Kamba people are well represented in defense and law enforcement and Kalenjins are mainly farmers.

Inter-tribal rivalries and hatred over Kikuyu dominance in political arena and trade have slowed down national coercion. Among the Kenyan communities the Kisii, Giriama, luo, Kikuyu, Akamba, Kalenjins, Luhya and Ameru are among the communities that participated in the struggle for self-determination in Kenya.

3.4 Sampling Techniques This study used purposive sampling technique was used. Purposive sampling is selecting of a population on the basis of one’s’ own knowledge of the population, its elements, and the nature of one’s research aims16. In this study, the populace was non-randomly selected. The individual characteristics were selected to answer respond to questions about the involvement of selected women in nationalistic politics and the struggle for independence in Kenya, 1920-1963. The researcher was able to select participants based on internal knowledge of said characteristic. This method was useful given that that a small subset was required for this study.

3.5 Data collection procedures The researcher sought for permission from Kisii University of which he was given; he was then given a letter to go to the field. This research was library based and scholarly articles, publications and books were used to source the required information. Therefore, the researcher was given a permit to visit various libraries, that is, public, private and institution based libraries. The internet was also of significance to this study as it had rich information that complemented library sources. Finally the researcher pre-visited the region under study after getting permission from the provincial administration.

16Babbie and Mouton, (1996), The Ultimate Goal of all Science is the Search for Truth, Pretoria: University of Pretoria. 15

3.6 Data analysis and presentation After collecting enough information from both primary and secondary sources it was subjected to research analysis to validate their accuracy through proper editing of the information. Materials that had serious errors were discarded. Library research materials and archival sources were subjected to accurate and careful content analysis for validity purposes. The information was read repeatedly for proper judgment.

This work is chronological in terms of chapters to capture the assessment of women’s involvement in the struggle for independence in Kenya, 1920-1963. The chapter are also arranged according to the objectives outlined their above.

CHAPTER TWO

4.1 THE POSITION OF WOMEN IN KENYA DURING THE COLONIAL PERIOD. Prior to the colonial period in Kenyan the issue of governance was on the hands of the councils of elders, who comprised mostly of elderly men in the community. Women and young girls’ responsibilities were to take care of young children, till the land and also take care of their husbands. Girls were involved in rigorous training on how to become good homemakers and culvators of family land. The only area where women were seen to be empowered was during the sale of the yields from the farm in the market places. In some communities, any decision which touched on the community was purely entrusted on the council of elders in the community. Womens were not included in any decision making in the community as they were seen as weak sexes. Every community in Kenya had council of elders who made major decisions with regard to political matters, economic and social issues. The historiography of women in Kenya can be attributed to the vast venture of colonialism, or from the time of colonial period. This is as a result of the existence of conflicts that arose from femininity and sex roles after colonialism due to the social structures that were put in place during the colonialism. 17 Kenyan men were mostly recognized in political economies, trade and other spheres of life as opposed to women. This greatly undermined the place of women in the Kenyan society and which was seen as a form of oppression on the Kenyan woman. Those communities that collaborated with the Europeans men were the ones who were appointed to collect tax, recruit labour force, and even being employed as workers in towns by the Europeans. There has been biasness between men and women up to this day in terms of the allocation of resources, political positions and even culture discrimination among the Kenyan communities. Kenyan women’s voice against all forms of discrimination is described in terms of the relationship between public and private spheres, or the ‘domestic versus public’ distinction in gender roles. During the colonial period women discrimination in Africa took a very complex path which was ‘grounded’ in traditional culture and implemented through this domestic-public dichotomy. In many African communities, female and male roles were embedded according to the traditional arrangements.

17C. Robertson and I. Berge, (eds.), Women and Class in Africa. Africana Publishing Company.

These drastically changed with the coming of the Europeans and eventual colonization of African continent due to the imposition of western political hegemonies and private enterprise. This altered the dynamism7 of gender roles and sexuality in many colonized countries. This resulted to the historical and contemporary dynamics of the African state, and its approach to gender issues. During the pre-colonial period women were not supposed to own land as it was the preserve of men, and women only were involved during cultivation and harvesting of the produce18.According to Mzee Keraita of Riabore village 19, Gusii women according to their culture were not supposed to speak before men. Even during the colonial period it was men who were supposed to be at the fore front in fighting the Europeans out of their land. Women were supposed to be submissive, bear children, and attend to farm and taking care of the children. But there was one woman who openly opposed the colonial rule in Gusiiland by the name Moraa. Moraa was an inciter and a very brave woman among the Kisii’s. Moraa was also a prophetees as she had prophesized that Abarumbasi (Europeans) could settle in Gusiiland and take their cattle and land and a Gusii by the name Ombati could betray them. That is why the Kisii’s normally use the proverb,’ Chaga osire buna Ombati asirete’ (Die the same way Ombati did).This prophesy later came true in 1907 when the war broke out in Gusiiland and Ombati betrayed Otenyo,’a Gusii warrior’ when he was being looked for by the Europeans for spearing a European20. The Kenyan women can also be viewed from the premises of conversation of struggle, defiance and rivalry. To improve their working conditions at work, these women organized strikes and harvesting boycotts in order to improve their earnings out of the work they did in settler farms.21 This boycotts and protests could be construed to mean that these women were negotiating for space to carry out their own production rights.22 This made the Europeans to view the Kenyan women in a negative way and even looked for ways of taming them.

18O.I with Muchekakaruti, Kitiri village 12/03/2014. 19 O I with Mzee Keraita, Riabore village-Nyamira County 12/03/2014. 20 O I with Mzee Ogeto, Ruora village-Kisii County 01/11/2014. 21 C.Robertson and r I.Berge,(1986),Women and Class in Africa. Africana Publishing Company. 22 A.Wipper, 1989 ‘Kikuyu Women and the Harry Thuku Disturbances: Some Uniformities of Female Militancy.’Africa. 18

The Europeans saw women’s loose moral behaviour as the seat of women’s control over men. This resulted in the unrest among the Europeans as they saw the unreliability of African labour for British agriculture.23 Women in fact, appeared threatening and uncontrollable. In wider African contexts, women’s reactions towards specific localised events which had raised their anger, or earned their disrespect, portrayed the use of sexual insult by women as an effective method of resistance.24 This action showed that women had nothing more to do with the offending person, or group, and that they reject the authority of the person or group who had moved them to behave in such a way. It was this action in 1922, during a protest at the arrest of Harry Thuku, Leader of the East African Association that ignited a riot, resulting in the death of four women leaders. 25 Ardner gives the example of Kom women who have been insulted sexually, calling other women of the village together to encircle the offending culprit, sing abusive songs, accompanied by obscene gestures and to demand recompense. This was usually in the form of a large animal or money. The use of sexual insult was considered to be serious. According to the African communities such insults concern not only the woman directly abused, but all women in the society. Compulsory militant action followed which supersede loyalty to kin and ethnic groups. Women demonstration was for the victims and for themselves as a sexual group.26 The use of sexual insult was a statement that an event of major social disruption had occurred. Its use during the arrest of Harry Thuku highlights this fact. The women were disgusted at the cowardliness of their menfolk’s attitudes toward the colonial administration. By lifting their skirts, women seriously devalued the men of the group, symbolically stating that their inaction had bought shame on the clan, its heritage and its very survival. More than that, these men had lost their right to life. “Women shrug off their garments in an ultimate protest to say “this is where life comes from. I hereby revoke your life.”

23 KNA 12281912/13. Notes on the Nandi. 1907/8, 1254 Nyanza Province Annual Report. 24S.Ardener,(1973) ‘Sexual Insult and Female Militancy.’ Man. New Series. 25A.Wipper, Kikuyu Women.

Thus, by these actions the women questioned the power of moral authority in all its aspects. From the colonial administration point of view, the events of these women reinforced their opinion that women were dangerous, subversive wanting to maintain the beliefs of the past and hence hold back the development of their localities. The construction of women as trouble makers in episodes of blatant public resistance to the colonial regime claimed for these women, at the very least, a presence in the colonial record, and ultimately an image of these women as heroines, fighters for women’s rights and in the context of the Mau Mau period, fighters for an independent state.27 This is a common construction of women in the armies of many independence wars, Zimbabwe, Eritrea, and Sri Lanka for example. In Elkins examination of the women who were imprisoned in ‘The Pipeline’ during the Mau Mau war, not only casts a valuable light on the injustices wrought against these women by the colonial administration, but gives voice to the type of war these women fought. “Everything was gone, my mother my co wife. I lost our cows. They took my husband’s land. I had no shamba. Only two of my children survived. We had been shamed. I felt like I was no longer Kikuyu”.28 For these, women war was a battle waged within domestic life as the British incarcerated and or forced into villages more than one million Kikuyu people. The aim of this villagisation was not only to rupture Kikuyu rural society, but to create domesticated women, with a clean, tidy home life, and involvement in women’s groups where they would build a new community, based on rearing children and home care. There was to be no re-establishment of the ‘pesky, rebellious’ women who demanded respect from their menfolk, and protested outside government offices demanding better wages or joining the forest fighters or political groups agitating for political change. Kikuyu women would become small time shamba farmers, no longer controlling the produce they grew or more importantly, enjoying the economic and political power that this farming brought. It was to be the end of women’s moral power, knowledge and its link to fertility. The resistance of women to the European administration that ruled over different parts of the African continent, concentrated around the constructs and responsibilities of the marriage institution.

27C. A.Presley (1998),Mau Mau’s Daughter. A life History. Wambui Waiyaki Otieno. Lynne Rienner. London. 28E.S.Odhiambo le J.Atieno & Lonsda,(2003), Mau Mau &Nationhood. James Currey. London. 20

In most of the African countries including Kenya, it is realized that when the men folk went to work on the European farms and also in towns, women performed all the duties that concerned them and those of men. These dynamics provided a fertile ground for women to venture into activities that concerned them more and which did not depend on men. These experiences brought into sharp relief the issue of what constituted marriage, the expectations that were associated with it and in particular the complexity of women’s status in relation to that of men. Men needed their womenfolk to hold households and farms together whilst they dealt with the pressures of the colonial administration. Daughters, widows, and wives became the link between the past world of land entitlements based on marriage alliances, and patronage, and the accepted understandings of male status, lineage and clan stability. The colonial regime colluded in this process with chiefs, headmen and important indigenous political players in order to keep the peace, and help establish British control and rule of law. Importantly, women, in taking charge of farms, turned this on its head, challenging the moral authority that underpinned constructions of gender and the gender relations that positioned women as the guardians of their husbands’ land and assets. Allman, in examining colonial Asante marriage disputes that appeared before the courts, found that the women had very strong notions of what constituted marriage: ‘if men were able to provide the basics of maintenance: (women) maintained that a husband’s exclusive sexual rights [with] his wife were contingent upon his provision of subsistence support’.29 In colonial Kenya, both unmarried and married women took up trading, joined Christian churches, left their homes and were routinely rounded up, or arrested and sentenced to prison, or sent back to their villages because their actions threatened accepted notions of what constituted marriage and women’s behaviour. Kenyan men in turn, states Peterson, concerned that wives amassing money around them would undermine husbands’ virility with sorcery. Therefore, it made sense to be keen of women who had cash, as women who traded were known as harlots.30

29J.Allman(1996), ‘Rounding up Spinsters: Gender Chaos and Unmarried Women in Colonial Asante.’ Journal of African History. 30 A.Heyer,(2006), ‘The Gender of Wealth: Markets and Power in Central Kenya.’ Review of African Political Economy. 21

Conversely, women condemned wage-earning men as impotent because they were unable to fulfill marital duties, and wasted household resources on cigarettes and beer.31 Churches offered a way out of this impotency, laziness and marital strife by providing discipline, salvation and god. Moreover, women and men who joined Christian churches found a degree of certainty to balance out the moral and social chaos caused by land loss, wage employment and the evils of urban life.

31D.Peterson, Wordy Women. 22

CHAPTER THREE

4.2THE IMPACTS OF COLONIAL POLICIES ON KENYAN WOMEN

During the colonial period the Europeans put up measures to tame men and women and to easily get them to provide cheap labour in the European farms. Africans were confined in the European created camps to monitor their movement and to seal them from supplying food, clothes and other suppliers to the African fighters.

During the colonial period, the British introduced taxation, forced labour and land alienation as forms of economic exploitation. All these policies were put in place to ensure that there was constant supply of labour on the European farms. These colonial policies either were majorly dominated or centred on the whites who owned plantations Kenya. It also centred on agricultural production, peasant commodity production, export production, rail and road transport and communication, education and health. All these services were meant to benefit the Europeans as they established settlement in Kenya. In implementing these policies and also formulation, it was done in bits during the colonial period. These stages as discussed below were the period prior to 1920, this period that was occasioned by the outbreak of the First World War. The second stage was the interwar period which ushered in the great depression between 1929 and 1934, and also the third stage being the Second World War 1939-45 and the post War era. In executing these policies the period was characterized by a number of contradictions with which the colonial state had to deal with, but with no much success32. There was a conflict of interests between the people who inhabited in the towns and who were regarded as capitalists and the colonial state in Kenya. British merchants and financiers often carried the day. There were differences also with regard to, Indians, Africans and European settler interests were also at variation within the colony. Customarily British settlers in Kenya got directions from the governors in Kenya as opposed to other groups. In addition, because of other interests, these policies were also gradually done away with and restructured differently with the restructuring of the colony. It was often cheaper, to use pre-capitalist forces and relations of production and also to place the market under the colonial state’s control.

32 J.Lonsdale,(1986),Explanations of the Mau Mau Revolt, Kenya 1952-1956: Johannesburg.

This was done with greater, “enthusiasm during the post-Second World War period more popularly known as the ‘second colonial occupation”. Colonial commodity production, led to widespread environmental degradation because of inappropriate practice. Forest concessions, led to massive deforestation and colonial enterprises destroyed local industries in Kenya.

By and large, the colonial economic policies in Kenya were involved in incorporating the pre- capitalist communities into the colonial and international economic systems which persisted into the post-colonial period.

The arrival of the Europeans in Kenya and the settler economy negatively affected Kikuyu women because the loss of land meant a loss of access to and authority over land. Due to land alienation kikuyu women found themselves lacking a variety of soils needed to carryout farming in small holdings. Conventionally, some part of the land were associated with the growth of certain crops hence the variety of soils was necessary to ensure availability of food throughout. Still more, the loss of land meant that women were confined to smaller pieces of land for farming. Continuous cultivation of these lands led to soil depletion of soil nutrients hence affecting crop yield. The economic productivity of women was affected because of land alienation carried out by the Europeans. As the colonial rule continued to embed itself in African continent, the professed importance of women’s agricultural contribution to the household was reduced. This is because their vital role in food production was overshadowed by the more lucrative male-controlled cash crop cultivation.

The establishment of the colonial rule in Kenya, affected women negatively by the introducing wage labour. Because women provided wage labour to the settler farms, women were directly affected by this policy. As mama Kaindi explains33district officers and African chiefs were commanded by the colonial government to recruit women and young labourers for personal and public works. Such directives affected women because it drew them away from their normal economic activities. 34In some stuations labour demands for Europeans were most deep during the climax labour necessities for their own agricultural production. As Mzee

33O.I with Kaindi Esther, Kunene village, Nyambene. 20/03/2014. 34 O.I with Kivutia Kairuria, Manyatta. 24/03/2014. 24

Kairuria explains, ‘in the Rungwe tea industry and Mbosi coffee industry, women and children were the major source of casual labour during labour peaks.’

This led to a conflict in women as they were forced to leave their tasks to work in the European farms. Remarkably, this forced labour was accompanied by acts of sexual and physical abuse committed by African men against their own women. Therefore, working on the plantations further compromised women’s well being and ability to be as productive as they previously had been35.

Introduction of wage labour also affected women during the colonial era because men were forced to move to towns to work there hence denying women this important labour. The introduction of the colonial economy by the Europeans forced men to search for employment in European economic ventures. This made men to denounce labour responsibilities they used to have in the traditional African economy.36 Women realized that not only did they have to execute their traditional tasks as women but the loss of male labour forced them to take on the duties previously carried out by men.

The male labour loss was seldom in the form of male migrant labour where men left rural areas to seek employment in towns established by the Europeans. This impacted on women both economically and socially. Since men kept on migrating to urban areas to look for jobs, women found that they had to hire labour to substitute labour lost through migration of men to towns through hiring. In Tanganyika for instance, hired labour cost, Tshs 22 per month with food being rationed.37

Challenges posed by men migrating to towns to look for employment were exacerbated by the dynamics in bride wealth arrangements. In many stuations bride wealth had changed from being a fee made in livestock to a cash exchange. As a result, bride wealth was exaggerated and became a way of putting financial worth on the bride’s wealth. Hence, instead of the bride wealth process being one that acknowledged the woman’s worth, it became one that judged the woman’s worth.

35 O.I with Wangui Wanjiru Muthu-thi-ini, Kiharo village. 01/04/2014. 36O.I with Kainda wa Mainda, Kunene village-meru. 03/04/2014. 37O.I with Mama Wairimu, Kiamwangi village-Kiambu 01/04/2014. 25

This price rises in bride wealth meant that most young men were unable to pay dowry and thus had to go to urban areas in order to earn enough to make the payment. Now women lost their husband’s economic support at the inception of marriage thereby putting them in a disempowered economic state from the beginning of marriage.

Fourthly, taxes were introduced by the colonial economy38 and in most cases these taxes were to be paid by men to the colonial government. In some cases, though, taxes were also imposed on women who viewed it as a nuisance for them since they did not have enough economic responsibilities of supporting the family in the absence of males.

The Europeans also introduced cash crop economy which negatively affected women. From the arrival of Europeans Africans were not allowed to grow cash crops because the Europeans feared that the indigenous African agricultural practices would spread crop disease to their crops. Africans were only allowed to grow cash crops between (1950-1963), and many Africans grasped this opportunity to grow cash crops, these also adversely affected women.39

Men controlled the cash crops and their earnings40 while women were to continue with subsistence farming except in the cases where subsistence crop became cash crops with a market value. In these circumstances men took control of the crop’s proceeds although women continued to do all the work around its production.

As the cash crop economy took root, the colonial administration forced the new cash crops on men and because of their market value that is tea, sisal, coffee, and cotton. Although women were expected to grow foodcrops, their labour was also needed in the growing of cash crops and this doubled the agricultural load on women41.

In addition, the introduction farm mechanization, especially the plough had a negative effect on women. To begin with, the plough enabled men to cultivate more land and this in return left the back-breaking, labour work of planting and weeding to women.

38 I.O with WaitheraWangoi, Narumoru Village-Nyeri. 28/03/2014.

39M. P. K.Sorrenson,(1968), Origins of European Settlement in Kenya Nairobi: Oxford University Press. 40 O.I with MukaomaithaNjeri, Narumoru-Nyeri 18/03/2014. 41 O.I with MuchekaWangoi, Narumoru village Nyeri 18/03/2014. 26

This increased women’s load. The plough also made men more directly involved in crop cultivation hence increasing the men’s right over profits earned from the cash crop.

To most men, this meant they could apportion with the money earned without consulting women who did most of the work in earning the money.

Although women were working more, their economic dependence on men was increasing42. Furthermore, colonialism led to the complete loss of access to land by women because the colonial regime brought with them the idea of private ownership of land. Women were completely excluded from this ownership.

Berger explains that in Kenya, the Swynnerton Plan of 1954 began a process of, ‘registering and consolidation land and granting titles to individuals, almost all of whom have been men while excluding women.’ This policy weakened rural women’s autonomy in the economy43. It is clear that colonial authority had distressing economic effects on women. As the Europeans occupied African nations, women found their labour being exploited in the provision of labour. This decreased women’s autonomy and their levels of dependence on males decreased mostly in central Kenya.

Colonialism also impacted on women on social and political spheres. 44 In the first place, socio-political effects of colonialism on women were the concept of the Victorian woman which the colonizers came along with. The colonial aithority came with the belief that women were to remain creatures of the private sphere. Women were to pre-occupy themselves with domestic chores and leave the real work of ruling and running the nation in terms of politics and economics to the men. The role and position of the pre-colonial African women did not conform to this concept of a woman. The execution of policies from this myopic thinking about women led to the erosion of women’s position in society.

42M. P. K.Sorrenson,(1967), Land Reform in Kikuyu Country, Nairobi: Oxford University Press.

43M. P. K. Sorrenson, (1968), Origins of European Settlement in Kenya Nairobi: Oxford University Press. 44C. A. Presley, (1985), "Labor unrest among Kikuyu women in colonial Kenya," in C. Robertson and I. 27

Male migration extremely affected women especially in rural areas45. In Kenya, male migrancy nearly halved the male population such that there were nearly twice as many women than men in the rural areas. The removal of males from African society destroyed the African family. Male contribution in their traditional roles in rites, ceremonies, and rituals was distorted.

The roles of old men in African societies of providing guidance and steering young men were deserted as many went to towns. Women could not rely on the social support and protection men offered them and in many cases women became became the de facto heads of household. The problem is that the increase in women’s social responsibilities did not lead to a rise in their status, if anything it led to an erosion of their status.

During the colonial era, African patriarchy, and the colonial government to a larger extent, tried to restrict movement of women in a bid to control their sexuality.

Colonial policy pushed men into migrant labour leaving women stranded in the rural areas with an increasingly burdensome workload.46 As conditions in the country side deteriorated, the cities beckoned. While women had little chance of waged employment in town, their opportunities to earn money existed.’ These led to more women migrating to urban areas but were met with firm antagonism in the form of disapproval of African patriarchs. Both African men and colonial officers didn’t like female migration because they felt it led to moral decadence among women and female indiscipline. In particular African patriarchs were worried with restraining women’s movement and thus sexuality for a number of reasons. Firstly, they wanted to retain the purity of their clan because when women moved away from home, the patriarchs had less control over whom the women married with. Hence, African men wanted to keep women under their control so as to guarantee endogamous marriage by the women. On the other hand, African men realised that if women left home and got married in their new area of residence, the groom often did not pay the bride wealth, since there was no social pressure on couples in urban areas to pay bride wealth. African patriarchs began losing a great deal of income in the form of unpaid bride wealth, thus, African patriarchs became pre-occupied with controlling female mobility. Europeans also

45 O I with Kitula Kiilu, Kurama village-Kiambu, 25/03/2014. 46 O.I with Mzee Keraita, Riabore-Nyamira County 11/04/2014. 28 became afraid because some African men left their employment early due to domestic problems that arose in the form of accusations of adultery and wives leaving them for other men. This made the Europeans to assist the African patriarchs out of initial mutual benefit. 47

Nonetheless, rural women’s movement was inhibited hence limiting the social freedom they used to enjoy. In the past women had participated in activities that required quite a bit of movement, for instance, among the Kikuyu women enjoyed freedom of movement in order to allot of their duties effectively because they engaged in trading activities. Colonialism caused some women to lose the freedom they once enjoyed and on the other hand, because of the Victorian concept of women held by the colonialist and embraced by the African patriarch, women were excluded from the new administrative system.

In the past, most African societies had a dual sex political system which allowed for substantial female representation and involvement in governance and administration. 48

It was found out from the field that sexist and misogynistic colonial officials made no provisions in the initial administrative design. It is often only with women protests as was the case of the Aba women’s war and the actions of Mekatilili was Menza, that a meagre number of woman’s positions were created in the colonial set up.

This marginalization of women led to attrition in the position and influence of women in society. As this new status quo was maintained, African men actually began to believe that women were incapable of leading the nations. This defective view is still held by men to this day and is reflected in the meager appointments women receive to parliament and ministerial positions.

47 O.I with Mama Nyanchama, Bomobea village-Kisii County 03/04/2014.

48 O.I with Mama Sabina, Montine village-Nyamira County 01/04/2014.

CHAPTER FOUR

4.3 THE ROLE PLAYED BY SELECTED WOMEN IN THE STRUGGLE FOR INDEPENDENCE IN KENYA.

Before engaging in comprehensive analysis on the position played by women in the struggle for self governance this study first embarked on women personalities who contributed in the freedom struggle. Between 1907-1908 the Abagusii led a uprising led by a Kisii Prophetess named Moraa48. Moraa prophesied the coming of the European rule, and warned that if Whites were permitted to stay, they would colonise the Abagusii people. Moraa was an inciter among the Kisii’s and with this respect she incited the Abagusii against the Omorumbasi (European)49. Moraa feared that the Europeans could take their land and confiscate their animals which were their livelihood. According to Mama Sabina50 of Montine village she says, “at one time Moraa told men when they feared that, is it that we don’t have men and if you have failed let us exchange clothes I wear men’s cloth and I give you women’s, give me the spear also and aloud she shouted. Mama Sabina narrates still that Otenyo the famous Gusii warrior was challenged and took up the spear and timed Omorumbasi and speared him but never killed him”. Later on the Europeans reorganized themselves and killed many Kisii’s which Mama Sabina referred as the Gusii genocide51. With this regard therefore Moraa organized the Gusii people to revolt against British rule. This left G.A.S Northcote, a British officer in Kenya wounded by one of Prophetess Moraa’s troop. Later Moraa was captured by the Europeans and taken to Kisimayu where possibly according to Mama Sabina her head was chopped off. During the Kisii revolt on the other hand a woman by the name Kemunto contributed immensely to fighting the Europeans. Kemunto was against also land alienation, confiscation of livestock and burning of Kisii’s houses by the Europeans52. Kemunto raised an alarm whenever she saw the Europeans.

49 O.I with Mzee Keraita, Riabore-Nyamira County 11/04/2014. 50 O.I with Mama Sabina, Montine village-Nyamira County 01/04/2014. 51 O.I with Mzee Ogeto, Ruora Village-Kisii County 01/04/2014. 52 O.I with Mama Nyanchama, Bomobea village-Kisii County 03/04/2014. 30

Uuuuui! Chiombe chiaito chiachire! Chitangere rogoro na moino! Omorumbasi oirire chiombe chiaito! Uuuuui! Chiombe chiaito chiachire emoraire minto!52 Translation Uuuuui! Our cattle have been stolen! Let us keep watch from all sides! The Europeans have taken our cattle! Uuuuuui! Our cattle have been stolen, let us not sleep!

The above song according to Mama Bosibori Salome is an example of Abagusii scream by women whenever they saw the Europeans. The above song gave the Gusii men encouragement and motivation and to be vigilant to the Europeans mischievous movements. It should also be remembered that it was Moraa who introduced “Enyamumbo cult”53 which was mistaken by the Europeans as a religious movement and many Kisii’s joined this cult. During Enyamumbo the Kisii’s congregated as if they were praying but their aim was to confuse the Europeans so that exchange ideas of the forceful occupation of the white man in their land. Mama Naom Nyanchama notes that, the Kisii’s had special women called ‘Chinting’ana’ (Chief’s women) and this also motivated them to press on with the fight54.

The Giriama were one of the most organized and successful colonizing communities of 19th century East Africa. The Giriama settlement spread during the nineteenth century to cover a great area from a relatively small area around the ritual center known as Kaya. This region covers the hinterland of Mombasa and Malindi, crossing the Sabaki River in the 1890s. This process of expansion was driven by a conjuncture of conditions. This includes long-standing tensions over resource control within the Giriama society. This was accentuated by the new opportunities for accumulation created by the rapidly expanding coastal economy and the growing availability of servile labor, female, and male.

53 O.I with Mzee Namu, Abagusii cultural welfare-Keroka 04/04/2014. 54 O.I with Mama Nyabeta, Bogesisnsi village Nyamira County 04/04/2014. 31

The growth which took place northward took the form of a steady establishment of new families by men. This sought to amass new dependents of their own, and to affirm a control over these dependents that could not be challenged by others either their own kin, or the "gerontocracy" of other elders who claimed power through association with the kaya. The ambitious expansion northward of these pioneers was encouraged through engagement with coastal society. Similarly, this was undergoing a period of northward expansion, driven by the growth of commerce with the hinterland in ivory, aromatics, and other products. The growing regional demand for foodstuffs encouraged the opening up of new areas of slave-based grain cultivation.

During the early years of European rule in Kenya, this growth continued. This made the early administrators to strike an accommodation with the most successful accumulators of the Giriama society that served the very limited needs of the early European rule. By the second decade of the 20th century, the demands of British rule had begun to clash with the model of expansion and individual accumulation on which the nineteenth- century expansion had relied on. The supply of slaves and runaway slaves from the coast had withered after the obliteration of slavery and slave trade. British administrators at the coastal region were more and more concerned over the state of the coastal economy. Because of this scenario the coastal people sought to promote new plantation ventures, as well as supplying labor for the growing needs of Mombasa town. Proof taken for the Native Labor Commission in (1912-13) identified the Giriama as an important potential source of waged labor. In October 1912 a new British official, Arthur Champion, was appointed to improve the supply of labor from among the Giriama. Arthur did this partly through the exercise of extralegal coercion and hounding, which was commonly used in early colonial states to "encourage" labor recruitment. It was also done through the collection of taxes, which would force young men to seek waged work. Champion tried to work through elder Giriama men but demands for tax and for young men to go out to work struck directly at the pattern of accumulation on which these men relied.

This made them to seek to acquire dependents, not to send them away to work for others. British restrictions on the ivory trade were equally unwelcome. Champion found himself and his camp effectively boycotted by the Giriama community.55

This embargo was encouraged by the activities of a woman called Mekatilele among the Giriama. Mekatilili drew on an established tradition of female prophecy to speak out against the British and who encouraged many Giriama men and women to swear oaths against cooperation with the administration. This was a complex phenomenon, for it drew on an established accommodation between women’s prophecy and the power of kaya elders. It also exploited tensions between old and young and between kaya elders and the accumulators who pioneered the expansion to the north, as well as on revolting to colonial rule. Soon Mekatilele was detained and sent up-country. Later mekatilili escaped and returned to the coastal region but again she was rearrested and removed again. For the meantime, in retaliation for the oaths and for some rather gentle displays of antagonism, the colonial government first closed the kaya in December 1913 and then burned and dynamited it in August 1914. British administrators were quick to understand Giriama resistance as motivated by prophecy, oaths, and the power of the kaya. This probably reveals less about Giriama motivations than it does about colonial perceptions of male household authority as essentially good and stable, and magical or prophetic power as fundamentally rebellious. In reality, the Giriama resistance to European demands emanated from the devastating impact of colonial administations’ policies and demands upon the authority of ambitious household heads.56

The destruction of the kaya coincided with the outbreak of World War I. The outbreak of this war led to renewed efforts to recruit Giriama men, this time round as porters for the European armed forces. The Giriama resentment was further inflamed by European’s plan to throw out the Giriama who had settled north of the Sabaki. This was to punish Africans for noncooperation and to deny them access of land and eventually force them into waged labor. In an act of routine colonial brutality, one of Champion’s police, searching for young men, raped a woman and but was himself killed by the Giriama in revenge.

55M. P. K Sorrenson, (1968), Origins of European Settlement in Kenya Nairobi: Oxford University Press. 56M. P. K Sorrenson, (1968), Origins of European Settlement in Kenya Nairobi: Oxford University Press. 33

British officials launched a punitive assault on the Giriama, using two full companies of the King’s African Rifles because of panic and fear of a Giriama rising. This made the British to find themselves in possession of an unusually powerful coercive force. This counter attack led to 150 Giriamas being killed, and hundreds of houses torched. The British officials found it had to bring the campaign to an end since there were no leaders with whom to deal and British policy had largely eroded the power of elder men. Finally this campaign was called off in January 1915. There were no military fatalities. A continued armed police presence in the Giriama land and the threat of further military reprisals ensured the clearance of the trans-Sabaki Giriama, the collection of a punitive fine, and the recruitment of a contingent of Giriama porters for the Second World War.57

After returning to the area in 1919, Mekatilili and a group of elder men took up residence in the kaya. This continued to be a much-contested source of ritual power, but the idealized gerontocracy of early nineteenth century society was never reconstructed, and ritual and political power among the Giriama has remained diffuse to date. The trans-Sabaki was settled again in the 1920s, but Giriama society never regained the relative prosperity of the late nineteenth century they had.

Among the Agikuyu community there were numerous women who aggressively or inactively participated in the Mau Mau war. According Corfield,58 Kikuyu women joined the nationalist organizations to propmote their economic status in the community. On the other hand, they wanted to gain admittance to the political process, to assist the return of alienated land and also to further their education. Muthoni wa Gachie was a member of Kenya Central Association and Kenya African Union in the 1940s. Gachie also recounted women's motives as being political in origin. From the oral testimonies obtained, Muthoni wa Gachie joined Mau Mau in April 1945 so that she could become a politician of the country. Jointly she was with a group of women from the whole of Central Province, that is, many of them were already members even before she could join the struggle. The basis for joining the struggle as she notes was to make the Europeans kicked out of the country. As per the oral testimonies Wa Gachies’ position was to cook for the visitors.

57C.BRANTLEY, ‘ MEKATILILI. 58 C.BRANTLEY, ‘ MEKATILILI. 34

She also contributed for Mzee Kenyatta to go to Europe to know how to become sovereign59. Wa Gachie was also taken to prison when the war started and in 1958 she was jailed three times and in 1959 once at Athii River and then later taken to Embu.

Among the Kikuyu also there was Field Marshal Muthoni who had an indisputable air of authority about her. Field Marshal rose up in ranks in the Mau Mau Movement because of her courage. With a lot of bitterness, Mau Mau freedom fighter Muthoni Kirima brilliantly remembers all about the Mau Mau war like it happened yesterday60.

Muthoni narrates her time in the Mau Mau movement; “My father worked for a settler. That is where I was brought up. Once you lived with them, you had to fight. We felt it was better to die in the forest fighting them than to live without our freedom. We wanted our land and our freedom but I have nothing to be proud of today,” says Muthoni. The Field Marshal recalls everything and how Dedan Kimathi died61. Muthoni continues to say that the struggle for freedom is like a competitive match. “We were the team; we played valiantly, sacrificially, against the opposing team. We sweated, sacrificed our lives and families, but what do we have to show for it?” she poses. She adds: “Nothing, the glory went to the other party, the spectators and traitors, it is the children of Mau Mau and other freedom fighters that are jobless. They are the ones who live as squatters yet we are the ones who went to the forest.” Muthoni remembers that during the Mau Mau war, there was no hatred between black Kenyans, not even with those that worked for the white settlers. This was due to lack of knowledge that they worked for the British and supported them. She adds that even the Europeans were not the enemies of the black Africans by virtue of the difference in skin colour but simply for taking away their rich fertile land as well as introducing draconian and oppressing laws to the Africans. Muthoni says that freedom fighters were betrayed while they were in the forest. This was an injustice that she argues is yet to be addressed locally by the Kenyan Government or by the British government to date. While they fought they risked their lives in the forest, another strategic war was taking place in the political arena.

59 F.Corfield,(1960), The origins and growth of Mau Mau: an Historical Survey, Nairobi: Kenya. 60 O.I with Kairegi Wanjiru, Kairuria village-Runyenjes 25/04/2014. 61 O.I with Muthoni Wanjiru, Muthu-thi-ini village Nyeri 28/04/2014. 35

Political Parties were being formed to fight for the rights of Kenya all the way to Lancaster House. Their educated men were agitating for the rights of the black man in the government, through constitutional ammendments. Even if their approach was not violent, some of them were inspirational to the Mau Mau movement but they distanced themselves from other Mau Mau fighters after independence in1963.62 Muthoni says after self-rule, freedom fighters freely gave up their arms and returned to their villages. As they were in the forest fighting the enemy, land consolidation had taken place in 1960 and that is how many of freedom fighters were left landless.63 Another Mau Mau heroine Jane Muthoni Mara was born around 1939 at Nguguini in the Embu District, and is now 74 years old64. In 1954, when she was about 15 years old, Mara was taken from her home, accused of being a Mau Mau adherent and she was arrested. Mara was transported to Gatithi Screening Camp, and while there she was taken to a tent and interrogated and interrogators compellingly inserted a glass bottle full of hot water into her genitals. This kind of torture was supervised by a white administrator and was administered to so many other women. Mara knew of several women who were gravely injured as a result of this abuse. Mara was then transferred from camp to camp where she was thoroughly beaten with sticks and whips and deprived of food and water. Mara knew of so many people who died in the camps because of the abuse they received. Finally she was released in 1957. Jane narrates her torment in her own words in her witness statement, an extract of which is below: “Suddenly there were four guards hovering around me. I was then pinned down to the floor by one man when held my shoulders. "Two other men held each arm and one man prised open and held my thighs apart. Edward was sitting on a chair directly in front of my spread legs and was pressing on my bare feet with his spiky army boots. "I was screaming and resisting and trying to wriggle and free myself from the men who were holding me down. Suddenly Edward produced a glass soda bottle. Waikanja told him to push the bottle into my genitalia which he did. I felt an agonizing pain and then realised that the glass bottle contained very hot water. "Edward literally forced the bottle into me with the sole of his foot while Waikanja was looking on and directing him.”

62 O.I with Jane Wairimu, Gichagi-ni village Kiambu 20/03/2014. 63 O.I with Wangechi wa Mutaro, Mombo village Murang’a 21/03/2014. 64 O. withI Gitu wa Kahengeri, Nguguini- Embu District 28/04/2014. 36

I was in so much pain and I could not stop crying and screaming. I felt completely and completely violated by this sexual abuse. Despite all this horrible torture I continued to insist that I had not taken an oath. "The ordeal lasted for about 30 minutes and it was very painful. While I was in the tent, I saw this act being done to the other three women I with. I had never seen anything so atrocious and frightening in all my life like this one.

"The abuse has affected my whole life and I relive the events I lived through on a regular basis. I do not understand why I was treated with such brutality for simply having provided food to the Mau Mau. I killed no one, I harmed no one, and all I wanted to do was to help those who were fighting for the dignity and freedom of our people. I want the British citizens of today to know what their forefathers did to me and to so many others. These crimes cannot go unpunished and forgotten.”

Virginia Wambui Otieno was a Gikuyu woman but married by S.M. Otieno, a prominent Luo lawyer. Wambui was arrested for her attachment in mobilizing the women's wing of the Mau Mau's riots. Towards the end of the State of Emergency that took place in 1952, the British colonial government detained her and sent her to a detention camp at the coast. Among the Talai, a community which has been forgotten for long had a woman freedom fighter by the name Taibagoi Bartiony. The death of Margaret Tabaigoi Bartiony, passed unnoticed. Her name may not ring a bell in the ears of many Kenyans, but Tabaigoi’s contribution to the defeat of the British colonialists should earn her a place in the country’s Hall of Fame. Tabaigoi was the daughter-in-law of the legendary Nandi freedom fighter Koitalel arap Samoei who was a revered Orkoiyot (Seer) from the Talai community. British enemy Tabaigoi was instrumental in holding together the Talai community as their fathers and sons were sought after, detained and killed by the British colonialists. 65 Due to their divine powers as seers, the Talai became enemy number one of the British who viewed them as a threat to their colonial administration60. Before they ventured into Nandi, Koitalel saw in a pot a long snake spitting fire and smoke invading. His father Kipnyolei Arap Turugat would later interpret it.

65M. P. K Sorrenson, (1968), Origins of European Settlement in Kenya Nairobi: Oxford University Press.

His vision came true, only that it was the British who invaded Nandi and built a railway with trains (snake) that helped them colonise the area. Koitaleel and his brothers then launched a resistance that saw them leave home to fight the British although many ended up detained and killed. The women, like Tabaigoi, were left behind to fend for the families and this they did with extraordinary strength and courage. Tabaigoi’s step son, David arapSaina, recalled how the late Tabaigoi would play hide and seek with the British colonialists who sought after boys and men from the Talai community to annihilate them. “She would hide them because the British had appropriately branded them wizards and sorcerers to create more enemies against the Clan (Talai) including the host Nandi community,” he said. Saina recalls an incident when Tabaigoi was spiriting boys from the community into hiding when white settlers pounced on them demanding to know whether the boys were from the Talai clan. “She confidently told them off saying they were Nandi and were on an excursion. However on further prodding, the women who were with Tabaigoi got intimidated and gave them away leading to their detention. The British then started a plan to separate the older generation of the Talai with the younger ones, detaching them to have the latter lose identity. “They took the young ones to Luo land to integrate them with the community there while leaving the older generation in detention areas in Nandi,” Saina adds with a faraway look. George Samoei Kemboi, a grandson of Koitaleel arap Samoei, recalls his mother throwing him over to his aunt after they ran into a roadblock.66 “We were going to rejoin my father, Barsirian arap Manyei who had escaped Nandi to go to Laikipia when we ran into the British along the way,” he said. Instinctively, his mother asked the aunt to quickly go through the check and catch the baby boy she would throw on the side of the vehicle they were travelling in. The aunt caught Kemboi and secretly slid with him through the dragnet to return to Nandi as the rest proceeded to Laikipia. “Had I been discovered to be a Talai, worse still from the Koitalel family, we would not be here sharing this story,” said Kemboi, 59. Kipchoge Arap Chomu, Secretary of the Koitalel family in charge of Logistics and Research, said apart from shielding the boy child like it was in the Bible during the birth of Jesus, the women also acted as spies.

66B.Rutto,(2009), Kenya’s Talai; The end of a dynasty. Pan-African voices, Kenya.

When men from the clan were arrested and hounded into detention camps, Chomu said it was women like Tabaigoi who gathered intelligence on the British. “They were allowed to visit their husbands and sons in detention and they would tell them what the British were planning and doing out there,” he explained. This helped the men plan how they would counter the white settlers. Chomu added that some women from the community even faked their identity and sought employment in British families and the colonial Government so as to spy on them. “And when the men planned detention breaks, the women would help sneak in weapons undetected to the detained Talai men,” he said. Tabaigoi’s granddaughter, Judy Koskei said her grandmother was widowed at an early age, but stood firm and gallantly soldiered on, protecting and catering for her children. “At one time after she was released from detention, she escaped further harassment and imprisonment with her family to Mt Elgon on the Uganda side,” she explained. After Koitalel’s death, life became unbearable for his immediate family as the colonialists hunted them down. Tabaigoi would later find her way back to Kenya after the British had forgotten about her and sought employment as a Prison Warden in 1952.She used proceeds from the job to educate our parents, especially the girls since the boys were either in detention or hiding with the men,” said Koskei. Tabaigoi had nine children and through the great injustices meted out to her by virtue of her being married to the Talai clan, four of them passed on.67 Sytune wa Kithuke was the Ukambani prophetess who used a dance called Kilumi in 1911 to mobilize the Akamba to protest against British colonialism. This dance was traditionally performed by medicinemen to send away evil spirits. Sytune mobilized the Akamba people and urged them not to pay taxes or provide labour to the Europeans. Later Sytune was arrested and exiled to Kismayu.

67 B.Rutto,(2009), Kenya’s Talai; The end of a dynasty. Pan-African voices, Kenya.

CHAPTER FIVE

4.4 ROLE OF WOMEN IN THE STRUGGLE FOR KENYA’S INDEPENDENCE

During the 1950s an anti-colonial struggle took place in Kenya between Africans who had been colonized by the British. The causes of the revolt dated back to the very early days of colonial occupation. From 1895, when Kenya was declared to be a crown colony of Great Britain, Africans were dispossessed of their land, forced to pay taxes to the new colonial state, and compelled to become low-paid laborers for European settlers and various government enterprises. In addition to economic and political changes, the colonial government, often encouraged by European missionaries, introduced social changes that supplanted customary laws affecting marriage, education, inheritance, land ownership, and religious practices. By the end of World War II a vigorous nationalist movement had emerged in Kenya.68

This movement was connected to the continent-wideanti-colonial movement because Africans in the colonized areas were eager to eliminate European hegemonic control of their politics, economies, and cultures. Kenya was also one of the African colonies that, like Algeria, South Africa, Mozambique, Angola, Namibia, and Guinea-Bissau, had been established as a white settler colony. The presence of white settlers added a special dynamic to colonialism in Kenya. Because the government was controlled by its European settler population, with the exception of South Africa, there was more race-based discrimination in Kenya than in other British colonies. In fact, the conditions in Kenya were very similar to the apartheid conditions in South Africa, where black Africans were forced to carry passes in order to be outside of their assigned areas, were socially segregated, barred from jobs that were reserved for Europeans and Asian immigrants, and unlike Europeans in Kenya, were unable to participate in politics through voting.

68F.Majdalany,(1963),State of Emergency: The Story of Mau Mau, Boston.

African militants began to take oaths towards the end of 1940s that required initiates to swear to be loyal to their fellow black Africans; this was meant to maintain the secrets of the Mau Mau fighters who were to fight the Europeans. Because of widespread inductions, mass meetings, and attacks on African loyalists and Europeans, the government declared a state of emergency in October 1952. Thousands of Africans including men and women fled to the forests and established Mau Mau guerilla bases. Over 10,000 Africans lost their lives during the rebellion. Many more were imprisoned during the war that lasted from 1952 until 1956. Although military operations ended in 1956, men and women rebels remained in detention up until 1959 when the imprisonment system ended.

The Europeans also jailed many women because they were armed combatants, as well as noncombatants who performed support functions for the rebels who lived in guerilla camps in the inaccessible forest zones in Kenya’s Central Province. Many other women experienced short- term detention and interrogation because they were Mau Mau rebels or accused of being Mau Mau rebels. A special prison wing was built to hold them. Hardcore prisoners were deported to prisons in coastal areas. During their imprisonment, detainees experienced abuses that included physical assault, sexual assault, food deprivation, and other acts of torture. These became so infamous that the British Parliament investigated and reformed the system towards the end of 1959.Outside of the prisons, the Mau Mau rebellion was ultimately crushed in 1954 through interrogations, roundups, and villigization program. Villagization involved the destruction of tradition villages and the forced relocation of the Kikuyu population to new villages that were surrounded by barbed wire fences and armed guards. Although the villagiza-tion policy had the ostensible goal of land consolidation, its real aim was to cut off the support Mau Mau rebels obtained from village populations. A crucial part of that support comprised the network of women who smuggled food and arms to the rebel camps in the forested areas of the three Kikuyu districts. 69

Like other African colonies Kenya was able to gain her self-determination. The colonial government spent millions of money repressing the insurgence and was rocked by a scandal involving the murder of political detainees.

69Kenya Colony and Protectorate (KCP),(1952.), Community Development Department (CDD), Annual Report (AR). 41

In addition, other British colonies experienced vigorous populist-based nationalist movements. For Kenya, the failed Mau Mau rebellion was a key factor. Although the rebels lost and thousands were killed, the surviving rebels and others credited the movement with being the impetus for negotiations for independence that began in 1960. Jomo Kenyatta, who was the leader of the Kenya African Union and suspected to be the leader of Mau Mau movement by the British, was released from detention in August 1961; when attained her independence from the British in 1963, Kenyatta became the head of the new African government of Kenya. The role of women in the struggle for independence in Kenya was recognized by the new administration. As much as the new regime did not restructure laws that underprivileged women, some were able to take uo political roles such as running for office on the district and national level. Women also gained the right to own property and to serve in the colonial military. Thus, the legacy of women’s participation in the struggle resulted in a shift in traditional gender roles and laid the basis for social and political change in contemporary Kenya.

In wider African contexts, women’s reaction towards specific localised events which has raised their anger, or earned their disrespect, portrays the use of sexual insult by women as an effective method of resistance. Sexual insult included verbal sexual insult, and physical insult, which may involve women removing their underclothes, turning their backs toward the offender and lifting their skirts. This action shows that women will have nothing more to do with the offending person, or group, and that they reject the authority of the person or group who have moved them to behave in such a way. It was this action in 1922, during a protest at the arrest of Harry Thuku, Leader of the East African Association that ignited a riot, resulting in the death of four women leaders. The use of sexual insult is considered to be serious. Such insults concern not only the woman directly abused, but all women. Mandatory militant action follows which overrides allegiance to kin and tribal groups. Women demonstrate not on behalf of the victim of the abuse but on behalf of themselves as a sexual group.70 The use of sexual insult is a statement that an event of major social disruption has occurred. Its use during the arrest of Harry Thuku highlights this fact. The women were disgusted at the cowardliness of their menfolk’s attitudes toward the colonial administration.

70G. H.Heaton,(1953), Report on the General Administration of Prisons and Detention Camps in Kenya.

By lifting their skirts, women seriously devalued the men of the group, symbolically stating that their inaction had bought shame on the clan, its heritage and its very survival. More than that;these men had lost their right to life. As Turner and Brownhill state, “Women throw off their clothes in an ultimate protest to say “this is where life comes from. I hereby revoke your life.”71 Thus, by these actions the women questioned the power of moral authority in all its aspects. From the point of view of the colonial administration, the actions of these women reinforced their opinion that women were subversive, dangerous, ‘wanting to maintain the practices of the past and therefore hold back the development of their localities’. Among the Kisii of Western Kenya women contributed immensely to the freedom struggle like any other community. According to Mzee Keraita from Riabore village women supplied the Kisii warriors with food and more specifically cooked porridge and wimbi. According to Gusii tradition women were not supposed to engage in the real fight but could do other things in support of the war. Its worthy noting that the Europeans in suppressing the Gusii revolt, they used earth scorched policy and hence there was insufficient food for the community. Therefore as men went out fighting women remained at home tending to farm to produce food for the warriors and the entire community. Women among the Kisii’s also raised alarm whenever they saw that men have pulled back during the fight. Through this men were encouraged to soldier on with the fight despite their dying in large numbers for example women could shout, Uuuuuui! Twaitiru Twaerire pi n’omorumbasi! (Uuuuui! We have been wiped by the Europeans).Women also in Gusiiland acted as inciters as it was seen during European public gatherings. Moraa could incite the Kisii’s to fight during such meetings and according to Mama Bisibori Oeta hardly a meeting could without a fight instigated by Moraa. In a nutshell according to Mzee Namu of Abagusii Cultural Centre, Moraa was strong, prophet, witchdoctor and an inciter during the Gusii revolt.

71D.BRANCH,(2007),"The Enemy Within: Loyalists and the War Against Mau Mau in Kenya". The Journal of African History.

CHAPTER SIX

4.5 COLONIAL ADMINISTRATION’S REACTION TO WOMEN’S STRUGGLE FOR INDEPENDENCE IN KENYA In reacting to Africans reaction to colonial rule, the Europeans employed various punitive measures to silence the freedom fighters. Apart from military operations and Operation Avril the colonial government introduced what they termed as villagization programme. This programme introduced by the British involved villagization and a propaganda program whose main rationale was to disengage women from Mau Mau freedom fighters. The colonial Government paid more attention to women's activism since key officials alleged that women were far more radical and dedicated than the males and more aggressive in their support of Mau. In rejoinder to women's "fervor" institutions designed to address such unmet needs as health, education, access to a clean and reliable water supply, and child care were created. The policy recognized, conceivably for the first time, that the colonial government had a primary role for the welfare of rural populations. The Community Development Department, which was created (1954) addressed these tribulations. This department was given a huge yearly budget of 250,000 pounds and a staff which included Africans as well as Europeans.

This Department was a wide scheme by the British government to control women nationalists in assisting their male counterparts. Prior to the 1920s, the competition over who would control women, and African or European males, revolved around jural issues, predominantly the marriage laws. The colonial government, of course finally, won the contest. Other conflicts of this nature revolved around female circumcision and women's wage labour. Women's contribution in Mau Mau movement contributed to the rebellion's initial mental, if not military successes. During the period of Mau Mau war a total of 34,147 women were sentenced to jail for contravention of the Emergency Regulations from 1952 to 1958. Thousands of these women were replicate violators of the rules, which included aiding the forest fighters through supplying food, guns and information. These women also were the ones involved in oath taking. Thus, from the point of view of both the British and the nationalists, wooing women's loyalty was an essential component in winning the war.

It should be noted that around the villages were deep, spike-bottomed trenches and barbed wire. The villagers themselves were also watched over by members of the Home Guard, often neighbours and relatives. In brief, collective punishments for instance curfews could be served much more readily after villagisation. This quickly had an impact on breaking Mau Mau's passive wing. Though there were degrees of differences between the villages, the overall situation engendered by villagisation meant that, by 1955, districts began reporting hunger and underfeeding. One provincial commissioner blamed child hunger on parents intentionally preserving food, saying the latter were aware of the propaganda value of apparent malnutrition.

Women's activism during the liberation struggle also sparked a response from the Government through arrests, while others were detained and interrogated in large numbers. Women like Priscilla Wambaki were detained in 1952 at Kajiado- Maasailand and Muthoni Wa Gachie in 1959 where she was tortured severely at Githunguri. When the State of Emergency formally ended in 1956, of the 27,841 Kikuyu who were still in the detention camps, 3,103 were women (Daily Chronicle 7 September 1956). During the Mau Mau period, of the 13,265 females admitted to prison in 1955, 1,714 were discharged from prison custody, 11,467 were sentenced to imprisonment (9,961 of these were first offenders, and 1, 506 were repeat offenders) (KCP, Treatment of Offenders 1957) 72 . Practically all women jailed were suspected of Mau Mau involvement.

Among the Gusii of Western Kenya, men and women were captured and taken to Kisimayu where they were imprisoned. According to Mama Naom Nyanchama of Bomobea village Kisii County, says “about 24 women and 50 men were captured and taken to Kisimayu where they were imprisoned. These detainees were tortured for supporting Moraa Ng’iti’s stand against the colonial rule”. The chart below shows the statistical analysis of men and women who were imprisoned during the Gusii revolt against the colonial rule.73

72Kenya Colony and Protectorate (KCP),(1952), Community Development Department (CDD), Annual Report (AR). 73 O I with Mzee Namu, Abagusii Welfare, Keroka 27/03/2014. 45

Men and women imprisoned at Kisimayu among the Kisii's

32.43% men 67.57% women

Figure: 6.1

Source: Researcher.

From figure 6.1 it is clear that 67.57% of women were imprisoned during the state of emergency compared to 32.43% of men at Kisimayu. This is a clear indication that women actively participated in the armed struggle in Kenya.

Before the State of Emergency in 1952; there was so little or none female offense that no particular prison facilities had been built. To the surprise of the colonial government, when Mau Mau activities became evident, women's inmvolvement was on such a large scale that a facility had to be built to confine them.74 The Kamiti prison was expanded to have room for the increase in women prisoners and detainees. The camp included 1,335 women prisoners and 1,010 women detainees by the end of 1954. Women were also detained in other facilities. The Athii River detention camp which was built in 1953 to contain violaters of the Emergency Regulations had ten compounds containing 1,429 detainees. One of the compounds was put aside for twenty- seven female detainees (KCP, Treatment 1953). Most women prisoners were sentenced for violations of the State of Emergency regulations (KCP, Treatment 1956). A huge percentage of the women sentenced were first time offenders.

74CLOUGHM. S.(1998)Mau Mau Memoirs: History, Memory and Politics. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers.

Sentences ranged from short terms of one or two months to the full duration of the Emergency. The majorities were sentenced to terms of six months or less - twenty percent (1952) and twenty- seven percent (1953) were sentenced to six months to two years. As Mau Mau became more intimidating, the length of sentences increased.75

The most noticeable achievement the Government achieved in converting Mau Mau detainees in 1955 and 1956 was among female prisoners in Kamiti prison. Many detention facilities for women were maintained around the colony, but Kamiti was for the 'hardcore' Mau Mau women (KCP, CDD, AR 1954).76 The number of women freed from the Kamiti jail in 1956 was 1,194 leaving 1,384 women in the camp. In 1957 4,220 women were released and 174 remained in detention. Many hardcore women were not released until 1960. The rehabilitation efforts among women were so successful that by 1957 Mau Mau women detainees were processed straight to their homes after being released and have not passed through the pipe line camps in their own areas as is the case with men. This is a compliment to the thorough and successful rehabilitation work undertaken at the camps (KCP, CDD, AR 1956).77

75Kenya Colony and Protectorate (KCP),(1952),Community Development Department (CDD), Annual Report (AR).

77 G. H.Heaton,(1953), Report on the General Administration of Prisons and Detention Camps in Kenya.

Below is the analysis of women detained in various camps during the Mau Mau war.

30,000

25,000

20,000

15,000

10,000

5,000

0 1 2

Figure: 6.2 Source: Researcher

Figure 6.2 shows clearly that during the state of emergency out of the total 27,841 detainees, 3, 103 were women and 24, 738 were men.78

In 1955 out of the total 13,265 women detained 1,714 were discharged and 11,467 were sentenced during the Mau Mau war.

78Daily Chronicle 7 September 1956.

1,714 discharged

11,467 sentenced

Figure: 6.3

Source: Researcher

From figure 6.3 out of the 11,467 women sentenced, 9,961 (87%) were first offenders and 1,505 (13%) were repeat offenders. Yet this is another clear indication on women’s participation in the struggle for independence in Kenya.

women sentenced in 1954

13% Repeat offenders

First offenders 87%

Figure: 6.4

Source: Researcher

During the year 1954 Kamiti prison had women detainees and out of 2, 345, 1,335 were prisoners and 1, 010 detainess a clear testimony of women’s participation in the struggle for independence in Kenya.

women detained and imprisoned at Kamiti 1 2%

2 98% imprisoned

Figure: 6.5

Source: Researcher

Figure 6.5 indicates that during the state of emergency in Kenya 2% of the women were detained and 98% imprisoned hence an indication of women’s active role during the mau mau movement in Kenya.

European reaction against the freedom fighters in Kenya and more particularly the Mau Mau insurgent, the European effort to defeat the movement broadly came in two stages; the first stage, relatively limited in scope, came during the period in which they had still failed to accept the seriousness of the revolts in Kenya, and the second came afterwards. In the first phase, the British tried to behead the movement by declaring a State of Emergency before arresting 180 alleged Mau Mau freedom leaders and subjecting six of them to a show trial (the Kapenguria Six). The second step began in earnest in 1954, when they undertook a series of major economic, military and severe initiatives.79

79D.BRANCH, (2007), "The Enemy Within: Loyalists and the War Against Mau Mau in Kenya". The Journal of African History. 51

80The second step had three main planks, a large military-sweep of Nairobi leading to the imprisonment of tens of thousands of the city's suspected Mau Mau members and sympathizers. The inactions of major agrarian reform in Kenya (the Swynnerton Plan), and the institution of a immense villagisation programme for more than a million rural Kikuyus. These punitive measures were spread throughout the country where Africans showed resistance to the colonial masters.

The harshness of the British response to the African resistance was overblown by two major factors. 81First factor, the British in Kenya was, most likely the most openly racist one in the British empire, with the settlers' violent prejudice attended by an unbending determination to retain their grip on power and half-submerged fears that, as a tiny minority, they could be plagued by the indigenous population. Some Europeans felt that a good sound programme of obligatory labour would do more to raise the nigger in five years than all the millions that have been sunk in missionary efforts, Its representatives were so eager on hostile action that George Erskine referred to them as "the White Mau Mau". Secondly, the brutality of the Mau Mau attacks on civilians made it easy for the Mau Mau movement's opponents, even for African and stalwart security troops, to adopt a dehumanized view of Mau Mau adherents.

82Indeed,a variety of influential techniques were initiated by the colonial government to punish and break Mau Mau's support. The colonial secretary of state by then Everline Baring ordered for punitive communal labour, collective fines. Other collective punishments and further confiscation of land and property was put in place. By the beginning of 1954, large heads of livestock had been taken, and were allegedly never returned. Detailed information of the policy of seizing cattle from Kenyans purpoted of supporting Mau Mau and other rebel communities were finally released in April 2012.83

On 20 October 1952, a state of emergency was declared in Kenya by Governor Baring. During the next day morning, Operation Jock Scott was officially launched and the British carried out a mass-arrest whereby 180 Mau Mau leaders within Nairobi.

80CARTER, M.,(1954),"The Kenya Land Commission Report". London: Government Printer. 81CLOUGHM. S.(1998),Mau Mau Memoirs: History, Memory and Politics. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers. 82Lovatt S. D.(2005),Kenya, the Kikuyu and Mau Mau. Mawenzi Books. 83W.ORMSBY-GORE,(1925), Report of the East Africa Commission. London: Government Printer. 52

Jock Scott did not behead the movement's leadership as hoped, this was because of the impending operation that was leaked. Thus, while the moderates who were most wanted awaited capture, the actual militants, for example Dedan Kimathi and Stanley Mathenge and also some women fighters like Field Muthoni, fled to the forests. 84

The day after the capture, another well-known stalwart chief, Nderi, was killed, and a chain of ghastly murders against settlers were committed by the Mau Mau fighters throughout the months that followed. The random and violent violent nature of British strategy during the months after Jock Scott, served purely to estrange ordinary Kikuyu and drive many of the irresolute mass into Mau Mau's arms. 85

Three battalions of the King's African Rifles were recalled from Uganda, Tanganyika and Mauritius. This gave a boost to the brigade five battalions in Kenya a total of 3,000 African troops. To conciliate settler opinion and also to reinforce European troops, one battalion of British troops, from the Lancashire Fusiliers, was also flown in from Egypt to Nairobi on the first day of Operation Jock Scott. 86

Baring requested assistance from the Security Service in November 1952. In the next year, the Service's A.M. MacDonald reorganized the Special Branch of the Kenya Police, to promote collaboration with Special Branches in adjacent territories. This was also meant to oversee synchronization of all intelligence activity. Six of the most prominent detainees from Jock Scott, including Kenyatta, were put on trial in January 1953, this was done chiefly to defend the announcement of the Emergency to critics in London. The trial itself was claimed to have featured a suborned lead defence-witness. There were also other serious violations of the right to a fair trial which led to the permission of African political activity to resume at the end of the military phase of the Emergency.87

84F.Heinlein,(2002),British Government Policy and Decolonisation, 1945-1963: Scrutinising the Official Mind. London: Frank Cass. 85I.Henderson, Goodhart P.(1958),Man Hunt in Kenya. New York, NY: Doubleday and Company. 86L.Oliver,(1962),The Memoirs of Lord Chandos. London: Bodley Head. 87C.WALTON, (2013), Empire of Secrets: British Intelligence, the Cold War and the Twilight of Empire. London: HarperPress. 53

The declaration of the state of Emergency led hundreds of Mau Mau insurgents to run away to the forests key among them women, where a decentralized leadership had already begun setting up platoons. The main area of operation of Mau Mau military strength was the Aberdares and the forests around Mount Kenya. At the same time an inactive support-wing was fostered outside these areas. In four years, that is, between (1952–56) the British fighters defeated Mau Mau fighters due to the better weapons they possessed and also using a more expansive version of coercion through exemplary force. In May 1953, the decision was reached to send General George Erskine who was to oversee the restoration of order in Kenya. 88

By September 1953, the British knew the leading personalities in Mau Mau after the arrest of General China in January the following year. Erskine's arrival did not herald a significant change in strategy immediately, thus the continual pressure on the gangs remained. But Erskine’s created more mobile formations that delivered what he termed special treatment to an area. After "special treatment" once gangs had been eliminated and driven away loyalist forces and police were then to take over the area immediately. Military support was only brought in thereafter to conduct any required pacification operations. After this successful dispersion and restraint, Erskine went after the Mau Mau forest fighters' source of supplies, money and recruits. This took the form of Operation Anvil, which commenced on 24 April 1954.

By 1954, Nairobi was regarded as the nerve centre of Mau Mau operations. Operation Anvil was adetermined attempt to eliminate Mau Mau's presence within Nairobi once and for all. To carry out this operation, 25,000 British security forces under the control of General George Erskine were deployed as Nairobi was completely sealed off and underwent a sector-by-sector flush out. All Africans were taken to temporary barbed-wire enclosures, whereby those who were not Kikuyu, Embu or Meru were freed while those who were remained in detention for screening.89

88c.Elkin, (2005), Imperial Reckoning: The Untold Story of Britain's Gulag in Kenya. New York, NY: Henry Holt and Company. 89R. B.EDGERTON,(1989),Mau Mau: An African Crucible. New York, NY: The Free Press. 54

Even as the operation itself was conducted by the British, most alleged members of Mau Mau fighters were picked out of groups of the Kikuyu-Embu-Meru detainees by an African informer. Male suspects were taken off for further interrogation, mainly at Langata Screening Camp. Women and children were readied for 'repatriation' to the reserves. Operation Anvil lasted for two weeks, after which the capital had been cleared of all but certifiably loyal Kikuyu, 20,000 Mau Mau suspects had been taken to Langata, and 30,000 more had been deported to the reserves.90

The British employed air power weapon against the forest fighters during this period. Between June 1953 and October 1955, the RAF provided a significant contribution to the conflict. Indeed the army was preoccupied with providing security in the reserves until January 1955. This was the only service competent of both psychologically influencing and inflicting considerable casualties on the Mau Mau fighters operating in the forested central region. Lack of suitable and precise intelligence meant bombing was rather random. But despite this, almost 900 Mau Mau insurgents had been killed or wounded by air attack by June 1954. This made forest gangs to break up, lower their morale, and also induce their pronounced relocation from the forests to the reserves.

Contrary to is sometimes claimed, Lancaster bombers were not used during the Emergency period, though Lincolns were. The first mission launched by Lincolns was on November 1953 and remained in Kenya until July 1955, dropping nearly millions of bombs to the insurgents. Lincolns and other aircraft were also deployed for survey, as well as in the propaganda war, conducting large-scale leaflet-drops. After the Lari massacre, British war planes dropped leaflets showing graphic pictures of the Kikuyu women and children who had been killed. Unlike the rather haphazard activities of British ground forces, the use of air power was more restrained, and air attacks were initially permitted only in the forests. Operation Mushroom extended bombing beyond the forest limits in May 1954. Churchill consented to its continuation in January 1955.

90C.BRANTLEY, (1981), The Giriama and Colonial Resistance in Kenya, 1800–1920. Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press. 55

According to Baring the massive deportations to the already-overcrowded African reserves could only make the stuation worse. Baring saw the act of giving more land to the Kikuyu in the reserves, could have been seen as a concession to Mau Mau, hence Baring turned instead in 1953 to Roger Swynnerton, Kenya's assistant director of agriculture. The major agenda of the Swynnerton Plan was to creat family holdings large enough to keep families self-sufficient in food and to enable them to practise alternate husbandry, which would create a cash income.

Swynnerton Plan proved to be very expensive for the cash-strapped colonial government as per the projected costs. Baring tweaked repatriation and augmented the Swynnerton Plan with plans for a massive expansion of the Pipeline coupled with a system of work camps to make use of detainee labour. All the Kikuyu employed for public works were now employed on Swynnerton’s programmes, and detainees in the work camps.91

The colonial government showed its own version of a gulag when the emergency first started according to their argument. The Mau Mau uprising would be dealt with completely in less than three months as per the colonial officials in Kenya and Britain.

When the transfer of Kikuyus to the reserves began again in 1953, Sir Baring and Erskine ordered all Mau Mau suspects to be screened. Out of the so many screening camps which were put up, only fifteen were officially sanctioned by the colonial authority. Bigger detention camps were sub-divided into compounds. The settlers staffed the screening centres who had been temporarily appointed by Baring. 92

The European who was mandated oversee the crafting of the British Detention and Rehabilitation programme during the summer and autumn of 1953, Thomas Askwith, termed his system the Pipeline. Originally, the British did not foresee the rehabilitation of the Mau Mau suspects through brute force and other ill-treatment. This is as per Askwith's final plan, submitted to Baring in October 1953.

91A.MUMFORD (2012), The Counter-Insurgency Myth: The British Experience of Irregular Warfare. Abingdon: Routledge. 92W. O.MALOBA,(1998),Mau Mau and Kenya: An Analysis of a Peasant Revolt (revised ed.). Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. 56

This programme was used as a blueprint for winning the Mau Mau war using socio-economic and civic reform. But generally what developed has been described as a British gulag.

The Pipeline programme operated a white-grey-black classification system which were cooperative detainees, and were taken back to the reserves. The Greys were under oath but were sensibly submissive, and were moved down the Pipeline to the camps in their local districts before release. The blacks were the so-called hard core of Mau Mau. This group was moved up the Pipeline to a special detention camps. Thus the position held by a detainee in the Pipeline was a clear-cut reflection of how supportive the Pipeline personnel deemed her or him to be. Cooperation was itself defined in terms of a detainee's readiness to confess their Mau Mau oath. Detainees were screened and re-screened again for confessions and intelligence, then re- classified accordingly. 93

A detainee's movement across the two locations along the Pipeline could sometimes last several days. During this journey, there was little or no food and water provided, and rarely any sanitation facilities. Once in camp they were in the camps, the freedom of speech was forbidden outside the detainees' accommodation residence; though off the cuff communication was widespread. Such kind of conversation included misinformation and disinformation, which went by such names as the Kinongo Times, designed to encourage fellow detainees not to give up hope this kind of communication was necessary. It also minimized the number of those who confessed their oath and cooperated with camp officials. Forced labour was performed by detainees on projects like the thirty-seven-mile-long South Yatta irrigation furrow. Family outside and other considerations led many detainees to confess. 94

The first year after Operation Anvil, colonial authorities had minimal success in compelling detainees to cooperate. Camps and compounds were overstretched, forced-labour systems were not yet perfected, screening teams were not fully coordinated, and the use of torture was not yet systematized. This failure was due to the lack of enough manpower and resources, as well as the large numbers of detainees. Officials could barely process them all, not even getting them to confess their oaths.

93R.Meinertzhagen,(1957),Kenya Diary, 1902–1906. London: Oliver and Boyd. 94B.LAPPING,(1989),End of Empire (revised ed.). London: Paladin. 57

Assessing the circumstances in the summer of 1955, Alan Lennox-Boyd wrote of his fear that the figure of detainees may still be rising. If so the outlook is grim. Black markets flourished during this period, with the African guards helping to facilitate trading. It was possible for detainees to bribe guards in order to obtain items or stay punishment.95

By the end of 1955, the Pipeline had become a fully operational and organised system. Guards were regularly moved around the Pipeline in order to prevent dealings developing with detainees hence undercut the black markets. Inducements and punishments became better at discouraging fraternizing with the enemy. The nature of the improved detention and interrogation regimen began to produce results to the colonial authority.

Many of the imprisoned Mau Mau insurgent leaders confessed, and this led to the production of a very big number of spies and informers within the camps. Some of them switched sides in a more open and official fashion. They left detention behind to take an active role in interrogations, even sometimes administering beatings. 96

The best example at hand of side-switching was Peter Muigai Kenyatta, Jomo Kenyatta's son, who, after confessing, joined screeners at Athi River Camp. He travelled throughout the Pipeline to assist the British in interrogations. The suspected spies within the camps were treated in the time-honoured Mau Mau fashion. The preferred method of execution was strangulation then mutilation. As explained by one Mau Mau member later, they did not have their own jails to hold informants so they would strangle them and then cut their tongue out. Screeners were given a freer hand in interrogation by the end of 1955, and very harsh conditions than straightforward confession were imposed on detainees before they were deemed cooperative and qualified for final release.

95D.BRANCH,(2007),"The Enemy Within: Loyalists and the War Against Mau Mau in Kenya". The Journal of African History.

96C. A.Presley, (1986), The Transformation of Kikuyu Women and their Nationalism, Ph.D thesis, Stanford University. 58

While oathing within the Pipeline was reduced significantly, many new initiates took the oath. Those who refused to take the oath often faced the same fate as a recalcitrant outside the camps, that is, they were murdered.

"The detainees would throttle them with their blankets or, using blades fashioned from the corrugated-iron roofs of some of the barracks to slit their throats", writes Elkins. The camp officials agreed that the preferred method of capital punishment was by public hanging.97

Even as the Pipeline became more sophisticated, detainees still organized themselves within it. They set up committees by selecting leaders for their camps, as well as deciding on their own "rules to live by". Possibly the most famous compound leader was Josiah Mwangi Kariuki. Punishments for violating the "rules to live by" could be severe. 98

The christian missionaries and their African counterparts played a crucial role by visiting camps to spread christianity and encourage compliance with the colonial authorities. They also assisted in providing intelligence, and sometimes assisting in interrogation. Detainees regarded such preachers with nothing but disdain. Lack of clean environment in the camps meant that diseases such as typhoid swept through the dwellers. Official medical examination outlining the challenges of the camps and their recommendations were ignored. The conditions being endured by detainees in the camps were also lied about and denied. A European official in charge of rehabilitation in Kenya found out in 1954 that detainees from Manyani were in shocking health, and many of them suffering from malnutrition. Camps like Langata and Gilgil were finally shut in April 1955. This was because, as the colonial adminstartion put it, “they were unfit to hold Kikuyu for medical epidemiological reasons.”99

97T. Kanogo,(1987),Squatters and the Roots of Mau Mau, London.

98G. Kershaw,(1997), Mau Mau From Below, James Currey.

99C. A.Presley,(1986), "Kikuyu women in the Mau Mau Rebellion" in Gary Y. Okihiro, ed, In Resistance: Studies in African, Caribbean, and Afro-American History, Amherst. 59

Pipeline camp was primarily designed for adult males, a few thousand women and young girls were detained at an all-women camp at Kamiti, as well as a number of unaccompanied young children. As per the report dozens of babies were born to women in captivity: "We really do need cloths for the children as it is impossible to keep them clean and tidy while dressed on dirty pieces of sacking and blanket", one colonial officer wrote.

Specifically Wamumu Camp was set up for all the lone boys in the Pipeline, though hundreds, of boys moved around the adult parts of the Pipeline.100

Another punitive measure against Mau Mau adherents was the creation of works camps. Originally there existed two major types of work camps envisioned by Baring. The first camps were based in Kikuyu districts with a sole rationale of achieving the Swynnerton Plan. The second camps were disciplinary camps, meant for about 30,000 Mau Mau suspects who assumed to be unfit to return to the reserves. These labour camps provided a much labour that was required by the Europeans to continue the colony's communications expansion.

The second sort of works camps as seen by the colonial government was a way of ensuring that any admission was lawful and as a final opportunity to extract intelligence. Probably the worst works camp to have been sent to was the one run out of Embakasi Prison, for Embakasi was responsible for the Embakasi Airport, the construction of which was demanded to be finished before the Emergency came to an end. The airport was a massive project with an unquenchable thirst for labour, and the time pressures ensured the detainees' forced labour was especially hard.

100C. A.Presley,(1986), The Transformation of Kikuyu Women and their Nationalism, Ph.D thesis, Stanford University.

CHAPTER SEVEN

5.0 SUMMARY, CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS 5.1 SUMMARY

This study was an historical analysis of historical study of selected women’s involvement in nationalistic politics and struggle for independence in Kenya, 1920-1963. From the study, it was noted that women played a crucial role in the liberation struggle in Kenya.90 This paper has argued that while women’s resilience in revolutionary wars is beyond doubt, for Kenyan women however, the resilience did not translate into gender equality and recognition in the social, economic and political arena. The post-war status of women ex-fighters in Kenya is unfortunately determined by individual women’s positions in that society. This factor is crucial in defining the women’s roles in the economy, in politics, and in decision making processes towards their emancipation. Women ex-combatants in Kenya have to fight harder for resources that some of their male counterparts take for granted. For example, women who fought in the war find access to employment often limited not forgetting their welfare by the government of the day and even compensation. While there is no doubt that female freedom fighters have met with unjust treatment, the war has had deep-seated significance on their lives. Women who were politically active before the war became even more militant during the war. Those who were not equally radical became involved in politics in ways they would never have had in the absence of their war experiences. The study investigated the involvement of selected women in nationalistic politics and struggle for independence in Kenya, employed feminist theory. This theory assisted us in our conclusion that with the changing trends in our society today, women have to be involved in every sphere of life. Women were affected by the land redistribution experienced by most Africans during the British colonial era. As Kenyan women lost access to and control of the land, they became more economically dependent on men, which led to an intensification of domestic patriarchy, reinforced by colonial social institutions.101 Therefore the feminist theory was ideal in dealing with domestic patriarchy so as to equally involve women socio-economic and political decision making in our society today.

101 G. K.Claris,(2010), Women Participation in the Kenyan Society, CIPE; Nairobi.

5.2 Conclusion Based on the findings of the study, the research arrived at the following conclusions. First, before the colonial period women were affected by patriarchal structures whereby they were not involved in major decision making in the society. Women during the pre-colonial period owned nothing, and they were only required to take care of children and tend to farms. Secondly, during the colonial period like their male counterparts, women were affected with land alienation, tax, kipande system, forced labour and torture by the colonial government. Therefore it is worth noting that as men went out to look for employment after land alienation, women were left back and they equally experienced the wrath of the colonial government. Thirdly, women played a key role in the struggle for freedom in Kenya like any other part of the world. From this study it was realized that women in India, Zimbabwe, Guinnea Bissau and Cape Verd, Angola and Nigeria played a very big role in political liberation of their countries. The same case applies to Kenya where women from various communities fought the colonial masters even when their male counterparts showed cowardice like the case of Moraa and Field Muthoni. Women in Kenya acted as combatants and non-combatants, they acted as spies, suppliers of food, clothes and other essentials to the freedom fighters. Women also used insults like showing naked bodies and even wanted to exchange clothes with their male counterparts whenever they saw that they have pulled back. Women like Field Muthoni participated in oath taking ceremonies so as to encourage their warriors. Lastly, it was concluded that in counteracting to women’s resistance in Kenya, the colonial government employed various strategies in suppressing the revolt. First the colonial government in 1952 declared a state of emergency in dealing with the revolt in Kenya. The Europeans also used military operations, Swynnerton Plan, Detention Programme, and villagisation programme in dealing with women revolts. These programmes were aimed at ensuring that women have been totally cut-off from the male fighters. Women were seen as inconsequential by the colonial government during the early years of colonialism. It was only very late when the Europeans realized that women played a very key role in assisting the Mau Mau freedom fighters and other fighters from other communities.

5.3 Recommendations From the above findings the following recommendations will be important in dealing with gender inequity in the socio-economic and political discrimination. First, the government, civil society, and non-governmental organizations must work together with young women to overcome the political, social and economic barriers to empowerment faced by Kenyan women. Secondly, this study will assist in compensation claims like that of Jane Muthoni Mara, Filed Marshal Muthoni and so many other forgotten heroines in Kenya. Thirdly, this study will assist in removing gender prejudices which has negatively affected women in the socio-economic and political decision making. It will also assist in further research on women discrimination in other spheres of life like that of religion where women are not recommended to guide summons in most churches in Kenya. Lastly, this study will assist in erecting monuments for women freedom fighters like their male counter parts as a way of preserving our culture and identity.

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APPENDICES APPENDIX i. Student Introduction Letter

I am a post graduate student at Kisii University pursuing a Masters of Arts (History). I am carrying out research on selected women involvement in the nationalistic politics and the struggle for independence in Kenya 1920-1963. To this end you have been identified to participate in this study at will. You are therefore kindly requested to provide the researcher with the necessary information to see him through his study. The information you will give will be treated confidentially during processing and editing. Please indicate below whether you are willing or not to participate in this research by ticking appropriately and sing in the space provided. In the process of giving out information you are free to stop giving if you realize that your rights have been violated.

[YES] [NO] Sign…………………………….

APPENDIX ii: INTERVIEW SCHEDULE.

1. What economic challenge that motivated Kenyan women to join nationalistic struggle? 2. What socio-cultural factors hindered most women in Kenya to join nationalistic struggle? 3. What political reasons that enabled women to be sidelined during the struggle for independence in Kenya?

APPENDIX iii: QUESTIONNAIRE

1. What motivated women according to you to joint nationalistic struggle in Kenya? Tick appropriately. A. Men nationalists B. Gender discrimination C. Women exploitation D. Others (specify) 2. Were women active freedom fighters of passive? Tick appropriately. A. Active B. passive 3. Were Kenyan act as combatants or non-combatants? Tick appropriately. A. Armed combatants B. Non-combatants 4. Which any other role did nationalist women play in Kenya during the struggle for independence? 5. To what extent did women nationalists suffer during the nationalistic struggle in Kenya?

APPENDIX IV

PLATES

PLATE 1:Some Freedom Fighters men and women carrying weapons. Source: Internet

PLATE 2:MekatililiwaMenza: A Giriama Freedom Heroine portrait

Source: Internet

PLATE 3:Some Freedom Fighters showing a woman accompanying them in the forest with weapons.

Source: Internet

PLATE 4:Field Marshal Muthoni: a Freedom Heroine in a traditional regalia.

Source: Internet

PLATE 5:Ex-freedom fighters Wanjiku Muthoni, Njeru Ritho and Lucy Njeri.. Source: Internet

PLATE 6:Stinging nettle and safari ants that were inserted by the colonial forces in the genitalia of Mau Mau women to torture them. Source: Internet

PLATE 7: A woman seen taking an oath during the colonial period. Source: Internet

PLATE 8:A former Mau Mau detention Camp in Mukurwe-ini District of Nyeri County. Source: Internet

PLATE 9:An image of Jane Muthoni Mara Mau Mau Freedom Heroine. Source: Internet

Appendix: Popular Mau Mau women songs.

We women of Murang'a were arrested for refusing

To have our cattle poisoned. And because we

Rejected such colonial laws we were thrown into

Prison cells and our children were wailing because

They had no milk to drink.

Chorus:

We beseech you, our Ngai (God)

Take us away from this slavery

We were taken to Nairobi after being finger-printed

And on our way they kept asking us,

Do you belong to this conspiracy,

Fighting for Liberation?

And our children continued wailing because

They had no milk to drink.

(Maina-wa-Kinyatti 1980)

Translation

Append iv:Popular mau mau women songs.

Gitumi kia ithui atumia amurang`a guikio ngono ni thirikari ya nyakeru

ni kurega mahiu maitu marogwo ni undu wa kuergena na watho wa ngeratha tukihingirwa nthero na cio ciana citu cituraga iririraga

ni kwanga iria ria kunywa.

Chorus

Ngai witu we twa guthaitha

tuchereria minyororo ya ukombo tuoywo irore tukirorio ya nairobii twi rugendo

ni maikaraga magiturigia kana turi amwe athuigani-kunuirira wiyathi?

Na ciana citu cigithii na mbere na kuuira

tundu citiari na iria ria kunywa.

Popular Gusii War Song Sung by Women

Kura mono eehe baba x2

Kura mono chiombe chiachire x2

Beni naigure ngocha bare.

Mbwer’are eehe baba x3

Mbwer’are Omorumba mbwer’are x2

beni naigure.

Translation

Scream loud ooh woman x2 Scream loud the cattle has been taken x2 I have heard their sound.

He is in the cattle boma x3 The white man is in the cattle boma x2 I have heard.

Appendix vi: Map

Map of Kenya showing areas where women participated in the struggle for independence in Kenya.

Source:Researcher

Appendix vii : List of detention camps across the country during the colonial period

102Fort Hall District

 Fort Hall Reception Centre  Kamaguta  Kandara  Kangema  Kigumo  Mariira

Embu District

 Dondueni  Gathigiriri  Kandongu  Karaba  Mwea  Thiba

Meru District

 Mbeu

Nyeri District

 Aguthi  Karatina  Mukuruweini  Mweru  Othaya  Nyeri Show Ground

102Detention Camps (Rehabilitation Officers, Commons Sitting (23 January 1957), Hansard 84

Kiambu District

 Gatundu  Githiga  Kiambu Transit Camp  Ngenya  Waithaka

Rift Valley Province

 Marigat

Coast Province

 Hola  Mkobe  Takwa

Southern Province

 Athi River  Kathonzweni  Mara River  Ngulot

Miscellaneous

 Lodwar  Kamiti  Mageta Island  Manyani  Nairobi Dispersal Centre  Saiyusi Island  South Yatta  Fort Hall Prison 85

 Embu Prison  Meru Detention Camp  Kisumu Prison  Marsabit Prison  Nairobi New Prison  Kamiti 'Y' Camp  Hindi  Mombasa Prison  Wamumu

Appendix viii Plagiarism Report

Appendix ix. Research Permit

Appendix x. Authorization Letter.