By Njonjo Kihuria
“Just before independence, calculated intrigues and schemes to bar freedom fighters from the gains of independence were engineered by the colonial government and its African collaborators and home guards,” says Shujaa Gitu Kahengeri in the 2014 Mau Mau book, ‘The forgotten heroes and heroines’.
He says the schemers ‘Africanised’ the government by filling positions with known enemies of the Mau Mau.
He claims the same group influenced the banks and other financial institutions to ensure they did not consider financial support to the freedom fighters.
“This way, the Mau Mau and their children remained poor and became cheap labour for the new (African) coloniser,” he says.
Skewed policy
And that, sort of, sums up the plight of those who made the ultimate sacrifice to free our country from the yoke of colonialism. In fact, the rains started beating jailed and detained freedom fighters as well as those weathering the struggle in the forests on the launch of the Swynnerton Plan in 1954.
Ostensibly the land consolidation policy envisaged by the plan was meant to intensify the development of agriculture and enable more Africans to grow cash crops, such as coffee and tea. But in essence, the plan was supposed to give the loyalists the upper hand as the freedom fighters languished in prisons, detention camps and in the African jungles.
Land consolidation enabled loyalists to acquire the most fertile land in the African reserves. Most of the land belonged to the men in the forest and the others who had been incarcerated. This way, the colonial government rewarded the loyalists and largely weakened the freedom fighters.
Four years after the launch of the plan, loyalists who were already getting high returns from the sale of coffee and tea, were a powerful lot that had economic and political muscle. Earlier they had been urged by the colonial administrators to acquire shops and other businesses so that by the time the Mau Mau came out of the forest, they (loyalists) would be on top of the game.
When the country attained independence, the freedom fighters found that their land had been taken away, families had disintegrated and their children had not got an education.
Only the children of the loyalists had the required credentials to enter government and private sector employment. The freedom fighters were forgotten and even the Mau Mau movement remained a terrorist organisation in the government’s books until 2003.
When Mzee Jomo Kenyatta became head of government, he said his regime would not dish out free land. He urged the freedom fighters to form land buying companies to acquire land. Most, however, were not able to do so and have remained landless since. Many were maimed and some have bullets lodged in their limbs. Their stolen land and properties are still in the hands of the loyalists.
They languish in poverty, chasing after compensation from the British but mostly, these heroes remain a forgotten lot.
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