Mau Mau and the barbaric face of the British empire

One horrific day in September 1957, Ndiku Mutwiwa Mutua claims, he was castrated by the British Government.

Last week the elderly Kenyan appeared in the High Court in London, along with three others to accuse Britain of being liable for what was done to him 54 years ago, and to demand compensation.

The case of Mutua and others versus the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) relates to events that took place at the height of the Mau Mau emergency — the uprising against colonial rule in Kenya between 1952 and 1960.

The Mau Mau rebellion was one of the nastiest chapters in British colonial history. Appalling atrocities were perpetrated by both sides, but few stories of cruelty are worse than that of Mr Ndiku Mutwiwa Mutua.

In 1956 Mr Mutua was a 24-year-old herdsman working for Mr Louvaine Dunman, a white settler in Kenya’s Eastern Province. Mr Dunman, a police officer in the district force, was known as “Luvai” among the Kamba people who couldn’t pronounce the name Louvaine properly.

While working on Mr Dunman’s farm, Mr Mutua began supplying food to the Mau Mau rebels hiding out in the nearby forest. On or before September 17, 1957, he was arrested by Mr Dunman and five other African police officers.

According to a court document, he was repeatedly beaten by European and African officers alike and then taken, blindfolded, to a tent.

Inside, he was allegedly handcuffed and pinned to the ground, with his legs pulled apart and tied or strapped down.

“Having been rendered completely powerless and vulnerable,” according to the document, Mr Mutua claims that he was “castrated by one or more of the officers present”.

For two days he was allegedly left without medical attention and then liberated from the camp by Mau Mau rebels. He remained in the forest for three-and-a-half years before the rebellion ended and he returned home.

Mr Mutua claims that he suffered depression, anguish, mental stress, and “intense flashbacks to the episodes of assault, including castration (and) mourned the fact that he will never have children of his own and never be with a woman”.

Like his fellow claimants, Mr Mutua holds the British Government responsible for his suffering. Another of the plaintiffs also claims to have been castrated, while a third was allegedly beaten and left for dead during the infamous Hola Camp massacre of 1959 in which 11 detainees were clubbed to death.

The only woman claimant said that she was subjected to sexual torture in which she was violated using bottles filled with hot water.

The alleged mistreatment of another claimant, Mr Wambugu wa Nyingi, carries echoes of waterboarding. Mr Nyingi claims that he was “suspended by his feet from the hut roof. He was then subjected to a severe beating over a period of about 30 minutes, while cold water was poured on to his face and into his mouth so he could not breathe”.

The claimants’ case rests on the argument that these acts of brutality were not isolated or random, the spontaneous cruelty of a few sadists, but a systematic policy organised and condoned by the British authorities, “part of a system of torture, inhuman and degrading treatment applied by police, home guards, and other members of the security services with the knowledge of the colonial administration.

“Many detainees were subjected to gross abuse and torture,” say the claimants.

“Such abuse included whippings, beating, castration, and sexual abuse of men and women... in many cases the abuse and torture were so brutal and dangerous that the detainee died.”

Lawyers representing the British Government argue that the case should be dismissed because the alleged abuse was carried out by the colonial government, which passed all rights and responsibilities to the independent Kenyan Government in 1963.

When Kenya assumed national sovereignty, government lawyers will argue, this included an implicit acceptance of liability for any outstanding claims against the national administration.

The Kenya Government flatly denies any liability. A letter was sent to British Foreign Secretary William Hague on March 31 stating: “The Republic of Kenya fully supports the claimants’ case and has publicly denied any notion that responsibility for any acts and atrocities committed by the British colonial administration during the Kenya ‘Emergency’ was inherited by the Republic of Kenya.”

Among those rounded up in the run-up to Mau Mau was Hussein Onyango Obama, Barak Obama’s paternal grandfather, who became involved in the Kenyan independence movement while working as a cook for a British Army officer after the war.

He was arrested and jailed for two years in a high security prison where, according to his family, he was subjected to horrific violence to extract information about the growing insurgency.

Further light will be shed by the newly discovered Foreign Office files relating to Mau Mau, which were deliberately removed from Kenya.

On December 3, 1963, nine days before Kenya formally declared independence, three wooden crates containing 1,500 highly sensitive government files were loaded on to a British United Airways flight bound for Gatwick.

A memo written by one Foreign Office official noted that the removal of the documents had been carried out in “meticulous fashion”, with files selected on the specific grounds that their contents “might embarrass Her Majesty’s Government, members of the police, military forces, public servants, or others”.

In a memo marked “Most Secret”, the Foreign Office noted that “the vast majority of the files concern the Emergency: eg, intelligence reports and summaries, African associations, activities of Africans, unrest in the districts etc . . . collective punishments, detainees and detention camps”.

In 1967, the Kenyan Foreign Ministry asked the British Government to return the missing files. The FCO refused.

A confidential FCO memo written on November 2, 1967, warned that if the documents were sent back to Kenya, it could “set a precedent and encourage other governments to follow suit” and demand “the documents of other former Dependent Territories which are now held here”.

A letter on the same subject from the Commonwealth Office clearly shows that the decision to remove the Kenyan documents was not an isolated incident:

“The fact that it has always been British policy to withdraw or destroy certain sensitive records prior to independence has never been advertised or generally admitted,” the letter states.

“The reply we give to Kenya could affect the treatment of records and files withdrawn from other former Colonial Territories.”

After 1967, the files removed from Kenya apparently vanished into the Foreign Office archives. There has long been speculation among historians about what happened to them, including the rumour that they had been loaded into a Lancaster bomber and dropped into the Indian Ocean.

When the four Kenyans filed suit last year, the High Court was informed that some of the most critical evidence relating to the case was still missing. The FO duly launched a search for the documents and in January the missing files were finally located.

The reparations claim is regarded in Kenya as nationally divisive since the Mau Mau was in large part an ethnic rebellion by the Kikuyu rather than a national uprising. Most of the alleged torture and abuse was carried out by Africans of other tribes, albeit under British supervision, adding a potentially toxic tribal element to the mixture.

The claimants are demanding a welfare fund and a statement of regret.

Mr David Miliband, the Labour Foreign Secretary, is believed to have favoured this approach, but a resolution was blocked by FCO officials.

The implications go far beyond the individual accusations levelled by four Kenyans. Hundreds more former Mau Mau detainees could file suit and countless other former colonial subjects may be able to claim mistreatment at the hands of the British Government.

Leigh Day, the lawyers representing the Kenyans, say they do not believe that the case will establish a precedent.

“The systematic torture which went on in pre-independence Kenya was exceptional in its scale and barbarity,” a spokesman for Leigh Day said. “This case is about victims who are alive and are seeking redress. People who suffered similar ill treatment in other colonies who are still alive are very few in number.”

In a speech at SOAS, the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies, last month, David Anderson, professor of African history at the University of Oxford, who is advising the claimants, said that the files discovered in the FCO archives may be the tip of a huge legal iceberg.

“In other instances — Malaya, Cyprus, Nigeria, to name just three possible examples — there might also be missing documents ‘retrieved’ to London, with much to tell us about the actions of colonial administrations.

“The Mau Mau claim is not the only claim the British Government may have to worry about,” he added. “Claims may arise from, for example, Palestine, and there is a fear that a successful claim could set a precedent.”

The files were spirited out of Kenya in 1963 because they “might embarrass Her Majesty’s Government”. Some 48 years later, they have at last come to light, with their capacity to embarrass the government intact.