HON. PAUL MUITE REFLECTS ON MAU MAU REPATRIATION: WAKATI WETU FEST CONVERSATION ON JUSTICE AND MEMORY

"A little favor that Her Majesty's High Court of Justice extended to the Mau Mau case was allowing hearing dates to be fixed only during summer because of the advanced ages of the plaintiffs. And so we explained to them that they don't need to fear about the weather in London, but our pleas to our clients fell on deaf ears. So we went in the middle of summer and the British media had a field day the television, the print media that it was stinking hot in that court. But it wasn't hot enough for the Kenyans, you know, height of summer. But our clients dressed with the huge overcoats, scarves pulled up to here, everything and kofia, dressed for winter because they had not understood how it would not be cold in England."

"Nothing is more important than reparation. It's restoration of humanity. Above the issue of compensation for the torture, for the humiliations, for the detention, one of the issues we wanted to hammer during that case was recovering and restoring the humanity of the Mau Mau individuals."

"The grabbing of the lands that belonged to the Mau Mau and their ancestors. Their fertile lands were grabbed by colonial white settlers and the original owners were turned into squatters on what used to be their own land."

"When the Mau Mau war broke out and it broke out because all their efforts to get back their land were not being successful Britain responded with horrendous, horrendous atrocities. Torture. Killings. Detentions. They were all there."

"After the first betrayal by the colonial masters, after the second betrayal of the atrocities and the detentions and the torture and the killings, the third betrayal came from those who took over power from the colonial masters. They did not want to hear about Mau Mau, about the freedom fighters."

"I myself discovered, when we were researching for the Mau Mau case in London, that in 1968, five years after Kenya had become independent, when we enacted our own Societies Act, the government of the first president, Mzee Jomo Kenyatta, re-gazetted Mau Mau as a terrorist organization. These are the betrayals I'm talking about."

"Wambugu Wa Nyingi, one of our witnesses, witnesses in their 90s, still very clear minded, this gentleman died about two, three years ago. He said, 'We are not late at all. Don't you know that Kenyatta was worse than you colonialists? The gazette notice that declared Mau Mau a terrorist organization was only repealed in 2003, when Mwai Kibaki took over. But it had been reinstated by Mzee Jomo Kenyatta in 1968. Before that time, we couldn't possibly file a case. How does a terrorist organization file a case? We were only able to fight it when that gazette notice was repealed.'"

"The English were alleging that we had no right to sue Her Majesty's government because it was our own people who were torturing us. And one time, the Queen's Counsel said, 'Why are you suing Her Majesty's government? It is your own people who are beating you. You know, the homeguards are the ones who did the beatings, not Her Majesty's people.' So Wambugu Wa Nyingi was getting worked up. And again he asked the English judge, 'Can I be permitted to ask this man a question?' The judge said, 'You cannot ask him a question. But tell me the question you wanted to ask him, so that I can ask him on your behalf.'"

"'Those homeguards that he's talking about, does he know they used to wear a kofia? I want him to tell us whose crown that was.' And I could see from the judge's body language that issue had disappeared."

"When Britain agreed to resolve this case out of court, we were negotiating. We told them that besides the monetary compensation, the one thing we demanded was an apology for the atrocities that were committed. And it is important in terms of how you restore the humanity of these people. We had a lot of pushback. I remember them saying that Britain has never apologized to anybody in history and they were not going to apologize. But eventually they came up with a form of an apology which they read on the floor of the House of Commons."

"What is required is that sort of comprehensive, credible report so that you include everybody. And also that report should be given to historians. Let us have names to those people. Let's not talk in generalities. It's not just about those who were detained. It is about also those who were in the forest fighting for freedom. It's about the women, courageous women who were cooking for the Mau Mau, because if you don't feed your army they cannot carry on."

"At least it will not cost a lot to have a wall of honor with all their names. That recognition is very, very important."

"They did not go for Mau Mau. They went for Home Guards, supporters of the colonial government in Kenya at its colonial time."

"The research or the questioning of who was a Mau Mau was never done."

"Kenyatta and his following president maintained the gazette because they had an authority from the British to maintain the status quo because Mau Mau had to be made perpetually poor."

"Many Kikuyus were killed who were extracted from Tanganyika in 1953. At night they were all shot there. And buried in the mountains you can see some hills near Manyani on the western side."

"That is why there is a church called Bahati, the Martyrs Church (PCA, Presbyterian Church of Africa)."

"I have recruited nearly 70% of the county commissioners, because originally they were against us under the Uhuru Kenyatta government, the Kibaki government. They did not want the truth to come out."