By GAKUU MATHENGE
Memory is power. Honoring and preserving the memory of national heroes keeps collective historical milestones that define the roots of Kenyan identity alive and in perspective.
Degrading this memory or allowing to fade away is tragic.
The burial of retired president Danile arap Moi in a private gravesite at his Kabarak home in Nakuru County among his Tugen tribesmen on February 12, 2020 should rank among most outrageous historical injustices Kenyans should purpose to revisit for corrective action.
Among reasons proffered include insinuation that the retired Head of State had willed to be interred next to his late wife, Lena, when his time came.
Kenya is still a fragile state struggling to forge a nation out of a patchwork of disparate and mistrustful tribes.
It is a legitimate question as to whether the remains of the second president of the republic and the longest-reigning champions of the idea of Kenyanhood should be interred at a private gravesite at his private farm rather than at a national monument.
In the interests of preservation of national and African heritage that Moi’s memorial is, the problem of having him and his late wife interred together could have been resolved by exhuming Lena’s remains and re-burying them in a national monument site together with her husband.
Alternatively, the National Museums of Kenya should be persuaded to declare Moi’s burial site a national monument under the National Museums and Heritage Act (2016).
This should once and for all put to rest the air of confusion the country faces each time a national hero or heroine dies, and questions of how to deal with it wrack the nerves of state bureaucrats wondering how exactly a befitting send-off looks like.
This confusion was apparent when former vice president, late Michael Kijana Wamalwa died in office in August of 2003. It was apparent again when former first lady, Lucy Kibaki, died in 2016. Both Wamalwa and Lucy were accorded state funerals like happened with Moi.
Their remains were also dispatched to their rural village homes. The risk of desecration and neglect over time is most real at private properties than at national monuments where heritage is protected and preserved for posterity. In a country routinely lamenting about diminishing patriotism and nationalistic attitudes, respectful preservation of the memories of icons of cultural heritage at public expense should not be too much to ask.
The current confusion about how to deal with fallen heroines and heroes is rooted in the history of reluctance by officialdom to fully embrace, honor and entrench the memory of Mau Mau freedom fighters as foremost and true Kenyan heroes.
Even the Mau Mau memorial monument at Uhuru Park, Nairobi, was erected and paid for by the British government as part of the reparations settlement package reached in court in London in 2012 in a suit filed by ex-Mau Mau detainees.
Second Phase
This official disregard and failure to honor, protect and preserve Mau Mau heroic memory have entered a second phase that seeks to erase and permanently destroy the only remaining monuments of Emergency Era Mau Mau villages and unexcavated mass grave sites.
The ongoing state-driven conversion of Emergency era Mau Mau villages into private possessions raises questions about the place of cultural, ethical and legal obligations to protect and preserve historic and cultural heritage for posterity and national identity.
Historical injustice is a common theme used by politicians to whip up ethnic emotions in contemporary political discourse in Kenya.
The conflicted Kenyanhood identity is expressed in the never-ending discourse around historical injustices as captured as a key agenda item in the Building Bridges Initiative (BBI) report, and the yet to be implemented Truth, Justice and Reconciliation Commission (TJRC) report published in 2o12.
This conflict is rooted in the decades of reluctance by officialdom since independence in 1963 to explicitly acknowledge the sacrifices made by Mau Mau freedom struggle movement by setting up memorial libraries and official documentation programmes for posterity.
It is this reluctance that seems to have morphed into the official policy of ambivalent and cynical actions when it comes to embracing generations of national heroines and heroes that came after Mau Mau freedom fighters. Cultural injustices like burying national heroines and heroes in private family properties, then in public spaces owned and maintained by the state, have not been accorded the requisite attention it deserves.
Burying the late Moi, like former first lady, Mrs Kibaki, late Vice Presidents, Prof George Saitoti, Mr Michael Kijana Wamalwa, Dr Josephat Karanja, Joseph Murumbi and the late Jaramogi Oginga Odinga also a former vice president and a top ranking of founding father of the nation, among others, in private gravesites should constitute historical injustices of gross proportions against the aspirations to forge a solid Kenyan identity.
Corrective actions
Among corrective actions should include immediate compulsory acquisition of those burial sites and gazettement as national monuments under the National Museums and Heritage act (2016), or exhumation and relocation of the remains to proper national monuments.
Along with this, the Jomo Kenyatta Moussoleum at Parliament grounds should either be opened to the public or the remains of the founding president buried at a national monument accessible to Kenyans and tourists.
These monuments are collective heritage of the society the women and men interred in there served, under whose collective shadow, fame or shame we live in the form of the impact their actions bequeathed posterity for a legacy and heritage.
As top cultural icons of our collective memory that defines Kenyanness identity, the dead heroines and heroes make their contributions in unholding common heritage by being accessible to posterity, not hidden in some high-security mausoleums and private family graves in far-flung villages hard to locate on a map.
Zimbabwe has since set the pace in Africa, where Heroes Acre outside of the city of Harare is the final resting place for national icons, and which is accessible to locals and outsiders at a fee.
Second assault on Mau Mau Memory
The first attempt to erase and cremate the memory of Kikuyu nationalism involved a massive and nationwide burning of churches, schools, colleges and all institutions associated with the Mau Mau freedom struggle movement, soon after the incarceration of their leadership cadres in late 1952.
Schools and physical properties that could not be destroyed were confiscated by government from the Kikuyu Independent Schools Association (KISA) and the Independent Pentecostal Church of Africa (AIPCA) and handed over to European Missionary church organisations among them the Catholic Church, The Anglican, and Presbyterian church-sponsored institutions. They never reverted to the AIPCA either by voluntary surrender or by government action today.
A second phase to erase the remaining memory of Mau Mau involves the ongoing government-driven privatisation of Emergency era villages in Nyeri and Nyandarua counties, and which could extend to Kirinyaga and Laikipia counties.
Some Emergency era Mau Mau villages consisted of mass grave sites that were yet to be excavated or officially designated as historical and cultural monuments for preservation in honour of the human sacrifices expended in the struggle for Independence.
The cruel irony of the current drive is hard to miss: Kenya is home to numerous and well maintained Commonwealth War Graves across the country in memorial of European nationals, some who died in the 50s in military operations in the suppression of Mau Mau activities.
These are safe, and memory of the aliens buried there may endure as the memory of Mau Mau is erased.
The cabinet secretary for lands and settlement, M/s Faridah Karoney, said on Friday, 2 February 2020, in Nyandarua County that the government had prepared 707 title deeds for issuance that day.
Rurii,Ndunyu Njeru and Njabi-ini and Wanjohi Emergency Era Mau Mau villages are targetted in Nyandarua county.
Karoney spoke as she updated President Uhuru Kenyatta on the progress of implementation of a directive he issued in 2017 to Karoney’s predecessor, Prof Jacob Kaimenyi, for individuals squatting on the Emergency Era villages be issued with title deeds.
President Kenyatta issued 707 title deeds to former squatters who occupied the Rurii Emergency Era village, completing the process of privatisation.
The Head of State directed survey for 22 other such villages to be expedited and some 5,099 title deeds issued to fulfill a 2017 campaign pledge.
In Nyeri County, some 220 of such villages had been surveyed and over 6,000 title deeds issued.
With these, the entire history of peasant uprising, resistance, and struggle against colonial enterprise by Africa peoples associated with these spaces is wiped out, erased and lost to posterity.
Impunity in conversation of community trust land
The conversion of the villages from community land held in trust for decades by the defunct Nyandarua and Nyeri county councils, reeks of impunity on the rampage as the constitution and the new Community Land Act (2016) requires unregistered community land to be held in trust by county governments, not conversion into private properties.
In Nyeri town itself, a famous former mass Mau Mau era mass grave site in Ruring’u has since been converted into a bus park by the County Government and private development premises in a World Bank-funded project before excavation or any official attempt at preservation.
At the height of the 2017 general elections, politicians keen to curry favour with voters put President Uhuru Kenyatta under immense pressure to issue an executive decree to grant title deeds to squatters occupying the targeted villages.
However the decree has raised questions about the legality of the decision to convert trust land into private land by issuing title deeds, and the county governments’ failure to uphold the constitution and the law regarding community land trusteeship bequeathed to them by the defunct County Councils.
The Ministries of Sports, Heritage and Culture and the National Museums of Kenya are the official custodians of the National Museums and Heritage Act, 2006,(formerly Antiquities and Momuments Act, 1983 ).
However, these have not been vocal in calling out politicians desecrating national heritage to secure transient political support.
The National Museums and Heritage Act defines monuments as “a place or immovable structure of any age which, being of historical, cultural, scientific, architectural, technological or other human interest has been and remains declared by the Minister to be a monument”. The act defines Heritage as “natural and cultural heritage”
Privatisation of Emergency-era villages also comes at a time of transition of land law regimes from the defunct County Council Trusteeship of community land, to the new regime of Community Land Act (2016).
Article 63(3) of the Constitution (2010) states:
Any unregistered community land shall be held in trust by county governments on behalf of the communities for which it is held.
Clause 10 (3) of the Community Land Act (2016) states:
(3) For the avoidance of doubt, until any parcel of community land has been registered in accordance with this Act, such land shall remain unregistered community land and shall, subject to this Act, be held in trust by the county governments on behalf of the communities for which it is held pursuant to Article 63(3) of the Constitution.
Clause (8) of the Community Land Act states:
A county government shall not sell, dispose of, transfer and conversion for private purposes or in any other way dispose of any unregistered community land that it is holding in trust on behalf of the communities for which it is held.
All these sanctions have been violated in the ongoing drive to privatise Emergency Era Mau Mau villages.
