Kibaki, the last witness to a meeting that changed colonial policy on Jomo’s freedom from detention.

The long-delayed memoirs of retired President Mwai Kibaki are expected to fill information gaps about key historical events he was part of but not yet made public.

For instance, Kibaki is the sole surviving participant to a secret meeting that changed the trajectory of Kenya’s history around Christmas of  1960.

He is the last living witness to a meeting that would overturn official colonial policy against setting Jomo Kenyatta free from detention.

The policy was based on fears that hs release would trigger a civil war amongst the  Kikuyu community then deeply split between nationalists, loyalists, Christian converts and their missionary churches, and traditionalists.

Other witnesses to the meeting that took place at the Nyeri County Hall in Ruring’u on 26 December 1960 have all since passed on.

The most include ex-colonial District Commissioner turned Mau Mau sympathiser, author and publisher, late John Nottingham, former foreign affairs cabinet ministers, Dr Munyua Waiyaki, and Dr Njoroge Mungai.

The secret meeting held at the  Nyeri County Hall on 26 December 1960,  had the effect of overturning the official colonial policy to keep founding President, mzee Jomo Kenyatta, under lock and key, even as preparations for independence entered critical stages in full swing.

The first Lancaster Conference to negotiate Kenya’s Independence took place in January 1960 without Kenyatta, and the colonial government strategy was to keep him under lock and even after Kanu elected him party president in absentia in May of the same year.

The British official policy was to isolate him until after independence or exhaust him in jail until he was either too old or too frail to play any meaningful role in post-Independence Kenya.

Rationale against Kenyatta release

The central argument was that Jomo’s release would plunge the Kikuyu community in Central Kenya into civil war between his Mau Mau followers and supporters on the one hand, and collaborators, loyalists, the Christian converts and believers on the other.

This narrative had two three key dimensions:

First was the prospects of a popular Kikuyu nationalist president seemed to send chills down the colonial British system at the time.

This dread was not least due to fear of reprisals against eight years of cruel atrocities they had unleashed on the community in a bid to crunch the Mau Mau uprising.

 Eventually, the British government caved in to demands for independence under physical exhaustion, body count and financial hemorrhage London was not willing to absorb a moment longer.

These are well documented in three acclaimed recent  books of monumental historical value :

Britain’s Gulag, The Brutal End of Empire in Kenya by American History Professor, Prof Caroline Erskine (2005); The History Of the Hanged, The Dirty War in Kenya and Ebd of the Empire” (2005) by W/. W Norton;   and  the exposure of cruel  Western hypocrisy on human rights values as captured in Human Rights in the Shadow of Colonial Violence in Kenya and Algeria, by German scholar Prof Fabian Klose (2013)

The second dimension was the British dread of a Kikuyu led Independent Kenya was buttressed by horror stories blowing into Nairobi about bloody civil war after Independence in Congo in 1960.

Many Belgians and Europeans fleeing Congo ran East into Nairobi with horror stories of massacre of foreigners in the civil war that erupted following a  bungled Independence from Belgium.

Things were moving fast, the first general elections were coming up in February 196,  with Kanu and Kadu the main protagonists for the  Governor’s mansion (State House) and the Second Lancaster Conference was scheduled for February 1962.

Expounding on the rationale of the policy to hold  elderly Kenyatta  “indefinitely”, then colonial governor, Sir Patrick Renison  said in  a national radio address on  March 20, 1961:

” I love Kenya too much to risk releasing Kenyatta…inspite of great difficulties after Mau Mau horrors, it is my view that Jomo Kenyatta should be kept in restriction indefinitely, I do not propose to release him until the security risk can be accepted and contained…

The fears of a civil war breaking out among the Gikuyu community in Central Kenya were not entirely without merit.

Memories of the Lari Massacre of 26 March 1953, when Mau Mau fighters are reported to have slaughtered about 300 perceived loyalists in Lari, Kiambu county, were still fresh.

Fresh in people’s minds too were assassinations of chiefs, clergymen and collaborators suspected of spying on and betrayal of the pro-independence cause, or opposition to the oath of allegiance administered by the Mau Mau.

Diverse Christian Missionary churches and the Mau Mau had since the early days of the 2oth century involved in an intense battle for the soul of the Gikuyu masses.

They got entangled in a fierce battle of wills between evangelists, their converts and the traditional cultural practices like female circumcision erupting into open battle lines between the two groups.

The agitation for Independence and majority black rule became an overwhelming third force in an already tense environment, especially with the deployment of traditional oathing to bind Africans to the cause of overthrowing the colonial rule.

Regardless one had converted to Christianity or not, taking the oath of allegiance was an imperative imposed on all Kikuyu adult male and female, that was not open to choice or negotiation.

This made the relationship between Christian converts and Mau Mau independence agitators most precarious in terms of social disruption, strained and damaged relationships.

During the emergency period (1952-1959), the Mau Mau hunted down and killed suspected collaborators, chiefs, and Christians opposed to oathing or betrayed those administering it, while the loyalists spied and told on Mau Mau support networks and activities.

The church in Central Kenya was split too, with African Independent Pentecostal Church of Africa (AIPCA) being favoured by nationalists, whose politics and defense of native cultural activities, tribal dancing and female circumcision were the height of heathenism to the European missionary dominated churches.

Worse for Kenyatta and his compatriots in colonial detention, leading  political voices, the clergy and chiefs across Kikuyu land in Central Kenya had signed a joint memorandum declaring all Mau Mau leaders and supporters to be “banished from Kikuyu land for good”

Few written documents pay tribute to the convoluted and twisted path Kenyatta trod to power,  pragmatically rallying a deeply divided and hurting ‘House of Mumbi’ (a euphemism for the Kikuyu community) behind his leadership like the Memorandum signed on 27 January 1954.

Monumental betrayal

Celebrated pioneer nationalists and Jomo’s fellow founding fathers Mr James Gichuru, Harry Thuku, Legislative Council Members Eliud Mathu and Muchoki Gikonyo,  among others, had lent their names and nationalist credentials to the doctrine to put Jomo and his cohorts away for good by signing the document.

“Due to your evil actions, the government has justifiably decided that no Mau Mau leader should ever return to Kikuyu country. We have endorsed and recommended the decision” read the chilling statement dated January 27, 1954.

 Others  who appended their signatures on the Memorandum on behalf of then Kiambu District included senior Chief Josiah Njonjo, father to Kenya’s long-serving AG, Mr Charles Njonjo, Chief Magugu Waweru, the Rev Wanyoike Kamwe, Councillor Mbira, Chief Kibathi Gitangu, Rev Williams Njoroge and Canon Samuel Nguru,

On behalf of the then Nyeri District and the hotbed of Mau Mau action and home to General Stanley Mathenge and Field Marshall Dedan Kimathi among others, then Senior Chief Muhoya (Tetu), respected head of the Presbyterian Mission in Tumutumu, the Rev Charles Muhoro Kareri, and Chief Eliud Mugo (Mathira) signed the memorandum.

For Murang’a District (Fort Hall)  were senior chief Njiiri Karanja, Chief Ignatio Murai, the Rev Alijah Gachanja and Chief Samuel Githu.

Signing for Embu were Chiefs Stephen Ngigi, and Richard Githae,  while from the Rift Valley were Mr Parmenas Kiritu, Chief Chrysostom Kihagi,Mr J G Kanyua and Chief Zedekiah Wambugu.

While some could understand chiefs and European missionary dominated church African clergymen, Gichuru’s and Thuku’s signatures bordered on the eternally scandalous realms that leave many deeply conflicted.

Considering the  pre-eminent leaders of the Mau Mau movement, General Stanely Mathenge and Field Marshall Dedan Kimathi had exited the scene, this document was the central evidence the colonial administration used in making the argument Kenyatta’s indefinite incarceration was essential to avert a civil war situation erupting

To counter that document and reassure London that Kenyatta and his followers would not cause trouble upon his release, Dr Njoroge Mungai recalled in an interview before he passed on in 2014:

“ To counter the colonial government propaganda we needed to confront the church and get it on board to publicly endorse Kenyatta’s release. In return, the African church leadership in Central Kenya needed to hear from all of us, and directly from Mau Mau leadership cadres still in the forests then, that there would be no reprisals or retaliation action, revenge, vendetta or intimidation against Christians over any perceived grievances they may have committed”

This was the overarching purpose of the secret meeting held at Nyeri Native County Council Hall on 26 December 1960.

A small group of youthful patriots, underground pro-Uhuru activists and leadership ranks of the Mau Mau militants, devised a secret counter-attack strategy for Kenyatta’s release and which they sneaked to White Hall behind the governor, Sir Patrick Renison’s back.

According to Njoroge, the group included himself, late first Nyeri Senator, Mr Joseph Mathenge, retired President Kibaki himself, Dr Munyua Waiyaki, Mwinga Chokwe, late Mr Jesse Kariuki, among others.

They managed to secretly persuade Chief Njiiri Karanja, to send his son, Kariuki Njiiri,while Chief Muhoya attended personally, as was Rev Charles Muhoro, representatives from  Mau Mau ranks from the Aberdares and  Mt Kenya forests among others.

The meeting drafted a Memorandum demanding for Kenyatta’s release and stating the entire spectrum of leadership cadres from the Gikuyu community had resolved they would not fight each other regardless of their political and or religious persuasions.

This commitment was attested by the signatures of both leading clergymen and colonial chiefs who appended their signatures to repudiate or “unsign” the earlier banishment memorandum. of  27 January 1954

In effect, having secured  unsigning of the earlier signatures, the next step was to secretly sneak the document directly to London, by-passing Nairobi bureaucracy, and causing considerable embarrassment on Renison’s part in the process

“Chokwe and two others would sneak this memorandum to  White Hall, upon which they were told to hold on as Renison was summoned to join them over the document” Njoroge recalled.

Chokwe would become speaker of the Senate in the first bicameral parliament

  Former colonial administrator turned author and publisher, Mr John Nottingham,  confirmed Dr Njoroge’s version about the secret meeting.

“I was the District Officer 1 (District Commissioner’s Number two)  at the Nyeri DC’s office at the time. I knew about the meeting but I looked the other way. The strategy was to meet over Christmas when things are slow and DC was on holiday. Of course, I lost my job when the memorandum reached London without the governor’s knowledge. The rest is history” John Nottingham said in an interview in 2010.

John’s wife hails from Central Kenya.

Details of the London meeting between Chokwe’s delegation, governor Renison and the secretary of state for colonies, Sir Ian Macleod are still scant, until Kibaki memoirs are published or colonial government papers are made public.

However, on August 14 the following year, Kenyatta was set free, elected Kanu president in October, of 1961,  before Fort Hall Legco member, Kariuki Njiiri, stepped down, and a by-election held on February 12, 1962,  in which Kenyatta was elected unopposed, in time to attend the second Lancaster Conference kicking off on February 14, 1962, in London.

Editor: Since Kibaki retired from active politics in early 2013, Kenyans have waited for the publication of his memoirs in vain.

The hopes for the memoirs ever being published have dimmed after a drastic reorganisation of the office of the retired third President of the Republic of Kenya, dropping some champions of the Memoirs under the aegis of the  Red Hill based Mwai Kibaki Foundation.

The original inner core team of  Kibaki personal staff that were driving the projects have since been ejected from the Mwai Kibaki Foudation and replaced with a new team led by former Kibaki State House operative from Kirinyaga county, Stanley Murage.

It is not clear what utility Murage would make in working for the retired president at his advanced age too.