RESISTANCE: British
police looking for rebels in a local village
Oct. 20, 1952
The Bloody Mau Mau Revolt
By Marguerite Michaels
Chief Kungu Waruhiu had just arrived at the Seventh Day Adventist
mission 7 miles outside of Nairobi when a fusillade of shots smashed
into his car, killing the Kikuyu leader instantly. The gunmen were Mau
Mau rebels, members of a secret society who had vowed to drive the white
man from the British colony of Kenya.
Already accused of a series of
arson and cattle-killing incidents, the Mau Mau's dramatic daylight
assassination of a prominent British loyalist from their own tribe
stunned the colonial government into calling a state of emergency that
lasted nearly eight years. British troops were brought in. More than
100,000 Africans were put into detention camps.
The killings
continued, and news reports about the Mau Mau's bloody massacres of
white settlers living in the highlands of central Kenya horrified the
world. In fact, only 32 Europeans died, while almost 2,000 Kikuyu loyal
to the British crown were murdered before the colonial government
regained control.
The turn to violence by the Mau Mau emboldened
independence movements across Africa, frustrated with years of broken
promises on land reform and self-government. After a largely nonviolent
political process, Ghana was the first to win its freedom, in 1957.
Kenya would wait another six years.
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