Dedan Kimathi Executed

Dedan Kimathi Executed

In the early morning of 18 February 1957, Dedan Kimathi Waciuri was executed by hanging at the Kamiti Maximum Security Prison, and according to documentation, buried within its grounds, in Nairobi, Kenya. Kimathi was the senior military and spiritual leader of the Mau Mau Uprising. Widely regarded as a revolutionary leader, he led the armed military struggle against the British colonial regime in Kenya in the 1950s until his execution in 1957. Along with Muthoni Kirima, Musa Mwariama, Kimathi was one of the three Mau Mau Field Marshals, and they were supported by Kubu Kubu, General China and Baimungi M’marete.

Dedan Kimathi, was born Kimathi wa Waciuri, on 31 October 1920, in Thege (or Thegenge) village, at Kanyinya, Tetu Division, near Nyeri in central Kenya. His father died before he was born. Kimathi received early education during the colonial period under extremely difficult conditions. He entered elementary school at the age of fifteen and went on to join the Tumutumu Church of Scotland Mission Secondary School in the region. Kimathi was reputed to be smart in class, and his school records reflected that he was exceptionally intelligent. He was particularly good in English and poetry and an ardent member of the debate club.

However, he was also known to be very naughty and stubborn. Some historians have attributed his rebellious character not to his hatred for white rule, but rather the unfair treatment he felt he was given by black people. His playmates nicknamed him ‘Njangu’, a Kikuyu word which means ‘rough and treacherous’. It is alleged that he even tried to paralyse learning at the Tumutumu institution by stealing the school bell. His associates said he took the bell and rang it loudly while atop the Tumutumu hill. He was eventually expelled from school for indiscipline in 1944.

In the mid-1940s, Kimathi enlisted in the British Army but was discharged after a month for ill-discipline. He thereafter attempted various jobs such as fulfilling clerical duties, tending after pigs and teaching. Armed with a good command of the English language, Kimathi charmed his way in and out of many jobs. By this time, he was getting agitated with the way the colonial masters were running the country. Around 1947, whilst working in Ol Kalou, the capital town of Nyandarua County of the former Central Province of Kenya, Kimathi came into contact with members of the Kenya African Union (KAU). By 1950 he had become secretary to the KAU branch at Ol Kalou, which was controlled by militant supporters of the Mau Mau cause.

The Mau Mau began as the Kenya Land and Freedom Army (KLFA), an armed wing of the Kenya African Union (KAU) and a militant Kikuyu, Embu and Meru army, which sought to reclaim land, which the British settlers had gradually stripped away from them. As the group’s influence and membership widened it became a major threat to the colonial government. It is uncertain where the term Mau Mau originated from. However, some say it was coined as an anagram of the Kikuyu word ‘uma’ which means, ‘go’. However, members of the movement preferred to be referred to as the KLFA. Later the term Mau Mau came to mean: “Mzungu arudi Ulaya, mwafrika apate uhuru”, a Swahili phrase which means: “Let the foreigner go back to Europe, so the African can regain independence”.

In 1951, radical members of the KAU in the Nairobi Branch formed a ‘Central Committee’ known as “Muhimu” (Kiswahili for “Important”) which began to plan more militant methods to achieve Independence. Referred to as the “Muhimu Committee”, these activists played a central role in transforming and spreading the practice of oathing within the Mau Mau movement, as they attacked loyalists and white settlers. The Uprising, which involved mostly Kikuyu people, the largest ethnic group in the Kenyan colony, began to take shape when more radical Kikuyu militants were invited into the nationalist KAU (Kenya African Union). Initially, Mau Mau fighters were mainly Kikuyu, whose territory was preferred by the white settlers, but later, Meru, Embu, Kamba and other ethnic groups joined in the struggle.

Upon taking the oath of the Mau Mau, Kimathi in 1951 joined the Forty Group, the militant wing of the defunct Kikuyu Central Association. As branch secretary, Kimathi presided over oath-taking. He believed in compelling fellow Kikuyu by way of oath to bring solidarity to the independence movement. His activities with the group made him a target of the colonial government, and he was briefly arrested that same year but escaped with the help of local police. This marked the beginning of his involvement in the uprising, and he formed the Kenya Defence Council to co-ordinate all forest fighters in 1953.

The Mau Mau Uprising lasted from 1952 through 1960 and helped to hasten Kenya’s independence. Issues like the expulsion of Kikuyu tenants from settler farms, loss of land to white settlers, poverty, and lack of true political representation for Africans provided the impetus for the revolt. The guerrilla war instilled fear in British settlers and moderate Africans alike, who were targeted for allegedly betraying the movement’s cause and collaborating with the settlers. During the eight-year uprising, 32 white settlers and about 200 British police and army soldiers were killed, and over 1,800 African civilians were butchered. Official records at the Kenya National Archives show that more than 10,000 Kenyans were killed by the British colonial security forces and nearly 50,000 were detained after the colonial administration declared the State of Emergency in October 1952.

The British colonial government also carried out 1,090 executions, making it the largest wartime use of capital punishment by the British Empire. On the other hand, several hundred people, most of them Kenyans, were allegedly killed by the Mau Mau fighters. Although the Uprising was directed primarily against British colonial forces and the white settler community, much of the violence took place between rebel and loyalist Africans. Thus, the uprising often had the appearance of a civil war with atrocities on both sides.

On 21 October 1956, Kimathi was shot on the leg by gunshots from two Home Guards belonging to a self-defence militia of his own Kikuyu ethnic group, following a manhunt led by Ian Henderson, a British intelligence officer. By the time of his capture in the emergency trenches dug to separate the “native reserve” and the Nyandarua forest, a bounty had been placed on him. After his capture, his image being carried away on a stretcher was printed in leaflets by the British to demoralise the Mau Mau and their supporters.

It was however not Henderson who first caught him, but he was captured by an “askari” (a native colonial soldier) called Ndirangu Mau. His capture marked the beginning of the end of the forest war. He was charged with possession of a firearm and ammunition. A court, presided over by a White judge and with an all-black jury of Kenyans, sentenced him to death. His appeal was dismissed, and the death sentence was upheld.

Before his execution, he asked to see his wife, and in the morning of the day of his execution, his wife Mukami was allowed to see him. He told her that “I have no doubt in my mind that the British are determined to execute me. I have committed no crime. My only crime is that I am a Kenyan revolutionary who led a liberation army… Now If I must leave you and my family, I have nothing to regret about. My blood will water the tree of Independence.”

Following his execution, the colonialists dumped his body in an unmarked grave at Kamiti Maximum Security Prison, presumably to stop Kenyans from turning the grave into a shrine. For several decades, the family, relatives and the Kenyan government pleaded with London to reveal the location where Kimathi’s remains lay, but to no avail. It was only on 25 October 2019, through the efforts of the Dedan Kimathi Foundation, that news of his burial site being discovered were released.

Kimathi is credited with leading efforts to create formal military structures within the Mau Mau and convening a war council in 1953. He was one of three Mau Mau Field Marshals, along with Musa Mwariama and Muthoni Kirima and was considered the most feared among the three field marshals who led the movement. Kenyan nationalists view him as the heroic figurehead of the Kenyan freedom struggle against British colonial rule, while the British saw him as a “terrorist”.

Kimathi was held in high regard by anti-apartheid revolutionary leader Nelson Mandela. In July 1990, Mandela visited Nairobi and requested to see Kimathi’s grave and meet his widow Mukami. However, during that time his grave was not yet identified by both the Kenyan and British governments. Mandela’s request was an embarrassing moment for the Daniel arap Moi administration, which had largely ignored Kimathi, like Jomo Kenyatta’s government before it. It was also an awkward moment searching for Kimathi’s widow, Mukami, in the village where she and her family lived, forgotten in poverty.

Nevertheless, Mandela’s request was not met, partly because the exact site of Kimathi’s grave was officially unknown, and partly because successive Kenyan governments had classed the Kenya Lands Freedom Army (KLFA), or Mau Mau, an organisation that Kimathi led, as “an illegal, terrorist group”. During a public address at the Kasarani Stadium, in Nairobi, before leaving the country, Mandela stated his admiration for Kimathi and other Mau Mau leaders who inspired his own struggle against apartheid colonial injustice. It was only 15 years later in 2005, during his second visit to Kenya, that Mandela finally managed to meet Kimathi’s widow Mukami as well as two of Kimathi’s children.

Despite being viewed negatively by Kenya’s first two presidents, Jomo Kenyatta and Daniel arap Moi, Kimathi and his fellow Mau Mau guerrilla fighters were officially recognised as heroes in the struggle for Kenyan independence under the Mwai Kibaki administration, culminating in the unveiling of a Kimathi statue in 2007.

“Mzungu arudi Ulaya, mwafrika apate uhuru” (“Let the foreigner go back to Europe, so the African can regain independence”).

Sources:
Wikipedia
South African History Online (SAHO).
Ngugi wa Thiong’o and Micere Githae Mugo, “The Trial of Dedan Kimathi”, Revsocialist for SocialistStories, Nairobi, August 1976.
James Shimanyula, “Dedan Kimathi: Kenya’s heroic freedom fighter”, African Roots, 11 May 2021.
Lauren Brown, “Dedan Kimathi (1920 – 1957)”, Blackpast, 20 June 2020.
Lutivini Majanja, “Reclaiming Kimathi, leader of the Mau Mau”, Red Pepper Magazine, 8 November 2023.
Pinky Khoabane, “We Remember Dedan Kimathi, Kenyan Revolutionary Leader Sent To The Gallows 18 Feb 1957”, Uncensoredopinion, 19 February 2018.

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