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King must apologise for Mau Mau atrocity, academic warns ahead of Kenya tour
90,000 Kenyans were executed, tortured or maimed during the crackdown, with 160,000 detained in appalling conditions
ByVictoria Ward, ROYAL EDITOR28 October 2023 • 12:20pm
The King must say sorry for the atrocities unleashed by British colonial leaders in Kenya if he wants to be a true moderniser and lead from the front, a leading academic has warned.
Charles, 74, will use the first Commonwealth state visit of his reign, which begins on Tuesday, to “deepen his understanding of the wrongs suffered” during the Mau Mau revolt of the 1950s - one of the British Army’s bloodiest post-war conflicts.
He will lay a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Warrior at Uhuru Gardens and view the Mugumo fig tree planted at the site of the declaration of Kenya’s independence in 1963.
Both the King and Queen will also tour a new museum in Nairobi dedicated to Kenya’s history.
However, Caroline Elkins, a Havard professor of history whose book about the brutal suppression of the Mau Mau uprising, Imperial Reckoning: The Untold Story of Britain’s Gulag in Kenya, won a Pulitzer Prize, said he should go further.
“I think it’s a start,” she said of the confirmation from Buckingham Palace that the King would acknowledge the “more painful aspects” of the UK’s shared history with Kenya.
“But there is one word that he really needs to say - sorry. We are sorry.
“That is what needs to come, he needs to do that. This happened on his mother’s watch.”
The uprising began when a group from the Kikuyu tribe began attacking the European settlers, first their livestock then their properties.
Attacks were carried out by the banned secret society, Mau Mau, against Kikuyu loyal to the government.
State of emergency
Settlers demanded that the Government take action and in 1952, a state of emergency was declared.
The Kenya Human Rights Commission has said that 90,000 Kenyans were executed, tortured or maimed during the crackdown, with 160,000 detained in appalling conditions. An estimated 1.2 million Kenyans were forcibly resettled.
Despite defeat, the Mau Mau revolt is regarded in Kenya as one of the most significant steps in its journey to freedom from British rule.
In 2013, after a lengthy High Court legal battle, the British Government agreed to pay around £19.9m in compensation to just over 5,000 victims tortured and abused in British custody.
It also agreed to fund a memorial to the victims in Nairobi’s Uhuru Gardens, which shows a woman handing food to a Mau Mau fighter. It is dedicated “to the victims of torture and ill treatment during the colonial era.”
Lord Hague of Richmond, the former Foreign Secretary, made a statement to Parliament after the case was settled in which he said: “The British government sincerely regrets these abuses took place. Torture and ill-treatment are abhorrent violations of human dignity which we unreservedly condemn.”
Referring to that historic acknowledgement, Prof Elkins said: “Whatever the King says in Kenya, he is already ten years behind in the conversation and that’s problematic.
“This visit has got to be more than just a listening exercise, he has to be open to the new ways in which the voices of the empire can be amplified.”
Apology question for Government
A royal source said the question of an apology would be one for the Government, which had already made a statement in 2013.
Exactly what the King says, or does not say, on state visits is entirely steered by the Government, on whose business he is travelling, the source added.
However Prof Elkins said the monarchy was “at a real crossroads” as Commonwealth realms seek independence amid calls for slavery to be better taught in schools.
The Prince and Princess of Wales were the “canaries in the coalmine” during their ill-fated tour of the Caribbean last year, when they were met with calls for slavery reparations
“How Charles handles this could set the tone,” Prof Elkins added. “The monarchy has been very careful about tending the past but what kind of present does he want to create? What kind of future?
“His coming to Kenya is meaningful but a lot will depend on how he engages with these communities and how he acknowledges the suffering and loss of life.”
David Anderson, a professor of African history at the University of Warwick, helped the Kenyans’ British legal team uncover 1,500 documents relating to the abuses that had been flown back to the UK on the eve of independence but then deliberately suppressed.
Government agree settlement
He said the Government had eventually agreed to a settlement to avoid the harrowing spectre of elderly victims detailing the horrific abuses they had suffered on the witness stand, before spending ten months negotiating the number of people they were willing to pay “down and down and down”, which Kenyans found “deplorable.”
Prof Anderson said the King faced a “major challenge” in terms of acknowledging Britain’s part in the story, the intricacies of which are widely recognised in Kenya.
“It’s very hazardous,” he said. “I can certainly understand why he feels he needs to do this but I suspect it was not encouraged politically. To get it right, he’d have to say quite a lot more than I suspect he wants to say. And maybe more than he knows how to say.”
Prof Anderson said the Mau Mau uprising was “enormously debated” in parliament in the 1950s, with Hansard records on the subject running to more than 1,300 pages due to almost weekly questions about the atrocities.
“But the British public wasn’t interested,” he said. “So the truth is actually much more painful than you first realise. It’s not that we’ve only recently discovered stuff we didn’t know, it’s that we deliberately forgot it.
“So Kenyans often feel they just want their dignity back. They want to be believed and acknowledged and they don’t want it to be denied, they don’t want deceit.”
Source: The Telegraph
90,000 Kenyans were executed, tortured or maimed during the crackdown, with 160,000 detained in appalling conditions
ByVictoria Ward, ROYAL EDITOR28 October 2023 • 12:20pm
The King must say sorry for the atrocities unleashed by British colonial leaders in Kenya if he wants to be a true moderniser and lead from the front, a leading academic has warned.
Charles, 74, will use the first Commonwealth state visit of his reign, which begins on Tuesday, to “deepen his understanding of the wrongs suffered” during the Mau Mau revolt of the 1950s - one of the British Army’s bloodiest post-war conflicts.
He will lay a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Warrior at Uhuru Gardens and view the Mugumo fig tree planted at the site of the declaration of Kenya’s independence in 1963.
Both the King and Queen will also tour a new museum in Nairobi dedicated to Kenya’s history.
However, Caroline Elkins, a Havard professor of history whose book about the brutal suppression of the Mau Mau uprising, Imperial Reckoning: The Untold Story of Britain’s Gulag in Kenya, won a Pulitzer Prize, said he should go further.
“I think it’s a start,” she said of the confirmation from Buckingham Palace that the King would acknowledge the “more painful aspects” of the UK’s shared history with Kenya.
“But there is one word that he really needs to say - sorry. We are sorry.
“That is what needs to come, he needs to do that. This happened on his mother’s watch.”
The uprising began when a group from the Kikuyu tribe began attacking the European settlers, first their livestock then their properties.
Attacks were carried out by the banned secret society, Mau Mau, against Kikuyu loyal to the government.
State of emergency
Settlers demanded that the Government take action and in 1952, a state of emergency was declared.
The Kenya Human Rights Commission has said that 90,000 Kenyans were executed, tortured or maimed during the crackdown, with 160,000 detained in appalling conditions. An estimated 1.2 million Kenyans were forcibly resettled.
Despite defeat, the Mau Mau revolt is regarded in Kenya as one of the most significant steps in its journey to freedom from British rule.
In 2013, after a lengthy High Court legal battle, the British Government agreed to pay around £19.9m in compensation to just over 5,000 victims tortured and abused in British custody.
It also agreed to fund a memorial to the victims in Nairobi’s Uhuru Gardens, which shows a woman handing food to a Mau Mau fighter. It is dedicated “to the victims of torture and ill treatment during the colonial era.”
Lord Hague of Richmond, the former Foreign Secretary, made a statement to Parliament after the case was settled in which he said: “The British government sincerely regrets these abuses took place. Torture and ill-treatment are abhorrent violations of human dignity which we unreservedly condemn.”
Referring to that historic acknowledgement, Prof Elkins said: “Whatever the King says in Kenya, he is already ten years behind in the conversation and that’s problematic.
“This visit has got to be more than just a listening exercise, he has to be open to the new ways in which the voices of the empire can be amplified.”
Apology question for Government
A royal source said the question of an apology would be one for the Government, which had already made a statement in 2013.
Exactly what the King says, or does not say, on state visits is entirely steered by the Government, on whose business he is travelling, the source added.
However Prof Elkins said the monarchy was “at a real crossroads” as Commonwealth realms seek independence amid calls for slavery to be better taught in schools.
The Prince and Princess of Wales were the “canaries in the coalmine” during their ill-fated tour of the Caribbean last year, when they were met with calls for slavery reparations
“How Charles handles this could set the tone,” Prof Elkins added. “The monarchy has been very careful about tending the past but what kind of present does he want to create? What kind of future?
“His coming to Kenya is meaningful but a lot will depend on how he engages with these communities and how he acknowledges the suffering and loss of life.”
David Anderson, a professor of African history at the University of Warwick, helped the Kenyans’ British legal team uncover 1,500 documents relating to the abuses that had been flown back to the UK on the eve of independence but then deliberately suppressed.
Government agree settlement
He said the Government had eventually agreed to a settlement to avoid the harrowing spectre of elderly victims detailing the horrific abuses they had suffered on the witness stand, before spending ten months negotiating the number of people they were willing to pay “down and down and down”, which Kenyans found “deplorable.”
Prof Anderson said the King faced a “major challenge” in terms of acknowledging Britain’s part in the story, the intricacies of which are widely recognised in Kenya.
“It’s very hazardous,” he said. “I can certainly understand why he feels he needs to do this but I suspect it was not encouraged politically. To get it right, he’d have to say quite a lot more than I suspect he wants to say. And maybe more than he knows how to say.”
Prof Anderson said the Mau Mau uprising was “enormously debated” in parliament in the 1950s, with Hansard records on the subject running to more than 1,300 pages due to almost weekly questions about the atrocities.
“But the British public wasn’t interested,” he said. “So the truth is actually much more painful than you first realise. It’s not that we’ve only recently discovered stuff we didn’t know, it’s that we deliberately forgot it.
“So Kenyans often feel they just want their dignity back. They want to be believed and acknowledged and they don’t want it to be denied, they don’t want deceit.”
Source: The Telegraph
