Here is some hot tea straight from Meru. A group of Mau Mau veterans have decided they are not just telling their stories over evening fires, they are taking them straight to the High Court. Their target? Not the British this time, but Jomo Kenyatta’s own government. Yes, the first independent administration is accused of picking up where the colonisers left off.
The veterans say that between 1960 and 1965, the Kenyatta regime unleashed security forces on them: arrests, forest raids, torture, killings, and even the public display of bodies. Field Marshal Baimungi was killed in Kirinyaga after refusing to play ball with Cabinet men, while General Chui and others were paraded like warning posters. Independence heroes turned into enemies of the state, all within a few short years.
Now here is where the law gets spicy. The case asks whether today’s government should pay for yesterday’s sins. International law says the state is continuous, so liabilities do not disappear with new presidents. But can we really stretch the 2010 Constitution backwards to cover events from the 1960s? That is the legal tightrope Justice Mbogo will be balancing on come November.
And then, the heart of it all: land. Because in Kenya, all roads lead back to land. The fighters believed independence meant land redistribution. Kenyatta famously told them there would be no free land, and that line hit harder than a curfew raid. Imagine fighting in the forest for years, only to be told to go buy back the same land you bled for. No wonder the veterans call it betrayal. The petition argues that silencing Mau Mau leaders was not just about security, it was about killing the land question before it caught fire.
If the petitioners win, it could be a Pandora’s box moment. We could see claims tied to Nyayo House torture, the Wagalla massacre, and every other historical injustice lining up at the court doors. If they lose, well, chalk it up as another story of promises deferred.
Either way, the tea is steaming. Independence was supposed to deliver freedom. Instead, it birthed a government that turned its guns on the very freedom fighters who made it possible.
