Unearthing Kenya’s Foundational Silences – London or Nairobi?

The discussion on the restitution of African cultural heritage has largely been dominated by efforts and campaigns to return cultural artefacts to their countries and communities of origin. The terms repatriation and restitution tend to conjure up images of the Benin bronzes from Nigeria, the Mijikenda vigango from Kenya, the Maqdala treasures from Ethiopia and the tens of thousands of cultural artefacts taken from the African continent and migrated to Europe in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Yet, as we continue to campaign for the return of artefacts, another facet of the repatriation debate forces us to expand the discussion on repatriation beyond objects and consider the place of African archives. The 1960s were a period that saw several African ex-colonies gain independence but as Britain handed over independence with one hand, it concealed, migrated and destroyed several archival documents with the other. In a secret program known as Operation Legacy, the British government mandated colonial officers across the empire to destroy “sensitive” files in order to prevent them from being inherited by the newly independent states. Essentially, the promise of independence opened up new possibilities for the future, while simultaneously closing off doors to the past.

In October 1952, the British colonial administration in Kenya declared a state of emergency in response to the Mau Mau uprising—an armed rebellion which called for independence and the return of land to the native people of Kenya. The emergency, which lasted almost eight years, became one of the longest wars of decolonisation fought within the British empire. When the state of emergency was lifted in 1960, thirty-two European settlers had died in the rebellion, and fewer than two hundred casualties were recorded among British regiments and police. In contrast, an estimated twenty thousand native Kenyans were killed and thousands more dispossessed of their land and property.[1]

In 1963, Kenya gained independence from Britain and in 1964 officially became the Republic of Kenya. “Mau Mau was a disease which had been eradicated and should never be remembered again”, wrote Jomo Kenyatta in his 1968 book, Suffering without Bitterness: The Founding of the Kenyan Nation.[2] Shortly after taking up leadership in 1963, Kenyatta invited a large audience of white British settlers to Nakuru where he famously proclaimed “Let me tell you Jomo Kenyatta has no intention of retaliating or looking backwards. We are going to forget the past and look forward to the future”.[3]

As a third generation Kenyan, I find myself awkwardly situated in “Kenyatta’s future”. I am a product of the Kenyan state he designed and an output of the system he put in place. It is because of me that the Mau Mau fought for independence—freedom for their children. Yet, it is because of me that they were forgotten—the new independent Kenya. More than 50 years after this speech was made, I find myself at the Kenya National Archives in Nairobi’s Central Business District, attempting to understand Kenya’s foundational story as tied to its violent struggle for independence. Trying desperately to decipher the discrepancies between my grandfather’s memories of the colonial period and the narratives contained or omitted from my primary school history books.

Today, the Mau Mau uprising is regarded as one of Africa’s bloodiest freedom struggles, yet in its home country Kenya its legacy remains complex at best, and silenced at worst. How is it that we seem to know so much about this period yet understand so little of its experience? To answer these questions, we must return to 1963, the year of our foundation.  

The removal of archival files from Kenya on the eve of independence would have far-reaching consequences. The British government destroyed several documents pertaining to the emergency period. This migration of files had a profound impact on how the founding story of the country would be crafted and in whose interest it would work. For every one voice that the colonial archive enabled, it silenced a hundred more. Among the files destroyed and migrated to the UK were documents detailing atrocities which took place in an estimated one hundred detention camps that were setup by the British in Kenya to “rehabilitate” those suspected of being Mau Mau.

Almost 60 years after independence, knowledge and memory of these detention camps have been almost entirely, and very deliberately, erased in both Kenya & the UK. Despite the presence of so many camps across the country, and with thousands still bearing unhealed wounds, the history of detention is neither taught in schools, nor is it a part of our collective national memory.

The absence of information on these camps, and a continued false representation of Britain’s presence and activities in Kenya, has perpetuated damaging social discourse on race, migration and social justice. As an historian of contemporary Kenya born under the guise of an independent state, I am forced to contend with the constant visibility of this history, in its ever ‘presentness’, surrounding me and informing my life whilst still being resigned to the invisibility of the archive.

Where do I, and many others like me, begin to find answers, in London or Nairobi? To ask this question is to assume that the relationship between the colony and coloniser is balanced; yet it is not. Efforts to regain possession of Kenyan records began as early as 1963 when a committee was established to deliberate on ways of retrieving absent Kenyan documents.[4] By 1967 it had become clear to Kenyan authorities that far more documentation had been removed from Kenya than the British had indicated. The then chief archivist at the Kenyan National Archives raised the issue of the migrated files but it was not possible at the time to establish the volume and nature of the records held outside the country. Further attempts to recover the records were made in the 1970s and 1980s.[5] The Foreign and Commonwealth office not only continued to maintain that the archive belonged to the UK, it declined to provide information on the contents of the files.

It was not until 2011 when, as a result of the legal claim brought against the British Government by former Mau Mau detainees, the UK government was forced to admit its custody of about 1,500 Kenyan files removed at independence. The majority of these files, which contain detailed accounts of the atrocities which took place inside the detention camps, were made available to ‘the public’ between 2012 and 2013. But who constitutes this so-called public when a vast majority of Kenyans are unable to navigate insurmountable visa requirements, provide three-month bank statements, show proof of employment or meet the financial costs required to facilitate their travel and accommodation?

Archives are internationally recognised as a basic source of evidence needed to assert the rights of individual citizens. The holding of Kenyan archives in the UK is not just a simple barrier to research access, it is a denial of our rights as citizens. In navigating this loss of agency, we find ourselves turning to alternative knowledge sources. We turn to oral histories, to the living whose testimonies the archive ignores or silences. But this is only half of the story, the other half is out of reach. The journey to unearth Kenya’s silences takes place in both London and Nairobi.

This is, however, not a relationship based on mutual access. It is a relationship based on power—the power of narrative and the power of knowledge. It is time this narrative shifted from those who it seeks to protect to those who it seeks to represent.

Chao Tayiana Maina is a digital heritage specialist and digital humanities scholar. She is the founder of African Digital Heritage, a Kenya-based non-profit organisation founded to encourage a more critical, holistic and knowledge-based approach to the design and implementation of digital solutions within African cultural heritage. She is also a co-founder of both the Museum of British Colonialism (https://www.museumofbritishcolonialism.org/) and the Open Restitution Project Africa (https://openrestitution.africa/).

[1] David Anderson, Histories of the Hanged. The Dirty War in Kenya and the End of Empire, New York, W. W. Norton & Company, 2005, p. 252.

[2] Jomo Kenyatta, Suffering without Bitterness: The Founding of the Kenyan Nation, Nairobi, East African Publishing House, 1968, p. 189.

[3] W. O. Maloba, Kenyatta and Britain: An Account of Political Transformation, 1929-1963, Palgrave Macmillan, 2018, p. 258.

[4] Nathan Mnjama, “Archives and records management in Kenya: Problems and prospects”, Records Management Journal, vol. 13, no. 2, 2003, pp. 91-101.

[5] Ibid.