Overview

The inside story of the struggles of the Kenya Land and Freedom Army, referred to by British colonialism as the 'Mau Mau rebellion', is little known today. The autobiographical material written by Karari Njama (a senior leader in the Mau Mau hierarchy) and compiled by Donald L. Barnett was first published by Monthly Review Press in 1966, as Mau Mau From Within: An analysis of Kenya's Peasant Revolt. It was reprinted in 1970; it has remained out of print for many years. As the late Basil Davidson put it in his review of the first edition: 'Njama writes of the forest leaders' efforts to overcome dissension, to evolve effective tactics, to keep discipline, mete out justice... and to teach men how to survive in those merciless forests. His narrative is crowded with excitement. Those who know much of Africa and those who know little will alike find it compulsive reading. Some 10,000 Africans died fighting in those years . Here, in the harsh detail of everyday experience, are the reasons why.' The book is an extraordinary story of courage, passion, heroism, combined with recounting of colonial terror, brutality and betrayal. It is a story of how the very idea of being 'Kenyan' was intimately linked to the idea of freedom, a connection that was destroyed not only by the firepower of the British, but also by those who collaborated and established themselves as the beneficiaries of neocolonial rule. Disconnecting notions of freedom from identity left only a caricature that rapidly descended into tribalism and ethnicity. This momentous story of the struggle for freedom described here is relevant not only for a new generation of Kenyans but also for all those engaged in emancipatory struggles internationally. For so long as the experiences arising from the struggles described in this book are perceived as merely 'African' or 'Kenyan', it is not possible to fully grasp the contributions they have made to the struggle for a universalist humanity. What is recounted in this publication is more than an 'analysis of a peasant revolt'. It is above all a history of the Kenya Land and Freedom Army. As Ngugi wa Thiong'o points out in his Preface to this new edition, 'we don't have to use the vocabulary of the colonial to describe our struggles.' We were tempted to rename the book 'Kenya Land and Freedom Army from Within.' But because the original title has wide recognition, and and as one of the characteristics of movements of the oppressed is to appropriate derogatory terms used by their oppressors and repurpose them as an expression of pride in their own experiences, this book retains the original title, but with a change in the subtitle as 'The Story of the Kenya Land and Freedom Army.'

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9781988832593

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"I am glad the book will reappear. Today's Kenyans need this history because I think their memory seems to fail and they forget where our country came from and how. We did our part, now it is for them to continue the fight up to the good end. -- Karari Njama The reissue of this book ... is timely. It is a personal testimony, largely a memoir of one who worked closely with Liberator Dedan Kımathi. The ""from Within"" of the title is important. The story of the fight for freedom has for too long, being written by those ""without."" --Ngugi wa Thiong'o ... Karari Njama and Donald Barnett have a tale worth our attention and I strongly invite everyone to come and sit around the metaphorical hearth of African orature story-telling, in order to listen to them narrating this important national Kenya story of peasants' and workers' s/heroic epic in liberating their settler-colonial occupied motherland.-- Micere Githae Mugo The Mau Mau liberation struggle was a nationwide mass movement; adherents sacrificed their properties and their lives in order to recover their country's freedom and the land grabbed by the white settlers. ... I, Gitu wa Kahengeri, personally participated in the Mau Mau liberation struggle starting from my teenage years to the heroic recovery of Kenyan independence. -- Secretary General, Mau Mau War Veterans Association"

I am glad the book will reappear. Today's Kenyans need this history because I think their memory seems to fail and they forget where our country came from and how. We did our part, now it is for them to continue the fight up to the good end. 'AEi Karari Njama The reissue of this book ... is timely. It is a personal testimony, largely a memoir of one who worked closely with Liberator Dedan Kf+/-mathi. The 'AEufrom Within'AEu of the title is important. The story of the fight for freedom has for too long, being written by those 'AEuwithout.'AEu 'AEiNgugi wa Thiong'o ... Karari Njama and Donald Barnett have a tale worth our attention and I strongly invite everyone to come and sit around the metaphorical hearth of African orature story-telling, in order to listen to them narrating this important national Kenya story of peasants' and workers' s/heroic epic in liberating their settler-colonial occupied motherland.'AEi Micere Githae Mugo The Mau Mau liberation struggle was a nationwide mass movement; adherents sacrificed their properties and their lives in order to recover their country's freedom and the land grabbed by the white settlers. ... I, Gitu wa Kahengeri, personally participated in the Mau Mau liberation struggle starting from my teenage years to the heroic recovery of Kenyan independence. 'AEi Secretary General, Mau Mau War Veterans Association

Author Information

Karari Njama is a former member of the Kenya Land and Freedom Army (otherwise known as the Mau Mau. Karari was born of squatter parents on a European farm in the White Highlands. His family had lost the better part of its land in 1910, when it was alienated and included within the Forest Reserve. Driven by the same shortage of land which moved so many others, Karari's father migrated to the Rift Valley to become a squatter-laborer for a Boer settler. A former school-teacher, It was not until early September 1952 that Karari, having felt the first sting of ostracism and isolation, finally got his chance to join the Movement. It had, over the preceding two years, grown to include a vast majority of his fellow villagers and Kikuyu; it had also, particularly since the introduction of the Warriors' Oath, became increasingly bold and militant. Karari's oath, in contrast to earlier versions of the Unity Oath, reflected this increasing militancy. He was arrested in 1955 by the British colonial forces. Today he lives in poverty, his contribution to the struggle for freedom ignored by the state. Donald Lucas Barnett was born on January 10, 1930. He died, of a heart attack, on April 25, 1975, at the age of 45. It is noteworthy that this was the very same day that Vietnam won the war ... a small country defying and defeating the world's greatest superpower.Don's political work began in earnest in 1960, when he moved with his wife and 4 children, to Kenya in 1960. His extensive interviews with veterans of the Mau Mau guerrilla resistance there, later consolidated and published as 'Mau Mau From Within', were the basis for his doctoral dissertation analyzing 'revolutionary potential in peasant societies'. Don earned his Ph.D. from UCLA in 1963. In 1964, he was hired to teach Cultural Anthropology at Iowa State University. There, he became controversial in his opposition to the Vietnam war, and in May of 1968, was fired as a result of his activism. Ngugi wa Thiong'o, original name James Thiong'o Ngugi, (born January 5, 1938, Limuru, Kenya), Kenyan writer who was considered East Africa's leading novelist. His popular Weep Not, Child (1964) was the first major novel in English by an East African. As he became sensitized to the effects of colonialism in Africa, Ngugi adopted his traditional name and wrote in the Bantu language of Kenya's Kikuyu people. The prizewinning Weep Not, Child is the story of a Kikuyu family drawn into the struggle for Kenyan independence during the state of emergency and the Mau Mau rebellion. A Grain of Wheat (1967), generally held to be artistically more mature, focuses on the many social, moral, and racial issues of the struggle for independence and its aftermath. A third novel, The River Between (1965), which was actually written before the others, tells of lovers kept apart by the conflict between Christianity and traditional ways and beliefs and suggests that efforts to reunite a culturally divided community by means of Western education are doomed to failure. Petals of Blood (1977) deals with social and economic problems in East Africa after independence, particularly the continued exploitation of peasants and workers by foreign business interests and a greedy indigenous bourgeoisie. In a novel written in Kikuyu and English versions, Caitaani Mutharaba-ini (1980; Devil on the Cross), Ngugi presented these ideas in an allegorical form. Written in a manner meant to recall traditional ballad singers, the novel is a partly realistic, partly fantastical account of a meeting between the Devil and various villains who exploit the poor. Mũrogi wa Kagogo (2004; Wizard of the Crow) brings the dual lenses of fantasy and satire to bear upon the legacy of colonialism not only as it is perpetuated by a native dictatorship but also as it is ingrained in an ostensibly decolonized culture itself. The Black Hermit (1968; produced 1962) was the first of several plays, of which The Trial of Dedan Kimathi (1976; produced 1974), cowritten with Micere Githae Mugo, is considered by some critics to be his best. He was also coauthor, with Ngugi wa Mirii, of a play first written in Kikuyu, Ngaahika Ndeenda (1977; I Will Marry When I Want), the performance of which led to his detention for a year without trial by the Kenyan government. (His book Detained: A Writer's Prison Diary, which was published in 1981, describes his ordeal.) The play attacks capitalism, religious hypocrisy, and corruption among the new economic elite of Kenya. Matigari ma Njiruungi (1986; Matigari) is a novel in the same vein. Ngugi presented his ideas on literature, culture, and politics in numerous essays and lectures, which were collected in Homecoming (1972), Writers in Politics (1981), Barrel of a Pen (1983), Moving the Centre (1993), and Penpoints, Gunpoints, and Dreams (1998). In Decolonising the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature (1986), Ngugi argued for African-language literature as the only authentic voice for Africans and stated his own intention of writing only in Kikuyu or Kiswahili from that point on. Such works earned him a reputation as one of Africa's most articulate social critics. After a long exile from Kenya, Ngugi returned in 2004 with his wife to promote Mũrogi wa Kagogo. Several weeks later they were brutally assaulted in their home; the attack was believed by some to be politically motivated. After their recovery, the couple continued to publicize the book abroad. Ngugi later published the memoirs Dreams in a Time of War (2010), about his childhood; In the House of the Interpreter (2012), which was largely set in the 1950s, during the Mau Mau rebellion against British control in Kenya; and Birth of a Dream Weaver: A Writer's Awakening (2016), a chronicle of his years at Makerere University.

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