At the funeral for one of the last leaders of Kenya’s Mau Mau resistance movement on Saturday, his daughter is bitter: he fought to liberate a country that never thanked him.
Christopher Njora Muronyo died at the age of 106 in poverty, still carrying three bullets in his body from his time as a Mau Mau rebel against the British in the 1950s.
Hundreds gathered for his burial near Kenya’s Aberdare mountains, but it was a modest affair, with no government dignitaries and the family relying on donations to host it.
“He was a hero but today I am not celebrating, the national government did nothing for him,” his daughter Emily Kiambati told AFP.
“General Kiambati”, as he was known, was close to the iconic leader of the Mau Mau movement, Dedan Kimathi, who was executed by the British in 1957.
The rebellion began in 1952 in response to the massive takeover of land in central Kenya by British settlers, who turned the region into the “White Highlands”.
It was a key chapter in the road to independence in 1963, and the British response was one of the bloodiest episodes in its colonial history.
Estimates for the number of Kenyans killed range from 10,000 to 90,000. The Kenya Human Rights Commission says 160,000 were also imprisoned in camps where executions, torture and ill-treatment were common.
In 2013, the British government acknowledged abuses after a landmark court case in London and agreed to compensate more than 5,000 Kenyans.
‘Abject poverty’
Yet many Mau Mau veterans ended their lives in poverty, never having received recognition from the Kenyan government or recovered the land for which they fought.
Muronyo, who never saw any of the British compensation, was one of many “forgotten generals”.
“He lived in abject poverty. His home had been destroyed,” his son, Wilson Maina Kiambati, told AFP.
The children grew up with a violent, traumatised father who received “no recognition for the role he and others played in liberating this country,” he said.
Kenya’s first president after independence, Jomo Kenyatta, seeking to maintain good relations with the West and fearing resistance to his own rule, did little to praise the Mau Mau’s contribution in public, said Kenyan historian Macharia Munene.
The new leaders of the independent country “went out of their way to downplay (the Mau Mau) so as not to scare the West,” Munene told AFP.
Some Mau Mau were arrested or even killed by the Kenyatta’s administration, and the movement was still classified as a “terrorist” organisation into the early 2000s.
“They were shocked, disappointed and confused that the government they had fought and shed blood for was now actively hunting them down,” said lawyer Kelvin Kubai, whose grandfather was a Mau Mau fighter who ended up imprisoned under Kenyatta for five years.
“This betrayal was more painful to the Mau Mau than the actual bullet of the colonial forces,” he told AFP.
The Mau Mau were a taboo for years in part because many Kenyans had sided with the colonial regime during the uprising.
“The government is still ignoring our suffering,” said Njoroge Kinuthia, 99, one of Muronyo’s comrades-in-arms, at the funeral.
