Central Kenya lockdowns and curfews of the 1950s

Last week the government put Nairobi and three counties in the coast on lockdowns to prevent Covid-19 virus transmission to other counties.

In the previous week, a dusk-to-dawn curfew had been decreed in the entire country to enhance social distancing to reduce the virus ‘s spread.

These peacetime measures have the semblance to wartime emergency restrictions. And there is no contradiction here because Covid-19 is in reality a global war against an invisible enemy requiring similar wartime containment methods since the objectives are the same – restrict public movement; search and screen to identify; isolate to contain; and then reduce the threat.

The two historical situations of war or civil disturbance that come to mind are the August 1, 1982, abortive coup by officers of the Kenya Air Force which centred in Nairobi and Nanyuki, and the traumatising Mau Mau war in Central Kenya in 1950s.

The 1982 dusk-to dawn curfews in the two locations lasted about a month and were meant to allow the army to contain the rebellion, and specifically arrest widespread and violent looting in Nairobi of mainly Asian businesses and homes by the public.

The economic impact of the abortive coup was phenomenal as traumatised Asian communities withheld investments with many leaving the country.

The abortive coup was also the defining turning point for President Moi’s rule which turned vindictive for he could no longer trust anyone.

The State of Emergency was decreed by the colonial government in October 1952 to contain a runway armed Mau Mau uprising in quest for land, justice and political freedom and which had spread across Nairobi, the Kikuyu, Embu and Meru (KEM) districts, and the European settler farms of Rift Valley.

By 1953 the Mau Mau fighters had an upper hand as they caught the authorities unprepared and without a co-ordinated strategy.

Then the colonial government copied a strategy from Malaysia colony which had previously encountered a similar uprising, and this entailed movement control of KEM communities, isolation and confinement of Mau Mau sympathisers to cut and weaken food and arms flow to the fighters in Mt Kenya and Aberdare forests, and finally striking the Mau Mau fighters hard.

These measures were ruthlessly implemented in 1954, the year when I was starting primary school at the age of seven.

Households scattered across central Kenya were all razed down and families forcibly relocated to hurriedly established concentration villages (ichagis) under a stringently centralised command and control hierarchy up from the headman (sub-chief), chief, District Officer (DO) to the District Commissioner (DC) who had enormous life and death judicial authority granted by Emergency powers.

A typical village had controlled access and exit with a perimeter fence and a wide moat with implanted wooden spikes, and a monitoring watch tower.

Movements from the village to fetch water and gather food from abandoned shambas were communal under armed guard escort. Dusk to dawn curfew had already been decreed in all parts of central Kenya.

The village model was meant to isolated and cut critical supply lines to the fighters in the forests.

The next major move was to forcibly repatriate all KEM people from all parts of Kenya and East Africa to their ancestral Central Kenya districts, creating severe congestion and starvation in the new villages.

This was followed by a full lockdown of central Kenya districts to prevent any movement out without a movement pass authorised by the DC.

Then came the most traumatic and dreaded step of screening, tracing and isolating suspected Mau Mau activists and sympathisers.

This was done from 1954 under Operation Anvil using a crude method of KEM adults walking past a local collaborator wearing a hood (gakunia). If he nodded his head, the unfortunate suspect was instantly loaded on to a waiting truck and sent to remote detention camps at Manyani, Lamu, Hola, Yatta, Mwea, Mageta Island near Kisumu, Marsbit, Lokitaung and many other camps across Kenya.

My late father who was a prominent businessman and a behind the scene Mau Mau organiser, was picked by “gakunia” and detained at Kangubiri in 1955/56, leaving my mother to manage his business at Karatina where we had relocated after our home at Hiriga near Sagana Royal Lodge was torched down.

Other screening methods entailed systematic intense and crude interrogations of people, including children to report on others.

I remember interviews in our primary school where we were asked about our parents Mau Mau involvement.

Then came a co-ordinated assault on the Mau Mau in the forest by a combined effort of the British Army, Kenya Regiment of young local white volunteers, Kenya Police, Tribal Police (Admin Police), and the local home guards. And this was a horrific experience from 1954 through 1955 and by the end of 1956, the fighters in the forest had more or less been vanquished.

The final step-by-step rehabilitation of Central Kenya back to socio-economic normality started in 1957/8 to consolidate land into individual titled parcels.

This allowed gradual voluntary return from villages to commence organised agriculture involving newly introduced coffee and tea cash crops. The village land reverted to communal use (trading centres, churches, schools, health centres) under county council trusteeship.

The ultimate crowning event was the withdrawal of emergency rule in January 1960 which simultaneously lifted the KEM districts lockdown allowing free travel outside central Kenya.

This is the year we made our first ever school trips outside Central Province to Nairobi Royal Show, and to the Rift Valley to view Lake Nakuru flamingos, the beautiful Thomson Falls, and the zoo at Carr Hartley farm at Rumuruti.

With the end of emergency, the outlawed political activity was now allowed, with the returning Mau Mau detainees taking over political leadership.

The 1960 Lancaster Conference set the stage for a constitutional roadmap to eventual independence, at a time when the British Empire was crumbling.

This story is meant to firstly break the ongoing monotony of sad corona news, while emphasising that the Covid virus is a war to be won using a disciplined and targeted strategy to isolate and conquer the virus sooner than later.