The lions do not let you see the forest. The big cats, the images of the savannah and its large herds of grazing herbivores on the watchful eye, provide a wild and romantic postcard of Kenya. But its recent past is not idyllic, but violent and practically unknown. The adventures of Josiah Kariuki, one of its historical leaders, shows the sinister background of one of the most fascinating countries on the planet.
As a young man in the 1950s, this supporter of independence provided material means for the Mau Mau, militiamen who fought against the British colonizers. The authorities arrested him and he spent seven years in confinement camps. After liberation, the guerrilla became the personal secretary of Jomo Kenyatta, the first president of the country and an emblem of the new times.
Years later, Kariuki, turned into an influential parliamentarian, claimed that the father of the country had illegally enriched himself. The complainant was last seen on March 25, 1975, at the Nairobi Hilton, accompanied by a presidential bodyguard. Days later, his body was found burned next to an anthill.
The murder was never clarified and Kenyatta senior’s credibility was tarnished. Over the past few months, the business practices of his son Uhuru, the current Kenyan president, have also been questioned. The Pandora Papers have revealed that this prominent family owns a network made up of thirteen ‘offshore’ or extraterritorial firms to which they have allegedly transferred a large part of their assets.
But neither a crime without confessed culprits nor the stratagems to hide fortunes in Panama and the British Virgin Islands constitute the great stains that weigh on the most important lineage of this country bathed by the Indian Ocean. His questioning refers to the origin of the State itself. The prestige of Kamau wa Ngengiro, aka Jomo Kenyatta, has been in question for half a century for its corrupt practices. Jomo, which means ‘fiery spear’, and Kenyatta, ‘light of Kenya’, knew how to capitalize on a struggle that we only know from the interpretation of his English enemies.
The arrival of the settlers
The English Empire reached East Africa in the late 19th century. The settlers occupied the lands of indigenous communities, mainly in the Rift Valley and created large plantations of coffee, tea, tobacco and cotton, dedicated to export. The new owners used forced or salaried labor. Shortly after starting these operations, wages were cut by a third and employees, already knowledgeable in union practices, organized a protest march. The extremely expeditious Police fired on those assembled and caused more than 50 deaths. The news barely got out. The writer Karen Blixen had a farm in Africa, but she never wondered who its previous owners were.
The bonanza was evident. The opulent life of British expatriates was taken to the cinema in films such as ‘Passions in Kenya’, which portrays their daily life among large estates, clubs and feasts in a territory they called ‘Happy Valley’, the happy valley. The plot revolves around the murder of the Count of Erroll by a spiteful husband, a real event that revealed, in the middle of World War II, the voluptuous and carefree microcosm of that elite.
The Mau Mau guerrillas arrived and the party was over. London released the image of brutal outlaws raiding residences and executing entire families of owners, but in reality, the repression of the security forces was much more ferocious. The British caused more than 100,000 fatalities and another 150,000, like Kariuki, received long prison terms in confinement camps.
Jomo Kenyatta, holding his Bible up, is sworn in as Kenyan Prime Minister in 1963. /
The terms of independence, celebrated in 1963, tried, in some way, to compensate the natives of that period of domination and depletion. The British Government offered funds to the new Administration to buy land from settlers returning to the metropolis. The person in charge of carrying out the operation was Jomo Kenyatta, the new president. The politician had suffered imprisonment and exile, but London trusted his moderate character and negotiated the segregation process with him.
The agrarian reform did not respond to the wishes of restorative justice, it only changed the color of the landowners’ skin. The statesman took advantage of these means to favor the ruling class, which took one sixth of the surface at stake, and the Kikuyu tribe, to which he belonged. In addition, the government also sold lots to foreigners.
Uhuru Kenyatta appears in the Pandora Papers with companies in Panama and the Virgin Islands
Jomo has been in question for half a century for corruption and numerous crimes
The eagerness of the new leaders to seize land even blocked a bill to limit the area of properties. A CIA report assures that the president only enjoyed 4,000 hectares, while his wife Mama Ngina owned farms that included more than 150,000 hectares and that included plantations and ruby mines.
Family businesses were also projected into the charcoal and ivory trade. By the end of the last century, the Kenyatta interests had expanded into hospitality, with control of seven luxury hotels, transportation, insurance, the media, and the largest milk producer in East Africa. Furthermore, the information agency’s dossier states that numerous relatives benefited from undisguised nepotism.
The southeastern coast
The greatest paradox occurred in the late 1960s, when the president promoted the Kikuyu colonization of the southeastern coast, inhabited by Swahili Wabajuni. Curiously, as in colonial times, the Administration granted property titles to communal lands and did not provide resources to the development plans to the already settled populations.
The result was the creation of two development dynamics and a growing tension due to the marginalization of the natives. Seven years ago, guerrillas stormed Mpeketoni, one of those newly built towns, and murdered 59 people. The government attributed the blow to the Somali militia Al Shabaab.
Jomo Kenyatta’s predatory management did not go unpunished. Frustration sparked insurrections, but the liberator did not hesitate to call on the remnant of British troops to quell the rebellion and establish a one-party system. He also took advantage of the importance of tribalism in Kenya. In addition to having the support of the Kikuyu community, he joined forces with Daniel Arap Moi, a politician belonging to the Kalenjin, another important group in number, to achieve majorities in a territory marked by tribalism.
The death of the patriarch did not imply any loss of his enormous heritage. Arap Moi, his successor, was too busy making his own fortune and keeping the opposition at bay. The 27-story, 84-meter-high Nyayo House skyscraper symbolizes this endeavor. Its basement is known as ‘the torture chamber’ while the upper levels looked like a Babel of administrative corruption. Today, the lower dungeons have become one more attraction for visitors to Nairobi.
The Kenyattas were waiting their turn. In 2002, his second son Uhuru, ‘freedom’ in Swahili, stood in the presidential elections, but was defeated, and in the 2007 elections Mwai Kibaki, the candidate of the ruling KANU party and also of Kikuyu blood, gave his support. The elections were a fraud, according to observers, and led to a confrontation between his ethnic group and the Luo, another important tribe mostly linked to the opposition. Uhuru was charged with instigating the riots by equipping the mungiki, a tribal mafia. The riots caused the forcible displacement of 250,000 people.
But, once again, the family remained united and buoyant. The 2013 elections brought victory to the dolphin and, since then, he has remained in power. Possibly no unsolved crime, paper or report, will lead you to court. Uhuru is one of the richest men on the continent. Its 650 million dollars of heritage, guarantee a genuinely Kenyan trajectory, the country of the forty tribes, the plunderers, the immense savannas and the endless beaches bathed with turquoise blue waters.
The process against Uhuru before the International Court that ended in nothing
Uhuru Kenyatta’s appearance before the International Criminal Court in 2014 was an event. For the first time, a sitting president sat in the dock accused of crimes against humanity, facts that refer to the riots after the 2007 elections. For some, the interpretation of this event was that no one was there. above the law, while, for others, the color of the accused’s skin reflected the permanence of neo-colonial practices.
But a case was never opened against Kenyatta. The institution acknowledged its inability to gather evidence due to the lack of cooperation from the Kenyan government and the conduct of witnesses, many of whom retracted their testimonies, possibly as a result of intimidation. There were no culprits, no one paid for the destruction of hundreds of houses, dozens of beheadings and the massacre of more than fifty people in the Kiamba church, set on fire by their stalkers.
Uhuru Kenyatta, who just celebrated his sixtieth birthday with thunderous congratulations, was overwhelmed by the popular reception after returning from the Netherlands. Regarding the Pandora Papers, he has promised to respond shortly to the accusations leveled against him, but it is not known when.
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