Koinange - Wa-Mbiyu: Mau Mau's Misunderstood Leader

Koinange, Jeff. Koinange - Wa-Mbiyu: Mau Mau's Misunderstood Leader. Sussex, England: The Book Guild, Ltd., 2000.

The role of colonial African chiefs in the development of African societies under colonialism is a subject that has received little attention from historians. It is usually assumed that colonial chiefs were monsters, or "running dogs of colonialism," as Ngugi Wa Thiongo has called them.

My earlier, preliminary, researches on the place of colonial chiefs in our history did not bring out this "monster" image. Indeed, colonial Chiefs such as Musa Nyandusi, in Kisii, Blasio Mbira of Yimbo and Waruhiu-Wa-Kungu, in Kiambu, did a lot to encourage their people to build schools, plant cash crops and change their outmoded cultural practices. True, there were a few bad eggs among colonial chiefs, but on the whole most colonial chiefs did what they could do for their people, under very hard and trying colonial circumstances.

There are many references in Kenyan historical literature that link Senior Chief Koinange-Wa-Mbiyu, with the Mau Mau movement. Among these references are the works of the historian Marshall S. Clough. Thus, when I came across this book, written by Koinange's grandson, I was curious to find out what is new about the "good, old chief."

The major contribution of this book is the revelation that the Koinange family were the main brain behind the Mau Mau movement. Jeff Koinange paints the picture of British ingratitude concerning the work of the Senior Chief, which resulted in his replacement with Chief Waruhiu as the paramount Chief in Southern Kiambu. This made Koinange very angry. The old chief was also disillusioned by the British when his son, Peter Mbiyu Koinange, was by-passed for nomination to the Legislative Council in 1944, when Eliud Mathu - an old boy of Alliance High School and Oxford - was preferred by the British. Thereafter the Koinange family, together with Jomo Kenyatta, Fred Kubai, et al., began to administer an oath of allegiance and unity to the Kikuyu, in readiness for confrontation with the British. This is how Mau Mau began, according to Jeff Koinange.

This is a brilliantly, and commitedly, written story of a collaborator turned enemy. Chief Koinange is painted as an illiterate but respected old man in Southern Kiambu, who defused, if not defeated, the machinations of hotheaded political radicals like Harry Thuku, Joseph Kangethe and Jesse Kariuki the Kikuyu Central Association leaders who were championing Kikuyu land and other grievances in the nineteen twenties and thirties. Having disorganized these politicians the Chief is said to have taken over their role as the articulator of Kikuyu interests before the British -either in Nairobi or when he travelled to present African grievances before the British Parliament in the early thirties in London.

Throughout the book Jeff Koinange is at pains to paint his grand father as a great and respected Kikuyu patriot and champion. But something is definitely missing in the tale. What did he really do for his people of significance? What schools, cattle dips, churches, roads, dams or cash crops did he build or promote in his domain? It is true he sent his son Peter Koinange to learn in America, and many of his children did well. But did he help his neighbors to also send their children to high schools or to go and study abroad?

In the absence of concrete answers to the above questions, Koinangewa-Mbiyu comes out of this book as someone who only used the British for the benefit of his family - and when this project did not come out right he began to plot against his masters.

Jeff Koinange's handling of the origins and growth of Mau Mau from his family also re-enforces my old and strongly held conviction that Mau Mau was primarily a Kikuyu affair, whose objective was to settle old Kikuyu grievances with the British. Ideas such as incorporation of other Kenyans in the struggle, or winning of independence for the whole country, were never considered or implied by the "Kiambu Parliament." Thus, recent claims that Mau Mau was a war for Kenya's independence are pure hindsight creations for political mileage.

Nevertheless, this book is a welcome addition to our historical scholarship about the forces that were at work in central Kenya in the run-up to the Emergency period.

William R. Ochieng'

Maseno University and Permanent Secretary, Office of the President of Kenya

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