Mau Mau From Within

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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 Ng¿g¿ 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

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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.