Obstétricas

57. Somewhere in the region of 400 people were killed in Lari on the night of the 26 and the morning of the 27 March 1953.²⁰ It was the bloodiest incident in the entire history of the Mau Mau. The number of people who died, as well as the manner in which they met their death, guaranteed Lari a unique chapter in Kenyan history.

Sixty years on, Lari continues to impact peoples’ lives in very direct ways. In some quarters, debates about responsibility, justice and compensation rage unabated.

58. While Lari falls just outside the Commission’s temporal mandate, like all of the massacres discussed in this historical analysis, it plays an important part in establishing independent Kenya as a state deeply rooted in mass killings. Because of the massacre, long-standing divides between victims and victimisers mean that even now some Lari residents do not speak to each other and harbour great resentments about their respective roles.²¹ For these reasons, it is important to have some understanding of the disturbing events that took place on this “night of the long knives”.

59. Lari is a fairly typical Central Kenyan town which, from the late 1940s onwards, received hundreds of squatters evicted from the Rift Valley estates, also known as the ’White Highlands‘. Workers at the Uplands bacon factory on the outskirts of Lari were restless and hankering to strike.

60. It was not all doom and gloom though. As in other parts of the country, a good number of people prospered under the colonial system. In Lari, this cadre included wealthy Kikuyu elders who owned and controlled large tracts of land.

19 The ‘Night of the Long Knives’ is widely and popularly used to refer to events at Lari; no further details on the origins of the phrase 20 There are no definite figures for Lari. This estimate of four hundred is the product of a contemporary account written by an Irish lawyer

called Peter Evans. Most other accounts cluster around two hundred and two hundred fatalities. David Anderson Histories of the Hanged (2005) 130

21 http://www.trinityafer.com/en/index.php/news/5168-the-massacre-58-years-ago-today-that-still-divides-lari-kenya- Accessed 29th November 2011

It also included Africans directly employed by the colonial administration as chiefs, headmen and the like, who were referred to by the local population as

‘loyalists’. The local chief’s name was Makimei. Both he and his predecessor, Luka wa Kahangara, have been described as unrepentant loyalists and had been threatened by the Mau Mau. Lari, therefore, became one of the first places where the British colonialists intensified their recruitment of so-called home guards:

men who had undergone basic training and who were usually called in to support the police and the army.

61. A couple of factors distinguished Lari from its neighbours. From 1939, it had been the focus of a bitter and extremely divisive land dispute. The dispute’s origins lie in nearby Tigoni, which was an early centre of European settlement in the Highlands.

As land was alienated for settler use, the problem of what to do with the indigenous Africans presented itself. In May 1928, Lari was proposed as a place to move the displaced Africans. The 600 or so evictees were offered one-and-a-half acres of Lari land for every one acre they had held in Tigoni. Some of the Tigoni elders held out for two acres. Another group headed by Luka wa Kahangara agreed to the European terms and, in 1939, headed for Lari. The move ignited a firestorm, with the hold-outs describing wa Kahangara and his group as traitors. He was also accused of all kinds of trickery in the distribution of Lari land. People who were not provided for in the initial counts were mysteriously awarded allotments. In the same way, legitimate claimants were disenfranchised. The choicest plots (well-watered and close to transport links) all ended up in the elders’ hands. To make matters worse, Lari was already densely occupied and had been witnessing conflicts between the landed and landless.

Dusk

62. The evening of the 26 March 1953 saw Lari home guards set off on their usual patrol.

The unpredictable security situation in Central Kenya meant that such patrols were critical. About an hour into their rounds, the guards came across a badly mutilated body nailed to a tree. The dead man was identified as a local loyalist. At around 9.00pm that evening, the guards noticed that a number of huts were ablaze in the direction of Central Lari.

63. As the guards turned around heading towards the fires it became clear that Lari was under attack. It was close to 10.00pm by the time they arrived in the main village. The scene that greeted their return was gruesome. As they found 75 people had been shot, hacked, strangled, burned and beaten to death. A further 50 people suffered severe injuries including slashed limbs that eventually had

to be amputated. Others exhibited second and third degree burns. Women and children were among the dead and injured.

64. This initial phase of the massacre was documented in graphic detail. Sources of information included survivors who recorded statements that were later used in the Lari trials. A handful of survivors were alive and available to speak to the press on the 58^th anniversary of the Lari Massacre on 26 March 2011. Philomena Nduta and Jacinta Wairuiru spoke of masked armed men who were lying in wait - villagers mistook them for “black dogs” - for the home guards to go out on patrol.²² The women described extraordinary levels of violence. Attackers are said to have licked their pangas clean of their victims’ blood. A number of decapitations took place and the detached heads were triumphantly displayed.

65. Because Lari is so close to Nairobi, journalists were quick to arrive and document the atrocities.²³ While it is difficult to exaggerate the horrors of Lari, some scholars have characterised British coverage as luridly sensationalistic and tailored to the anti-Mau Mau propaganda market. Within days, the story of Lari had been splashed across world media and Kenya’s image as a happy-go-lucky European outpost was shattered. Questions about the intruders could not be readily answered as victims were traumatised and the home guards arrived in Lari at the tail end of the ambush. The guards pursued the attackers but by this point most had melted away into the surrounding darkness.

66. Terrified survivors suggested that between five to six gangs consisting of 100 men each had carried out the attack. Nobody could be sure who they were because their faces were masked. It was clear though that the men came well prepared and were determined to inflict as much damage as possible. They were heavily armed with an assortment of ropes, swords and spears. Some were heard telling their victims that they were all to be “finished”.

Dawn

67. The rising sun exposed a further 200 or so bodies strewn all over Lari and its immediate environs. Dead men, women and children were everywhere: in the bushes, in the rivers, in the streams and by the roadside. The tiny local mortuary was groaning under the weight of scores of bodies. A second massacre had taken place in Lari in the early hours of 27 March 1953. Little-known, little-discussed, little-acknowledged and yet undeniable, the perpetrators of this massacre were

22 http://www.the-star.co.ke/lifestyle/128-lifestyle/18591-the-night-of-long-knives-slain-colonial-chiefs-widows-recall-lari-massacre Accessed 29th November 2011

23 Selected original clips of contemporary coverage of Lari are available at http://www.britishpathe.com/record.php?id=30923

almost certainly home guards, reservists and police who may have been under the direct command of European police officers.

68. A curious, almost oppressive, silence surrounds this second massacre. Historians and various other interested parties have found it difficult to construct a firm chronology. From the few details available, it seems that the conditions for the second massacre began at about 10.00pm the night before, shortly after the arrival of the home guards in Lari. They rushed off in hot pursuit of the attackers, firing shots as they ran. Eye-witness reports indicate that the gangs had largely disappeared by the time the guards arrived. Sporadic skirmishes between home guards and the remnants of the gangs could not then have been responsible for the more than 200 bodies discovered on the morning of the 27 March 1953.

Most of these people were more likely to have been killed later when the then Lari District Commissioner John Cumber ordered all male suspects rounded up.

Notwithstanding the fairly vague nature of Cumber’s instructions, the home guards (who by this time had been joined by the police and reservists) combed through greater Lari. Men, women and children were pulled out of their homes, beaten and killed.

69. This version of events is corroborated, admittedly long after the event, by Kimani Njuguna who was interviewed by a Daily Nation reporter in March 2011. Njuguna recalled how he “lost ten members of my family when the colonialists struck the following morning, including my two parents and uncles”.²⁴ He added: “These raids were led by African home guards. Colonial police went door to door searching for those suspected to have taken the (Mau Mau) oath, rounded them up and took them to police stations, where they were tortured, brutalised and killed.”²⁵

70. Lari’s proximity to Nairobi meant that a number of people were on site to document and record the atrocities. Karigo Muchai, for instance, was a Kenya African Union (KAU) member who arrived in Lari very early that morning after receiving reports of upheaval from his associates in nearby Kiambaa. He hid up in the hills to observe what was happening.²⁶ He saw for himself the burning huts. More importantly, Muchai claims to have witnessed people actually being shot. He remained in Lari for a further three days, speaking to shell-shocked residents who confirmed what he already suspected: mass killings at the hands of the security officers. Muchai would later write that “in Lari there was a massacre on 26 March 1953, but most of

24 http://www.trinityafer.com/en/index.php/news/5168-the-massacre-58-years-ago-today-that-still-divides-lari-kenya- Accessed 29^th November 2011

25 http://www.trinityafer.com/en/index.php/news/5168-the-massacre-58-years-ago-today-that-still-divides-lari-kenya- Accessed 29th November 2011

26 For further details on Muchai’s trip to Lari, see Marshall Clough Mau Mau Memoirs: History Memory and Politics (1998) 157

the blood was on government hands.’²⁷ The most convincing evidence, however, comes directly from the government itself. A fortnight after the attack, an official statement was published in the East African Standard. Short on specifics, the notice simply stated that “the security forces had killed 150 people alleged to have been involved in the massacre.”²⁸ No further details, no official inquiries, no files, no arrests; the second Lari massacre simply slipped out of official discourse.