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Kenyan-born novelist and playwright Ngugi wa Thiong’o and his collaborator, Micere Githae Mugo, have built a powerful and challenging play out of the circumstances surrounding the 1956 trial of Dedan Kimathi, the celebrated Kenyan hero who led the Mau Mau rebellion against the British colonial regime in Kenya and was eventually hanged. A highly controversial character, Kimathi’s life has been subject to intense propaganda by both the British government, who saw him as a vicious terrorist, and Kenyan nationalists, who viewed him as a man of great courage and commitment. Writing in the 1970s, the playwrights’ response to colonialist writings about the Mau Mau movement in The Trial of Ded...
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The transcript from this historic trial, long thought destroyed or hidden, unearths a piece of the British colonial archive at a critical point in the Mau Mau Rebellion. Its discovery and landmark publication unsettles an already contentious Kenyan history and its reverberations in the postcolonial present. Perhaps no figure embodied the ambiguities, colonial fears, and collective imaginations of Kenya’s decolonization era more than Dedan Kimathi, the self-proclaimed field marshal of the rebel forces that took to the forests to fight colonial rule in the 1950s. Kimathi personified many of the contradictions that the Mau Mau Rebellion represented: rebel statesman, literate peasant, modern t...
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The British captured extensive archives belonging to the Mau Mau, which to this day have not been made public. Here for the first time, as a result of years of village - level research, historian Maina wa Kinyatti has recovered some of the movement's - and its leader, Dedan Kimathi's - most important papers. Translated in to English, they make startlingly clear movement's own perspectives on their struggle and its difficulties, the relatively advanced nature of their goals as a national liberation movement, and their radical visions of a liberated Kenyan society. Dedan Kimathi became President of Mau Mau's ruling body in August 1953 and remained its overall head until his capture and death two years later. He ordered the movement to keep documentation for the purpose of providing, as he put it, 'concentrate evidence that we fought and died for this land'. By recovering some of this material, Maina wa Kinyatti has done Kenyan history a signal service.
A novel of great sensitivity about people in Cape Town organizing underground opposition to apartheid
Extensive archives belonging to the Mau Mau were long held by the British and were not made available widely. This book, written by one of the foremost researchers on the Mau Mau, is a result of years of village-level research which also recovered some of the movements most important papers. Translated into English, they clarify the movement's own perspectives on their struggle and it's difficulties, the relatively advanced nature of their goals as a national liberation movement, and their radical vision of a liberated Kenyan society. Dedan Kimathi became President of the Mau Mau's ruling body in August 1953, and remained as its overall leader until his capture and execution by the British two years later. During his time as president he ordered the movement to keep documentation for the purposes of providing, as he put it "concrete evidence that we fought and died for this land." This book is an important contribution to Kenyan history and the history of liberation movements around the world.
Mũkami Kĩmathi: Mau Mau Woman Freedom Fighter is the story of the brave wife of one of Kenya’s foremost freedom fighters, Field Marshal Dedan Kĩmathi Waciũri. Kĩmathi led the Mau Mau war in Kenya’s independence struggle against the British colonialists. Mũkami’s role as a daughter, wife, mother, freedom fighter and leader is varied and very complex. Her story spans pre and post-independent Kenya. Her experiences provide an important complement to existing written literature on Kenya’s history. In 2003, the Mwai Kĩbakĩ Government lifted the ban put in place by the British colonialists declaring the Mau Mau as terrorists, and recognised Mũkami Kĩmathi and other freedom fighte...
This collection of essays introduces students of African literature to the heritage of the African prose narrative, starting from its oral base and covering its linguistic and cultural diversity. The book brings together essays on both the classics and the relatively new works in all subgenres of the African prose narrative, including the traditional epic, the novel, the short story and the autobiography. The chapters are arranged according to the respective thematic paradigms under which the discussed works fall.
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