The Other Barack by Sally Jacobs

trucks and carted them ceremoniously to the Nairobi police station. Baring’s hope was that a dramatic show of force would bring the movement to its knees and convince the settlers—if not the world—that the British authorities were in control.
    One of the biggest catches of the roundup was Jomo Kenyatta, the Kikuyu president of the KAU, whom Baring and other government administrators erroneously believed was the mastermind behind the Mau Mau uprising. In fact, Kenyatta, one of the elders of the Kikuyu political oligarchy, had long tried to repress the rebels at the forefront of Mau Mau. 20 Kenyatta had emerged as a moderate nationalist among the “mission boys” of the 1920s, and he regarded the fierce, young militants who had spearheaded the Mau Mau movement as impetuous and their radical tactics unwise. Although he had spoken against their violent methods, British authorities turned a deaf ear to his words, just as they did to the grievances of the Kikuyu people; instead, the highly visible and popular Kenyatta had been targeted as a prime instigator. The British authorities reasoned that his public prosecution would send a loud message to both the settlers and the other militants. The authorities’ miscalculation would have far-reaching consequences and, ironically, served to enshrine the aging statesman as the presiding symbol of the nationalist cause.

    Charged with “managing an unlawful society,” Kenyatta and five others were taken to the remote northern town of Kapenguria near the Ugandan border—a location that enabled the government to maintain strict control on the comings and goings at their sensational trial. The government selected conservative British Judge Ransley Thacker to hear the case. There was no jury. Thacker was given £20,000 for his service and the inconvenience of the location, a payment that was widely regarded as a bribe intended to ensure a guilty verdict. Despite little real evidence with which to prosecute the defendant group, known as the “Kapenguria Six,” Kenyatta and the others were found guilty in April of 1953 and sentenced to seven years imprisonment with hard labor followed by a lifetime of restriction. On his release in 1959, Kenyatta, then in his late sixties, 21 had become the country’s most prominent champion for the cause of freedom as well as its undisputed leader.
    Far from bringing an end to the insurgency, however, Kenyatta’s arrest only exacerbated the ongoing conflict. Within months of the declaration of emergency, bands of armed freedom fighters based in the Aberdare Mountain range and the forests of Mount Kenya stepped up their campaign in earnest. There followed a series of highly visible murders, the most notorious of which was the slaying of the Ruck family. In January 1953 Kikuyu fighters hacked to death Esme and Roger Ruck, a hardworking and well-liked young British couple, on their remote farm. Their six-year-old son, Michael, was slaughtered as he lay in his bed. The sordid killings, photographs of which appeared the world over, marked a critical turning point in the war.
    In the months following the Rucks’ deaths, the government implemented a draconian series of measures that further inflamed the situation. The Emergency Regulations authorized collective punishments, detention without trial, the seizure of convicts’ property, and the suspension of due process. In addition, the range of offenses for which capital punishment could be imposed was vastly expanded. The purpose of these extreme measures was to reestablish colonial domination and to satisfy the settlers’ near-hysterical calls for dramatic actions against the rebels.
    Over the next two years the British brought their military might to bear upon the rebels and by 1955 eventually gained the upper hand. But they did not lift the state of emergency for another five years. The net result was
a staggering degree of human dislocation and