Britain should heal painful wounds of colonial injustices

By Njoki Ndung’u

The picture of five elderly Kenyans standing outside the British Prime Minister’s office and their stated mission this week marks an important milestone in the pursuit of settlement for a long-outstanding injustice.

It is not every day that ordinary folks from third world countries journey across continents for a date with Gordon Brown at 10 Downing Street. This significance is immensely enriched when, as in the case this week, the visit is motivated by an agenda calculated to tag at the conscience of the host; one with the potential for immense historical, economic and moral implications.

The quest for reparations for the horrendous and myriad ills perpetrated by imperialists all over the world has been a festering wound that is as old as the first taste of liberation.

For the victims of the vicious colonial onslaught against the Mau Mau insurrection and indeed other casualties of colonialism, seeking compensation has been a protracted affair. This is amid overwhelming evidence of the painful scars of colonialist excesses left on natives that is well documented by, among others, British-own scholars of repute.

Yet reparative justice has hitherto remained a mirage largely because of the array of powerful forces, which have united to scupper such efforts.

In 2005, as one of the Kenyan MPs in the Pan African Parliament in South Africa, I filed a Motion seeking to have the continent forge a common and co-ordinated approach to the pursuit of reparations from former colonial powers. Through the African Union, the Motion sought to have African heads of state and government establish a specialised technical committee that would spearhead the search for a strategy to demand reparations.

Hostile occupation

Its duties were, inter alia, to collate data on crimes against humanity perpetuated in the continent by pre-independence governments and to propose practical ways of seeking reparations. The rationale for reparation is really to repair. It is not even compensation. Rather, what Africa and other victims of hostile occupation or intrusion should be seeking is the mending of damages caused by historical, economic, financial and psychological ruin.

But this thinking was clearly not in sync at the Pan African Parliament. My Motion never saw the light of day. The highest office, for fear that the Motion would jeopardise delicate relationships with prickly Western donors, blocked it!

In the last four centuries, Africa has been an unwilling host of rabid exploitation and abuse by the West. From enslavement and forced migration of thousands of its human resource to work in foreign cotton and sugar farms, Africa has been undoubtedly bled profusely.

Colonialism took different forms. There was the conquer-and-occupy type perfected in Kenya, Zimbabwe and South Africa where the colonialists carved out for themselves swathes of our prime land thereby manufacturing landlessness. This was in tandem with forced labour, punitive taxation and pillage of natural resources. In extreme cases, entire communities were exterminated or scattered to the four winds in ways that ended their existence as distinctive tribes.

Besides illegal detention, arbitrary detentions, sexual exploitation, forceful separation of families and manufactured starvation through scorched-earth policies, there were the macabre excesses such as those committed against the Herero and Namu of Namibia by the Germans and the Belgians trophy-hunting in Congo, where natives were the trophies. The case for Africa seeking redress cannot, therefore, be over-emphasised.

Terrorist group

It is, therefore, gratifying to see solid progress in the latest search for reparation. Until the latest push by former Kabete MP and senior counsels Paul Muite and Martin Day, individual efforts pushing for this have tended to be largely lackadaisical. The fact that Mau Mau remained virtually a terrorist organisation before former Security Minister Chris Murungaru revoked their proscription in 2003 also meant little, if any, realistic chances of gaining legal redress.

The suit filed at the Royal Justice Court deserves support. Unlike the British public, our common response thus far has been muted yet the matters in play have much resonance with our history. Even now as we struggle with historical injustices and attempt efforts at truth and reconciliation, we must realise impunity in this country stems from this time.

The proscription of the Mau Mau by the British in 1952 was carried through the Kenyatta and Moi regimes; one of the reflections of a continuing oppressive system and proof that the politics of yesteryear inform that of today.

If we cannot confront our past, we cannot secure our future: like many victims of post-election violence, most of those seeking justice in the British courts were assumed guilty merely for their ethnic origins.

—The writer is an advocate of the High Court — [email protected]