Fearless general who shot down British warplanes

By WAINAINA NDUNG’U

Mau Mau general Ndungu wa Gicheru who died last week is immortalised as one of the most fearless Mau Mau fighters and sharp shooters in the ranks of the liberation army.

Praised by many of his peers for saving their lives through his acumen in shooting down killer British bomb dropping planes, Gicheru was captured in 1956 after almost six years in the jungle, having been one of the earliest youths to leave for the forest to launch the war of liberation.

According to accounts of many Mau Mau veterans, Gicheru brought down several colonial war planes with his Mark 4 rifle stolen from the home of a colonial settler in the then so-called “White Highlands”.

“After the heroic attack on the farm, the rifle became his close companion and would save hundreds of lives in the forest which would have been wiped out by the deadly arsenal in the planes,” says 81-year-old Mathenge wa Iregi, a former freedom fighter, now a Kikuyu elder and traditional priest.

radical reforms

Gicheru, who was born in 1928 and dropped out of school in Class Five, lived most of his life in Gataragwa where his father Paul Gicheru Ndungu and his mother were farmhands in a settler’s ranch, having migrated from their native Mungaria village in Aguthi location of present day Tetu District.

According to his neighbour and childhood friend Theuri Njugi Kimbo (General Kimbo), 90, they were among some of the first youths aged 25 – 30 years who left for the forest to launch the liberation struggle around 1950. “Most of us were frustrated with landlessness in the African reserves and only our parents were paid wages for working in the European farms,” says General Kimbo. “We were idle, nursing pent-up anger while the colonialists seemed not to care about radical reforms.”

General Kimbo said Gicheru’s family and his lived in neighbouring settler farms in the Gataragwa area of Kieni and they had been familiar with each other even before they left for the forest.

By the time they left to launch what would initially seem like a relatively uncoordinated struggle, Gicheru was already married to his first wife, the late Esther Wanjiru, and their first child Anna Muthoni had been born in 1946.

It would be a deadly but worthwhile sacrifice as the colonial government had devised a strategy to punish Mau Mau supporting families through punitive actions.

Michael Ndirangu, the younger brother of Gicheru who was then aged 10, says his family paid dearly for the ‘sins’ of his brother.

Ndirangu, 70, recalls that when his brother officially left for the forest in 1950, his parents were immediately detained besides the general’s wife and elder sister.

The young members of the family were ordered to leave the settler’s farm and returned to their native reserve in Mungaria. “We lived at Aguthi village without an adult to provide food and suffered immensely. We had to let neighbours “adopt” our youngest siblings,” recalls Ndirangu.

In the meantime, they were rendered landless when their family land in the village was allocated to the families of collaborators as their parents languished in jail and their brother fought in the forest.

The general was been born in a family of eight siblings. Both parents were labourers at the settlers’ farm.

Muthoni, 63, who was an innocent toddler when his father left for the forest says their father’s personal war sacrifice was worth it adding that he compensated the absence from the family by adequately taking care of them when he was freed in 1960.

Survivors of the war of liberation were unanimous that the deceased would be remembered for taking up the role of rescuing others through his accurate shooting. “He did it so regularly and it was always a relief to have him around when the deadly planes swooped over us,” said General Kimbo.

compensation token

It was a sentiment that had been echoed earlier by 83-year-old Elijah Kinyua (General Bahati) who fought the colonialists from the Mt Kenya forest and one of the youngest war veterans, Captain Nderitu Wambugu, 72. General Gicheru was indeed immortalised in the Mau Mau songs as the ‘downer of warplanes’ and by legendary Kikuyu musician Joseph Kamaru in his remix of the same.

Despite his reputation as a brave and methodical warrior, family members claimed they could not ascertain whether the deceased was in the list of over 5,228 veterans who are in line to be get a Sh340,000 compensation token by the British government.

A reliable source indicated the deceased was not in this list because there was no evidence of his having been tortured while in captivity or prison which is a key requirement to be included in the list.

Just like when he was alive, two factions of the Mau Mau veterans laid claim to him. The Mau Mau War Veterans Association, which is associated with Gitu wa Kahengeri, claims he was their chairman while the National War Veterans Association associated with General Bahati claims he was their patron having retired from the veteran’s pressure groups on the grounds of health.

General Bahati said last week in Nyeri town that the Kahengeri group was comprised of imposters who had no right to associate with Gicheru. However, Gicheru’s family who spoke at Gataragwa said the deceased was linked to the Kahengeri group.

private life

Yet, General Gicheru was perhaps one of the luckiest Mau Mau veterans. Besides acquiring 52 acres of land in Kieni under the Settlement Fund Trustees in the Million Acre Scheme, he was appointed chief of Gataragwa in 1968 and served for five years. That was on top of being elected the chairman of the Gataragwa Land Buying Company in 1964 until it was dissolved.

He married five wives and sired 19 children and his grandchildren number over 70 according to his younger brother Michael Ndirangu.

In the 1970s, he also built an impressive 12-roomed bungalow with a spacious porch that must have been outstanding in the village. His compound has sizeable granaries that indicate favourable harvests in the past.

Hellena says their livestock once numbered 200 cows and over 190 goats before they were wiped out by the 1984 drought. Even today, the cow pen at the homestead shows evidence of a sizeable population of cattle.

But the family says the General died poor because of his sacrifices in the war. According to his second wife, only one of his 19 children advanced their education beyond Form Four and none had been employed in the civil service or any gainful employment. His daughter who completed her A levels teaches at a local private secondary school.

The family claims health complications from the hard life in the jungle and four year imprisonment after his capture wiped out his fortune, saying the bullet in his leg made him walk with a painful limp. Hard labour and torture in captivity, they claim, always troubled his health making him require constant medication. “To finance his costly medication, he sold livestock and land,” says the second wife.

She said the General succumbed to pains in his leg where a bullet was lodged during his capture in 1956 and in his upper body.