All hail the Queen: Mau Mau lived in extreme poverty, while collaborators enjoyed 'soft-life'

Queen Elizabeth II inspects a guard of honour. [PHOTO: FILE]

The death of Britain's Queen Elizabeth at 96 ignited a furious debate on social media, pitting Kenyans who support the monarch against those who believe she stood for a system that colonialised, robbed and brutalised Kenyans. But what has always incensed the children of Mau Mau is that those who collaborated with the colonial system ended up inheriting the very lands that that their ancestors fought for while the warriors of independence lived and died in poverty.

Notably, the children of colonial chiefs also had superior education and ended up with plum jobs in government at independence, lording it over the children of Mau Mau and creating multi-billion shilling economic empires. Not so Nabongo Mumia, a colonial paramount chief who has been lampooned for being a British sympathizer, rubbing shoulders with the British and abetting the lucrative slave trade which was the digital currency of the era.