INCARCERATED in a Birmingham jail at the height of the civil rights movement in America, Martin Luther King Jr penned the immortal words “justice too long delayed, is justice denied”. It seems a cliché to quote Dr King, yet these words perfectly encapsulate the enduring injustice which plagues the family of the historically elusive Mau Mau leader Dedan Kimathi.

Kimathi was a rebel field marshal fighting the British colonial authorities in Kenya during the Mau Mau rebellion of the 1950s.

The Mau Mau rebellion is a violent and controversial part of both Kenyan and British history. The outbreak of the rebellion instigated the creation of a system of detention camps which saw the incarceration of some 80,000 Kikuyu people in Kenya. Within the camp system detainees were aggressively interrogated, thousands were subjected to horrific abuse and several inmates lost their lives.

On February 18, 1957, the British colonial government sentenced Dedan Kimathi “to hang by the neck until death”, making him an iconic martyr of the Mau Mau cause. His legacy is still suffocated under the clandestine location of his grave.

On November 19, 1956, chief justice Kenneth O’Connor found Dedan Kimathi guilty of unlawful possession of a firearm and ammunition.

Immediately after his death, British colonial officers buried his body in an unmarked grave within the grounds of Kamiti Maximum Security Prison, where he is believed to have lain ever since.

Kimathi rose from anonymity to prominence within the movement in the early 1950s, first acting as an oath administrator – a method of initiation and a way of ensuring loyalty within the Mau Mau movement. He quickly became a leader of the Mau Mau fighters who made their way into the forests to fight the British forces after the declaration of the state of emergency in late 1952.

On October 25, 2019, the Dedan Kimathi Foundation announced that Dedan Kimathi’s body had finally been found after “numerous concerted efforts”. Evelyn Manjugu Kimathi, his youngest daughter and chair of the foundation, labelled this development as great news not just for the family, “but also the larger freedom struggle heroes fraternity”.

She said she would seek an order to exhume his remains, but as yet his body remains excavated, with no updates on the search being broadcast online or in news outlets. One can assume that he still lies in an unmarked grave somewhere in the grounds of the prison.

The Kenyan Government has dismissed the discovery of his grave as fake but nevertheless Kimathi’s 88-year-old widow, Makami Kimathi, has prepared a site at her home for his body to be buried. Her wish is simple: “All I want is for the remains to come home. My wish is for the government to make this a reality.”

The contention surrounding Kimathi’s body, his lack of exhumation and the silence of the global press on the matter is disconcerting, but predictable.

The Mau Mau rebellion and its modern-day implications were a hot topic in the academic community and the British press fairly recently

A series of court cases beginning in 2012 plagued the British Government and former detention camp prisoners held the Foreign Commonwealth Office accountable for the atrocities it committed within the camps during the rebellion.

The veterans received compensation, a public apology and even the erection of a memorial to the Mau Mau victims in Nairobi, fully paid for by the British Government.

The Mau Mau court cases also revealed that the British Government had been hiding thousands of colonial documents at a warehouse in Foreign and Commonwealth Office site Hanslope Park in London, which it was then ordered to release, providing historians with hope that a more comprehensive and accurate history of Britian’s colonial past might be discovered.

In 2018, 40,000 Kenyans took to the English courts seeking damages for the sufferings they had endured within the detention camps. But the Kimathi and Others v The Foreign and Commonwealth Office (2018) case was dismissed under the notion that a fair trial was not possible because of the 50-year delay.

However, the documents which were found in the so-called Hanslope Park Scandal harbour crucial information detailing the abuses which occurred in the camps. The documents are now available for consultation and could be utilised in a trial, yet the fact that they were were hidden for so long prevented a court case from taking place in a timely manner.

How can these people receive any form of justice, if their claims are dismissed due to the passage of time? How, can this be just, when the British Government had systematically hidden such evidence to prevent knowledge of its colonial crimes?

The Dedan Kimathi issue faces similar, problems. The British Government will not conduct an investigation to help discover his hidden grave

This refusal of justice allows the UK Government to continue to dehumanise the Mau Mau veterans and deny them basic human rights, just as they did when the detention camps were in operation.

Evidently, the era of post-colonial retribution is over, and the British government has once again successfully swept its colonial history under the rug, leaving Dedan Kimathi to remain hidden under the concrete.

During the rebellion, the British press worldwide broadcast the successful capture of Kimathi around the globe. However there has been zero mention of this momentous occasion in the British press, while the British Government remains silent on the matter.

Dedan Kimathi was a symbol of anti-colonial defiance. His very existence represented the discontent of the African community in Kenya who did not wish to be suppressed by British rule.

He stood for freedom, liberty and the fight for African emancipation and self-determination. His execution was therefore a pivotal moment in which the British directly showcased their determination to maintain colonial order.

The violence enacted against Kimathi was a public exhibition which revealed not the violence of the Mau Mau forces but the violence of the British Government, a precedent which would be further consolidated through the British Government’s abuses and interrogations carried out in its detention camp system.

The lack of coverage of the potential discovery of his remains, and the UK Government’s surreptitious silence on the matter, shows its constant effort to drape its colonial history in the nostalgic romanticised cloak of the civilising mission.

The Dedan Kimathi Foundation has struggled relentlessly for equality and the fight to find his body. The British and Kenyan governments should afford the families and supporters of the organisation the ability to honour the life of Dedan Kimathi and afford him the peace and some form of justice which was never afforded during his life in the British colonial era.

While addressing a gathering of ex-freedom fighters in Nairobi in summer 2019, Kimathi’s widow renewed her plea to exhume his remains and allow a proper burial of her late husband.

“I appeal to President Uhuru Kenyatta, his deputies (William Ruto and Raila Odinga) to ask the British Government to identify the grave so that I can bury his remains before I die,’’ she said.

It remains to be seen whether peace may be granted to the family of Dedan Kimathi, but the repercussions of British colonial rule continue to plague the veterans of Mau Mau’s rebellion.

Many suffer from physical injuries obtained in the camps.

Thousands more of the Mau Mau veterans still lack the very thing the rebellion started over – land.

Sadly, it appears that just when progress was being made towards obtaining justice for these people, it has aggressively and determinedly been stopped.

Describing his actions during the Mau Mau rebellion, Dedan Kimathi said: ‘‘I led Africans who want their self-government and land.’’

His actions, were fuelled by his simple belief – “God did not intend that one nation be ruled by another”.

This one simple principle of freedom and a desire for self-determination cost him his life.

Kimathi has for too long been an elusive figure in the public history of the British empire. Instead, he should stand on a historical pedestal, as a martyr for the Mau Mau cause and a representation of the ugliness of the British empire.

Only time will tell if his body will finally be found, acting as a catalyst in the ever-enduring fight for post-colonial justice and recognition.

Lauren Brown has a masters degree in History from the University of Dundee. She has multiple publications on Kenyan history, particularly focused on the Mau Mau rebellion. She is currently the assistant editor for Scottish Financial News and Scottish Housing News

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