What does a revolutionary figure look like? A man in dirty uniform, crawling towards his targets with a rifle, belly hungers for food and water, aching to rest, but can’t because he is a soldier, a warrior with a duty to perform and a cause to uphold? Probably, that is a revolutionary figure, and I would like for you to meet such a man. Meet Dedan Kimathi, a field marshal, who was executed on February 18, 1957, by the British colonial government. Kimathi was hanged because he was a leader of Kenya’s Land and Freedom Army, a militant army, made up of members of the Kikuyu, whom were out to reclaim their land, which the British settlers had gradually stripped away from them. As the group’s influence and membership widened, it became clear that they would become a major threat to the colonialists. The KFLA were demonized by the media as the “Mau Mau.”
Dedan Kimathi, from where he was in primary school, had mastered a skill that is impossible for most Africans to accomplish: the skill of perfect English, which would, in the future, use those language skills to write broadly before and during the Mau Mau uprising. We know that he was a Debate Club member in his school, meaning that he had extensive knowledge of his subject and was able to defend his ideas and he was quite the poet. He was also a troublemaker, constantly challenging his teachers and hated any form of discipline or control forced on his by his teachers. Consequently, he glided in and out of school, and never fulfilled his potential of a bright academic career, which I still think he would have hated. Can you imagine him sitting in a lecture hall, always questioning his professor all the time? Two words: ACADEMIC SUSPENSION!!!
After a quick shooting up the ranks, he become the secretary to the Kenya African Union branch and then joined the military branch of the organization. Part of his job was presiding over oath-taking. He believed intensely in compelling other Kikuyus by way of oath to bring solidarity. To achieve this, he oversaw beatings and carried a shotgun. Later, he was briefly arrested that same year but escaped with the help of local police. In 1956, after he was finally arrested with one of his wives, he was sentenced to death by a court judge and jury, while he was in a hospital bed at the General Hospital Nyeri. In the morning of February 18, 1957, he was executed. To this day, Kimathi is still buried in an unmarked grave. He is viewed by many Kenyans, especially from his tribe, as a national hero.
Another revolutionary fighter was a Harry Thuku, a man who was one of the pioneers in the development of modern African nationalism in Kenya. Thuku wasn’t a fighter with a rifle or a dagger, he was a lawyer, later becoming a politician. Harry Thuku was born in the Kambui district of Kenya in 1895. He spent 4 years in school, and in 1911, he received a 2-year prison sentence for forging a check. Thuku, later, became a typesetter for the Leader, a European settler newspaper. In 1918, he became a clerk-telegraph operator in the government treasury office in Nairobi. All this experiences had made Thuku one of the first of Kenya’s Africans to be fully capable of working in the English language, which was a major accomplishment.
Thuku was one of the founders of the East African Association (1921), Kenya’s first modern political organization. It drew members from many tribal groups, but due to its location, most of the members were Kikuyu. Thuku played an important role because of his education and government position. The organization faced opposition from the Kenyan government since the settler-dominated colony were not ready for any forceful presentation of African views. But Thuku and his colleagues continued to work and to gain support among Kenya’s educated Africans. Because of this success, Thuku was arrested in 1922. This event was met by an intensive African protest which resulted in a demonstration culminating in violence. Thuku was then exiled to Kismayu.
He later went on to join and form other organizations to bring about the independence of, not only Kenya, but of all of Africa. He was a Kenyan`s leading anti-colonial figure, intrepid politician and a farmer. Thuku is the “Father of Kenyan Nationalism” and the first Kenyan to lead the first pan-Kenyan nationalist movement to protest against white-settler dominance. Years later, he denounced the Mau Mau, which caused him to be shunned by his former colleagues, and thus played no role in subsequent political developments. On Independence Day, he celebrated it privately by planting coffee trees to show his economic liberation. And the independent Kenya government honored him by bestowing his name on the street that runs along the Norfolk Hotel, the scene of the confrontation between his supporters and the police in 1922.
Thuku was a courageous man, who challenged the invincible colonial system when very few would have dared to do so. He gave up a profitable career in the civil service in order to remove the grievances of his people. Therefore, he is a symbol, an example, and pioneer of the nationalist movement in Kenya.