Kimathi, Dedan

Kimathi, Dedan 1920-1957

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Dedan Kimathi (also known as Kimathi wa Waciuri) was an important member of Kenya’s militant nationalist group, the Mau Mau. He became notorious as the elusive “general.” Born in 1920 in the village of Thegenge in the Tetu Division of the Central Nyeri district in Kenya, Kimathi began his formal education at the age of fifteen when he enrolled at the local elementary school, Karunaini. He funded his education by collecting seeds for the forestry department. He later entered the Tumutumu CMS School, but could not complete his secondary education due to a lack of funds. In 1941 Kimathi enlisted in the army to help prosecute World War II (1939–1945), but he was discharged three years later for misconduct. In 1946 he became a member of the Kenyan African Union (KAU), a political organization established to fight British colonialism. In 1949 he returned to teach briefly at his former elementary school, but quit within two years.

In 1950 Kimathi embraced radical politics when he subscribed to the oath of the Mau Mau, the group demanding freedom and the return of Kenyan land from the British. Kimathi became one of the most prominent of the three dominant leaders of Mau Mau’s Land and Freedom Armies, with oversight functions for the Aberdare forest. In 1952 he was elected the local branch secretary of the KAU in the Ol’ Kalou and Thomson’s Falls area. He was arrested the same year when he was implicated in a murder, but he escaped from police detention with the help of a sympathizer. The following year he created the Kenya Defense Council to coordinate guerrilla activities, and moved to the Nyandarua forest, which served as the operational base of his army. Besides the armed struggle, he toured the forest and towns attempting to inspire people to join his group. Kimathi soon developed skills as a strategist and became an accomplished master of disguises. In addition, he became a skillful writer, penning letters to the colonial authorities and to friendly and unfriendly chiefs, as well as articles that were published in newspapers. Due to the activities of the Mau Mau, the colonial regime was forced to declare a state of emergency in 1952.

In 1956 Kimathi was captured with Wambui, his “forest wife,” and sentenced to death. He was hanged on February 18, 1957, at Nairobi Prison and was buried in a mass grave. Despite attempts by British propagandists to label him a dangerous and elusive terrorist, Kimathi became a folk hero among the people of Kenya. After independence, several towns in Kenya named buildings or streets after him. A statue was also dedicated to him in Nairobi in December 2006. Kimathi’s life has inspired several literary and historical works, including The Trial of Dedan Kimathi (1976) by Ngugi wa Thiong’o and Micere Mugo, and L’inafferrabile Mau Mau (The Elusive Mau Mau, 1957), a novel by Ottavio Sestero. Kimathi also lives on in the history, legends, and music of ordinary Kenyans.

SEE ALSO Anticolonial Movements; Decolonization; Kenyatta, Jomo; Mau Mau

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Anderson, David M., 2005. Histories of the Hanged: The Dirty War in Kenya and the End of Empire. New York: Norton.

Barnett, Donald L., and Karari Njama. 1966. Mau Mau from Within: Autobiography and Analysis of Kenya’s Peasant Revolt. London: MacGibbon & Kee.

Maughan-Brown, David. 1985. Land, Freedom, and Fiction: History and Ideology in Kenya. London. Zed.

Olutayo C. Adesina