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Repurposing
What happened to these Kenyan sites where those resisting colonial rule were incarcerated? How were the structures of imprisonment and detention repurposed?
Secondary schools were scarce at independence, especially for girls. This scarcity may be why today, both Aguthi and Mweru works camps are Presbyterian Church of East Africa (PCEA) high schools. On the other hand, there is some evidence that detention camps were built on land seized by the colonial authorities from Kikuyu Independent Schools, which had been set up as an alternative to the mission schools. This seizure took place immediately after the declaration of the state of emergency as these schools were accused of being actively involved in Mau Mau activity. Although it has been hard to establish what the Aguthi and Mweru sites were used for and by who prior to the Emergency, it could be that these weren’t repurposed, so much as returned to previous educational usage, but we do not know for sure.
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In the late 1950s, Mweru opened as an ‘approved School’ set up by the British colonial government for children as young as 8 years old. These institutions were part of the colonial government’s strategy to control and ‘rehabilitate’ young people considered to be influenced by or involved in the Mau Mau uprising. The site was subsequently used as a detention camp. When the camp was closed, it was first utilised as a juvenile prison until 1969, when it reopened for its current purpose as a school.
Aguthi Works Camp was opened as Kangubiri Girls School in the mid-1960s. The school was an initiative by a colonial Kikuyu Chief, Chief Muhoya wa Kagumba, a committed member of the PCEA congregation in Nyeri, and his son Mathenge Muhoya became the school’s first principal in 1965. The school’s name, Kangubiri, is a modification in the Kikuyu language of the English phrase ‘can go free’ , referencing what detainees were told when they were believed to have been ‘reformed’.
"It’s where we keep our things" - Student, Focus Group Kangubiri
Whilst the Kapenguria cells were known about and on occasion visited by prominent politicians, for many years they remained pretty much abandoned, being used as storage. In the late 1980s, Pokot leaders and inhabitants petitioned the Arid and Semi-Arid Lands (ASAL) Development Programme, funded by the Dutch Cooperation, to build a museum exploring Pokot culture. In 1992, the District Development Committee of West Pokot accepted the proposal of ASAL to construct a museum. The project was to consist of an ethnographic gallery and two traditional homesteads.
The National Museums of Kenya was approached to organise the ongoing management of the museum. The NMK proposed the prison as a venue for the Museum and the incorporation of the cells of the Kapenguria Six as part of this new heritage site. The colonial office was turned into a library about the trial and the freedom for independence in Kenya. The old prison has been turned into the Curator’s office and the ‘struggle for independence’ gallery. In this way, the remit of Kapenguria Museum evolved to encompass the history of the independence struggle and incarceration.
From a Camp to a School
The repurposing of the camps into schools has left traces that are still visible today.
In Aguthi Works Camp, the roundabout that was placed at the entrance of the camp continues to be an important landmark for staff, students and visitors to the school. It also offers a useful marker to identify remnants of the camps within the school. The roundabout can be seen at the entrance of the camp, with a small tree and flowers planted at its centre. It is prominent in this 1955 archive photograph of the camp and is visible on this aerial photograph from 1960.
Detainees had to pass the roundabout several times a day on their way from their barracks to the clay pits where they would work making bricks, or to other hard labour outside the camp such as terracing land.
Marks on the Landscape
Colonial Incarceration has left many marks: on the bodies of the detainees, on the memories of communities, and on the landscape.
The British colonial government used detainees as labour for large infrastructure and agricultural projects such as irrigation schemes, terracing, deforesting, or building roads. In both Aguthi and Mweru, detainees made bricks. These bricks were used to build multiple colonial buildings across Kenya. For example, they are visible on what was a colonial administrator’s residence in Nyeri town next to the Museum. They were also used to construct buildings in the camps themselves.
The imprint of the camp on the schools is not necessarily obvious at first glance but barbed wire can be seen in the rafters of multiple classrooms and small barred windows can be found high up on some buildings. Structures that were part of the camp are also marked out by their construction in smaller colonial era bricks. Bricks stamped with AWC for Aguthi Works Camp are visible on some of the floors and walls, of buildings within Kangubiri Girls High school. Loose bricks have also been found in the school grounds and some of these have been donated to Nyeri Museum.
Beyond the architecture, the terrain itself has been reordered. In both Kangubiri Girls High School and Mweru High School, the clay pits where bricks were manufactured have been turned into sports fields, and you can still make out the dips and depressions of the excavations. At Kangubiri, a large trench by the girls’ dormitories, originally to prevent escape, is still visible despite the brush that has grown over it. At Mweru, the classrooms built in the 1980s stand on the terraces that were part of the structure of the camp. The terracing is at the core of the school and staff and students go up and down these stairs daily.
The landscape also lends itself to interpretation by students, staff and visitors. Trees with wooden planks for climbing are interpreted as lookout posts or hiding spots. The terracing is also understood as part of the infrastructure of torture within the camps, retaining water to flood the isolation cells.
Remembering
Both the schools in Nyeri county and the museum in Kapenguria are important sites in the memory of British repression of Kenya’s independence struggle. But many different groups were involved in this struggle. Questions therefore arise about whose stories are told, retold and remembered.
GAZETTEMENT & RECOGNITION
Kapenguria museum and the cells of the Kapenguria Six – Bildad Kaggia, Kung’u Karumba, Jomo Kenyatta, Fred Kubai, Paul Ngei, and Achieng’ Oneko – have been formally gazetted by National Museums of Kenya. This means that Kapenguria Museum is recognised as a nationally important heritage site. However, the two schools that were former detention camps have not. Indeed, there isn’t a detention camp in Kenya that has been formally recognised in this way.
KENYATTA’S ‘FAKE’ CELL
During the gazettement of the prison site and its conversion to a museum, debates arose about exactly where on the site the Kapenguria Six were detained, which the media framed as a dispute over the ‘fake’ versus the ‘true’ cell of Kenyatta. At its heart the controversy was about whether Kenyatta had received ‘preferrential treatment’ in detention, i.e. whether he had a bigger cell, bathroom and store. Following oral testimony of one of the former warders and the visit of two former detainees (Achieng’ Oneko and Fred Kubai), the location of the Kapenguria Six’s cells was established as a separate block to the side of the main prison building. These cells were renovated and became a central part of Kapenguria Museum.
DINI YA MSAMBWA
The Kapenguria Six were certainly not the only Kenyans incarcerated in Kapenguria. Long before Jomo Kenyatta’s trial, Kapenguria Prison was used to detain petty offenders. In 1940, some 22 members of the Kikuyu Central Association, the Ukambani and the Taita Hills Associations were arrested and detained there.
In the 1950s, Pokot men and women suspected of being members of the Dini Ya Msambwa were arrested and imprisoned, many at Kapenguria. Founded by Elijah Masinde among the Luhya in 1945, Dini Ya Msambwa which roughly translates as ‘religion of the ancestors’ – combined indigenous religious practices with resistance to colonial rule. The movement spread to the Pokot, led by Lukas Pkech, who was killed at Kolloa by colonial forces. This movement was considered as big a threat as the Mau Mau by the colonial government. In 1957, the British opened a special detention camp for members of Dini Ya Msambwa at Kapenguria. Descendants of the movement want their story included in the ‘struggle for independence’ gallery at Kapenguria museum.
Landscapes of Memory
During the Emergency, the British colonial government established detention camps primarily to detain members of the Mau Mau movement, which aimed to overthrow colonial rule and reclaim land. As the movement was largely Kikuyu-led, they were disproportionately impacted, however, the camps also held members of other groups that opposed colonial rule. At the height of the Emergency, it is estimated that there were 47 detention camps in Kenya, mainly located in the central province around Mount Kenya (see panel on Race and Incarceration). Detainees suffered torture and other abuses whilst incarcerated at the camps. Fifty years later, in 2013, following a case in the UK courts, a group of exdetainees received compensation from the British government. Although local government in the area and some heritage professionals are keen to get greater recognition of the sites where these detention camps were located, they have not been officially gazetted as yet. This does not mean however that the detention camps have been forgotten. Many local people and communities remember the camps vividly.
THE TORTURE CELL
A cell stands at centre of Mweru High School, the sign attached reminds all that here the Mau Mau were detained, harassed, tortured and died ‘for our FREEDOM’. Students pass it daily on their way to the dining hall and their dormitories. It is not clear if this is a reconstruction of one of the isolation cells or a cell which was left rather than demolished, nor is it clear who put the sign up. What is clear, is that this is a memory seen as important to retain.
MUGUMO TREES
In Nyeri, many former incarceration sites feature Mugumo trees, which are seen as sacred. There are various stories about the significance of these trees. In Mweru, the tree located above the solitary torture cell is either believed to have been planted to cleanse the site or used for hanging detainees. At Kangubiri High School, a tree planted at the camp’s entrance is said to have been uprooted and moved there by detainees as a form of punishment. A similar tree stands at Aguthi Primary School, a former Home Guard post, and is remembered as somewhere bodies would be displayed before being buried in the Kiariua mass grave.