Mau Mau at peace
NJURUTA, Kenya — In July, a landmark legal decision in London allowed aging Mau Mau veterans of Kenya’s independence movement to proceed with a class-action suit over colonial-era practices. The allegations, all from the 1950s, include murder, rape, sodomy, and deliberate starvation. Veterans are asking to be compensated for what they call war crimes. The Mau Mau, who called themselves the “Kenya Land and Freedom Army,” fought the British from 1952 to 1960, during what was known as the Kenya Emergency. Colonial authorities called the Mau Mau a savage cult. Kenya itself, a newly sovereign nation by 1963, was equally dismissive, and banned Mau Mau associations until 2003. The Mau Mau case got as far as it did in part because of Caroline Elkins, a Harvard history professor whose years of scholarship and accumulated oral histories documented colonial treatment of the Mau Mau. Her book “Imperial Reckoning: The Untold Story of Britain’s...