MAU MAU ELUSIVE
No. 1 Foe Slips Away
This is the fifth in a series by Jack Scott Sun writer, on the Mau Mau war in Kenya
May 13, 1953
NYERI, Kenya – On the day that I spent along the Mau Mau "battle-front", Kenya's Public Enemy No. 1 slipped the noose again. As John Dillinger was to the FBI, so is Dedan Kinathi to Kenya's "security forces". Here at Police headquarters there's an intelligence file on "D.K." that's a good half -inch thick. They know everything there is to know about Kinathi except how to catch up with him. He is described in this file as "about 30, bearded, with a thin scar about one inch long on one cheek, first two joints of the left middle finger missing."
10 Armed Bodyguards
A report issued only that day, based on information from informers and Mau Mau deserters, said that "D.K.", when last seen, was wearing a black greatcoat, ' carried a long staff and a double-barrelled .45.
He was described as being "well supplied with food and women, has a constant bodyguard of 10 armed men and has become so fat that he cannot run any more." The police here were properly skeptical about this. Whatever his appetities, "D.K." seems to know how to run only too well.
Kinathi is wanted specific cally for the slaying last Oc-, tober 22 of Chief Nderi, sen ior chief of the Kikuyu tribe in the Nyeri area, who was murdered and savagely muti lated when he tried to break up an oath-taking ceremony.
But that's an old score. Kinathi is wanted badly now because, as the leader of one of the small Mau Mau outlaw bands, he is the most cunning and elusive of any. There's a reward of f500 (about $1400) for information that will lead to his arrest or, better, his death.
When I made my tour of the "front" a posse was reported to have surrounded Kinathi's gang in thick bamboo forest and was "relentlessly closing in." When I returned that night "D.K," had vanished once more.
Gang Just Disappears
At a forward post of the King's African Rifles a weary patrol had just come in from a typically unsuccessful clash with such a gang. A tall, boyish, young lieutenant, his eyes bloodshot from lack of sleep, sipped a mug of tea and talked about his day. ... -
Nearby in khaki pup tents h's native troops sat about and two native "trackers" (members of the Masai tribe) slept prone on the ground with their bows and arrows beside them.
"We got one of them," the lieutenant dismally said. "The trackers followed his blood trail for 300 yards before they lost it. He was fairly badly hit, I'm sure.
"He was seen to fall. Some of our men heard him groan. We threw grenades and mortars. But after that we could never catch up with them. They just disappeared."
This is the way the strange Mau Mau war goes these days. A few roaming bands some say mighty few are tantalizing and evading a force which outnumbers them, at the least, a .hundred to one.
Kenya is spending 500,000 (or something like $1,500,000) a month to comb them out of the colony's disrupted life, more than was spent in any single year on native education.
Hard Core of Thousand
Some people estimate that there are at least a half million members of the Kikuyu tribe who have taken the Mau Mau oath, readily or from fear of death. These are, in theory, "the enemy." ,
But one' senior military officer told me that he doubts if there are, in fact, more than 1000 of the "hard core" who are keeping the war alive.
Again, you hear "armchair generals" who guess that the Mau Mau have a great cache of weapons.
One colonial official told me sadly that they might have a Hundred Years War on their hands. Others, in the military, look more closely at the evidence and predict that the Mau Mau, at the very most, has a year to live.
In many clashes the gangs have proven to be armed only with spears, the panga and the simi.
When police raided and searched a "location" on the outskirts of Nairobi, said to be a hot-bed of Mau Mau activity, they found only a shotgun and one .32 automatic.
In some cases the Mau Mau gangs have made imitation guns which seems to suggest that their arsenal is some' thing short of impressive.
Against this amorphous ghost army there's a very real army of upwards of a hundred thousand men, an army which is busy filling out forms in triplicate, sal uting each other, marching on parade squares and "eager," as one colonel put It, "to meet the enemy."
Kenya's Public Enemy No. 1 Slips Out of Noose Again
In this army you find many a proud name: The First Battalion, Lancashire Fusiliers, air-lifted to Kenya ! from Suez last October; The i First Battalion of the Royal East Kent Regiment; the First Battalion of the Devonshire Regiment, who arrived about a month ago; the . Kenya (Territorial) Regiment, which has been brought up to strength by a general call-up; the King's . African Rifles, made up of I British officers and native j troops, most of them from i Tanganyika.
There are, in fact, some- thing like 6000 professional I soldiers eager to meet the ' enemy. !
The Kenya Police Reserve I too, has been brought up to a ! strength of 12,000, also by I compulsory call-up.
Many of its new members are young enough to have missed the Second World War and so full of beans that they have drawn widespread criticism as being irresponsibly trigger-happy.
(It did not help their reputation one recent night when they staged an elaborate "ambush" and neatly shot the knee-cap off a certain Mr. Jones who, regret-ably enough, drove through them with the conviction that he was being trapped by the Mau Mau.)
In the Kikuyu reserve there are some 7000 African Home Guards and in Nairobi (which has been declared a "special area" permitting a home guardsman to shoot to kill if his challenge goes unanswered) there are constant night patrols of the white residential areas by "volunteers", whose organization also includes the Boy Scouts and Girl Guides.
25,000 Loyal Kikuyu
In the reserves there are a further 25,000 "loyal Kiku-yu" who have formed local resistance groups.
On the farms there are volunteer guards, usually business men or office workers from Nairobi or Mombasa anxious for a little action.
In the air there's the Kenya Police Air Wing, made up of civilian pilots who try to "spot" outlaws in the forest from Harvards and Piper Cubs.
(A recent order under the Emergency Regulations permits bombing from the air "on the upper part of Mount Kenya," where no innocent person is likely to be endangered.)
All of which explains why this part of Kenya has the appearances of an armed camp and why no prudent person will wander around too carelessly, especially if, like Dedan Kinathi, he happens to be wearing a black greatcoat.
Kinathi may be getting some satisfaction out of holding his own against these uneven odds, but I'm convinced that his days are numbered.
The rebellion now seems to be in the end of a first phase and about to begin on a second and . final phase. This first phase is to secure the Kikuyu reserve, the long agricultural valley which extends 100 miles north of Nairobi and some 30 miles in width, an area which more than a million Kikuyu call home.
There are now 45 "security" posts in this valley, each of them with a complement of either white military men or police. Gradually the native population itself is taking over the responsibility of protecting itself from the secret society. When that is completed, as it probably will in the next two or three months, the forces will be carrying the war to the Mau Mau.
Raiders Hide by Day
As it is now, the Mau Mau have already taken cover in the forest tangle on either eide of this valley to the west in the bamboo groves of the Abeldare Mountains, to the east in the cedar and wattle of the long- slopes at the base of Mount Kenya.
Here they hide by day, moving their camps repeat-; edly. When night falls they ! filter into the valley in search , of food or to find some new Victim for their oath.
More and more these for- ays are ending in violence. . It is a dull night down in Nairobi when the British correspondents, gathering for 1 the 11 p.m. communique by the Kenya Information Office, aren't rewarded with another short chapter of violence, such as these two I picked at random from last week's communiques:
"Eleven terrorists were killed in the Maragwa area of the Fort Hall district in a clash with a combined force of police, military and home guards . . . ."
"One of four terrorists armed with spears and simis were killed in a clash with a police patrol near Krama-chimb..."
The hunting is less effective when patrols, acting on the tips of deserters, seek out the enemy in the forest.
Since untold numbers of Kikuyu have taken the Mau Mau oath and remain in the reserves or in settled areas, many of them servants in white homes, the Mau Mau has a formidable intelligence system.
In some cases patrols, acting on a swift tip-off, have found hideouts where the cooking fires were still burning, but the band had evaporated.
Large numbers of Mau Mau suporters, police claim, have been found in the postal, telegraph and telephone services and that best listening post of all, the wheel of a taxi.
This kind of thing has made the whites here extremely "security" conscious. Last night, having a drink in the bar of the Outspan Hotel with a police inspector, I asked him a question about Mau Mau strength.
He frowned at me, shook his head, and nodded meaningfully at the back of the Kikuyu barman, an amiable man with whom I'd been discussing earlier a mutual fondness for Duke Ellington's music.
There is undoubtedly much help still coming to the Mau Mau from the reserves. Police frequently discover huts filled with foodstuff "ordered" by the Mau Mau. They are said to be building up a sizable financial fund, as well, on the old Chicago shake-down system of demanding a 10 shilling "donation" –or else.
The white authorities have tried to counteract the force of the Mau Mau oath by encouraging the tribal witchdoctors to adminster a "cleansing oath."
Since this is given in almost as voodoo a fashion as the original, often involving the throat-slitting of a live dog, the government has had to issue an official denial that it is endorsing paganism.
Still, hundreds of Kikuyu have been turned over by the police to the tribal medicine men in the hope that they may be purged.
No one puts too much faith in this since the Mau Mau ceremony is backed by a solemn reminder that to break the oath may mean a visit some dark night from a man with a very sharp knife and perhaps the loss of a head.
Still, the resistance is obviously building up steadily.
At the "front" I visited a police post where a great number of Kikuyu "Home Guards" were bivouaced. These were men who had made the decision openly to side with the whites, wore a white arm-band to prove it and, in effect, are under a death sentence by the Mau Mau.
They were a laughing, almost excessively friendly bunch (they doffed their hats when I stepped up to talk to one group) with no apparent problem in morale or, at any rate, not in the bright light of day.
I noticed two or three of them carrying rifles, evidence of the trust the authorities put in them, but in each case these armed men were surrounded by other natives carrying six-foot spears. The rifle, they told me, would ,be withdrawn unless its owner was constantly accompanied by at least four spearmen.
The leaders of these groups, reasonably enough, are Kikuyu who have not fared too badly under white rule.
The most famous of them, Chief Muhoya, who was awarded the MBE in a special Kenya honors' list, is a relatively wealthy cattle-breeder and has sent one of his sons away to university.
Another, Chief Eliud, who has survived three attempts on his life, is the owner of a 12-acre farm, a Rockefeller by Kikuyu standards.
Most of the people directing the operation against the Mau Mau are anxious to get this phase completed.
Brig. Donald Cornah, who commands the Northern Brigade with headquarters here, told me frankly, "Once we can cut them off from the help they are getting in the reserves and get rid of the purely policing operation, we can launch a sort of Chin-dit type of war and huht them down in the Aberdares and on Mount Kenya. It is now only a question of time."
This second phase, itself, will be no easy victory.
Standing with the young lieutenant I looked out across what is indisputably Mau Mau country, mile after mile of rolling ridges so thickly forested that, as he put it, "you could walk by a whole gang of them a yard off the trail and never know they were there."
When that war begins in earnest much will depend on cutting off the bands from food and from the sly cooperation of their converts. When that is accomplished , even the elusive Dedan Kinathi will be no match for Kenya's formidable army.