The Life and Times of General China: Mau Mau and the End of Empire in Kenya ed. by Myles Osborne (review)

General China (Waruhiu Itote) was one of the three senior Mau Mau forest generals, and the only one to survive. Wounded and captured in January 1954, he was tried and convicted but saved from execution and spent the rest of the Emergency in detention, where he became close to Kenyatta. After independence he took up a career in public service, wrote his memoirs, and died a hero in 1993. However, like his fellow forest leaders Dedan Kimathi and Stanley Mathenge, though for different reasons, he was a controversial figure, denounced by some as a turn-coat who saved his neck by betraying others. As Miles Osborne makes clear, he was a man plagued by uncertainty and deep conflicts, characteristics he shared with many on both sides of the war: that is one reason that Mau Mau continues to haunt the imagination, and why Itote’s career deserves attention.

Osborne has put together an important collection of documents, primarily for upper level undergraduate teaching but also of interest to scholars. It includes archival material that is not otherwise easily accessible, together with a characteristically nuanced and thoughtful forward by John Lonsdale, an introduction that explores Itote’s life and times and provides full context for the sources, and a short but useful discussion of the development of the historiography of Mau Mau. Wisely, however, Osborne does not venture too far into the thickets of historical debate, which have made Mau Mau as conflicted in memory as it was in life. Like all primary documents, the texts published here raise problems of interpretation and require careful analysis, with due consideration of the purposes they served and the circumstances under which they were produced. They include an abridgement of Itote’s memoir (“Mau Mau” General, published 1967), the notes of his lengthy interrogation after capture, the transcript of his trial, and a transcript of the only handwritten letter that appears to have survived. The interrogation notes were written up after the fact for wide circulation and drew on additional material. They focus almost exclusively on military matters, providing the fullest picture of Mau Mau organization then available. If Itote and his interrogator discussed other concerns, they were unfortunately not recorded. Even if the collection is necessarily focused rather narrowly on the war itself, undergraduates will get a good sense of the procedures that determined life and death during the Emergency.

Osborne’s introduction is thorough and evenhanded, and it deals directly with the central issue of Itote’s career after capture: his involvement in an abortive government attempt to persuade forest fighters to surrender en masse. The fact that this move to end the war in early 1954 failed, through miscommunication or possibly sabotage, does not minimize its potential importance—much suffering might have been avoided—but it did perhaps cloud Itote’s reputation. His assertion that he was actually on his way to surrender (and to claim amnesty) when he was captured seems implausible and was rejected in court, but his expressed wish to end the fighting is far less so. His interrogation and trial statements contain clues suggesting a desire to limit the impact of violence on ordinary Kikuyu, and what we now know of debate and dissension in the forest provides further context for such a view. While the full force of counter-insurgency had yet to hit civilians in the Reserve, and it was probably too early to conclude that the war in the forest was already lost—the security forces did not think so, hence the importance of Itote’s capture and interrogation—he may well have come to believe that by taking up arms Mau Mau had already earned the right to be heard and that escalating violence might destroy the community. We cannot know, but this possibility is worth debating.

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