Police may have killed hundreds of people in a crackdown on Kenya's notorious Mungiki gang, a rights group said on Thursday, in a growing national controversy ahead of a presidential election in December. The Kenya National Commission on Human Rights said it suspects police dumped hundreds of bodies in a Nairobi mortuary before lack of space forced them to use secluded bushland outside the capital.

Fighters of Burundi's last active rebel group have for the second time in one week attacked a position occupied by a break-away faction, forcing villagers to flee their homes, a senior military official said. The evening raid by combatants of the Front National de Liberation (FNL), led by Agathon Rwasa, took place on 24 October evening on a site where the so-called FNL "dissidents" have gathered in Gakungwe village of Kabezi commune in Bujumbura Rural province.

Ongoing clashes coupled with a lack of central government control are crippling attempts to develop a national AIDS strategy in Somalia, where thousands have been displaced and are living in temporary shelters, with little access to basic healthcare.

The hidden crimes of systematic detention, torture and murder committed against the opponents of the government of Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) by security forces has been exposed. Amnesty International (AI) that exposed the crimes in a newly published report asked the government of President Joseph Kabila to urgently and independently investigate the alleged cases.

The dangerous Gulf of Aden crossing claimed more lives at the weekend when up to 66 people drowned after being forced overboard by smugglers off the coast of Yemen. The tragedy involved two smugglers' boats that left the Somali coastal town of Bossaso on Saturday with 244 people aboard, mostly Somalis and Ethiopians. The two vessels reached the Yemeni coast off Hawrat Al Shatee on Sunday, survivors said, adding that passengers were forced into deep water and many drowned.

The latest escalation in fighting in North Kivu province of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) has forced thousands more people to flee southwards towards Goma and across the border into Uganda. An estimated 8,000 Congolese refugees who fled to Bunagana in Uganda over the weekend were still there on Tuesday morning.

More than 16,000 refugees have returned to their home districts in the Democratic Republic of the Congo's (DRC) Equateur province so far this year – almost as much as in the three previous years combined. The surge in the number of returns to the rainforests of northwest DRC – almost all from the neighbouring Republic of Congo (RoC) across the Oubangui River – comes as UNHCR prepares to phase out assisted voluntary repatriation to this area in mid-2008.

What credibility can we afford such gloomy words that portray Africans as fundamentally traumatized beings incapable of acting on their own behalf and in their own recognized interests, asks Achille Mbembe. What is this so-called historicity of the continent which totally silences the long tradition of resistance, including that against French colonialism, along with today’s struggles for democracy, none of which receive the clear support of a country which, for many years, has actively backed the local satrapies?

Police in Chad arrested nine French people on Thursday as they were preparing to fly more than 100 children to France with a view to having them adopted, Chad's government and French diplomats said. They included the head of a group called Zoe's Ark, which said earlier this year that it intended to bring orphans from Sudan's violent Darfur region to France for adoption.

Youths went on the rampage in Sierra Leone's capital Freetown on Thursday, attacking and looting Lebanese-owned shops after reports a Lebanese man had raped and killed a local woman. Police fired tear gas to disperse crowds of young men who broke into shops in the impoverished and densely populated east end of Freetown, walking out with mobile phones, generators, TVs and radios, a Reuters reporter said.

Chad's government and four Sudan-based Chadian rebel groups signed a "definitive peace accord" in Libya on Thursday that included an immediate ceasefire, a Chadian presidency official said. The deal, which aimed to end more than two years of sporadic fighting in eastern Chad, was signed in the Libyan city of Sirte in the presence of Chadian President Idriss Deby, Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir and Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, the official, who asked not to named, told Reuters.

MDC President Morgan Tsvangirai’s long serving bodyguard, Nhamo Musekiwa, has died in South Africa from complications sustained during an assault by state security agents in March this year. The 37 year old had been guarding Tsvangirai since 1999 when the party was formed. At the time of his death he was recuperating at a hospital in South Africa. This followed the brutal assaults on Tsvangirai and several other activists after an aborted prayer rally in Highfields.

Peace talks aimed at ending the four-and-a-half-year conflict in Sudan's Darfur region could be doomed before they begin after the leaders of the two largest rebel groups said they would not take part. Khalil Ibrahim, the leader of the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM), has joined Abdul Wahid al-Nur, the leader of the Sudan Liberation Movement (SLM), in refusing to take part in the talks in Libya, which are due to begin on Saturday.

The International Criminal Court (ICC) has entered a protocol agreement with the Central African Republic (CAR) setting out the cooperation and protection that the Government will provide to court officials investigating whether war crimes have taken place in the impoverished country since 2002. Bruno Cathala, the ICC registrar, signed the agreement with the CAR Justice Minister Thierry Maleyombo during a meeting yesterday in the capital, Bangui, according to a press statement released by the Court. Prime Minister Elie Doté was also present.

http://www.pambazuka.org/images/articles/325/cartoon_43984_maumau.jpgAs the Kenya Human Rights Commission (KHRC) prepares to sue the British Government for personal injuries sustained by survivors of the Mau Mau war for independence whilst in British detention camps in Kenya, Mukoma Wa Ngugi unravels the Colonial myths of Christianisation and civilization and exposes the reality of torture, murder, slavery, landlessness, dehumanization and internment.

In February 2008, the Kenya Human Rights Commission (KHRC) will file a representative law-suit against Her Majesty’s Government (HMG) in the British High Court on behalf of the survivors of the Mau Mau war for independence.

The KHRC is suing HMG for “personal injuries sustained [by the survivors] while in detention camps of the Kenya Colonial Government which operated” under the direct authority of HMG during the State of Emergency (1952-60).

But to understand the law-suit in all its implications, we have to look at Africa’s historical relationship to the West and separate the image from the reality. The Enlightenment of the 1600’s sought to civilize Africans, introduce reason and logic to them, and equip them with the key to heaven through Christianization. The reality masked underneath this image was one of torture, murder and slavery.

Later, colonialism used the image of a gentle stewardship to guide Africans along until they were civilized. The reality, as the KHRC suit shows, was landlessness, torture and dehumanization, whole population internment, outright murder and mass killings.

For the Westerners and Africans alike who have sought comfort in the images, the reality difficult to take. But the reality has been well documented. Adam Hochschild, writing in King Leopold’s Ghost, estimates that 5 to 10 million Africans died as a direct result of Belgian colonization in the Congo in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s. And chopping off hands, quite literally, was a form of public control.

And between 1904 and 1907, 65,000 Herero (80 percent of the total Herero population) were systematically eliminated by the Germans in Namibia. In Algeria, during the war of independence (1954 to 1962), the French routinely tortured and 'disappeared' FLN freedom fighters.

These random examples illustrate an alarmingly simple principle: One nation cannot occupy another and seek to control its resources without detaining, torturing, assassinating and terrorizing the occupied. A modern day example of this principle at work is Iraq today where torture and killings under the occupation of the United States are rampant, even though the U.S. wants to sell an image of spreading democracy.

Colonialism, Legacy and the Mau Mau

In Kenya, British colonialism followed this same principle. Caroline Elkins’ Imperial Reckoning: The Untold Story of Britain’s Gulag and David Anderson’s Histories Of The Hanged: The Dirty War In Kenya document tortures, hangings rushed through kangaroo courts, detention camps, internments, and assassinations, not to mention psychological warfare through fear and intimidation.

Independence however did not bring justice for Kenyans - certainly not for the Mau Mau veterans. Kenyatta, even before being sworn as president in1963, had denounced the Mau Mau as terrorists. Contrary to British propaganda, Kenyatta was never a member of the Mau Mau. In an interview, Muthoni Wanyeki, Executive Director of the KHRC, said that:

"On coming to power, [Kenyatta] proceeded, through the land ownership policies(and practices) of his government (and himself), to betray everything that the Mau Mau had stood for and to entrench the landholding patterns established under the colony"[1]

It is not a surprise that Kenyatta by the early 1970’s had a few detentions and assassinations under his belt. In the words of politician J.M. Kariuki (assassinated in 1975), Kenyatta created a nation of ten millionaires and ten million beggars. He wanted the Mau Mau platform of Land and Freedom erased from Kenyan memory.

In 1978 President Moi took over when Kenyatta died and continued with the same dictatorial policies. Irony is such that in 1982, Mau Mau historian Maina Wa Kinyatti was imprisoned by the Moi government in the same Kamiti Prison where the British in 1957 hanged and buried the leader of the Mau Mau, Dedan Kimathi, in an unmarked grave.

It was not until the Kibaki government took over in 2002 that the colonial ban on the Mau Mau was removed. Finally in 2007 a statue of Kimathi stands on Kimathi Street, something unimaginable under the Kenyatta and Moi regimes.

But more important than a hero's acre or a monument is a reckoning with the colonial legacy of torture, dehumanization and pauperization. Mau Mau veterans that are still alive, along with their children and grandchildren, live in abject poverty, landless and without formal education.

The past and current Kenyan governments have as yet to ask the British government to at the very least issue an apology for the atrocities committed against the Kenyan people. The Moi and Kenyatta governments, dependent on Western aid and while maintaining a vicious elite system, were not in a position to pressure Britain for an apology. Or even to pressure HMG to reveal the exact location of Kimathi’s grave so that his widow, Mukami Kimathi, can bury him.

This dependent relationship has allowed the British to commit crimes against Kenyans with near impunity. Forty plus years since Kenya’s independence, the British Army still uses Northern Kenya for military exercises. As a result of leaving unexploded munitions behind, “hundreds of Maasai and Samburu tribes people - many of them children - are said to have been killed or maimed by unexploded bombs left by the British army at practice ranges in central Kenya over the past 50 years” the BBC reported [2] With the legal aid of Leigh Day and Co Advocates, 228 survivors took the UK government to the British High Court. In 2002, a settlement was reached in which the UK government agreed to pay 7 million dollars plus legal fees.

Economic Justice and Forgiveness

Eric Williams’ Capitalism and Slavery[3] shows how Western economies grew at the expense of African slave labor. Walter Rodney in How Europe Underdeveloped Africa [4] updates the argument to include colonialism –Europe developed at the direct expense of Africa. Today we find that economic giants, Barclays Bank [5], J.P. Morgan and Chase Manhattan Bank [6] are direct beneficiaries of the slave trade.

Muthoni Wanyeki argues that “it has to be recognized that the UK (and all ex-colonisers) grew at great human expense and political-economic disruption and exploitation within the ex-colonies. It is on that recognition alone that current debates on 'aid'/'development financing', trade and investment can shift as they need to.” The call for forgiveness and reconciliation then has to rest on the realization that colonialism was first and foremost an exploitative economic relationship.

Because the former colonizers continue to benefit from colonialism, while the victims of colonization continue to live in poverty, the governments of former colonizers have a moral duty to rectify the historical wrong in the present time. On the basis that colonialism as an investment is still paying off, the British cannot argue that they are not personally responsible for atrocities committed by their parents – they have inherited the economic well-being of a colonial system. They need to do right by this history because it is living.

The British government has as yet to issue a formal apology for the atrocities it committed. In the same way that Clinton expressed shame and sorrow for slavery without offering a formal apology, so did Blair for colonialism. One can express sorrow, regret and shame for causing an accidental death, but surely this is not enough for a systematic exploitation that causes millions to suffer and die.

It should be stated clearly that the authoritarian governments of Kenyatta and Moi are guilty of suppressing Mau Mau memory. And that there were thousands of Kenyans who collaborated with the British. But it should also be said that collaborators did not create colonialism, it is colonialism that created its functionaries. The real crime is colonialism.

And because colonialism if we are to be honest with history is a crime against humanity, the British parliament should at the very least pass a bill offering a formal apology to its victims in Africa. And the apology should also make provision for restitution.

Truth, Restitution, Reconciliation and Justice

While revolutionary in attempting to heal a wounded nation, South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission undermined the very concept of forgiveness and justice it espoused because it did not demand that the perpetrators address in word and deed the question of restitution. Muthoni Wanyeki on the TRC says that:

Within the human rights movement in Kenya (and in Africa more broadly), the TRC process in SA while hailed for its reconciliation potential has always been critiqued for its enabling of impunity and its lack of direct recognition of, compensation for survivors.

Even though a desired by-product, the struggle against apartheid was not waged solely for blacks to forgive whites, or for whites to ask forgiveness, but to bring economic, social and political equality for all South Africans. So then here is the irony of the TRC – the perpetrators go home to their mansions, the victims back to the township.

To put it differently, after the TRC hearings the victims go back to a life of poverty, they remain without the means to feed, cloth or educate their children. Freedom comes without the content – it’s just a name – it has no meaning. Under these circumstances, forgiveness, healing and justice cannot exist without restitution.

The British government, which had the largest empire in the world, has cause to fear losing the Mau Mau law-suit. Once it begins where it will end? In neighboring Uganda? India? Malaysia? Or Jamaica? And if the British lose, will this set precedence for the victims of French, Belgian or Portuguese colonialism? The British government knows that losing one law-suit will open closed colonial closets all over the world.

It is precisely because this lawsuit has huge implications for the victims of colonialism all over the world that it deserves the support of all those who understand that history is still acting on us and that justice cannot exist without some form of restitution even if it comes in the form of the whole truth.

Identifying the graves of the disappeared, so that their relatives can rest; the numbers of how many killed, so that nations account for their dead; the names of the guilty, so that they may be brought to justice or forgiven; initiating the return of what was stolen: all these issues resonate with formerly colonized peoples.

For Muthoni Wanyeki says that “We see this case as being part of the process of understanding and coming to terms with our past...particularly given that our past impacts so clearly and evidently on our present.” African people in the continent and Diaspora should support the Kenya Human Rights Committee by calling on the British government to account for its torture of Mau Mau detainees.

We have to become each other’s keeper of memory and see each atrocity perpetrated on the other as part our collective memory – whether we identify as Afro-Latino, African American, or African.

We have to make common cause because ultimately the struggle for the truth will not be won because the British High Court finds it just, or because the British Government decides to come to terms with its past, it will be won because victims across Africa, the Diaspora and other survivors of colonial atrocities will make common cause with the Mau Mau struggle and vice versa. Truth will come to light because we will have demanded justice and restitution before offering forgiveness.

It is only when an apology and restitution are offered, and the victim in turn forgives that for both the perpetrator and victim true healing can take place. For me, that is the truth of justice.

Notes

1. Wanyeki, Muthoni (Kenya Human Rights Commission Executive Director). Interview by Author via e-mail. October 15th, 2007.
2. UK pay-out for Kenya bomb victims. July 19th, 2002
3. Williams, Eric. Slavery and Capitalism. New York, Russell & Russell, 1961
4. Rodney, Walter. How Europe Underdeveloped Africa. Washington, D.C. Howard University Press, 1981
5. Barclays admits possible link to slavery after reparation call. http://observer.guardian.co.uk/business/story/0,,2047237,00.html April 1, 2007
6. Corporations challenged by reparations activists http://www.usatoday.com/money/general/2002/02/21/slave-reparations.htm February 21, 2002

* Kenyan writer Mukoma Wa Ngugi is the author of Hurling Words at Consciousness (Africa World Press, 2006) and the forthcoming New Kenyan Fiction (Ishmael Reed Publications, 2008). He is a political columnist for the BBC Focus on Africa Magazine.

* Please send comments to [email protected] or comment online at www.pambazuka.org

Monday morning, October 22, five men - one of whom was armed - attacked a team of MSF workers travelling in two vehicles by road from Agadez to Dabaga, where MSF has been providing medical care at the local health post since the start of October. Following this violent incident, MSF has decided to cease activities in
Dabaga and the surrounding region because the security situation is preventing the organization from adequately carrying out its work for the people living in this area. Moreover, this incident follows the October 16 theft of an MSF vehicle that was travelling on the same road to Dabaga.

Despite an overall decrease in the intensity and recurrence of conflicts in the district of Ituri in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), civilian populations there are still subjected to high levels of violence. Based upon four years of medical work in the region, Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) has issued a report titled "Ituri: Civilians Still the First Victims", emphasizing the persistence of sexual violence as well as the direct humanitarian consequences of military operations in 2007 during a "pacification process" in the region.

The head of the U.N.'s refugee agency has welcomed an EU decision to send 3,000 peacekeepers to eastern Chad, saying it would contribute to efforts to help civilians fleeing violence in neighboring Sudan. "It is a key instrument to allow for the security of the refugees ... and for the possibility of a more effective humanitarian operation," said Antonio Guterres, the U.N. high commissioner for refugees.

Yemeni policemen are stealing money and jewellery from African migrants arriving to Yemeni coasts on a daily basis, say refugees and locals. Somali and Ethiopian refugees at the Mayfa'a district of Hadhramout, about 800km south-east of Sana'a, said policemen stole their money after their arrival last week.

The home affairs department's refugee offices in Cape Town was a "chaotic" place where refugees were treated like animals, a parliamentary committee said. The MPs, on an unannounced visit to the refugee offices on the Foreshore, found that officials illegally detained refugees.