23/07/2022
Wanja wa Johana and Wangui wa Kimani were the first Mau Mau women guerillas to be sentenced to death in 1954 by the British occupiers after refusing to compromise national patriotism. Wanja led a KLFA village detachment in Tetu, Nyeri, which ambushed an enemy patrol, killing a white settler's wife. Two days later, a local collaborator betrayed her; the police arrested her and badly tortured her but she refused to cooperate---to betray the homeland or her comrades-in-arms. As a result, they took her to a kangaroo court, and sentenced her to death. A year later, her death sentence was commuted to life imprisonment because she was a teenager. Wangui was shot and captured on the battlefield in Nyahururu in 1953 and, like many committed patriots, they executed her after she stubbornly refused to cooperate with the imperialist police. Likewise, Wanjiku wa Karuku of Mukurwe wa Nyagathanga village, Murang'a, said in an interview (1980) that, she was an active member of the Mau Mau movement and her husband was a freedom fighter under General Kago's command. One day in October of 1954, they arrested her and took her to the enemy camp for interrogation. She stubbornly refused to cooperate and as a result they mercilessly tortured and sexually assaulted her. Her right hip was broken and her captors refused to take her to hospital for treatment. Today she walks with a limp. In this connection, Major General Mbaria Kaniu explained:
Our women were strong and recalcitrant. Repeatedly, during the war, I observed that a woman could keep a secret much better than a man keeps one, and uphold national patriotism without flagging. Even under brutal torture, relatively fewer women than men would break down and reveal the secret of the movement. Most of them chose death rather than surrender---and that was the revolutionary beauty and sweetness of our women.
Describing her role in the armed movement in Meru district, Naomi Rigiri in an interview said that she was a Mau Mau Central Committee leader in her village. The main task was to feed guerillas in the forest, to supply them with clothing, medicine and intelligence. They prepared food that could last in the forest such as ugali (corn meal), yam, roast bananas, cassava, arrowroots, roast goat meat, githeri (mixed corn and beans) and plenty of all kinds of fruits. The Mau Mau cadres working in Meru Hospital and in the colonial army clinics supplied drugs and medical equipment. Each of them instructed to collect strategic information from the enemy, to observe the movement of the enemy, and to report the internal traitors to the village guerrilla commander. It was also their responsibility to assist women who had lost their husbands on the battlefield and others whose husbands were in prison for their involvement in the struggle. They took care of children left orphaned. It was their primary duty to recruit young men and women to join the guerilla army in the forest. They were unsuspected infiltrators of the colonial system and secret agents of the Mau Mau insurrection. Since they believed in the liberation of the country, Naomi explained, "We worked with courage and confidence. Those who were caught by the enemy were cruelly tortured; many were killed. We believed that to die for our country's independence was to live forever."
History of Resistance in Kenya
Maina wa Kinyatti, 2008.
