At the high court in London, three elderly Kenyans are seeking redress for their torture at the hands of British troops during the Mau Mau rebellion
| BRYAN ROSTRON |
| Published: 2012/07/25 07:37:47 AM |
IMAGINE that an ageing Nazi who is wanted for war crimes is found living quietly in a Sussex village but the German government objects that it is too long after the event for a fair trial to be possible. There would be international outrage. Yet this, essentially, is a defence that the British government now claims.
At the high court in London, three elderly Kenyans are seeking redress for their torture at the hands of British troops during the Mau Mau rebellion.
Last week, the British government made it clear to the court that it does not dispute the truth of their claims: among other abominations, one of the men was publicly castrated with pliers; the woman, then 15, was raped with a bottle.
These abuses, however, took place from 1952 to 1960. There is also a bureaucratic paper trail. Researchers recently unearthed 8000 secret files (17000 pages), which lay bare the extent of the violence inflicted on Mau Mau insurgents. A number of suspects were tortured to death. Some were burned alive. Sexual violence was rampant. Documents show that the British cabinet was made aware of at least some of these atrocities but chose to do nothing.
Here are the statistics of that 1952-60 struggle compiled by the late historian Basil Davidson: "11503 Mau Mau killed, 1035 captured wounded, 1550 captured in action, 26625 arrested and 2714 surrendered, indicating a gruesome relationship between killed and captured. Against this, British and colonial forces lost 167 troops, while 1819 ‘loyal civilians’ were killed — this last category included Africans and Asians. The total number of European civilians killed was 32."
More recent historians say the total number of Mau Mau dead may be double the 11000 estimate. Even so, for many, the term Mau Mau remains shorthand for barbaric terror. This is an indication of European myopia regarding the crimes committed in the name of colonialism.
In German South West Africa, which is today Namibia, there was a concerted attempt between 1904 and 1908 to exterminate the Herero people. As I previously noted in Business Day, this is a rare case in which the intent to commit genocide was actually documented, both by Gen Lothar von Trotha and the German general staff.
In the Congo, once the personal fiefdom of King Leopold II of Belgium, the sadistic brutality and depravity is laid bare in Adam Hochschild’s harrowing King Leopold’s Ghost. It is estimated that between 1880 and 1920, about 10-million Congolese died from the colonists’ depredations. In 1908, when Leopold was forced to hand his private colony over to the Belgian state, all the archives were incinerated. Ash and smoke covered the sky over Brussels for eight days.
"I will give them my Congo," declared Leopold defiantly, "but they have no right to know what I did there."
Yet every time there is conflict in Africa, some lazy subeditor will write a headline to include the unthinking phrase, "heart of darkness". In fact, in 1898, as Joseph Conrad sat down to write his great novella of the same name, a French expedition set out from Senegal to conquer the Chad basin and unify all the French territories in west Africa. It became a homicidal odyssey of rape, torture and massacre.
The leaders, Capt Paul Voulet and Lt Julien Chanoine, left behind them a trail of slaughter and burned settlements. When a villager killed two of his men, Voulet ordered 150 women and children executed in retaliation.
Guides who displeased Voulet were strung up alive so their feet could be gnawed by hyenas and the rest devoured by vultures. As word filtered back to Paris, the governor of Timbuktu, Lt-Col Klobb, was sent after them. He followed an "infernal trail" of devastation and charred bodies.
When Klobb caught up, Voulet ordered his men to shoot him.
Voulet and Chanoine were then shot by Klobb’s troops.
In 1902, after an inquiry, the French ministry of colonies ruled that the two psychopaths "had been driven mad by the dreadful heat".
Once again, it was Africa’s fault.
Conrad’s Heart of Darkness appeared in 1902. Seafarer Charles Marlow, aboard the yawl Nellie on the Thames, begins to tell his companions about his bizarre quest for the crazed Kurtz in Africa. And Marlow remarks of London: "This also has been one of the dark places on earth."
It still is, it seems.
• Rostron is an author and a freelance journalist
