Married and detained for Kenya's sake

By Amos Kareithi

The masses charged and surged, chanting as they neared the police station, where agitated police officers waited, fingers on the trigger, ready for any eventuality.

The late Mrs Koinange

During a lull in the chanting, a woman crossed, the front line and shouting at the men, who were facing off with the policemen at Central Police Station, then known as Kingsway.

"What type of men are you? Your cowardice knows no bounds! How can you just stand there doing nothing when our leaders are locked up here? Surrender your trousers to us and we will give you our skirts!" shouted the brazen, Muthoni Wa Nyanjiru.

Having captured the attention of thousands of rioting Nairobians, Muthoni further taunted men to break the gates of the Central Police Station to rescue the three freedom fighters who had been locked up.

The three leaders according to Maina Kinyatti’s book,Agikuyu, 1890-1965,Waiyaki, Kenyatta, Kimathi recounts, were, Harry Thuku, George Mugekenyi and Waiganjo wa Ndotono.

Kinyatti details how the three had been detained at the station on March 14, 1922, leading to political unrests which culminated with the surrounding of the station for 24 hours by the irate protesters.

Muthoni’s words whipped emotions and changed the course of Kenya’s history. For, as soon as she was through with her speech, the crowd rushed to the gates and the police opened fire.

Koinange at State House Road Girls School in 1977

Inevitably, Nyanjiru was among the first to fall at the gates of the police station as the frenzied crowd fled as the police shot indiscriminately.

"Those who run towards Norfolk Hotel found white settlers waiting for them with their guns ready. They were shot mercilessly by the settlers as they escaped from the police," Kinyatti writes.

The historian estimates on the day of the riot, barely two years after Kenya was declared a colony in 1920, at least 250 people died and many more sustained life-threatening injuries and would later die in their hideouts.

In the meantime, the three politicians, Thuku, Mugekenyi and Waiganjo were spirited out of Nairobi and detained in Lamu and Kismayu, as the Government banned all political rallies in Nairobi.

A smile, a wave, but no speech from Koinange to the crowd, which greeted him on his first visit in ten years to his home district, Kiambu, in 1961. He was forbidden to make statements or speeches as he was a restricted person. Photos: File/Standard

The Government also pursued all suspected supporters of Thuku and handed them one-year jail sentences although some prominent figures such as Joseph Kang’ethe, James Beauttah and Job Michuchu went underground.

"When my father was released in 1925, he had changed. It was like he had been whitewashed and wanted nothing to do with the liberation struggle," recalls Waiganjo’s son, Joseph Gikurumi, 80.

Waiganjo, just like Thuku, came out of detention crushed, ready and willing to work with the same forces he had opposed leading to his incarceration. Like a red hot coal which begets cold impotent ash, Waiganjo, now earned himself a name as one of the fiercest defenders of the white regime, which saw him rise to head the tribal police in Kiambu District.

"My father was powerful and he trotted around on a mule. Every evening his arrival in Cigi-ini village in Kahuguini sub location was announced through powerful blasts of a trumpet," another of Waiganjo’s son, Simon Karanja, 81, says.

The trumpeting would start when he reached what is today called Blood Gate so that a retinue of villagers would wait for him at Ha Ngure.

Here, villagers wishing to greet Waiganjo had to be content with touching the hairy strands of his flywhisk, as he did not shake hands in the customary manner.

Mama Ngina Kenyatta is received by Lena Wanjiku Mbiyu at Wambui’s burial planning

When he was not superintending Kiambu DC’s gates, Ndotono’s son was busy presiding over land tribunal appeal cases in a special office, Thingira, away from his housewhose door had white inscription, announcing the year he was detained and released.

This three roomed house made of burnt bricks is still intact although the reed thatch has been replaced with iron sheets and is now occupied by Waiganjo’s son, Gikurumi.

Although Waiganjo’s passion for freedom struggle had died off, the embers still smoldered in his children with some, especially Rith Damaris Wambui who was born in 1934 and who would suffer greatly.

Despite his close association with the colonialists, when the Mau Mau council of elders decided to look for a fitting wife for the son of Senior Chief Koinange Wa Mbiyu, they zeroed on Waiganjo’s homestead.

Although Waiganjo had 12 wives and an army of children, they settled for Wambui, a girl who had been initiated and had barely cleared primary education.

Simon Karanja

Mbiyu had already made a name for himself when he flew to America in 1927 for further studies, making him one of the first Kenyans to achieve this feat, further amplified when he obtained a masters degree.

During his school days at Alliance High School, Mbiyu had made acquaintance with another rising star, Jomo Kenyatta, through his younger brother James Muigai, establishing a friendship, which would influence the course of Kenya’s History.

Before this arranged wedding, Koinange, who had started Kenya Teachers College, Githunguri, and a total of 400 independent schools teaching 62,000 students, and was married to his first wife, Loise Njeri, a daughter of staunch Christian family.

When he came from London after delivering a petition on behalf of Kenya Africa Union to the British government, the elders insisted that he take a second wife. "I was a very young girl. I remember Kenyatta, Charles Kigwi, Muhoho Mugo wa Muratha and Hezekiah Tumbo visiting our home. They settled for Wambui," her younger sister, Rosemary Gathoni says.

Joseph Gikurumi

The elders wanted a young maiden who had undergone all the Kikuyu customs for Mbiyu’s bride because they believed he was destined for great things.

By 1950, Wambui, who had just reached puberty, was so young that she could be playing with other young girls in Mbiyu’s new home to the amusement of some older folk.

She witnessed some of the most historic movements as Kenya’s senior-most politicians huddled in her house to scheme against the white rule.

"I remember when Kenyatta lost his wife, Wambui, a sister to Mbiyu, the widower was inconsolable. He frequently visited my sister’s place. I believe it was here that plans were made for him to marry Mama Ngina," Gathoni says.

Her love life was turned upside down by the declaration of emergency. Mbiyu, who at the time was on yet another Kenya African Union (KAU) mission in London, could not travel back home.

Wambui (Mbiyu’s wife) was blacklisted and arrested in October 1952, when Kenyatta, Achieng’ Oneko and other freedom fighters were arrested.

"She was arrested alongside Mama Ngina Kenyatta and taken to Kamiti prison. She was locked up at Kambi ya Hiti (Hyena’s camp), the most notorious section where prisoners were either maimed or killed," her younger sister, Gathoni says.

At one point, she was to be hanged at Githunguri but she was relocated yet again to Kamiti where after serving seven years in detention, she was released.

Instead of being allowed to go back to her matrimonial home, she was held under house arrest in an administration camp near her 100-acre estate, Thimbigua.

Gathoni recalls prior to her arrest, Wambui had been entertaining Kenyatta and other freedom fighters in her home, where a special room was always waiting for the man who would later become Kenya’s president. After her conditional release, Wambui, used one of her sisters to farm and cater for her two children at the time, Florence Wanjiku, born in 1952, and Isaac Njunu, born in 1954.

Wambui’s lineage and marriage strengthened ties between three of Kenya’s most politically recognisable families interlinking the Koinanges, Muhohos and Kenyattas.

One of Wambui’s 11 stepmothers, Monica Nyambura, was Gathecha’s daughter. Gathecha was Mama Ngina’s grandfather as he had sired Muhoho, the first lady’s father. This makes Ngina and some of Wambui’s stepbrothers cousins.

By marrying into the Koinange family, Wambui interlinked both the Gathechas, Koinanges and the Kenyattas, for the first president had married one of Koinange’s sisters, Wambui.

Although the patriarchs, Koinange and Kenyatta, are long gone, the bonds they cultivated in their youth and political heyday are still evident, at times blurring the bloodlines.

Wambui who died on August 18 aged 77 never had an opportunity to enjoy her youth. Like many women at the time, she sacrificed love to enter into prearranged marriage only to be separated from her children and husband by the freedom struggle.

Like Nyanjiru and thousands of other women, their contribution to the country’s liberation has been downplayed while their male counterparts’ are hero- worshipped.

Wambui will be buried on August 31, in Thimbigua, the very farm where the colonialists demolished her house, which harboured freedom fighters, after she was arrested.

Lena Wanjiku believes her mother has left an imprint in the history of this country confident in the knowledge that the struggle started by her father, which saw her jailed, and kept her husband abroad was never in vain.

—akareithi@standardmedia.co.ke