Causes of the Uprising The Mau Mau Uprising was rooted in long-standing grievances among the Kikuyu and other communities over land dispossession, lack of political rights, and social inequalities under British colonial rule. “It was not simply a rebellion of peasants. It was also a battle of meaning: about land, rights, and justice.” – Anderson … Read more
The claim that Kenya was once chosen as the future homeland for the Jewish people derives from what is commonly known as the “Uganda Scheme,” a proposal made in the early twentieth century. In 1903, Theodor Herzl, the visionary leader of modern Zionism, received an offer from Sir William Mackinnon’s East Africa Syndicate, under the … Read more
Stretching across the dry expanse six hundred kilometers north of Nairobi, the Rendille are a people whose lives are woven together by camels, stars, ritual, and belief. In a landscape that rises only here and there into lava‐hardened plateaus or the occasional forested mountain, these camel‐herding nomads have forged a social cosmos entirely their own—one … Read more
The Turkana of northwestern Kenya developed a distinctive social and military culture long before encountering European colonizers. In The Scattering Time: Turkana Responses to Colonial Rule, John Lamphear (1992) draws on oral traditions and archival records to reconstruct how the Turkana navigated shifting power dynamics in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. By juxtaposing … Read more
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o’s life work was fundamentally a struggle to diagnose—and ultimately to reverse—the distortions of African cultures and societies wrought by colonialism and its after-effects. Across his major works, he repeatedly identifies three core elements of “the problem”: 1. Cultural and Linguistic AlienationNgũgĩ shows how colonialism, far more than a simple political or economic … Read more
Wherever they went, in their voyages of land, sea, and mind, Europeans planted their own memories on whatever they contacted. In his book The Idea of Africa, V. Y. Mudimbe writes, “The geographic expansion of Europe and its civilization . . . submitted the world to its memory.” Mapping, which involves exploration and surveying, was … Read more
Dr. Florence Gladwell Ng’endo Mwangi was a trailblazer in Kenyan medicine and a pioneer for women’s education. She was born in Kinoo, Kiambu County, in December 1936, and attended Loreto High School Limuru as part of its pioneer class. In 1959, she was selected for the Kennedy Airlift program organized by Tom Mboya, which enabled … Read more
In early April 1971 a group of military officers and civilians in Kenya conspired to overthrow President Jomo Kenyatta’s government. The plotters included serving officers, opposition politicians, and at least one member of the judiciary. Their aim was to remove Kenyatta and install a new regime by force, mirroring coups that had recently occurred in … Read more
In 2003, the Kenyan rap duo Mashifta released the track “System ya Majambazi,” using razor-sharp lyricism to critique how every stratum of society—from pastors and politicians to lawyers and parents—had become complicit in a corruption so pervasive it could only be described as a “system of thugs” (Timmons, 2018; Haugerud et al., 2024). The title … Read more
Along the northeastern shores of Lake Victoria in western Kenya lives a diverse group of Bantu-speaking peoples collectively known as the Bantu of Kavirondo. This term, once used by colonial administrators and early anthropologists, refers to several distinct but culturally and linguistically related communities, including the Wanga, Marama, Logoli, Vugusu, and others. Today, most of … Read more