Kenya’s ousted deputy president, Rigathi Gachagua, who was impeached in October 2024, established his name early enough as a forceful politician unafraid to take a stand. These include his aggressive push for justice for Mau Mau ex-freedom fighters and those who survived them. Landless veterans of the guerrilla war against British colonialists were infamously left out of the post-independence stakes as the new government pledged to forgive and forget the exploitative colonial past. Benson Waiganjo Kanyingi, who has studied land grievances among the ex-freedom fighters and the silenced history of the Mbeere ex-freedom fighters in Embu county sets out the four things to know about Gachagua’s direct challenge to the very foundations of Kenya’s post-independence order.
1. Kenya’s post-independence status quo
The Mau Mau struggle stemmed out of the harsh and exploitative policies of the British colonial government which ruled Kenya from 1895 until the country’s independence in 1963. The armed rebellion began with oathing ceremonies in the Rift Valley. It quickly spread from there across settler-occupied regions to remote regions in Mbeere, bordering Mount Kenya.
