Brilliant. Thanx for sharing Kabir. I associate myself wholly with Mukoma's  
opinion and it is long overdue. I will follow the suit and I think other 
victims  of colonialism should seek compensation for damages and past atrocities. I 
have  long believed that Reparations ought to be refined and focused 
severally rather  than the friggin diluted concoction it had been all along. There is 
a valid case  to be made for remedy by Great Britain, Germany, Portugal, 
Spain, Italy, and  Australia. We must not however wait for the remedy to develop 
ourselves. Our  continued diligence will be the wild card in yielding remedy.
Thanx again for sharing.
 
Haroun Masoud. MQDT. AL Khairawan. Darbo.
 
In a message dated 11/3/2007 4:49:30 P.M. Mountain Daylight Time,  
[log in to unmask] writes:

OPINION
Kenyans should be compensated for atrocities suffered during  the Mau Mau  
rebellion.
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-ngugi3nov03,0,4270221.story?coll=la-
opinion-rightrail
By  Mukoma Wa Ngugi 
November 3, 2007 
Lately, saving Africa has become very  fashionable. Hollywood celebrities are 
adopting African babies. Bono and Bob  Geldof sing for Africa. And Bill 
Gates, former heads of state Bill Clinton and  Tony Blair and a sprinkling of 
former World Bank officials have probably  caused traffic jams there as they tout 
their campaigns. 

Put aside the  irony of Clinton doing little for Africa when holding the most 
powerful office  in the world and now, as a private citizen, wanting to save 
the whole  continent. In the "save Africa" caldron, you will find two active 
ingredients  missing: Africans and modern African history.

Africans want former  colonial powers to be held accountable for a history of 
suffering. One example  is the lawsuit the Kenya Human Rights Commission 
plans to file in the British  High Court on behalf of the survivors of what came 
to be known as the Mau Mau  rebellion. (The commission is a nonpartisan, 
nongovernmental organization  focused on human rights in Kenya.) The colonial 
government declared the  rebellion a "state of emergency," and it lasted from 1952 
until the rebels'  defeat in 1960.

Kenya had been officially made a British colony in  1920. The rebellion began 
with the Kikuyu -- the largest ethnic group --  fighting against British rule 
and British settlers' land grabbing. Some Kikuyu  leaders mobilized fighters 
against the British through oaths of allegiance  (the term "Mau Mau" was 
coined by the British, likely from the Kikuyu word for  oath).

The British response, through the British army, the Royal Air  Force and the 
help of Kenyan collaborators, was brutal, with innocents swept  up along with 
the rebels. The official number of fighters killed was 11,000,  but some 
estimate that tens of thousands more Kenyans died and as many as 1  million -- 
mostly women, children and elderly men -- were detained.  

Because recent authoritarian governments suppressed Mau Mau history  and 
threatened survivors with arrest if they tried to organize, the Mau Mau  movement 
was not legally recognized in Kenya until 2003.

The lawsuit,  to be filed in February, will now seek justice, alleging that 
from 1952 to  1960, the Kenyan colonial government killed and tortured Mau Mau 
detainees. A  background document I obtained from the Kenya Human Rights 
Commission argues  that because the injuries "were sustained in the detention camps 
of the Kenya  colonial government" operating under the mandate of the 
British, it follows  that the British government is liable. Further, it claims the 
British did not  do enough to prevent the torture and abuse.

In her Pulitzer  Prize-winning book, "Imperial Reckoning: The Untold Story of 
Britain's Gulag  in Kenya," historian Caroline Elkins estimates that more 
than 100,000 people  died in the detention camps in the process of 
"re-education." Thousands of  others were shot in combat, hanged or killed as collateral 
damage, and the  majority of the Kikuyu people were interned. 

The lawsuit raises  several questions: Can and should one generation be held 
accountable for  another's atrocities? Should citizens be held accountable -- 
through the taxes  they pay -- for the atrocities committed by their 
governments? Should  corporations and banks be held accountable for profits gained 
through past  actions that hurt others? 

Historical precedence answers in the  affirmative. For example, Germany and 
Austria have paid billions of dollars to  the Israeli government and individual 
Holocaust survivors for World War II  atrocities.

But there is also a compelling moral argument for Mau Mau  reparations. 
Philosophers have argued that, as moral beings, we have three  sets of duties: 
helping those in need, doing no harm and alleviating problems  inherited from the 
past to prevent further harm in the future.

We, the  living, become accountable for the past, for the sake of the future. 
 

For a British citizen, the wealth created by colonialism (not to  mention 
slavery) is the foundation of today's well-being in much the same way  that the 
poverty created by colonialism is the foundation of the infamous  Nairobi 
slums. Poverty and wealth can both be inherited.

If a society  continues to gain from a past atrocity, doesn't it have a duty 
to the children  of the victims?

Forgiveness, justice and healing are closely related.  In the Truth and 
Reconciliation Commission of South Africa, the perpetrator of  the crime had to own 
up to the wrongs of the past, then ask for  forgiveness.

But the perpetrators also should give back (a step missing  in the South 
African commission), in one form or another, what they took from  the victims. 

The whole truth, an apology and a tangible gesture of  righting the wrong 
would go a long way in making this living history truly a  thing of the past.

Mukoma Wa Ngugi, a Kenyan writer and author of  "Hurling Words at 
Consciousness," is a political columnist for the BBC's Focus  on Africa  magazine.

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