Last year, tragedy struck on one of the holiest and merriest of times for the Christian faithful in Kenya after the discovery of four bodies near a small informal settlement on the eastern outskirts of Thika town. This was not death in a natural way, but as murder. A five-day search party had culminated in the discovery of the bodies of four young men from this squatter village floating on River Thika on Christmas Eve. The four were allegedly murdered by security guards from the food giant Del Monte for stealing pineapples and their bodies thrown in the river.

The recovered bodies were taken to General Kago Funeral Home where an autopsy showed that two bodies had multiple injuries to the head, neck and other parts. The autopsy further revealed that three out of the four young men had drowned, most likely after being beaten and coerced into the river.

The morgue is named after Kariuki Kago son of Mboko, a great Mau Mau fighter and guerilla commander from Murang’a. Kago, who was born in Rwathia in Murang’a District, was a squatter like the deceased young men, and was repatriated to the Rift Valley region at the start of 1953.

Kago joined the King’s African Rifles (KAR) at the onset of the Second World War and was sent to fight abroad. When the war came to an end, white soldiers were given tracts of land in Murang’a Settlement Scheme while the African soldiers who had sacrificed everything for the white man’s war remained landless and under control of the very chiefs who had conscripted them for the war. The plight of his fellow squatters who were dehumanised by colonial occupation compelled Kago to join the Kenya African Union (KAU), and he was later sent to the forest by the War Council when the war for national liberation broke out. For being one of the best fighters and generals, the enemies nicknamed him ‘Black Napoleon’. Kago paid the ultimate price – he was killed because of the land question.

A few kilometres from the Del Monte farm, Christmas bells at Kakuzi Agricultural Company in Murang’a County sound the death knell for people in the neighbouring villages.

Women from the nearby Kinyangi and Mwania villages risk being assaulted and killed by security guards from Kakuzi farm where they regularly get basics like firewood for cooking from. Though many people from the nearby towns and cities might not relate to the use of wood for everyday cooking, it remains a constant reality in many of our villages and settlements. Can you imagine the horror of being killed for picking branches of dry wood to prepare a meal for your family on a festive day? Do you remember that Christ himself breathed his last on a log of wood? The irony of blood and wood still haunts us 2000 years later even as we celebrate the son of Mary.

If the story of that mysterious gift-bearing old guy with a white beard, red coat, and polished boots were true, then these poor villagers would beg him for the gift of their ancestral lands for Christmas. They instead get by on forlorn fantasies every day. They hope that the government will one day stand up to these multinational firms. They hope that their lives, as well as the lives of their descendants, will stop being sacrificed for profit.

The despicable atrocities committed against these poor hard-working squatter villagers, especially the pain of the families of the four young men killed at the Del Monte farm on allegations of stealing pineapples, or that of the late Joseph Ndung’u from Kimorori village who was killed by guards at Kakuzi farm on allegations of stealing avocados, paint the grim legacy of Kenya’s brutal colonial past and the structural violence of capitalism.

Colonial exploitation of labour.

Colonial domination in Muranga was made possible through three main factors. First was the weakening of the Agikuyu people by a series of natural disasters that caused food shortages just before colonial rule. Second was through the help of collaborators such as Karuri Wa Gakure, chiefs Kibarabara, Karanja Njiiri and Njirii Karanja. Lastly, the colonial administration encouraged and applied the use of excessive force on those who showed active resistance to colonial rule.

1902 was largely marked by the establishment of British colonial rule in Murang’a through brutal violence. In one instance in September 1902, Meinertzhagen gave an order that every living thing except children in Kihumbuini should be murdered without mercy. Every living soul was either shot or bayonetted, while the huts and banana plantations were razed to the ground. Francis Hall had earlier, in 1901, led a punitive expedition to Gaturi to crush resistance against colonial rule.

With colonial administrative structures now established, more white settlers took up the government’s offer of land alienated from the indigenous people. However, the stability and growth of a settler economy required the colonial authorities to not only alienate indigenous lands but to also put in place policies that would guarantee an oversupply of wage labour – thereby enabling employers to suppress wages. In that era, forced labour and taxation were used to force Africans into the money economy, further pushing the people toward wage labour on settler farms.

The forced labour in Murang’a was to come from the neighbouring reserves around Kinyu, Kihumbuini, Kandara, Muruka, Gaichanjiru, Kagunduini, and Muthithi areas.

The settlers also recruited labour from villages controlled by friendly chiefs who they bribed. These settlers brought pressure on the colonial administration resulting in the Native Labour Ordinance No. 9 of October 1919 which was designed to force labourers to work for low wages in settler farms, and which literally was an act of slavery. The Registration of Natives Ordinance No. 19 of 1920 later came into effect in Kenya, leading to issuance of the first kipande.

Providing cheap labour to be exploited for maximal profit has been at the heart of the capitalist enterprise from its dawn. At the beginning of the industrial revolution, the worker was subjected to gruesome work hours and little pay and in the process even had to enlist his/her children for work in order to survive. A threatening and dire systemic providence generated by greed and the race for surplus. Through it, the reserve army of labour is kept close so that the workers are ever fearful of rebellion and losing their jobs.

The transference of this brutal system to the colonised society was made even worse since they were only mere denizens of a land they no longer owned. There were no illusions of freedom or rights to be fought or agitated for. The continuation of this practice took on a new and sharper turn in the colony; in the land of the landless and those pushed out. The land where citizenship was predicated on the whims of colonial corporations.

In today’s world, this takes the shape of unemployment and underemployment. The reserve army roams the centres of capital scraping for whatever jobs they can find or any rebellious workers to be ejected so they can try and replace them. Again, we find that totalized continuity of shaming and humiliation of the human being for maximisation of profit and power.

The history of Kakuzi begins early in the 20th century when three British settlers,  Mr. Donald Farquharson, Mervyn Ridley and Lord Cranworth acquired 10,117 hectares of land on which most of modern-day Kakuzi stands.They named the estate Sisal Ltd. Sisal limited over time diversified its investment portfolio to include tea, which was grown in Nandi Hills. This prompted the neighbouring Kakuzi Ltd, then majority-owned by Eastern Produce, to acquire Siret Tea Estate in 1948. The two firms merged in 1966, forming Kakuzi Plc.

Indigenous populations in Murang’a were forcefully evicted from their ancestral land to enable settler-colonialism, with many of them having to live in the companies’ worker camps located in these large colonial farms where they worked in slave-like conditions. These camps included Shauri Yako, Kiragu, Seme, Kambi Punda, Ariek, New Coffee, Vieri, Jericho, Nakuru, Catholic and Kambi Swahili .

Kakuzi land later expanded to include land seized from local communities during the State of Emergency (1952-1960) imposed following the outbreak of the war for national liberation, and other land sold to them by European settlers who left Kenya after independence in 1963.

The nearby Del Monte farm is another painful reminder of Kenya’s brutal colonial past. In 1920, the colonial government forcefully evicted the locals who inhabited the area by burning their houses and confiscating their livestock. This allowed Agro French (later Kenya Canners, and present-day Del Monte) to acquire over 22,000 acres of land in Kiambu and Murang’a counties. Our people were turned into squatters on their land overnight, slaving tirelessly on these farms for almost nothing. Their villages were converted into labour camps, and they were forced to work in the sisal estates before the land changed hands. In Kiambu County, most of these victims settled in labour camps that are today’s Umoja, Madharao, Gachagi and Majengo slums in Thika.

The colonial enterprise was not only a story of dispossession of indigenous lands but also one of the exploitation and abuse of workers in these farms. They today still suffer from poor working conditions like lack of protective gear, lack of social security (pension or gratuity), and unlawful termination for unionising or protesting. In one instance, on 26th May 2015, 300 workers at Kakuzi farm were summarily dismissed for gross misconduct because they participated in a strike. In July 2017, the-then chief shop steward Mr David Ndambuki was summarily dismissed for having convened a workers meeting on Saturday, 29th April 2017, at the union office in Kitito during work hours. The guards at these farms, meanwhile, not only physically assault women from the village for ‘trespassing on private property’, but are also responsible for numerous cases of sexual assault on female workers at the farm.

The undying weight of history is upon us.

These present and historical injustices meted on locals continue to shape our country’s political economy. They continue to be a potent undercurrent in Kenyan politics to date. Just like their grandparents, these squatters are today still abused and dispossessed by multinationals. The farm guards have replaced the Kamatimu (homeguards) who maimed and killed their grandparents, while the politicians who masquerade as their leaders have replaced the colonial administrative chiefs who betrayed their people for personal gain. These ‘leaders’ remind them of Judas, the son of Simon Iscariot who betrayed the ‘son’ of Joseph the carpenter, from the village of Nazareth, who served his community by making furniture and utensils.

These human rights atrocities and evidence of dispossession are well-documented in a legal suit filed against Kakuzi Plc, which is majority-owned by UK-based Camellia Plc. This suit accused the company’s security guards of gross human rights violations including killings, rape, assault, and imprisonment of locals in Kenya under false accusations. On the 11th of February 2021, Camellia announced that it would spend up to Kshs. 696 million to settle individual claims and put in place a raft of reparative measures. Noteworthy, the company did not announce these measures because they regretted their actions or cared about the locals. This was done as part of Kakuzi’s desperate attempt to restore its share of the UK and European markets that it had lost in the wake of media reports on human rights abuses on its host community and workers.

Following other efforts by squatters organised under the Kandara Residents Association – who cited historical injustices suffered during the colonial era – the Parliamentary Lands Committee directed the Ministry of Lands and the National Lands Commission (NLC) to allocate land excised from the American fruit processor, Del Monte, to the residents association and the devolved governments of Murang’a and Kiambu counties.

Today, the national government plans to build, among other things, 2,000 housing units as part  of the affordable housing project in Makenji and an Export Processing Zone(EPZ) in Ithanga, Kakuzi Sub-County, in part of the land ceded to locals so as to create employment opportunities for the people of Murang’a. Constructing the ‘affordable houses’ under the guise of creating construction jobs and the establishment of an EPZ is a tactic meant to not only again dispossess those who were historically alienated from their ancestral lands, but to also introduce new forms of exploitation of these workers.

In the grand scheme of things, the squatters are only meant to act as labourers, constructing houses they can hardly afford. The EPZ on the other hand represents a symbol of wanton robbery, echoing the centuries-long exploitation of the Global South.

EPZ’s are a partnership of interests between foreign capital invested in these economic zones and host governments that protect the investments. The aim of the EPZ is to create maximum profit through exploitation of various raw materials and repression of workers. The government on the other hand supports these EPZ’s through tax holidays and by undermining the basis of organised labour. The EPZ’s are thus just another form of exploitation of people already abused by the fruit farms owned by multinational corporations.

But the locals have never made peace with their exploitation. Conversations about the indignity meted on them by successive regimes come up every time two or three villagers converge – whether they are from the market, church, women chamas or the bodaboda sheds.

Jamhuri Day – meant to commemorate ‘full independence’ from British colonial rule – is annually celebrated 13 days before Christmas. To these people, Jamhuri day only brings back painful memories of dispossession, domination, and deception.

These villagers harbour fury like the overflowing river Maragua. They recall decades ago when their parents took to the forest to fight for their lands and freedom from the inhumanity of British occupation. They named their liberation movement the Kenya Land and Freedom Army (KLFA), popularly known as MauMau. For years, they endured the harsh weather, hunger, separation from their dear families, bombs and bullets of the invaders from ‘Ruguru’ – the thieves of their lands. They gave their blood to water the tree of freedom in that era, but only a handful of them today enjoy the fruits of freedom in this neo-colonial state.

As the freedom fighters heroically fought in the forest during the war for national liberation, the colonial government initiated a process of land consolidation and registration through the infamous Swynnerton Plan of 1956. This plan was mainly crafted to exclude the freedom fighters from owning land. The independence government subsequently declared that land would be transferred from the departing settlers strictly on a ‘willing buyer, willing seller basis’. The squatters and those who returned from the war, and who had no economic means to buy land from the departing settlers, largely remained landless. Later on, multinationals like Kakuzi and Del Monte got their land leases renewed by the neo-colonial government.

These Africans were condemned to the position of perpetual squatters on their own land. To lives of poverty and harsh conditions. Their descendants are today dependent on foreign multinationals like Kakuzi and Del Monte for wage labour and access to basic amenities, services, and infrastructure – and are even required to obtain passes to access certain public roads that cut through these farms. Those who live close to Kakuzi additionally have to deal with the ecological impact of the mass planting of eucalyptus trees (munyua mai) near water bodies.

The locals still recall the life and sacrifice of their immortal hero, the trade unionist and freedom fighter Bildad Kaggia with a lot of pain, anger and admiration. Kaggia grew in the Santimor Estate in Makuyu, Murang’a – where his father worked as a labourer. They adore and hold dear lessons from another freedom-fighter and politician, JM Kariuki, who was born in a small village outside Nakuru in the breathtaking Rift Valley region. His parents had been forcefully relocated to the area to offer labour to settlers. The locals here have never forgiven those damn bloody traitors who frustrated, humiliated and impoverished Kaggia and who subsequently brutally murdered JM in 1975 for standing with the dispossessed and demanding that they must get their land back. This country remains a land of ten millionaires and ten million beggars.

These squatters have been preached to over-and-over again and have even read in the Constitution that they have the right to a dignified life. But that same Constitution defends the ‘sanctity’ of private property. It puts in place structures that allow a rich minority to continue owning all the land and grow richer off the labour of the poor majority – then enables them to use the profits made to gobble up more land and exploit countless more poor workers under the protection of institutions such as the police and courts.

These dehumanised squatters in Murang’a, Kiambu and all other regions in the Country can only enjoy dignity in their lifetime if the workers control the means of production, enabling them to retain the full value produced through their work.

They must replace Christmas carols and the National Anthem with Wimbo wa Mapambano(The Anthem of Struggle).

Kupigwa na Kupokonywa Maisha,

Hakutatuzuia Sisi Wananchi,

Kunyakua Uhuru Wetu,

Na Haki ya Jasho Letu.

Tutanyakua Mashamba Yetu,

Tupiganie Uhuru Wetu….

Sisi Hatutaki Kudhulumiwa….

Translation:

Being Beaten and Murdered,

Will not Stop Ordinary Citizens,

From Fighting for their Freedom,

And the Fruits of Our Labour.

We Shall Take Back Our Lands,

And Fight for Our Freedom…

We are Tired of Being Oppressed…

Like Jesus Christ who was brutally murdered for standing with the poor, these abused and dispossessed people are ready to die struggling to get their lands and dignity back from their sworn enemies – the rich minority that hates poor people, and which is disgusted by their smell. They want their heaven here on earth, not as the meek who inherit a scorched, bloodied earth – but as people who own and control the land that once belonged to their ancestors and which they will pass to their descendants, finally breaking the cycle of dispossession of land and place.

The undying weight of history is upon us. It refuses to die even as its legacies maim and kill those who dare transgress the bounds of neocolonial boundaries. This transgression, whether it be in the form of picking dry branches or rebellious discourse in bodaboda sheds and women chamas points to the ever fickle nature of oppression. This land once owned by its righteous inhabitants, will always be a nostalgic front to inspire resistance, whether it be instinctive or rational.

Whither is the path to salvage the land question and the memory of the Mau Mau? This is the task laid squarely on those landless, humiliated squatters alongside all people of conscience at this late hour of neocolonial production. May it be so that the landless will be landed and the tentacles of big capital decapitated on every stolen land in the fullness of time.