Forward to Independence, the long-awaited
memoir by the outstanding Goan lawyer and parliamentarian, Fitz de Souza, is
available on Amazon. I am absolutely delighted with it and I would urge anyone
who has had even the flitting interest in Kenyan politics, Kenyan-Goan nostalgia
and role that Fitz de Souza played in the early life independent Kenya … please
read this book. It will also prove a worthwhile eye-opener for the sons and
daughters and ex-East African Goans. Fitz has a delightful writing style, sort
of emulates the person that he is. It is his journey which starts with his
ancestors in Goa, his father’s move to Zanzibar and family’s life …and there is
heaps and heap more revel in. I hope you will enjoy it as much as I am doing.
The Kindle version is very inexpensive.
As an appetiser, Fitz, once and for all,
smashes the myth (or demonisation or false accusation) the Jomo Kenyatta, Kenya’s
first president belonged to Mau Mau freedom fighters. Here is an excerpt:
“Kenyatta would tell me many
times, ‘Fitz, I am not the leader of Mau Mau, I do not believe in violence. I
believe you can achieve your goals without violence. But in any political party
there are always some who believe you have to go further, you have to fight,
and I know who they are – they are my friends, they are in this party, they are
with us all the time. But I am not going to do the job for the British
Government and expose them and fight against them.’ When asked by the British
to condemn those who practised violence, he would do so, but only in general
terms, never naming names. ‘The British would like us [Africans] to fight with
each other and make this into a semi-civil war; they killing our supporters and
we killing their supporters, and I am not going to allow that at all. I know
what I want and they know what they want, our objectives are the same…’ It
seemed then that the only disagreement between Kenyatta and those who supported
the Mau Mau was the means to those objectives. ‘They think I am too mild, and I
think they are picking on something that is not necessary and creating too much
pain and suffering.’
‘It was believed the actual
leaders of the Mau Mau were Kubai and Kaggia. This surprised me, as Kaggia was
one of the priestly types, with a church following. But why then, we asked, are
you trying to prosecute Kenyatta? He replied that this was his instruction
since the whole Kenyan African movement was seen as directly or indirectly part
of the terrorist organisation. I understood later how those on the outside,
probably because of Kenyatta’s effervescent personality and his long campaign
for land reform, might have assumed this. People were certainly inspired by
him, but if it went further and aroused them to violence, was that his
responsibility? It is important here to remember the frightening nature of the
Mau Mau, and how any connection to them, however tenuous, could utterly poison
a person’s reputation. The atrocities themselves were terrifying enough, but
alongside the slaughter and intimidation of fellow Africans, the secret rituals,
taking the oath while drinking the blood of a cow, a cat or even a human,
however exaggerated in the public imagination, opened a deeper dimension, with
haunting ideas of ‘black magic’, dehumanisation and a reversion to
centuries-old barbarities.
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