by Richard Oxman

On the 6th anniversary of the British government telling veterans of the Mau Mau rebellion to go screw themselves, I submit that it’s time for anti-Amerikans to consider parallels between their situation and that of 1950s Kikuyu Kenyans.

For that purpose, it might be interesting for readers to review a 1999 World Socialist Website article by Jean Shaoul [1], paying special attention to:

> “The best selling novel *Something of Value*, by Robert Ruark, reinforced this official version of ‘black savagery’. In 1957 it was made into a motion picture starring Rock Hudson and Sidney Poitier. Prime Minister Winston Churchill even narrated a prologue to the movie.

> The reality was somewhat different. In all, the actual number of white civilians killed during the uprising was 32, while the number of African civilians killed by Mau Mau was officially put at 1,819.

> **Savage treatment of the Mau Mau**

> The treatment of the Mau Mau and the Kikuyu during and after the -Emergency- was truly savage. It remains one of the most infamous episodes of British colonial history and fully vindicates historian C.L.R. James’s famous statement: -The cruelties of property and privilege are always more ferocious than the revenges of poverty and oppression.”

> The government encouraged the white settlers to take up arms against the Mau Mau. The settlers set up their own vigilante groups to protect their farms from the rebels. They often hired other Africans to do their killings for them and shot suspected Mau Mau with impunity.”

Like my mentor George Weber used to say… as we labored late into the night adjacent to the closed buildings of Rutgers University-Newark, “there are things, Richard, that one can address one-on-one in private that cannot be broached in the one-to-thirty situation of the lecture hall.” [2]

Perhaps there’s something of value heref… for enough people… to make a difference.

Forbidden Footnotes:

[1] See [Kenyan Mau Mau Seek Compensation from British Government](http://www.wsws.org/articles/1999/may1999/mau-m26_prn.shtm l “Kenyan Mau Mau Seek Compensation from British Government”)

[2] My all-time Prof was Chairman of the Art Department on that campus of the State University of New Jersey. And the first one to fill me in on that business of *all roads leading to Rome*. Why did they build the huge highways, the networks? Not in the name of progress or civilized values, asserted George. Nay, rather…so that Roman soldiers could march four abreast into any province… to put down rebellion. He had much more to say about “today”… when others weren’t around. And although he was legally blind as per the laws of New Jersey –from a growing peripheral vision *malady* — he saw more than anyone I had ever met.