Dedan Kimathi

Dedan Kimathi Waciuri (born Kimathi wa Waciuri; 31 October 1920 – 18 February 1957) was the senior military and spiritual leader of the Kikuyu rebels involved in the Mau Mau Uprising.

His father died in September 1920, a month before Kimathi was born.

Kimathi was raised by his mother, Waibuthi, one of his father's three wives.

He had two brothers, Wambararia and Wagura, and two sisters.

At the age of fifteen, he enrolled at the local primary school, Karuna-ini, where he perfected his English.

He continued his education in the secondary school Tumutumu CMS School.

He was a passionate writer, and wrote extensively before and during the Mau Mau uprising.

He was a Debate Club member in his school and also showed ability in poetry.

Kimathi balked at any efforts to discipline or control him, and was constantly in trouble with his teachers; as a result, he drifted in and out of the educational system.

Tumutumu could not contain his rebellious nature.

It is alleged he even tried to paralyze learning at the institution by stealing the school bell.

His associates said he took the bell and rang it loudly while atop the Tumutumu hill.

The missionaries were however lenient, his name still remains in the preserved school register.

In 1940, Kimathi enlisted in the British Army, but was discharged after a month, allegedly for drunkenness and persistent violence against his fellow recruits.

He moved from job to job, from swineherd to primary school teacher, from which he was dismissed after accusations of violence against his pupils.

His close associates however said he was dismissed for ranting about the school administration.

Around 1947 or 1948, while working in Ol Kalou, Kimathi came into contact with members of the Kenya African Union (KAU).

Widely regarded as a revolutionary leader, he led the armed military struggle against the British colonial regime in Kenya in the 1950s until his capture in 1956 and execution in 1957.

By 1950 he had become secretary to the KAU branch at Ol Kalou, which was controlled by militant supporters of the Mau Mau cause.

The Mau Mau began as the Kenya Land and Freedom Army (KLFA), a militant Kikuyu, Embu and Meru army which sought to reclaim land, which the British settlers had gradually stripped away from them.

As the group's influence and membership widened it became a major threat to the colonial government.

Upon taking the oath of the Mau Mau, Kimathi in 1951 joined the Forty Group, the militant wing of the defunct Kikuyu Central Association.

As branch secretary, Kimathi presided over oath-taking.

He believed in compelling fellow Kikuyu by way of oath to bring solidarity to the independence movement.

To achieve this he administered beatings and carried a double-barrelled shotgun.

His activities with the group made him a target of the colonial government, and he was briefly arrested that same year but escaped with the help of local police.

Kimathi is credited with leading efforts to create formal military structures within the Mau Mau, and convening a war council in 1953.

He, along with Baimungi M'marete, Musa Mwariama, General China and Muthoni Kirima, was one of the Field Marshals.

Kenyan nationalists view him as the heroic figurehead of the Kenyan freedom struggle against British colonial rule, while the British government saw him as a terrorist.

This marked the beginning of his involvement in the uprising, and he formed the Kenya Defence Council to co-ordinate all forest fighters in 1953.

Kimathi's fight for an independent Kenya came to an end in 1956.

On 21 October of that year, Ian Henderson, a British colonial police officer who had been on an "obsessive hunt" for Kimathi, managed to trap him in his hide-out in the forest.

Kimathi was shot in the leg and captured by a Tribal Policeman called Ndirangu Mau who found Kimathi armed with a panga (a bladed African tool like a machete).

His capture marked the beginning of the end of the forest war; the image of Kimathi being carried away on a stretcher was printed in leaflets by the British (over 120,000 were distributed), to demoralise the Mau Mau and their supporters.

Kimathi was charged with possession of a .38 Webley Scott revolver.

A court presided over by Chief Justice O'Connor with three African assessors sentenced him to death while he lay in a hospital bed at the General Hospital Nyeri.

His appeal was dismissed, and the death sentence upheld.

Despite being viewed with disdain by the first two presidents of independent Kenya, Jomo Kenyatta and Daniel arap Moi, Kimathi and his fellow Mau Mau rebels were officially recognised as heroes in the struggle for Kenyan independence under the Mwai Kibaki administration, culminating in the unveiling of a Kimathi statue in 2007.

This was reinforced by the passage of a new Constitution in 2010 calling for recognition of national heroes.

Kimathi was born in Thegenge Village, Tetu division, in today's Nyeri County.