A ceremony to honour Giriama heroine Mekatilili wa Menza dominated
proceedings in Malindi yesterday. A statue was unveiled at the former Uhuru
Garden of the woman who led the Giriama uprising against the British in 1913
and 1914. The garden was named Mekatilili wa Menza Garden in her honour. The
celebrations continued overnight at the Madica Centre (Malindi District Cult
ural
Association). In the morning, members of Madica and guests from Galana,
Weruni and Godoma gathered at the Malindi Museum for a procession on Beach
Road. The procession ended at Mekatilili wa Menza Garden where the statue was
unveiled” (Nation 2010).
In the following pages we attempt to provide the background to this story, and to address
some
of the questions that it raises. Who was Mekatilili wa Menza, and what was her role
in the
2
Giriama uprising? Why is she portrayed with a hen and chicks? What is the role of
the Malindi
District Cultural Association (hereafter referred to as MADCA) in c
ontributing to her increasing
prominence as Kenyan history is created and re-created on a local and national
level? How is she
portrayed, by different Kenya and foreign groups and individuals? It must be stre
ssed that this is
a preliminary report on a continuing story; the (re)creation of Mekatilili is v
ery much a work in
progress. We begin by looking at the variety of sources that provide information, opinions
and
interpretations of this woman who was a key figure in Giriama resistance to
colonial rule nearly
a century ago.
The sources
Primary sources are the Kenyan colonial archives of the second decade of the
20
th
century and oral sources. The oral sources include the transcripts of formal int
erviews, for
example Cynthia Brantley’s interviews with Hawe Karisa Nyevu Makar
ye and Ishmael Toya at
Jilore on 14
th
and 15
th
December 1970 (Brantley 1981: 233, 271 and Brantley 1970a and b).
Brantley also interviewed numerous other Giriama (1981: 173-175). Other authors cited or
al
sources but transcripts of the interviews are not now available. Temu draws heavily
on what he
describes as “oral traditions, records of which were collected during the 1968
-69 vacations by
two Giriama students” (Temu 1972: 217); his footnotes acknowledge particular individuals
interviewed by the students. Elizabeth Ndua
ii
thanks Reuben Kombe of Kaloleni for sharing his
memories of Mekatilili with her (Ndua 2000: ix). Njau and Mulaki cite colonial records
and an
interview with “Mzee Elija Kalume of Jilore in Malindi District who says h
e knew Me Katilili
[sic] and lived with her for a month as a young boy” (Njau and Mulaki 1984: 50). Other people
tell of older family members who had stories about Mekatilili. Joseph Mwarandu, i
nterviewed in 2009, said “Mekatilili is not a new subject to me particularly because my grandmother lived a
at the time when Mekatalili was alive and she lived at Garashi, and during the Giriama uprising she
was a gal so she used to tell me about Mekatilili right at the time I was a y
oung boy. But it didn’t
occur to me that this was a very important person ...”. According to Mwarandu “basica
lly all the
Giriamas know about Mekatalili. What she did, where she was born, and what role she playe
d in
this country - they do not
know” (Mwarandu 2009). As we shall discuss later, one of MADCA’s
objectives is to increase Giriama knowledge of and pride in their culture an
d history, and making
Mekatilili’s life and achievements widely recognized is an important part of
this project.
Mwarandu sought out more oral narratives about Mekatilili in preparation for the f
irst
festival organized by MADCA:
“we were asking our members of our organization anybody who has information
about Mekatilili wa Menza. Now luckily we got very close members of the
Mekatilili family in our organization. So they told us everything, they said ok this
one was born here, and her brothers were so and so and you know, where she got
married and eventually where she died. That is how we got to know the site. So
we reached both families, where she was born and where she was married, yes
”.
(Mwarandu 2009).
Mwarandu also acknowledged the information about Mekatilili that he obtained from Cynthi
a
Brantley’s book and from other published sources. Ndua acknowledges Brantley as a m
ajor
source (2000: viii); Njau and Mulaki cite colonial records and Thomas Spear (1978). Stat
ements
about Mekatilili’s life continue to circulate and re-circulate in speech and
writing, so that it
becomes very difficult to determine the ‘original’ source of particular
parts of the narrative,
which might be colonial archives from the early 20
th
century, interviews from the late 1960s and
early 1970s (before written accounts of her life became generally availa
ble), or later interviews
4
with people who may or may not have read or been told about the written accounts of her life
that have become available since the 1980s.
Since the establishment of MADCA in August 2003 and the inaugural Mekatilili Cul
tural
Festival the following year, there has been a fairly steady stream of a
rticles in the Kenyan press
reporting on MADCA, the run up to and events of the festival. Other articles deal w
ith broader
issues of cultural and environmental conservation, particularly with reference
to the kaya forests,
the ‘sacred groves’ of the Giriama and their eight related Mijikenda groups
. These articles draw
on a variety of sources (for example Caplan (2008) refers in detail to Ndua and Nja
u and
Mulaki’s books) and present a variety of points about Mekatilili, mostly uncited and some
internally inconsistent
iii
. Mekatilili has even earned an entry in Wikipedia (2011). We also have
access to informal reports of our own and others’ visits to the Kenya coast, and to t
he various
statements issued by MADCA, as well as the transcript of a lengthy inter
view with Joseph
Mwarandu in July 2009 (Mwarandu 2009). From these sources we have attempted to unpack the
different strands that make up the image of Mekatilili, and show how it continues to evolve
. We
begin with a short account of the key events of 1913 and 1914, drawing mostly from Brantley
’s
work (1973, 1981, 1986).
The Giriama uprising of 1913-1914
In the early years of the 20
th
century many forces were putting Giriama society in a state
of flux, among them the breakdown of the indigenous governance system. The last ruling
generation had taken power in the 1870s, but by 1900 the conditions for an orderly transfer of
power to the subsequent generation no longer applied. Giriama leadership was we
akened and
divided, with tensions between younger and older men and between representatives of the
5
indigenous governance system and British-appointed headmen. At the same time, the B
ritish
were putting increasing economic pressure on the Giriama, through taxation, at
tempts to control
trade in palm wine and ivory, and by the recruitment of young men to work on plantations a
nd
public works projects.
As Giriama resistance to these demands hardened, Mekatilili’s voice bega
n to be heard.
She played a major part in a key meeting held in Kayafungo, the ritual center
of the Giriama, in
July and August 1913, where she “led the discussions and [she] complained first about labour
demands and then about the jurisdiction of the traditional elders being undermined. She indica
ted
that vital customs were being spoiled and that wages which headmen received gave the
government the belief that they could demand labour” (Brantley 1986: 340). And she further
added “we are not to fear the Europeans”. This meeting concluded with the swearing of
powerful
oaths that effectively prevented all Giriama from all co-operation with the
colonial
administration.
Mekatilili’s public role in Giriama society was limited to a few years
; colonial records
show that she was arrested in October 1913 and sentenced to five years’ detention. She and
Wanje wa Mwadorikola, a male leader of the Giriama resistance, were de
ported to the far west of
Kenya but escaped a few months later and found their way back to the coast, where they
continued to organize against colonial rule before being recaptured. Kayafungo was des
troyed by
the colonial forces on 4
th
August 1914, but in the years that followed, the Giriama were allowed
to regain it as their ritual center and in 1919 Wanje and Mekatilili were permitt
ed to return from
detention and move into the kaya as leaders of the men’s and women’s councils respect
ively
iv
. A
recent source (MADCA 2011) puts her death as late as the 1970s but a date in the 1920s
(MADCA 2010) seems more probable.
6
Opinions differ as to the impacts (short, medium and long-term) of the Giriama upris
ing.
According to Brantley, in the short term “The British won the war against
the Giriama, and the
Giriama were forced into a stringent peace settlement”, though in the medium te
rm “the British
government removed land restrictions and lightened labor demands. In this policy reve
rsal the
Giriama achieved the main goals for which they had originally fought” (1986: 152)
. In the longer
term, the virtual withdrawal of the colonial administration from the Giriama hi
nterland may have
contributed to its isolation and economic stagnation “As the colonial economy passed t
hem by,
the Giriama were left to become small-scale producers. Their local econom
y became
subordinated to the colonial economy but was not linked to it in any productive way” (ibid.).
Those who have traveled in the Giriama hinterland, including Mekatilili’s burial s
ite at Bungale,
can testify to the sense of isolation and rural poverty that hangs over these area
s, a striking
contrast to the bustling tourist centres of Malindi and Watamu.
Key issues: economic and socio-cultural
All sources agree that Mekatilili was motivated by the major economic a
nd social
changes that were being forced on the Mijikenda in the opening decades of the 20
th
century. She
was particularly articulate about the issue of labour recruitment; accordi
ng to Brantley “she
wanted to prevent Giriama men from laboring for the British” (1981: 85) while the
colonial
officer Arthur Champion provided details of her words to a meeting of Giriama “[
she] told them
that the Government headmen had received each 1,000 R to sell young men to the Europeans,
that the Europeans would send them over the sea and they would be sold as slaves and never see
their native land again”
v
. Her strong feelings on this issue have been linked to a personal tragedy.
According to MADCA (2010) one of her brothers was captured in front of her eyes by Arab
7
slave traders. Ndua has a slightly different version, telling how Mekatilil
i’s husband was “stolen
to work in a British plantation far away” (2000: 36). Mekatilili’s concern for the Gi
riama youth
is vividly expressed in the ‘hen and chicks’ narrative that we discuss in a later
section.
Mekatilili’s message also had strong socio-cultural elements, including
the desire for a
return to the ‘traditional’ Giriama governance system, and thus resistance t
o the authority of the
British-appointed headmen; she “directly accused headmen of being traitors to t
he Giriama in
order to get rewards” (Brantley 1981: 85). Brantley refers to her “anguish ove
r the growing
disintegration of Giriama society that led her to try to convince others to do somet
hing about it”
(ibid. 87). Seeing the Europeans as a disruptive threat, she “called upon the Giriama to s
ave their
children – sons and daughters – and to end the conflict between elders and youth” (339).
Furthermore, “She wanted a revival of the kaya and the traditional kambi
vi
, a return to the many
customs which had been “spoiled” and an absolute rejection of British demands for Giria
ma
labor” (ibid. 87-88).
A Mijikenda scholar has expressed this explicitly: “What concerned [Mekati
lili] most
was that the Midzi-chenda [Mijikenda] codes of socio-political stability, ec
onomic foundations
and religious potentiality were being undermined and uprooted” (Chidongo n.d.). Other sourc
es
have described a broader social and political agenda, including resistance to the
payment of hut
tax (Ndua 2000: 38) and to the colonial attempt to deny the Giriama access to land north of
the
Sabaki river (ibid. 43). More recently she has been described as “standing tall a
s the first Mau
Mau (freedom fighter) in Kenya” (MADCA 2011) and as an activist who “advocated fre
edom
and basic human rights to all” (MADCA 2010). We return in our concluding paragraphs to a
consideration of what she means in modern Kenya.
Read more:
http://www.open.ac.uk/Arts/ferguson-centre/memorialisation/events/london-symposium-2011/Celia_Neil_Mekatilili.pdf
