Royal Colony (noun) - a colony ruled or administered by officials appointed by and responsible to the reigning sovereign of the parent state. It was an unusual move, to say the least. Having done my own research during the 2008 campaign I was very aware that the man about to assume the Oval Office was “hostile” to the traditional sense of Americanism: capitalism, the free market, even the Constitution itself which he described as “inadequate” in a 2000 interview with Chicago NPR; but even knowing all that I was caught off guard. I mean, send back a bust of Winston Churchill? And not send it back as in “take this gift from Tony Blair, given to George W. Bush in the wake of 9/11, and put it in the basement,” or the Smithsonian, or simply another White House room. But rather he sent it
back, back… To England.
Those of us in the know, those of us whom make it their business to follow the events of our nation, should have asked why. Now you may believe we did, for there was much discussion about this on talk radio and online. However, the general consensus, in which I partook, was that this was yet another example of the President’s opposition towards all things George W. Bush in specific, and his hostility towards all things “traditional” in general. We didn’t ask “why” on a more intimate level, and we should have.
Have you ever heard of the
Mau Mau Rebellion? And no, this is not the rebellion so nice they named it twice. Not ringing a bell? Nothing? I’m not surprised. Few historians can discuss it with any authority, let alone the average American. Yet it affects every American’s life to this to this day, and has since 2008.
The year is 1949. Rumblings of revolution fill the air and the distinct odor of weakness permeates the British Empire. Post WWII they are a shadow of their former selves. And the colonized throughout the Near East can sense the opportunity to throw off their rulers. In Kenya they begin to meet, to talk, to consider the unthinkable - defeating an empire. By 1951 information is filtering back to London about secret meetings being held in the forests outside Nairobi. A secret society called the Mau Mau, believed to have been started in the previous year, requires its members to take an oath to drive the white man from Kenya. The movement grows.
By August of 1952 the British ruled Kenyan government imposes a curfew in three districts on the outskirts of Nairobi where gangs of arsonists, believed to be members of the Mau Mau, have been setting fire to homes of Africans who refuse to take the Mau Mau oath.
In early October of the same year a senior chief named Waruhui is assassinated in Kenya. He is speared to death in public, on a main road outside of Nairobi. Recently he had spoken out against increasing Mau Mau aggression towards colonial rule. The rebels, intent on ejecting the colonists, are starting with the easiest targets - fellow Africans sympathetic to the UK.
Soon after the British government fears things are getting out of control, and they pledge to send British troops to Kenya in order to subdue the situation.
On October 21st, 1951, and with the immanent arrival of British troops, the Kenyan government declares a state of emergency. Nearly fifty people have been murdered in Nairobi within four weeks and the Mau Mau, officially declared terrorists, have acquired firearms. As part of the overall clamp down Jomo Kenyatta, president of the Kenya African Union (the British proxy government), is himself arrested for alleged Mau Mau involvement.
On October 30th British troops initiate a round-up of at least five-hundred suspected Mau Mau rebels.
By November 1952 The Mau Mau declare open rebellion against British rule in Kenya. British forces respond by arresting over two-thousand suspected of Mau Mau membership. Suspicion is everywhere. Neighbor informing on neighbor. White land owners become suspicious of their servants, and their servant’s children. The volatility of the country is on a razor’s edge, they are falling into open civil war.
Amidst the chaos of round ups and skirmishes was a cook. A black African named Onyango whom served dutifully in WWII on behalf of the British in the “Luo’ regiment. At the time of insurrection he happened to be the primary chef for a well-to-do British Army officer living in Nairobi. Onyango was outspoken, politically oriented, and soon gained the suspicions of his employer.
Mr. Onyango was eventually arrested, detained, and interrogated. As a servant for a British Officer it was feared that he was in prime position to relay Intel to the Mau Mau Rebels. I warn you, the following account, offered by Mr. Onyango’s third wife Sarah, is not for the faint of heart:
He said they would sometimes squeeze his testicles with parallel metallic rods. They also pierced his nails and buttocks with a sharp pin, with his hands and legs tied together with his head facing down… The African warders were instructed by the white soldiers to whip him every morning and evening till he confessed.
“There was torture in Kenya during the Mau Mau emergency, institutional and systematic, and also casual and haphazard,” Professor Anderson writes in
Histories of the Hanged: Britain’s Dirty War in Kenya and the End of Empire (2005). “Violence . . . was intrinsic to the system, and the use of force to compel obedience was sanctioned at the highest level.”
Mrs. Sarah Onyango went on.
This was like a death camp because some detainees died while being tortured… We were not allowed to see him, not even taking him food. [He] was told that he would be killed or maimed if he refused to reveal what he knew of the insurgency, and was beaten repeatedly until he promised never to rejoin any groupings opposed to the white man’s rule.
Even after he confessed, and renounced the insurgency, the physical abuse allegedly continued. An estimated 71,000 Kenyans were eventually held in prison camps on suspicions of Mau Mau affiliation. The vast majority were never convicted. Letters smuggled out of the camps complained of systematic brutality by warders and guards. And there were reports of sexual violence and mutilation, including the use of a device known as “castration pliers.”
Kenya would go through nearly another decade of on again off again war with the British Empire until finally gaining its’ independence in 1964. The total of Mau Mau activists killed is placed well above ten-thousand. During the same time period thirty-two Africans of European descent were reported murdered.
Mr. Onyango would eventually be released and returned to his family… The Obamas. Mr. Onyango’s full name was Hussein Onyango Obama. He is President Barak Obama’s paternal grandfather.
The woman, the third wife of Mr. Onyango Obama whom so vividly recalls the details of her husband’s ordeal, is referred to as “Granny Sarah” in President Obama’s book
Dreams from My Father. In that book President Obama recalls another of Granny Sarah’s stories about his grandfather‘s return home:
When he returned to Alego he was very thin and dirty. He had difficulty walking, and his head was full of lice. For some time he was too traumatized to speak about his experiences. From that day on, I saw that he was now an old man.
It should be noted here that the Prime Minister responsible for quelling the rebellion, initiating the original round ups, and the man responsible for sending the first waves of British troops to Kenya was none other than Sir Winston Churchill.
It should also be noted that another man was arrested and imprisoned for a short time during this ten years of war, for attending a meeting in Nairobi of the Kenya African National Union (Kanu), the organization spearheading the independence movement. That man’s name was Barak Obama Sr. - son of Mr. Onyango, father to our president. Barak Obama Sr. would later take advantage of a scholarship program initiated by JFK to enable Kenyan’s to self-govern their emerging country. That scholarship was taken at the University of Hawaii.
Let me ask you my fellow Americans, why is this story not widely known? Why has the media intentionally chosen to ignore, perhaps even cover up, information so vital to understanding what informs our Commander-in-Chief’s persona, his prejudices, to this day? Armed with this information is there any doubt as to why the bust of Churchill was returned? Is there any wonder why our President self imposes the role of “warrior” on behalf of those he sees as “colonized?”
This is a man weaned from birth on stories of the oppressive white man. Not theoretical dissertations, but personal family stories. He openly describes befriending Marxists, and purposely falling in with radicals while attending college. He insults our closest European ally on behalf of his family lineage. He routinely sides and sympathizes with the “colonized” Palestinian over the “colonizing” Israeli. His first call, literally his first phone call in his capacity as President of the United States, was to Abas, leader of the Palestinian Authority, whom is not even the head of a recognized state. In his first public appearance after the attack the President saluted the American Indian and their plight prior to addressing the mass murder of US soldiers on US soil by Major Nadal Hassan .
Now pause for a moment. Such a build up, as I have laid it out, may be stirring a resentment for the President within you, at this very moment - this is not my intent. My intent is to understand what informs his decision making process. Consider your own reaction. Your family, your people, your history. What if it were full of not general, not theoretical, but specific, real and measurable instances of intense brutality, of torture, or racism? Could the perpetrators, their descendants, their nation, ever find forgiveness in your heart?
So abandon the resentment and simply understand, it is our best strategy. Unlocking the president’s motives is the key to stopping the “change” he is attempting to bring this nation. This is a man dedicated - and this is vital to remember - a man dedicated to undoing the aggression of the traditional colonial powers, including America - their land, their status, their wealth, their power. In his mind it is all ill-gotten That is the “fundamental transformation” of America, “and the world” that he promised in 2008. He is orchestrating the bottom up reformation of our world as shaped by the 18th - 20th century powers, via their collapse.
Ironically if he is to be successful he must in the end become what he despises. He must “colonize” our traditions, our history, even our “inadequate” founding document. And replace it with
“officials appointed by and responsible to the reigning sovereign.” Such push and nudge Czars are the only path to his collective salvation - the only way to cleanse us of our collective historic sins. In other words, he must become the governor of a royal colony in order to save us from our colonial past.
This family lineage has all along been made up of fighters. Senator Barack Obama is fighting using his brain, like his father, while his grandfather fought physically with the white man.
-Granny Sarah *Sources:Britain’s Gulag: The Brutal End of Empire in Kenya (2005); Histories of the Hanged: Britain’s Dirty War in Kenya and the End of Empire (2005);
UK Times Online; African History/About.
