Crucible: Macharia’s Costly Delusion
March 1990
The farcical “Kapenguria Six” trial was a watershed moment in Kenya’s history. Six leaders involved in organized opposition to colonial rule were accused of participating in the management of Mau Mau, the guerilla-style terrorist movement that played a significant role in forcing the British to relinquish one of their prize colonies. Railroaded by a government desperate to discredit and halt those engaged in legitimate political dissent, the six were sentenced to prison and hard labor. Among them was the man who would eventually become the first president of an independent Kenya. Chronicled in the book “The Trial of Jomo Kenyatta,” Kapenguria resulted in Kenyatta’s imprisonment from 1953 until 1959, and his subsequent detention in Lodwar, in the remote frontier of Turkana District, until 1961.
Exacerbating the prejudicial disposition of an openly hostile judge, who during the trial remained in secret contact with the colonial governor of the time, was the prosecution’s duplicitous main witness. Rawson Mbugua Macharia, a diminutive, bookish former government clerk and local KAU branch secretary testified that at the home of Joram Waweru on March 16, 1950, he had been administered the oath at the hand of Kenyatta himself, in a ceremony that he claimed involved the drinking of human blood, and nudity. It was the only evidence presented of a direct link between Kenyatta and Mau Mau. Five years later Macharia swore in an affidavit that he had perjured himself, admitting to being among those bribed by the colonial government to give false testimony. Among his rewards, Macharia was sent to England for studies immediately after the trial. It was only upon his return to Kenya in 1956 that he came to terms with his disillusionment, blowing the whistle on his own participation in a perjury-for-profit scheme.
RM: There may be some cheats, but they are the best people you could meet in the world.
DB: The British . . .
RM: Yeah, THE ENGLISH!
DB: So you had a good experience with them . . .
RM: Oh yes, ohhhhh… oh yes, oh yes. You see, I don’t regard them as angels but if you are lucky to meet the best of them . . . they are so honest in their dealing, and they are disciplined people. Not all, but particularly the educated class, you can rely on.
DB: On the other hand, they’re the same ones who enticed you to, in your own words, in your own experience, to perjure yourself in court.
RM: They were not the typical people-- they were colonial people, and they are working on their profit. They lived here to make money, you follow me? You wouldn’t regard them as typical Englishmen. When I’m talking about Englishmen, I’m not talking about British colonial power, I’m talking about an individual Englishman at home, in England. You can really trust them-- they won’t play you tricks, as they did here. You see, the policeman here, Henderson, I don’t know if you know about him, he was an agent of the colonial government, so he was doing his duty, you see?
Thus a less momentous but still significant trial was held in 1959: the trial of Rawson Macharia. The colonial government tried him on the charge of filing a false affidavit, employing a disingenuously ironic twist by accusing him of lying about being bribed to lie during the Kapenguria trial. Magistrate I. Rosen’s scathing 50-page ruling was highlighted by vintage British colonial imperiousness, dissecting events in studious detail to discredit Macharia and dispel any notion of wrongdoing by the crown. Rosen described him as “bone idle,” a “Judas,” a “mammonistic mythist,” and “a wicked, unscrupulous individual,” claiming that “his love of the limelight would lead him, and has led him, to be prepared to pay whatever price, except money, to be considered important.” In his sentencing, Rosen expressed great regret that the law limited Macharia’s penalty to two years of imprisonment. “I can’t really conceive a more serious offense. The accu