In August 1952, students at Makerere University College, Kampala, went on strike. Chapter 1 connects the strike – and its leader Abu Mayanja – to the regional crises of 1952–1953: the Mau Mau uprising and the imposition of the Central African Federation. Education institutions and party politics came into unprecedented dialogue in this period, but this process was not directed from above by an older generation of nationalist leaders. Secondary school graduates, college students and newly qualified schoolteachers all encouraged this shift as they sought to define a global role for this regional cohort, thinking through regional comparisons, historical crossroads and notions of constitutional protest. Returning repeatedly to Makerere, this chapter focuses on correspondence around the strike, networks of schoolteachers, party-political student clubs, student publishing and anti-Federation newsletters. These examples demonstrate the importance of regional structures – and of how young people responded to these structures – as they set their sights on anticolonial work beyond the region.

The idea of ‘home’ had long served as a pervasive metaphor for transoceanic British belonging, routinely employed to invoke patterns of long-distance intimacy. With the onset of decolonization, however, these everyday assumptions came under scrutiny. The colonial administration of Kenya took remedial action in 1947 in the form of a wedding gift to Prince Elizabeth and the Duke of Edinburgh - a home of their own in the foothils of Mt. Kenya. The symbolism of a permanent Royal residence in the heart of Africa was meant to ensure that ‘home’ retained a sense of long-range reciprocity. But by the time the royal couple took possession of Sagana Lodge in February 1952, the violent incursions of the ‘Mau Mau’ insurgency had arrived on their doorstep. Throughout the ensuing crisis, familiar depictions of the settler home appeared graphically in British newspapers and newsreels. The violation of British notions of ordered domesticity became a potent means of mobilizing empathy for the embattled settler community of Kenya, widely depicted as ordinary Britons abroad in need of extraordinary relief measures. The intersecting story of Sagana Lodge, the Monarchy and the domestic horror of Mau Mau provides a unique window into the eclipse of Greater Britain in Africa’s settler heartland, revealing the limits of home as an enduring symbol of Britain’s spurious place in Africa.

Chapter 3 provides the historical context in which to understand land and political violence in Kenya. It does so by comparing the histories of land ownership and distribution between Kenya’s highlands and the Coast region. The chapter’s central question asks how and why practices of land allocation vary between regions. Drawing on patterns of land allocation, archival data, and in-depth interviews, the chapter argues that two styles of political leadership – the vote-seeking land patron and rent-seeking landlord – reflect different modes and logics of land accumulation and distribution that have developed over each political regime. The chapter further explains how these different modes of land distribution and the broader politics of land play out under three phases of Kenya: colonial rule and the Mau Mau civil war (1900–1962), the single party rule of Jomo Kenyatta (1962–1978), and the de facto single party rule of Daniel arap Moi (1978–2002).

Chapter 2 examines how far ideas of human rights were taken up by activists and protest organisations during their campaigns over the end of the British empire in Africa and the creation of the apartheid regime in South Africa. The chapter begins by assessing the impact of African questions on Britain, emphasising the significance of moral – as opposed to political - concerns. The two main sections of the chapter are, first, a detailed discussion of the handful of individuals (in particular Eileen Fletcher) who criticised Britain’s brutal handling of the ‘Mau Mau‘ rebellion in Kenya and, secondly, an analysis of the first phase of the anti-apartheid movement, a campaign which more fully embraced human rights. The chapter concludes by looking at how the emergence of independent African states in the 1950s created new human rights concerns for activists, in particular over the oppression of ethnic minorities.

Chapter 2 narrates how the campaign to release Kenyatta from jail, launched in 1958, culminated with him taking over the leadership of the nationalist party, the Kenyan African National Union, in 1961. Using the new “migrated files” from the British National Archives, it argues that Kenyatta emerged as a national figure out of a deeply divided and inimical political scene. This chapter shows that Kenyatta’s rise to power was largely accidental. His name was merged with the myth of the father of the nation, which his comrades had created, and wrongly thought they could manipulate and control. In fact, no politician who campaigned for Kenyatta’s release expected that he would dominate the political scene and frustrate their own political ambitions. No one had anticipated how the power of this ambiguous Mau Mau past managed to unite a fragmented electorate. Once released, Kenyatta chose to remain silent, refusing to speak publicly. His almost unexpected political rise would have a profound impact on Kenyan decolonisation: he became the “sole spokesman” of a nationalist elite he could not trust, and yet he alone could unite.