280 pages

English

Découvre YouScribe en t'inscrivant gratuitement

Je m'inscris

Never Be Silent , livre ebook

Vita Books - Shiraz Durrani

Découvre YouScribe en t'inscrivant gratuitement

Je m'inscris

Obtenez un accès à la bibliothèque pour le consulter en ligne
En savoir plus

280 pages

English

Obtenez un accès à la bibliothèque pour le consulter en ligne
En savoir plus

A propos
Informations
Extrait

Description

“We will never be silent until we get land to cultivate and freedom in this country of ours”…so sang Mau Mau activists. The struggle for independence in Kenya was waged at many levels. Never be Silent explores how this struggle was reflected in the communications field. It looks at publishing activities of the main contending forces and explores internal contradictions within each community. It documents the major part played by the communications activities of the organised working class and Mau Mau in the achievement of independence in Kenya. The book contributes to a reinterpretation of colonial history in Kenya from a working class point of view and also provides a new perspective on how communications can be a weapon for social justice in the hands of liberation forces.

Sujets

Colonisation

Informations

Publié par	Vita Books
Date de parution	29 décembre 2006
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9789966189059
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	2 Mo

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0000€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

NEVER BE SILENT

Shiraz Durrani

NEVER BE SILENT PUBLISHING & IMPERIALISM IN KENYA 1884 - 1963

SHIRAZ DURRANI

Vita Books, P.O. Box 2908, London N17 6YY, UK

20TZ

Vita Books

Never be silent:simama imara

Vita Books P.O. Box 6250100200 Nairobi Kenya

info.vitabkske@gmail.com http://vitabooks.co.uk/

ISBN:][\ U \Z]\\Z TY ]

Vita Books are distributed by African Books Collective Ltd, P.O. Box 721 Oxford OX1 9EN UK

www.african Books Collective.com orders@africanbookscollective.com

1 WE WILL NEVER BE SILENT

On January 7th we were surrounded at Bahati by the colonial army.

We will never be silent until we get land to cultivate and freedom in this country of ours, Kenya.

Home Guards were the first to go and close the gates and Johnnies entered while the police surrounded the location. You, traitors! You dislike your children, caring only for your stomachs; You are the enemies of our people.

We will never be silent until we get land to cultivate and freedom in this country of ours, Kenya.

1 Mau Mau liberation song, quoted in Mathu (1974), pp. 23-24.

POVERTY CAN BE STOPPED

“The poor are the Mau Mau. Poverty can be stopped, but not by bombs and weapons from the imperialists. Only the revolutionary justice of the struggles of the poor can end poverty for Kenyans.”

K I M A A T H I W A W A C H I U R I in a letter he wrote from his headquarters in Nyandarua in 1955 to the Nairobi newspaper Habari za Dunia

contents

INTRODUCTION A VOICE OF SILENCE - NGUGI WA THIONG’O HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE - MARIKA SHERWOOD BREAKING THE CULTURE OF SILENCE - SHIRAZ DURRANI A NOTE ON TERMINOLOGY

C H A P T E R O N E A HISTORY OF PUBLISHING . . . A HISTORY OF STRUGGLES

C H A P T E R T W O 1884 - 1922: RESISTANCE OF NATIONALITIES SETTLER AND COLONIAL GOVERNMENT PUBLICATIONS CHURCH PUBLICATIONS SOUTH ASIAN PUBLICATIONS AFRICAN PUBLICATIONS

C H A P T E R T H R E E 1922 - 1948: CONSOLIDATION OF WORKING CLASS NATIONALIST AND WORKING CLASS POLITICS SETTLER PUBLICATIONS CHURCH PUBLICATIONS COLONIAL GOVERNMENT PUBLICATIONS SOUTH ASIAN PUBLICATIONS AFRICAN PUBLICATIONS TRADE UNION MOVEMENT LEADS THE WAY

C H A P T E R F O U R KISWAHILI RESISTANCE PUBLISHING AT THE COAST EARLY KISWAHILI EPICS KISWAHILI BOOK PRODUCTION KISWAHILI AS A LANGUAGE OF RESISTANCE

C H A P T E R F I V E 1948-1963: MAU MAU REVOLUTIONARY STRUGGLE A HIDDEN HISTORY

i iv vii x

22 29 31 34 44

51 53 55 60 61 62 67 74

85 85 88 89

97 98

LEGAL ASPECTS OF PUBLISHING THE ESTABLISHMENT OF LIBERATED TERRITORIES COLONIAL GOVERNMENT PUBLICATIONS SETTLER PUBLICATIONS SOUTH ASIAN PUBLISHING THE MAU MAU COMMUNICATION STRATEGY ORAL COMMUNICATIONS REVOLUTIONARY PUBLISHING PREPARATION FOR ARMED PHASE SOME PRESS PROFILES PAMPHLETS, HANDBILLS AND LETTERS ESTABLISHMENT OF A PEOPLE’S PRESS

C H A P T E R S I X OVERSEAS SUPPORT FOR KENYA LIBERATION UK CANADA USSR EGYPT IRELAND INDIA USA TRINIDAD

C H A P T E R S E V E N INDEPENDENCE AND NEO-COLONIALISM “THE STRUGGLE FOR KENYA’S FUTURE”

C H A P T E R E I G H T CONCLUSION: NEVER BE SILENT

BIBLIOGRAPHY

APPENDIX A: SELECTED LISTS NEWSPAPERS PUBLISHERS INFORMATION ACTIVISTS KENYAN NEWSPAPERS AVAILABLE IN THE BRITISH LIBRARY

APPENDIX B: BANNED IMPORTS, A SELECTED LIST

INDEX

103 119 126 129 139 153 157 176 189 200 212 216

222 223 228 229 230 230 231 231 232

233 235

239

241

252 252 262 264 264

267

269

YOU CANNOT UNEDUCATE THE PERSON

Once social change begins, it cannot be reversed. You cannot uneducate the person who has learned to read. You cannot humiliate the person who feels pride. You cannot oppress the people who are not afraid anymore.

2 - C E S A R C H A V E Z

2 Cesar Chavez founded United Farm Workers of America, AFL-CIO in 1962. Quoted by Dana Lubow in a posting to owner-PLGNet-L@listproc.sjsu.edu on 2 April 2005. Details about the United Farm Workers of America are available from www.ufw.org [accessed 3 April, 2005]

i I N T R O D U C T I O N

A voice of silence N G U G I W A T H I O N G ’ O

Information is power in war and peace. But information, particularly in the struggle between the dominated and the dominating, is never neutral. The dominating try to control the sources, agents and contents of information. They want the dominated to view the world through the filters of the dominating. What they choose to package, how they package it, and even how, when and where they choose to spread the packaged information are all geared to realising their strategic and tactical ends of dominating. But the dominated do not just absorb the information as packaged. They will read between and behind the lines. But more important they will also try to collect and package information which will counter that of their enemies. For in order for them to struggle with a measure of success they must arm their minds with the correct data of what is really going on around them. The packaged information of the dominating aims at creating confusion or silence among the dominated. The packaged information of the dominated aims at providing clarity and voice to their struggle. It gives voice to silence. Never be Silent in word, mind and spirit becomes their motto, law and order. Information is therefore a site of intense struggle and nowhere is this better illustrated than in a colonial situation.

All this, and more, is very well captured in Durrani's narrative of publishing in Kenya from the times of the Berlin Conference of 1884 to the Lancaster House Conference of 1963. And what a tremendous exemplary effort it is covering as it does the entire colonial period of Kenyan history from the earliest information bulletins of the colonial settler state to the Mau Mau publishing efforts in the fifties and sixties! Information in the print and oral media was vital to the resistance struggles of the Kenyan people and contributed in a large measure to their very successes. And that is why the British and the colonial state spent so much energy not only in producing counter-propaganda but also used the legal system to ban the information emanating from those on the side of the Kenya people’s struggle. In a sense Durrani's narrative documents the monumental failure on the part of the

colonial machine and independence of the country in 1963 is a proof of that failure or in another sense a proof of the success of the information strategies and tactics of the Kenyan anti-colonial struggle.

That is why it is impossible to read this fascinating drama without realising the enormity of the ideological crimes perpetrated by the successive post-colonial KANU regimes against the Kenyan people. These regimes have literally tried to take the colonial measures and practices a stage further. Where, for instance, in pre-independence Kenya there were several newspapers and magazines in African languages, these regimes ensured that for more than twenty-five years, there were hardly any meaningful newspapers or magazines in African languages. Where, in colonial Kenya, there were radio stations catering to the various regions in their dominant languages, the post-colonial regimes ensured that such did not exist. Where, in colonial times, there were thriving trade unions, civic societies, cultural groups, the post-colonial regimes ensured that in the new Kenya there would not be any space for free trade union and cultural activities. But they should also have learnt well from the drama outlined in Durrani's narrative: that no amount of state anti-people propaganda can actually eliminate the correct information arising from a people's own experience of reality. If people are getting low wages, or are being tortured, or subjected to genocide, no amounts of information trying to convince them of the contrary can actually succeed; that in the end people will struggle to create their own information systems to meet the needs of the struggle. So that although the narrative ends with the year of independence in 1963, it has a lot to teach Kenyans in their current struggles for national liberation and social revolution.

This book is a wealth of resource data and should be of interest to historians, political scientists, cultural workers, and all those engaged in active struggle. It is information. It is drama. It is history. It is also a salute to the spirit of struggle.