and food cultivation. The unique experience of women was based on a
combination of forced labor, physical abuse, sexual abuse, harassment,
manipulated food allocations, and inadequate clothing.
The treatment of young Mau Mau women created a great deal of
controversy. Many girls were convicted of life imprisonment when they were
under age. The colonial office was investigated but records were altered and
sentences concealed. The issues of the prison system and treatment of
imprisoned women are connected to a much larger conversation related to British
criminalization, imperialism, and gender. The prisons were an instrument of the
colonial power to break down women (through “mind bending” and systematic
anti-Mau Mau propogandas) and to culturally transform and cleanse them so
they could become functional and obedient members of the colonial society.87
Gender in the Invention of the Mau Mau
As noted above, women participated in Mau Mau on all battlegrounds
available. Cora Ann Presley states that “from the standpoint of both the British
and the nationalists, wooing women’s loyalty was an essential ingredient in
winning the war.”88 Yet, female involvement in Mau Mau presented perplexing
issues for the British. The “dirty war” that David Anderson is known for was a war
also played out in paper.89 The British used tactics like propaganda, images, text,
pictures, and language in their fight against Mau Mau. A major component of this
was to paint the movement as a savage, irrational, and tribal conflict of men that
87 Elkins, Imperial Reckoning, 229-232.
88 Presley, Kikuyu Women, The Mau Mau Rebellion, 504.
89 See Anderson, History of the Hanged The Mau Mau War called the “dirty war.”
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