Kenya's independence

Kenya became independent from Britain on December 12, 1963, with Jomo Kenyatta as prime minister, and a republic a year later with Kenyatta as president. Kenyatta, leader of the Kenya African National Union, had been sentenced in 1953 to seven years in prison as a suspected Mau Mau leader and then held under restriction until his release in 1961. At midnight in a Nairobi stadium the British flag came down and Kenya's black, red and green flag went up.¹²

Britain had ruled Kenya since the 1890s and settled Europeans on the fertile highlands, taking land from the Kikuyu and others. The Mau Mau uprising of 1952 to 1960, in which fighters mostly from the Kikuyu people attacked settlers and loyalists, was crushed at heavy cost. Tens of thousands were held in detention camps, and abuses such as the killing of eleven detainees at Hola in 1959 shocked British opinion. By 1960 Harold Macmillan had spoken of a wind of change in Africa, and at the Lancaster House conferences of 1960 and 1962 Britain agreed to majority rule. In 2013 Britain agreed to pay about 19.9 million pounds to 5,228 survivors of abuse during the emergency.²³⁴