Emergency Communal Labor and Gender in Central Province During the Mau Mau War in Kenya, 1953–1960

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis article examines the Kenya Colony administration’s use of communal labor as a punitive, coercive labor practice during the Mau Mau rebellion of the 1950s. Faced with the Mau Mau rebellion, the administration transformed the preexisting communal labor system and began to use it on an unprecedented scale as a form of collective punishment against the mainly Kikuyu African civilian populations thought to be in collusion with the Mau Mau guerrillas. Communal labor, which was previously justified as a building block of development and used widely throughout the colony as cooperative village labor, now became an aspect of the punitive “rehabilitation” of the Kikuyu populace in Central Province. Although colonial officials directed Emergency communal labor against all of the African civilians living in the rural areas of Central Province thought to be in tacit support of Mau Mau, women were the corps of most of the communal labor work parties. As a result, this article examines the role of gender in the British administration’s wielding of communal labor as a punitive measure in Central Province during this time period. This window into the machinations of communal forced labor also sheds more light on the wider issue of gender and forced labor during the colonial period in Africa.