Kenya's Independence
Kenya became independent on 12 December 1963 under Jomo Kenyatta, who had been imprisoned by the British for seven years as an alleged leader of the Mau Mau uprising — a charge that was never proved and that British authorities later acknowledged lacked evidentiary foundation. The Mau Mau rebellion (1952-1960) had been suppressed at a cost of some 12,000 Kenyans killed (official British figures) and perhaps 50,000-100,000 detained in camps under conditions a 2012 British High Court ruling found constituted systematic torture. Britain's 'Emergency' in Kenya was one of the bloodiest episodes of late colonial suppression, documented extensively only after the Kenya National Archives releases of the 1990s and subsequent litigation. Kenyatta's post-independence government maintained close ties with Britain and the West, turning Kenya into one of East Africa's more stable capitalist economies. The inherited land patterns — large settler farms in the White Highlands — were not comprehensively redistributed but bought out at market prices, concentrating new wealth among the Kikuyu political class around Kenyatta.
- Year: 1963 CE
- Category: Independence
