Kapenguria Six

The Kapenguria Six – Bildad Kaggia, Kung'u Karumba, Jomo Kenyatta, Fred Kubai, Paul Ngei, and Achieng' Oneko – were six leading Kenyan nationalists who were arrested in 1952, tried at Kapenguria in 1952–53, and imprisoned thereafter in Northern Kenya.

Evelyn Baring was the new Governor, who arrived in Kenya on 30 September 1952.

After the European invasion, large amounts of Kenya's best land were alienated for exclusive white use. Black Africans were allowed to remain as tenant farmers ('squatters') on land they had previously owned or newly cultivated; their terms of service steadily worsened. At Olenguruoune in 1944, 11,000 squatters were expelled, the beginning of the last act of a land dispute that had raged since the 1920s. The first Mau Mau oaths were probably administered there and then. Kenyatta returned home from the UK in 1946. By 1947, oathing had spread all over Kikuyuland and into Nairobi.Mitchell, the previous Governor, proscribed the new organisation – now called Mau Mau – in 1950.

On 9 October 1952, Senior Chief Waruhiu was shot and killed by Mau Mau gunmen. Baring had been on a tour of Central Province. It was cut short. At the funeral, he and Kenyatta locked eyes over the casket; days afterwards, Baring signed the arrest warrants for the Six.

On the night of 20/21 October, a mass arrest was carried out of Mau Mau and KAU leaders. There is some doubt about the actual number of arrests. Baring had signed the Emergency order on the evening of the 20th, the emergency was publicly proclaimed on the morning of the 21st. Troops from the Lancashire Fusiliers, flown in on the 20th, were in place later that day, patrolling the African areas of segregated Nairobi.

Anthony Somerhough, the Deputy Public Prosecutor, opened proceedings on 3 December 1952. The charge against the defendants was that they had jointly managed a proscribed society (and that the proscribed society, the Mau Mau, had conspired to murder all white residents of Kenya).

The defence was led by Denis Nowell Pritt, assisted by a multiracial team: HO Davies, a Nigerian; Chaman Lall, an Indian and friend of Nehru; and the Kenyans Fitz De Souza, Achhroo Ram Kapila, and Jaswant Singh. In line with the segregationist legislation then in force, they were prohibited from staying in the same hotel.

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