Taking a break from the archives, Matt at Theewaterskloof Dam, Villiersdorp.

Matthew Kustenbauder, a Ph.D. candidate in the department of history at Harvard University, has received a Fulbright-Hays scholarship from the U.S. Department of Education.
 
The Fulbright will fund ten months of research in South Africa for his dissertation, “South African Cosmopolitans in a British Imperial World, c. 1850-1950.”
 
Kustenbauder’s research examines the making of a transnational South Africa. For over a century, southern Africa was a gatepost of the British Empire, at the crossroads between East and West. Coastal towns and their hinterlands were sites of cultural dynamism, where African chiefs, British merchants, American missionaries, Boer farmers, Indian indentured laborers, and colonial administrators all rubbed shoulders, competed, and cooperated in surprising ways.
 
Kustenbauder will weave together the successes and failures of a diverse cast of characters and trace their linkages to India, America, and Europe to illustrate the global processes that shaped how South Africa became a rainbow nation long before 1994. In doing so, he aspires to contribute to studies of colonialism, cosmopolitanism, and the African past.

The Moth is an acclaimed not-for-profit organization dedicated to the art and craft of storytelling. It is a celebration of both the raconteur, who breathes fire into true tales of ordinary life, and the storytelling novice, who has lived through something extraordinary and yearns to share it.

Published: Thursday, May 16, 2013

Kimbo cooking fat is 60 years old, but manufacturer Bidco is also competing with aggressive new brands/Photo©Reuters

Smaller and more agile local brands are taking the fight to multinationals seeking to benefit from increasing consumer spending in sub-Saharan Africa. Both sorts of firms are looking to expand in the region and are deploying new strategies to attract customers.

Azam Cola hit the market quietly in Tanzania in August 2011. It was the first foray into the carbonated drinks market by Tanzanian family-owned company Bakhresa.

A year and a half later, the drinks have won 30 percent market share and the division is bringing in $90m, says Daniel Hill, Bakhresa’s group sales and marketing manager.

Azam Cola – sold in 500ml plastic bottles – is now selling at TSh700 ($0.43), compared to TSh600 for a 330ml glass bottle of Coke.

To compete, Coca-Cola recently brought out its own 500ml plastic bottle for TSh1,000.

Bakhresa is just one of a host of locally owned companies – including Kenyan firms Bidco and Kapa, and Angola’s Refriango – that are using familiar brands, local nous and quick decision making to challenge the multinationals.

These companies are already well woven into the fabric of African economies, but their founders receive little of the attention garnered by players such as Nigerian cement magnate Aliko Dangote.

Their coming of age marks a significant new chapter in the history of African business.

Most of these local brands are family-owned businesses that have been steadily growing their consumer goods brands for more than a decade without much fanfare.

Now the children of their founders are professionalising their marketing and distribution strategies, and investing in regional expansion to boost their brand recognition and scaleability.

Bharat Thakrar, chief executive of Kenya-based Scangroup, one of Africa’s largest advertising and marketing groups, calls these local companies ‘B-brands’ because they tend to represent a lower tier of competition.

He says they saw growth of 25-30 percent in some sub-Saharan African markets in 2011.

Historically, he says, B-brand products have been underpriced, with firms investing little in marketing.

That is beginning to change, and companies are hiring more experienced brand managers, often from the multinationals themselves.

“They’re creating that brand love and brand equity. They’re local, they’re low priced, \[and] in terms of quality they’re as good as the top brands,” says Thakrar.

Sky’s the Limit

Kenyan firm Bidco has big ambitions. It is already present in 16 countries in East, Central and Southern Africa after 12 years of operations.

“Our goal is to be number one in Africa by 2030,” says Mitul Shah, Bidco team leader for sales and marketing.

Bidco proved so successful that it bought Unilever’s edible oil and soap business in Kenya in 2002.

It also produces a wide range of kitchen products, from Kimbo cooking fat to Powerboy washing powder and Biddy’s margarine.

“We love competing with the multinationals because they’re the easiest to compete with. We don’t make decisions in Paris, in Dubai, or in London or Atlanta. Decisions are made here within minutes,” says Shah.

Bidco communicates in multiple local languages – seven in Kenya alone – and focuses its media spend on wall branding, alongside TV, radio and billboards.

It brings in advertising directors from South Africa and India to help to create its TV commercials and is also pushing its brands through social media and mobile phones.

“We have a database of more than 6,000 consumers on email who we directly communicate with in terms of new products and advantages,” he says.

With more than 70 percent of Kenya’s population under the age of 30, Shah says the market is dynamic and sophisticated, as consumers are hungry for new and fashionable products.

Bidco plans to launch one new product every month for the first six months of 2013.

By contrast, companies such as Tanzania’s Bakhresa still do not see the need for large marketing campaigns.

The company has chosen to do little product advertising, but it concentrates instead on improving its distribution network and driving up sales volume.

It pushes its products into neighbouring countries, where it already has mills established for its bakery business. Bakhresa is planning to expand its drinks division this year in Uganda and Rwanda.

Lists of best brands have recently begun appearing.

In Nigeria, a new initiative called Top 50 Brands Nigeria is currently collecting votes to compile its first list of the country’s favorite brands.

Taiwo Oluboyede, its project coordinator, says 43 out of the 100 brands under consideration are Nigerian-owned, including names such as food pro-ducers Honeywell, GTBank and the Tantalizers chain of fast-food restaurants.

In Ghana, a similar list of the top 40 brands put together in 2012 had fewer than 10 Ghanaian-owned companies.

Eric Affaidu from Superbrands Ghana said local brands still have to challenge the idea that foreign products are higher quality.

“Local brands that go beyond Ghana are able to change that perception,” he says, pointing to firms like Interplast, which manufactures pipes, and mattress company Latex Foam.

Export Cachet

Faisal Ali Osumanu, sales and marketing manager at Homefoods in Ghana, also points to the importance of communicating to consumers that its palm oil, vegetable oil, jams and gari are exported beyond Ghana.

“It builds their confidence level in our products,” he says.

The company has a 16 percent share of the market for vegetable oil in Ghana, competing against Asian multinational Wilmar and Avnash Industries Ghana.

Homefoods doubled its production in both 2011 and 2012 to meet de- mand and will increase production again by 50% in 2013.

This demand is driven by the rise of Africa’s middle classes.

Consultancy firm Accenture predicts that African consumer spending will grow from $600bn in 2010 to nearly $1trn in 2020 (see graph).

Yet some multinationals are finding the going tough as they roll out ambitious expansion plans.

For example, Unilever, which set a target in 2012 to double its African revenue within five years, saw revenue in Ghana grow last year, but net income decreased 44 percent to $8.8m, caused by high input costs and local currency depreciation.

Scangroup’s Thakrar says some multinationals have been lazy in their approach, running one advert across multiple countries.

They can get caught out – a Tanzanian housewife can see that the woman in a detergent commercial is Nigerian, and it is clear when adverts are dubbed and have no local nuance.

Thakrar says that some multinationals now realise their advertising must be locally relevant to compete.

“That is getting more important now, especially when you’ve got the B-brands doing exactly that,” he says.

Kim MacIlwaine, chief executive for Africa and the Middle East for consumer research company TNS, sees increasing demand from multinationals for deep research into lifestyle habits.

MacIlwaine, who used to work for Unilever in Africa, says that consumers in the region are “some of the most discerning consumers, not least because they don’t have very much money to spend.

“They really make their choices very consciously and very rigorously, often based on what they know works.”

In some instances, B-brands might be ripe for takeover. Faced by competition in India from local cola Thums Up, Coca-Cola bought the brand in 1993.

African groups that shun such overtures will have to deploy all their local advantages to keep ahead in the face of the multinationals’ large advertising, research and marketing budgets if they want to win the race for customers among Africa’s young and growing middle classes.

Read article in original posting here. 

Kris Snibbe/Harvard Staff Photographer
“I was in prison because I spoke,” said Birtukan Midekssa, a Harvard Scholar at Risk who spent 41 months of her life in Ethiopian prison.

Four years ago this spring, Birtukan Midekssa was in solitary confinement in an Ethiopian prison. Her cell was 13 feet wide and 20 feet long and had no window. She was allowed only two visitors: her elderly mother and her 3-year-old daughter.

Midekssa left Ethiopia in 2011, after two imprisonments that consumed 41 months of her life.  She stayed first in Washington, D.C., and then at Stanford University. Today — grateful, happy, and energized — she has an office (with a window) at the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute, where she is a fellow this year. (A lawyer by training, Midekssa is also a Visiting Fellow with Harvard Law School’s Human Rights Program; starting in the fall she’ll pursue a one-year mid-career master’s degree in public administration through the Mason Program at Harvard Kennedy School.)

Most apt of all her local connections, perhaps, is her role as a Harvard Scholar at Risk. The program — based in New York, with dozens of affiliates at universities across the world — guarantees a year or more of refuge for scholars, writers, and scientists who in their native lands are under threat of death, imprisonment, or harassment.

“I was in prison because I spoke,” said Midekssa.

She was first sent to prison in 2005 — entering when her daughter Halley was 8 months old — and then again in 2008. Both times she was sentenced to life (the second time her original sentence was death). Both times Midekssa was pardoned because of pressure from international human rights groups. But she was ready to live her whole life in a cell. “I was being imprisoned for a right cause. What else could I do?” said Midekssa. “If you restrain your self-expression, you are left with what? Your diminished self.”

Midekssa had entered Ethiopia’s political arena in 2002 after serving nearly six years on that nation’s federal criminal bench. “Most of my years were full of challenge,” she said of being a judge — a struggle to “keep my independence and professional standards.” While she was on the bench, Ethiopian officials routinely tried to influence her decisions, she said. But she refused to go along, despite pressure that sometimes ratcheted up to threats of death. Her most notorious act of defiant honesty was to free a former defense minister, Siye Abraha, who’d been accused of corruption on dubious grounds, charges that had already cost him years in prison. (Abraha himself was in the Mason Program at Harvard Kennedy School, from 2011 to 2012.)

From girlhood, Midekssa had been enthralled by the idea that Ethiopia one day could be an open democracy, despite the fact that such a concept remained entirely theoretical during her early life. She was born in 1974, the last year of a dynasty of Ethiopian emperors that had started in the 13th century, and grew up in the capital city of Addis Ababa during a military dictatorship that lasted 17 years, ending when she was a senior in high school.

Before the next dictatorship took hold, Ethiopia enjoyed a brief Golden Age of open political discussion, said Midekssa. “Naturally, I aspired to see a country in which individual liberty is protected — in which nobody is killed for their views.”

Midekssa knew that such killing was possible. In the mid-1970s, university students and others had rallied behind the idea of a Marxist-Leninist utopia for Ethiopia — an opposition movement that led to the death and disappearance of thousands. Her uncle, a promising student headed for university studies, was one of them, and his disappearance hovered over young Midekssa’s household. Her uncle’s story was both a warning and an inspiration. Her mother often told Midekssa how unwise it was of her uncle to be in politics, she said — but “if I were his age I would have done the same thing.”

Her childhood contained another influence that could be called political: her neighborhood. “The community life was very fervent,” said Midekssa. “I grew up in a big family of small families.” Mutual support, collective trust, and affection were the norms, she said, and the egalitarianism of her childhood “was an inspiration for a fair and democratic society.”

Her mother was a housewife; her father a soldier. Both were illiterate, she said, but intensely interested in education, and proud of the acuity their daughter displayed in the classrooms of her youth.

By age 25, Midekssa was a federal judge specializing in criminal law — just one young face in a wave of young judges who replaced those associated with the deposed military regime. “I was full of enthusiasm from what I learned in law school,” she said, “but the experience in court was entirely different.” It was her struggle with maintaining the rule of law while on the bench, and her close-up view of official corruption, Midekssa said, that finally propelled her into politics.

During the 2005 national elections, her Coalition for Unity and Democracy party won every parliamentary seat in the capital, and scored other big wins over the ruling front of Prime Minister Meles Zenawi. But within days of the results she was in jail, along with other party members and a raft of independent journalists — all charged with treason. The arrest set her on a path to becoming Ethiopia’s most famous opposition figure. In 2010 she became the first woman in Ethiopian history to chair a political party, Unity for Democracy and Justice.

At Harvard, in her law school setting, Midekssa has studied how the judiciary in closed societies can remain independent. But at the Du Bois Institute her focus has been investigating how Ethiopia can achieve democracy. There is a strong appetite for democracy there already, she said, along with a tradition of Christian-Muslim religious tolerance that suggests to her that democracy would thrive.

But along with bedrock values there are also bedrock problems. For one, Ethiopia’s new constitution, in 1995, redrew the nation of 85 million along ethnic lines, fragmenting the overarching national identity into 80 ethnic identities within nine member states. That left Ethiopia “hollowed out,” she said, “deprived of its national symbols and emblems.”

Meanwhile, the federal government has ruled with a strong hand, sometimes by regional proxies. Midekssa called the arrangement “an unholy marriage between authoritarianism and ethno-nationalism.” Ethiopia’s aggressive central government and its weak regional states, she said, undermine “the virtues of federalism” and make the practice of democracy very unlikely. Leaders have also tightened their hold on the judiciary, the media, and the electoral process — a further “narrowing of the democratic sphere,” Midekssa said.

So what is to be done? The first step is to “recast the past,” she said, to reclaim symbols and a national narrative that would make Ethiopia one again. Also, re-imagine the future, said Midekssa, by promoting the shared social values that, for instance, her own childhood represented.

Then there are the practical steps, she said, including an official language, an independent supreme court, nationwide political parties to supplant those drawn along ethnic lines, and multicultural education to “help Ethiopians to imagine democratic Ethiopia, with all her mosaic.”

Read article in original posting here.

Feel free to publicize this information and invite others who may be interested in our degree programs.  Those who wish to attend should RSVP to Dinali_abeysekera@hks.harvard.edu.  

The events are sponsored by the Executive Education Program and the Office of Alumni Relations.

Monday, May 20th 2013
6:00 PM – 8:00 PM
The Hotel Avenida
Av Julius Nyerere, 627
Maputo, Mozambique

Thursday, May 22nd 2013
6:00 PM – 8:00 PM
The Westin Cape Town
Sir Francis Drake Room
Convention Square, Lower Long Street
Cape Town, South Africa

Monday, May 13th 2013
6:00 PM – 8:00 PM
Radisson Blu Hotel Sandton
Nasdaq Room
Cnr Rivonia Rd and Daisy St
Johannesburg, South Africa

Harvard Kennedy School site

Subscribe to HKS’ Admissions blog here

Jomion and the Uklos of Benin with Dudley House Jazz Orchestra.

by Sarah Politz

May 5, 2013

The Dudley House Jazz Orchestra welcomed Jomion and the Uklos of Benin for a musical residency and spring concert, held April 26-27. The guests arrived mid-week, and from our first rehearsal it was clear that something special was in store. The arrangements of Jomion’s music, prepared by myself and Michael Heller, had up until then lacked the expert advice of the composers. But with Jomion’s stylistic coaching and fine tunings, the Jazz Orchestra musicians opened up their ears and quickly adapted to the new rhythms and styles. I was proud of everyone for investing so much in the collaboration, and for being open to the synthesis we were able to create.

Jomion and the Uklos got students on their feet!

Jomion and the group also performed at the African Languages in the Disciplines conference on April 25, first as part of Faith Conant’s paper on Adzogbo poetry (Faith had hosted the group earlier in the week at Mount Holyoke College), and then in the evening for the conference reception. They performed a set featuring their vocal repertoire, gradually transitioning into more rhythmic material as several professors wanted to dance!

Because I had heard about the recent scouting trip a few Berklee professors made to Benin, and their encounter with Jomion and the Uklos, I was anxious for Jomion and his brothers to attend a concert with one Yoron Israel on drums Thursday night at the Lily Pad. The reunion was quite dramatic when Yoron and others recognized our guests. We also made a connection with Jorge Perez, a Berklee percussion instructor who also traveled to Benin. As it turned out, he was planning a concert with Beninois drummer Jah Baba, someone who has been a mentor for Jomion, that Saturday at the same location. What was more, Jah was also performing a Monday night concert with Berklee’s Global Jazz Institute. We attended all of these events together, and Jah and Jorge both ended up participating in our events as well. Jorge generously loaned his congas to us for the concert. These cross-connections ended up being some of the most thrilling encounters of the week, and will form the basis of future relationships for myself and for Jomion. Benin is developing quite a reputation for music in this part of the world.

At the end of the week, Jomion held a master class at Dudley House where the group demonstrated several examples of the traditional Beninois rhythms that they have modernized, and broke down the different parts for the audience on the drum set and on talking drums such as the gangan and the gbon, which are the specialty of Uklos member Jean Gnonlonfoun. He explained that one must be initiated into the appropriate religious environment in order to learn how to play these drums. About 25 people attended the master class, including a few members of our Jazz Orchestra, but also many more visitors from the community who were on campus for the Arts First festival taking place that weekend. The discussion covered many topics, including connections between the music of Benin and Brazilian bossa nova, the importance of Benin’s cultural history in the African diaspora, and the balance between good and evil in vodun religious tradition. The band remarked that they have given master classes before, but have never been given the opportunity to speak about their music in such depth.

The concert Saturday night began with Jomion and the Uklos marching into Dudley House in brass band formation with the members of the Jazz Orchestra, playing a mutual favorite, Herbie Hancock’s “Cantaloupe Island.” The night featured three sets, one with the Dudley House Combo performing pieces like “Caravan” and “All Blues” that featured Jomion’s percussion and trumpet styles, another with Jomion and the Uklos on their own which incited much dancing (it turned out there was a healthy contingent of Boston-area residents originally from Benin who turned up at the concert!), and finally a set featuring the Jazz Orchestra’s arrangements of the Jomion compositions “Sonayon” and “Ayi,” along with a Dudley arrangement of Fela Kuti’s “Colonial Mentality” with special guest Jah Baba on vocals and talking drum. Jomion led these pieces with great pride and joy from the lead drum in front of the orchestra, bringing in each of the band’s entrances with the appropriate drum call.

Overall, the residency was a huge success. Of course, the work that went into it was considerable, and we all needed a few days to recover from the excitement and turn our attention to final papers. I received many comments from Jazz Orchestra members, not just in the rhythm section, remarking on the uniqueness of this opportunity to learn from African artists in person and through performance. I was very impressed with Jomion’s professionalism, energy, and desire to learn from students even as he shared his expertise with them, and I was just as proud of our Dudley House musicians for coming to the project with open minds and ears and making the most of our time together. We were able to forge many new connections with musicians in the Boston area, while making the music available to a larger audience as well. I am so thankful to the Committee on African Studies and the Student Groups grant for helping to make this possible.

Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad Program

Application Deadline: June 3, 2013

CFDA Number: 84.022A

Funding Opportunity Number: ED-GRANTS- 050213-001

The U.S. Department of Education and the International and Foreign Language Education (IFLE) office is pleased to announce a Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad Program opportunity.

Under the Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad (DDRA) Program, the institutional grants provide fellowships to enable doctoral students enrolled in modern foreign language and area studies programs at U.S. institutions of higher education to conduct dissertation research overseas for 6-12 months.

Duration: Applicants may apply for a maximum grant performance period up to eighteen months in duration; proposed start and end dates should be October 15, 2013-April 15, 2015.  The minimum time abroad is six weeks total.  

Eligible Applicants:  U.S. institutions of higher education.

Eligible Participants: An individual is eligible to participate in a Fulbright-Hays DDRA Fellowship if she/he is: (1) A citizen, national, or permanent resident of the United States; (2) is a graduate student admitted to candidacy in a doctoral degree program in modern foreign languages and area studies at a U.S. higher education institution; (3) is planning a teaching career in the United States upon completion of his or her doctoral program; and (4) possesses sufficient foreign language skills to carry out the dissertation research project. An individual applies for a fellowship by submitting an application through the institution of higher education in which the individual is enrolled.

Financial Provisions: The institutional award may pay travel expenses to and from the residence of the fellow and the country or countries of research; a maintenance stipend for the fellow and his or her dependents related to cost of living in the host country or countries; an allowance for research-related expenses, such as books, copying, tuition and affiliation fees, local travel; health and accident insurance premiums; and other expenses in the country of study deemed necessary for the project’s success and approved in advance by the U.S. Department of Education.

The DDRA program will not provide funds for: 1) visa fees; 2) passport expenses, including photographs; (3) equipment costs (laptops, digital cameras, records, etc.); (4) research or transcription assistants; (5) language tutoring, tuition, or fees that might be required by the American grantee institution, (6) medical expenses such as malaria pills or vaccinations.  Please note that students may not accept certain grants (IIE, Boren, IREX, Japan Foundation) in the same fiscal year that a US/ED Fulbright-Hays grant is awarded.

The application package will be available starting May 2, 2013 at www.G5.gov, please scroll to the bottom of the page to e-Application Packages. Both the student and the institution of higher education must complete portions of the application correctly and submit via the G5 e-Application system. For more information, please go to http://www2.ed.gov/programs/iegpsddrap/applicant.html.

Find more information on the Harvard University Graduate School of Arts & Sciences website. 

While most students take classes in the traditional lecture format, students of Professor Peter Der Manuelian’s class Societies of the World 38: Pyramid Schemes – The Archaeological History of Ancient Egypt (Fall 2012), had the opportunity to learn in a non-traditional and innovative ways, using digital media. As the Harvard Gazette reported, “history, archaeology, and cultural studies come together” in this course, led by Peter Der Manuelian, Philip J. King Professor of Egyptology.

This course, which counts towards General Education credit, has been taken by upwards of 170 students each time offered.

Speaking to the Gazette, Professor De Manuelian says, “I enjoy watching students get excited about new pyramid construction theories, ancient religious schisms, explanations for the rise of complex society, and the mysteries of ancient Egyptian hieroglyphic grammar. Long ago, I learned that to focus only on the narrow confines of one’s discipline can lead to diminished interest levels across the board.”

Students give Manuelian’s course high marks, and have made it one of the most popular Gen Ed offerings. Margaret Geoga ’12 said the course combines visits to area museums with the innovative use of technology to give students a deeper understanding of what ancient Egypt was like.

“The technology turned out to be one of the best features of the class,” she said. “For example, the 3-D tour of Giza in the Visualization Center gave us an understanding of how all the monuments and tombs relate to each other physically that photos simply cannot provide.”

Students also produce two of their own iMovies.  The first iMovie is a visual study guide helps students prepare for their midterm exam; the second is intended to help students form a research question for your final paper. These assignments are meant to demonstrate scholarly content in visual form, and more broadly, they are designed to encourage the creative translation of that scholarly content into interactive multimedia presentations.

As per the course syllabi, the five goals of the iMovie assignments:

1. to allow you to think very concisely about a specific Egyptological problem and present it in an engaging way;
2. to combine a well-thought out “script” with a chance to take advantage of ancient Egypt’s rich visual heritage;
3. to help you prepare for essay questions on the midterm exam;
4. to provide a “teaser” or “test run” method for exploring aspects of your final research paper;
5. to channel your inner Martin Scorsese, learn a new skill, impress your friends and have fun!

 View some the best student-produced iMovies here!

Professor Peter Der Manuelian

Course description: Surveys ancient Egyptian pharaonic civilization. Emphasizes Egyptian material culture: pyramids, temples, tombs, settlements, and artifacts. Explores major developmental themes that defined the Egyptian state: the geographical landscape, kingship, social stratification, and religion. Follows a chronological path with excursions into Egyptian art, history, politics, religion, literature, and language (hieroglyphs). Also touches on contemporary issues of object repatriation, archaeology and cultural nationalism, and the evolution of modern Egyptology. Includes field trips to the Egyptian collections of the Peabody Museum and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, along with immersive 3D computer models in Harvard’s Visualization Center. No prior experience in Egyptology expected.”

by Ian Cobain and Jessica Hatcher

Published May 6, 2013 in The Guardian

The British government is negotiating payments to thousands of Kenyans who were detained and severely mistreated during the 1950s Mau Mau insurgency in what would be the first compensation settlement resulting from official crimes committed under imperial rule.

In a development that could pave the way for many other claims from around the world, government lawyers embarked upon the historic talks after suffering a series of defeats in their attempts to prevent elderly survivors of the prison camps from seeking redress through the British courts.

Those defeats followed the discovery of a vast archive of colonial-era documents which the Foreign Office (FCO) had kept hidden for decades, and which shed new and stark light on the dying days of British rule, not only in Kenya but around the empire. In the case of the Mau Mau conflict, the secret papers showed that senior colonial officials authorised appalling abuses of inmates held at the prison camps established during the bloody conflict, and that ministers and officials in London were aware of a brutal detention regime in which men and women were tortured and killed.

As a handful of details began to emerge last week from the confidential talks between lawyers for the government and the Mau Mau veterans, the FCO said it acknowledged the need for debate about Britain’s past, and added: “It is an enduring feature of our democracy that we are willing to learn from our history.” Up to 10,000 former prisoners may be in line for compensation, if the talks result in a settlement. Although the individual amounts will vary greatly, the total compensation is likely to run into tens of millions of pounds.

The Foreign Office knows that compensation payments to Mau Mau veterans are likely to trigger claims from other former colonies. Any such claims, if successful, would not only cost the British taxpayer many millions of pounds; they could result in testimony and the emergence of documentary evidence that would challenge long-cherished views of the manner in which Britain withdrew from its empire.

Former Eoka guerrillas who were imprisoned and allegedly mistreated by the British in 1950s Cyprus are already considering bringing claims against the British government.

The archives of the International Committee of the Red Cross show that its inspectors documented widespread use of torture in British prisons during that insurgency, with some individuals being waterboarded, with kerosene mixed into the water.

Historians and personal injury lawyers believe strong claims could be made on behalf of individuals who were imprisoned during the 1960s insurgency in the colony of Aden, now part of Yemen. Papers from the time show abuses inflicted upon prisoners were carefully documented by British officers, and that senior colonial officials kept the FCO informed.

Documentary evidence could also support compensation claims from Swaziland in southern Africa and British Guiana, now Guyana, in South America. However, as a result of a number of rulings in the House of Lords, no damages claims arising from events before 1954 can be brought in the English courts. During the process of decolonisation, the eight-year insurgency known as the Mau Mau uprising was possibly the most bloody conflict in which the British became embroiled, with up to 30,000 Kenyan deaths, both insurgent and loyalist.

Thousands of people – estimates vary from 80,000 to 300,000 – were detained in a network of camps that were described in one Pulitzer-winning history of the conflict as Britain’s gulag.

Official papers from the time confirm that prisoners suffered appalling abuses. Some died under torture, with colonial officials writing about prisoners being “roasted alive”. In one of the few prosecutions brought against the torturers, in December 1954, a Nairobi judge, Arthur Cram, compared the methods employed to those of the Gestapo.

One of those abused was Hussein Onyango Obama, the grandfather of Barack Obama. According to his widow, British soldiers forced pins into his fingernails and buttocks and squeezed his testicles between metal rods. Two of the original five claimants who brought the test case against the British government were castrated.

It was not until the Kenyan government lifted the ban on the Mau Mau in 2002 that survivors of the camps began to consider legal action, however, and it was a further six years before they asked the high court in London for permission to sue the British government for damages.

Government lawyers argued that the claim should not be heard, initially arguing that under the legal principle of state succession, the Mau Mau veterans should be suing the Kenyan government and not the British. A number of historians, called as expert witnesses in the case, realised that the government’s disclosure of documentation was incomplete. This in turn led to the disclosure of the existence of the enormous secret archive at Hanslope Park in Buckinghamshire, a repository for more than 8,000 files from 37 former colonies.

Among them was a damning memo from the colony’s attorney general, Eric Griffith-Jones, a man who had described the mistreatment of the detainees as “distressingly reminiscent of conditions in Nazi Germany or Communist Russia”. Despite his misgivings, Griffith-Jones agreed to draft new legislation that sanctioned beatings, as long as the abuse was kept secret. “If we are going to sin,” he wrote, “we must sin quietly.”

When the claimants gave evidence at the high court in London last year, Wambugu Wa Nyingi told how he was detained on Christmas Eve 1952 and held for nine years, much of the time in manacles. He was beaten unconscious during a particularly notorious massacre at a camp at Hola in which 11 men died.

“I feel I was robbed of my youth and that I did not get to do the things I should have done as a young man,” he said. “There is a saying in Kikuyu that old age lives off the years of youth, but I have nothing to live off because my youth was taken from me.”

Faced with the secret archive evidence and the expert witnesses, government lawyers conceded that the allegations made by Nyingi and the other claimants were true, but continued to oppose their attempt to bring their case, arguing that too much time had elapsed for there to be a fair trial.

That was rejected by the high court last October, with the judge ruling that a fair trial remained possible. “The documentation is voluminous,” he said. “And the governments and military commanders seem to have been meticulous record keepers.”

The FCO announced that it would appeal against a judgment that had “potentially significant and far-reaching legal implications”, and a hearing was due to be held later this month. The government also faced considerable international political pressure, with the United Nations’ special rapporteur on torture, Juan Méndez, calling publicly on the government to “provide full redress to the victims, including fair and adequate compensation”, and writing privately to David Cameron, along with two former special rapporteurs, to warn that the government’s position was undermining its moral authority across the world.

“In our view the response of the British government to vulnerable and elderly victims of (acknowledged) British torture is shameful,” they wrote.

Last month the FCO told the claimants’ lawyers, Leigh Day, that it wished to adjourn the appeal and start negotiating a settlement.

In Nairobi, the Kenya Human Rights Commission compiled a list of around 50,000 people whose claims to be Mau Mau veterans were confirmed by a government committee. This list has since been divided into five categories. George Morare, senior programme officer with the commission, said that any compensation agreed would be paid only to members of one category: “Those who can show they suffered personal injury and grievous bodily harm, such as castration or rape.”Tom Mboya, a former political adviser to the British high commission in Nairobi who now runs the Kenyan civil rights group Inuka, said: “Symbolically, a payout by the British government might provide further validation for the younger generation of the role the Mau Mau played in the struggle for independence in this country. Recent struggles often obstruct our ability to look at how far we have come as a country, and indeed, where we have come from. It is critically important that younger Kenyans understand this history.”

Dan Leader, a partner with Leigh Day, said: “The parties are currently exploring the possibility of settling the claims brought by our clients. Clearly, given the ongoing negotiations, we can’t comment further.”

The Foreign Office also said that it would be “inappropriate” to discuss the talks. In a prepared statement, however, it added: “We believe there should be a debate about the past. It is an enduring feature of our democracy that we are willing to learn from our history.

“We understand the pain and grievance felt by those, on all sides, who were involved in the divisive and bloody events of the Emergency period in Kenya. It is right that those who feel they have a case are free to take it to the courts.

“Our relationship with Kenya and its people has moved on and is characterised by close co-operation and partnership, building on the many positives from our shared history.”

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by David Smith in Mbabane

Published April 29, 2013 in The Guardian

Waterford school, Swaziland, in 1967. Eighty-six nationalities have studied at the institution since its launch in 1963

Russell Palmer, a journalist from South Africa, described it as like landing on another planet, a feeling of having suddenly arrived in an environment so different from what he has known that there is overwhelming bewilderment. The place was Waterford school, just 14 miles across the border in Swaziland, but a brave new world in its attitude to race.

The first multiracial school in southern Africa was born in direct opposition to the apartheid regime, which branded it “sick” and “unnatural”, and became a haven for the children of struggle leaders such as Nelson Mandela, Walter Sisulu and Desmond Tutu. On Saturday it celebrated its 50th anniversary with colourful parades, performances and reflections on its courageous role in the continent’s history.

“We were here during the era of apartheid and this school was an absolute beacon of what was to come,” former student Amanda West, a last-minute replacement for Tutu as guest speaker after he withdrew due to illness, told a gathering of alumni, donors and teachers past and present. “As a student population we were wildly involved in the politics … This is an astounding place.”

Eighty-six nationalities have studied there over the years and most were represented in a sports field parade featuring students in national dress and speaking national languages. Although it ran the gamut from Angola to Zimbabwe, the biggest cheer was reserved for the Swazi delegation.

Then came a series of cultural performances including ballroom, hip-hip and traditional Swazi dancing along with martial artists chopping a plank of wood and a finale symbolising how Waterford rose like a phoenix from the ashes of school closures in South Africa. Students ran food stalls selling everything from Mozambican prawns to American chocolate chip cookies and staged a debate on African leadership in the school hall.

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