Gikuyu (Kikuyu) People of Kenya (African Studies)

Introduction

As with other peoples in Africa, the Gikuyu—also spelled Kikuyu—comprise people of different origins. The 10 million Gikuyu (22 percent of the Kenyan population) live mainly in central Kenya, Rift Valley, as well as in Nairobi. They belong to a northeastern Bantu-speaking group. They are believed to have belonged to a long-term movement of Bantu-speakers who migrated from Central Africa or Tanzania in precolonial times. Between the 15th and 18th centuries, Gikuyu—a highly heterogeneous population—reached their current settlement, which stretches from Nairobi in the south to the northern slopes of Mount Kenya, east of the Nyandarua Range (Aberdare). During British colonization (1898–1963), British immigrants took over land cultivated by Gikuyu people for European settlements and forest reserves in areas that soon became known as the White Highlands (mainly the Nairobi area, the Central Rift Valley, and Laikipia Plateau). At that time, Gikuyu subsistence was based on crops (millet, beans, potatoes, and maize) and animal husbandry (cattle and small ruminants). Cattle were necessary for paying bride-price, needed to marry and beget children, and were thus endowed with enormous symbolic significance. Gikuyu maintained strong relations, including economic exchange and intermarriages, not only between their own nine clans but also with Maasai’s sections of the Rift Valley, as well as with the Meru people of the north of Mount Kenya and the Embu and Mbeere people to the south. From the 1920s onward, the Gikuyu started to convert to Christianity and attend missionary schools. Some of them also became small entrepreneurs who spearheaded the economic development of the Colony of Kenya, while others remained landless and dependents of wealthier landlords. The Gikuyu’s success made them an economic threat to the British settlers, the majority of whom were themselves struggling farmers. Gikuyu are considered to be the first indigenous population to mobilize using colonial-introduced forms such as voluntary associations and independent schools and churches, which they did as a means to challenge British hegemony. The Mau Mau colonial and civil war (1952–1956) transformed Gikuyu social fabric thoroughly and sealed the process of conversion to Christianity. The tragedy of the war paved the way for independence under the leadership of a Gikuyu president, Jomo Kenyatta (1963–1978). After Kenyatta’s death, Daniel arap Moi, a Kalenjin, succeeded the nation’s founding father, putting an end to Gikuyu elite socioeconomic and political privileges until his forced retirement in 2002. Mwai Kibaki, Moi’s former vice president, won the elections and brought power back to the hands of the Gikuyu. His two terms in office were tarnished by corruption scandals—not unusual in Kenya—and ethnic clashes, which claimed more than a thousand deaths during the aftermath of the contested 2007 elections, narrowly won by Kibaki. Political power remained in Gikuyu hands when Uhuru Kenyatta, son of the first president, won the 2013 elections in the first round. People known as Gikuyu remain a heterogeneous population, divided by region, class, religion, and more. Among well-known Gikuyu are the late Wangari Maathai, Noble Peace Prize recipient, and writers Koigi wa Wamwere and Ngugi wa Thiongo.

General Overviews

Archaeology, linguistics, and oral traditions teach us that Gikuyuland was a complex theater of language and peoples. Based on oral and written sources, Leakey 1977 and Muriuki 1974 believe that Gikuyu migrants arrived in central Kenya in the 16th century and intermarried with local hunter-gatherer groups of Okiek or Ndorobo to acquire land. For Gikuyu, the only secure way to gain property was to obtain land rights through marriage and to cut down trees to transform the forest into farmland, on which they cultivated millet and finger millet. As new edible plants—maize, beans, and potatoes from the Americas—reached the area Gikuyu incorporated them, and they are now considered “traditional” foods. Milk and meat from cows, sheep, and goats complemented their diet and were often accompanied by wild vegetables and fruits gathered by the women in the forest. Gikuyu also brewed honey beer (mûratina), drunk mainly by the men during their meetings or offered as a way of welcoming visitors. Precolonial Gikuyu achieved a mixed economy, where foraging for honey or wild fruits and vegetables, as well as rearing livestock, played important roles. The Gikuyu were a relatively egalitarian, but at the same time strongly hierarchical society, where “big men” (politicians) attracted poor clients to till their land and herd their animals. Gikuyu agriculture is often contrasted with their pastoralist neighbors, the Maasai, with whom they forged changing alliances including intermarriage. Such alliances even led to joint raids against other neighbors. Central Kenya did not remain isolated from the rest of the world, however, and both Gikuyu and Maasai encountered Arab—or Swahili—caravans and European explorers and adventurers during the late 1800s.

Leakey, L. S. B. The Southern Kikuyu before 1903. London, New York, and San Francisco: Academic Press, 1977.
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In spite of Leakey’s conservative approach to Gikuyu politics, this ethnography offers an accurate and comprehensive study of precolonial Gikuyu society.
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Lonsdale, John. “The Moral Economy of Mau Mau: Wealth, Poverty, and Civic Virtue in Kikuyu Political Thought.” In Unhappy Valley: Conflict in Kenya and Africa; Violence and Ethnicity. Edited by Bruce Berman and John Lonsdale, 315–504. London: James Currey, 1992.
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The author highlights the local—as well as national—fabric of Gikuyu ethnicity, which oscillates between a contested moral ethnicity and fierce political tribalism.
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Muriuki, Godfrey. A History of the Kikuyu 1500–1900. Nairobi, Oxford, and New York: Oxford University Press, 1974.
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The first scientific history of the Gikuyu people. Even if its style and some of its interpretation has suffered from the passing of time, it is still considered as an important contribution to the history of central Kenya.
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Traditional Gikuyu Life Course

From birth to death, rites of passage governed Gikuyu lives, as Droz 1999 and Peatrik 1999 underline. The birth of a first child heralded the adult status of the child’s parents, ending the first cycle of life punctuated by rituals marking birth, second birth, circumcision, and marriage. The new adult couple then started climbing the ladder of the several councils of elders. Men, who were leaving the ranks of young warriors, as well as women embarked on their individual paths of self-accomplishment in the hope of ending their life with a burial ceremony, as funerals were an indication of one’s ultimate status. Only people who reached old age—especially if they had met certain recognized moral qualities—received a status called ahomori, which granted them the honor of being buried near their family homestead (see Gikuyu Rites of Passage). Young people were organized into age sets, determined by their time of circumcision. Within each age set, there was a hierarchy based on the prestige of one’s extended family and lineage, as well as one’s personal qualities (e.g., bravery in a raid, dedication to till the land, stoicism when facing blows dealt by fate). Lonsdale 1992 (cited under General Overviews) shows how property reinforced this hierarchy, and how wealthy men could, thanks to their generosity, attract clients to convert forests into cultivated plots.

Droz, Yvan. Migrations Kikuyus: Des pratiques sociales à l’imaginaire: Ethos, réalisation de soi et millénarisme. Neuchâtel, France: Institut d’ethnologie, 1999.
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A comprehensive study of Kikuyu people that presents a synthesis of historical and anthropological works, as well as an in-depth ethnography of late-20th-century Gikuyu migration patterns.
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Peatrik, Anne-Marie. La vie à pas contés: Génération, âge et société dans les hautes terres du Kénya (Meru Tigania-Igembe). Paris: Société d’Ethnologie, 1999.
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An in-depth ethnography of the Meru people covering every aspect of daily life and social organization. A fascinating study of the life of men and women east of Mount Kenya before colonization, as well as the changes that have occurred since this era. The author underlines the importance of the age system.
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History

Speaking of “Gikuyu” implicitly means a naturalization of ethnicity in a group of people sharing an identity imagined as common “blood.” Thus, history is crucial to show the lability of ethnic identities and the strategic—or political—use of myths and rites. The Kikuyu “tribe” was co-invented by the British colonizers and the local “big men” or Gikuyu politicians. The political and identity uses of the myth of origin are examined in order to imagine a common ancestry. The 20th-century history of central Kenya is explored to show the colonial impact on Gikuyu, and how the Mau Mau War and Gikuyu political domination in independent Kenya cemented Gikuyu ethnicity.

The Invention of the Gikuyu

Before colonial times, the Gikuyu did not exist as a “tribe.” Rather, as Droz 1998 and Peterson 2004 show, the notion of a shared ethnic identity was forged gradually, through dialogue between Gikuyu politicians and leaders looking for an imagined community broader than immediate lineages and clans and the British colonial administration, as inspired by evolutionary theory and “divide and rule” politics to control local populations. At that time, ways of life were considered the most important feature of an “ethnic” identity. As Routledge and Routledge 1910 notes, a Gikuyu who was more inclined to hunt than till the land was categorized as “Ndorobo” (a hunter-gatherer “ethnic” group), while those who preferred to herd cattle became “Maasai.” As Lonsdale 1992 (cited under General Overviews) convincingly describes, collective moral ethnicity was shared by the groups living around Mount Kenya, especially the ones classified as Gikuyu, Embu, and Meru. Moreover, the colonial administration used the drawing of territorial boundaries and the appointments of chiefs as a means to forge tribal identities. Jomo Kenyatta (Kenyatta 1960) and Louis Leakey played a cardinal role in the process of inventing the Gikuyu during the colonial period and throughout the Emergency (1952–1956) that was declared in Kenya to crush the Mau Mau. Local African politicians soon exploited this shared identity, with the aim of establishing a constituency large enough to dominate national affairs. After independence, Kenyan politics revolved around the ethnic affiliation of politicians, and a group of mainly Gikuyu, Embu, and Meru created the GEMA (Gikuyu, Embu, and Meru Association); it bid to defend the “House of Mumbi” (the descendants of the mythic daughters of Gikuyu and Muumbi; see Myth of Origin: Gikuyu na Muumbi) and concentrate national power in their hands. In so doing, GEMA consolidated the community of “The Gikuyu” and transformed it into an “imagined community.” The 20th-century historical process that created the Gikuyu “tribe”—as well as others, like the Kalenjin—slowly crystallized and led to the eruption of ethnic clashes that have tarnished several Kenyan national elections since 1992.

Berman, Bruce, and John Lonsdale, eds. Unhappy Valley, Conflict in Kenya and Africa. London: James Currey, 1992.
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A brilliant comprehensive study of the social history of central Kenya and the Gikuyu people. The collection of articles describes the formation of the colonial state and the “invention” of the Gikuyu through a dialogue between moral ethnicity and political tribalism.
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Droz, Yvan. “Genèse de l’‘ethnie’: Le cas des Kikuyus du Kenya central.” Canadian Journal of African Studies/Revue Canadienne d’études Africaines 32.3 (1998): 253–275.
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This article describes the “invention” of the Gikuyu “tribe.”
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Kenyatta, Jomo. Facing Mount Kenya: The Traditional Life of the Gikuyu. London, Ibadan, Nairobi, and Lusaka: Heinemann, 1960.
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The famous book by the first Gikuyu president of Kenya written under the auspices of Bronislaw Malinowski. It offers a complementary view to Leakey’s comprehensive ethnography.
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Peterson, Derek R. Creative Writing: Translation, Bookkeeping, and the Work of Imagination in Colonial Kenya. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 2004.
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A revolutionary book that shows how the missionaries’ creation of the Gikuyu language and its uses by the mission boys shaped the local fabric of Gikuyu ethnicity.
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Routledge, W. S., and K. Routledge. With a Prehistoric People: The Akikuyu of British East Africa. London: Edward Arnold, 1910.
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One of the first ethnographies of the northern Gikuyu people; it offers an alternative view to Leakey’s later one on the southern Gikuyu.
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Myth of Origin: Gikuyu na Muumbi

Today, most Gikuyus accept the myth of Gikuyu na Muumbi as the authentic founding story of the Gikuyu people. However, the first Europeans–among them the Routledges (Routledge and Routledge 1910) and Tate (Tate 1910)–who visited Gikuyuland collected several myths of origin, which underlines how local groups around Mount Kenya disagreed about their collective origin and were less interested than today in considering ethnicity as a primary identity marker. For example, one such narrative describes the birth of three sons and three daughters from a man called Mbere. These offspring become the progenitors of the Maasai, Kamba, and Gikuyu people. However, the canonical myth related by Leakey 1977, Kenyatta 1960, Muriuki 1974, and Neckebrouck 1978 recalls that a man—Gikuyu—and a woman—Muumbi—begot nine daughters, who gave their names to the nine Gikuyu clans. The girls felt lonely, and God (Ngai) sent them nine men who married them. All Gikuyu are believed to originate from these unions. In the same version of the myth, God orders Gikuyu to climb up to the summit of Mount Kenya, where God explains that the well-watered land of the fig trees stretching in ranges below will belong to him and his descendants. An all-embracing version of the myth paves the way for the Kikuyu “ethnic” claims to parts of the Rift Valley and supposedly legitimates them. In fact, myths are often exploited for contemporary political gains, endorsing political tribalism. See Independence and the Kenya of Kenyatta and Gikuyu Politics from the Moi Era to the Present. Nonetheless, Gikuyu people are subdivided into clans numbering from nine to fourteen.

Kenyatta, Jomo. Facing Mount Kenya: The Traditional Life of the Gikuyu. London, Ibadan, Nairobi, and Lusaka: Heinemann, 1960.
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The founding father of independent Kenya wrote its Gikuyu ethnography in 1938 to offer an alternative voice to English anthropologists. It recalls the “traditional” myth of origin.
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Leakey, L. S. B. The Southern Kikuyu before 1903. London, New York, and San Francisco: Academic Press, 1977.
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A rather short presentation of Gikuyu na Muumbi, as if this story was not that important to the eyes of 1930s Gikuyu.
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Muriuki, Godfrey. A History of the Kikuyu 1500–1900. Nairobi, Oxford, and New York: Oxford University Press, 1974.
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Muriuki offers an alternative Gikuyu myth of origin and synthesizes the oral testimonies he collected concerning 19th-century Gikuyu history.
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Neckebrouck, Valeer. Le onzième commandement: Étiologie d’une église indépendante au pied du mont Kenya. Immensee, Switzerland: Nouvelle revue de science missionnaire, 1978.
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A comprehensive ethnography of Gikuyu in the 1970s, associated with a historical study based on local oral “tradition.”
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Routledge, W. S., and K. Routledge. With a Prehistoric People: The Akikuyu of British East Africa. London: Edward Arnold, 1910.
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“Explorers” who lived among the Gikuyu at the beginning of the 20th century offer several interesting myths of origin collected among the northern Gikuyu (Nyeri area).
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Tate, H. R. “The Native Law of the Southern Gikuyu of British East Africa.” Journal of the Royal African Society 9.35 (1910): 233–254.
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This article describes an alternative version of the Gikuyu myth of origin.
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Colonial Times in Gikuyuland

According to Berman 1990, the intention of the British government and colonial administration in the first decades of the 20th century was for Kenya to host a white population and become a settlers’ colony, similar to Rhodesia and South Africa. Central Kenya, Kershaw 1997 and Ambler 1988 remind us, was an area severely depopulated by the late-19th-century plagues, and the administration grabbed huge tracts of agricultural and forest land, which was considered from then on as Crown land, according to Okoth-Ogendo 1991. This land was granted to white settlers in an attempt to boost the economy of the costly colony. At the same time, it confined the local population to designated “tribal land” known as the Gikuyu Reserve (established in 1915). This move created much resentment among the Gikuyu and provoked political unrest, which led to the nominating of an ad hoc land commission headed by Morris Carter, as Sorrenson 1967 describes. Sorrenson shows that after World War I, settlement schemes were planned to attract British settlers, and the impoverished British government rewarded its retired officers with land in Central Kenya instead of military pensions. The slow trickle of European immigration created a demand for laborers, and Gikuyu people were attracted to the White Highlands farms to work. There they lived as squatters, enjoying no right of land ownership but still able to cultivate plots for their own benefit in exchange for work at the settlers’ farms. Until World War II, Kikuyu squatters’ economic situation appeared relatively bright, as they discovered in the White Highlands a new frontier, where they could clear new “wild” areas and put them to their own use. Therefore, Lonsdale 1992 (cited under the Mau Mau War) explains, they could build their wealth by the sweat of their brow, tilling the land and attracting dependents in a bid to reach the status of accomplished men, as Gikuyu moral ethnicity prescribes. However, by 1937, the colonial administration enacted new ordinances to curb the squatters’ economic dynamism, which threatened the development of the white farms. This “second colonial occupation” sent a host of Gikuyu squatters back to their “tribal” reserve. However, the growth of the Gikuyu population meant that the Gikuyu Reserve became severely overpopulated. This strained situation provoked political unrest, and led to the Mau Mau war (1952–1956).

Ambler, Charles. Kenyan Communities in the Age of Imperialism: The Central Region in the Late Nineteenth Century. New Haven, CT, and London: Yale University Press, 1988.
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An inspiring historical panorama of central Kenya before colonial times. Ambler describes the plagues that hit Gikuyu communities in the late 19th century.
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Berman, Bruce. Control and Crisis in Colonial Kenya: The Dialectic of Domination. Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 1990.
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A detailed study of the political history of 20th-century Kenya, with a special emphasis on the colonial administration.
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Berman, Bruce, and John Lonsdale. Unhappy Valley: Conflict in Kenya and Africa. London: James Currey, 1992.
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John Lonsdale presents a very detailed history of the Gikuyu during colonial time, and insists on the “second colonial occupation” as one root of the Mau Mau war.
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Castro, Alfonso Peter. Facing Kirinyaga: A Social History of Forest Commons in Southern Mount Kenya. London: Intermediate Technology Publications & World Association, 1995.
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This book offers an insightful view of the “traditional” uses of forest resources. It describes the struggle over forest resources, including sacred groves, local communal forests, and the Mount Kenya forest, from the colonial era onward.
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Kershaw, Greta. Mau Mau from Below. Oxford: James Currey, 1997.
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The author collected oral testimonies to reconstruct the history of Gikuyu settlements in Kiambu, and the heavy impact of the Great Famine, which led to the abandonment of numerous areas of South Kiambu. This eased the European settlement around Nairobi in the 1900s.
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Okoth-Ogendo, H. W. O. Tenants of the Crown: Evolution of Agrarian Law and Institutions in Kenya. Nairobi: African Centre for Technology Studies, 1991.
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A careful study on land tenure in Kenya, with a special emphasis on the—mainly Gikuyu—squatters.
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Peterson, Derek R. Creative Writing: Translation, Bookkeeping, and the Work of Imagination in Colonial Kenya. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 2004.
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A revolutionary work that shows how the missionaries’ creation of the Gikuyu language and its uses by the mission boys shaped the local fabric of Gikuyu ethnicity.
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Sorrenson, M. P. K. Land Reform in the Kikuyu Country. Nairobi, Oxford, and New York: Oxford University Press, 1967.
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The author presents a comprehensive history of the land question in Kenya. An insightful study on the Morris Carter land commission.
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The Mau Mau War

Mau Mau: this sole word sent shivers of fear and fantasies of African primitiveness among the British population, and especially among the Kenyan colonial administration and the settlers, fed by the propaganda campaign waged by the British administration and army. After World War II, the Gikuyu soldiers who fought for the king’s African Rifles in Northern Africa and Burma went back to a changed Kenya. The promises of a better future for the heroes who risked their lives against fascism turned out to be deceptive and hollow. Indeed, the second colonial occupation had seriously worsened livelihood conditions in the Reserve and among Gikuyu squatters in the White Highlands. The government was slow to reward the demobilized Gikuyu soldiers, most of whom were resigned to living in the slums of Nairobi. Moreover, the colonial administration resettlement schemes only slightly alleviated the overcrowded Kikuyu Reserve. Furedi 1989 describes how the expelled squatters of the White Highlands who “benefited” from the schemes often found themselves stuck in the poor land of Olenguruone, near Nakuru. This fraught socioeconomic situation evolved rapidly toward political and civil unrest that led to the upsurge of a civil and anticolonial war. Historians usually date the beginning of the Mau Mau war to the Kenyan administration declaration of a state of emergency on the 20th of October 1952 (“the Emergency”), announced after the assassination of Chief Waruhiu. The war was mainly fought between Gikuyu people—Mau Mau fighters, loyalists, and civilians. The war claimed tens of thousands of Kenyan lives, mainly among the Gikuyu, whereas less than a hundred white people died. The debate on the Mau Mau war was—and still is—very lively and is intimately linked to the creation of the Kenyan nation: was it a Gikuyu civil war or a war of liberation against the British oppressor? This debate has been fueled by the publication of numerous autobiographies. Dozens of books and autobiographies of “freedom fighters” have been written on the Mau Mau war. Kanogo 1987 highlights its historical origins and the role played by women. Maloba 1993 incriminates the counter-insurrection, or the Mau Mau “crimes,”while Elkins 2005 denounces the “rehabilitation pipeline” campaign. Branch 2009 studies the loyalists’ struggle, and Anderson 2005 covers the trials of the vanquished. Two works deserve special recognition: John Lonsdale’s chapter in Unhappy Valley (Lonsdale 1992), which describes the causes of the war and the moral ethnicity of the Gikuyu, be they Mau Mau or loyalists, and Greet Kershaw’s thorough study of a local Gikuyu community at the time of the Emergency (Kershaw 1997).

Anderson, David M. Histories of the Hanged: Britain’s Dirty War in Kenya and the End of Empire. New York: W. W. Norton, 2005.
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A brilliant study of the war through the lens of the documents left by the Mau Mau prisoners and the colonial administration.
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Atieno Odhiambo, E. S., and John Lonsdale, eds. Mau Mau and Nationhood. Oxford: James Currey, 2003.
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A collection of articles on the Mau Mau that gives a comprehensive view of the period from an interdisciplinary perspective.
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Branch, Daniel. Defeating Mau Mau, Creating Kenya: Counterinsurgency, Civil War, and Decolonization, African studies. Cambridge, UK, and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009.
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An innovative microsociological study dwelling on the Gikuyu Loyalists’ view of the Mau Mau war.
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Elkins, Caroline. Imperial Reckoning: The Untold Story of Britain’s Gulag in Kenya. New York: Henry Holt, 2005.
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Caroline Elkins’s controversial study unveils the British counterinsurgency campaign through a collection of life histories and oral testimonies. She describes the daily life in the “villages,” the camps where the whole Gikuyu population was detained.
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Furedi, Frank. The Mau Mau War in Perspective. London: James Currey, 1989.
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An accurate study of the Gikuyu squatters and the role they played in the Mau Mau war and its aftermath.
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Kanogo, Tabitha. Squatters and the Roots of Mau Mau 1905–63. London: James Currey, 1987.
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One of the first studies on the squatters in the Mau Mau war, with special attention to the role of the women. Kanogo conducted oral interviews in Gikuyu and studied the historical files of the British administration.
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Kershaw, Greta. Mau Mau from Below. London: James Currey, 1997.
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An insightful and precise anthropological study of a Gikuyu community during the Mau Mau. The author conducted her fieldwork at the end of the Emergency and during the following year.
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Lonsdale, John. “The Moral Economy of Mau Mau: Wealth, Poverty, and Civic Virtue in Kikuyu Political Thought.” In Unhappy Valley: Conflict in Kenya and Africa: Violence and Ethnicity. Edited by Bruce Berman and John Lonsdale, 315–504. London: James Currey, 1992.
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A comprehensive study of the colonial occupation in central Kenya and how it opposed the Gikuyu moral ethnicity and stopped Gikuyu from becoming accomplished men. Lonsdale’s detailed history highlights the profound divide in Gikuyu society between loyalists and Mau Mau.
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Maloba, Wunyabari O. Mau Mau and Kenya; An Analysis of a Peasant Revolt. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993.
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One of the first studies describing the “pipeline” system of the counterinsurgency campaign and the role played by missionaries in the so-called rehabilitation process of Mau Mau fighters.
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Independence and the Kenya of Kenyatta

Gikuyu politicians played a significant role during the fight for independence. Jomo Kenyatta was arrested and held in the isolated northern prison of Lokitchokio, before the British government decided to release him as a way of seeking a peaceful transition to independence. Kenyatta—a Gikuyu and the eventual first president of the Republic of Kenya—first had to alleviate the British settlers’ fears regarding possible Mau Mau retaliation. The British were anxious about the prospect of their farms being nationalized and dreaded their expulsion from the country. Kenyatta sought compromise within the Gikuyu society, which was deeply divided between former Mau Mau supporters and loyalists. The latter established themselves as the definite winners of the civil war. Bourmaud 1988 and Hornsby 2012 discuss Kenyatta’s decision to nominate Daniel arap Moi as vice president. Moi was a Tugen—one of the seven ethnic groups that were to form the Kalenjin tribe—and his appointment was intended to assuage fears of a Gikuyu hegemony over independent Kenya. Nevertheless, Kenyatta’s presidency strongly favored Gikuyu people; he not only by hired them directly to join the formal state apparatus, but also encouraged them to establish land-buying companies with the aim of acquiring the departing settlers’ farms in the Rift Valley.

Bourmaud, Daniel. Histoire politique du Kenya: Etat et pouvoir local. Paris: Karthala, 1988.
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A clear and comprehensive political history of Kenya up to the Moi regime. Bourmaud presents an insightful analysis of Kenyan post-independence politics.
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Branch, Daniel. Kenya: Between Hope and Despair, 1963–2011. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2011.
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A very detailed political history of indpendent Kenya. It presents new insights on the numerous corruption scandals and political assassinations that mark the recent history of Kenya. The last chapters give a comprehensive description of Moi’s last year in power (the Goldenberg scandals), the hope raised by the election of Kibaki, and the subsequent despair provoked by the violence stirred up by the August 2007 elections.
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Haugerud, Angelique. The Culture of Politics in Modern Kenya. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1995.
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The author studied the use of political rallies (barazas) in the day-to-day life of central Kenya from the 1980s up to the multiparty era. She applies a multilevel analysis of Kenyan political life and describes the clientelistic fabric of politics.
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Hornsby, Charles. Kenya: A History since Independence. London: I. B. Tauris, 2012.
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An incredibly comprehensive history of independent Kenya up to now. One thousand pages that “summarize” the political history of the country.
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Sabar, Galia. Church, State and Society in Kenya: From Mediation to Opposition, 1963–1993. London and Portland, OR: Frank Cass, 2002.
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A study on the role of churches in Kenyan political history from independance up to the multiparty era.
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Gikuyu Politics from the Moi Era to the Present

After the death of the first president in 1978, Daniel arap Moi took over the presidency, as the Kenyan Constitution dictated. Moi faced fierce opposition from Gikuyu politicians and entrepreneurs operating under the banner of GEMA (Gikuyu, Embu, and Meru Association). The 1982 attempted coup against Moi ended the post-independence Gikuyu hegemony over the country, at least for some years. In 1992, the first “ethnic clashes,” whose victims were mainly the Gikuyu and Luo of the Rift Valley, shook Kenya; they were followed by more clashes in 1997. The two rounds of violence claimed the lives of several thousands and caused hundreds of thousands of farmers to be displaced. Rutten, et al. 2001 explains how the predominantly Kalenjin government fomented these clashes to retain the presidency and “cleanse” the Rift Valley from the Kikuyu and Luo, transforming it into a patchwork of “pure” monoethnic constituencies. In 2002, Kikuyu leader Mwai Kibaki won the presidential election and brought the presidency back to the “house of Muumbi” after the failed attempts of 1992 and 1997 (Maupeu, et al. 2005). In spite of a presidency tainted by the corruption affairs detailed by Wrong 2009, Kibaki won a second term in office in contested elections held in December 2007. These elections were followed by violent ethnic clashes between Kibaki’s supporters and the followers of Raila Odinga, a Luo. These clashes left more than one thousand dead and tens of thousands of displaced persons (Branch, et al. 2007). In 2013, after two terms in office, Kibaki was constitutionally required to step down. Cheeseman, et al. 2014 details how Jomo Kenyatta’s son Uhuru Kenyatta, who was then charged by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for his alleged role in the 2007 ethnic clashes, won a surprise victory in the first round and retained a Gikuyu presidency (see also Thibon and Maupeu 2013).

Branch, Daniel, Nic Cheeseman, and Leigh Gardner, eds. Our Turn to Eat: Politics in Kenya since 1950. Afrikanische Studien 34. Münster, Germany: Lit, 2007.
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A collection of articles revisiting Kenya’s post-independence history from an interdisciplinary perspective.
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Cheeseman, Nic, Gabrielle Lynch, and Justin Willis, eds. Special Issue: Kenya’s 2013 Elections: The Triumph of Democracy? Journal of Eastern African Studies 8.1 (2014).
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A detailed analysis of the 2013 election of Uhuru Kenyatta in spite of the threats of the ICC trial and the international pressure on Kenya.
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Kagwanja, Peter, and Roger Southall, eds. Kenya’s Uncertain Democracy. The Electoral Crisis of 2008. London: Routledge, 2009.
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A special issue of the Journal of Contemporary African Studies on the 2008 Kenyan elections with a critical view on the use of ethnicity for political “gains.”
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Maupeu, Hervé, Katumanga Musambayi, and Winnie Mitullah, eds. The Moi Succession: Elections 2002. Nairobi: Transafrica Press, 2005.
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An interdisciplinary analysis of the 2002 Kenyan elections that saw the end of the Moi era.
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Rutten, Marcel, Alamin Mazrui, and François Grignon, eds. Out for the Count, the 1997 General Elections and Prospects for Democracy in Kenya. Kampala: Fountain Publishers, 2001.
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A collection of papers presenting the defeat of the opposition in the 1997 elections.
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Thibon, Christian, and Hervé Maupeu, eds. Special Issue: Élections de 2013 au Kenya: Les bégaiements de l’histoire politique kényane. Afrique Contemporaine 3. 247 (2013).
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A special issue of Afrique Contemporaine on the 2013 Kenyan election with a focus on the new Gikuyu-Kalenjin alliance.
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Wrong, Michela. It’s Our Time to Eat: The Story of a Kenyan Whisleblower. London: Fourth Estate, 2009.
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A fictionalized history of the head of the anti-corruption unit during of the reign of Mwai Kibaki. Wrong paints the slow fall of Kibaki’s government in the hands of the corrupt Mount Kenya mafia.
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The Anthropology of the Gikuyu People

Gikuyu ethnography began early in the 20th century, with the famous work of Jomo Kenyatta, first printed in 1938 (Kenyatta 1960), and Louis Leakey’s then-unpublished comprehensive ethnographic research (Leakey 1977). Leakey also published essays on Gikuyu clitoridectomy and specific aspects of ancient Gikuyu society. Before World War II, both authors competed for the authority to speak on behalf of “traditional” Gikuyu society. Another important early text was that of Prins (Prins 1953), whose intriguing doctoral thesis was inspired by interviews with Lambert, a colonial officer, and Koinange, the son of an important chief in southern Gikuyuland. Based on these three early structuro-functionalist publications, one may reconstruct—or reinvent—precolonial Gikuyu society. During colonial times, ethnographers and colonial officers were of the opinion that Gikuyu, Embu, Mbeere, and Meru people shared most of their social structures and constituted, in spite of their differences, a single “tribe.” In actuality these ethnic groups considered themselves as separate units, even if their social organization was inspired by the same social logic—similar rites of passage, a moiety principle, and an identical kinship system. They also shared a Bantu ethos with regard to the accomplished (wo)man, notwithstanding differences in the precise path toward social accomplishment. In the second half of the 20th century, most researchers focused on the Mau Mau war and its roots in the colonial era (see Colonial Times in Gikuyuland and the Mau Mau War). There were unpublished American PhD theses on Nyeri Town or Gikuyu women, but Valeer Neckebrouck (Neckebrouck 1978) is the only ethnographer (also theologian) to conduct extensive fieldwork and publish a comprehensive work on the Gikuyu people in the 1970s. Glazier 1985 and Davison 1989 are insightful ethnographies on the Mbeere and Kikuyu women. The end of the 20th century saw a revival in the ethnographies of central Kenya with Peatrik 1999 and Droz 1999, theses based on extensive fieldwork among the Meru or the Gikuyu. Important studies in social history by historians, rather than anthropologists, dwell on the Gikuyus’ conversion to Christianity and their lives in mission stations and on post-independence Kenyan politics (see Independence and the Kenya of Kenyatta and Religion).

Cagnolo, C. The Agikuyu: Their Customs, Traditions and Folklore. Torino: Instituto Missioni Consolata, 1933.
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The first comprehensive ethnography of the northern Gikuyu, written by a Catholic priest.
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Davison, Jean. Voices from Mutira: Lives of Rural Gikuyu Women. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1989.
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Six life histories collected by Jean Davison offer a beautiful and sensitive insider perspective on the daily life of Gikuyu women in the 20th century.
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Droz, Yvan. Migrations Gikuyus: Des pratiques sociales à l’imaginaire: Ethos, réalisation de soi et millénarisme. Neuchâtel, France: Institut d’ethnologie, 1999.
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The author presents a comprehensive anthropological study of the ethos of the accomplished men—the moral ethnicity—of late-20th-century Gikuyu.
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Glazier, Jack. Land and the Uses of Tradition among the Mbeere of Kenya. Lanhan, MD, and London: University Press of America, 1985.
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One of the sole comprehensive studies describing the life of the Mbeere and the way they manipulate their traditions, as if they reinvent them constantly.
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Kenyatta, Jomo. Facing Mount Kenya: The Traditional Life of the Gikuyu. London, Ibadan, Nairobi, and Lusaka: Heinemann, 1960.
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A romantic ethnography of the “traditional” Gikuyu people seen by the young Kenyatta and written under the auspices of Bronislaw Malinowski while Kenyatta was exiled in London.
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Leakey, L. S. B. The Southern Kikuyu before 1903. London, New York, and San Francisco: Academic Press, 1977.
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The main source of information on precolonial Gikuyu is this incredibly detailed ethnography. However, a traditional or dynastic perspective biases this work.
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Neckebrouck, Valeer. Le onzième commandement: Étiologie d’une église indépendante au pied du mont Kenya. Immensee, Switzerland: Nouvelle revue de science missionnaire, 1978.
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Apart from the work of Kershaw, this book presents the only comprehensive ethnography of 1970s Gikuyu people.
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Peatrik, Anne-Marie. La vie à pas contés: Ggénération, âge et société dans les hautes terres du Kénya (Meru Tigania-Igembe). Nanterre, France: Société d’Ethnologie, 1999.
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Peatrik offers a very detailed ethnography of Meru people, which helps to illustrate the similarities and dissimilarities between Meru and Gikuyu people.
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Prins, Adriaan Hendrik Johan. East African Age-Class Systems: An Inquiry into the Social Order of Galla, Kipsigis, and Kikuyu. Groningen, The Netherlands, and Djakarta: J. B. Wolters, 1953.
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This structuro-functionalist study of precolonial Gikuyu society highlights the crucial role of age systems in East Africa.
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Gikuyu Society

Ancient Gikuyu society was governed by three organizing principles, sustained by the strong Bantu ideology of migrant polities. First, the so-called generation or moiety logic, probably borrowed from the Karimonjong societies of northern Kenya and the south of Uganda and Sudan, meant that societies were organized along generation moieties, with the grandfather belonging to generation A, the father to generation B, the son to generation A, and so on. The ruling generation controlled the ritual life, and the elders presided over the ceremonies of rites of passage while the warrior age group policed the territory (See Gikuyu Rites of Passage). An important ceremony called itwuîka governed the transmission of the ruling power to the next generation. The ritual, which was held every thirty-five years or so (Peatrik 1994 and Peatrik 1995), also cleansed the land of any ceremonial uncleanness, and redistributed some land rights. Second, circumcision ceremonies, practiced by men and women alike, forged age groups’ solidarity. These rituals constituted a strong social bond between male and female youth and permitted them to look for a marriage partner. Moreover, they bonded together the young warriors who were to form military regiments. This military arrangement was possibly inspired by the military effectiveness of the Maasai sections that dominated the 19th-century Rift Valley. See Oxford Bibliographies article in African Studies on Maasai and Maa-Speaking Peoples of East Africa. Third, the Bantu patrilineal lineage formed the basis of social solidarity among extended families. This classic kinship structure governed the egalitarian transmission of land rights among male heirs, as well as the stock of personal names for both men and women within the lineages. The intertwining loyalties encompassed in these three social systems—generations, age class, and kinship—(described in Droz 1999) organized the day-to-day life of Gikuyu people. Today, the Gikuyu generation system has virtually disappeared. It still governs the transmission of personal names within the lineage but has no social influence apart from that. Murray 1974 focuses on the controversies over clitoridectomy, and its prohibition under the Moi regime, which contributed to the fading away of age group solidarity. A transformed expression can be observed in bonds forged between cohorts of school pupils. Kinship family ties are today the main organizing principle of Kikuyu society.

Droz, Yvan. Migrations Kikuyus: Des pratiques sociales à l’imaginaire: Ethos, réalisation de soi et millénarisme. Neuchâtel, France: Institut d’ethnologie, 1999.
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From the sum of anthropological works on Gikuyu people, Droz synthesizes three social logics that structured precolonial Gikuyu society.
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Murray, Jocelyn. “The Kikuyu Female Circumcision Controversy: With Special Reference to the Church Missionary Society’s ‘Sphere of Influence.’” PhD diss., University of California, 1974.
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Murray’s unpublished PhD thesis remains a major historical work on the famous circumcision controversy that shattered colonial Gikuyu society. This event also drove most converts away from missionary churches and into newly founded independent Gikuyu churches.
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Peatrik, Anne-Marie. “Un système composite: L’organisation d’âge et de génération des Kikuyu pré-coloniaux.” Journal des Africanistes 64.1 (1994): 3–36.
DOI: 10.3406/jafr.1994.2390Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
This foundational article unveils the social logic of generations and age-class systems among Gikuyu.
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Peatrik, Anne-Marie. “La règle et le nombre: Les systèmes d’âge et de génération d’Afrique orientale.” L’Homme 134 (1995): 13–49.
DOI: 10.3406/hom.1995.369906Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Peatrik extends her analysis of the generational fabric to East Africa, with a special reference to Meru people.
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Gikuyu Rites of Passage

Rites of passage punctuated the life of any individual in precolonial Gikuyu society. Leakey 1977, following van Gennep’s insightful theory, analyzes the life cycle of Gikuyu rites of passage. The first step was birth, which was followed, around the age of five, by a second-birth ritual, where the biological birth was mimicked, inscribing the young child within the wider Gikuyu community. Male and female circumcision ceremonies (usually performed on those between the ages of sixteen and twenty) constituted the age group and opened the path to marriage and adulthood. The real coming of age started with the wedding ceremonies and the payment of the bride-price by the future husband’s lineage. The spouses were not considered full adults until the birth of their first child, which started the ritual transmission of the personal names of the lineage. Upon rearing children, both father and mother could enter separately into the councils of elders, whose mandate was to settle day-to-day conflicts. For the Gikuyu, after-death body treatment was the ultimate indicator of social achievement. Death rituals ranked men and women according to their deeds. Indeed, the circumstances of death determined the treatment given dead bodies: children and young people were left for scavengers, and their names were forgotten; adults received a similar treatment, but their children made sure to keep their memory alive; burials were the sole privilege of old people who had met all conditions according to the Gikuyu ideal of self-accomplishment. Droz 2011 shows how such funerals constituted an important event, attracting major crowds. Similar rituals mentioned by Lamont 2011 existed among the Meru, who lived north of Mount Kenya. According to Neckebrouck 1978, in the “classic” Gikuyu worldview, prosperity is passed on via land ownership and descendants. Land ownership was a vehicle for starting a family and engaging in agricultural work, as well as a source of social respectability. Clearing forests to create plots of subdued nature and tilling the land by the sweat of one’s brow were prized practices among the Kikuyu. Beyond that, however, one’s own plot could be used as his or her burial place, and being buried on one’s own homestead was a way of touching immortality and being revered as an accomplished person. Indeed, the ownership of a plot was instrumental for constituting a new lineage that would continue to carry one’s name after departure.

Droz, Yvan. “Transformations of Death among the Kikuyu of Kenya: From Hyenas to Tombs.” In Funerals in Africa: Exploration of a Social Phenomenon. Edited by Michael Jindra and Joël Noret, 69–87. New York: Berghahn, 2011.
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This chapter describes the funeral rituals among Gikuyu people, as well as their recent transformations and highlights the hierarchy created by death ceremonies.
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Lamont, Mark. “Decomposing Pollution? Corpses, Burials, and Affliction among the Meru of Central Kenya.” In Funerals in Africa; Explorations of a Social Phenonenon. Edited by Michael Jindra and Joël Noret, 89–108. New York: Berghahn, 2011.
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This article shows how Meru funeral rituals and death ceremonies cleansed the ritual pollution occasioned by the corpses.
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Leakey, L. S. B. The Southern Kikuyu before 1903. London, New York, and San Francisco: Academic Press, 1977.
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Leakey provides a very precise description of the complex funeral ceremonies among precolonial Gikuyu and explains how the thahu, the ritual pollution, was treated to cleanse the living.
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Neckebrouck, Valeer. Le onzième commandement: Étiologie d’une église indépendante au pied du mont Kenya. Immensee, Switzerland: Nouvelle revue de science missionnaire, 1978.
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The author suggests the concept of family phylum to explain the importance Gikuyu people accorded to the revolving of the family names.
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Gikuyu Men and Women

Neckebrouck’s notion of the “triangle of life” (Neckebrouck 1978), according to which the foundations of a good life are closely intertwined, captures well the Gikuyu ethos. Land allocated through the lineage elders was indispensable to obtain small ruminants—sheep and goats—as well as cows. Cattle were necessary, in turn, for the bridewealth payment needed to marry a woman who could till her spouse’s land, beget children, and welcome guests to the homestead. Marriage, in turn, was a condition for obtaining land ownership, because a father would allocate a plot only at the time of his son’s marriage. This indicates that men had access to land mainly through marriage or by clearing pristine forest land. Women reached the peak of their social position at the eventual burial of their husband and, indeed, with their husband buried, women were likely to be bestowed a similar honor. Elders were supposed to show compassion for their neighbors, to redistribute part of their wealth, and to welcome wandering people, whom they granted rights of cultivation, turning them into their clients. These “big men” participated in councils of elders and were expected to live peacefully, marry more wives, and beget plenty of children. Polygyny was held in great esteem, but only the first wife could hope to enjoy the honor of a burial. In order to advance the wealth and fame of the family, the first wife efficiently managed the household to allow her husband to receive acquaintances and members of his age set. For those who failed to respect the conservative, dynastic ethos, other modes of accomplishment were available: the clearing of new virgin territories in the forest of Mount Kenya or Nyandaruha, as well as raiding neighboring communities. Raids were reserved for young circumcised men, who could make up for the absence of land or cattle by military heroism and the material goods that it could provide: women, children, and animals. Abducted women could become future wives without incurring a bride-price; children would gradually be integrated into the warrior’s lineage; and animals could finance a young warrior’s marriage (see Droz 2015 and Peatrik 2013). During colonial times, both men and women found an alternative path in migrating to either the white farms of the Rift Valley or Nairobi and its vicinity, where they could look for a job or develop commercial activities, as Robertson 1997, Thomas 2003, van Stapele 2015 and White 1990 describe.

Brinkman, Inge. Kikuyu Gender Norms and Narratives. Leiden, The Netherlands: CNWS Publications, 1996.
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The text offers a gender perspective on Gikuyu women and their transformations. The author conducted interviews and studied literary resources to present diverse Gikuyu gender norms.
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Droz, Yvan. “Jeunesse et âge adulte en pays kikuyu: Des éthos précoloniaux aux nouveaux mouvements politico-religieux.” Cahiers d’Etudes africaines 55.218 (2015).
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This article describes the precolonial modes of entering adulthood (rites of circumcision, marriage, and the birth of the first child), as well as the traditional Gikuyu ethos of masculinity and femininity. It also discusses how youth today face the Gikuyu local morality.
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Neckebrouck, Valeer. Le onzième commandement: Étiologie d’une église indépendante au pied du mont Kenya. Immensee, Switzerland: Nouvelle revue de science missionnaire, 1978.
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The author conceptualizes the ethos of the accomplished Gikuyu man with the image of a triangle, where land, women, and children are closely intertwined and symbolize the core values of the Gikuyu.
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Peatrik, Anne-Marie. “Tuer pour engendrer les agents d’une masculinité au long cours (Afrique de l’Est).” Cahiers d’Etudes africaines 209–210 (2013): 217–245.
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The author shows how Meru men could become accomplished men. It describes the elements that constitute Meru masculinity and their current expressions.
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Robertson, Claire. Trouble Showed the Way: Women, Men and Trade in the Nairobi Area, 1890–1990. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1997.
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A historical and anthropological study on the role played by trade for the Gikuyu—mainly women—over one century.
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Thomas, Lynn M. Politics of the Womb: Women, Reproduction and the State in Kenya. Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press, 2003.
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The story of the role played by (mainly) Gikuyu women through the 20th century in central Kenya. This book revisits the controversy over clitoridectomy, the role of women during the Mau Mau war, and debates over the affiliation act in postcolonial Kenya.
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van Stapele, N. “Respectable ‘Illegality’: Gangs, Masculinities and Belonging in a Nairobi Ghetto.” PhD thesis, FMG: Amsterdam Institute for Social Science Research (AISSR), 2015.
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A study on the new form of masculinities and the current expressions of rites of passage for Gikuyu men in the slums of Nairobi.
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White, Luise. The Comforts of Home: Prostitution in Colonial Nairobi. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1990.
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226895000.001.0001Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
A fascinating and groundbreaking piece of work that minutely describes the lives of the first Gikuyu women who headed to Nairobi in the 1920s and 1930s.
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Religion

Only a few elements of the ancient Gikuyu religion are accurately known. Gikuyu people believed in Ngai, the god who lived on top of Mount Kenya and who created Gikuyu and Muumbi (see Myth of Origin: Gikuyu na Muumbi). But even if the elders worshiped Ngai at the foot of a fig tree, he was far away and showed little involvement in people’s day-to-day life. The Gikuyu also sacrificed to the spirits of the dead who lived in the underworld. In family shrines maintained within individual homesteads, they sought to pacify the spirits of their ancestors through such practices as libation. One of the most important elements of the Gikuyu religious world was the thahu, ceremonial uncleanness, that affected people when they broke social taboos or touched dead bodies. A particular, complex ritual had to be performed in order to purify the tarnished person. The colonization of central Kenya, explained in Strayer 1978, was accompanied by the missionary work of mainline Christian churches: Anglican, Presbyterian, and Catholic. Sandgren 1989 describes how Evangelical and Pentecostal missionaries also had a limited presence early on. Most of the early Gikuyu converts to Christianity were fleeing their community for diverse reasons: they were suspected witches or families believed to be bewitched, people affected by recurrent diseases or misfortunes, etc. As Lonsdale 2002 notes, the conversion process was slow to take root over the first two decades of the colonial time, but mission stations gradually gathered a flock of believers. During the 1920s and the 1930s, African independent churches seceded from main churches, and the spread of the East African Revival profoundly transformed Kenyan Christianity (Peterson 2012). The controversy over clitoridectomy caused the temporary dwindling of the pews within the missionary churches. The Mau Mau war deeply affected the Gikuyu worldview and completed the process of conversion to Christianity. Indeed, missionaries participated in the “rehabilitation” of Mau Mau prisoners through the so-called pipeline, and conversion was considered one of the favorite means of “normalizing” the detainees, after which they confessed their alleged crimes. The current wave of Pentecostalism has attracted many Kikuyus, mainly—but not only—in the main cities of Kenya, and most of all in Nairobi. Nowadays, the vast majority of the Gikuyu belong to various branches of Christianity.

Elkins, Caroline. Imperial Reckoning: The Untold Story of Britain’s Gulag in Kenya. New York: Henry Holt, 2005.
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Elkins describes the condition of life in the concentration camps where Gikuyu people were detained and the role of the conversion to Christianity in the “rehabilitation” process.
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Karanja, John. Founding an African Faith: Kikuyu Anglican Christianity, 1900–1945. Nairobi: Uzima Press, 1999.
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A very detailed and rich history of the Anglican Church in Gikuyuland, written by one of its ministers.
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Lonsdale, John. “Kikuyu Christianities: A History of Intimate Diversity.” In Christianity and the African Imagination: Essays in Honour of Adrian Hastings. Edited by David Maxwell and Ingrid Lawrie, 157–197. Leiden, The Netherlands, Boston, and Köln: Brill, 2002.
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An insightful article on Gikuyu conversion to Christianity, written by one of the best historians of the Gikuyu people.
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Peterson, Derek R. Ethnic Patriotism and the East African Revival: A History of Dissent, c. 1935–1972. African Studies Series. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2012.
DOI: 10.1017/CBO9781139108614Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
A comprehensive study of the East African Revival and the political role it played. The author dedicates several chapters to the Gikuyu.
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Sandgren, David P. Christianity and the Kikuyu; Religious Divisions and Social Conflict. Bern, New York, Frankfurt am Main, and Paris: Peter Lang, 1989.
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A brilliant study of the history of Gikuyu conversion to Christianity and on the role played by the African Inland Mission and the Akûrinû churches.
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Strayer, R. W. The Making of Mission Communities in East Africa: Anglicans and Africans in Colonial Kenya, 1875–1935. London: Heinemann, 1978.
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This book presents the history of the Church Missionary Society in Kenya and in Gikuyuland.
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Gikuyu Popular Culture and Global Influence

Early works of anthropology focused primarily on “traditional” Gikuyu culture or on rural dwellings, where they looked for new forms of solidarity or transformation of tradition to accommodate development: new commercial crops like coffee and tea, small enterprises, self-help groups, and land-buying companies are well documented following independence. Dance, music, paintings, sport—and clubs for the elites, as Connan 2014 describes—are diverse expressions of urban and rural culture that can be found in central Kenya and in Nairobi since World War I. Wanjohi 1997, Wanjohi 2001, and Kabira and Mutahi 1998 offer annotated lists of Gikuyu oral literature or proverbs. Unfortunately, in spite of the dynamism of urban popular Gikuyu culture, little is known about it and what it conveys of rural life. In fact, plays and songs (benga, one-man guitar, etc.) in Gikuyu represent an arena where strong debates about Gikuyu identity or ethnicity have taken place since the end of World War II. Beginning in the 2000s, a new trend in social research, led by PhD students and scientists studying new topics, has been observed. Historians have begun to unveil the social history of sport (Cunningham 2016) and of dance (Bushidi 2016) in Gikuyuland. Hervé Maupeu studied the spread of Gikuyu songs in Nairobi (Maupeu 2005) as well as the life of intellectuals (Maupeu 2008, cited under Gikuyu Journals and Novels, Maupeu and Mutahi 2005, Njogu and Maupeu 2007). Others focus on the first Gikuyu intellectuals (see Muoria-Sal, et al. 2009 and Pugliese 1995, both cited under Gikuyu Journals and Novels) or of the first converts to Christianity (Kareri, et al. 2003, cited under Gikuyu Journals and Novels). Contemporary Gikuyu intellectuals debate the “traditional” Gikuyu oral literature taught in schools. They argue that this ancient folklore gives an outdated image of Gikuyu culture and propose a new form of modern and urban Gikuyu ethnicity. Moreover, they underline the political features of current Gikuyu folklore. Gikuyu writers, including Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Micere Mugo, and Koigi wa Wamwere, to mention but a few, have found an international audience and have deeply influenced the African literature, and beyond. Additionally, Gikuyu people figure in the works of famous writers like Elspeth Huxley and Karin Blixen.

Bushidi, Cécile Feza. “Dance, Socio-Cultural Change, and Politics among the Gikuyu Peoples of Kenya, 1880s–1963.” Unpublished PhD thesis, SOAS, 2016.
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A fascinating PhD thesis showing the subversive power of dances during colonization. On the one hand, dances were a way to express anticolonial feelings; on the other hand, new dances brought back to the village by youth living in Nairobi contested the Gikuyu moral ethnicity.
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Connan, Dominique. “La décolonisation des clubs kényans: Sociabilité exclusive et constitution morale des élites africaines dans le Kenya contemporain.” PhD diss., Sciences politiques, Paris, Sorbonne, 2014.
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The first study on the social clubs in Kenya with references to the Gikuyu elite.
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Cunningham, Tom. “‘These Our Games’—Sport and the Church of Scotland Mission to Kenya, c. 1907–1938.” History in Africa 43 (2016): 259–288.
DOI: 10.1017/hia.2015.12Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
How did sports forge the body politic of the new converts? A historical thesis on this new field of Gikuyu social history.
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Kabira, Wanjiku Mukabi, and Karega wa Mutahi. Gikuyu Oral Literature. Nairobi: East African Educational Publishers, 1998.
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A collection of “traditional” narratives and proverbs.
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Maupeu, Hervé. “La ville dans la chanson kikuyu contemporaine.” Journal des Africanistes 1.75 (2005): 255–292.
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The article dwells on the role played by Nairobi in Gikuyu imagination as expressed in popular songs.
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Maupeu, Hervé, and Patrick Mutahi, eds. Wahome Mutahi’s World. Nairobi: Transafrica Press, 2005.
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The only existing book on Wahome Mutahi, the famous Kenyan humorist. It gathers a collection of articles written by Kenyan authors on his work. They offer hindsight on his life, political or religious standpoints, and literary career, particularly in Kenyan newspapers that published the adventures of his hilarious character, Whispers.
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Mutonya, Maina wa. The Politics of Everyday Life in Gikuyu Popular Music of Kenya (1990–2000). Nairobi: Twaweza, 2013.
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A comprehensive study on Gikuyu popular music and its social role.
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Njogu, Kimani, and Hervé Maupeu, eds. Songs and Politics in Eastern Africa. Dar es Salaam, Tanzania: Mkuki na Nyota Publishers, 2007.
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This edited book on Gikuyu popular music is a multidisciplinary study of the social role of songs in the region, as well as of their political impact.
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Wanjohi, Gerald Joseph. The Wisdom and Philosophy of The Gikuyu Proverbs; The Kihooto World-View. Nairobi: Paulines Publications Africa, 1997.
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Wanjohi offers an interpretation of a Gikuyu philosophy inspired by the analysis of hundreds of proverbs.
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Wanjohi, Gerard Joseph. Under One Roof. Gikuyu Proverbs Consolidated. Limuru: Paulines Publications Africa, 2001.
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A comprehensive collection of Gikuyu proverbs with their English translation and a reconstruction of the Gikuyu worldview concealed in the proverbs.
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Gikuyu Journals and Novels

For a detailed presentation of this literature, please see Oxford Bibliographies article in African Studies on Modern African Literature in European Languages. A wide range of Gikuyu literature has existed since the interwar period. Journals in Gikuyu appeared as early as the 1930s. Berman and Lonsdale 1998 analyzes the Kenyatta newspaper in Gikuyu. Pugliese 1995 covers the work of Gakaara wa Wanjau. Kareri’s personal journal is translated in Kareri, et al. 2003. The famous Gikuyu author Ngugi wa Thiongo decided to write his novels in Gikuyu, in a bid to “decolonize his mind.” Several biographies or studies have been written about him (see Oxford Bibliographies article in African Studies on Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o). After independence, one observes a flourishing of Gikuyu authors writing in English. They painted the quagmire of life in the city (Meja Mwangi) or recollected the history of the Mau Mau war or of the life in rural communities (Ngugi wa Thiongo). It is worth mentioning that the city of Nairobi itself has become a key actor in Gikuyu novels. Maupeu 2008 shows how autobiographies—of intellectuals, Mau Mau fighters, politicians, or businessmen—represent another genre of Gikuyu literature. Surprisingly perhaps, Gikuyu people feature in Resnick 1998, a science fiction novel in which Gikuyu traditionalists engage in interplanetary migration and reinvent, following the work of Leakey, the ancient Gikuyu society on a asteroid within our solar system.

Berman, Bruce, and John Lonsdale. “The Labors of Muigwithania: Jomo Kenyatta as Author, 1928–45.” Research in African Literatures 29 (1998): 16–42.
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As usual, both authors offer a very detailed study of Kenyatta’s writings in Gikuyu and its political uses in the interwar period.
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Kareri, Charles Muhoro, Derek R. Peterson, and Kariũki Múríithi. The Life of Charles Muhoro Kareri. Madison: African Studies Program University of Wisconsin-Madison, 2003.
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A translation of Kareri’s personal journal that give insights in the life of the first converts to Anglicanism and the day-to-day life of Gikuyu people in mission stations in the first part of the 20th century.
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Maupeu, Hervé. “Les autobiographies au Kenya. La production d’un genre littéraire.” In Le Statut de l’écrit. Afrique-Europe-Amérique latine. Edited by Christiane Albert, Abel Kouvouama, and Gisèle Prignitz, 191–202. Pau, France: Publications de l’Université de Pau, 2008.
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The author critically analyzes autobiographies as a genre and embeds them in the Kenyan political context.
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Muoria-Sal, Wangari, Bodil Folke Frederiksen, John Lonsdale, and Derek Peterson. Writing for Kenya: The Life and Works of Henry Muoria. African Sources for African History 10. Leiden, The Netherlands, and Boston: Brill, 2009.
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A translation of three political pamphlets written by Muoria accompanied by three articles that describe the context and the life of the author, as well as the moral and political implications of his work.
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Pugliese, Cristiana. The Life and Writings of Gakaara wa Wanjau; Author, Publisher and Gikuyu Nationalist. Bayreuth: Bayreuth African Studies, 1995.
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A comprehensive analysis of one of Kenyatta’s early competitors. Gakaara wa Wanjau’s life and writings illustrate the heated political debates over versions of Gikuyu moral ethnicity.
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Resnick, Michael D. Kirinyaga: A Fable of Utopia. New York: Ballantine, 1998.
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An unexpected set of science fiction novels imagining a future Gikuyu society that flew on an asteroid, in order to live their own traditional life, inspired by Leakey.