Visionaries of Freedom: Kikuyu Elders and Ex-World War II Soldiers Creating Kikuyu Indi Schools in Kenya

The 1940s was a decade of steadfast development and political realization among Kikuyu communities involved in creating independent schools in colonial Kenya. Throughout Kikuyuland, local school committees worked fervently to improve their schools and to build new ones. The partnership between Karĩng’a and KISA school committees established stronger networks, and astute elders such as Jacob Muthui and James Njogu enhanced local independent schools through their persistent efforts to encourage Kikuyu children and adults to think critically about the purpose of education. As visionaries, many elders and ex-World War II soldiers focused their attention on the future of Kenya. They believed the Kikuyu people could no longer afford to remain uneducated about the cultural and political devastation caused by colonialism. As one notable Kikuyu ex-World War II soldier wrote,
“Any African who has no thought about our collective future is obviously
 a man of distorted vision. For the truth is that the life is slowly being
strangled out of the African. Each and every one of us must become active
in the struggle for a restitution of our lands as well as the recovery of our
national independence and delivery from our slavery. And the regime, with
its divisive tactics, works to the detriment of all of us Africans irrespective
of our social class or standing—people in religious ministries, or those who consider themselves religious, merchants and traders, clerical workers,
leaders, men of means, squatters, so called loyalists, people belonging to
the Gĩkũyũ Karĩng’a Independent movement, soldiers, peasant farmers in
the countryside, even school children.”
This call for political consciousness by ex-soldiers spread incrementally from the classrooms of independent schools to the broader Kikuyu community during the first half of the 1940s.