Versions and inversions: Mau Mau in Kahigais Dedan Kimathi: The real story

Abstract

Through the subtitle of his novel Dedan Kimathi: The Real Story, Sam Kahiga situates the text at once at the center of the controversial dis- course of Mau Mau historiography. The novel's subtitle makes no real claims to authentic historicity but it nevertheless signals the author's intention to contest the status of prior histories of Mau Mau, histories that he already implicitly considers "unreal." Indeed Kahiga finds it necessary to state in a note to the reader that "a considerable amount of research went into the writing of [the novel]"-an unusual statement from a writer of fiction but one that is meant to forestall stock accusations of inauthenticity, myth-making, and lack of research often leveled against Mau Mau novels by historians. Kahiga's portrayal of Dedan Kimathi and the Mau Mau war of inde- pendence has been shaped by his awareness of and attitudes to the conflictual claims of prior fictional and historical texts. Kahiga's version of the story becomes "real" not because it actually displaces the other versions by its claims to factual verity, but ironically because it tends to present these versions as inevitable elements of the ever evolving Kimathi/Mau Mau narrative.