Beatings and abuse made Barack Obama’s grandfather loathe the British

Source: Times of London

Barack Obama’s grandfather was imprisoned and brutally tortured by the British during the violent struggle for Kenyan independence, according to the Kenyan family of the US President-elect.

Hussein Onyango Obama, Mr Obama’s paternal grandfather, became involved in the Kenyan independence movement while working as a cook for a British army officer after the war. He was arrested in 1949 and jailed for two years in a high-security prison where, according to his family, he was subjected to horrific violence to extract information about the growing insurgency.

“The African warders were instructed by the white soldiers to whip him every morning and evening till he confessed,” said Sarah Onyango, Hussein Onyango’s third wife, the woman Mr Obama refers to as “Granny Sarah”.

Mrs Onyango, 87, described how “white soldiers” visited the prison every two or three days to carry out “disciplinary action” on the inmates suspected of subversive activities.



Read more: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/africa/article5276010.ece?token=null&offset=0&page=1

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It's a fascinating story.

I worked for a white Kenyan immigrant couple for a while and they told me about the suffering they went through. It seems that it's always the civilians that get caught up in these wars that get the worst of the atrocities handed to them no matter how neutral they were about it. However, I did enjoy their other stories about growing up and living in Africa.

But beatings and abuse would do it, too.

However, I take your point.

but one could counter with Fawlty Towers, IMO.

We had a very hawkish Foreign & Colonial Office (our State Department) and they were determined to hold on to African colonial possessions after quitting India. One of the many nasty racist imperialist wars that my country did for prestige and profit.

I'm not sure most historians see the period that way. By then, Britain had come to a consensus to give up most of its possession in Africa and to continue to control them through informal means, so called "neo-colonialism."

Sadly, the Mau Mau war was not so much about whether Kenya was to be independent, but on what terms it was to be independent and to whom power was to be transferred.

Also the local settlers were a monumental headache for a colonial power that essentially was scheming on how to get out of East Africa.

But I would agree it was a nasty, nasty war, full of British atrocities, and the fact that (imo) independence was pretty much a foregone conclusion, and that the British ultimately became comfortable with Kenyatta, the killing was that much more unnecessary.

And insist that the U.S. stop all torturing by its intelligence agencies, its military, and its allies.