Shiraz Durrani: Guerilla Incursions into the Capitalist Mindset – Essays with focus on Kenya 1979-2023

This book deserves to be an inspiration for all freedom loving people in Kenya and internationally. In these days we see brave people in action against the reactionary regime of Ruto. Continuing the long time unfinished class struggle in this neocolonialist capitalist state.

The author Shiraz Durrani has for decades documented this struggle. He is a brave man standing up to imperialism and its lackeys in Kenya. He is an African with roots in the South Asian Minority and with a deep understanding of the misery of the peoples in Kenya, a former British settler colony. First humiliated and exploited by the British Empire and its white settlers. Then by the new black bourgeoisie that stole the liberation from the freedom fighters that gave their lives in the struggle.

Shiraz Durrani has the courage to write on this and the book is full of original documents from the freedom struggle. He was persecuted for publishing about the freedom fighters and had to flee from his homeland and got political asylum in UK in 1984. In London he and others established Vita Books and have since published extensively.  The Afro-American Richard Wright wrote in “The Color Curtain”(1956) about “the despised, the insulted, the hurt, the dispossessed – in short – the underdogs of the human race”.  Shiraz Durrani saw the same, and the Kenyan people should be thankful for his lifelong dedication to documenting the silenced freedom struggle. A history that was suppressed by the new rulers of Kenya after liberation. Kenya was formally liberated in 1963, but the power structure from colonialism was not demolished.

Shiraz got in the 60´es contact to the December Twelve Movement and as an activist, librarian and researcher he got interested in the real history of the anticolonial freedom struggle. A history he saw from a working class perspective. Kenya`s new rulers painted the Mau Mau movement, The Land and Freedom Army, as backward and primitive. Shying, hiding and forgetting its radical history. A struggle where the nationalities united in a peoples war. It was met with the most brutal repression by British imperialism using torture, hangings and gulags. They also exploited so called “tribal divisions”. Shiraz has only contempt for the use of the concept of tribe, as he sees Kenya as comprised of many nationalities. They lived in relative peace, but were subdued and split by colonialism.  Kenya was a place with cheap labour and rich resources to exploit and combined with brute force super exploitation was possible. In this climate trade unions played a pivotal role openly and in the underground as part of the resistance movement.  The struggle was and still is a class struggle.

 Shiraz have tried to shine light on the struggle and some of its leaders like Maina Wa Kinyatti,  Dedan Kimaathi, Karimi Nduthu, Bildad Kaggia, Pio Gama Pinto and Makhan Singh. Publishing for equality and political rights brought the publishers in conflict with the neocolonial regime.  In Kenya there are about 40 languages in use and publishing in other than English, the preferred language by those with economic and political power, was also a means of coming out with the message of liberation.  So publishing could be an act of resistance bringing problems to the publishers. Shiraz experienced it when publishing articles on Pio Gama Pinto, and was threatened so he feared for his life and family and fled from Kenya.

The resistance under British colonialism was deep rooted in Kenya and the freedom movement had in its high time 50 newspapers communicating about the struggle for land and freedom.  Shiraz has continued to break the silence about these brave freedom fighters and their ideas. 

The new rulers were against this with their acceptance of capitalism as the only way forward. Shiraz has written on the political and social aspects of information in a world dominated by capitalist and imperialist ideology. That only have brought misery to the working people world over. As if there is no alternative to this way of organizing society.  Retaining control of their former colonies was an obsession for imperialism. The process of liberation from this mental, physical and political prison involves liberating the minds of the working people. A continuing struggle, and “Guerilla Incursion” documents Shiraz as an activist, organic intellectual and dedicated writer.  Documenting the Mau Mau movement as a revolutionary force and the Kenyatta/Moi regime overturning it all and enriching themselves. The struggle continues against neocolonialism and imperialism for a socialist Kenya.  Shiraz says that it is not the responsibility of the oppressor to educate us. We have to search for the real history and teach the new generations about the freedom struggle and the challenges in a neocolonialist capitalist Kenya.

Vita Books,  Nairobi, 2023.  www.vitabooks.co.ke

John Graversgaard is a Political activist from Denmark Email: [email protected]