Henry Muoria

“Chase a man with the truth and he will go away for good. But if you chase a man with a stick, he will turn back to you with a stick.”

This was one of Henry Muoria Mwaniki’s favourite proverbs. Fitting for a sharp-witted journalist to whom truth was sacred and the battle against oppression began in the mind. Born Muoria Mwaniki in 1914 in Southern Kikuyu, his family was relatively well-off by standards of the time with his father working at Nairobi’s electrical power company. Growing up, Muoria possessed a conviction for words and after being inspired by a friend’s schoolbooks, he learned to read. Supporting himself with the vegetables grown on his mother’s farm, he enrolled in Canon Harry Leakey’s Mission School in 1927.

A Budding Revolutionary

In 1930, a baptised Muoria took on a Christian name – Henry. The following years consisted of several adventures including attending railway school in Nairobi in 1931 and securing an appointment as a signalman. To while away the long hours on guard, Muoria took to reading. One of the books he pored over was Jomo Kenyatta’s ‘Facing Mt. Kenya’. He came to the realisation that African writing could be on par with or even better than that of Europeans. It was this pivotal moment that led him to study journalism by taking up a course advertised in the East African Standard. Done through correspondence, Muoria received the learning materials via mail from Britain and worked through them diligently.

Shortly after, he released his first political pamphlet entitled ‘What Should We Do, Our People?’ which encouraged self-reliance for Africans. The success of this first writing attempt led Muoria to leave his steady job at the railway and pursue writing – a decision that his first marriage to Elisabeth Thogori did not withstand.

After the Second World War, Muoria married Judith Nyamurwa, a trained teacher and seasoned writer. The two were perfectly paired as her spirit of exploration and contempt for British rule matched his own. He then started his own newspaper which sealed his political future. The paper – called Mumenyereri or Defender in Kikuyu – sought to popularise nationalism, condemn racism and support the stealthy resistance movement. He printed the newspaper with the help of Asian businessman V.G Patel. In 1946, as Muoria stepped into a new era where political awareness was paramount for young Africans, he became the assistant general secretary of the Kenya African Union (KAU).

Mumenyereri at its Peak

His popular paper kept the revolution alive by reporting on ‘tea parties’ – a euphemism for banned Mau Mau oathing ceremonies still happening in informal settlements such as Mathare. At its height, the paper easily wore the crown of the most popular weekly in Central Kenya and averaged a circulation of 20,000 copies. But British officials rejected the anti-colonial ideas in the paper. Things came to a head in 1947 when officials deemed Henry Muoria’s writing activities an unmistakable threat – the same year he married his third wife Ruth Nuna.

Both Judith and Ruth shared Muoria’s vision for a newspaper that cut to the core of colonial rule and exposed its ills. Together, they moved from place to place and even stayed up all night to produce, package and distribute the paper. They knew they had an impossible task of taking down a colonial regime whose oppression knew no bounds but persisted anyway. Authorities watched Mumenyereri’s activities closely;  possession of even a single copy would land one straight in a jail cell.

The paper’s reporting of the Uplands Bacon Factory Strike in Kiambu was particularly deemed to be seditious. During this event, African police officers gunned down two strikers. Muoria’s paper went on to report that a European officer forced his team to shoot. The District Commissioner of Kiambu in 1947 boldly stated,” If we do not control this type of journalistic activity in the vernacular press, we are storing up serious trouble for the near future…” Henry’s conviction on 21st October 1947 followed. Slapped with a fine of Ksh 150 or a three-month imprisonment, Muoria paid the fine and sought a path forward from this onslaught.

Muoria the Exiled Hero

In 1950, he bought the printing press machinery used to print Mumenyereri from V.G Patel and established Mumenyereri Press. It was the very first African-owned press in Kenya. In mid -1952, the poison deemed to be held in Muoria’s words caused him to be exiled. After consistently releasing his paper for seven years, Henry left Kenya for England and acquired an automatic printing press with a plan to stay there for six months. Little did he know he was never to return to Kenya. With the State of Emergency tearing his home apart at the seams, he received counsel from close friends in London that returning to Kenya would be inadvisable.

Still, in his time away, his work lived on through the herculean efforts of his wife Judith who ensured that Mumenyereri continued to print. She was even detained for two years in 1953 when frustrated British officials could not trace Henry. Upon arrest, she methodically requested to return the printing machinery to their rural home and after doing so, carried her and Muoria’s son Kinyanjui and surrendered to custody. But the spirit of a Muoria does not die easy and she spent her time in prison writing about the unsuitable conditions and raging against colonial oppression.

Ruth, on the other hand, joined Muoria in London in 1954 after playing an instrumental role in propagating the family paper. 

Henry Muoria left behind a sweeping legacy in print media that played a huge role in breaking down the powers that be. With the help of his wives, he built a formidable African press for African people, and for this, he is a Kenyan hero worth his salt.

Image credit: Writing in Kenya