Land Freedom Army (LFA)*
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The Land Freedom Army aka "Mau Mau."  A poorly armed nationalist movement that caused a mass hysteria among British colonists.  The units in the game are decidedly better armed than their actual counterparts were.
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Short History of the "Mau Mau Rebellion"*
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The fiercest opposition to the colonial authorities came from the Kikuyu tribe who in 1902 had been evicted from their traditional areas to make way for the European farmers. By the end of the Second World War, 3,000 European settlers owned 43,000 square kilometres of the most fertile land, only 6 percent of which they cultivated.*
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The African population of 5.25 million occupied, without ownership rights, less than 135,000 square kilometres of the poorest land. On the "native reserves" much of the land was unsuitable for agriculture. The native farmers had been forced to abandon their traditional methods of extensive agriculture and did not have access to the new technology that would make intensive agriculture viable. The population could not feed itself and the people were desperate.*
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Rumors began to circulate about the formation of a secret society amongst the Kikuyu, Kenya's largest tribe, one-fifth of the population. It was called the Land Freedom Army (LFA). It was forcing Kikuyu to swear an oath to take back the land the British had stolen. Any African who refused the oath or was loyal to the colonialists was likely to be brutally murdered. The secret society acquired a new name, though no one knew where from. It was called "Mau Mau."*
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The designation "Mau Mau" was never used by the Kikuyu and does not exist in their language. It was, most probably, invented by the British as part of an attempt to demonize the Kikuyu people. Professor Lonsdale, an historian, explains how the movement was portrayed by the settlers and the government as "the welling up of the old unreconstructed Africa, which had not yet received sufficient colonial enlightenment and discipline, which proved that colonialism still had a job to do."*
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The core of the LFA was the Kikuyu Central Association (KCA), which was formed in 1924. Its original programme was a combination of radical demands such as the return of expropriated lands and the elimination of the passbook scheme, (similar to the internal passport system in South Africa), with a striving to return to the traditional pre-colonial past. In the late 1930s the KCA led a wave of mass peasant struggles against the forced sale of their livestock to the government.*
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Much of this political background is usually ignored, so it appears that the Mau Mau arose spontaneously in 1952.*
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In the 1950s the KCA began conscripting support from the Kikuyu masses, believing it was possible to consolidate their support through the administration of "the oath."*
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Jacob Njangi, an LFA fighter, explained, "We used to drink the oath. We swore we would not let white men rule us forever. We would fight them even down to our last man, so that man could live in freedom."*
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When a staunch British loyalist, Chief Waruhu, was killed on 7 October 1952, the government saw the LFA as the first serious threat to colonial rule in post-war Africa. Two weeks later, on 20 October, a state of emergency was declared.*
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Thousands of British troops and equipment were flown in to "clear the colony of the menace of "Mau Mau." Over 100 leading members of the Kenya African Union, a political party demanding greater African self-rule, were arrested. Along with others, Kenya's patriarch Jomo Kenyatta was put on trial for subversion.*
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Ten days into the start of emergency rule almost 4,000 Africans had been arrested, but the attacks from the LFA continued. A wave of hysteria swept through the European settlers. In January 1953, after the killing of a European farmer and his family, angry settlers stormed government house demanding stronger action.*
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Early in 1953 almost 100,000 Kikuyu farm worker families had been evicted from their homes in the Rift Valley - where they had been living as squatters on settler farms - and driven back to the reserve. Some of them had already been evicted 20 years earlier, to make way for European settlers. Chief Luka, who had been personally rewarded with good land, negotiated this government "land exchange scheme." The farm workers vented their anger against the chief, whom they considered to be responsible for their plight. On 25 March a loyalist village was destroyed and most of the inhabitants were killed, including Chief Luka and his family. *
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In a revenge attack the following day, 10 times more Kikuyu were killed by government forces and more houses were destroyed.*
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In late 1953 the British opened a new campaign, code named Operation Anvil, to cut off the supply network to the LFA. The first target was Nairobi, which was believed to be the centre of their organisation. On 24 April 1954, the police rounded up all the African inhabitants in the city - around 100,000 people. The 70,000 Kikuyu were separated and screened. Of them, up to 30,000 men were taken to holding camps. The families of the arrested men were pushed into the already overcrowded native reserves.*
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In rural areas Kikuyu were forced into fortified villages, where they lived under 23-hour curfew. This policy, known as "villagisation", was claimed to be "purely protective and beneficial for the Africans". It gave the colonial authorities total control over the Kikuyu.*
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Taking the Mau Mau oath was made a capital offence. Between 1953 and 1956 more than 1,000 Africans were hanged for alleged Mau Mau crimes. Public hangings, which had been outlawed in Britain for over a century, were carried out in Kenya during the emergency.*
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In 1954 one-third of all Kikuyu men were said to be in prison. These detainees had not been convicted of any crime and were held without trial. The British government insisted that every prisoner had to denounce "the oath" and submit to a "cleansing ceremony."*
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By 1956 the LFA had been militarily defeated, but the camps still held 20,000 detainees who refused to confess to taking the oath, so the emergency remained in force.*
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In 1960 the state of emergency was lifted. The LFA death toll during the emergency was 11,500, of whom around 1,000 were hanged. 80,000 Kikuyu were imprisoned in concentration camps. 150,000 Africans, mostly Kikuyu, lost their lives, with many dying of disease and starvation in the "protected villages." On the other side, the KFA killed around 2,000 people, mostly African civilians but including 32 European civilians and 63 members of the British and Kenyan security forces.*
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