The problem of truth

Having worked for the colonial administration of Kenya during the Mau Mau years, Ian Buist has a first-person perspective on the revisiting of history. Recent evidence that the British were engaged in violent suppression of the Mau Mau uprising, as conveyed in Reform and other publications, should not, he argues, be allowed the last word

All of us like stories. We shape them individually from our selective memory; we adopt them collectively from our traditions and preconceptions. “When the legend becomes fact, print the legend...” But the myth too often kills the truth, which is rarely plain and never simple. Yet it is truth, not myth, which is to make us free.

So it is now with our colonial history. Largely forgotten, rarely a source of pride, it has become liable to misinterpretation, not least from those who have a special axe to grind. Take the whole industry of development, in which we invest so much emotional, intellectual and financial effort. Who acknowledges that the huge educational, economic and social groundwork (however decayed and imperfect) upon which this now rests was our own achievement, and that “colonialism” was in fact directed to development, preparing those for whom we were responsible for self-government?

This article is an extract from the September edition of Reform.

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