Our Land, Our Freedom is the seminal documentary of the year on post-colonial Kenya and its relationship with those who fought for independence. This documentary will move you, anger you, and potentially even radicalise you, as is the case with any film about Kenya’s fraught history. This is your official trigger warning.
Directed by Meena Nanji and Zippy Kimundu, Our Land, Our Freedom takes us through a journey we have seen too many times before, as Wanjugu, the key subject of the film says, “I’m going to continue the fight my parents began. Freedom for Kimathi. Land for his comrades.”
Our Land, Our Freedom was the closing film at the recently concluded NBO Film Festival 2024 and continues to screen this month at Unseen Nairobi. The festival, which made a comeback after a three-year hiatus, made an extremely bold and laudable choice with its bookend films, probably intentionally picking them to really underline themes that have been on everyone’s minds this year: themes of freedom, justice, land, and protest.
Watching Our Land, Our Freedom, one can almost draw parallels with the festival’s opening film, The Battle for Laikipia. For the audience, this is your nudge to go see both, wherever you can find them showing. Both documentaries echo a David versus Goliath battle for a marginalized community facing injustices rooted in a violent colonial past. There is also a careful intention to reframe the narrative: the Kenya Land and Freedom Army versus the Mau Mau propaganda and the Samburu bandits versus nomadic pastoralists.
Filmed over eight years, Our Land, Our Freedom follows Wanjugu Kimathi, the daughter of Field Marshal Dedan Kimathi, the legendary Mau Mau leader, and her almost herculean attempt to resettle the Mau Mau veterans and their descendants. Dedan Kimathi is one of the most, if not the most important, figures in Kenya’s struggle for liberation against the British in the 1950s. He was the one who went into the forest and started the Kenya Land and Freedom Army – labelled the Mau Mau by the British.
Leading a generation of freedom fighters, his legacy is a mighty but sad one indeed. Wanjugu’s journey is interwoven with memories of her father’s legacy and the unfulfilled promises made to those who fought alongside him. Haunting scenes transport viewers to villages where the remnants of the Mau Mau were abandoned after independence while the land was parcelled off to collaborators.
We meet Dedan Kimathi’s widow, ‘The Wasp’, Mukami Kimathi, who is in her old age and past her revolution years, still asking for her husband’s remains. Mukami is the cornerstone of this documentary, frequently cited as Wanjugu’s inspiration to keep fighting. Though a calm and mostly quiet voice in the background, her love and stalwartness radiate, as does the rest of Wanjugu’s family, who offer us happy glimpses of her family life away from the struggle.
Our Land, Our Freedom serves as a powerful reminder that even though the fight for justice has changed, it really is still, unfortunately, the same. It plays out like a horror version of Groundhog Day, where past injustices bleed into present-day struggles. The film begins, you see, with Wanjugu continuing her mother’s mission: to find her father’s remains. It’s poetic in how she digs the ground looking for human remains, a metaphorical and literal unearthing of Kenya’s buried history.
The stories shared by old Mau Mau generals and warriors are riveting and poignant. The way the memories play across their faces when they talk about the war songs they would sing, how they were found, arrested, beaten, and inhumanely tortured. There are clear linkages between the Mau Mau and other historical land injustices in places like Kakuzi, where the fight is just as disheartening and relentless.
There are an inordinate number of villains in this story, from the British colonisers to the collaborators, and of course, our own fears, and what those fears make us do – or not do. In one scene, someone tries to convince Wanjugu to abandon her quest for safety reasons, citing the fear that she’s ruffling political feathers. Ironically, it’s clear that Wanjugu isn’t even interested in politics; she simply wants justice for those denied it.
Looking at the recent events in Kenya, the symbolism and on-the-nose modern-day relevance in this documentary is overwhelming, and perhaps that is what makes it so emotive. In her search for truth and justice, Wanjugu shows us what our old freedom fighters look like now, and you can’t help but wonder about the ones who are fighting now. What will this look like in a couple of years?
The land that Wanjugu eventually wants the freedom fighters and their descendants to make their home is in Laikipia, tidily wrapping up Our Land, Our Freedom and The Battle for Laikipia, not in the neat bow I would have wanted but more so in the open-endedness of where both stories will take us. There are more questions than answers at the end, and no clear resolution, and yet both documentaries are unflinching in bearing witness to Kenya’s history, a sobering reminder that the more things change, the more they stay the same.
