Monuments in Kenya – Monuments in Nairobi
Dedan Kimathi Monument
Category: Monuments in Kenya
The statue of Field Marshal Dedan Kimathi on Kimathi Street in Nairobi.
Kimathi was captured and hanged by the colonial government at the height of Kenya’s freedom struggle. His grave at the Kamiti Prison has never been identified.
A sculpture is a three-dimensional object with a message. It could be a statue thriving in the context of a city like Nairobi, watching over people coursing through a life that is damn so daily.
Sculptures have a life of their own since within every block of wood, iron, or stone lies a spirit waiting to be carved.
Nairobi’s latest is the statue of nationalist Tom Mboya on Moi Avenue. It was unveiled by President Mwai Kibaki on the eve of Mashujaa Day this October as a tribute to Mboya’s “remarkable contributions” to this country, and to “honour the departed hero and remind the nation of whom he was” and “what he stood for”.
Tom Mboya’s is the second statue to be gazetted as a national treasure, after that of freedom fighter Dedan Kimathi in 2007.
That was the year the government created a task force to carry out countrywide data collection to establish criteria for identifying, recognising, and honouring national heroes and heroines.
Mr Gideon Siundu, a lecturer at Masinde Muliro University, wrote in a local newspaper then that such monuments “act as public sites of memory, complementing in useful ways the narrative of resistance, visionary leadership, and embodiments of national aspirations.”
Statues and monuments commemorate the historical in eternal present, beside adding to a city’s aesthetic beauty.
Indeed, towering statues and monuments contribute to a country’s history, much like its antiquated and contemporary architecture, the rhyme and reason of its national anthem.
The world over, streets, highways, public places, and spaces are punctuated by brooding statues of decorated literary giants, military heroes, freedom fighters, and political liberators to remember triumph and tragedies, hardships and hark work, heroes and heroines.
The Tom Mboya statue
Category: Monuments in Kenya
It took 42 years and Sh20 million for Kenya to finally honour one of its greatest fallen heroes in cast bronze. “TJ” was assassinated on 5 July, 1969 as he stepped out of Channa’s Chemist, a few metres from where his statue stands.
The three-year effort of self-taught sculptor Oshoto Ondula shows Mboya in flowing Ghanaian kente robes, a gift from President Kwame Nkrumah, which he wore during his campaigns for Nairobi Constituency (now Kamukunji) during the 1960 General Election.
His right hand is stretched out to symbolise a leader reaching to his people and not looking down at them.
The statue stands on what symbolises Rusinga Island, where he was buried.
The fountain and flamingoes under the statue represent the aeroplanes used by Kenyan students in the now famous Mboya-fronted Airlift Africa educational project that saw Kenyan students study on scholarships in American universities in the late 1950s and 1960s.
The Ministry of National Heritage commissioned the statue’s tendering. Ondula was short-listed out of 20 hopefuls as he got Mboya’s face correct. The family approved.
The Dedan Kimathi statue
Category: Monuments in Kenya
This piece of art was unveiled on 15 August, 2007 to mark 50 years since freedom fighter Dedan Kimathi — the most defining character during the armed struggle for independence — was captured, hanged, and buried in an anonymous grave inside Kamiti Prison. Kimathi, who embodied the Mau Mau resistance, sacrifice, and commitment to ideals of nationalism, holds a rifle in the right hand and a dagger in the left.
The statue was created by sculptors from Kenyatta University’s School of Fine Art.
It cost Sh4.5 million but was criticised for portraying Kimathi dressed in military fatigues interpreted as the uniform of the imperialist army.
Materials got scarce during its creation and Kimathi ended up standing a few inches shorter on the street named after him.
Celebrated artist Elimo Njau was quoted as saying the statue was not true to life and Kimathi “could be mistaken for Bob Marley”.
The Pope’s pyramid slab
Category: Monuments in Kenya – Monuments in Nairobi
This was erected to mark Pope John Paul II’s pastoral visit in 1980 and for the African synod in 1985 at Uhuru Park, Nairobi.
The World War memorial statues and pillar
Category: Monuments in Kenya
These stand opposite each other on Kenyatta Avenue in memory of “native troops” and “our glorious dead”, who perished during both world wars.
They were erected after 1918 and re-erected in 1945. One of the statues at the far left is identified as Kapombe Ngumbao.
The Nyayo Monument(s)
Category: Monuments in Kenya
The Nyayo Monument in Central Park was erected to commemorate 10 years of former president Moi’s rule in 1988 and 25 years of independence.
The ceremony featured 10 heads of state at a cost Sh300 million.
The Nyayo monument has provided visitors with a memorial backdrop during photo sessions, besides being a reminder of the Moi administration.
The four-sided monument cost Sh18 million, Italian marble and all. Never mind that they started peeling off barely a year after it was unveiled. They have now been repaired.
The Sh100 note issued by the Central Bank of Kenya in 1989 featured the monument on one side.
Those who desired to make political statements defaced it. But others went further.
Raila Odinga, the then Ford Kenya deputy director of elections during the 1992 general elections, vowed that it would be demolished “once Ford Kenya comes to power.”
Other Nyayo monuments (with Kenyatta’s fly-whisk crisscrossing Moi’s fimbo to blend their two eras) included The Nyayo Fountain at Uhuru Park.
Others were erected in all major towns in Kenya, prominently featuring President Moi’s ubiquitous “fimbo ya nyayo” and Kanu’s single finger salute, besides the two goblets resembling his rungu along the Malindi-Mombasa Road.
The Kenyatta statues
Category: Monuments in Kenya
Two statues of Kenyatta were the first to be erected in the independent country. Kenyatta is depicted very differently in both monuments. The earlier statue, erected in December 1964, celebrates Kenyatta’s role in the achievement of independence, while the second statue, unveiled in December 1973, confidently depicts him in his role as the established leader of Kenya. However, the erection of both monuments fulfilled the same purpose: a celebration of Kenyatta and a political tool in the assertion of his power. The monuments were intended to symbolise independent Kenya. Yet through the artists chosen to sculpt them – both statues were designed and sculpted in England – and through their figurative forms, the two Kenyatta statues show continuity with the colonial monumental landscape.
Jomo Kenyatta, first President of Kenya.
However, the examination of this long transition period in Nairobi’s monumental landscape suggests that only a tentative attempt was made to create a Kenyan national identity. The two Kenyatta statues were the only two erected in Nairobi during Kenyatta’s presidency and through their figurative form both relied on Kenyatta’s authority as Father of the Nation. No other ideals or ideologies were drawn upon. It was not until the Nyayo era that a more concerted effort to use monuments to create a postcolonial identity can be seen through Nairobi’s symbolic landscape, where the Nyayo-era monuments are also strong statements of power.
The Naked Boy
Category: Monuments in Kenya
The original was replaced by the Naked Blind Boy donning a wig and peeing into a fountain while clutching a fish to portray justice as naked, blind, and slippery like a fish.
In 2009, however, Nderitu Njoka of Maendeleo ya Wanaume (Mawe) complained that the statue, erected in honour of lawyer Alexander George Hamilton, who died in 1937, “does not portray naked justice. Instead it portrays naked injustice”.
The Uhuru Monument
Category: Monuments in Kenya – Monuments in Nairobi
Uhuru Gardens on Lang’ata Road, Nairobi hosted Kenya’s independence celebrations in 1963 and has two national treasures: a mugumo tree planted on the spot where the Union Jack was lowered as Kenya’s flag was hoisted and the 100-foot Uhuru Monument designed by Hamid Mughal at a cost of over Sh15 million.
It features the sculpture of a man standing in front of the Kenya Court of Arms ready to “protect our interests and resources”.
At the centre of the monument is a pair of white marble palms embracing a heart and a dove on top to symbolise the Nyayo philosophy of “Peace, Love and Unity”.
The fourth monument has people raising the flag to exemplify the harambee spirit.
Galzon-Fenzi Memorial
Category: Monuments in Kenya – Monuments in Nairobi
It was built in 1939 in memory of Galton Paul Fenzi, who founded the East African Automobile Association besides devising Kenya’s road system.
It is also called the Nairobi Milliary Stone as it was at the point from which distance from and to Nairobi and other parts of the country was measured.
It is situated at the junction between Kenyatta Avenue and Koinange Street. The monument currently resembles a grilled tomb.
An imperial monumental landscape
Category: Monuments in Kenya
The Queen Victoria statue was one of three monuments to British monarchs that stood in colonial Nairobi, the other two being the King George V statue, unveiled in June 1945, and the King George VI memorial fountain unveiled in December 1957. These monuments to British monarchical figures contributed to the construction of a landscape of colonial power. Celebration of the monarchy was part of the process through which Britain linked its empire as a social entity, through the reproduction in its periphery of its own perceived domestic social hierarchy. From a postcolonial perspective, the inscription of these monuments into the landscape can be seen as a cultural tool in the project of imperialism.
The monuments were to remind Nairobi’s population of the link with Britain and with the British Empire. The empire was symbolised through these monarchical figures where the persons of the Queen-Empress and King-Emperors formed an imperial aesthetic. The head of the British monarch was chosen to embody the empire. Yet not only were these monuments used to assert colonial authority in Nairobi, but they were also used to assert Kenya’s place in the empire, to prove to the imperial power the country’s position as a loyal member of the British Empire. This is particularly evident in the unveiling ceremony of the Queen Victoria statue, the whole choreography of events surrounding the ceremony creating a particularly visual spectacle. The unveiling was carried out by the Duke of Connaught, the first royal visitor to the protectorate, and Kenya’s East African Standard newspaper described how Nairobi was ‘profusely decorated’ on the day of the unveiling, and how the streets following the Duke’s journey from the Nairobi Railway Station to the statue in the Jeevanjee Gardens were ‘thronged with enthusiastic crowds, and lined on either side by Masai warriors who gave a most picturesque effect to the whole scene, and were an excellent object lesson in loyalty to the more truculent members of other local tribes’. The unveiling of the statue was a means of highlighting, to Nairobi’s residents, the authority of the British in the town. But it was also used to illustrate, to the visiting Duke of Connaught, that British authority had been asserted. In addition, the aggrandisement of the young town allowed the colonial government in Nairobi to prove to the royal visitor Kenya’s status as a loyal country of the empire.
Monuments in Kenya – Monuments in Nairobi
The visit of T.R.H. the Duke and Duchess of Connaught to Nairobi, 1906. Exhibit of Game Trophies en-route. McMillan Library, Nairobi. All rights reserved.
Even late in the day of the British Empire, Nairobi continued to illustrate a desire to express loyalty to the dissolving empire, as is evident through the unveiling of the King George VI memorial at the end of 1957, and also of the East Africa Memorial at the beginning of 1956. Both these monuments were erected and unveiled during Kenya’s Mau Mau rebellion. Mau Mau challenged colonial rule and during this period of instability the erection of the King George VI memorial and the East Africa Memorial asserted and visualised colonial power. In addition, the then Governor of Kenya, Governor Baring, used the unveiling ceremony of the East Africa Memorial to stress loyalty to the emerging idea of the commonwealth.
Statue of Lord Delamere in Nairobi
Category: Monuments in Kenya
The third group of monuments that stood in colonial Nairobi consists of settler monuments such as the Lord Delamere statue, the Galton-Fenzi memorial and the Hamilton fountain. In the creation of an identity for themselves, as read from these monuments, Kenya’s settlers retained a connection with Britain as well as drawing on the African land. Furthermore, examining these monuments uncovers the often uneasy relationship and battles of power between the settlers and the colonial government. The statue of Lord Delamere, arguably Kenya’s most famous white settler, was the first of Nairobi’s colonial-era monuments to be removed in the transition to independence in Kenya.
The Nyayo-Era monuments
Category: Monuments in Kenya
Kenyatta was succeeded by Daniel Toroitich arap Moi, who was officially installed as Kenya’s second president on 10 October 1978. As president, Moi developed the Nyayo philosophy. A Kiswahili word meaning ‘footsteps’, the Nyayo slogan emphasised the continuity Moi intended to implement as he followed in the footsteps of Kenyatta, equipped with the new foundational tenets of love, peace and unity. As well as promoting Nyayoism as a nation-building ideology, Moi employed the philosophy as means to assert, advertise and legitimise the authority of his ruling party, the Kenya African National Union (KANU), and his own power as leader of KANU. According to Moi, ‘there are three important factors in the Kenyan style of nation-building: the vehicle, the force and the philosophy. KANU is the vehicle, Nyayo is the moving spirit or force, and Nyayoism is the philosophy’. In order to achieve ‘the Kenya we want, in peace, love and unity’, Moi demanded, ‘all Wananchi must pledge undivided loyalty and commitment to the nation, the Head of State, the ruling party and the Government’. Moi’s presidency became known as the Nyayo era, and an era of state repression.
Nairobi’s Nyayo-era monuments were erected in a highly charged political context and common to most of them is their large, imposing size and their dominating presence in the landscape, claiming solidity and stability. Evident in their design is the manner in which the political elite claimed the memory of the moment of independence to validate their authority and to associate themselves with the independent country. While the form of the city’s colonial-era monuments are to a great extent figurative and literal, that of its Nyayo-era monuments can be described as more abstract and metaphorical. They are highly symbolic, both in size and form, and they create a postcolonial aesthetic through their mixture of symbolic images and concepts, ‘as befits the palimpsestual tension in postcolonialism’ described by Richard Werbner in Memory and the Postcolony. These monuments employ symbols that can be read as African, such as the sculpture of Mount Kenya, a symbol of the country, and the KANU cockerel, representative, in African culture, of a leader (Nyayo Monument); symbols that are more universal, such as the dove and the colour white for peace (National Monument), and the image of a family as a metaphor for the nation (Nyayo Monument); symbols that are more explicitly ‘western’, such as the raising of the flag – this imagery made famous through the iconic photograph of the raising of the American flag at Iwo Jima (National Monument); and symbols that draw on socialist-style imagery, such as the machine cogs in the ‘Industry’ medallion (Nyayo Monument). The different symbols and images of the Nyayo-era monuments are strung together in a collection of abstract shapes and forms, curves and lines.
In addition, these monuments were designed to be ‘interactive’. By their very nature, all monuments are of course intended to be viewed. But Nairobi’s Nyayo-era monuments include structures and space, such as surrounding benches or steps, to allow for the leisurely viewing and reflection on the monuments. This highlights the grand ideals embodied by the monuments, and also the expectations that these grand ideals would be engaged with and accepted by the wider public. In addition, through the construction of such public space the public are being invited to participate in the celebration of the nation-state. The constellation of ideas embodied in these monuments attempts to legitimise, as well as assert, KANU’s authority. Furthermore, they seek to demand loyalty to the ruling party and, through a national identity, to the nation-state.
However, the construction of such monuments also inadvertently creates the symbolic space for the ordinary public to make its voice heard and to resist such embodied ideals. Celebrating ten years of Nyayo, Nairobi’s Nyayo Monument has been particularly targeted over the years. For example, in February 1990 it was damaged by student demonstrators hurling stones, dustbins and other objects at the monument while in October 2004 members of the Release Political Prisoners Pressure Group (RPP) demanded that a Truth, Justice and Reconciliation Commission be established in Kenya and defaced the monument.