There was no discussion of reparation for British colonial atrocities during King Charles visit: Mudavadi

Prime Cabinet Secretary (CS) and the CS for Foreign Affairs, Musalia Mudavadi, says the government did not discuss Kenyans’ calls for reparations by the British government for atrocities suffered during the colonial period when King Charles visited the country in October.

Ahead of Charles’s visit, there were calls by survivors of that period, local rights groups and some Kenyans at large for the British monarch to directly apologise and endorse reparations for colonial-era abuses such as torture, killings and expropriation of land.

In a new interview with Citizen TV, Mudavadi says there was no direct discussion on the matter with the king during his four-day state visit.

Charles, Mudavadi says, instead wanted a “moment of exclusivity” of conversing with “some of the victims who might have been affected by some issues”, not a situation where “the government is seen to be the one driving that conversation.”

“The government is very serious about those voices,” Mudavadi said of the calls from a section of Kenyans.

He told the host Sam Gituku in the interview aired Thursday that “The structure of that meeting, as it was, was that the king wanted to engage separately on his own with some of the victims who might have been affected by some issues.”

According to figures from the Kenya Human Rights Commission (KHRC), some 90,000 Kenyans were killed or maimed and 160,000 detained during Kenya’s Mau Mau rebellion between 1952 and 1960.

Britain has expressed regret for those abuses and in 2013 agreed to a 20-million-pound (about Ksh.3.7 billion) settlement.

According to Mudavadi, Kenya is pushing for colonial reparations through the African Union (AU) under a process led by Ghanaian President Nana Akufo-Addo.

“A few days ago, I was in Ghana representing the president on the AU-initiated process of the reparations for past colonial atrocities,” he said.

“I was representing the government of Kenya in the conversation of having a unified approach and strategy under the umbrella of AU on matters reparations,” Mudavadi noted, adding “This brings not just Africa but also the African diaspora; the Caribbean.”

During Charles’s visit, the monarch said he felt the "greatest sorrow and deepest regret" for atrocities suffered by Kenyans during their struggle for independence.

"The wrongdoings of the past are a cause of the greatest sorrow and the deepest regret," Charles said during a state banquet on October 31.

He however steered clear from a full apology, only saying “There were abhorrent and unjustifiable acts of violence committed against Kenyans as they waged... a painful struggle for independence and sovereignty – and for that, there can be no excuse."