Surveillance, policing, and political prisoners then and now: an introduction to the prison world through freedom papers in 21st century Kenya

By Amed Galo Lopez

Kenyan prison systems suffer from post-colonial effects in governmental surveillance, autocracy, and overall discrimination. These problems have rolled over into the twenty-first century, continuing to silences voices in the marginalized communities of Kenya today. According to the World Prison Brief database,[1][open endnotes in new window] the number of prisoners in Kenya has increased almost 300% since 1972 with silenced voices still prevalent within today’s prison population of over 58,800. While Kenyan prisoners have created spaces, or rather histories, of perseverance, mutual aid, and identity, these spaces are often destructively interfered with or further marginalized by the current police state that brought them into prison in the first place. Therefore, as an academic, I ask the questions:

• How has the current police state in Kenya affected the social and economic lives of Kenyans and Kenyan prisoners in Nairobi?
• How can we study and historicize the police state and its feature of prisons considering Kenya’s long-lived epistemological surveillance and policing?
• What methodologies are available to us and what new methodologies must we utilize?

To answer these questions, I will introduce a concept of the “prison world” to interpret archival history within the prison. My goal is to historicize the lives of police-targeted communities and prisoners through understanding their environment and interactions with police, guards, other prisoners, and the outside world. To borrow an idea from Historian Nidhi Mahajan, a prison is a world unto itself, a world within a world.[2] Within this world, the experiences and activism of today’s Kenyan prisoners, including political prisoners, has been expressed through freedom papers, which play a significant role in letting those outside hear their voices. Such freedom papers, in fact, include many things—memoirs, music, textiles, wood carvings, academic publications, and political manifestos. In them prisoners creatively reveal political and social awareness, while also advocating for social justice, feminism, LGBTQ+ activism, and freedom of expression.

Silences and oral histories in the archive

Silenced voices: Before delving into the case studies of political prisoners and their carceral experiences, I want to first elaborate on the prison itself and why it acts not only as an institution of power and has a longevity in its effects, but it also functions as an archive of silenced voices as well.

Silences, according to Haitian historian Michel-Rolph Trouillot, are often created in the process of historical archival production. In this process, facts are created from the primary sources and are then given authenticity only after deemed adequate enough to be incorporated within the archive.[3] Since facts are not equitably created in this process, silences that can be and should be considered facts, are overshadowed and deemed less significant than other sources.[4] As a result, as Congolese historian Jacques Depelchin argues,

 “facts do not speak for themselves and silenced facts cannot speak for themselves.”[5]

Therefore, in order for silenced voices to be recovered or at least acknowledged, they must be understood historically to the greatest extent that we can, no matter how many inaccuracies might exist in our recuperation of these facts. For example, prisoners are often disregarded in history because of their presumably hyperbolized testimonies. From their telling of torture to describing their uncomfortable spaces and endangering encounters within prison walls, what they say can be perceived as untruthful or inaccurate. However, this is how silences are created. In order for the oppressed to be unsilenced, their “inaccuracies” must also be granted validity and reliability. As historian Luise White[6] diligently puts it,

“the inaccuracy in these stories make them exceptionally reliable historical sources… they offer historians a way to see the world the way the storytellers did, as a world of vulnerability and unreasonable relationships.”[7]

History itself is a culmination of ever-changing stories and testimonies; it is always interpreted and will continue to be interpreted anew as more sources become present in the archive. This speaks both to a useful practice of sometimes valuing quantity over quality, and understand how quantity aids in making quality judgments. In this case, because prison accounts are minimal in the archive, their quality as a reliable source is underestimated and underappreciated. In regards to African history as well as African prison history, voices are often silenced in the archive when history and its quality are solely developed upon the quantity of writings. This kind of prioritization especially occurs when an overall collection of writings is accumulated and organized by the archivists. Of course, once again we see the archive as an example of hegemonic power, a power that is produced and continues to structure sources in the archive. Oral history may, in this context, become a special passage for voice to remain alive and heard.

Oral histories: Oral tradition is one of the defining features of African history; however, acquiring the skill to utilize that tradition in its rawest form and produce an oral history is not an easy feat. Many modern historians depend on critically acclaimed written sources, which are both abundant and easy to access. But when they encounter oral tradition, a challenge ensues. According to anthropologist Jan Vansina, oral tradition is full of spoken words that breathe and exist inside time. In order to comprehend the fullness of these vivacious words and their meanings, historians will have to first slow down and reevaluate their methodologies.[8] I do not wish to demean or exclude the use of written sources. On the contrary, many oral traditions themselves utilize written data, archeological material, ethnography, and scientific methods to prove the credibility of spoken words.[9] More simply, I ask modern historians to really hear oral tradition and to take it more seriously, especially when oral histories of prisoner experiences have much to teach about cultural practices. In particular, in the context of Fort Jesus[10] (Kenya’s first modern prison), its oral histories have now become oral tradition, or stories passed down by generation and told by the walimu[11] of Mombasa. When oral tradition is taken into account alongside written sources, a fuller history can be written, engaged with, and brought to life.

How to navigate prison studies

Freedom papers: Because the history of Kenyan prisons is limited in scholarship, I have turned to what I call “freedom papers.” This concept is defined as the prisoner’s form of writing that unlocks their spatial entitlement to communication, awareness, and individuality within the prison system.[12] Inspired by political prisoners Kwame Nkrumah, Jomo Kenyatta, Ngũgĩ wa Thiongʼo, Maina wa Kinyatti, and Nelson Mandela, freedom papers originated from writing and drawing on toilet paper. According to Thiong’o in his autobiography Detained: A writer’s prison diary, for any Kenyan political prisoner, whether incarcerated in the colonial or postcolonial period, writing was their main voice in prison. He argued,

“paper, any paper, is about the most precious article for a political prisoner… These prisoners have mostly written on toilet paper.”[13]

Interestingly enough, toilet paper was and currently is often conveniently accessible to political prisoners. Inspired by political prisoners Kwame Nkrumah, Jomo Kenyatta, Ngũgĩ wa Thiongʼo, Maina wa Kinyatti, and Nelson Mandela, freedom papers originated from toilet paper as it became more than just a supply for hygiene, but a tool for writing with expression and resilience. It became… a freedom paper. Now, although that be its origin and inspiration, toilet paper is just one example of the tools used to create freedom papers—it does not delimit freedom papers. In fact, freedom papers are prisoners’ form of writing for self-expression on any platform and material used for writing. And such activity can even be expressed through oral sources, objects, and spaces. For example, an oral history, in the context of prison studies, can be studied as freedom paper and can be utilized to uncover realisms and fallacies about the prison system. I found that freedom papers of Kenyan prisoners included oral histories and musical rhythms, using self-expression for defiance, feminism, and mobilization. The voices here were strong and unsilenced. No matter how much torture prisoners endured, the power of voice through words, actions, and writing permitted their minds to prevail. Additionally, these freedom papers help reveal the realities of prisons and the society that surrounds them. I believe that the only way prisons and prisoner experiences can be fully analyzed and realized is through utilizing the primary sources of freedom papers.

The prison world: The concept of freedom papers also alludes to what I am currently developing about the “prison world.” The prison world I refer to is not only a place, but it is also as an archive in itself that can be unveiled through the freedom papers of political prisoners and other prisoners. To define the first part of this concept, I want to return to historian Mahajan and her idea of the ship being a world unto itself. Through her method of archipelagic ethnographies, she argues that dhows (a wooden sailing vessel) docked in ports are not merely static pieces of floating material, but they are rather mobile productions of memories and histories interconnected by spaces and temporalities across the Indian Ocean.[14] She adds that archipelagoes hold the same characteristics as the dhow since they establish a moving space through its geography and social interactions. She argues:

“In tracing relationality, archipelagic thinking provides an apt ground for imagining multi-sitedness where relationality is centered, where the place is not lost in the relational scale but, in fact, made through relations with other spaces and places. This relationality is formed not only through networks of trade, or the movement of people, but also through social interactions, traces of past movements, and mnemonic traces.”[15]

An island can thus be just as mobile as a dhow, whether it is setting sail across the sea or stationed in its port. With this in mind, let us turn to islands that were once considered prisons. Historically, islands made great geographical locations for imprisoning war criminals, undesirables, and dissidents. From the British overseas territory of St. Helena to Robben Island offshore from Cape Town, South Africa to Alcatraz in San Francisco, California, these islands were home to some of the most infamous maximum-security prisons that held political prisoners such as Nelson Mandela and tyrannical figures such as Napoleon Bonaparte. Even the continent of Australia was used as a penal colony from the end of the eighteenth century to the middle of the nineteenth century for keeping the majority of Britain’s convicts. Each island and colony carried out its own carceral laws and procedures; they were each their own prison world.

The prison island of Ustica, where Antonio Gramsci was imprisoned and famously wrote Prison Notebooks, is another great example of a world unto itself. I argue that Gramsci’s accounts can be considered both an archipelagic ethnography and a freedom paper. Based on his experiences as a political prisoner, the island of Ustica was not only “so finely-wrought a file” with its high surveillance, censorship, and torture, but it was also a space for intellectual thought, self-awareness, and perseverance, which at times, felt unreal.[16] Gramsci’s imprisonment lasted eleven years, and his cell became his new world until his death in 1937. His life-in-prison on an island exemplifies how a prison, just like the dhow, is a specific place, or a world, that is both existent and nonexistent since prisoners were incarcerated for large spans of time, spending their life temporarily or permanently behind steel bars, fenced gates, and concrete walls. And these break all ties with the nation that built, facilitated, and controls them. These conditions are the same for the prisoners of any modern prison, earlier under colonial occupation and later under autocratic regimes. However, accompanying the power of the governmental sword also comes the power of the imprisoned pen.

Perhaps less clear to readers is the second definition of my concept—the “prison world” as an archive. Those who write history often dismiss sources deemed inadequate and erroneous. The very process of writing history, of using the archive, produces unheard and silenced voices. In addition, archives usually produce hierarchies of knowledge. According to Mbembe,

“archives are the product of a process which converts a certain number of documents into items judged to be worthy of preserving and keeping in a public place, where they can be consulted according to well-established procedures and regulations… The archive is, therefore, not a piece of data, but a status.”[17]

A great example of a hierarchical archive is the National Archive, more specifically the Colonial Office of the British Empire.[18] Prior to the turn of the twenty-first century, The National Archive would only showcase documents that spoke of British successes during their colonial rule in Africa. It was not until revisionist (Marxist) Mau Mau historians Caroline Elkins, Huw Bennett, and David Anderson were called to investigate the archives that five Kenyans filed claims against the British government for “acts of mistreatment and torture” under British colonial rule in Kenya.[19] Throughout a tedious and complex investigation, they were given access to the Hanslope Disclosure,[20] where they found many files regarding interrogations, screenings, villagisation (a form of population control through detention villages), and hand detainees missing from the archives.[21] This new highlighting of different information proved that the British were not only responsible for the atrocities of Mau Mau detainees, but the National Archive secretly held sources that officials knew would tarnish their reputation. On one hand, the reorganization and withholding of certain documents exemplified the archive’s hierarchy, production of silenced voices, and illegitimate credibility as a historical archive. On the other hand, while censorship limited access into the totality of the archives, many historians such as Elkins were still capable of reading “along the archival grain” in order to uncover the truth. According to anthropologist Ann Laura Stoler, reading along the archival grain means to set aside any biases and assumptions about the colonial archive and instead read into it willingly to comprehend its methodical construction, imperial motives, and colonial interpretations. She argues that reading along the archival grain in colonial archives has produced some incredibly insightful analyses of colonialism, and anti-colonialism for that matter, especially when addressing rationalities and reasonable implications.[22] However, this methodology can only go so far especially when encountering histories that bleed into contemporary systems of power and surveillance.

At this point, the “prison world” can be recognized as a new archive, or at least we can be reminded of its existence as an unused archive for explicit and uncensored sources. Because the “prison world” and its freedom papers are created by the prisoners themselves, the political prisoner (who is the archivist in this case) shares an intimate connection to the prison world. Within the prison is a prison world, and within that world are freedom papers.

In the next section I turn to explore a history of Kenyan prisons through their harsh realities of governmental surveillance, discrimination, and torture, but also through their triumphant stories of escape, activism, career building, and creativities of expression.

Echoes from the past

Temporal landscapes: My first case study describes temporality and space in Fort Jesus, Mombasa. Between 1895 and 1958, the Portuguese military base was transformed into Kenya’s first carceral facility. Built in the shape of a man with four bulwarks representing a limb and eight watch towers, the fort reflected the “panopticon” advocated by British jurist and prison architect Jeremy Bentham. This carceral design was a circular prison that included a watch tower in its center; its structure was intended to create a state of conscious and permanent surveillance over the prisoner in order to ensure automatic authority.[23] This modern disciplinary mechanism, Michel Foucault argued, inflicts “institutions of repression, rejection, exclusion, and marginalization”[24] as it permeates throughout the institution a hierarchical system of power achieved through surveillance.[25] In addition, the fort incorporated prison warden quarters, barracks for soldiers and guards, kitchens, burial sites, etc., and above all, prison cells for men, women, and children.

The photographs above showcase one feature in particular: the torture chambers. Located just below the women’s cells, these chambers consisted of two rooms: the first room (left) was for both men and women, while the second room (right) behind it was solely meant for men. According to Educational Director of Fort Jesus, Mwalimu Abdi Aden Korio, prisoners would be chained to the walls while ocean waters would rise up into the chambers and drown the prisoners throughout the night.[26] A testimony from these chambers comes from former prisoner Mohammed Bachu whose years of imprisonment are unknown; however, according to his daughter, he died in prison in 1956, just two years before Fort Jesus had disbanded as a prison. Bachu was imprisoned for trading ivory and because this was deemed a serious crime, he was sentenced directly to solitary confinement in the torture chamber. While confined, he was not alone as there were other prisoners in the chamber.

Mwalimu Abdi states that prisoners who were held in the torture chamber were not allowed to talk amongst each other, so Bachu developed a form of communication with percussive taps against the wall that only he and the other prisoners understood.[27] Two taps followed by a pause and then another tap meant that a guard was approaching. Continuous taps meant that the chamber was about to flood. Four consecutive taps would signify that a woman was approaching the chamber (this can be viewed as an early version of catcalling). Mwalimu Abdi mentioned that Bachu eventually was able to sneak in materials of leather and string in order to construct a small drum, which he strategically hid from guards.[28] Bachu’s use of musical rhythms to communicate with other prisoners was a form of esoteric knowledge that developed into mutual aid amongst those held in solitary confinement.

Political prisoners then: The political prisoners of then refer to the revolutionaries of colonial Kenya of the twentieth century. A great example of this type of prisoner is former Mau Mau custodian Maina Macharia, who is 93 years old. While Kenyan Mau Mau revolutionaries mobilized in hopes of decolonization from the British, Maina Macharia was their custodian of important files from 1952-1953. His title was short-lived since he was captured and sentenced to more than five years in prison; during his sentence, Maina moved from prison to prison until he was released in 1959.[29] According to his memoir, of which he gifted a copy to me during our interview in his home, Maina stated that he was forced into hard labor, and in every new prison that he was relocated to, his sleeping arrangements, access to paper, and food rations were reduced to almost nothing.

“We had only one bed and two blankets that accounted for ten of us. Many days, we had no food, no mats, no sunshine… we had to smuggle in newspapers using ‘night baskets’ [used for trash] so that my fellow prisoners and I were briefed of the news outside… But the lack of food was the worst. I remember one man named Munogoki… he was one of us. He committed suicide in Karaba after a beating for gulping down a porridge.”[30]

From starvation to harsh beatings, political prisoners like Maina Macharia and his acquaintance Munogoki were not treated with the honor and status they had acquired outside. Instead, they were intensely surveilled, most especially because of their status and affiliation with the Mau Mau. Free conversations were scarce in the prison world, but communication with the outside world was almost non-existent. When first interrogated, Maina stated that if you did not admit to being Mau Mau, you would be placed in another room for screening and forced persuasion.[31] In other words, there was no way of getting out of this situation; whether you were Mau Mau or not, one accusation could lead to your inevitable imprisonment.

Though Maina Macharia was locked up under high surveillance, this did not break his spirit as he continued to smuggle newspapers and books in to enhance his studies on world affairs and current events. After his release, he was employed with newer opportunities in politics; he was even able to keep and preserve some of the Mau Mau files he had prior to his imprisonment (as shown in the photograph below). While many perceived him as a historian of great knowledge, his opposing ideas and actions against the current government still did not end well, especially with Presidents Jomo Kenyatta and Daniel Arap Moi. Still today, Maina remains under government watch.

Forbidden communities and their testimonies

Finding the forbidden fruit: for the last two weeks of my trip to Kenya in the Summer of 2022, I visited the slums located in Mathare and participated in political agenda meetings with members of the Mathare Social Justice Centre,[32] who directed me to the Coalition for Grassroots Human Rights Defenders (CGHRD).[33] My visit with the latter placed me in a secluded area in Mathare, where I was able to stay off the police grid and meet with the LGBTQ+ community.[34] I conducted three non-consecutive group interviews in total, interviewing over twenty Kenyans who have experienced discrimination, violence, and/or imprisonment. My analysis will use testimonies from only five femmes and studs from the total of twenty-four interviews taken.[35] Since it is illegal to be a homosexual in Kenya, the interviews do not disclose individuals’ names, dates, or locations in order to protect their identities. In fact, I suggested that they all introduce themselves with nicknames before the start of the interview. In addition, the only place mentioned in these testimonies is the location where these interviews took place. Although the Kenyan government knows that these communities exist in the Mathare slums,[36] only the CGHRD, which is a protected non-governmental organization, knows where they meet and where they are located. Only with permission from the representatives can the community be known.

The political prisoner now: This contemporary political prisoner is a familiar, yet silenced voice in today’s prison world of discrimination. Since homosexuals are targeted by police, being openly gay creates a risk for oneself if around law enforcement. In this regard, Esther, a bisexual femme in her boarding school, shares how she and her friend were targeted, arrested, and imprisoned. She shares:

“One of my friends, she’s a tomboy... a football player. One of the police saw us together and we were put in Lang’ata prison... FOR 3 MONTHS... WE WERE HARRASSED. The police officer wanted to put her in the other cell with men because of what she was wearing... but she was like “No!, I am a woman” so the police officer wanted to touch her to feel if she was a woman, to confirm. I feel like, we were LGBTQ and that’s why he did that.”[37]

LGBTQ+ people experience countless acts of sexual harassment, and much of it is not only dismissed by police but encouraged. Kenyan police forces, built on misogynistic and colonial structures, view themselves as having omnipotence and legal immunity. Since the police force is one of the very few government entities that can carry weapons, they have great authority over people. They are not to be accused of wrongdoing, and if they are, consequences will be inflicted the one who defied them. In the case of Esther’s friend, she was erroneously viewed as a man, stripped of her identity, and raped.

Nasty, a bisexual stud who loves to play soccer, shares their story of when a group of friends came across the police after a party:

“The police harassment increased as we avoid the bash, we go and fight. We go to the archives; there the archives were carried around and we were not taken inside. We were surrounded and spoken to badly and in the end, we were dropped somewhere we don't know and you just had to defend yourself to get there. Also, the boys here are harassing people, they don't talk to any girl. If you talk to him, they talk badly and say that he will plan to curse you. That is harassment too.”[38]

Homosexuals are often targeted by the police; when identified at big parties, they are harassed and arrested. Such police harassment is rooted in the privilege of authority. Because they wear the badge and have a status that represents power, they have accessibility to commit atrocities. And other males imitate them who seek this same sensation of power, but also revenge. Many men believe that LGBTQ+ women and studs steal their women. Revenge fantasies are conjured from feelings of betrayal and competition, especially since there is no tangible evidence of a crime that the “alleged offender” committed. The police will simply leave LGBTQ+ victims in unknown places once they have satisfied their appetite for control, revenge, and power. 

Vero, a bisexual stud, shares a similar story of being targeted and thrown to an unfamiliar place. They state:

“It’s not safe for us out here. Even when the policemen catch you. Like when I’m in the town and I go out in the club and it’s midnight, they start saying ‘it’s midnight and what are you doing outside.’ You are caught, they keep you at Mahindra, you are just turned around. … All they are doing is just abusing you, saying all sorts of things. But I have to stay calm for them to leave me alone. After they have said all sorts of things, then they drop me in nowhere. It’s so sad.”[39]

Police using their power to harass the LGBTQ+ community is discussed here in Vero’s testimony. Unfortunately, while many policemen engage in verbal and sexual harassment, the majority of police, or the police in general, do not act upon harassment cases pertaining to homosexuals. Instead, they ignore and neglect to investigate the brutalities these communities face every day. Vero continues by saying:

“Local authorities like the chief, the police, like even if you go to the police station, they should just create somewhere where a person can go and report if she’s being harassed and they’ll take action. Legal action, ‘cause even when you go there to report they do not take action because they just accept that it’s that way. This is normal. Even if you talk [to them], they won’t help you. They just write it down and tell you to go and then come back, just like that.”[40]

The police, according to the above statement, should serve and protect the people. Laws should be followed and law enforcers ensure that laws are not broken. If a civilian comes to the police for assistance and for safety and reports atrocities committed against them, then the police should deliberately review the report. If the report is proven true and the civilian did fall victim to these atrocities, then the police must act on these atrocities with legal action in order for the civilian to acquire justice. This mandate, of course, is simply disregarded.

A femme lesbian named Candy describes her experience of being arrested and imprisoned at Kamukunji Police Station:

“We normally have a rainbow club in town. So, when we caught by the police officers in town, I was taken to Kamukunji. My friend was so drunk that I was trying to take her home. So when we reached at the bus stop, they saw me taking her inside. And when I was coming into the car, I arrived at a certain road, there near the railway bus station. The police took me, I had done nothing. They saw I was wearing a rainbow pin, and one police man said, ‘This is the one who is targeting the girls in this town. Where are you from? What are you doing here? Just get in the car.’ And they arrested me for four days. They had nothing on me. They had to release me because they said I was useless, using their space for free. Yes. But I never told anyone. Cause even if you tell someone they say you are lying or joking.”[41]

Rainbow clubs, like many nightclubs, have played an important role in LGBTQ+ lives. They are considered safe havens within which people can truly be themselves without any hesitation or discomfort or interference from the outside world. Since this nightlife is vast and overpopulated, anyone can blend in with the crowd. However, once out of that place, a person’s identity is again in jeopardy of being noticed and they are put into harm’s way. For Candy, the moment she stepped out of the club was the moment she was at risk of being caught by the police. In addition, her rainbow symbol became what most police would identify as an obvious target. Interrogation and trepidation follow as mechanisms of authority and imprisonment take over once the police intrude with their power and superiority. Candy was arrested for four days and then released for the reason of taking up space. Such treatment indicates that the police do not necessarily care to criminalize homosexuality, but instead allow their prejudices against queers to dominate their abuse of authority.

In another experience of imprisonment, Beryl shares a different case where they were imprisoned in a Lang’ata woman’s prison. They state:

“As for me I was arrested. My case was a little bit difficult. I was taken to Lang’ata women’s prison, a real prison. And not a police cell, yeah. So after a few days, I don’t know where they heard it from but they started treating me different. They isolated me, they put me in a single room, in my own room. They isolate you from other women cause… I don’t know how they see us, but that is what I experienced. Many times I was isolated.”[42]

After their arrest, Beryl was placed in a women’s maximum prison for being perceived as a woman rather than a man. Once the authorities discovered that they were homosexual, Beryl was removed from the population of women prisoners and forced to remain in an isolated single room. Considering that prisons are essentially made to discipline the prisoner’s mentality and morality, isolated confinement usually led to insanity. Beryl shared that the guards intentionally isolated her more than once in order to “rid the gay away[43] and many times, Beryl lost mental stability and experienced serious depression.

In most cases, the police and prison guards do not offer any expected protection, security, and justice. When a person is a homosexual, not only are these legitimate expectations denied, but oftentimes replaced with reciprocated violence, harassment, and discrimination. This is the reality of policing. This is the reality of modern-day Kenya.

Temporalities and creativities of expression

            Schedules: Bringing it all together, I return to the temporality of imprisonment, especially through the use of schedules. While I argue that prisons are places stuck in time, prisoners do abide by strict schedules and along with it, scheduled activities. But, it is important to note that not every prisoner or political prisoner has had access to these activities and resources, or even have endured the same experiences. For this essay, each testimony I got discloses only a part of Kenya’s overall prison world. A testimony does not define the prison world since each prison has its own procedures, disciplines, prisoner populations and demographics, forms of punishment, resources, accessibility to resources, etc. I reiterate, each prison was different and each experience must be respected as its own. With that in mind, we proceed.

According to Collins Zikoyo, a former prisoner incarcerated in Nairobi’s Industrial Area Remand Prison for two years, prisoners would receive three meals per day:

• 5am: Breakfast (porridge)
• 9am: Lunch (ugali w/water)
• 12pm: Supper (maharagwe (beans) and wali (rice) and every now and then, some nyama (meat).[44]

Between each meal and after supper, prisoners in the remand prison were required to work until very late at night during the weekdays. Labor varied from prison to prison, but prisoners would work either on the shambas (farms), or in carpentry, textiles, industry, and would partake in minor roles such as kitchen staff and maintenance crew. If tasks were not complete between meals, that meal would be withheld. Once the day was complete, sleep was no reward either since each cell, which measured 35 ft x 15 ft, was overcrowded and unsanitary.[45] Considering that there was a lack of medical aid, many prisoners would become sick from either the food or sleeping conditions.[45]

Activities: While weekdays were dreadful, weekends were more promising. Aside from participating in daily prayer, prisoners, based on good behavior and levels of literacy, could access books at the libraries and academic subjects in schools offered on the compounds. Jackson Mwangi Kigo, a former prisoner who was imprisoned for fourteen years in three different prisons,[47] was capable of receiving an education while in prison, and eventually rose to be one of the school teachers. Below is a scanned copy of Jackson’s CV with a list of all the subjects he completed from English to religious education.

Jackson was an exception, and acquiring an education was not the only objective prisoners could pursue to buy time during their imprisonment. According to retired prison officer John Odongo from Kibos Maximum Prison in Kisumu, prisoners could partake in other activities such as workshops, sports (football, netball, badminton, volleyball, etc.), choirs, book clubs, bible studies, arts and crafts, wood carving, board and card games. Of course, any trade skills they acquired from labor tasks were beneficial to them in the near future, especially in means of financial gain.[48] John stated that a high percentage of prisoners who were released used the skills they learned to open up textile shops. Since prisoners were exposed to Christianity, they continued a life of religious servitude and evangelization. Furthermore, when released, many of the products they made in prison would be sold outside to tourists and anyone who came across them in police facilities. The photographs below showcase purchased artistries and crafts from the Kenya Prison Headquarters in Nairobi. Each item sold was made by various anonymous prisoners. Though they did not earn much, prisoners did not always leave their imprisonment empty handed.

As mentioned, these activities, resources, and skill sets were not always available to prisoners. Depending on their length of sentence, which prison they were sent to, the amount of money they had before their sentence,[49] ethnic background, sexual orientation, etc., prisoners could be categorized with a lower status, hindering them from receiving equal and fair treatment.

Conclusion

Prisoners are oftentimes disregarded in history because the inmates are generally labeled as “criminals” in society. Unfortunately, their voices are not always recorded in the archive because their government and its propaganda deem their testimonies untruthful, detrimental, inaccurate, and worthless. However, this is how silences are created. In order for them to be unsilenced, prisoners’ voices must be indiscriminately welcomed into the historical archive. As political activist and abolitionist Angela Davis eloquently wrote, we are called

“to imagine agents of history very differently from the ways we have been encouraged to think of powerful individuals as the motors of change… [prisoners] are our messengers, our dreamers, and our pioneers.”[50]

Prisoners tell of torture, government surveillance, police brutality, mass incarceration, sexual harassment, discrimination, isolation, starvation, and arduous labor. They describe all-encompassing, uncomfortable spaces and endangering encounters within prison walls. These prisoner voices matter and are motors for change.

We as scholars must be open to their stories and enter their prison world. This essay introduces methodologies that can be used across spaces and temporalities in history, not just in Africa. Where there is a prison, there is a prison world; and where there is a prison world, there are freedom papers. Only by searching out and recognizing what the prison papers consist of can we uncover their landscapes, political manifestos, memoirs, educational endeavors, drum rhythms, textiles, wood carvings, and testimonies. Only then can we understand how prisoners self-express decolonization, social justice, LGBTQ+ activism, feminism, and freedom of expression. For the prison world is not only a place, but an archive for us to listen to.

Notes