AO: This quote highlights the use of fire(s) (also mentioned in Fedha 1972) to destroy many of the colonial government's documents and the supposed rationale for why the documents were destroyed.
On 7 September 1961, the East African Standard reported that many classified documents, including reports compiled during the Mau Mau emergency, had already been burnt. When enquiries were made about this incident, the then Permanent Secretary in the Chief Secretary’s Office, Mr T. Neil, stated that the destruction of documents was a standing exercise because of shortage of storage space. (3) We now know that the main reason why valuable Mau Mau records were destroyed was rather because they contained valuable yet sensitive information which the colonial administration did not wish to hand over to the next African government. We shall never be able to establish how many records were destroyed.
