Mau-Mau Cave Mau-Mau Cave Located near Nanyuki, about 199.2 km North East of Nairobi in Kenya's Central Province, the Mau Mau Cave was used as a hide-out by Kenyan Freedom Fighters during the Mau Mau Uprising of 1952 to 1960. It is located approximately 18 km south of the equator inside the thick Mount Kenya National Park. The cave was discovered in 1953 by the Mau Mau freedom fighters fighting the British colonial government soon after the declaration of the State of Emergency in 1952. It was bombed by British forces in 1959 after the location was obtained from a member of
Mau Mau Uprising enaction of Swynnerton Plan. The villages were surrounded by deep, spike-bottomed trenches and barbed wire, and the villagers themselves were watched over by members of the Home Guard, often neighbours and relatives. In short, rewards or collective punishments such as curfews could be served much more readily after villagisation, and this quickly broke Mau Mau's passive wing. Though there were degrees of difference between the villages, the overall conditions engendered by villagisation meant that, by early 1955, districts began reporting starvation and malnutrition. One provincial commissioner blamed child hunger on parents deliberately withholding food, saying the latter were aware of