The Ladies & the Pangas

In a lonely Kenya ranch house some 60 miles north of Nairobi, Mrs. Dorothy Raynes-Simson, a cattle rancher, sat chatting with her partner, Kitty Hesselburger. There was a noise at the door, a shout, and a gang of Mau Mau thugs, led by the ranch's male cook, burst into the living room, brandishing panga knives. One man seized Mrs. Hesselburger by the throat, bent her across a chair; the rest set upon Mrs. Raynes-Simson, who grabbed her revolver, a handbag necessity for most Kenya white women these days, and blazed away. She shot two men dead, one of them the cook. Then, taking careful aim, Mrs. Raynes-Simson killed the man who was struggling with Mrs. Hesselburger. The Mau Mau fled, with both women in hot pursuit. Dorothy Raynes-Simson found one of her attackers hiding in the bathroom and shot him, too. Then she called the cops and asked them to collect the corpses.

We Wanted Your Head. In Kenya Crown Colony last week, whites in their remote farmsteads were jumpy and alert. The Mau Mau, striking from their jungle hideouts, were now concentrating mostly on loyal Kikuyus, members of the sturdy tribe on which the Mau Mau prey for their recruits. Chief Ireigi Karamba was shot in both legs and one arm; two African policemen and a Kikuyu schoolteacher were hacked to pieces. Three more tribesmen walked into the ward of a government hospital at Kiambu, sought out their chief, Hinga Hinga, who was recovering from a Mau Mau ambush, and shot him dead in his bed. A white farmer, returning home to find his house a shambles, unearthed a crude Mau Mau note: "God must love you. We wanted your head." They got his headman's: it rolled over the farmer's boots when he flung open the door of the headman's hut.

Queen's Counsel. The Kenya government relies on British regulars, Kenya home guards and Wandorobe savages (who get -L-10 per Mau Mau head) to stamp out the terror. So far 13,000 Kikuyus have been rounded up as Mau Mau suspects; several dozen have been killed and four hanged. Yet few white settlers believe the Mau Mau can be crushed until Jomo ("Burning Spear") Kenyatta, the bearded Kikuyu whom the government accuses of masterminding the terrorists, is safely locked away.

Kenyatta, handcuffed and shabby after ten weeks in jail, was on trial last week in the remote northern outpost of Kapenguria. The principal charge was "management of an unlawful society," but implicitly, Kenyatta was suspected of sowing the seeds of African Communism. His defending counsel was Britain's slick Denis Nowell Pritt, Queen's Counsel, the man who got Gerhart Eisler freed in England. Though he denies being a Communist Party member himself, Pritt can be relied upon to echo the familiar cries, including that of germ warfare in Korea.

Thanks largely to Pritt's skilled defense tactics, Kenyatta's trial is now a month old.

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