Gallows on the Golf Course

From the shaded terraces of the White Rhino Hotel, Kenya's white citizens look over their teacups at Nyeri golf course, one of the world's finest. Last week, as they watched, a squad of black policemen trundled on to the fairway an odd-looking contraption of ropes and parallel bars. It was the Crown Colony's portable gallows, an 18th century-style instrument used to dispatch Mau Mau terrorists near the scene of their crimes.

With nice regard for the golf club's sensibilities, the cops housed the gallows in a corrugated iron stockade with only the gallows bar peeping over the top. Nearby, in a makeshift corrugated iron cell, they penned eight Mau Mau tribesmen, convicted of the murder of three officials: a Negro policeman, a Negro agricultural adviser and a Kikuyu headman.

On the morning of execution, five armed warders and an African priest entered the death cell. The murderers chucked them out and, screaming like madmen, attacked the cell walls with bleeding hands and feet. After two hours' battering, the eight frightened convicted men burst out on to the fairway. They found themselves in the middle of a square of 100 armed policemen, with rifles at the ready.

Despair lent the murderers courage to face their fate. Meekly they surrendered and asked a Roman Catholic priest to baptize them. Then, all eight squatted on the ground and kissed a handful of red earth in token of their love for the land. A few minutes later, as the morning golfers watched, they disappeared up the ramp leading to the hidden gallows. "The executions," said an official bulletin, "were carried out according to law."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.