Turning Tide

The Kenya Colony's leading political figure, big, bluff Michael Blundell, told Britain's Colonial Office in London last week that the Mau Mau have been losing ground ever since last April when Britain gave Kenya's blacks a bigger voice in local government. Loyal Kikuyu, bravely standing out against the terrorists in their tribe, have done much to turn the tide. Mau Mau are now surrendering to local authorities at the rate of 25 a week as opposed to a scanty two a week, six months ago. The 6,000-odd Mau Mau gangsters still at large, said Blundell, are mostly without effective leadership. Even the discovery last week of the body of Gray Leakey, a friend and tribal "blood brother" of the Kikuyu since his youth (TIME, Nov. 1), did not change Blundell's optimism. "We must expect sporadic outbreaks," he said, "but the end is in no doubt at all."

Leakey's body was found in a dense thicket some five miles from the lonely farm on which his wife was strangled to death by Mau Mau six weeks ago. Leakey had been tortured, buried alive and left in a shallow grave to become the prey of hyenas and wild dogs. Oddly enough, his murder was regarded in Kenya as further evidence of the Mau Mau's declining fortunes. The captured Kikuyu witchwoman who led police to Leakey's grave admitted that he had been made a human sacrifice in the hopes that his death would bring renewed good luck to the Mau Mau.

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