by
Toby Harnden
Daily Mail

A new biography
of Barack Obama has established that his grandfather was not, as
is related in the PresidentÂ’s own memoir, detained by the British
in Kenya and found that claims that he was tortured were a fabrication.

Barack
Obama: The Story by David Maraniss catalogues dozens of
instances in which Obama deviated significantly from the truth in
his book Dreams
from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance. The 641-page
book punctures the carefully-crafted narrative of ObamaÂ’s life.

One of the
enduring myths of ObamaÂ’s ancestry is that his paternal grandfather
Hussein Onyango Obama, who served as a cook in the British Army,
was imprisoned in 1949 by the British for helping the anti-colonial
Mau Mau rebels and held for several months.

ObamaÂ’s
step-grandmother Sarah, Onyango wife, who is still living, is quoted
in the future President’s memoir, as saying: ‘One day,
the white manÂ’s askaris came to take Onyango away, and he was
placed in a detention camp.

‘But he
had been in the camp for over six months, and when he returned to
Alego he was very thin and dirty. He had difficulty walking, and
his head was full of lice. He was so ashamed, he refused to enter
his house or tell us what happened.Â’

In a 2008 interview,
Sarah Obama claimed that he was ‘whipped every morning and
evening’ by the British. ‘They would sometimes squeeze
his testicles with metal rods. They also pierced his nails and buttocks
with a sharp pin, with his hands and legs tied together. He was
lucky to survive. Some of his fellow inmates were mutilated with
castration pliers and beaten to death with clubs.Â’

But Maraniss,
who researched ObamaÂ’s life in Kenya, Indonesia, Hawaii and
the mainland United States, found that there were ‘no remaining
records of any detention, imprisonment, or trial of Hussein Onyango
ObamaÂ’. He interviewed five people who knew ObamaÂ’s grandfather,
who died in 1979, who ‘doubted the story or were certain it
did not happenÂ’.

This undermines
the received wisdom that ObamaÂ’s grandfather was a victim of
oppression, an assumption that has in turn fuelled theories that
Obama harbours an animus towards Britain based on a deeply-rooted
rage about the way Onyango was treated.

John Ndalo
Aguk, who worked with Onyango before the alleged imprisonment and
was in touch with him weekly afterwards said he ‘knew nothing’ about
any detention and would have noticed if he had gone missing for
several months.

Zablon Okatch,
who worked with Onyango as a servant to American diplomats after
the supposed incarceration, said: ‘Hussein was never jailed.
I know that for a fact. It would have been difficult for him to
get a job with a white family, let alone a diplomat, if he once
served in jail.Â’

Charles Oluoch,
whose father was adopted by Onyango, said that ‘he did not
have any trouble with the government in any way’.

Dick Opar,
a relative by marriage to Onyango and a senior Kenyan police official,
gave what Maraniss judged to be the most authoritative word. ‘People
make up stories,’ he said. ‘If you get arrested, you say
it was the fight for independence, but they are arrested for another
thing.

‘I would
have known. I would have known. If he was in Kamiti Prison for only
a day, even if for a day, I would have known.Â’

Maraniss also
casts a sceptical eye on ObamaÂ’s grandmotherÂ’s tales of
racism in Kansas, doubting whether she was ever chastised for addressing
a black janitor as ‘Mister’ or ridiculed for playing with
a black girl.

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the rest of the article

June
21, 2012

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