[2] Despite being viewed negatively by Kenya's first two presidents, Jomo Kenyatta and Daniel arap Moi, Kimathi and his fellow Mau Mau rebels were officially recognised as heroes in the struggle for Kenyan independence under the Mwai Kibaki administration, culminating in the unveiling of a Kimathi statue in 2007.
Kimathi balked at any efforts to discipline or control him, and was constantly in trouble with his teachers;[4] as a result, he drifted in and out of the educational system.
In 1940, Kimathi enlisted in the British Army, but was discharged after a month, allegedly for drunkenness and persistent violence against his fellow recruits.
[citation needed] Around 1947 or 1948, while working in Ol Kalou, Kimathi came into contact with members of the Kenya African Union (KAU).
[5] His activities with the group made him a target of the colonial government, and he was briefly arrested that same year but escaped with the help of local police.
This marked the beginning of his involvement in the uprising, and he formed the Kenya Defence Council to co-ordinate all forest fighters in 1953.
On 21 October of that year, Ian Henderson, a British colonial police officer who had been on an "obsessive hunt" for Kimathi, managed to trap him in his hide-out in the forest.
The day before his execution, he wrote a letter to a Father Marino asking him to get his son an education: "He is far from many of your schools, but I trust that something must be done to see that he starts earlier under your care."
[11] He was buried in an unmarked grave, and his burial site remained unknown for 62 years until 25 October 2019 when the Dedan Kimathi Foundation[12] reported that the grave-site had been identified at the Kamiti Prison grounds.
Among their children are sons Wachiuri and Maina and daughters Nyambura, Waceke, Wangeci, Nyakinyua Nyawira, Muthoni, Wangui and Wanjugu.
[13] The government constructed a three-bedroomed house for Mukami at her farm in Kinangop, Nyandarua County in 2009 and provided her with a double cabin pickup for private use in 2012.
[17] The Kibaki government erected a 2.1 metre bronze statue titled Freedom Fighter Dedan Kimathi on a graphite plinth, in central Nairobi.
Kimathi, clad in military regalia, holds a rifle in the right hand and a dagger in the left, the last weapons he held in his struggle.
In July 1990, five months after his release from 27 years of imprisonment by South Africa's apartheid regime, Mandela visited Nairobi and requested to see Kimathi's grave and meet his widow Mukami.
Mandela's request was an embarrassing moment for the Moi administration, which had largely ignored Kimathi, like Jomo Kenyatta's government before it.
It was only 15 years later in 2005, during his second visit to Kenya, that Mandela finally managed to meet Mukami as well as two of Kimathi's children.