By 1954, 9 years to the actual independence, Mau Mau leader Dedan Kimathi was already feeling the victory drawing nearer, after years of engaging the colonialists in forest battles.
He led Kenyan fighters in fighting the Britons and the local home guards whom they had recruited and turned against their fellow Kenyans in the Aberdare Forest.
However, victory was still far away and though he remains credited as one of the persons who played a major role in achieving independence, he never lived to enjoy what he fought for.
According to Peter Thatiah, one of the persons who fought alongside Kimathi, so confident of a win was Waciuri that he began toying with the idea of forming his government.
He says that towards the middle of the year, Kimathi came up with the idea of giving each and every one of the fighters a rank, while he crowned himself the Prime Minister.
But this faced stiff opposition from General Mathenge, a fellow fighter who was almost of the same rank, and who had even fought in Burma (Myanmar).
"It did not surprise me when Mathenge turned down the offer to be made a field marshal. He said Kimathi should even refrain from calling himself a Prime Minister, arguing that it is the man who will survive the war who would claim the post," Thatiah was quoted by the Standard.
Mathenge would shortly afterwards be arrested and arraigned before the Mau Mau court-martial, after which himself and six of his men were tied to trees as Mathenge and his council consulted on what to do with them.
It was said that they were planning to betray the course by reaching into a ceasefire deal with the white man.
Thatiah says that he crept to where Mathenge was and untied him secretly, after which he (Mathenge) left walking down the valley, and was never seen nor was his body found.
Kimathi was also betrayed and arrested in Tetu in 1956.
The position he had been dreaming about would end up with Mzee Jomo Kenyatta who never fought in the forests.