Kenya depth study

conservatives

-stood for the interests of the old aristocracy

collaborated with the british and controlled patronage

moderates

western educated and epitomised by Kenyatta who had been educated

- resented conservative chiefs who restricted moderate access to power and authority under the british

- seek to advance themselves by breaking free of British rule by constitutional means

- Kenyatta is leader of KAU in 1947

Land shortages and evictions law

-From 1901, European settlers had simply taken land that they wanted in Kenya, even though the Kenyan concept of githaka (ancestral ownership) led Kenyans to believe this was theirs

-1915 Crown Land Ordinance, which divided up land by race - the whites were granted the most fertile land, the so-called 'White Highlands' and the Kikuyu were limited to their own reservations.

-The 1932 Land Commission rejected Kikuyu claims that 60,000 acres of white land be returned to Kikuyus. Before WW2, 1 in 8 Kikuyu were 'squatters' or tenants on white land.

consequences of land shortages and evictions

-By 1948 1.25 million Kikuyu were restricted to landholding in 2,000 square miles of tribal lands, while 30,000 settlers occupied 12,000 square miles, including most of the land worth cultivating

- 100,000 Kikuyu were forcibly evicted between 1946 and 1952.

politcal representation

-In 1944 Kenya became the first East African territory to include an African on its Legislative Council. The number was increased to two in 1946, four in 1948, and eight in 1951, although all were appointed by the governor from a list of names submitted by local governments.

-5 million Africans lived in Kenya in 1945, compared to 97,000 Asians and 29,000 Europeans. By 1951, the constitution fundamentally served European interests: the Legislative Council was made up of 11 elected white settlers but only 4 Africans, who were not elected but chosen by the European government.

poverty and unemployment

-The Kikuyu would earn on average only a fifth of the payment which white workers would earn for the same amount of work Coffee growing was a rewarding industry due to the fertile land held by the Kikuyu.

-The Native Grown Coffee Rules of 1934 set regulations which meant no Kenyan could grow coffee unless he had been granted a permit.

-80,000 Africans lived in the squalid slums of eastern Nairobi. Therefore, when a general strike called by the East African Trade Union Congress in May 1950 was brutally suppressed by British authorities, angry Kikuyu turned to militant union leaders such as Fred Kuba

WW2

-75,000 Kenyans fought in World War II. These men returned to Kenya with high expectations and wartime savings ready to invest.

However, they found each opportunity blocked off by conservative chiefs who wanted to save all political and economic opportunities for themselves and their allies.

War veterans therefore turned to crime and militant politics in order to get ahead. As one member of the criminal gang The Forty Group commented: "We felt that the KAU was going too slow and that the only way to change things was through violence."

social tensions

-European missionaries began to establish themselves in Kenya. The education provided by these organisations led to the emergence of young, educated Kenyans who challenged traditional tribal rule.

- the missionaries campaigned against traditional Kikuyu practices they found repugnant - an aim that alienated the new breed of moderate Kikuyu

-missionaries launched a campaign against female circumcision during the 1930s, the moderates campaigned against them

-they broke the missionaries' monopoly on education, meaning that education was now controlled by the moderates, in the form of the Kikuyu Independent Schools Association.

oathing

• By the end of 1950, over 140 had been prosecuted in colonial courts on charges related to oath taking.

• Oathing was central to Kikuyu culture. By 1948 the oathing campaign was being led by the Kikuyu Central Association (KCA), involving a commitment to civil disobedience for the recovery of lost lands.

• However, by 1950, Kikuyu militants were using a new oath - the 'Killing Oath' - which pledged its takers to rid Kenya of Europeans and, crucially, to kill Africans who stood in the way.

• Those taking the oath were often told that by doing so they would be entitled to land on their farm when the Europeans were thrown out of Kenya

April 1952

-Governor Baring approved the Collective Punishment Ordinance, giving local officials authority to punish whole villages for the Mau Mau's acts. British officials regularly confiscated the whole population's cattle and imposed fines on the whole population.

In Nairobi, the meat market -Burma Market - was burnt down to punish the Kikuyu population.

moderates became increasingly frustrated at their inability to engage with the Kenyan people. In 1950, Koinange invited Mau Mau militants to join the Kiambaa Parliament. They gained mass support, but the militants took over control of the Parliament.

Kenyatta and Koinange were unable to control them or the proliferation of the 'Killing Oath'.

september 1952

-In September 1952, Joseph Kabunja and his wife refused to take the Mau Mau oath. Kabunja was beaten and then throttled to death with a rope.

Twelve days later, the Mau Mau forced other members of his village to dig up his body and hack it to pieces. They were then forced to rub his bloody flesh on their bodies. The Mau Mau wanted to show there were bloody consequences for not joining their movement.

october 1952

-the British government passed the Emergency Powers Regulation, extending the crimes punishable by hanging from murder to include administering the killing oath or being a member of Mau Mau.

- Between 1952 and 1958, 1090 Kikuyu were hanged.

7th october 1952

-Chief Waruhiu was a Kikuyu chief who had worked closely with the British government, becoming the most senior African official in Kenya.

He had evicted Kikuyu tenants from his land and he opposed Mau Mau. he was shot in the back seat of his car by a Mau Mau gunman.

Operation Jock Scott

- on 20th october arresting 150 KAU leaders, including Kenyatta. This action forced all political activity underground, and the state of emergency was declared.

-Kenyatta was charged with five others with "managing and being a member of the Mau Mau."

The evidence was unconvincing but the judge - Judge Thacker - was paid a £20,000 to provide a guilty verdict.

-The court sentenced Kenyatta on 8 April 1953 to seven years' Imprisonment with hard labor and indefinite restriction thereafter.

However, Kenyatta was not running Mau Mau. The real militants were tipped off and fled for the forest.

Home guard

-Many Kikuyu - especially conservative chiefs who had benefitted from British rule - vociferously opposed Mau Mau. Facing Mau Mau attacks, they formed a Kikuyu 'Home Guard'.

The British formally acknowledge the Home Guard in December 1952 and, by January 1953, there were 7,600 recruits. The Home Guard were very effective due to their local knowledge. They were responsible for 42% of all Mau Mau killed.

violent mau mau attacks

-In January 1953, the Ruck family - Roger, Eseme, and their six-year-old son Michael - were brutally hacked to death by Mau Mau fighters.

- On 26 th March 1953, over 500 Mau Mau attacked the village of Lari, targeted because it was a centre of loyal Kikuyu and Home Guard organising. Within one hour, 120 lay dead, mainly women and children.

In response the British arrested some 2000 men, although most of the Mau Mau leaders escaped.

women and children in Mau Mau

-Following increased British use of detention from April 1953, many women and children joined Mau Mau fighters in the forest.

Women were central to the running of Mau Mau. They could more easily move between the forest and the villages than men and were therefore essential for carrying intelligence and supplies.

-Dedan Kamathi's camp in the Aberdares mountains was home to over 400 women. Without women's contributions nothing could have been achieved.

It was "the women who transported arms and food to the forest edge and spied for the freedom fighters. The women as much as the men hazarded their lives to gain back a country" (Likimani, 1985).

Mwathe conference: kimathi charter

-was held in August 1953 and came to be known as the Mwathe Conference.

A decision was made to form the Kenya Defence Council as the highest military and political organ of the armed struggle.

-Kimathi was elected the President of the Kenya Defence Council, with Gen. Macharia Kimemia as vice- president, Gen. Kahiu-Itina as the Treasurer and Brig. Gathitu as Secretary.

Kimani charter demands

-We demand African self-government in Kenya.

● We demand to know who hands over the money for land from Settlers and where the money goes.

● We demand to know why many different Christian missions with different laws are brought to Kenya.

● We condemn the dropping of poisons from the air as the colonialists in Kenya are doing to the African population.

● We reject the foreign laws in Kenya, for they were not made for Kenya and are not righteous. - We reject being called terrorists when demandingour people's rights.

Nairobi bus boycott

-the Mau Mau announced a boycott of the city's buses from September 1953. Africans walked to work for eight months, and the loss of revenue forced the British to back down.

Mau Mau also organised boycotts of European beer and cigarettes.

-As the Mau Mau grew in power, the educated middle-classes who worked for the colonial government were targeted.

- Tom Mbotela - a senior official on the African Advisory Council - was hacked to death in Nairobi on 26th November 1953 by Mau Mau fighters.

-By late 1953 there were some 24,000 fighters in the Land and Freedom Army.

February 1954

-A meeting of the Kenya Defence Council was held in February 1954. Eight hundred delegates attended the meeting and after intensive discussions, a decision was taken to replace the Kenya Defence Council by a new body -the Kenya Parliament.

Operation anvil

-Aware that Mau Mau's base was in the Eastlands slums of Nairobi, British General Erskine launched Operation Anvil: in April 1954, the entire population (50,000) was moved to temporary camps.

-Here they were screened by anonymous hooded gikunia (loyal informers) to check whether they were Mau Mau.

-worked: 700 'hard core' Mau Mau were identified, and the organisation had been destroyed, but 50,000 ordinary Kikuyu had been removed from their homes and 24,000 men imprisoned without trial.

Viligization

-In June 1954, the British decided to enforce villagization: the enforced resettlement of Kikuyu into tightly controlled villages.

Approximately 1 million Kenyans were forced to burn their homes and rounded up for six years in 854 villages fenced with barbed wire where acts of brutality by colonial guards were widespread.

acts of brutality at the hands of the british

Detainees were subjected to arbitrary killings, severe physical assaults and extreme acts of inhuman and degrading treatment.

The acts of torture included castration and sexual assaults which, in many cases, entailed the insertion of broken bottles into the vaginas of female detainees.

methods to deal with rebellion at camps

-Prisoners at Hola frequently refused to perform their work or take part in 'rehabilitation' exercises. The camp commandant outlined a plan that would force 88 of the prisoners to work.

On 3 March 1959, 11 of the prisoners were clubbed to death by British guards.

-Despite attempts of a cover up, news of the massacre reached Britain following a Time magazine expose.

results of the Mau Mau rebellion

- British spent an estimated £55 million suppressing the uprising t

• hey carried out massacres of civilians, forced several hundred thousand Kenyans into concentration camps, and suspended civil liberties in some cities.

- war ended in the imprisonment and execution of many of the rebels, but the British also understood that things had permanently changed.

With nationalist movements sweeping across the continent and with Britain no longer financially or militarily capable of sustaining its empire, the British government and representatives from the Kenyan independence movement met in 1960 to negotiate independence.

- on dec 12th 1963 Kenya declared its independence from Britain

British takedown of Mau Mau

-In early 1955, British forces began a series of sweeps through the forests in an attempt to drive out the remaining Mau Mau, who by now were suffering from a lack of food and ammunition.

- The government turned out the entire African population of some districts - in one case as many as 70,000 people - to work their way through the forest and kill any Mau Mau they found.

- By the end of 1955, there were only an estimated 1500 Mau Mau fighters left in the forests, and they were in such a wretched condition that any further organised military campaigns were out of the question. Although the declared state of emergency was to continue until 1960, the rebellion was effectively over.

-Officially the number of Mau Mau and other rebels killed was 11,000, including 1,090 convicts hanged by the British administration. Just 32 white settlers were killed in the eight years of emergency.

The Kenya Human Rights Commission has said 90,000 Kenyans were executed, tortured or maimed during the crackdown, and 160,000 were detained in appalling conditions.

The swynerton plan

- in 1954 main objective was to create family holdings which would be large enough to keep the family self sufficient in food and enable them to practice alternate husbandry to develop a cash income

- It was envisioned that 600,000 African families would have farming units of approximately 10 acres of land a family, which would raise their average productivity in cash sales from £10 to £100 a year after providing for their own needs.

- the value of recorded output from the small-holdings rose from £5.2 million in 1955 to £14 million in 1964, coffee accounting for 55 percent of the increase.

The carpenter committee report

-The Report of the Carpenter Committee on African Wages in 1954 prepared the way for substantial rises in African wage rates and proposed minimum wages.

- Between 1955 and 1964 the annual average wage for African workers doubled from £52 to £107

One million acre scheme

-designed to accommodate masses of landless families;

- scheme would see the purchase of about one million acres of land, bought in large block locates in the periphery of the reserves.

-80,000 hectares were to be bought each year for a period of 5 years.

The land would then be used to settle 35,000 families on more than one million acres of land

-The scheme cost £25 million

-In order to attract the settlers, the administration improved the terms of payment to make them generous and attractive.

From July 1962, a new policy was introduced underlining full cash payment at the time of buying the land with the settlers having the right to choose where to be paid; London or Kenya.

Lyttelton constitution

- 1954

- 3 Europeans, 2 Asians, and 1 African acquired executive position

- Establishes a Council of Ministers and a Legislative Council to advise the Governor. The

government provided for elections of 8 Africans to the legislative Council

Africans were allowed to form political originations whose functions were confirmed to district levels.

Lennox -Boyd constitution

-1957 increased the number of African ministers to 2

- on March 10th kenyans celebrated the first election of Africans to the legislative council- poll averaged 83%

- african rep on the legislative council raised to 14, equal with europeans and Africans given two ministerial posts

1960

- African political organizations were allowed again in 1960. The Kenya African National Union (KANU), founded in May of that year and favouring a strong centralized government,

was built around Kenyatta, who was still in detention.

- he was released in Aug 1961

First Lancaster House conference

-1960

- Establishes principle of majority rule (i.e. one person, one vote) and therefore gives Africans a majority in both the Council of Ministers and the Legislative Council.

Second Lancaster house conference

-1962

- A framework for self-governance was negotiated

- A coalition government of the KANU and KADU was formed in 1962, and after elections in May 1963 Kenyatta became prime minister under a constitution that gave Kenya

self-government.

Third Lancaster House settlement

-1963

- Kenya became fully independent on Dec. 12, 1963

A year later, Kenya became a republic (with Kenyatta as its first president)

British public opinion

-Following the 1959 Hola Massacre, at which 11 Mau Mau prisoners were clubbed to death by British guards, public opinion swung against British rule in Kenya.

- The Fairn Report concluded that the British government had allowed for systematic brutality and both Labour MPs such as Barbara Castle and Conservative MPs such as Enoch Powell publicly criticised the government.

Conservative party policiy

-Following the retirement of Winston Churchill

and Eden's resignation over Suez, Harold MacMillan's Conservative government followed a new imperial policy, choosing to represent the process of decolonisation as evidence of the enlightened maturity of both the party and

the British government. Gradual decolonisation was now to be encouraged and carefully managed.

Jomo Kenyatta

-Kenyatta had the political ability to appease the white settlers - promising them that "Kenya is large enough...black, white, brown, black can work together harmoniously" - whilst

simultaneously maintaining the respect of Mau Mau, for example persuading them to give up their weapons and return to Kenyan life as ordinary citizens.

Tom Mboya, Oginga Odinga, and

KANU

-After African political parties were cautiously legalised in 1955, opposition to British rule centred on the moderate Kenyan African National Union (KANU) led by Tom Mboya and

Oginga Odinga. KANU won a landslide victory in the 1961 elections but the party leadership refused to take office unless the British released Kenyatta.

British economic reforms in Kenya

-British government introduced a series of initiatives in the early 1960s: the Swynnerton Plan provided 600,000 African families with 10 acres of land; the Carpenter Committee report proposed a minimum wage for urban workers, and the Lidbury Commission promised equal salaries for government employees of all races.

US pressure

-Anxious to avoid an independent Kenya allying with the Soviets, the American government under Eisenhower (1953-60) and Kennedy (1960-3) put pressure on the British to depart from their policy of suppressing nationalist movements in Kenya. Moreover, some elements of American public opinion - influenced by leaders such as Malcolm X - were sympathetic

to the Mau Mau.

British Finances

-The Suez Crisis of 1957 had shown that Britain lacked the financial power to conduct wars in defence of her empire. Wars were simply too costly, and imperial wars seemed to be the

most expensive of all. In 1957 MacMillan had compiled a "balance sheet of empire" which showed the Kenyan State of Emergency (1953-59) had cost £55 million. To capture one

Mau Mau fighter had cost over £10,000.

Blundell and the New Kenya party

-By the late 1950s, the white settler community in Kenya was fragmented politically. A new political party, the New Kenya Group, led by the liberal Sir Michael Blundell and other white businessmen, sought to build up a moderate African middle-class and showed a willingness to collaborate with moderate African political groups.