A Short History of British Presence and the Emergency in Kenya

The Kenya colony, whose territory was four times as large as that of Malaya, was created by decree in 1920 out of the larger area of the East Africa Protectorate, which was established after the arrival of the British to the region in the late 1880s. Kenya was brought into existence to help collect levies so that the London government could collect some of the money it had spent on building the Uganda railway that ran through Kenya. To this end, European settlers had already been encouraged to move in from the early 1900s on and occupied the most fertile lands in the country.⁵⁵⁹

The arrival of the European settlers hit the Kikuyu of the African tribes the hardest: the Uganda railway cut their land into two and settlers took their best lands. The land issue was especially serious as the Kikuyu society was based on the land ownership and it controlled overpopulation by moving away and bringing still uncultivated land under cultivation. They were soon circled by the settlers, government forest reserves and urbanization (i.e. Nairobi) on all sides, making settling elsewhere impossible.

Nevertheless, they were skilled cultivators of the land and, despite hardships, could compete with European farmers, brining prices down. Consequently, the Kikuyu were banned to sell their crop but was welcome on the farms as workers (squatters) and even small pieces of land were given to them to cultivate for their own benefit. In the 1930s there were 150,000 squatters who had given up their claim to land in the Kikuyu reserves. Soon giving up their

559 Carver 1990, 29; Anderson, David. 2005.Histories of the Hanged. The Dirty War in Kenya and the End of Empire. New York and London: W. W. Norton & Company, 3; Elkins, Caroline. 2005.Imperial Reckoning. The Untold Story of Britain’s Gulag in Kenya. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2-5, 9-10.

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lands reflected on their regal status as they were declared landless wage laborers at the insistence of the white settlers.⁵⁶⁰

World War II brought a temporary change in the situation since British troops in the Middle East and North Africa needed agricultural supplies. Consequently, the ban on the Kikuyu to produce for the market was lifted. However, the economic boom that benefited both the white and native population soon made the Kikuyu squatters worse off than before the war, as settlers replaced about 100,000 squatters by machinery. These squatters returned to the already overpopulated reserves with exhausted lands or moved on to be landless urban workers in Nairobi. The few who were still employed had to make do with lower wages.⁵⁶¹

At the same time, the black population did not miss the political irony of the war: they fought for freedom, but returned to subjugation after the war. Although there were 5 million Africans (out of which the Kikuyu numbered about a million), 97,000 Asians, and 29,000 Europeans in Kenya by the late 1940s-early 1950s, the Legislative Council was under the control of the colonial administration (15 votes) and the settlers (11 votes). All other races on the Council were given 11 votes, including 4 representatives of the Africans.⁵⁶² However, they were not elected but nominated by the administration and, thus, they came from the loyalist lot of the native inhabitants.

To advance the causes of the Kikuyu the Kikuyu Central Association (KCA) was formed in the 1920s. Under the leadership of Jomo Kenyatta it called attention to their plight and lack of rights. During World War II the KCA was forced underground (it was banned in 1940) but resurfaced as the Kenya African Union (KAU) with Kenyatta still being the leader of the movement.⁵⁶³ However, it was not the moderate reformers of the KAU that found the way to mobilize the Kikuyu but the more militant members of the community, who used the

560 Anderson 2005, 4-5, 23; Elkins 2005, 10-17.

561 Anderson 2005, 24-26; Elkins 2005, 18, 22- 24; Kyle, Keith. 1999.The Politics of Independence of Kenya.

New York: St. Martin’s Press, 36.

562 Anderson 2005, 5; Elkins 2005, 20, 24-26.

563 Anderson 2005, 24; Elkins 2005, 20, 24, 28.

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old custom of oathing for the purpose. Although the movement that was referred to as Mau Mau was banned in August 1950, it continued to have immense grass root support and did not cease targeting the black and white representatives of colonial rule.⁵⁶⁴

Sir Evelyn Baring, the new governor who arrived in early October 1952, found the colony to be a far cry from the peaceful place the outgoing Governor had described it. The murder of the loyal Kikuyu chief, Waruhiu, prompted the white settlers to demand action.

Seeing the magnitude of the problem, Baring requested and received authorization to declare a state of emergency and introduce one British battalion to the colony in addition to the four battalions of the King’s African Rifles (KAR) already stationed in the Kenya colony. The state of emergency went into force on October 20, 1952. Jomo Kenyatta and 132 other KAU leaders were detained the same day. However, contrary to the expectations of the colonial government, Mau Mau violence escalated further. ⁵⁶⁵

General Erskine was sent from London to take control of the situation. He meticulously cleaned the country of Mau Mau supporters: first the reserves, then Nairobi, finally the forests. When Erskine left Kenya in April 1955, most of the job was done: he reduced the 12,000 terrorists to 5,000 and, while the campaign continued, British forces started to be withdrawn in September 1955.⁵⁶⁶

At the same time punitive measures were put into force against the Kikuyu community.

Between July 1954 and October 1955, more than a million of them were uprooted and resettled within the framework of the villagizaiton campaign, which – unlike similar attempts in Malaya – only applied sticks but no carrots.⁵⁶⁷ Furthermore, detention camps were opened to rehabilitate Mau Mau supporters. By 1959 more than 70,000 Kikuyu were subjected to

“rehabilitation” in the camps, which were characterized by bad sanitary conditions, brutalities

564 Anderson 2005, 37-42, 44; Elkins 2005, 25-6; Carver 28.

565 Anderson 2005, 51-9, 62-67, 69; Elkins 2005, 29-36; Carver 1990, 28, 31-2. Carver (1990, 28-29) also presents Kenyatta as belonging to the more radical Kikuyu.

566 Anderson 2005, 69, 178-179, 262-8, 284-286; Elkins 2005, 51-54; Carver 1990, 33-35, 37, 39, 40-42.

567 Anderson 2005, 294.

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and forced labor.⁵⁶⁸ It was only in 1959 that the camps became a liability for Macmillan’s conservative government after ten detainees were beaten to death.⁵⁶⁹

Besides these measures, the fight also continued in the political arena. Colonial Secretary Oliver Lyttelton announced constitutional changes on March 14, 1954 in order to give more space to Africans and Asians in politics and start progress toward a multi-racial society.⁵⁷⁰ The Lyttelton Constitution formally established the already existing Council of Ministers and introduced multiracial membership: three elected European, two Asian and one African ministers. Moving toward the popular election of the African members of the Legislative Council, political parties were legalized (except in the Mau Mau heartland of the Central Province) in June 1955 and the franchise extended so as to double the number of eligible voters. The first eight African Legislative Council members were elected in March 1957 – three years before the emergency was lifted in 1960.⁵⁷¹

The Lancaster House talks of 1960 resulted in the acceptance of universal suffrage and black majority rule. Elections were scheduled for February 1961. Although the British originally supported the KADU (Kenya African Democratic Union) as opposed to KANU (Kenya African National Union), the KANU victory at the first colony-wide elections achieved Britain’s aim to transfer power to conservative nationalists. To do so, however, London had to bow before the wishes of KANU and in August 1961 Jomo Kenyatta was freed, who then joined KANU as its leader and became the first president after Kenya became independent on December 11, 1963.⁵⁷² All in all the emergency cost the British government £ 55-60 million, and resulted in the death of 10,527 Mau Mau activists, 1826 loyalist African civilians, thirty-two Europeans and 600 police and military personnel.

568 Anderson 2005, 311-322; Carver 1990, 39; Elkins 2005, 130, 304.

569 Elkins 2005, 54, 344-350.

570 Anderson 2005, 278.

571 Anderson 2005, 333; Carver 1990, 37-38; Kyle 1995, 63-65.

572 Anderson 2005, 331-335; Elkins 2005, 355-60; Kyle 1999.

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