Can Britain Pacify Kenya?
IRVINE, KEITH
CAN BRITAIN PACIFY KENYA? By Keith Irvine Constructive political and economic programs, not force, are needed to end the current strife in Kenya The tide now seems to be running against the Mau...
...Unfortunately, the latter is meeting with opposition not only from the Mau Mau (who try to pull down the banked terraces as they are built) but also from the Digos, who make up a Moslem coastal community and support the anti-conservationist movement known as "Tutsi" ("Together...
...This base also supports the forces occupying Suez...
...Foreign observers sometimes ask whether Britain will "stay" in Kenya once the Mau Mau emergency is ended...
...In Kenya's future, the role of the Indians??who outnumber the whites by three to one??is also likely to prove important...
...The fact is that, even if the white settlers are dispersed, Britain cannot afford to relinquish Kenya yet...
...Mau Mau strength among the Kikuyu is largely a result of the fact that the present "Ituika" (or transfer of tribal power from the "elders" to a younger age group, which occurs about once every thirty years) appears to have adopted a pro-Mau Mau policy, thus throwing the whole weight of tribal tradition behind the movement...
...Colonial Secretary Oliver Lyttelton reports that two out of three incidents are now initiated by the 50,000-strong Government forces rather than by the Mau Mau...
...and it would strike at the root of the Kikuyu's principal grievance??land hunger...
...Other British investments include $450,000 for Kenya's first Parliament buildings, which were officially opened in February, and $1.4 million to improve the railway system...
...If adopted, it would considerably reduce the time wasted in litigation between Africans over land rights...
...Nevertheless, one hopes it may eventually lead to the establishment of a true multi-racial society, although, from the African point of view, this is not likely to happen because there is no African or Indian electorate...
...Settler extremists, headed by the elderly Colonel Grogan, have even advocated a declaration of rebellion against the Colonial Office and the mass hanging of Kikuyu tribesmen...
...Small wonder that the Mau Mau boycott on smoking, and on patronizing Asiatic teashops, has been religiously observed...
...It also looks forward, at the end of this time, to developing cash crops...
...One of the heaviest blows suffered by the settlers since the outbreak of the emergency has been the appointment of one African and two Indian ministers to Kenya's Council of Ministers...
...Several such settlement projects are already under way, the largest being the 480-square-mile Marubeni project in the country of the Wakambas??a tribe 600,000 strong which the Mau Mau have recently been trying to infiltrate...
...Yet, whether the emergency is ended or not, the colony will know an uneasy peace at best for a long time to come...
...Even if the suggestion is not accepted, the Mau Mau has impressed the entire settler community with the impossibility of Kenya??where whites are outnumbered 177 to one ??ever becoming a "white man's country...
...In this connection, a 25-year plan is under consideration which is designed to carry approximately 600,000 African families on intensively or semi intensively farmed holdings alone...
...Even the British Commander-in-Chief, General Erskine, admits that Kenya's problems can be solved only by politics, not by bullets...
...A cadastral survey has also been recommended...
...Semi-arid lands would also be developed for stock...
...In December, it was announced that Kenya would receive $30 million in British aid, of which $14 million will be devoted to agriculture...
...Meanwhile, Sir Richard Acland has suggested in the House of Commons that the Government offer to buy the white settlers' land and use it for African settlement...
...Furthermore, it is virtually certain that one of the first results of a British withdrawal from Kenya would be the annexation by South Africa of the coveted territories of Bechuanaland, Basutoland and Swaziland...
...Although the oaths contain several untraditional novelties, the Mau Mau ritual has succeeded in completely transforming the personalities of its adherents, both willing and unwilling...
...it would save many settlers from the bankruptcy now facing them...
...But the gains achieved can be consolidated only if Mau Mau power is broken...
...This group, it is felt, inspired such campaign features as the refusal to be photographed for identity papers and the Nairobi boycott of European-owned buses...
...At present, the Mau Mau remains almost entirely confined to the Kikuyu, whom it has reduced to a state of civil war...
...Despite Kenya's social disintegration and climate of suspense, constructive work does continue...
...The manager of a Pakistan wrestling team visiting Kenya, who was so injudicious as to wait at a bus stop, was clubbed to death...
...Large sums have been spent, too, on boring for water and building reservoirs, construction of the Wanji and Low Tana hydroelectric projects, and rice-growing operations...
...Such a move would loosen, if not end, the settlers' political stranglehold...
...Alternate generations succeeding to power are named Maina and Mwangi, respectively, and the transfer, which is marked by a series of secret induction ceremonies, takes several years...
...It is not rich, like Malaya with its rubber, but MacKinnon Road in Kenya??the base where the British concentrated all the military supplies evacuated from India, and more besides??defends half a continent from land attack...
...Although costly, this action might help end the small war that is costing close to $2 million a month...
...In the past, the Ituika has been marked by unrest??as, for example, in 1922, when the Mwangi generation came to power??but nothing comparable to the present upheaval has ever been known before...
...Whatever the outcome of the present test of strength between the opposing forces, the Mau Mau movement provides us with an object lesson: We cannot afford to ignore the languages, customs, religions and needs of the "tradition-directed" African peoples with whom we come in contact...
...Since soil erosion is one of Kenya's most serious problems, a great deal of money is also being spent on soil conservation...
...It is this unexpected and inexplicable phenomenon which has baffled Western observers...
...The principal stumbling block to political reform is the reactionary influence of the 30,000 white settlers...
...If we do, we in the West will find ourselves with a delinquent continent on our hands...
...If it does not spread to the Luo or the Wakamba tribes, the emergency will drag on painfully to an inevitable end...
...True, this concession was made at the price at having a settler sit in the War Cabinet...
...This, in turn, would threaten the internal stability of the uneasily united Central African Federation, and thus the peace of all Africa...
...By Keith Irvine Constructive political and economic programs, not force, are needed to end the current strife in Kenya The tide now seems to be running against the Mau Mau terrorists in Kenya...
...While the Mau Mau has shown itself, in part, as anti-Asiatic, about 20 Indians are believed to have been connected with the movement, for anti-colonial reasons...
...The plan aims at increasing the present coffee acreage 18 times and pyrethrum 40 times, as well as substantially increasing the tea, pineapple and sugar-cane crops...
...To prove that she intends to stay, Britain is pouring large sums of money into what has hitherto been one of her least progressive colonies...
Vol. 37 • April 1954 • No. 17
