UWI L ibr ary IW, t-t \ ~ ~~ ,,___£ w---L.,t_ ~ ~ ~~ l!G ,_ a_ ~ c._; t:rll V - ~ 7(~ l , // ~ ~ ~ O(_ f;r,J'. ~ . O~L- 1 UWI L ibr ary -·------ ?""!D NA.- .-:v ~ ½ ~ if ?' ~ ) o.-J {ARL/ v" ~ I J ___.o_rJJ_ ~ ~ foJJ~ t:,. I/ UWI L ibr ary \~a_ I .,.______J ...._....JI.- ,;:a,,_,. A~ r-. . . "I.,.~ • ') L.....,,Q '~ ~ 1/, lta.. ~\ ~. Q.,..o_ ~ t:t.,_ 'd."'-4~ ~'j-.J:;._..,._' ~ -lj;;-,,__ . ~ d"1s. -;-1.s,_ -r~'-- ,(t ~ }, , '7:) ' . "';"") AJ.u.4-- A}~ luJl_ ~u L '-- ,~~ , 10~ L,_ ~ L,,,__,,__ -Lea.._ ~ ..:J. ciJ~ . ft,,_ ~ l.__ uJ.- f,1} <>-<- 1~ a_. c;...,.J_ . , G_ ~ ~ ~ ~~:r--,..>---<:..c ;___ ~~i J~~ ~ b ~ -t.; 11-_..,[L_ "-~ ~ k...... :___ ~ ~~ ~ ~ °"7 . l"-t~- C)'Lft_ ~I ~ ~ ~ ,~-A~.~•- tJ?o_ same time that any physical en~a«ement would mean a massive slaughter of the black majority by the hi«hly disciplined, well armed 2nd determined white minority. At immigr tion I was cau«ht in a French-speakin&-packa&e-tour and UWI L ibr ary 4 , in East African Airways blue, followed the line till a pert youn« African Miss/with the strikingly chiselled lines of the Somalit women,told me to go back and wait since my passpar t showed I wa ~ bt part of the French-speakin« party. I looked closely at her and decided she could not be all Somali. She was shorter, stockier, slightly bigger boned: -fp.e fine, elongated Somali bone the Somali beauty structure had been blunted by other genes, but :a.mnxaxmxcirx.tlial:iXp]I &11KX.ixmccxx.Yi•xtt shone through for all that. She misread my stare l~~ and seemed momentarily confused. She ~• ,• not much older than my eldest daughter, a year perhaps, or two. But men my age, and older, take young women of that age for second or third wife in those parts where polygamy is still practised. I walked aw~y from her, back to the lounge and sat down to wait. The presence of the young woman was itself a sign of chan~e, a warning of the future changes that would, ultimately eliminate even the polyg&JD.ous relationship between old men end young women. After a while, when the French-speaking crowd had passed through customs and there was less of a crush, she strolled casually over to me. "You from the coast?'' I said: "No." "Kampala?" "No." "Dar?" "No. Jsmaica. '' J amaica It was clear/tut meant nothing to her, she'd never heard of it. "In America?" "No." She shrugged slightly and strolled away leaving me feeling unreason- ~.__ ... able and difficult. To get over the feeling I went l~oking for the ~oph There were n - 'European', 'Asian' and 'African' si~s as there had been at the ~~i;;; of that other airport in Nairobi in 1952. UWI L ibr ary 5 There were three immit:!;I'ation officers. The one in the most prominen1 position in the centre of the three-lined EJUdi passageway through to customs was African. To his right, near a wall was a white officer, and to the left of the Africlilll was lilll Indian in the turban of a ill± Sikh. Last time the immigration men had been white only. I presented my passpart to the Sikh gentleman. I looked beyond him and it was clear that the world h d indeed changed here. The customs officers waiting ~o examine the luggage were all Africans. To 2nyone who had known the old East Africa, the old Kenya, the •··- . i- I old Nairobi airport~ certainly tom~-\ this was like stepping through the gateway of a South Africa where all the racial barriers of Apartheid had been swept aside. Last time Nairobi airportµxft• W ~ iill.kEraE1magxaxx~~ ~ one or' the two main ,!;ateways into 'white' Afric: Johannesburg airport was, and still is, the other. Nairobi longer was African. -.l!l!!!!!B!!i!i-=.. not the gateway to a piece of J ai})ort, now, i whitJ Africa~~l!l:E:t:ii-lCd:F@~~• I went through to the relaxed, assured young customs officer, then a Kikuyu porter came to take my bags. He had the - for me familiar - L-.. large holes in his ears, but ~ eyes were wholly unf&miliar. The last time I had looked into a Ki~ face, any Kikuyu face, there had been ~ ..-4 ~ a smoulderin« and bitter anger in the eyes. I had / enae d this bitterness and anger everywhere I went, breathed it in the air and felt it even in the red earth; but most of all, strongest of all, it had been in the eyes of the_ Kilpl~. It had me.de all of them look hard and bleak ..-J. ~ and colcz_ Now I looked into Kikuyu eyes that reflected a soft and gentle and friendly mood. There were other Kikuyu porters, other men with big holes in the lobes of their ears, and the _w~ at peace with themselves and their world. ~ My arrival at Nairobi airport in A~gust 1965 was ~sdifferent as thi --fLx e~ {~ ~':)& "'--I~ -::::::-:--:;-a.n- y __ n_~_ c_ou_l_d_b_e_ f_r_o_m_ m_::_y_ ar __ r_i _v_a~l ~---=-~~ =AU=€U:~ of/\ "J.952@ w ~~ • UWI L ibr ary 6 l~ Nairobi we-e big , sprawling, very clean, very mo dern ; and because mhe sky was overcast and no sun shone the eight-mile trip from the airport to the city could have been in Britain on a fine and clear ......._ sunless day, or in the flat regions of the French countryside on a dull autumn mornin~ . Perhaps the fine road was wider and straighJe and newer, but that was all the real difference . And the city, too, ~ave off stron~ly this feel of being more part of Europe that Africa. It was built by ~'lple who had ~XJDDll&K conceived and planned it as a piece of Europe set on the African highveld, and they had done a firstclass j0b. And because they ha.d built it for themselves and on the assump~ion that they would always be in control, they had built it beautifully and well, with wide tree-lined avenues and open spaces where patches of neatlf cropped ~ass soothed the eye or a riot of flowers stirred the spirit. There _ are few cities in Africa as well lid out as Nairobi, few that are as x 'European' in its planning and architecture. But llEt that is not r eally to be wondered at since its orginal builders did conceive of it as the main city of a 'white' East Africa. The result is that the Africans of Kenya have inherited from the white settlers one of the most modern capital cities f j / all Africa. Today the city area cavers rou«hly ?66 square miles and has a <;t,-dl-, ~ (a 1 ~ I\. uowing population that now stands at - - ...-- over 3i 0,000. It boasts a fine City Hall where you can have morning coffee or lunch out in its gardens or on its terraces, or something stronger at the bars. Then there is a massive hall rigged up with those eenferenee gadgets wkaxa which makes it possibaa for a speech in • Be lant;uage to be instanEly translated into a number of others. There is a National - Museum which inco:pporates a snake park ;and aviary, a City Park of 300 acres and an Arboretwn of 80 acres. There is The McMillan Mem0rial Library (not named after Bri taiib former Prime Minister) with UWI L ibr ary 7 close on a 100,000 volumes . ~ All these, and much more, the white seatlers had made built for themselves, and all these the Africans L.-a- .b.a:d:" now inherited • centre The city/h grown and changed so much since I had l as ; seen it that I felt lost. To add to my confusion ld names had been replaced by new ones so that what had once been Delamere Avenue was now perhaps, Kenyatta Avenue, signifying/the final and camplete victory of the ~ lj Africans as symbolised by Kenyatta ~et those fi:.4Yi-&!!ft« to make Kenya a white man's country/~ wn•/great symbol~/ with the defeat of the 'white' Africa idea and so/Delamere Avenue became Kenyatta Avenue; and Hardin«e Street was renamed Kimathi Street after Dedan Kimathi, one of the military leaders _thrown up by the Mau Mau stru«gle who was captured and executed by the British. There were a mul.tt tude of othe• chan~ed names: the road from the airport into the city had once been Princess Elizabeth Way. Now it was Uhuru Hi«hway. White House Road had become Haile · Selassie Avenue. Such changes, I found out later, were n t confin d to street names only. For example the King Geor«e VI Hospi*al had been transformed into the Kenyatta National Hospital. These were from the whites the outward and visible evidences that state power had passed/to the blacks. I found the town a deal more friendly than n my last visit. There were iewer Europeans about than XXXIIDUDJl'»arai last time, and those I saw did n t cexry themselves as lords of the earth. And there were the Indians, often more numemous than the Africans, but still not as aa sharply forced on my consciousness as that other time. Then, Nairobi had been a town belongin« to the Europeans and Indians, with each figh-ting for the dominant position. There were African,e 1 cations, of course, but these were seg~e«ated an~~ outskirts of the city, and frGm them came the servants who wllrkaa menial jobs in the homes UWI L ibr ary 8 and offices and shops of the Europetillls and the Indians; they were on the fringes of the city, welcome when they could be useful, but not of the city, not enjoying the same rights and privileges as the other two groups. I remembe~ hat on that first day in Nairobi t hirteen years earlier Jomo Kenyatta, the old Chief Koinange, now dead and honoured by having one of the streets of Nairobi named after him, ne of the old chief's sons, myself and a handful of others, had jone to tilll Indian-owned restaurant. Waxlutt»K.Elx.tmlUixa~ They had rejused to serve all f us: the old man, Kenyatta and myself, yes; the others, n. So the others had gone. I remember the old chief Koinange ha d said: "This is our burden. We are either denied or they make us concessions. It is a k heavy burden." ·Now,_ though the Indians were still very much there, it was clear tha t the city, like t he country, had been taken over by the Africans. Today the African population of the city is greater than its European and Indian citizens combined. And, as everywhere else in the world, there is a steady, persistent drift from the countryside to the big city. I had spent the best part of an hour cruising about the city and I was getting concerned about the taxidriver's bill so we hunted down the office of an old friend from my London days, eldest son of the old chief K inane and now~ Minister in the government. It was still early me coffee, teleph ned some "d&Bge.,Qae -£agi tators • of ~lie eld Ila. • ow he s 1 -R;;~ " obviously happy and contented, involved in the work of na tion building , anxious to conserve and consolidate what ha d been gained. And there was the new reserve I ha d by now come to expect and look for in t hose of UWI L ibr ary 9 my former friends who had assumed the burdens and the responsibil~ies and the powers of political office. It was obvious the Minis ter was busy; his Permanent Secretary came in to brief him nan important conference with e~ther some f, British or American ~overnment repreentatives, soi left quickly. \- My friend promised to come and look for me after work that afternoon. I did not in Africa bank on it:~~s~ overnment are busy people and one often ma s~promises in order to get rid of someone who mi4ht----~N•i•*9 take up more time than one either can or is prepared to give. The Minister's secretary ,;.-- a==;i-.-;ri.-t,t;l ::;.L..--. . woman dressed in ',.S-J' ~ ·,,. traditional .:r a sari, f\ to- my mind I\ the most feminine of all nationa:ib the/ costumes of thew~ of the wer+d. I was admiring her dress when she a m.. ~ ~W~ i C I. ~ snapped [~oe 1;J ~ 'bo- the rican p rter wh was helping me with my thins. I closed my eyes and listened. It was like this, in arrogant tones tinged with contempt, that Europeans and Indians had addressed here their African servants that other time I was /%uxa. I wonderia : ~J~ rwiA...uJr c)~.J... ~ I 11 4:; how deep the changes really went, 0~1i' :&1u1 ..a::micrly~ with a slight serw3e of skeptivism about all I had seen thus far. Then I ~~ . ~ &lilsett that it wa.s only two years since- Kenya attained independence . Changes in attitudes, outlook, patterns of prejudice, ~enerations of u habit, could not be carrried throu~h at the same pace as the political changes. I reminded myself that I would have to allow for the greater time-gap needed for the adjustments ';;,. outlook t catch up with the new power adjustments. The hotel was a. couple of miles frem the centre of the city, on the crest of a 1 w rolling hill. The grounds around it were well-kept, spaci us, and its facade was most pleasin. There was a playing area UWI L ibr ary 10 for children, with swing, small sandpit 9nd seesaw. 4 continental European effect was achieved with tw tables under sunshades outside the extrance to the hotel . Two women, ne coloured, one white, and clearly American from their speech, sat talking and writing letters at one of the outdoor tables. Inside, sn African male recepti•nist eyed me with a combinati n of curi si ty and suspici n. Behind him·, in the background, a, ta.11, a.gular English woman we.s hard at werk e.t the hotel accounts. Above the woman's head, looking directly down at any ne registering was a portrait of the President of the Republic, Mzee Jcmo Kenyatta. 'Mzee' is the title that he himself chose. It means 'Old One ', 'Ola Man', more 'Elder'. ~e is/honoured in il"rica than elsewhere. But the title is not and has not been ma.de exclusive to the President . Al.l over the country when people wanted to show respect_ for someone who was lder .,-... they &.ddressed him as 'Mzee'. The port rai t was in 0ne of those cheap utility frames - the sort of thing you buy if you must, not because y u want t. In· the weeks that followed I saw portraits like this one - sometimes a little lar~er, somstimes a little smaller - in every public or semi-public place in the land: every stor,, every hotel, every restaurant, every bar, every office, had its ~ rait of the President han~ing where it could most easily be seen as you entered the place. With rare exceptions the frames of the Presmdenti l portraits were all cheap, mean-lo~king affairs, giving the impression of a thin~ done because it had to be done . bl!:xtdxll:µfx.iJDljXXll'.Jq,DlllU In a few places, usually Indian-owned,~b~ there were more than one: one in the window and one where you can see it the moment you step int the store: A sort of doubly declared si~ of patriotic loyalty made doubly manifest The youn~ African did not know about any reservation for me so the Englishwoman left her books and took over. She had waited in silence UWI L ibr ary ll uhtil the younc man and I had reached an impasse, with him insistin~ there was no reservation and me insisting that there was. She said: 11 0h yes, Mr. Abrahams; I had the call from the Ministry. The room won't be empty till twelve but we can put up your things till then." The younc man looked at me with expressi nless eyes that could not quite hide his mood of heaviness. Hgd the woman deliberately left thin~s until he was on the verge of turning away a customer? this in order to show that he could not yet cope by himself? Now, with her in comtrol, everything went smoothiy. -- And was The place was old and very British. It had probably once been a large private home run with an army of servants. Its location had once ·been the most exclusive section of white residential Nairobi; within easy reach of the centre of the city and yet far out enough to be away from all its hustle and bustle. It could once have been the home of a top col nial civi! servant or of the manager of a bank or of some very senior represent tive of a private business firm. As an ho t el it clun~ almost desperately to its Britishness with a not very inspire British cuisine • .And since its terms were on a full board basis there was not much the ~ests could do about the food they got. On my floor, the ground floor, the bathrooms were of that age where they looked dirty no matter how much they were scrubbed. The total effect was a genteel, clean,shabbiness . All gentlemen guests were expected to wear jackets and ties for dinner and the night life of the hotel centres around the bar. It transpired that the two American ladies were part of a group tuur of tee.chers ·from the United Sta tes . I encountered at least two other such groups during my East African ~ourney. Apart from the American teachers there was a:p young Italian family with two lovely children, UWI L ibr ary two or three.couples of settler-type East African whites and a trades unionist from ~h1ma come to partic~p•ae in some sort of advisory - - the workers and their employer, capacity in a labour dispute between/the East African Common Services Organisation, a body set up by the governments of Kenya, T&nzania and Uganda for the running of certain comm n regional services . My room, and premumably all the others, was provided only with running water and washbasin . Toilets and bathr oms were outside, and all telephone calls had to be made, or ~eceived, u xi.ka in public at the reception desk. As far ~s I was concerned while 45/- a day was not a ~eat deal to pay, it was too much for what was provided and for the quality of service . The trade unionist from Ghana, I discovered felt the same way; and since he was not paying the bill himself he would not have minded so much if only the food had been a little better. It took me four days to find a better place and on the fifth day Im ved into a the Hotel Pigalle in the Ind~an section of central Nairobi. For 40/- a day I had a spacious single room with private and breakfast as well. bathroom and toilet and a telephone in the ro mj I also met Mr. C.A. Pa tel , w~ x11Xiarld Xiibixmx:u:xaxxaxJ:~ •rixh.iu.rh man ager and general factotum of the hotel, and a passionately overwhelming protet t r and p~omoter of the interests of those he likes. He stands five foot two or .naxx~ three, is as thin as a rake: I doubt th t any scale he st od n would register a hundred pounds weight. He is dark brown, sharp featured, emotional; his face registers, mirrorlike, every mood and feeling that ·courses through his mind. We started off badly. I liked my room, I liked the privacy it afforded and I liked my view of the clean clear skyline of the city; on a so I decided to bo k fi:n:llI monthly basis which carried a decent discount. Mr. Patel wanted a month's money in advance, ~ Ad . .QJ(~ the manner of his askin~ for it made for the trouble: he ex] uded ·-apprehen si o aJia a 11d ~ apoloc ~c.o-"-<,::. --"> ~~~ UWI L ibr ary 13 "Does everybody here pa.y in advance?" I demande d6) G?il!fiiJ.li: 1 a "No sir. But we ask it of long stay customers who get the monthly discount." "Why?" 11 You see, Mr. Ebrahim, sir, sometimes customers come and take a r om for a month because it is cheaper; then they leave after two ~ weeks and want to pay only half of the month's rent which meanillthe ~~ is the loser. So we make this rule, sir." I was mollified. lady visitors Another rule of the house was that no/paa:.ta were permitted wax. into the rooms at night - unless ximx~KBXB the guest concerned booked .-the lady in and paid the standard daily rate for her. I asked Mr . Patel who had thought up this particular rule. 1 !1:_: Italian owner, who also , ttr s~ c..\.-l.,-, ran Nairobi's only striptease joint a little further down the same A road. Understanding and communication between Mr. Pa tel and myself grew slowly, delicately. I sensed a particular restraint in his dealin~s with Africans. They were the new factors. Once thei had not been entertained in places like this. Now they came in and demanded service as of right: and t heir behaviour was often unpredictable. S metimes two or three would sit in the upstairs lounge and consume vast quruttities of beer. Afterwards thel would want to pay by cheque, arid ~f Mr . Patel refuse ~ _\ l.,_J.. t.., w Q;~ n ..-.JL- ;.IA.i~ -~v to accept a cheque because he did not know thecll\ they ~ould ac ~use him of racial prejudice and the like. Dealing with the new customers often presented str~ and complex problems. If a man had a meal and then walked out g.f '!:a.~ Q&te l restaurant without pa.ying you had to know who he was, who he was related to, whether some ~JllCKXKJJUDUX.ad~uxax public figure would later come and pick up his tab. To just have him arrested could lead to complications and the charge of practising racial .;:,J-~ L/)' it-, ·~ q L, \,.~ discriminatio{~ So Mr. Patel was exceedingly careful wi t h all Afr icans. UWI L ibr ary 14 It--- \.a_,.i\- -r-A' i ~ ~\ He was also careful in talkin~ about himself: • it took qQite a while /l for me to find out that he was forty-two, that his was perhaps the 'first Indian love marriage in East Africa because I chose my wife without the permissi n of her parents and mine', that he had been br ,u,i;ht to Kenya at the age 'ot one an ,knew no other country as -home, Once he said t me: ''How can they say I don't belon« here, Mr. Ebrahim? This is my country. I don't know anythint; ab ut India." "Who says you don't belong,?" I asked. But Mr. Patel would not be drawn: he shook his head, watery eyes glowing affecti nately at me from behind his thick ~lasses. Whenever he felt emoti(?nal •~ his eyes gi:ew moist. /..:_ ~ ~ , , u.._ ,_;;,i-r .,,.,.. re war din« \ I Going shopping with Mr. Patel was/EI experienc7 · He seemed to know every Indian we encountered on the streets. And when I wanted a bottle of Scotch I got it at less than the wholesale price because llfir. Patel was with me, knew the vend rand spoke t him in the voice of, nd with the gestureS\of, the timeless huckster. I did kJt not need to understand the language\ 0f!lis -=i.11 02 d&1 t understand what was being said. But in order to make his •~u±Jd plea for the special disoount I invari bly «ot Mr. Pa tel {;;;;;}:tti>zr slipped into his wn 1ta:tJ.111.J.e:F Indian ton!Ue. Indeed, this business of slipping into one's own particular tribal tongu.1 in mid- conversati n is very pronounced in Kenya. In the midst fa mixed «roup f say Indians, Afr icans, Americans end Englishmen, the Africw who are either Kikuyu or Lu r Kamba might, at any moment, _slip into their own private tribal language leaving the rest of the group not understanding what they are sayin~ t:ae I n dies weula. e.e preeieely the, ":%fol : In this way, I found, that which separates the Kikuyu from the is Lu, the Luo from the Kamba and the Kamba from, say, the Luhya/dramatise< and emphasised. Tribal languaf!:e thus becomes an instrument of Etbi:ax exclusion, of making the p~rson not lint;u.istically 'in ' feel cut off_ UWI L ibr ary 15 Very often I received t he distinct impression that slipping into ne's tribal lant!;Uage with a fellow tribesman was in fact used deliberately, especially by members of the dominant tribes like the Kikuyu and Luo, t indicate superior status. The trouble is this is an important in divisive factor/the hard busmness of nation-building. But everybody who had a private language, members of the vsrious · African tribes, and with u t apology Indians, Arabs, all slipped casually and blatantly/into these private languages in the presence of guests and strangers. Once I saw a world ~ baffled frustration , of painJand doubt in the eyes of a wife as her husband left her out in the cold while he slipped into the language of his tribe with a male friend. This, among other things, hag led a South .African-born friend of mine to declare impatiently: "These people don't want integrati man! 11 .So I got used to Mr . Patel slipping into his own particular tribal language when we went shopping. And I invariably paid anything from U~x%•xli fifteen to thirty-three-and-a-third percent less than the marked price of the particular item. And ~eing a sucker for a bargain, and a perfDmnanee , Mr. Patel and I often went shopping for things I neither needed nor wanted. It was something to see his ey~s lightin«["t to see that special 'I'll- show-you-something' half - smile, to see that slight casual man-of-the-world/tpssing gesture of the right hand and the axxg}d merest suggestion of a hunching up of the shoulders, all ending with the self-consciously cocky "you leave it to me, Mr. Peter." I was Mr. Peter When we were away from the hotel or when we were having a drink in my ro m otherwise, and especially in front of the hotel staff, I was always Mr. Ebrahim, sir. He explained it once: "I got tQ train these staff young fell ws, you understand, eir ; and the' don't maJD[Q know manners." UWI L ibr ary 16 His staff consisted of three young Indians who shared a twenty­ four hour manning of the reception desk, five African waiters who 1t.v coped witht din~ng-r oom and room service, two African porters-night- watchmen, an African and an Indian in the tinu kitchen. In addition, but not under Mr. Patel's control, there was the advertised Italian Chef who turned out to be the propriet r's wife, a homely o~ ~ - + who could only prepare really homely Italian dishes ~«--- \,...s-X ~· When I first bo ked in contact between the African and Indian staff was remote, impersonal, cold. As it became apparent that Mr. Patel and I .El.japi liked each other, enjoyed each other's company, an easier, more personal atmosphere grew between his Indian and African staff. And of course I benefi tted by getting from both i!;roups a. quality of service I had received nowa ere else in my travels. One of the young Indian recppti•onists, a stockily strapping and &lean-living youngster named Bushan, was getting ready to migrate t England where his father and eld~r brother had already settled. He was going because they were there and they wanted him but also because he did not see much of a future for himself in Kenya. He was a youngster without any special skills or training. He could hold down a receptionist, clerical or storekeeping job, nothing more. - In this he was ne of = ~~~ands of young Indians. As long as such jobs had beenA::=tb.eiP ,Fe ■ 1rv1~ things had been allright. Now the Africans were pushing, and every year more African youngsters with preciselj the same education as young Bushan came on the labour market to compete for the jobs that had once been the :p::_erve; of the Under ordinary circumstances the competition forAjobs wQuld be Indians. and grow tougher; in the special circumstances of Kenya, where there ~ Jr~t.:..-. ~~)~ ~ was growing unemployment and where the government ~alt teat the historic1 I\ imbalance that had put the African majority at the bottom of almost UWI L ibr ary 17 the econ mic scheme of things, it 1 ked as though the competiti n would become hopeless for those like Bushan. And so at twent~·~&&~ this young man was preparing to leave the land of his birth and up­ bringing and follow _his father and elder bro~her into exile in a hostile Britain that had made it clear that it wanted nox~~ua coloured citizens of the Commonwealth as residents of the 'mother country'. The day after he had gone for his injections Bushan leaned across the recep~ion counter and asked earnestly, with the trustful innocence of the young who are pure in heart: "What you think, sir? How will it be?" How could I tell him how it would be? That he would come across people who- would call him 'coolie' and 'curry arse'; that he would be rudely invited to go home; that the sky would k[a leaden and heavy dull grey most of the year; that he would be lonely without the warmth of all the In~ an faces about him; above all that he would be made to feel unwantedAa long way from home? I said; "You'll have your father and your brother.'' His face lit up. "Yes! Al)d I'll cook for the old man." , "But it• s not like here," I said. ''You won't like i t. 11 He thought about it, began to say something then changed his mind. He smiled bravely and looked very young and very vulnerable. I was reminded vividly of that distant time when I had left the land of my birth to seek a greater freedom than its rulers would allow me. I had -~~ -th.~a~Q"'-. . . aot beei, much ol _deI· th-Ml young Bushan. The memory was a reminder of the resilience of the young. "You'll be allright," I sailfl firmly. He rewarded me with a beaming smile. UWI L ibr ary 18 The last time I was Kenya there had been between 150,000 and 160, 660 Indians. This time, and in spite of the departures since independenc the official figure is 183,000. My own guess is that 200,000 would be neqr er the mark. The majority of them are still, as they were then, traders. But they were, and still are, also lawyers, contractors, ~arage owners, mechanics, doctors, dentists, plumbers, carpenters, masons, linotype operators, clerks in post offices, banks, store s and the civil service. In the old days they held the jobs in the middle, the jobs that made the machine tick over. They kept the nation's accounts and shifted its food from one place to the other. Without their industry and their enterprise it is doubtful w.akteBr the Kenyan economy would have become as sophisticated as it is, even with the settler presence. The Indians, through their stores in every sizeable population centre, carried trading through the lengt~ and breadth of the nation. And if Nairobi's plumbing and sewerage systems compare favourably with the best in the rest of the world this is largely due to the skills of her Indian workers. It was because they controlled the ~etail trade of the cities and were the skilled craftsmen that kept the national machine ticking over -that the Indians demanded, and won, in the face of settler resistance, a share of p litical power. So it was that as early as 1923 the Indians won for themselves the ri~ht to elect five of their own kind on a communal basis to speak for them in the col ny's legislature. They were of c8H£~~no~1'11lffiBirtg by settler representatives, but at least they had five men/speak for them. An'fo ther twenty- ne years had to pass before the first African was to sit in the Legislative Cpuncil in the company of the Europeans and Indian: and then he was not elected by his people but nominated by the Govern r to 'represent' them. It was not surprising then that the Indians showed as little ' - UWI L ibr ary 19 interest as did the whites in the Africans . The~ own fi«ht against the white settlers, their struggle for a fair share in the running of the country, was fierce and hard enough for them not to have either the time or the inclination to be concerned about the interests of the backward tribesmen who made up the majority of the population. And there were vast linguistic and cultural ~aps . So the Indians who were exclud ed and discriminated against by the whites discriminated and excluded the blacks in turn. But willy-nilly, whatever their motives, in challenging the politica ascendency of the white settlers, and doing it as successfully e.s they did, they prevented settler power becqming as entrenched as it did in Southern Rhodesia and, earlier, in South Africa. So, negatively at lea.st tlhe relative strength of the Kenya Indians contributed to the ultimate political defeat of the settlers . Today there are Indian1who claim that this is exactly what they fought for. This is f&r from the truth. What is true is that their presence in Ifenya, bees.use it was a brake on undisputed settler power, contributed vastly to the ultimate frustration of the settler smbi tionrL1 l~,ice Kenya a European enclave in the fertile and beautiful rolling iplains of East Africa. , . ,, ~ ~ For me this fact, the fact th t fg;p whatevef'motive ~ helpei'\ ~ ~ ~ break the settler hold on Kenya, lends an especial poil!;llancy to their I\ present fears and uncertainties. With the coming of independence the British government made it clear that all the citizens of the former Kenya Colony would be welcomed if they chose British citizenship . Under the Kenya constitution dual citizenship is not permitted. Thus the Indians and Europeans were put in the position of having to DEIXK either renounce their British citizenship .and become Kenyans or else forfeit their Kenya citizenship UWI L ibr ary 20 in order to remain British. On the face of it both the Indians and ~ Europeans had the same alternative choices, but only on the face of it. Any white settler who opts for Kenya citizenship know~that any ti.me the going gets r ugh he will be able to pack up and go to Britain. And any Indian knwws that once he surrenders his claim to British citizenship E~.x& there'll be no way back to it, no matter how rough the going becomes later. So it is relatively easy for the settler ~ to opt for Kenya. citizenship: there is ae- unwritten, unexpressed but clearly understood escape line. The British will not let down their 'kith and kin', be they tories .or socialists. And every Kenya Indian , know• iiud there is no sucp escape line for him or her. For the Indian for keeps, opting for Kenya citizenship is/for good or ill, with,,no way back. do The Afr icans either/wxll not or will not see the difference between the European and Asian positions, so they use the comparatively more numerous European registrations and applications for citizenship as a stick with which to beat the Indians. The Indians, they say, are less committed to the land than the white settlers; the Indians are willing to exploit the land, to grow rich on it but not to ~ hrow in their lot with it. For the Indians this situation has often assumed the dimensions of a cruel dilemma. I spent many days and many nights discussing .tk:tz it 1 li.;_ with m~ different groups. At the end I was no nearer a clearcut, or even a partial, answer than at the outset. But I think I did achieve a measure of understanding of the p\ oblem, which in this case means ,.,.k· a measure of underetanding of a ~sta er, fof mind. At present, I think, the mu:~ Indian problem in Kenya is a because most pr nounced, there is sorted out and settled can shape problem of ~ the Indian I\ the fate of Kenya and perhaps East Africa as a whole. sta tes of mind. First, state of mind. How this is the Indian communities in UWI L ibr ary 21 To ~et to East Africa from the Caribbean it is still necessary to go by way of London; also, the High Commission offices of the places I planned to visit were in London so I had to apply to London for travel and visitor's permits -M-8. tae li.k:e ; in addition many friends I had not seen in a decade and more were in London. So I spent a few days in Lon don • One of the people I was most anxious to see was an old friend whom I had known ~ ba~k in the days when London was still the political centre of Africa,!, and the 'agitators' were more effective there than 1tsa- Jc...,~ in their own particular count~ies; ~ SN when Seretse Khama and the Kabaka of Buganda were in exile there . In the London of those days we ,went to parties, restaurents and nightclubs with the men who are the now/shapers and shakers of their African world . T~is particular friend, °"""' i smaili or Khoja Moslem from K~nya, had been in touch with and had introduced me to most of the outstanding young students and political fi~res in the making from East Africa. He was, at the time, the only East African Indian I knew who believed that politic~l power should be transferred to Afri can hands; he believed too that there should be sociel and cultural integration between all the people of East Africa and he played out these beliefs in his person l relations. He had more African than Indian and European friends; he shared di~s with some, went on holidays with them, chased the same girls, whatever their race or colour. And because he came from a relatively wealthy family whatever he had was always available to his African friends . His views and his conduct had inevitably made him a ' dangerous coolie' to s e ttler groups and suspect am0ng his own Indian people. When the political change came he went home . Now he was back in Britain. At our first meeting it was clear that something had gone seriously wrong. He was bitterly disappointed at the way things had UWI L ibr ary 22 devel ped; freedom and Af'rican power had not worked out as he had hoped they would. I was disturbed and surprised because my . friend, mor e than any other East African_ Indian, had been with the Africans, intimate with the most influential among them, close to the mainstream of African feeling. So what had gone wrong? We did not get far on that first meeting; but he invited me to dine at his home a few days later, promising to round up one or two other friends from the old days. On the appointed day I travelled to the distant no~hern London suburb by undergrpund, and it was as though I had travelled back in time except for one new element: there was a crystalized racial hostility in my white fellow passengers in the underground train that was uniform enough for -me not to miss it. In the old days there had always been pockets of prejudice, but there had also been pockets of a counter mood that had neutralised the atmosphere. ~ow this counter ~ mood se·emed a.,i'bsent . · I found the house easily enough but the name on the door nonplussed me. It was English, two-syllabl ed as against my friend's four-sylaabled and very Indian name, but it was familiar. If you had an Indian name such as my friend's and you wished to change it so that it fitted unobtrusively into a London suburban middle-class setting then you were most likely to change it to the name I saw on the door. I rang the bell and it was my friend's house . My friend's plans, now, were to live permanently in Britain, to be ___, 'called to the Bar' and to pract ice as a Barrister in Britain. La ter we were joined by another Indian from Kenya, a barrister who ha d been a Minister in the government immediately prior to the A:ffrican takeover. This gentleman had packed up and left the country. Now, two years later, he announced that he was going home; Britain was not and never would UWI L ibr ary 23 be home. It was a hard dicision for this man to make; he had been identified with the regime before Kenyatta took over and that would take some living down for an Indian. In the new dispensation things that would be forgiven or at least overlooked if done by an African could, done by an Indian, be a very heavy burden to live with. All three of us were sufficiently intimate with the African reality to know this. "And you can'ie really make a l 'ii"ing at the bar here?" I said to the ex-politician. "They keep the briefs among themselves." He tried to make it sound offhan ~ unimportant, a.s though being alii:a:rlm unable to make a living for himself and his fQmily was a small matter. "But they__ don't want us!" my friend expl ded. Even the ex-p0litical type protested that this view was too extreme to be just. But my friend stuck to it, insisting with a sick kind of obsession such as sometimes g0es with blighted young 1 ve, that t here was no future for the Indians in Kenya: the .A:ficans did not want them, and they did not want to intf grate with the Africans. When I got to Kenya I found t t . was not as my friend had painted it; general ~ ,t- p.-.lt 6l >t'.& Ar-c- _ I found no/hostilitY, They seemed ~a n much too preoccupied with their I own affairs, their own problems, to devote more than passing thought to the Indians among them. There were peri die outbursts from infividual African politicians against the apparent reluctance of Indians to take up citizenship; I heard gripes of how they tended to keep what they had within the Indian community. And when I raised the matter with Africans I was treated to a multitudinous %X catalogue of ways in which Indian behaviour rankles, from the tail-tossing snooti­ ness of the majority of Indian women who seem to have been convinced that the only thing in every black man's mind is to rape them to the UWI L ibr ary 24 apparent inability to become reconciled to the fact that you do not patronise people who control political power, or you do so at your owm peril. Often it was the small things that seemed to rankle most. One of the most influential Af ~ican Senators told a group of Indian intellect­ uals in my presence: "The thing we don't like about you people, the thing we find hard, is when we invite you to our homes. When you invite us and we go we drink what you drink, we eat what you eat, even though your curries sometimes upset our stoma chs afterwards; but when you come to us you've already had you tea if we offer you tea, you've already ,, had your food if we offer you food, yoii children won't even accept sweets from our children. It is as though you make us the new un­ touchables in your minds." No-one challenged the Senator's charge. My good friend Mr. Patel said: "You never invited me, Sena tor. " "I will, Patel." Then the Senadlor caught my eye, read my reaction and s aid hurriedly: "Yes, I will, Mr. Patel." Mr. Patel turned twinkling watery eyes on me, me~ing it obvious to all the others, African and Indian, that he and I shared a special n n-racial conspiracy of understanding. I knew he was cheating because he, too, would, at any moment slip into his private language of race should the need arise. Another time an Arab friend poitjted out two young people to me: an attractive young Indian woman in western dress and a goodlooking young African male. They were not together at the time but he told me they were lovers. It was a piece of interesting information because others had given it an importance he himself could not accept. This young couple, though both Kenyans working in the same organisation, did nqt UWI L ibr ary 25 get to know each other till they met in Eu{> pe. Getting to know each fl.>, c)...s~ c.1 \ other led nxbd:ingXDXi:lllCK to l a community of intere•ts and, ultimatelJ to falling in love. In Jamaica tha.t would have been the end of that. In Kenya, even indpJEiansnt Kenya, it was not. I was told by my Arab f r iend , and it was later confirmed by an Indian journalist, that the young lovers had . to meet in secr et; the girl was afraid of being ~een in public with her boy; she was afraid of her family ' s reaction and afraid of the impact of Indian public opinion on her family if she were seen with a black boy on the streets of Nairobi. I wa s told, and I saw, that Indians practis ed communal exclusivenes among .themselves. I found remnants of the caste system of India more prevalent among the Kenya Indians than among the Indians of my native South Africa. The sub- caste groups such as the Patels and the Shahs were more clan r tribal group names than family names. And the lines were almost as ri~idly drawn within the sub-groups of one caste, and between one ca.ate and another, as between the Indians as a group and Indians of different the Africans. For instance intermarriage between/castes i i frowned on by the wore conservative and orthodox, which means the majority. In ,,.l!...t_ power scheme of things in Kenya until a scant two years ago the Africans were, in caste terms, the lowest of the low, the Untouchables. In these terms the Europeans were the Brahm.ins, the aristocrats at the top of the heap; and the caste system can be seen in colour terms - because the original Sanskrit word for'caste' does mean 'colour' and the historical assumption is that the caste system owes it ori~in to the fair skinned Aryan people who invaded Indian wishing to preserve their own racial characteristics . S it was easy for Kenya Indians to see the white settlers as the Brahmins of their new homelland. Next in the four rtpaal Indian castes there are the Kshatriyas, the warrior UWI L ibr ary 26 caste of soldiers and rulers of whom very few went to Kenya. After the warriors come the Vaisyas or Vaishyas - the merchants and traders - of whom my / friend Mr. Patel's sub-group is a part, as are the Shahs, the Lahanas and the Oswals. Then there are the Sudras, the artisans I ~ and the labourers of the Sikhs of Kenya are such untstanding examples. I\ The majority of Kenya's Indians are from the last two castes, the Vaishyas and the Sudras • .And as it was in mother India, every Hindu pelon~Ji: to ·the caste of his parents and nothing, no accumulation of wealth, no outatanding talent, e~ alter his caste status. Caste, like a person's colour, ~ something fixed and permanent; and marriage . . . '- . outside a person's caste w forbidden or very seve~ y discouraged. On a personal and ps~chological and emotional level the question the new situation poses for the Indians of Kenya is: What do you do '9 when the Untouchables become the rulers of the land. According to the caste system they are still Untouchable, will remain Untouchable no _ new rulers matter how much power they have. The rub is that they themselves do not recognise the caste system, are imp~tient and have no room for it. For me this seemed the really important Indian problem of Kenya in particular and of East African Indians in general. And like all J!X-'Hi: problems of the heart and the spirit and traditional cultural habits, it is a hard one. It is ironic that the vastly greater Indian population of South Africa - some half a million as against Kenya's close on two-hundred have thousand , -/ai.•? because of the terrible pressures of Apartheid, effect- ively destroyed their own caste system. As with tribalism the caste system makes difficult a loyalty greater than that of a man to his own particular in-group, and it is this greater loyalty that the Africans are waiting to see the Indians show. UWI L ibr ary 27 What makes it particularly difficult for the Indians is that they - are expected to make this demonstration at a time when they can see and a clear diminiution in their political influenceJ the ending of their special, racial right to certain jobs. They would like some sort of ~antee, some ~ort ef assurance that the future would be allright for them. I found no Indian who had worked it out smfficiently clearly in his own mind to be able to say 'we want this or that guarantee'. Cn the other hand I found many intelligent and perceptive Indians who s aid that things would work out in the long run. Even the ex- politician barrister, when I met (,.p.. of the future, was glad that~had proudly to me one day that he had him later in Nairobi, spoke hopefully decided to come back, announced made his decision about citizenship and had sent in his papers. A few weeks later the government Ministry concerned made public that there was suGh a pile-up of applications for citizenship that there would be some delay in processing them. slowly So, painfully/in some cases, but certainly,the Indians seemed to me to become reconciled to the new scheme of things. For some the 'bone is in the throat' was more difficult than for others and it would take swallow it and so time to/shea the caste-~red superiorities. But in the end they will become reconciled because this is how it is and this is how it is going to be and it is their homeland. The diehards had gone already,a few more might go, but the maj·ori ty would remain and help build, as they had done in the past, but on surer foundations. Certainly Kenya needs what they have to _ give. Perhaps, in time, and if things do not turn sour, a signmficant Indian contribution might be a powerful infusi n of that rare Indian quality of spirituality into ·what is now a stridentl; aggressive materialism that seems to have no time for the things of the spirit. ~. But the factors that cam make for things turning sour are ther t UWI L ibr ary 28 Perhaps th• sizeable unemployment problem is the single most important. are liable The hungry and the homeless and the dispossessedj with very little help , to turn on the 'stranger within the gate'· and attack him as the cause of all their ills. Indians are a minority of high visibility and if Kenya were hit by serious economic difficulties they would make as perfect sce.pegoats as ·did the Jews in many countries of Europe in other times. And there are very highly placed politicians, some of them with pretensi ns at internationalism, who are not above beating up a little anti-Indian prejudice when they think it will pay a little political dividend. I was told of one distinguished Minister who went to see his Indian friends after one such_nasty anti-Indian speecluul and explained that he did not really mean everything he sa.id: it was just one of those things. The trouble is that a series of 'one of those -things' can implant anti-Indian prejudice very deeply in the minds of his semi-literate and no t -so-sophisticated audience; and this prejudice can burst into racial ugliness in times of trouble. But on the whole I found the situa tion of the Indians in Kenya a ,; deal more hopeful than my friend in London had led me to expect. The government of Kenya he$ made it bundantly clear that all citizens of Kenya. enjoyed all the rights, privileges and responsibilities of such citizenship . The bias in public service appointments was an administrative device to ensure that the service reflected more accurate: than hithert the true face of the nation. Beyond that I found no discrimination, publicly or privately against Indians or against whites. remained Indeed, I think the whites who ..__,, x•am:t/~~~jj: e.fter the change were more than a little startled at how pleasant life ~ turned out for them , There were many pointers to what they seemed to haveQ11.qti;d expected. I spent an evening with a young Indian couple, a. journalist and _his wife UWI L ibr ary 29 who had earned her degree at a university in India though she was born and grew up in E~st Africa. Their small cut stone bun alow stood on an acre of land off the Ngong Road, one of the main highways in and Q.. out of Nairobi. It was ~beautiful little house; the kind en agin~ civil servant and his wife dream of moving into when retirment comes and the children have grown up and married and gone away; the kind that an elderly woman could run without servants and without too much effort. There was evidence of a once beautiful garden on which much time and love had· been lavished, and which looked all the more forlorn because of th t. And as with some houses, this~ one gave off a distinct feel, mood, atmosphere: the feel was of a place of resigned quietude. I found myself submitting to a pervasive somnolence on each of my visits. My friends, the young Indian couple, had moved in very recently and ""they had not yet had a chance to impress their own distinctive yout~ful presence on the place. Indeed, I gathered that they only half lived there. They were very well-to-do and their real home still seemed to be the rooms they occupied in the sprawling house of the husband's pa.rents. They ha.d bought this little house, because it had been a fantastic bargain, at an auction sale: the young man had got it for a sum in the region of £1,500. I had asked curiously a1aldi whether my friend knew enything about the former owner. He had answered casually - a sort of verbal pause between showing of his fine new toy - "I think it was an old lady; they said she went to Australia. But you could pick up better bargains than this two years ' a~~ I'll show you a place •••• " wherever My heart went out to the old lady,/uaxax she wase I came across many other such fantastic 'bar~ains' in what had UWI L ibr ary 30 once been exclusively white suburban Nairobi. Among others, the South Afric&n m:iter, Ezekiel Mphahlele, currently director of a Kxa:dxx~ Congress for Cultural Freedom centre loc .ted in Nairobi, had 'picked up' for a fraction of what it is a worth, a sprawling double-stor~y house in spacious grounds and with one of the most beautiful fireplaces I h ve seen away from the stately homes of England'. Another bargain finder was veteran British journalist and by now old Africa hand Tom H pkinson, who had moved up from South Africa where he had once edited DRUM magazine and now headed the Africa,! Journalists' Training Scheme for the International Press Institute. Mr. Hopkinson told me that he . felt happier, m re s~cure, as a white man in an African-run Kenya than he had fi.l t in Sputh Africa with its white governmento Perversely, and feeling like a than I had thought possible reactionary, I found mysel more concerned, more saddened/~ the fate either hated or feared or else £rlii had so little of the defeated dettiers who had/saxxtij;h faith in "Wte black country- men that they had upr oted their lives and ~ sold up their homes at giveaway prices.xa.tuxx:tkaJlXXl!:ma:htxammaxxilxuElxxK.iu Perhaps it ~as · ,fl_; one of the most fearful realities h e-e1im:'ffl!l~~m;s reluctan1 to facs up to/xu.xx2•ii4 of prejudice: that it can, given the right breeding ground, go so deep and grow so strong destroy themselves that in the end its victims would/~XKXllJIXXUXXXJUUIUlllXllllllX.tUll abandon mrliaiaDg>BSSaSllllBS rather than/their prejuidces. Whatever the reason, I found myself a deal more ¥~SJUJ¥~HUfXM~~¥X~fi"~~•~••fXMD~ compassionat ely involved in the fate of the white settlers. As the strutting lords f the earth I had met that other time they had engaged only my resent­ mwnt, brought out only the meanest emotions in me. Now I could -- h ::w4i ~ a...'!:, speculate about .tf'i....Q:i@ whc,'J:es1J a1Hl ge:tte e-e human beings whose priv te tragedies stemmed from one of the great~ PBXIUI and most stupid we humans have public tragedies/ever brought on pD~J!CXIJXmin ourselves. In arithmetical terms the numbers of these private tragedies were UWI L ibr ary / 31 small compared to the 'priv te tragedies' the African had experienced in the engagemen .ant a~e~t that~► Wk.El In 1952 the most reliable population figures were those of the 1948 census. This showed EuropeQll population of 29,660. By the time the 1962 census was taken the Europeans stood at 49,000. The most reliable official estimate of the number of Europeans in the colony in 1952 was the fi~e of 35,000. About half of this number lived in Nairobi. True, the old days of the Happy Valley crowa had gone. The wild, wife swapping parties were over; the hard drinking had toned down considerably; Nairobi had become less of 'A place in the sun for shady people'. But not all the 'hell' had gone out of it in 1952. So, in spite of disturbing talk about secret' ceremonies and oath-taking among the Kikuyu, the close on 20,000 white residents of Nairobi seemed to me to be h ving a pretty good time that year. Life had been rather different for the farming hall of the settler population: harsher, more of a gamble, greater personal and material insecurity and, of course, lonelier. But even there the compensations most were great, greater than/JUQ: farmeD) enjoyed back in Britaino The land was cool and beautiful and the man with a mind to do so could carve out for himself an empire of a thousand, two thousana, three thousand acres. He was free from the fiddlin~ form-filling associated with farming in Britain, free too of the terrible burden of British inexhaustible taxation, and he had available to him an\ apparently/•HillUUI supply in cash of cheap labour. Where he paid/for his labour wages ranged from between t hirty-five shillings to ~ifty shillings per month. More often he allowed landless Africans .to squat and cultivate small strips of land on condition that they work on his farm. Some of these squatters' 'contracts' gave the farmer the right to demand not only the labour of UWI L ibr ary 32 the African male squatter but of his wife and children as well. And of course, if the African squatter, or his family, received as much as a penny from the farmer it was out of the goodness of the farmer's heart. As long ago as the late 1930s the pre.ctice of using squatter a form of labour - which was in fact/peonage - had become such an integral part of Kenya farming that 20% of all settler farms on the White Highlands were occupied by African squatte~ • . to give the settler with his A logical by-product of this was/.tiul.D1nmtgx~xlu:x4rlkEIPXK•i Jli:H~XICC~XJtalUUl sprawling farm a vested interest in a large landless black peasantry. And so it was that with wtik vast stretches of the White Highlands not fully used the settlers continued to press for more land to be set aside for exclusive European use. By the time of my first visit in 1952 the Colonial Government had 'alienated' for European settlement a tota'xxab:iJi:iii:i&x of 7,372,880 acre.s. 5% of this was described a.s uncultivable end 207,987 as not yet allocated. This left a balance of cultivable and llocated land af of seven milli n acres. And in 1952 there were only about 3,000 Europeans who actually farmed in the White Highlands. This gives us an average land holding ~tv- of 2,500 acres per settler farmer. But of the Aseven million acres · ~ only a little in excess of one million acres were actually under g crop, the rest, over six million acres, were officially described as grazing. And since stock farming represented only 12.9% of agricultural production in the White Highlands at the time the assumptior. must be that the major portion of six million acres set aside for 'grazing' were just not utilised. after had discovered It was/Dllll I/lllt£11][Er:U these facts atx~ax.tua that I broadcawt early in xUi August of 1952, just under two months before the crut­ break of the Mau Mau troubles, a warning that those troubles were in UWI L ibr ary in fact about to erupt. calle'd down the wrath of he dl 33 R~xd~JDC~ This particular broadcast \ the powerful settler lobby in London on my In 1965, I found that about 2,000 white settlers had been bought out by the Kenya Government with money provided by the British Government and something in ex~ess .of another 1,000 were just waiting for the availability of more money to sell out too . The government haw set up a Central Land Board whose business it is to buy out these settler lands. In the year 1963/64 this Board bought up 295 farms compri~ing a total acreage of 367,274 a~res for £3,521,968 which is , the equivalent of £11.46 per acre. Currently negotiations are going 1 1 on in London between the British and Kenya governments over a loan to finance the buying out of the remaing settlers who want to leave. Some people, parliamentary backbenchers among them, feel strongly that the prices paid to the settler~ are excessive. If it is recalled that the settlers originally got the farms for as little as one pe:mny per acre these charges assume some validity. So far, because of the location of the bought out farms the landless among the Kikuyu have benefitted most, which has caused a measure of resentment among other lend-hungry tribeso .. ,,v .;; 11oL-J..e~ u.ramc1. usea-ror me line or-cen contradic ory atti tu'des towards the whites as well as the tr con adictory position of some of those whites in the country. Both stories came out of matters raised in parliament. In , the first there wa~ were questions about a white settler who had sold his farm to the government at a handsome figure and who had then stayed on at the f arm as an 'adviser', living in the same house and behaving precisely as he had _done when he had been owner of the house. This, I was told by a Senator, was not an isolated case; there were others 11·ke it. I th· k th in e settlers who can enter into arrangements of this type will not have to be persuaded not to UWI L ibr ary 34 leave the country. Uhuru, in their cases, is very profitable business. ~ .. :~~, t-r..a, ,,.....11., -"-"4'l"iJ i- {6-4J'2- ~S :_ tL: ~ tt;:.,)' ~H~ ~-G-- ¼IJ' The kernel of fue seconlfl story was a mo'tion mm tha t came before parliament on the 30th July, 1965 and that was resumed on the 17th September, 1965 . The motion read: That this House urges the Government a s a positive measure against the Apartheid Policy, to introduce an amendment of the Constitution which will allow confiscation of all immovable assets in Kenya belonging to nationals of the Republic of South Africa. One backbencher speaking to the motion s aid there were scores of refugees from South Africa in Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda and other territories. These were people in need, black South African vict:tms of Apartheid, and the ends of justice would be served if the proceeds from t he confisca ted property were used to aid these people. Others talked about the Kenyan African tax payer being forced to subsidise r acialists whose sole purpose was to further the evil doctrine of Apartheid. Another recited the details of how a white South African hotelier opera ting in the country ha d refused service to Kenyatta on the eve of his becoming Prime Minister of the country. This particulr gentleman had now left the country and gone back to the South Africa. But he still had his holdings in Kenya from which money was being remitted to him, thus financing, the speaker irtisted, the Apartheid policy. The Attorney-General, the government spokesman, son of a chief and British trained Barrister, said the government could not behave like \ . thugs or thieves by taking away peopll PDDperty . If there were instances of white South Africans in Kenya perpetuating r acialism and the ideas of Apartheid members were to bring it to the attention of the government and action would be taken against such people. For this there was no need to change the constitution . The backbenchers were not happy and some used very strong language UWI L ibr ary 35 to show their displeasure. Oddiy enough - and this was brought to my notice by e. white Sou th African enemy of Apartheid passing through Nairobi at the time - neither the government spokesman nor the supporters of the motion seemed to know that in South Africa itself no African, native-born or outsider, freehold could own/prpperty. So, all in all, things had not turned out as badly as they might have for the settlers. 6f course it was nothing like the 'good old days', but then they are gone forever. The young civil servant who extended my visitors' permit summed it up quietly for me. "Let me be honest with you: I would have fought against it ('it' being the change) five years ago, just as the other Europeans did. I was as strongly against it as they were. Now I must admit that it is right; the best thing that could have happened. I think we'll be allright now. I think you'll find that things are goin~ to work." We talke-d on easily, without restraint or inhibition. In the other corner of the little office was an African who shared the room with the young white man. He was immersed in his work; but every now and then he got so interested in our talk that he paused and looked up to listen. A private little smile tugged at the corners of his mouth. He was watchful, relaxed, completely at ease. I vxondered whether these working together .......-~~ two, the black Kenyan and the white,/«arl.__ia t•s room,tkatxtu~ had A DZXKaxtaxkxaEmctxtuxaxn.nrgaxikatxu.txtmxERXtattau.am.t reached the point where they could really talk to each other about those ~ things of the mind that •B:W- to be brought out into the open before /1.. it would really be 'allright now'. I left them feeling they had not yet reached that point, largely because jhet young African had not joined our conversation much as I had ~rie~ to obliquely tease him out of his silence. But they were working in the same room and that was quite a beginning. UWI L ibr ary 36 When I lef~ the city to look at the countryside, it was like going back in time. There were changes, of course1 a new power pylon here, a new cluster of huts there, what had been forest then was now cleared and cultivated land in one spot; but these were largely superficial, like a mild rash on a familiar face. In the main it was as it had been wh~n I had last seen it : the great dif{erence was that the White Highlands, the most fertile land in all the country, ·~ ~ - /•JUI no longer 'reserved for Europeans only', no longer 'White'. You have to see this land, to see its beauty and its life-giving richness; you have to stand on a crest and watch the rolling plains sweep away to the misty di stanc~s of space; you have to breathe in the sweet fragrant highland air to begin to understand why the settlers . fought so savagely to hold on to this land and why a single, poorly equipped African tribe could take on the settlers and the might of ]ri tish arms, fight them to a standstill in one of the most incredible wars Africa has ever know, and win the lando The outbreak known as the Mau Mau, the war in which the Kikuyu lost ten thousand dead and a hf;111dred thousand were rendered homeless and made political prisoners, was a war fought over posession of 13,000 square miles of this land; 1m:i for whoever controlled this most pleasant and best watered piece of Kenya, controlled all of it. This was the heart/ of it. And it was logical that the Kikuyu should be the tribe to make a fight for it. It had all been their land. As far as they were concerned this was not a matter of dispute. They had been found on this land and they had been dispossessed of it, crowded into a small corner of it to smch an extent that by 1952 population density in the then Kikuyu reserve was in excess of 600 persons . to the square mile: this would not be bad in an industrialised area, in a peas!l+lt agricultural area it was UWI L ibr ary 37 impossible. There were two alternatives: give in and submit to bein~ moved from this beautiful le~d to the semi-desert area the government had already marked out in the arid north and named Yatta Bl and Yetta B2~ (to which the Kikuyu leaders had themselves taken me in 1952~,or else BX fight. If the Kikuyu had given in the chances are that Kenya would have become like South Africa - it was well on the way there in 1952 - and the history of East and Central Africa would have been different from what it is today. The Kikuyu decided to fight. The Emergency - as the colonial government called the war - began on the 20th October 1952 and lasted until January of 1960. In purely milii,ary terms it was a small operation fought out in one of the smallest Provinces of the country (the Pr~ ces have now . - Kikuyu country & the of the W. Highla been renamed Regions) . he Central Province/occupied a mere 5,000-odd !/'\ square miles of a land area of 225,000 square mile;-r The war for Kenya was fought out in this comparatively small area between the one and a half million Kikuyu tribesmen and their wives and children ( with active assistance from their close tribal cousins the Embu and Meru of the, eighbouring Eastern Province) on the one hand and the white se11lers the , bac by/British military on the other. However much other tribes in - other parts of the country may have sympathised - and the more than a I million strong Luo tribe certainly did more than just sy1npathise - the Kikuyu fought the _war. People who lived in the other parts of the country, especially the people of the large Coasta.l Region, were as remote from ·the axarlax.ad bloody goings-on in Nairobi and the Central at the time Region as those of us who/read about them from afar. really For me one of the/mBa% striking things about the Mau Mau was its corporateness. Within a month of the declaration of the &iergency all the known political leaders of the ilxxBJIJ:U Kikuyu were locked up; not only the people at the top.f' those at the district and village level too. UWI L ibr ary JS And yet the leaderless Kikuyu maintained ~ discipline and displayed · few of the a political sophistication under the kind of pressure ~ /so- called more advanced nations had ...,_been able to withstand. The British did not only fight the Kikuyu militarily, they assaulted them with all the weapons of modern psychology. They used the techniques of t brainwashing' on a massive scale - here of course, sinc~ wef were using these methods we used safe words such as 'rehabilitation' to describe them, much as the Chinese used 'self-cultivation' to describe their bramnwashing methods . I had been told and I had read much of Kikuyu atrocities. Now, moving through the beautiful country, I ku heard from some of the vimtims themselves of some of the atrocities perpetrated on the Kikuyu. It was hard to make people remember and talk, and they certainly one trusted. would not have done so had I not been with some/wellknown and/nfh«Riia: - 1x±Eaix Even then it required great effort to talk; and when they did they did so quickly and briefly, anxious to get it over with and go on to more .pleasant things., There is not much sense in setting down .JlBDIB 1rlk• ugly details }u[xa for their shock impact. Straight physical brutality - and there was enough of it - was the smallest in a world o,- ugly experiences: some of the refinements used in the assaults on the mind and of the person's sense of dignity were really shocking. After hearing the experiences of a few people, I too found. myself not wanting to know eny more. It made me understand the general Kikuyu the details the day-tl day events ef desire to forgetj to behave as though/the years between 1952 and 1960 were a nightmare rather than the stuff of the world of waking men. One young man whom I had met as a student of one of Kenyatta's more than 200 Kikuyu Indi endent Schools when I was t here in 1952, met me in the bar of a once-exlusively white country club. He was a leading Senator now. Over beer he remembered, glossing quickly over 1the details, UWI L ibr ary 39 how he had grown to manhood, first in the forests, then in the detention camps. When I pressed him for details he turned eyes suddenly gone bloodshot on me: "We don't want to remember too much; if we remember everything we will want to go out and start killing." And when the old man behind the bar said "It is best to forget." I bandaneti,d my probing. But the kn wledge of common suffering, and of victory won, has · given the mass of the Kikuyu a pride and ; confidence th tis something beautiful to behold; and it is something that is not limited. From the nameiiss Kikuyu porter who carried my cases, to the taxi-driver who showed me the town, to the little jack-of-all-works named Peter at my British first, very pukka/gone-to-seed hotel, to tke jovial waiter Kariuki who served my me ls under Mr. Pate 'h~upervision and tiny forty-one-year old Bothi (father of five and whose body still bears the marks of childhood rickets) who was my 'room servant•, to the doctors, civil servants, parliamentarians, there was this pride and confidence. bx.tu maill:x.timxB:Draax1ulii~x,uudc~xam111axi:.t I f ou.n d it even among the Kikuyu 'Town Girls' - the local name ~Ir the prostitutes who work the budding night clubs of Nairobi. The girls who had been in the forest, or who had been couriers, were a breed apart from the others, the Somalis and the girls from the coast: they were more serious, more dignified, more reserved. I suspect they traded more than a little on the fact that they had been in the battle. But in the main there was nothing cocky about this pride and confidenceo Such cockiness and arrogance as I found came largely from the new class of Afr icans who were emerging as the replacements of the former white top echelon/civil servants, and ,inevitably, , I found a fair amount of . ~'I: dr~k-with-power pomposity in a f~~ ;.~ ·~ ·+-t!l'4tFR!l"""S-:-· But there was '\ ~'- wz_., surprisingly little of this , ~ ~s · ee-..JJ.J ~~ ~ -1-.v--- . .__ ~ ·~ tc ti.. bl~ r l~ r~ UWI L ibr ary 40 I The Kikuyu , then , is the tribe that fough t and wen the war f or ¾nya ' s indepen dence . ilmxin»lJ.XllKXQtm:ill:gxx~x f xtkaxfmxmuxikx:t& H&llXD'.KXriilx&lllli:i:lnKXD Mi:gkbmK~ll.D[cfitxtkll:mxmlUiiXMK&KH&«X.tlulllllkxafxiikRxil«lltxmfxtkxa lJUtxxiax:blxwkaixkaarlxriiiiinaliJxlaB:EllxliklltpxcEU1.txJxxbl:Eriiia»lJ ~llll I t is the liberzaor- tri be . This is an accepted fact for all the more than forty tribes of Kenya . Not ever yone is happy with this fact . Again and again some bright and gifted person who was not Kikuyu made J it clear to me his feeling that, all else being equal, txaxaxwJD1xa nxtmciixa«IJUlbga being Kikuyu conferred distlblhct advantages in the competition for pref erment in business or the public servi ce . But openly however unhappy , I encountered no one who either questioned/or WJIJlt.td tm challenged directly the present Kikuyu hegemony. Periodically, how­ ever, signs of latent discontentment spil led over . When I was there association the principal Luo tribal/mxgmti:aaiiimx (it is not called a political . Kenyai\; a one- party s'tate and party because7KK&KH]Q( the only poli t ical party in the country is the governing Kenya African National Union,) held a much publicised meeting _.,(_&\ ~ ~ in Nairobi. nECJlxapak:axax~x•taan~' the Lu o Ministers in Kikuyu (\ dominated government were -quick to disso ciate themselves from any ,i:~.J..: -~ 6\ Planning & :Development possible .. "iriabJ. attitudes that might c6me out the meeting~x . Tomi A t- . Mboya, one of the ablest and most experi»nead of Kenya ' s politicians, and himself a Luo, was the first to dissociate himself from the upcoming meeting and to denoun ce tribalism. It was both easy and wise for Mr. Mboya to take this stance. His parliamen t ary seat( is Central Nairobi with a mixed Indian and multi-tribal African electorate . Unlike the other two, Vice President Oginga Odinga and Information Minister Achieng Oneko, he has no tribal base to fall back on . The source of Mr . Odinga ' s in the Government and the country power and influence/iExk±xxbmxiix±»a , . and to a lesser extent Mr . Oneko's, is the tough, tightly-knit brainy Luo tribe that had to fight all comers to carve for itself a home on the shores of Lake Victoria in the distant UWI L ibr ary 41 days of the great African migrations when they came to Kenya from the ' Sudan by way of the Nile Valley. Today they are the second largest tribe in Kenya - 1,148,000 to t h e Kijuyu's 1,642,000 . There are two other tribes - the Kam~a numbering close on a million and the Abaluhya numbering a million and eighty-thousand - who could have become the Kiµyu's political partners. The Luo did because they are most like the Kikuyu in certain very important »a3±£ r e spects: they are as toughminded as the Kikuyu, as nang: intel ligent, as politically ambitious, as sophisticated, as cohesive . I think they are the only other Kenya tribe who would have performed as well against the settlers a;).. as ftthe Kikuyu ~ . _ I think it is recognition of this - one strong man recognising another - that has led to the Luo-Kikuyu political partnership. I am not suggesting that this is a relationship thought out, or worked out in tribal terms. But however non-tribal the ideas of the be, this is how it is. leaders might uxK mKJUt , this is how it has worked out1 Hoever much the leaders may wish to function only as nationalis~ t the national level the needs and pressures from those behind them often compel actions and attitudes that are seen in tribal terms . When one prominent member of Parliament told the press club in Nairobi in September that there could be no real unity in the country unless there was an end to the favouritism that makes a man give a job to a fellow tribesman, he was saying in public what was more often, and more generally said in private. It seemed to me that the government tried very hard not to act tribally. But if you are the M.P. for a Kikuyu constituency, and you are ~he Minister who controls the spending of money or the buil·ding of houses and schools, the pressures of your electorate and your other friends who represent Kikuyu constituencies and who speak the same UWI L ibr ary 42 language and who have been through the same struggle, all this will make it very difficult for you to deny your own when there is not enough t # round for everyone. There is not enough land to go round 1, for every one, there are not enough jobs %B~mxxmouixb1xx•xax~xlUlK, %klllKXJIXI[ not enough homes, xm%xmu,m:~k schools. Sharing out what there is in such a way as to avoid charges of tribal discrimination becomes a difficult and delicate problem. The temptation, often, is simply to do the best you can: to take care of your own kind, those on whom you depend for powero S8me~of this has come into play. It seemed to me the greatest danger for the future would be if the relatively modest economic expectations of the mass of the people were to be unfulfilled to the point where they abandanedri hope. At presentjx:.tlxlQ!ltiK they are still living in the afterglow of the victory that brought them freedom. Wages are still abysmally low. adult Male/agriculliural workerSIJI. and they are still the ma jority of workers, earn between £3 and £3.10. o. peiynonth, witP#fl housing. The employer may dedu~t jx not more than 5/- a month for every half acre of land he allows the worker to cultivate for his own use: female workers get between £2 and £2.6.6.; males under eighteen get between £1.16. o. and. £2 .2. Oo and females between £1. 4. O. and £1. 8. O. JI~ ~ All these are monthly wages which include hous~ing of some kind, often the most primitive imaginable. But low as it is, it is a dramatic improvement on the recent past. Monthly wages for workers in town often average two or three times those of agriculural workers, with £10 a casual month as a sort of crude norm for the majority of/aamli workers. Of course in town there is no house with the job, however primitive; rents are higher than in the country and food costs more. sat in the dining room planning One day as r;a,~xpa~%x~~a:t.x~mtxu my long safari t ha t would cover the best part of 2,000 miles of East Africa, one of the waiters UWI L ibr ary i " 43 pause d at my table to see if I wanted anything. On his tray were half a dozen empties of a very popular local beer and as many glasses out of which spirits had been drunk. In addition there was a 100 shillin1 note, a little damp and stained by the spilled liquor. "Some party," I said. It was very early evening, not yet five. "Government people," he said. Then he looked at the damp note. "One man buying and I have to work a month to make this money." I discovered later that he had exaggerated somewhat. He earned 180/- a month. But ~ point was valid. ~ ~ w,'/- -J w,11~;___,i C?~ ~~ ~ L--i ~< ~-'l~ >,s c.R Jr ~ ~ ~ n . t., , _ ' r ·-rt- -~\ W- C . i;_. ~ --------~ ll....L. ~~ ~~UL. 4 ~ • UWI L ibr ary Kenya Manuscript 0001 Kenya Manuscript 0002 Kenya Manuscript 0003 Kenya Manuscript 0004 Kenya Manuscript 0005 Kenya Manuscript 0006 Kenya Manuscript 0007 Kenya Manuscript 0008 Kenya Manuscript 0009 Kenya Manuscript 0010 Kenya Manuscript 0011 Kenya Manuscript 0012 Kenya Manuscript 0013 Kenya Manuscript 0014 Kenya Manuscript 0015 Kenya Manuscript 0016 Kenya Manuscript 0017 Kenya Manuscript 0018 Kenya Manuscript 0019 Kenya Manuscript 0020 Kenya Manuscript 0021 Kenya Manuscript 0022 Kenya Manuscript 0023 Kenya Manuscript 0024 Kenya Manuscript 0025 Kenya Manuscript 0026 Kenya Manuscript 0027 Kenya Manuscript 0028 Kenya Manuscript 0029 Kenya Manuscript 0030 Kenya Manuscript 0031 Kenya Manuscript 0032 Kenya Manuscript 0033 Kenya Manuscript 0034 Kenya Manuscript 0035 Kenya Manuscript 0036 Kenya Manuscript 0037 Kenya Manuscript 0038 Kenya Manuscript 0039 Kenya Manuscript 0040 Kenya Manuscript 0041 Kenya Manuscript 0042 Kenya Manuscript 0043 Kenya Manuscript 0044 Kenya Manuscript 0045 Kenya Manuscript 0046 Kenya Manuscript 0047