Events and Stories of White Settlers in Kenya, 1902

● From readings in the book "The Global Problems & The Culture of Capitalism" by Richard H. Robbins, and other related references.

● Germany and Britain agreed to divide control of the East Africa region – which had been an economic theater of war between them – and in order to avoid conflict the two countries met in Berlin in 1884 to partition East Africa between them. Kenya fell within the sphere of British influence, and the Kenyans had to deal not only with the British invasion but they also suffered locust invasions that devastated the land, drought, and, in addition, a smallpox epidemic..!

● British influence began covertly behind the British East Africa Company, and the operations of the British company culminated in a treaty with the Sultan of Zanzibar, the legitimate authority over East Africa; that treaty was signed in 1887 CE, under which the company paid him 20% of its profits..!

● White settlers, encouraged by the British in 1902, arrived and seized the fertile, elevated lands, as advertisements appeared in British newspapers in Britain and in the colonies it controlled describing the economic benefits for settlers in Kenya; as a result, many settlers came from South Africa, while the rest came from Britain. Many of these settlers were sons of wealthy British lords who were sent to Kenya to amass their fortunes; some obtained ownership of 100,000 feddans..!

● The Kenyans resisted the settlers and attacked them, which led to further British incursions and more Kenyan deaths. In the midst of their anger that flared in early 1902, the Kenyans captured a white settler and threw him to the ground, then forced his mouth open with a wedge, and the whole village urinated into his mouth until he drowned. After that they cut off his genitals, removed his entrails and defecated on his body – and the British responded by entering the village at night and slaughtering everyone there, including the elderly and women; only the children who had hidden in the forest survived – according to what was reported in the book - ..!

● The Kikuyu groups were the most widespread ethnic groups in Kenya, and among them were some of the most educated and wealthy in Kenya. Many worked in government or in private business, and some owned large farms.

● In 1895 Britain occupied Kenya. As a result, the lives of the Kikuyu changed greatly under the influence of the Western economic and educational system, and the British who invaded Kenya seized Kikuyu lands, and the Kikuyu lived in poverty as their property and political influence shrank. During the 1950s they led a movement called Mau Mau that opposed British rule. Britain arrested many of those who were labeled rebels, among them JomoKenyatta, leader of the Kikuyu. (who became the country's first president at its independence in 1963) Thousands of Kikuyu were transferred to detention camps after their homes were destroyed.

● As a result, the Kikuyu continued to fight the British using poisoned spears and arrows, but by 1904 the resistance had been suppressed. Other groups fought the British, and the Kenyans herders from the Maasai tribes, were among Africa’s most capable warriors; they fought alongside the British against the Kikuyu! (according to the book’s account)

● As for the peasant uprisings that occurred in the twentieth century and focused on land, there was the armed peasants’ revolution in Kenya, which erupted as a result of British colonial policies during the first half of the twentieth century: the Kikuyu revolution — the Mau Mau revolt...but settlement continued..!

● The white settlers, both poor and rich, needed African labor, and Africans were not very reluctant to work for wages; the Kikuyu quickly learned the value of money ..and they began walking distances of 300 miles for work..!

● But the settlers, in order to solve the problem of getting Africans to work for them, caused the government to impose a tax on every hut and every head, which forced Africans to work to pay the taxes, while at the same time preventing them from planting cash crops, such as coffee and maize. Also every African was forced to travel with a passport or identity document bearing his name, tribal affiliation, fingerprints, and employment history, in addition to a photo later on. Every African had to carry this passport and within a metal box tied around his neck..!

● In order to administer colonial properties, the British developed a system that later became known as indirect rule. They mistakenly assumed that every African group should have a ruling chief, and so they appointed one from each category to the position of senior leader who would act as an intermediary between the colonial administration and the group or category. But the Kikuyu, for example, did not have a single senior leader; rather the principal governing body of Kiukobu consisted of a council of elders of respected persons, called siama in the African language, and these handled all aspects of life, and the council owned power and money.

● The process of appointing leaders by the British led to the creation of a ruling elite enjoying the wealth and the privileges that the colonial government lavished upon them..!

● Thus the power of the leaders stemmed from the armed power of the British; they relied on them and used them for their benefit, and anyone who protested the leaders’ practices was exposed to death..!

● The Mau Mau uprising began in 1952, led by peasants who had been expelled from the lands they had worked, along with a number of urban groups who had been detained or forced to live in camps. However, the larger role probably belonged to the peasants who lived in the white highlands, which are fertile agricultural areas on which the British settlers had established their farms in order to take advantage of their dominance over Kenya. The British then distributed these lands to white settlers, and because the settlers needed labor to run their farms and the peasants needed cash to pay the taxes imposed on them, those who had been forced to sell their land earlier to settlers were compelled to remain in the highlands and work for the new settlers.

● The white settlers controlled these lands for 20 years (the white highlands), and their real desire was to undermine Kikuyu power so that they would become wage-dependent workers by depriving them of the option of independent farming (1920-1950).

● In 1920 settlers, whose number was estimated at about 20,000, managed to convince the colonial government to pass a law requiring the Kikuyu to work on Europeans’ farms 180 days a year, and in 1930, under settlers’ pressure, the British colonial government passed a law the Kikuyu called the hut law (Kifwakio), which reduced the number of livestock that Kikuyu workers could keep, without any wage increases.

● In 1937 the British colonial government passed a bill that in effect gave settlers the authority to reduce or remove Kikuyu livestock, as well as to regulate the number of working days for each Kikuyu laborer; accordingly the settlers increased the number of working days first to 240 days and then to 270 days. Laws were amended to remove cattle and goats from the possession of the Kikuyu..

● The Kikuyu resisted these continual amendments against their families, where the Mamau revolution shook the British in 1950,

● The settlers committed atrocious acts against Kenyans and supported killing all the Kikuyu... even bombing them. About one hundred thousand of the Kenyan population were arrested in the midst of the Mau Mau uprising..in the mid-twentieth century..

● The settlers hunted Mau Mau members, and some of them boasted that they had killed hundreds of them. They dragged some young Mau Mau members by tying them to the back of a Land Rover and dragging them until their heads were severed...!

●      The courtroom had been witnessing significant manipulation, and perhaps the trial of Jomo Kenyatta, charged with being a leader of the Mau Mau, testifies to that: the judge, who had been chosen carefully by the colonial governor, was guaranteed to receive 20,000 pounds sterling in return for a guilty verdict..a sum that would allow him to retire in England, and he received it..

●      Kenya gained independence in 1963..and its first president was Jomo Kenyatta, who was the leader of the Kenya African National Union, and ruled from 1963-1978 ..

●      Brief information about Kenya from other sources

● Kenya is a country in Africa, located in East Africa, with an area of 580 367 square kilometers. Its population is more than 53.01 million in the 2021 census. Kenya’s capital and largest city is Nairobi, while its oldest city, its current second-largest city, and its first capital is the coastal city of Mombasa.

● As of 2020, Kenya is the third-largest economy in sub-Saharan Africa after Nigeriaand South Africa, bordered by South Sudan to the northwest, Ethiopia to the north, Somalia to the east, and Uganda to the west, and Tanzania to the south, and the the Indian Ocean to the southeast.

●      In 1998, the U.S. administration accused Osama bin Laden of being behind the bombing of its embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, on the seventh of August that year.

●      The earliest settlers in Kenya were Arab and Persian migrants in 500 CE, it is said for the trade in ivory tusks (where they killed elephants to obtain their tusks) and the slave trade..!. Then the Portuguese colonizers arrived in 1498, after which "the Arabs in the eighteenth century managed to overcome the Portuguese and control Kenya, but that did not last long, and in 1887 they leased it to the British", according to "Muriuki".

●      When the settlers departed, after being besieged by the Mau resistance in 1950, they sold most of the fertile lands they had seized, which had been given to them free of charge by the English colonizers, to the Kenyan government..which sold them to purchasers...not the real owners from whom the lands had been seized by the English and the white settlers. This further deepened the conflict between the tribes up to now...!