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The Genesis of the Squatter Community, 1905–18
By the end of the First World War, the squatter system had become an established part of the socio-economic structure of European farms and plantations in Kenya, with Kikuyu squatters comprising the majority of agricultural workers on settler plantations.1 This study shows how, contrary to settler and colonial government intentions, the squatter phenomenon was created as a response to the difficulties of settlers in securing labour power and of Africans in gaining access to arable and grazing land.
To some extent, the squatters did meet the settlers’ labour needs, but on terms other than those preferred by the settlers. The squatters, trying to cope as best they could with pressures from their own society, which were intensified by land alienation and labour extraction by the chiefs, exploited the weaknesses and dependence of the settler economy to turn themselves precisely into the kind of independent community the settlers and government feared. The squatter and settler communities thus created two incompatible systems. This dichotomy reached successive crises during the kifagio period (when the squatters lost their livestock) and in the Mau Mau rebellion.
The development and success of the European settler plantation agriculture as the basis of Kenya’s economy depended heavily on the availability of land, labour and capital. In a series of excisions, the government alienated about 7 million acres of land, including some of the most fertile in Kenya. This land comprised what came to be known as the White Highlands, or the Settled Areas, which were set aside for exclusive European agriculture.
As well as access to land, the settlers needed a cheap and abundant supply of labour. It was intended that Africans should be farm-workers on settler farms. The government proceeded to impose various legislative and financial measures to force Africans into the labour market.2 These measures included the introduction of the Hut and Poll Taxes (1901 and 1910 respectively), the alienation of African lands and the discouragement of African cash crops, especially in areas bordering the White Highlands. These would ensure that Africans were unable to become self-sufficient and would have to seek wage employment to meet their cash needs. For a period, the government even procured forced labour. The 1906 Masters and Servants Ordinance and an identification pass known as the kipande (1918) were used to control the movement of labour and to curb desertion. At the same time, the government sought to strengthen the settler economy by providing various services. These included a rail and road network, subsidies on freight charges, agricultural and veterinary services and credit and loan facilities.3
The above measures were all designed to polarise the settler and African economies, by subordinating the latter to the former.4 The process was protracted, violent and subtle, and unleashed numerous conflicts and contradictions. Although they were progressively subordinated, Africans, particularly the squatters, sought to adjust, and in some cases to outwit, the colonial machinations. The following examination of land alienation among the Kikuyu attempts to illustrate both the colonial government’s disregard for African rights of proprietorship in land, and the Kikuyu responses to the situation, especially with regard to the emergence of the squatter community.
Land alienation among the Kikuyu
When the British government declared a Protectorate over what came to be known as Kenya, Kikuyu settlement stretched northwards of Nairobi to the slopes of Mount Kenya.5 European settlement of the White Highlands began in the southern district of Kikuyu country.6 It soon transpired that settlers intended to appropriate the more highly cultivated areas, land that had already been broken in preference to waste and unoccupied land.7 Administrative officers entrusted with the task of processing European applications for land usually gave settlers immediate authority to occupy land, with the only condition being that they pay the Kikuyu owners a meagre three rupees per acre compensation for their loss of rights.8 In the Kiambu-Limuru areas about 60,000 acres of Kikuyu land were alienated between 1903 and 1906.9 By 1933, 109.5 square miles of potentially highly valuable Kikuyu land had been alienated for European settlement. A register listed 50 Europeans who were expected to compensate the African owners of the land they now occupied with a total of 3,848 rupees to be shared between approximately 8,000 Kikuyu. A further 3,000 Kikuyu living on the land at the time of alienation received no compensation whatsoever.10
This indiscriminate alienation of African land rendered several thousand Africans landless. Those Kikuyu who had lost their land to European settlers in the Kiambu-Limuru areas were urged to stay on to provide labour for them. By July 1910, there were 11,647 Kikuyu on the Kiambu-Limuru settler farms cultivating approximately 11,300 acres of land then owned by European settlers. Some of these ‘squatters’ were the original owners of these same farms.11
The term ‘squatter’, which originated in South Africa, denoted an African permitted to reside on a European farmer’s land, usually on condition he worked for the European owner for a specified period. In return for his services, the African was entitled to use some of the settler’s land for the purposes of cultivation and grazing. In the case of the Kiambu-Limuru Kikuyu, this meant that those who continued to reside on the same land were transformed from landowners to squatters overnight. This first group also included Kikuyu families that had fled from the Kiambu-Limuru area to Muranga during the 1899 famine and had since returned. They too were encouraged to remain on their alienated land to provide for the labour demands of the settlers.12 But this initial attempt to create an African labour force was largely unsuccessful. Africans were reluctant to work as wage-labourers except temporarily and at their own convenience. In many cases, wage labour meant having to work far from home. This, coupled with the various hardships of wage labour, including inadequate housing, low wages, long working hours and unfamiliar diets, precipitated unrest and desertion among the workers.13
Attempts to turn the Kikuyu into farm-workers were therefore highly unsuccessful. This was partly because Kikuyu society had an expansionist dynamic of its own, propelled by clan (mbari) expansion and competition, by the entrepreneurial ambitions of the cattle-owning ahoi (landless people amongst the Kikuyu), and by the pressures of colonial measures enforced by greedy and hostile colonial chiefs. In addition, the settler community was weak and, for the most part, especially in the beginning, could get no more than the rent they charged from these Kikuyu frontiersmen.
The Kikuyu expansionist dynamic
The acquisition of land in Kikuyuland operated through what was known as the githaka system.14 Under this system, each clan established its ownership over a specified portion of land, with each clan member being entitled to land within the githaka. Ahoi from another clan could acquire the right to cultivate portions of the githaka in return for gifts to the clan elders. In this way, they were able to accumulate large herds of stock.
Land ownership among the Kikuyu was initially established either through prior cultivation, breaking up virgin land (known as kuna), or purchase. The first occupant or purchaser then founded an mbari comprising an extended family or clan. The founder of such a group had jurisdiction over this githaka and parcelled it out to his wives, married sons and ahoi. On his death the eldest son of the senior wife assumed the role of muramati (the trustee of the land). Subsequent subdivisions resulted in the development of several ithaka whose boundaries and manner of acquisition were known. If disagreements arose, members could leave their clan to buy land or clear virgin land and establish a new clan with a new muramati. New clan, or mbari, land could also be established while still maintaining allegiance to the old muramati.15
The establishment of colonial rule then blocked any further Kikuyu expansion either to the north or to the south. The pioneer migrants visualised the opening up of the White Highlands as a new frontier, in much the same way as the southern Kiambu area had been in the closing years of the last century.16 The availability of extensive virgin land in the White Highlands enabled squatters to continue their pre-colonial cultivation and stock-keeping on a much larger scale than was possible in Central Province.
In the following pages, I will show how squatters were not only drawn to the White Highlands by dreams of wealth, but were also pushed there because of land shortages and the oppression of chiefs. Initially the Kikuyu squatters merely took advantage of the suitable conditions presented to them but later, capitalising on administrative incompetence and inability to arrest their activities, they occupied and used vast areas of the White Highlands, bringing into existence an economic system that operated within and in competition with the settler economy.
Factors behind Kikuyu migration
Land shortage
Although there was definite evidence of land shortage in Kenya even before 1914,17 during this period the application of the term ‘land shortage’ was relative. While some clans in Kiambu District owned enough or even surplus land, land alienation had rendered many families in the same area completely landless, especially in the Limuru area. As a result, there had already been a wave of Kikuyu movement to the White Highlands in search of land as far back as the early 1910s. One of these early migrants was Wanjiku wa Kigo. She moved to the Rift Valley with her stepmother before the First World War.18 Her father had initially been left behind to look after the family’s livestock. Wanjiku said that her family moved because their land in Central Province was inadequate. They ‘hated their plot (shamba) at home because the soil was “red” – it lacked fertility’.19 This land compared poorly with the Rift Valley where ‘the shambas were not measured’20 and were fertile.
Wanjiku and her mother first settled in Ndunyu Buru near Elmenteita, where they had gone to join Wanjiku’s brother, who had moved to the area earlier and become a squatter. There was a strong kinship basis to the squatters’ migration pattern.21 Ernest Kiberethi Kanyanja and his father went to the Rift Valley in 1917 ‘because of poverty in Kikuyu’.22 Although his family had owned land in Githunguri, their plot was infertile and too small. His father therefore decided to move to the Settled Areas where he initially found employment as a ‘forest cleaner’ in Elburgon. As a forest squatter, Kiberethi’s father would clear and cultivate an area, usually for about three consecutive years, after which it would be planted with young trees. He could then continue to plant his crops between the rows of trees for a while before moving on to clear fresh bush and repeat the process.
Some of the squatters who moved to the Rift Valley before 1918 were large stock owners who needed more land for their livestock.23 As Hannah Njoki recalled: ‘My father was a rich man so he hired his own bogie and got other people to board with all their luggage and livestock.’24 The availability of good quality grazing land in the White Highlands was a great incentive for migration. Because of their impecunious state many settlers could only afford to pay meagre wages to these migrants and met the deficit by making part of their excess land available to the squatter. In this way the settler got cheap labour and the squatter access to prime land in return for minimal labour. In Njoki’s case, her father grazed his stock while his son worked for the settler. It has been asserted that squatters leased out their landlords’ grazing lands to their Kikuyu friends,25 so that some of the squatters were grazing not only their own herds, but also those of friends and relations in Central Province.
Other early squatters had been ahoi who had lost their rights to use land in Central Province: a situation prompted on the one hand by an expansion of cultivation in Central Province and on the other by the alienation of lands for European settlement and consequent block on any further Kikuyu expansion. Under such pressures, githaka holders withdrew ahoi rights until the 1940s,26 which forced the ahoi to look for land in the White Highlands.
Taxation
If the possibility of evading taxes provided an incentive for some Kikuyu to move to the Settled Areas,27 they would have gained only temporary relief. This was because, apart from being employers, the settlers also acted as tax-collectors. Indeed, some squatters hoped to earn their tax money by moving to the Settled Areas. As Gitau stated, ‘Some people had no money for the head-tax so they came here where the European would pay the tax for them. He [the settler] would only present the people with the receipts.’28 In this respect, the 1910–11 Annual Report for Naivasha District noted that, since the Assistant Commissioner was confined to his office most of the time, the collection of taxes depended ‘almost entirely on the willingness of the employer to pay the tax for their boys as an advance of wages or to collect and send it in on pay day.’29 In most cases, the employer obliged in the latter manner.
The chiefs’ oppression
The White Highlands were regarded as a haven for people wishing to escape conscription into the Carrier Corps during the First World War. Like several other informants, Shuranga Wegunyi had been captured for the Carrier Corps from his home in Muranga. His father redeemed him by paying in kind, one ndigithu (gourd) of honey and a ram to the local chief. On release, Shuranga and his father decided to move to the safety of the White Highlands. Here, the settlers protected their employees from conscription into the Carrier Corps for fear of losing what remained of their resident labour.30 Some people moved to the Settled Areas to avoid the chief’s authority, for in the reserve the chief and his headmen were entrusted with the task of providing labour for communal and public projects. People detested this form of forced labour, failure to do which could be punished by the confiscation of livestock. Mithanga Kanyumba’s move to the Rift Valley was a direct attempt to escape the chief’s authority. As he himself recalled:
My father was rich. The chief used to choose young men who would be taken to Fort Hall. We [Mithanga and one other] stayed there for two days without knowing our fate. The European [who was to hire them] was at location 2 at Chief Njiri’s. We were told by the Askari Kanga [the chief’s soldiers] to wait for the European who would give us money for travel. We refused the money and went back. I left Kikuyu due to the chief’s trouble. I went to Nightingale’s place where I was employed.31
Other reasons, such as fear of witchcraft, hostile neighbours and family feuds also played a part in making individuals move to the Rift Valley,32 but, in most cases, the move was the result of a combination of reasons.
Early labour recruitment
Naivasha and Nakuru, where the bulk of the work-force was Kikuyu, were among the districts least affected by labour shortages in the period before 1918. By 1918 there were about 8,000 squatter families in the Nakuru District alone. Of a population of 9,116 Africans in the Naivasha District, 6,600 belonged to almost exclusively Kikuyu squatter families.33 Although salaries were low, between three and six rupees per month, because land was plentiful the two areas were exceedingly popular among Kikuyu squatter-labourers and attracted a number of illegal squatters. Incidentally, by 1905, one rupee was equivalent to l/4d, or 15 rupees to one pound sterling. However, by 1920, one rupee was valued at two shillings (2/-).
The first settlers to recruit labour in Kikuyu country promised their prospective squatters large tracts of land for grazing and cultivation. An initial quantity of livestock, including cows and goats, was also promised and actually given to some of the pioneer Kikuyu ‘labourers’. This all helped towards starting them off on a sound footing towards their ultimate goal of amassing wealth. In return, the Kikuyu were required to herd the settlers’ livestock.34 Later, especially after the First World War, this obligation was extended to jobs relating to the commercial cultivation of settler crops, but in the meanwhile the labour demands imposed on pioneer immigrants were minimal.
The early settlers capitalised on the depleted state of Kikuyu lands by offering prospective immigrants larger and more productive plots in the Rift Valley than were available in certain parts of Central Province. As a number of ex-squatters pointed out, it was not actual landlessness that made them decide to move to the Rift Valley, but rather the inadequate size and infertility of their own lands. Some of the Kikuyu who migrated to the Rift Valley in the period before and after 1918 were, however, completely landless, either as a result of direct land loss through land alienation or because they had been evicted by their Kikuyu landlords.
Unlike the Luo, Luyia and Abagusii contract workers, the Kikuyu labour-force brought their women and children to the settler farms, as well as certain items such as livestock and beehives, which could be regarded as indications of the permanent nature of their migration.35
Prospective migrants were initially offered free transport and this continued until the outbreak of the First World War. The Kikuyu, Limuru and Kijabe stations served as departure points, especially for squatters from the southern Kiambu area. One of my informants, Kiiru, who was among them, spoke about these journeys as follows:
People began coming to the Rift Valley in 1909. Most of them were brought by Delamere. People would be put in a ‘bogie’ with their beehives, livestock and skins (ndarwa) for sleeping on. All alighted at Njoro where they would be taken to places where they could graze and cultivate freely without restriction. They were shown large fields which belonged to Delamere, who wanted them to look after his stock.36
Although Delamere’s name was the one most frequently quoted by the ex-squatters, other settlers also made labour-recruiting journeys to Central Province and elsewhere.37 Njoro was clearly not the only terminus for squatters thus recruited. The destinations of such labourers were as varied as the extent of European settlement.
The squatter system
As the squatter system evolved, it began to show a number of characteristics that revealed weaknesses in the settler community and colonial government’s attempts to create an African work-force. For a start, not all the squatters were settler employees. Illegal squatting and what was rather derogatorily referred to as ‘Kaffir farming’ were integral to the squatter system and persisted until the settler presence in Kenya drew to a close in the early 1960s. It was largely from Kaffir farming that Kikuyu squatters acquired the socio-economic values of independent production, which they strove to maintain in the inter-war years amidst intensive opposition from the settlers and colonial administrators.
Kaffir farming
Kaffir farming, which like the squatter system derived its name from South Africa, referred to the practice whereby a large European landowner would allow Africans to use his land for grazing and cultivation in return for payment in cash or kind, the latter in the form of milk, manure, stock or crops.38 As we shall see later on, various versions of Kaffir farming coexisted alongside the squatter phenomenon and evaded the scrutiny of the administration. By 1910, there were about 20,000 Kikuyu Kaffir farmers representing approximately 5,000 families.
In Kenya, the development of Kaffir farming was blamed on the small impoverished European settlers who, through financial impecuniosity, were prevented from engaging in productive agriculture on their farms.39 But some forms of Kaffir farming seem to have been practised by a majority of European farmers throughout the colonial period.40 The Ukamba Quarterly Report of December 1910 noted 67 villages of African tenants on one farm in the Province. For the right to use land, these tenants either paid between 8 and 30 rupees, or handed over part of their crop or the profits from its sale. These squatters did not normally work for the European landowners.41 Even after the institution of the 1918 Resident Native Labourers Ordinance (RNLO), which was set up to convert squatter residence in the Settled Areas from a tenancy into a labour contract, some European settlers continued to demand a certain amount of squatter maize crop, milk or manure as part of their labour contract. Njoroge Mambo, Gacheru Manja, and Bethuel Kamau, all spoke of how their settler employer had demanded a minimum of six gunias (gunny-bags) of maize per year from each of his employees.42 This was despite traders from Central Province offering better prices for maize than the settlers to whom they were forced to sell their crop.43
Many European Kaffir farmers were absentee landlords. The Africans who utilised their lands grew and marketed their produce both within and outside the White Highlands. The more successful European settlers and colonial administrators saw Kaffir farming as negating the whole purpose of European settlement. Since the White Highlands had been alienated for a European commercial agriculture dependent on African labour, the emergence of a flourishing peasant economy in the area was seen as an obvious and undesirable threat to settler hegemony. Interestingly, as will be illustrated later, the squatters’ analysis of the plantation economy portrays a similar but opposite observation. As Kimondo, an ex-squatter observed: ‘When the Europeans saw that people [squatters] were becoming rich, they began to reduce the size of the shamba.’44
It was feared that cultivation by Africans of large parcels of land in the White Highlands would, in time, create de facto African rights to land under their use.45 Colonial administrators were concerned that settlers who did not engage in any production on their farms were failing in their obligation to contribute to exports, which were necessary for the economic development of the country.46
The settler Kaffir farmers, on their part, considered the practice a good way of building up settler stock, while at the same time keeping pasture under control and bringing in an income. Also, land that had already been worked by squatters was much easier to cultivate once the settler was ready to expand his own production.
Kaffir farming involved a landlord-tenant relationship between the European settler and the African squatter, and some settlers were almost entirely dependent on the African producers who resided on their farms.47 When settler agriculture came to a standstill during the First World War, the squatters virtually took over responsibility for agricultural production in the Settled Areas.48
The administration found Kaffir farming difficult to control. Since the tenants could not be classified as employees, they were protected from prosecution under the Masters and Servants Ordinance of 1906, and the authorities were reluctant to prosecute the European Kaffir farmers.49 The tenants who did provide labour to the European settlers did so intermittently and under vague verbal agreements which lasted for only three months in any one year.50 Administrative personnel did sometimes confiscate stock from the Africans on the European Kaffir farmers’ land, but the government complained of inadequate personnel and insufficient finances to maintain a close watch on Kaffir farming.51
Kikuyu migration to the Rift Valley
Kikuyu migration to the Settled Areas was initially looked upon by the colonial administration as a good opportunity for harnessing labour. Though Kaffir farming was thought to stifle the flow of labour, squatting was believed to have the opposite effect. The 1912/13 Naivasha Annual Report, for example, stated that ‘squatting . . . might mitigate the labour difficulty’.52 A year later, the 1914/15 report of the same district could boast that, ‘there was no shortage of labour in the district’,53 and that ‘80 per cent of it was Kikuyu’.54 The rest was Maasai, Kipsigis, Luo, Luyia and Baganda.
Unlike Naivasha, where the Kikuyu had established themselves as farm-labourers from an early period, in Nakuru District, the ‘kavirondo [sic.] as farm hands were [initially] much preferred by the settlers’.55 It did not take long for this situation to change, however, as the figures in table 1.1 indicate.
TABLE 1.1
Source: KNA, Nakuru District Annual Report, 1915–16, pp. 2, 3.
This early Kikuyu movement to the Settled Areas was initially profitable for both parties, the settlers and the Kikuyu squatters. The settlers were supplied with minimal but much needed labour, while the Kikuyu immigrants, for a period of at least two decades, evolved a lucrative peasant economy in the White Highlands. Both the squatters and the settlers anticipated continuous and permanent residence of the ‘squatter’ labour-force in the White Highlands. The government was especially concerned that the settlers should provide favourable conditions to encourage the workers to accept permanent employment. To this end, on 18 May 1910 the Governor, Sir Percy Girourd, issued a confidential memorandum to all Provincial and District Commissioners stating that: ‘It is . . . in the interest of the employer to make him [the labourer] as comfortable as possible and try to persuade him to settle down and accept permanent employment’.56
Before 1918, the Kikuyu squatters had been able to withstand any pressures that threatened to thwart their endeavours. For example, any attempts by a settler to control the amount of ‘squatter’ cultivation, or the size of their herds, or even demands for more labour hours than the squatter considered necessary, were counteracted by the withdrawal of the squatters’ labour. The squatters would simply move on to the next farm to continue their virtually independent existence. By changing ‘masters’, the squatters were thus able to establish and operate the labour pattern best suited to their major activities, namely extensive cultivation, herding and trading in crops and livestock. During this period, the Kikuyu ‘labour-force’ had thus created a beneficial socio-economic system, which they sought to retain in the wake of shifting relations in the economy of the Settled Areas.
Also during this laissez-faire period, the Kikuyu community began to feel very much at home in the Settled Areas: a feeling generated and reinforced by the relative prosperity that accrued from cultivation and livestock keeping in the region. And, in that this initial period was characterised by unregulated squatter production, squatter self-assertion was also enhanced.
Whatever notions the settlers held about their position in relation to the squatters, both groups were driven by the same dream of achieving a better life style through exploiting the rich Highland areas. But, to realize this dream, each group needed to exploit the resources controlled by the other. The settlers depended on African labour,57 while ‘squatters’ capitalised on the availability of unused land in the White Highlands. As Muya Ngari, a pioneer ex-squatter, put it: ‘I came because the Rift Valley was wide’.58 However, whereas the squatter was a vital spoke in the wheel of the plantation economy, the settler presented an impediment to squatter activities in the area.
Squatter settlement patterns
Whereas Kikuyu squatters from the Kiambu and Muranga areas usually went to the Naivasha and Nakuru districts, those from Nyeri tended to move to settler farms in the Laikipia region. On arrival at European farms, squatters were free to locate their homesteads anywhere within the area the settler had set aside for them on his farm.59 Thus, within certain limits, they were ‘free to build where they wanted’.60 This independence enjoyed by the Kikuyu in locating their place of residence contrasted sharply with the treatment meted out to contract labourers, who were housed in (or rather, herded into) wattle-and-daub labour camps (in lines), which the Kikuyu squatters derogatorily referred to as maskini61 (poverty stricken). This consideration for the squatter’s individuality played an important part in enhancing the Kikuyu’s sense of self-respect.
The squatter’s unrestricted use of land in the White Highlands before 1918 was aptly referred to as ‘depending on one’s hand’.62 In other words, it was the squatter’s industry, rather than the settler’s restrictions, which determined how much land a squatter brought under cultivation and how much livestock he came to own. Unlike the settler economy, squatter agriculture did not depend on financial investment or on a fluctuating labour-force. With ample labour for cultivation and grazing, the squatters thrived at a time when the settler economy was still trying to gather enough momentum to take off.
Until 1918, labour requirements were minimal. A ‘squatter and his wife might be expected to work for five months in the year between them: he would be required to work for three and a half months a year at least’.63 This gave the squatter ample time to pursue his own productive activities. Although there were times when the settler’s labour requirements coincided with the squatter’s schedule for opening up new fields, sowing, weeding or reaping, the composition of a squatter’s homestead was such that it could ensure that these labour demands were met. Wives, older men, women, any children not at school, and visiting relatives were all mobilised to cultivate the squatter’s shamba. Since, in contracting as a labourer, the head of the family acquired the right to cultivate part of the settler farm for the rest of the family, it was really their responsibility to cultivate and graze the land.
Large tracts of unused settler land were cultivated by squatters for planting with maize, their major food and cash crop. Sometimes these squatters would need to seek additional labour from fellow squatters and their families, casual and contract labourers, or relatives from Central Province, for the production of a surplus maize crop was of prime importance to them. Most of the grain would be sold to the European settlers, or to Indian and African traders at the various trading centres that had sprung up in the Settled Areas.64 A certain amount of maize was sold to labourers who did not cultivate and at times found their posho (maize-meal) rations inadequate.65 Some of the settlers insisted ‘on a compulsory purchase, at a poor price, of the squatter’s own produce’.66 Even when squatters sold to the settler voluntarily, it was always at a lower price and the settlers sometimes resold the maize at a profit. In this respect, it was obvious that the squatter economy was subsidising the settler economy and in some cases, as in Naivasha before 1918, settlers were completely dependent on squatter produce: ‘As the farms in the District are practically entirely stock farms, the resident labour is largely employed in growing foodstuffs which are as a rule sold to the employers, the rate for maize and beans being one rupee a load’.67 As the figures in table 1.2 show, even as early as 1916–17, the extent of squatter cultivation was considerable.
TABLE 1.2
Source: KNA, Naivasha District Annual Report, 1916–17, pp. 2, 11.
While only some settlers produced enough maize for export, they all needed large quantities of it for milling into posho, which provided the main ration for their contract workers, mostly Luo, Luyia, Kisii, Maasai and some Kalenjin. Posho was also given to squatters during their first year of engagement before their crops matured.
Squatters found it surprising that contract labourers would willingly engage in labour contracts that forbade them to produce their own food crops, especially since the food rations were sometimes inadequate. Despite this, the contract labourers never put any pressure on the settlers to allow them to cultivate.68 As Karanja Kamau recalled:
The nduriri[non-Kikuyu especially from Western Kenya] labour had no shamba. They only got posho because they were monthly employees. They did not want shambas. They would even buy maize from the Kikuyu because the European posho was not enough. Yet it did not occur to them to dig the shamba.69
The Kikuyu squatters were bewildered by these contract workers who had only come ‘to work for their stomachs’. The odd contract worker might cultivate a vegetable garden, but on the whole, non-squatter labour did not cultivate land in the White Highlands. They had nothing to show for their efforts out there, which was what Kikuyu squatters found hard to understand. The bulk of these labourers were actually migrant target workers who signed on periodically when they wanted to raise money for specific cash needs at home, which might include items such as livestock for bride-wealth, taxes, school fees, or even a hoe (jembe). Once the labourer had accumulated enough money, he would return to his village ‘to rest’ and to attend to his personal and communal duties.70 Rest periods varied as much as the periods of contracted labour, although, with time, these labourers spent longer and longer periods at work, either on settler plantations or in urban areas, while their wives and families tended the family shambas in the village.71
In the period before 1918, an average squatter family cultivated between six and seven acres of land, which meant that a surplus was almost invariably available for sale. Since the African market provided a more profitable outlet for squatter produce than the settler buyers,72 most transactions were conducted at the various trading centres. Among those in Nakuru District were Subukia, Bahati, Ndundori, Njoro, Elburgon, Turi and Molo, where regular weekend markets were held, and large amounts of produce bought and sold. Urban proletarians from the various mushrooming townships in the White Highlands, especially Nakuru, were among the African customers for the squatters’ produce.
Asian traders would purchase squatter produce in bulk to dispose of, either wholesale or retail, in the various urban areas. ‘The best buyers, however, were those Kikuyu who came from Central Province’.73 These would include the new arrivals to the Settled Areas who had not yet gathered their first harvest and therefore were in a poor position to bargain. But, the most profitable trade was undoubtedly with individuals or traders from hunger-stricken Central Province.
Despite the availability of abundant land, squatter production was occasionally reduced to subsistence levels because of the low prices offered for the produce.74 Under these conditions, flooded markets discouraged the production of a surplus, and squatter produce would either be given to needy friends and relations from Central Province, or sold to them ‘at the same price as the Europeans’75, i.e. cheaply.
Squatter accumulation: livestock
In addition to growing maize and other surplus crops for sale, including cabbages, potatoes and peas, the Kikuyu squatters sought to accumulate livestock. In certain instances, they directly exchanged their foodcrops for livestock with the Dorobo, Tugen, Somali, Turkana or Maasai people.76 More often, however, goats and sheep were purchased at trading centres from their Somali, Tugen or Maasai owners.77 Sometimes squatters travelled long distances to purchase livestock: for example, from Nakuru to the Baringo District or from Naivasha to Maasailand.78 There are even references to purchases of livestock from Maliboi in the Londiani-Kisumu region.79
The amount of livestock, especially of sheep and goats, increased rapidly in the White Highlands, and after a while the Rift Valley came to be referred to as weru, or pasture-land. Although it is difficult to establish the exact cost of livestock at this time, pioneer squatters obviously found the prices more competitive than in Central Province. At one time, two debes (tin containers) of posho were said to fetch two goats from the Turkana,80 whereas the Somali and Dorobo would sell a cow for about two rupees.81 At least seven other prices were quoted by these early pioneers, but, although there are minor differences and problems in translating into the cash equivalent the goods in kind given in exchange for livestock, the important factor is that these Kikuyu squatters saw these deals as competitive. Wangoi stated that three months’ pay went a long way towards helping to accumulate ‘a hutful of goats’.82 This rapid accumulation of stock, first by cheap purchases and later by natural increase, served to popularise the Settled Areas among the Kikuyu, not only among those who were resident in the area but also those in the Kikuyu homeland. Livestock, the symbol of wealth the Kikuyu had consistently sought to acquire from the Maasai, was now readily available, at a price, in the Settled Areas. Herding the animals became the responsibility of the young boys and old men.83
One reason why the squatters were so keen to accumulate livestock was because of its importance in the social and economic lives of the Kikuyu. Sheep and goats were required for a multitude of ceremonies and rituals and for various other forms of social intercourse. L.S.B. Leakey84 ventured to enumerate these occasions and identified 172 of them between the birth and death of each average individual (Kikuyu), each of which demanded the slaughter of a beast and the eating of meat. In addition, the acquisition of livestock was viewed as a way of saving; it could easily be converted into hard cash when necessary for the various expenditures that accompanied the establishment of colonial rule, such as taxes, school fees and the purchase of consumer goods. Though livestock still remained central to the payment of bride-wealth, other rituals, such as circumcision, required cash, with surgeons increasingly preferring to be paid in cash rather than in kind.85
In the Settled Areas, as in Central Province, the possession of livestock was concomitant with social status. It was always ‘. . . the rich people who spoke while others listened’86 at important squatter gatherings like beer-drinking parties. High social standing (igweta)87 among the other squatters was acquired by accumulating stock, and this led squatters to resist the added labour obligations and restrictions which were imposed by the settlers even before 1918. Squatters were reluctant to expend the bulk of their energy on settler farms as members of the labouring community. They aimed to earn their income from their own productive activities. As one ex-squatter’s wife recalled, ‘Wealth did not come from salaries, no, it came from shamba produce and exchange’.88
Squatters’ wages were meagre, even in comparison with those of the contract labourers. To the squatters, however, especially in the pre-1918 period, the cash proceeds of their labour contracts were of little or no economic significance.89 Wage differences did not determine whether or not a squatter agreed to make a contract. Although the money could be put to use, the squatter’s major concern was the availability of sufficient land for cultivation and grazing. As Lucia Ngugi declared, ‘People used to be paid in rupees and were also given shambas. But they preferred the shamba. The rupees could not do anything’.90 Though the money was useful, access to land guaranteed a better basis than a salary for generating wealth.
By the end of the First World War, the settlers had got rid of squatter cattle, so from then on goats and sheep assumed central place in the squatters’ social, economic and political life.91
Goats became the most important item in the payment of bride-wealth. But, because of their ready availability and high level of accumulation among the squatters, more goats were needed to pay for bride-wealth in the Rift Valley than in Central Province.92 The standard bride-price between the late 1920s and early 1930s, when the squatters were at the height of their prosperity, averaged between 80 and 100 goats.93 Although this price held during the kifagio (broom—signifying the sweeping away, or elimination, of livestock) period, it is necessary to recognise that this came at the height of squatter wealth and that, rather than sell their large herds, the squatters preferred to increase the size of the dowry as they married more wives.94 Ngoci Ndegwa married two wives during kifagio and paid 120 goats for each of them. Wanyoko Kamau paid 120 goats for each of his kifagio brides and 80 for a third.
The immediate success that had given the squatter immigrants their sense of arrival in the early period was to be thwarted by the settler community in the period after 1918. But, in the meanwhile, in Central Province, the kihiu-mwiri circumcision initiates of between 1914 and 1918 drew attention to the opportunities to be found in the Settled Areas in their song entitled ‘Ndingiria Gikang‘u Njugu Iremeire Ndimu’95 (I cannot continue to eat maize only, when there is a surplus of beans at Njoro). The female initiates in the same age-group also formulated a song about the productivity of the Rift Valley,’ in which they expressed their desire to settle in this land of plenty:
Ngwithiira Ruguru,
Ngahituke Mutamaiyo,
Kuria Ngwaci cia Nyakiburi
Ciaturagwo na rwamba.
Ngwithiira na ruguru,
Ngaikare murangoine
Haria burugu uhihagiria marigu
Wanjiarire ukunjuria thigagwo ku
Na thigagwo kibui mucii
Munene wi mburi na ngombe.
Wanjiarire Unjuragia thigagwo ku,
Ukiuga ni itheru wanjiarire
thii kibui ukarorie.96
I will go to the West [Rift Valley Settled Areas],
Beyond the Brown Olive Tree,
Where the Nyakiburi sweet potatoes
Are split with a sharpened stick.
I will go to the West
And sit at the entrance,
Where the purko [Maasai] roast bananas
Father you ask me where I will be married,
I will get married at Kibui the big
Homestead which has goats and cattle.
Father you ask me where I will be married,
You think it is a joke,
You had better go to Kibui
And find out (confirm).
Former squatters spoke of how the Kikuyu in Central Province homelands would try to marry their daughters to Kikuyu men in the Rift Valley, in an attempt to boost their wealth of stock with the anticipated bride-price.97 There were also instances of women married in Central Province being freed from their marital ties and brought to the Rift Valley to remarry. This happened if the woman in question was being ill-treated by her husband. Her relatives in the Rift Valley would return the equivalent number of goats and other livestock paid for her dowry to her husband’s family. Once redeemed, the girl would be brought to the Rift Valley where a better suitor would be found for her to marry.98
These discrepancies even extended to the circumcision fee. Although this later came to be paid in cash, here again the traditional surgeons (aruithia) agreed that rates of remuneration were higher in the Settled Areas than in Central Province. While in 1920 one debe (tin container) of honey was an acceptable surgeon’s fee in Central Province, in the Rift Valley the surgeon received a gourd of beer, one half calabash of black peas (njahi), one gourd of fermented porridge and about ten shillings in lieu of the gituiku, the handleless blade then widely used as a circumcision fee.99
Up until 1918, little was done to regulate the legal relationship between European settlers and their African counterparts. It was difficult to distinguish between a squatter who was supposed to be an agricultural labourer and one who merely paid rent. Both were engaged in the same productive activity and over time each developed the same rationale to explain his presence in the White Highlands, i.e. settlement in the pursuit of wealth. In this respect, the constant references to the squatters’ evasion of duty or reluctance to work for the settlers100 were indicative of the dichotomy in the squatters’ status as labourers on the one hand, and, colonists on the other. The latter was more apparent in the period before 1918, and although not publicly defended by the squatters or acknowledged by the settlers, it was an ever present phenomenon which posed a real threat to settlerdom.
This threat was instrumental in, indeed fundamental to, the formulation of the 1918 Resident Native Labourers Ordinance which, much to the disappointment of the settlers, emphasised the squatter’s labour obligations without stipulating that his status in relation to the settler was that of a labourer rather than co-owner of the White Highlands. Some of the more self-sufficient squatters completely severed ties with their areas of origin. For others, the occasional visits of relatives from the country continued to increase and perpetuate the wealth of the Settled Areas. This, in turn, resulted in the Kikuyu migrating to the Rift Valley.
Like the European settlers, a generation of Kikuyu came into existence who moved from one area to the next in search of ‘a place to feel at home’.101 This worked against the colonial plan and led to the dual problem of labour shortages on the one hand, and increasing numbers of illegal squatters on the other. The colonial government was caught in the position of trying to maintain a balance between these two conflicting productive patterns. The much discussed labour shortage was attributed to a lack of manpower, but the irony of the situation in the White Highlands in the period before 1918 was that this badly needed labour-force was actually resident in the Settled Areas as illegal squatters. Employers merely failed to offer the kinds of conditions that would attract their labour.
The paradox of a labour shortage: squatter self-perception
Settlers and colonial officials assumed that African labourers in the Settled Areas would constitute a ‘migrant labour force’ which would leave once the contract expired, or at six months notice if the settler so desired. Kikuyu migrants viewed their presence in the Settled Areas in a different light. They sought to establish a ‘dwelling place’ (utuuro)102 and to evolve a viable socio-economic system within the White Highlands.
One way of trying to understand how the squatters perceived their own situation is to look at them in their role as ahoi, as they understood it, in their own society.103 Among the Kikuyu, at the time when migration and settlement were taking place, it was common for ahoi to help, not only in the task of defending the acquired land, but also in acquiring more land. The ahoi ‘. . . readily accepted such an invitation because the rutere (frontier) was regarded as the land of opportunity where an industrious person expected, sooner or later, to acquire wealth of his own to enable him to buy his own land’.104 To the pioneer squatters, the Rift Valley was a new frontier which in many ways promised to be more rewarding than Central Province.105 The early settlers were themselves instrumental in the crystallisation and consolidation of what became a widespread theory about the abundant opportunities that accrued from settling in the White Highlands. In other words, ‘advertisements circulating in the reserves led Africans to believe that life on European farms would be a “paradise” for them’.106 Like the European settlers, prospective African migrants anticipated easy and immediate prosperity in the White Highlands.
To this end, the migration of some squatters, especially those who abandoned their lands in Central Province107 and moved to the Rift Valley, was a calculated risk. An unknown, but probably a considerable proportion of these migrants were large stock owners who were attracted to the Rift Valley because of the quality and extent of the grazing land available.108 For these squatters, the White Highlands offered an opportunity not only to continue their pre-colonial mode of production but to do it on a larger and more rewarding scale. As an ex-squatter put it, ‘During the earlier squatter days, the shamba belonged to both the squatter and the European settler’.109
Hopes of retaining this wealth (for the earlier squatter) or of acquiring wealth (among prospective migrants) began to fade once the settlers started restricting squatter cultivation in the early 1920s. Till then, Kikuyu squatters looked upon themselves and the settlers as the joint heirs to the Settled Areas.
The other squatters
Though predominantly a Kikuyu practice in Nakuru and Naivasha, squatting was by no means restricted to these two districts, nor to the Kikuyu people alone. There were also Akamba, Nandi, Kipsigis, Marakwet, Keiyo and Tugen squatters, even in these two areas, and after the First World War the Luo, Luyia and Kisii squatters made their appearance in the region as well.
Nandi and Kipsigis with insufficient pasture for their livestock would squat on European farms mainly in the Uasin Ngishu and Songhor areas. By 1921 they had begun to work as hired labourers for the meagre sum of four shillings per month in return for unlimited grazing rights.110 Alternatively, they grazed on settler farms and paid their rent in livestock.
The earliest group of Nandi squatters came from the northern part of the Nandi homeland to serve as squatters on farms in the southern Uasin Ngishu District, to which they were brought in 1906. Many of them were born in the area and believed they were ‘fully entitled to live in the Settled Areas, because it was formerly owned by them’.111
By 1912, settlers were making requests for labour to Nandi chiefs.112 In that year it was observed that the cattle population in the Nandi reserve had fallen to about 12,000, as the bulk of the cattle had gone with the squatters to the neighbouring settler farms. Nandi headmen, when consulted, did not want their followers to leave, especially when they wanted to take their stock with them.113 On the other hand, by 1916, settlers were complaining about ‘the restrictions forbidding Nandi squatters to take their cattle on to farms’,114 for the Nandi refused to contract as squatters unless they were allowed to take their cattle with them. When the Veterinary Department granted temporary concessions allowing them to take a few milk cows, ‘hundreds of Nandi registered for work on the farms’.115
Immediately after the War, about 100 square acres of Nandi land were alienated, including salt-licks. This resulted in further migration to the Uasin Ngishu and Trans Nzoia farms and by 1920 there were about 1,500 Nandi squatter families. Placing the Nandi reserve under quarantine for pleuro-pneumonia, rinderpest and East Coast fever during the period 1908–24 not only prohibited the movement of stock to and from the Nandi homeland, but also limited the possibilities of trade in cattle.116 This meant that the Nandi had little or no means of obtaining cash, a basic necessity to many people during the colonial period, with the consequent result that some Nandi families drifted to the Settled Areas in search of work.
The Kipsigis too were short of land, mainly as a result of colonial machinations. In the southern part of their reserve, 130,000 acres (52,000 hectares) had been alienated for European settlement.117 Some of this land was occupied by settlers and some converted into Crown Land. When the Maasai were pushed out of Laikipia to make room for European settlers, some of them came and settled on the Kipsigis land, which had already been partly penetrated by Abagusii.
The Kipsigis found the loss of the Sotik land and salt-licks particularly hard to bear. The administration operated under a self-imposed civilising mission of endeavouring to create agriculturalists out of the ‘backward’ pastoralists. This was used as a good excuse for alienating large parcels of African-owned land which was then given for European settlement,118 forcing the unlucky Africans to resort to wage labour in the White Highlands or elsewhere. This was the fate of a sizeable number of Kipsigis. The first Kipsigis squatters were registered in 1913 and by 1917 their numbers had increased to 1,800. The introduction of the Kericho tea estates demanded further alienation of Kipsigis land, resulting in the subsequent thrust of more Kipsigis into the labour market. Like the Nandi, the Kipsigis opted for squatter labour which afforded them grazing rights.
By the mid-1920s, the Keiyo and Marakwet119 had also found it necessary to resort to squatter labour. As the victims of pre-colonial and colonial factors, they had occupied the eastern rim of the Uasin Ngishu plateau even before 1890. In 1922 they lost 328 square miles of forest land, which was alienated for E.S.M. Grogan Ltd. This was a substantial land loss and, over time, overstocking became a major land problem, leaving the residents no alternative but to sign on as resident labourers on European farms. Living in a marginal area sometimes forced the Keiyo and Marakwet to seek employment on European farms, especially during periods of famine, which were usually brought on by the severe droughts common to the area. Signing on as squatters was thus also a way of obtaining pasture for their livestock.
The pattern of squatting among other ethnic groups was to some extent different from the trend prevalent among the Kikuyu, for whom settlement in the alienated areas was often thought to involve (though was not invariably accompanied by) a complete severing of physical ties with their original homelands.120 While the majority of Kikuyu agricultural labourers were emigrants, those from other ethnic groups were migrants who had their feet in two camps, their places of work and their areas of origin.
After the squatters, the second largest category of Africans in the colonial labour force in both settled and urban areas comprised the Luo, Luyia and Abugusii people. Although regional preferences were not exclusive, Luyia squatters tended to settle on Trans-Nzoia and Uasin Ngishu farms, Luo squatters contracted in the Muhoroni, Koru and Londiani areas, while the Abagusii were found on the Kericho tea estates. In terms of agricultural labour, especially in Nakuru District, the Luo, Luyia and Abagusii provided mostly casual labour. Abagusii, Luo, Maragoli and Banyore labourers contracted as squatters on the Kericho tea plantations for periods lasting about three years.
Apart from a concern to regulate the extensive independent Kikuyu production and presence in the White Highlands, by 1918 the government was also determined to create an abundant and controllable supply of labour for the settler plantations. Until then, the squatter system had little to do with wage employment. It was merely the product of settler undercapitalisation and of the abundance of fertile land in the White Highlands, which had satisfied squatters’ needs for land but not the settlers’ demand for labour. The squatter was an accident, a mark of the settlers’ failure to obtain labour in any other way. The next chapter examines the government’s attempts to turn squatters into labourers, a cheap source of labour, and shows how the squatters reacted to this initial assault.
Notes
1. By 1945, there were about 200,000 squatters, the majority of whom (122,000) were Kikuyu. See Leys, C., Underdevelopment in Kenya: The Political Economy of Neocolonialism, 1964–1971, London, Heinemann, 1975, p. 47.
2. For the evolution of labour during this early period see for example Clayton, A., and Savage, D. C., Government and Labour in Kenya, 1895–1963, London, Frank Cass, 1974; Leys, N., Kenya, (fourth edition), London, Frank Cass, 1973 (first published 1924); Ross, W.M., Kenya from Within, London, Frank Cass, reprint 1968 (first published 1927); and Dilley, M.R., British Policy in Kenya Colony, New York, Praeger, reprint 1966 (first published 1937).
3. Brett, E. A., Colonialism and Underdevelopment in East Africa: The Politics of Economic Change, 1919–1939, London, Heinemann, 1973.
4. See Dilley, British Policy, pp. 213–23.
5. Wrigley, C. C., ‘Kenya: Patterns of Economic Life 1902–1945’ in Harlow, V., Chilver, E. M. and Smith, A., (eds), History of East Africa, Volume II, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1965, p. 212.
6. For an account of European settlement in Kenya, see Sorrenson, M.P.K., The Origins of European Settlement in Kenya, London, OUP, 1968.
7. ibid., p. 181.
8. Sorrenson, Origins of European Settlement, p. 179.
9. Rosberg, C. and Nottingham, J., The Myth of Mau Mau: Nationalism in Kenya, Nairobi, EAPH, 1966, p. 19.
10. ibid.
11. Sorrenson, Origins of European Settlement, p. 184.
12. ibid.
13. See Report of the Native Labour Commission, 1912–13, for a discussion of problems related to labour before the First World War.
14. See Sorrenson, M. P. K., ‘The Official Mind and Kikuyu Land Tenure, 1895–1939’ in the EAISR Conference, Dar Es Salaam, January, 1963. See also Muriuki, G., A History of the Kikuyu, 1500–1900, Nairobi, OUP, 1974, pp. 13–81.
15. Sorrenson, ‘Official Mind’, p. 6. See also Muriuki, History of Kikuyu.
16. See Tignor, R. L., The Colonial Transformation of Kenya: Kikuyu and Maasai from 1900 to 1939, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1976, p. 107.
17. Van Zwanenberg, R. M. A. and King, A., An Economic History of Kenya and Uganda, 1870–1970, Nairobi, EALB, 1975, p. 35.
18. Interview, Wanjiku wa Kigo, 2 October 1976, Rongai.
19. Interview, Wanjiku wa Kigo, 2 October 1976, Rongai; Njoroge Kahonoki, 1 October 1976, Rongai, and Muya Ngari, 6 October 1976, Njoro. 1976, Njoro.
20. Interview with Muya Ngari, 6 October 1976, Njoro.
21. This was evident in the employment of relations on one farm and the prevalence of people from the same locality in Central Province to squat in the same neighbourhood. As Wangoi remembered: ‘Employment was on [a] kinship basis’. Interview, Mary Wangoi Macharia, 6 October 1976, Njoro. People moved to areas where their relations had settled and initially lived with them as they sought employment. Impressed by the livestock his relation had accumulated at Olkalau, Munge moved to the Settled Area before the First World War. Interview, Munge Mbuthia, 8 October 1976, Subukia, oral interview with Njau Kanyungu, 2 October 1976, Rongai, and Nganga Githiomi, 2 October 1976, Rongai.
22. Interview, Ernest Kiberethi, 13 October 1976, Elburgon.
23. Kitching, G., Class and Economic Change in Kenya: The Making of an African Petite Bourgeoisie, London: Yale University Press, 1980, p. 18.
24. Interview, Hannah Njoki, 10 September 1976, Turi.
25. KNA, Naivasha District Annual Report, 1922, Special Report, p. 1.
26. See Tignor, Colonial Transformation of Kenya, pp. 307—8; Sorrenson, M. P. K., Land Reform in Kikuyu Country, Nairobi, OUP, 1967, p. 78.
27. Van Zwanenberg and King, Economic History, p. 222.
28. Interview, Gitau Gathukia, 16 September 1976, Njoro.
29. RH, Microfilm AR 895, Naivasha District Annual Report, year ending March 1911, plate nos. 000908–000909. Interview, Shuranga Wegunyi, 25 October 1976, Nakuru.
30. KNA, Naivasha District Annual Report, 1916–1917, p. 2. After many appeals, the settlers did, however, release their surplus labour to the Carrier Corps.
31. Interview, Mithanga Kanyumba, 14 September 1976, Molo.
32. Interviews, Kuria Kamaru, 2 October 1976, Rongai and Muchemi Kimondo, 8 October 1976, Subukia.
33. KNA, Naivasha District Annual Report, 1919–1920, p. 2.
34. Interview, Arphaxad Kiiru Kuria, 21 September 1976, Elburgon. The Naivasha Annual Report for 1911–1912 noted that there was no arable farming in the district and that the energies of the settlers were directed toward livestock farming.
35. See Kanogo, T.M.J., ‘A Comparative Analysis of the Aspirations of the Kikuyu, Luo and Luyia Workers in the White Highlands, 1900–1930’, unpublished article, Department of History, University of Nairobi, No, 18, 1977/78.
36. Interview, Arphaxad Kiiru Kuria, 21 September 1976, Elburgon.
37. Lord Delamere, a pioneer settler who gained prominence as a champion of settler interests, seems to have achieved a mythical image among the squatters. He seems to fulfil the same mythical function as Gikuyu na Mumbi who are seen as the founders of the Kikuyu tribe.
38. Van Zwanenberg, R. M. A., Colonial Capitalism and Labour in Kenya, 1919–1939, Nairobi, EALB, 1975, p. 257. See also Sorrenson, Origins of European Settlement, p. 185.
39. Sorrenson, Origins of European Settlement, p. 185.
40. For a brief discussion on Kaffir farming see Van Zwanenberg, Colonial Capitalism, Pp. 257–60, and Tignor, Colonial Transformation, pp. 106–10, 160–4 and 192.
41. KNA, PC RVP 6A/25/3, ‘Squatters 1931–38: A Note on the Squatter Problem’ by Fisher, V.M., Principal Inspector of Labour, June 1932.
42. Clayton, A. H., ‘Labour in the East African Protectorate, 1895–1918’, Ph.D. thesis, University of St. Andrews, 1971, p. 193.
43. Interviews, Njoroge Mambo, Gacheru Manja, 4 October 1976, Elburgon, and Bethuel Kamau, 8 October 1976, Subukia.
44. Interview, Muchemi Kimondo, 8 October 1976, Subukia.
45. Van Zwanenberg, Colonial Capitalism, p. 257.
46. ibid.
47. Clayton, ‘Labour in East African Protectorate’, p. 104. See also Ghai, Y.P. and McAuslan, J.P.W.B., Public Law and Political Change in Kenya, Nairobi, OUP, 1971, p. 83.
48. KNA, Naivasha District Annual Report, 1916–1917, p. 2.
49. Clayton, ‘Labour in East African Protectorate’, p. 193.
50. ibid.
51. KNA, PC RVP 6A/25/3, P.C. Ukamba, Mr Traill, to Chief Secretary, 7 May 1915 on ‘Native Cattle on European Farms’, A.19/5.
52. KNA, Naivasha District Annual Report, 1912–1913, p. 2.
53. KNA, Naivasha District Annual Report, 1914–1915, p. 13.
54. ibid., p. 14.
55. KNA, Nakuru District Annual Report, and Quarterly Report 1910–1911, p. 3. Kavirondo was a colonial misnomer for the Luyia, Luo and Abagusii people who inhabit the Nyanza and Western regions of Kenya.
56. KNA, DC NVA 4/1, p. 5.
57. Clayton and Savage, Government and Labour, p. 20.
58. Interview, Muya Ngari, 6 October 1976, Njoro.
59. Interview, Kihiko Mwega, 25 October 1976, Nakuru. See also Shuranga Wegunyi, 25 October 1976, Nakuru, and Muchemi Kimondo, 8 October 1976, Subukia.
60. Interview, Icogeri Nyaga, 6 October 1976, Njoro.
61. Interview, Muta Njuhiga, 1 November 1976, Bahati. These camp houses were poorly constructed and most likely overcrowded as the labourers had to share accommodation.
62. Interview, Munge Mbuthia, 8 October 1976, Subukia.
63. Mbithi, P. and Barnes, C., Spontaneous Settlement Problems in Kenya, EALB, Nairobi, 1975, p. 45.
64. Interviews, Njoroge Mambo, 4 October 1976, Elburgon, Gacheru Manja, 4 October 1976, Elburgon, and Bethuel Kamau, 8 October 1976, Subukia.
65. Interviews, Joseph Matahe, 30 September 1976, Bahati; Karanja Kamau, 21 October 1976, Nakuru.
66. See Clayton, and Savage, Government and Labour, p. 5, and interviews with Solomon Muchangi, 16 September 1976, Njoro; and Wilson Mwangi Njau, 13 October 1976, Elburgon.
67. KNA, Naivasha District Annual Report, 1916–1917, p. 2.
68. See Kanogo, ‘Comparative Analysis’.
69. Interview, Karanja Kamau, 21 October 1976, Nakuru.
70. Interviews, Ochama Omolo, 17 October 1976, Kericho, and Jackton Oyoo, 14 October 1976, Kericho.
71. See Kanogo, ‘Comparative Analysis’.
72. Interview, Gacheru Manja, 4 October 1976, Elburgon.
73. ibid.
74. Interviews, Wanjiku wa Kigo, 2 October 1976, Rongai, Kuria Kamaru, 2 October 1976, Rongai, Gacheru Manja, 4 October 1976, Elburgon, and Muchemi Kimondo, 8 October 1976, Subukia.
75. Interview, Gacheru Manja, 4 October 1976, Elburgon; Njoroge Mambo, 4 October 1976, Elburgon; Bethuel Kamau, 8 October 1976, Subukia.
76. Interview, Mrs Kamau Wanyoko, 13 September 1976, Londiani; Mary Wangui Macharia, 16 September 1976, Njoro.
77. Interviews, Muta Njuhiga, 1 November 1976, Bahati, Wangari Thuku, 3 October 1976, Njoro, and Njau Kanyungu, 2 October 1976, Rongai.
78. Interview, Shuranga Wegunyi, 25 October 1976, Nakuru.
79. Interview, Wanjiku wa Kigo, 2 October 1976, Rongai.
80. Interview, Mary Wangui Macharia, 16 September 1976, Njoro.
81. Interview, Kamau Wanyoko, 13 September 1976, Londiani.
82. Interview, Mary Wangui Macharia, 16 September 1976, Njoro.
83. Interview, Kuria Kamaru, 2 October 1976, Rongai.
84. Leakey, L.S.B., ‘The Economics of Kikuyu Tribal Life’, East African Economic Review, Vol. 3., No. 1, 1956, pp. 158–80.
85. Interview, Gacheru Manja, 4 October 1976, Elburgon.
86. Interview, Bethuel Kamau, 8 October 1976, Subukia; Nganga Githiomi, 2 October 1976, Rongai.
87. Interview, Bethuel Kamau, 8 October 1976, Subukia.
88. Interview, Mrs Kamau Wanyoko, 13 September 1976, Londiani.
89. Mrs Kamau Wanyoko, 13 September 1976, Londiani, Kuria Kamaru, 2 October 1976, Rongai, and Nganga Githiomi, 2 October 1976, Rongai. Squatters expressed surprise at the Luo, Luyia and Kisii workers who ‘did not come to cultivate . . . but came [to the Settled Areas] for salaries’.
90. Interview, Lucia Ngugi, 10 September 1976, Turi.
91. Interview, Nganga Githiomi, 2 October 1976, Rongai.
92. Interview, Shuranga Wegunyi, 25 October 1976, Nakuru.
93. Interviews, Gacheru Manja, 4 October 1976, Elburgon, Ernest Kiberethi, 13 October 1976, Elburgon, and Kihiko Mwega, 25 October 1976, Nakuru, for figures quoted as bride-wealth during this period. Riiyu Ngare, 30 December, Nakuru.
94. Interview, Ngoci Ndegwa, 29 October 1976, Nakuru.
95. Interview, Arphaxad Kiiru Kuria, 21 September 1976, Elburgon.
96. Interview, Wanjiru Nyamarutu, Njoki Mucaba, 18 December 1976, Nakuru.
97. Interviews, Njoki Mucaba, Wanjiru Nyamarutu, 18 December 1976, Nakuru, and Njau Kanyungu, 2 October 1976, Rongai. Njau indicated that bride-price was much higher in the Settled Areas than in Central Province.
98. Interview, Wanjiku wa Kigo, 2 October 1976, Rongai.
99. Interview, Kihiko Kimani, 2 October 1976, Nakuru; Gacheru Manja stated that at a time when gituiku was the equivalent of two shillings in Central Province it was six shillings in the Rift Valley.
100. The settlers believed that the African was inimical to work and needed to be taught the dignity of labour. See, for example, Leader of British East Africa, 13 April 1912 and Huxley, E. White Man’s Country, 1870–1914, London, Macmillan and Co., 1935, pp. 214 ff., where the ‘uncivilised’ nature of the African and his obligation to provide the much needed labour are stressed. With time, however, the African labourer became sufficiently sophisticated to know that he could go and work where and for whom he desired and did not have to comply with administrative directives. See KNA, DC NZA 3/20/4/2, DC Kisii to Senior Commissioner, Nyanza, 7 January 1925.
101. Interviews, Bethuel Kamau, 8 October 1976, Subukia, and Muya Ngari, 6 October 1976, Njoro. The latter stated that once in the Rift Valley, squatters did not anticipate a return to Central Province. As if to clinch the point, Ngari recollected the Biblical story in which Noah sent a dove to survey the possibility of locating dry land. On spotting the land, the dove remained on the dry land (to eat of it) and did not relay the message to Noah. See Genesis 8: 6–12.
102. Interview, Arphaxad Kiiru Kuria, 21 September 1976, Elburgon.
103. As early as 1910, however, the ahoi’s traditional rights to cultivate and occupy land were already decreasing, largely because of land shortage. See Muriuki, History of Kikuyu, p. 174.
104. ibid., p. 78.
105. Interview, James Mumbu Muya, alias Kinuthia Muya, 14 October 1976, Elburgon. Muya summed up the White Highlands as offering ‘satisfaction of the stomach and livestock’.
106. Mbithi and Barnes, Spontaneous Settlement, p. 147.
107. Interviews, Kihiko Mwega, 25 October 1976, Karanja Kamau, 21 October 1976, Nakuru, Njuguna Kiorogo, 12 October 1976, Nakuru, and Bethuel Kamau, 8 October 1976, Subukia.
108. Kitching, Class and Economic Change, p. 294.
109. Interview, Kimondo Muchemi, 8 October 1976, Subukia.
110. Van Zwanenberg, R. M. A. Colonial Capitalism and Labour in Kenya, p. 231. A 25 per cent drop in wages had reduced their salaries to this low level.
111. ibid, p. 230.
112. KNA, DC NDI 5/2, ‘Returning Squatter Stock from Uasin Ngishu’, Notes from Nandi Political Record Book.
113. KNA, Nandi District Annual Report, year ending 31 March 1914, p. 1.
114. KNA, Nandi Political Record Book, 1916, p. 35.
115. KNA, Nandi Political Record Book, 1916, p. 36.
116. KNA, DC 3/2. Nandi Political Record Book, ‘Cattle Diseases, Veterinary Department Activity among the Nandi Cattle, 1908–1942’.
117. For a discussion of land alienation among the Kipsigis, see Korir, K.M., ‘The Tea Plantation Economy in Kericho District and Related Phenomena to Circa 1976’, BA dissertation, Department of History, Nairobi University, 1976.
118. See Kenya Land Commission: Evidence and Memoranda, pp. 3438, 3441 and the Memorandum from C.M. Dobbs, paragraph 1152.
119. Van Zwanenberg, Colonial Capitalism, p. 234.
120. Interview, Ngugi Kuri Kamore, 10 October 1976, Turi. This should not be taken to mean that all Kikuyu squatters severed all ties with Central Province. The parallel is only a relative one.
