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Two

Settlers and Squatters: Conflict of Interests 1918–37

No native should be allowed to settle on land held by Europeans, unless bona fide employed by the owner. . . . No renting of land in European occupation should be allowed.¹

The European settlers who have invested their fortunes in the country at the invitation of the British government cannot be blamed for demanding native labour. Put in the same situation, the twelve apostles would not have acted otherwise.²

The previous chapter looked at how the European settler demand for labour was to a large extent satisfied through squatterdom rather than wage labour. The evolution of this squatter community was shown to be only marginally related to the labour problem, with the Kikuyu influx to the Settled Areas being mainly in search of sufficient land for grazing and cultivation. As time passed, it became increasingly obvious that the settlers were tolerating squatter cultivation and grazing only as a convenient arrangement while tropical agriculture was in its pioneering stage. But unlike settler agriculture, squatter production was not dependent on capital and therefore thrived while settler agriculture foundered.

In the inter-war period, however, the settlers emerged as a much stronger community determined to consolidate their hold on squatter labour and the productive machinery in the White Highlands. The period marked the beginning of a protracted and overt conflict between settlers and squatters. The settlers believed that, if their economy was to develop, then the government and the squatters must rally behind them. Their priority was to ensure that they had at their disposal a cheap, adequate and controllable supply of labour and this called for the introduction of various labour regulations. In this chapter an attempt will be made to examine how, with the help of the colonial government, the settlers tried to ‘regulate’ squatter labour and how the squatters reacted.

Inherent in the settler programme was the determination to curtail the extensive squatter cultivation and grazing to the immediate needs of squatter households. As well as limiting squatter usage of land in the White Highlands, this would release the squatter for his labour obligations. The measures applied threatened both the economic and the social viability of the squatter community. By overlooking the fact that they only paid minimal wages to squatters, who therefore supplemented their income by cultivation, grazing and trading, settlers dismantled an earlier mutually beneficial relationship and sought to replace it with a set-up which the squatters felt undermined their very raison d’être. Their response was both adamant and tenacious. It comprised outright resistance by way of strikes and illegal squatting, refusal to sign on again, and withdrawal of labour to Central Province and elsewhere.

As early as 1918, in an address to the Acting Chief Secretary on the subject of native cattle on European farms, the Acting Provincial Commissioner for Ukamba doubted ‘if the labour which settlers hope to acquire by means of this inducement, will prove satisfactory’.³ He also feared that Kaffir farming would be practised at every opportunity and that while the sole object of the measure was to provide labour for farms, in his opinion the price was too high. As he put it, ‘There may be some temporary relief but I cannot bring myself sincerely to believe that the policy is one which will prove of ultimate benefit to the country’.⁴

As well as facing insecurity of tenure and lack of land in the reserves, he viewed the squatters as a great danger. He held that for the 16 years that ‘promiscuous uncontrolled squatting’⁵ had existed it had been a bad thing but that any attempts to control it by amending legislation would be ‘another sop to Cerberus’. The most permanent solution to the problem would be to pack up the squatters with their families and livestock and send them away from the farms. But since it was unlikely that anybody in the field of practical politics would agree to sponsor such an alternative, he made two other recommendations. The first was that the supervision of squatters and their stock by the then inadequate supply of police and veterinary officials be increased without any need to amend legislation, and the second that a laissez-faire policy be adopted whereby each farmer controlled his squatters as he pleased. The local option would allow the District Council to decide on the number of squatters per farm, whether or not any stock be allowed on the farms, and if so, what kind. Records of these could be kept and provisions made for the branding of squatter stock. The above powers would be enforced by the criminal code, and squatter and occupier could enter a civil contract agreeable to both and attested by the District Commissioner if equitable. The result would be that any breach of contract could be dealt with.⁶ Throughout the 1920s and early 1930s settlers grappled with the problem of squatter stock, applying variations of Mr Traill’s recommendations in varying proportions, depending on the local conditions and the individual settler occupier. The first regulation provided a legal context for the squatter community.

The 1918 Resident Native Labourers Ordinance (RNLO)

To create a stable and malleable supply of labour for the White Highlands, it was thought necessary to introduce a publicly supervised contract of agricultural labour. This was embodied in the RNLO of 1918, the preamble of which declared that: ‘It is desirable to encourage resident native labour on farms and to take measures for the regulation of squatting or living of natives in places other than those appointed for them by the government of the protectorate’.⁷ The Ordinance did not create the institution of squatterdom, but rather sought to legitimise it and to provide a legal framework for its social control.

The fundamental provision of the Ordinance was the squatter’s obligation to provide not less than 180 working days per year on a farm. In return for this, the worker and his family were allowed to live on the farm and cultivate a part of the settler’s land for his own use. A minimal wage would be paid for the work done. The Ordinance did not specify the acreage or number of stock allowed per squatter.

To enforce the Ordinance it was necessary that Kaffir farming be abolished and replaced by labour tenancy. Except for labourers on monthly contracts, the Ordinance stipulated that residence for Africans in the White Highlands should be restricted to Africans with squatter contracts, thus prohibiting illegal squatting. The adoption of this new set-up helped to limit the employers’ cash remunerations to the labourers. The labourer was expected to feed and house himself and his family.

More importantly, resident labourers would ensure the supply of sufficient and easily available labour to the farmers, for the squatters’ wives and children could be called upon at peak labour periods, especially during the harvesting season. Nonetheless, as will be shown later, labour shortages remained rife until the late 1920s, when labour requirements were eased by the depression.

In the meantime, ways and means were discussed as to how to compel ‘idlers’, i.e. ‘men who have not recently been in employment and who are not adequately engaged upon definite agricultural or other economic enterprise in their reserves’, to work.⁸ In the Settled Areas, labour shortages were juxtaposed with the problem of illegal squatting. Not only were the illegal squatters reluctant to sell their labour at all, but there were also incessant complaints about the contracted squatters’ failure to provide adequate labour. This confirmed the settlers’ contention that the native had no conception of the dignity of labour.⁹

Though designed to generate and control labour by emphasising the squatter’s labour obligations, the RNLO of 1918 largely failed to ensure the development of an adequate labour supply. The squatters continued to pursue activities that undermined and evaded the colonial government’s sole reason for allowing them into the area. Right from the beginning, then, there had been an ambivalence between the motives of the squatter community on the one hand, and the settler government on the other. But in so far as settlers could now evict any excess or illegal squatters they did not wish to sign on, the Ordinance could be said to have provided a legal framework within which the settlers could exercise some control over squatting. But in itself the Ordinance was insufficient.

Additional labour legislation

Settlers had hoped that the 1918 RNLO would be reinforced by the existing Masters and Servants Ordinance of 1906, under which workers were liable to heavy penalties for negligence of, or absence from, work. However, since squatters belonged to the category of labour-tenants rather than servants, they were able to avoid prosecution, even under the amended 1919 Masters and Servants Ordinance.¹⁰ The settlers continued to clamour for the inclusion of squatters under the Masters and Servants Ordinance of 1924,¹¹ which would make the squatters liable to prosecution for negligence of duty. The settlers maintained that it was necessary to define the word ‘squatter’ to emphasise that the status of a resident labourer was that of a servant rather than tenant.¹² With the 1918 RNLO’s obvious limitations, other enactments to control labour were also used. From 1919 onwards, labourers were required to carry an identification certificate (kipande), on which the owner’s previous and current labour history was entered, including the nature of employment, date of engagement, length of contract and wages paid.¹³ The kipande system was a vicious imposition on ‘native’ labour. It made desertion very difficult, helped to keep the labourers’ salaries static, and turned the labourer into a virtual prisoner until such time as his contract came to an end and he was discharged. Even then, the squatter stood few chances of getting a better paid job unless he risked destroying his identity card, along with all the revealing information it contained. The combination of the kipande and the 1918 RNLO in effect meant that the squatter contract ceased to be a civil and mutual agreement between two people and became a ‘publicly supervised and enforced enterprise’.¹⁴

By 1920, it was evident that for a squatter the acquisition of a labour contract was little more than a means to an end. Settlers were forced to ‘police’ the attested squatters to ensure that they provided adequate labour. Uncontracted Kikuyu continued to reside illegally on occupied and unoccupied land in the White Highlands.¹⁵ In as much as both categories of squatters – legal and illegal – failed to comply with settler expectations, they were seen to constitute the much detested ‘squatter menace’.

To reduce the shortage of labour, settlers continued to welcome more squatters from the Reserves, even though those whose contracts had expired seldom returned home, preferring to stay on in the Settled Areas. New generations of squatters’ children also remained in the Settled Areas, though not always employed on the farms. Although the owners of large farms were seen to be particularly vulnerable to illegal squatters, it was the poorly-supervised unoccupied and Crown lands that literally teemed with uncontracted Kikuyu. The manner in which the Kikuyu encroachment took place made detection especially difficult, as an exasperated administrator remarked:

They creep on all unbeknown; first of all living with a friend or relation, then occupying the hut of a deceased person. Later a wife appears and a few handful of maize are planted. If enquiries are made it is stated by all that the person concerned is only on a short visit and was kind enough to give a hand in the hosts’ garden.¹⁶

According to the laws in operation in the mid-twenties, it was neither possible nor considered tactful to prosecute the occupier. But, as the administrator concluded, the 1918 RNLO also made it impossible to prosecute an African who encroached on such land:

Nothing exists in the law to prevent a native from going to a European farm, cultivating a crop and later when called upon to work sliding off and doing exactly the same thing. He gets virgin soil, the price of a good crop and no work. If fact we seem to have encouraged in the Kikuyu just what we wanted to put a stop to.¹⁷

Even when the demand for labour fell, exodus to the Settled Areas continued. This was most noticeable in the Naivasha, Nakuru, Eldoret and Trans-Nzoia Districts where ‘numbers of natives residing on farms continued to increase during the year (1923) somewhat out of proportion to the actual labour requirements’.¹⁸ In both the Naivasha and Nakuru Districts the African population, which was largely squatter, increased markedly.¹⁹ If we compare table 1.1 in Chapter 1 with the figures in table 2.1, we can see just how much the squatter population did increase in only one decade.

TABLE 2.1

It was felt that existing legislation was inadequate for coping with this sharp rise in the squatter population, and new Ordinances were therefore adjusted to take this into account. For example, the RNLOs of 1924 and 1925 provided for the punishment of a labourer who failed to carry out his duties, or who resided on a farm other than as a squatter under a labour contract. The 1925 Ordinance also stipulated that, when a farm changed hands, the contracts were automatically transferred to the new owner. In return for their increased powers over the squatters, the settlers were obliged to provide the squatter with building materials, in addition to land for grazing and cultivation.²⁰ Even these increased powers, however, failed to curb squatter resistance and the administration had to intervene by forcibly removing illegal squatters from unoccupied or badly supervised farms to those that needed labour.²¹

Settlers and squatter stock

Existing legislation was also inadequate for dealing with the large numbers of squatter stock and the detrimental effect this was believed to be having on the settler economy. In the 1920s, high commodity prices encouraged settlers to diversify the largely maize monoculture economy into the stock and dairy industry. Settlers imported herds of expensive grade cattle and sheep, some of which they interbred with local stock. The settlers maintained that the stock industry could prosper only if squatter stock were eliminated. Squatter stock were carriers of such tick-borne diseases as redwater, blackwater and East Coast fevers – which might infect settler stock.²² They also suffered from rinderpest and bovine pleuro-pneumonia. It was argued too, that the presence of squatter stock would encourage stock theft from settler herds.²³ The constant movement of African stock between the White Highlands, Central Province, Maasai Reserve and other African areas only compounded the problem.

But it is important to remember that the squatters regarded their stock as their main form of saving and investment. By the 1920s, the number of squatters and their cattle had increased tremendously. Squatters had concentrated all their energies into accumulating stock, which, until then, had provided the settlers with milk and manure. Some settlers had even built their herds from squatter livestock. In some ways, this arrangement was mutually beneficial to the settler and the squatter. The rapid increase of squatters and their herds was to a large extent an index of squatter autonomy in the White Highlands. Settler attempts to alter the relationship by demanding that the squatters de-stock overlooked the economic and social significance of livestock to squatters’ livelihoods. They were, in fact, far more dependent on their crop yields and livestock than they were on wages, and any money from the sale of surplus crops was almost invariably used to purchase more livestock. The settlers had, so to speak, hit the squatters below the belt.

Despite this, in many areas there was no corresponding rise in squatter wages, which remained static from the mid-1920s to the early 1940s. This was mainly because the ticket system of squatter contracts which was in operation at the time limited how much a squatter could earn. The average wage was eight shillings for a 30-day ticket, but it took an average of 45 days, much longer in some cases, to complete a ticket. Again, on average, a squatter completed only seven tickets per year, even though he might well have worked for the greater part of the year. When an individual squatter’s tax burdens are taken into account, not to mention the various cash fines for ‘crimes’ committed on the job, such as negligence of duty or petty theft, then it becomes clear that even at the best of times a squatter’s income from wages was irregular and minimal. Evidence of these constraints can be found in the labour records of individual squatters, of which three, those of Waweru Wa Munge, his wife (bibi)²⁴ and Kachego Wa Chege,²⁵ are reproduced in tables 2.2 and 2.3.

Kachego Wa Chege’s ticket in the Nakuru area portrays less contingency expenditure but is indicative of how long it took to complete a 30 day ticket. His income between 1926 and 1929 is shown in table 2.3.

There were two major reasons for the tickets taking so long to complete. In the first place, settler labour demands were staggered throughout the year so that a thirty-day contract did not run consecutively, but straggled over a much longer period. In the above case, the six tickets between 28 January and 21 December 1927 covered a period of 322 days, whereas six tickets (the squatter’s minimum obligation to the settler) were only really supposed to comprise 180 working days per year. Second, the squatter might fail to complete what the settler had stipulated as a day’s task within the day. In such cases, the day would not be recorded, thus increasing the days it took to complete a ticket. Njoroge Gakuha illustrated this point twice over. His father was employed at a settler’s farm in Elmenteita. He was required to prepare 60 fencing poles a day. The task, according to Njoroge, required the joint effort of the informant, his father and his mother, if it was to be completed in one day. Failure to complete one’s daily quota of work often meant no wages were recorded for that day.

TABLE 2.2

The second example was drawn from the informant’s own experience. Between 1929 and 1950 he worked as a field hand at Kampi Ya Moto. On a certain Bwana Kamundu’s farm, each labourer was required to weed eight rows of maize plants per day. The task seems to have been an arduous one since it proved impossible to complete in a day, even with somebody else’s help. In Njoroge’s words: ‘If you did not finish [cultivating] the lines, you got the day’s posho but the day was not recorded [for payment]’.²⁶ On completion of some tickets, the squatter would have to go home with a completely empty pay packet, the settler having withheld the money for Hut Tax, fines for petty thefts or crimes, or other expenses.

TABLE 2.3

It was widely acknowledged that squatters were a cheap source of labour and that, by cultivating and grazing on settler land, they were rightfully receiving payment in kind as a supplement for their low wages. Technically, this was contrary to the provisions of the 1926 Employment of Natives Ordinance, which forbade any payments in kind, but the legislation was flagrantly violated. On a Mrs Irvine’s farm in Songhor Valley, for example, the labourers received no pay whatsoever, the only remuneration for their work being ‘the liability accepted by the employer to pay their tax’.²⁷ Because Mrs Irvine grew coffee and needed as much manure as she could get, she allowed her squatters to engage in extensive grazing and refused to be bound in any way by the opinions of her neighbours. Squatters on her farm agreed to sign on at the rate of three shillings per ticket. The District Commissioner was hoping that the introduction of a new RNLO would correct the situation, but in the meantime, he could do nothing and squatters working six tickets earned ‘merely 18 shillings of which 12 shillings (at least) goes to Hut Tax. If 1932 or 1931 taxes were not paid or the man has 2 huts, he has to work for more months without obtaining anything other than tax receipts’.²⁸ In a similar case, a Mr J. Wallace of Ol Arabel in Rumuruti signed squatters on at five shillings without posho. He asked the District Commissioner to sign on more squatters for him, but the District Commissioner refused to do so under Section 4 (5) Ordinance V of the 1925 RNLO until he had heard from the Provincial Commissioner ‘as to whether you consider this a fair remuneration’.²⁹ The Provincial Commissioner responded that it was not, unless there were special circumstances like ‘ploughing of squatter shamba and supply of seed by the employer’,³⁰ which would still require the payment of a minimum of eight shillings minus the posho ration. The Provincial Commissioner was of the opinion that, if there were major disagreements over the minimum rate, the District Commissioner should discuss the issue with the District Committee.

The depression further affected squatter wages, which were then reduced to six shillings per ticket. Immediately before the depression, casual labourers earned between 12 and 16 shillings, as against the squatter’s 8 shillings. In 1932, the earnings of casual labourers dropped to a new low of 8 shillings per month, which was complemented by a posho ration.³¹

It would be possible to enumerate many more cases to illustrate that squatter wage incomes were both minimal and inconsistent.³² There is no doubt that, by playing the destocking card, the settlers were reducing the squatters’ main source of income, and therefore threatening to dismantle the squatter community as it stood in the 1920s.

Settler differences over squatter stock

Settlers in different ecological and economic brackets held different opinions about keeping squatter stock. In general, settlers in the drier dairy and stock-keeping areas advocated the complete eradication of squatter cattle. This category of settlers functioned independently of squatter labour and could therefore afford to enforce stringent measures against squatter stock. Settlers in mixed-farming areas, where maize and wheat were grown, as well as those engaged in the plantation production of tea, coffee and pyrethrum, were heavily dependent on seasonal workers, especially during planting and harvesting periods, so could ill afford to antagonise their labour. Although willing to reduce squatter cultivation and stock-keeping, they were totally opposed to the complete eradication of the squatter and his stock.

A third category of settlers, undercapitalised and occupying marginal land for stock and dairy cattle and occasionally limited mixed farming, were heavily dependent on squatters in more ways than one. Apart from appropriating their labour, for which they could barely afford to pay, these settlers entered into mutually beneficial agreements with their squatters, through which they acquired milk, manure, livestock and other produce. For the very poorest of these settlers, the total eradication of squatters or their livestock would result in the collapse of their agricultural undertaking. Also, in the more marginal areas where crop production was minimal even in good years, it was absolutely necessary that the squatters be allowed to keep livestock.

Even within the same district, settlers would vary in their opinions about squatter livestock and, unable to arrive at a consensus, would eventually evolve a policy embracing numerous local options. In the predominantly dairy and stock area of Naivasha District, however, there was consensus over the need to eliminate squatter stock. In the Trans-Nzoia district, where settler production ranged from dairy and stock-keeping to maize and wheat production, opinion was divided, and here, as elsewhere, the policy of local options was employed.

Nakuru District sustained a wide range of agricultural activities, which by the end of the inter-war period included pyrethrum, maize, wheat and coffee, as well as a certain amount of livestock. Although all these settlers were heavily dependent on squatter labour, the settler community at large did not see this as a mitigating factor and some of the settlers wanted the squatter community, as it existed in the White Highlands, to be completely replaced by resident wage labourers.

Apart from taking individual measures to reduce squatter stock on their farms, settlers started pushing for legislation to back up their actions. But a court decision taken over the issue at the time left the matter unresolved. The judge argued that keeping what might be considered excess squatter livestock could hardly be regarded as an officially punishable crime.

There is no such offence as maintaining cattle on a farm in excess of the number allowed by the contract. The fact of having an excess may be a ground for rescission of the contract between the occupier and the squatter, but it does not render the latter liable to conviction.³³