Squatters and the Roots of Mau Mau, 1905–1963. Tabitha Kanogo
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