Page 10 - THE RHINO Issue 001

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DEVONSHIRE OR RUTO WHY HUSTLING IS AN INSULT TO KIKUYUS
That Kikuyus are economically ahead of any other community in Kenya because of colonial privilege is a fact of history. That Kikuyus got a head start because they were allowed to grow cash crops like coffee and tea, when others weren’t exposed to
BY KEVIN MAINA European agricultural methods, is also a fact of his-
tory.
Kevin is a Political Economist But was it designed to be so by the colonial admin- and Doctoral Student at the
OUR COLUMNIST
Swiss Management Centre istration? Absolutely not! It was by fluke. A result of (SMC), Zurich, Switzerland. He unintended consequences.
is also an Associate Fellow and
a Political commentator at the Fort hall School of Government.
The colonial administration was actually addressing the Indian question. You see, the Indian immi- grant community in the early 1920s petitioned the colonial government to grant them access to the fertile white highlands of central Kenya. In their 30 years of being in Kenya, the Indian community
then had grown socio-economically and had amassed some considerable wealth enough to make them think they could challenge white hegemony. They had grown from being just being 30,000 Indians who hadarrived in Kenya in the 1890s, as part of the lunatic express railway work-force.
Thirty years later they thought they were at par with mzungus and therefore sought admission in Kenya’s white man’s country. The white highlands had been reserved for white settlers only. Off course the Europeans wouldn’t allow the Indian ascension to the top of Kenya’s racial totem pole. In fact in 1922 Sir Winston Churchill, then Colonial Secretary of State for the Colonies reaffirmed in a policy statement that-“We do not contemplate any settlement or any system which will prevent British East Africa becoming characteristically and distinctively a British colony.
Looking forward in full fruition of time to complete responsible self government”-read for Europeans. And therefore, the colonialists torpedoed the Indian ambitions by crafting a white paper, that on paper, shifted paramountcy from the white settlers to Africans.
The purpose of a white paper is to advocate that a certain position is the best way to go or that a certain solution is best for a particular problem. In 1923 the colonial secretary, Victor Christian William Cavendish, the Duke of Devonshire published the white paper regarding the status of all settlers and natives in the Colony of Kenya. The essence of the paper, other than just paramountcy to Africans, was that the British Colonial office was the trustee of native races. In the white paper, the part on labor reads: “As regards labor, the native should be effectively and economically free to work in accordance with his own wish, either in production in the reserves or as individual producer upon his own plot of land” And herein, was where the Kikuyus got the head-start.
At the time 7 out of 10 adult Kikuyu males in Kiambu alone worked for Europeans. They initially grew cash crops for white settlers but suddenly got the freedom to grow them for themselves. It was a game of numbers. The more exposed to cash crop farming one got, the more money he could make from it. In essence, the laborer that had experience in working for the settler was more favored by the existing conditions hence his ability to forge economically and finan- cially ahead quicker. And this was the case for kikuyus. They made it by fluke!
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