British East Africa

on the World Today

TAKE a piece of ancient land sparsely inhabited by pastoral and nomadic tribes, mix into it a variety of white men of various intent, let it simmer for fifty years, and serve it hot in 1953. The result is a vulnerable, contradictory, and potentially dangerous area called British East Africa. In this flat land, this land of great mountains, of wild beasts, of desert and forest, the natives of Tanganyika, Uganda, and Kenya are emerging from their past. On the credit side stand those enlightened and sensible Africans who, with belief in Christian democratic principles, seek to bring their country quietly forward. On the debit side is Mau Mau.

Even though the activities of this organization have been restricted to a comparatively small area of Kenya, even though they are only indulged in by the Kikuyu tribe (that is, by two fifths of the native population), observers are watching carefully for the first definite signs that the white man is weakening. Though it would seem inconceivable that the forces of disorder could consume Africa, it is as well that the situation should be viewed in a world-wide way, for not only does East Africa play a vital part in the strategic pattern of the Western powers but its resources are essential to their economies.

The Kikuyu is intelligent, hard-working, ambitious, and politically aware. Over the years he had developed a religion and a government suited to his needs, based on a complicated system of blood relationship, age grouping, and land tenure: the possession of land was the material sign of his progress, his affluence, and his prestige. It is this tribe which has been most caught between the old way of life and the new. The white man came and strove to instill his ideas of religious and civic conduct, and by slow degrees he took from these natives their independence.

Into this vacuum stepped the political agitator. In 1922 it was Harry Thuku, president of the first Kikuyu Central Association; in the 1950s, after years of subversive activity and violent demand, Jomo Kenyatta was the ringleader, followed by Jesse Kariuki, Kangetha, F. W. Odede, and others in the now outlawed Kenya African Union. These men knew what they were doing; they were the educated, the intelligent ones. But from legitimate grievance they produced crypto-Communist and nationalist, propaganda, with just enough truth in it to make it seem the truth, with just enough mumbo-jumbo of secret and obscene ritual to make the uninitiated, ignorant, and often unwilling native join in a struggle which has as its main object the eviction of the white man.

Murder as a fine art

The design of a bloody autocracy appeals to men looking for quick gains. To the savage there is a certain satisfaction in killing expeditiously, in bringing murder to such a fine art that for his victims there is only two seconds between warning of danger and death.

Fear of Mau Mau makes him treacherous; the Rucks and the Meiklejohns were hacked to pieces by men who had been in their employ for many faithful years, and the little Ruck boy met death at the hands of his own “nurse-boy.”

One Kikuyu, when asked by his dying master why he had attacked him after thirty-five years of close association, replied: “The past is the past and today is today.”

The irony of it all is that the intergroup killings of Mau Mau— black brother against black brother — will probably destroy, faster than Western teaching, that very tribalism which is the backbone of the Mau Mau oath.

It is a popular battle cry that the white settler in Kenya stole land from the Kikuyu. It is at the same time convenient, to forget that he occupies altogether 13,000 square miles, including the mission lands and lands appropriated for public purposes, such as the game preserves and forest reserves. The native possesses the rest of the 225,000 square miles of Kenya, of which 52,000 square miles of the best agricultural land has been reserved for his use. (Native reserves are in no sense compounds within which the native is confined, but are the means by which the British Government seeks to protect tribal land rights.)

Thanks to primitive and pigheaded native cultivation and to the falling death rate, this reserved land is deteriorating and becoming overcrowded. More land will have to be made ready by irrigation in order to satisfy the needs of the many Kikuyu who wish to remain agriculturists. A Royal Commission on East Africa has been set up to study this question.

Until the Mau Man emergency, the extreme elements among the Kenya white settlers, powerful and critical, had been unenthusiastic about giving representation to the Africans and cooperating with Her Majesty’s Government. They remained ignorant of the native way of life, except in so far as it concerned their own employees; and their favorite threat, when government became too officious, was to stage a “Boston Tea Party.” With the arrival of British troops and aircraft came the realization that white security depends on Parliament and on the vote of people in the mother country.

Michael Blundell, spokesman for the European Elected Members on the Kenya Legislative Council, is trying to keep the settlers together. From the efforts of this liberalminded man may emerge a group prepared to accept compromises, with whose help it may be possible to make constitutional changes equal in scope to those now being effected in Uganda and Tanganyika.

Uganda’s prosperity

Kenya’s fundamental weakness lies in the fact that its economy is based on a declining agriculture. Neither Tanganyika nor Uganda is so dependent on agriculture as Kenya. Uganda was and is a law unto itself, a native dynasty where the white man found barbarity and substituted prosperity.

All rural lands in Uganda are held in trust by the British Government for the native population; and out of a total area of over 80,000 square miles, less than 500 square miles belongs to non-Africans. Scattered over the country are the native cotton crops, whose yields make Uganda the main cotton-producing center of the British Empire. It is a rain crop without irrigation, and the system of small holdings tends to prevent serious soil erosion. Contained in this rich land are magnificent forests.

The British Government’s shortlived post-war Groundnuts scheme for producing oil for margarine in East Africa was an imaginative enterprise but it failed because, for reasons of political prestige, it did not advance cautiously from small beginnings, nor did it set out to gain local support. Instead, huge sums of money urgently needed elsewhere in the territory were squandered, and this extravagance, together with the deplorable behavior of some of the corporation employees, gave the local tribes a bad example of the white man’s character and capabilities.

A more fruitful legacy to southern Tanganyika’s economy is the construction of a railway one third of the way towards Rhodesia and the blueprint and initial construction at Mtwara of one of the finest deepwater ports of the East African coast.

Just over the border are the Portuguese, who have been in Mozambique since 1505. Their methods are based on the system practiced by the old Roman Empire. “We are Portuguese citizens,” they say. “You, too, can be one if you prove yourself eligible.” Roman Catholicism is the main religion taught in the territory; education is not compulsory; there is no color bar; and there are no Indian immigrants.

The Hindu threat

The British Government has continued to leave open the gates of British East Africa to Indians, The thousands who arrive, settle, and multiply are invading every part of civic life, and they are the real competitors and constitute the gravest hindrance to progress and prosperity.

The spiritual head of the most important Moslem group in East Africa, the Aga Khan, has specifically instructed his people to embrace the Western way of life and to be loyal to Great Britain. These people can therefore be regarded as East Africans, but it is very different with the immigrants from India, particularly the Hindus, who make no secret of the fact that their loyalties lie elsewhere and that they expect East Africa to become one day a part of the Indian Empire.

The white man’s responsibility

There is at present plenty of room in East Africa, but the space needs to be filled by men of energy and vision. Whatever his limitations, it is the white man on whom the future of the African depends: it is not only his money which is needed but his ability to push through schemes for the greater development of the more backward areas. The white man must be active but not dominant; he must be ready to laugh at the fallibility of his authority; he must have imagination; he must have more spark and be less concerned with theory.

In Kenya the native exercises a considerable measure of local selfgovernment through the district councils; in Uganda and Tanganyika, native organizations are the primary instruments of the system of indirect rule and are in various stages of development, from the highly efficient native government of Buganda to the recently fledged district councils. From these stem the native treasuries, law courts, schools, dispensaries, and employment agencies.

But because modern life cannot be fully lived on a tribal basis, responsibility for health, education, and agricultural enterprise must still rest primarily with the central government. And because there are certain services common to all — communications, collection of customs duties and income taxes, and various research projects such as the continuous fight against the tsetse fly — the three territories have formed a central body known as the East African High Commission, which consists of the governors and of European, Asian, and African representatives.

Kenya, Uganda, and Tanganyika together form a neat economic unit enjoying a favorable balance of trade. In visible terms Kenya’s is unfavorable, but the colony has a considerable invisible export, not only in the performance of many services for the other two but in its flourishing tourist trade. All the major companies have offices in Nairobi and Mombasa, where much of East Africa’s cotton and coffee is sold, and for the tourist there are the beauty, color, and power of the landscape and the wild animals roaming at will, preserved from extinction in all three territories by a wise system of game reserves and by strict hunting laws.

Each has a ten-year plan taking its development to 1955 and costing many millions of pounds. The money comes partly from revenue, partly from British Government contributions, and partly from loans, including one from the International Bank. These plans cover improvements to roads and communications generally, soil conservation, planting and conservation of forests, opening up of new land, development of water supplies, and establishment of African, Asian, and European medical and educational services.

The West must help

Great new harbor works at Mombasa, Tanga, and Dar-es-Salaam are under construction, and inland transport is also being expanded, to all of which the United States is lending technical and financial aid. Through the Foreign Operations Administration a sum of $1,680,000 has been put towards the Morogoro-Iringa Road Project in Tanganyika and £2,390,000 has been loaned to the East African Railways and Harbors Administration to facilitate exports of sisal and other essential raw materials through Mombasa and Tanga.

Other funds have come from the United States — about $300,000 for each territory — which are primarily designed to foster small industry not directly related to agriculture. In this way the General Services Administration can, in return for metals, metal ores, and other raw materials, extend aid to firms which otherwise might have difficulty in raising sufficient capital.

It is important to underwrite East Africa. Now that both India and China are pursuing their own independence, this piece of Africa stands strategically and ideologically at the gateway between East and West. It is essential to uphold and encourage those Africans whose knowledge has raised them from the mass of their fellows but for whom, under the present system, there exist few opportunities for real service.

Among them there are moral, mature men who are not only faultless in manner and intelligent in thought and debate but who still retain the priceless African ability to laugh at themselves. These men, and many Europeans, official and unofficial, dare to nurse dreams of equal citizenship within a self-governing Central and East African dominion.