Mau Mau’s Children: The Making of Kenya’s Postcolonial Elite

1. Late Colonial Childhoods

18 1 Late Co­ lo­ nial Child­ hoods Kenya is an East ­ African coun­ try ap­ prox­ i­ mately the size of Min­ ne­ sota, North Da­ kota, and South Da­ kota com­ bined. It strad­ dles the equa­ tor and has the In­ dian Ocean as its east­ ern bor­ der. The geo­ graphic area that we now call Kenya has had a long and ven­ er­ able his­ tory char­ ac­ ter­ ized by an­ cient ­ coastal ­ city-states and ­ extended-family farm­ ing and herd­ ing en­ ter­ prises in the inter­ ior. Vast areas of the inter­ ior con­ sist of hot and dry ­ plains suit­ able only for ­ sparse pop­ u­ la­ tions of pas­ tor­ al­ ists. Most of the ­ country’s pop­ u­ la­ tion re­ sides in the much ­ higher cen­ tral pla­ teau, where rain­ fall is reg­ u­ lar and abun­ dant and the soils are suit­ able for in­ ten­ sive ag­ ri­ cul­ ture. It is here that the Gi­ kuyu peo­ ple live, the eth­ nic group of these stu­ dents, oc­ cu­ py­ ing the hills and val­ leys of an area ap­ prox­ i­ mately one hun­ dred miles by fifty miles. Gi­ kuyu So­ ci­ ety and the Co­ lo­ nial Ex­ pe­ ri­ ence By the be­ gin­ ning of the twen­ ti­ eth cen­ tury, Gi­ kuyu were well es­ tab­ lished in this area, with their ex­ tended fam­ i­ lies (mbari) oc­ cu­ py­ ing neigh­ bor­ ing home­ steads. The Gi­ kuyu were pri­ mar­ ily farm­ ers and pas­ tor­ al­ ists who, in ad­ di­ tion to these pur­ suits, also en­ gaged in trade with neigh­ bor­ ing peo­ ple and some­ times fur­ ther ­ afield. They ­ hunted, ­ smelted iron, and pro­ duced pot­ tery. While the most com­ mon po­ lit­ i­ cal, eco­ nomic, and so­ cial in­ sti­ tu­ tion was the mbari, which was led by fam­ ily heads and func­ tional at the neigh­ bor­ hood level, Gi­ kuyu were also ­ loosely or­ ga­ nized into clans and age sets, which ­ helped to knit to­ gether ­ larger areas of peo­ ple for de­ fense and pro­ vided op­ por­ tu­ nities for the shap­ ing of use­ ful­ self-help strat­ e­ gies for sur­ vi­ val. ­ Nineteenth-century Eu­ ro­ pean travel­ ers fre­ quently re­ ported that Gi­ kuyu had ­ created for them­ selves a vi­ brant and ­ wealthy so­ ci­ ety, ­ filled with ­ healthy and hos­ pit­ able peo­ ple.1 Late Colonial Childhoods 19 It was to these peo­ ple that the Brit­ ish ­ turned their at­ ten­ tion in 1895, an­ nex­ ing the en­ tire re­ gion and call­ ing it Brit­ ish East Af­ rica (Kenya, after 1920). The ar­ ri­ val of the Brit­ ish and the ­ system of co­ lo­ nial rule that they set in mo­ tion had dis­ as­ trous con­ se­ quences for Gi­ kuyu, as well as for many other peo­ ple of Kenya.2 First, large ­ tracts of land were ­ seized by the state for its own pur­ poses or sold to the in­ com­ ing white set­ tlers who even­ tu­ ally num­ bered forty thou­ sand at the ­ height of co­ lo­ ni­ al­ ism in the 1950s. Some Gi­ kuyu were ­ evicted from their land, while many oth­ ers were pre­ vented from ex­ pand­ ing into the for­ ests to ­ create new mbari set­ tle­ ments. Land pre­ vi­ ously used for com­ mon sea­ sonal graz­ ing now lay out­ side the boun­ dar­ ies of the newly ­ created Gi­ kuyu Re­ serve. The co­ lo­ nial labor ­ system also had a neg­ a­ tive im­ pact on Gi­ kuyu be­ cause it im­ paired their abil­ ity to re­ main ­ self-sufficient in their rural home­ steads. In ad­ di­ tion to being ­ forced to “give” their labor free on a reg­ u­ lar basis to such co­ lo­ nial pro­ jects as build­ ing ad­ min­ is­ tra­ tive cen­ ters and roads, the state also in­ itiated taxes to be paid in cash to force­ Africans to work on set­ tler farms or other Eu­ ro­ pean en­ ter­ prises. For those who had lost their an­ ces­ tral land to the co­ lo­ nial in­ tru­ sion, the shift to wage labor was per­ ma­ nent. For the...