KENYANS WILL RESIST HEGEMONS, IT’S WIRED IN OUR DNA

(Part 1 of 3)

Oduor Ong'wen

[In this first installment of three-part discourse on our resistance against exploitation and domination, I recall how our people have in the past risen against “messianic” hegemons] 

William Samoei Ruto wants to save Kenyans. Since the conclusion of last election cycle that ended with Uhuru Kenyatta practically running against himself last October, the Deputy President and his supporters have repeatedly reminded Kenyans that we have for far too long been under the hegemony or spell of some dynastic families but that is about to change as Messiah has been born – and the Messiah is a hustler. I have consulted three dictionaries and all give me the two meanings of the word “hustler.” The first meaning is one who makes money by selling or peddling illicit goods. Examples they give include drug peddlers, dealers in contraband goods and pimps. The second meaning of a hustler is prostitute. I don’t know whether the DP belongs in the first or second definition. What matters is that he has confessed to being a hustler.

Every hegemonic or exploitative enterprise masquerades as inspired by something other than domination or theft. The General Act of the Berlin Conference in 1885, under which the European powers cut Africa, like wedding cake into slices of formal colonial possessions, claimed that their purpose was “furthering the moral and material well-being of the native populations  - and bringing home to them the blessings of civilization.”

Similar rhetoric has attended all such seizures. Colonial establishment was presented as a liberating act to save native people from their enslavement to the Devil, or the Arabs, or each other, they had to be forced into general servitude, while their land and natural wealth were transferred to more enlightened people from over the seas. Preposterous as such propaganda may seem to most of us today, it was taken very seriously. In some quarters, it still is. But not everyone was duped. The resistance against Portuguese invaders at the Coast in the 15^thCentury was the earliest manifestation of Kenyans’ resolve against the duplicitous forces.

In the 1890s, there was a massive mobilisation of the people along the Indian Ocean coast to take up arms and resist British and German imperialist invasion. Between 1895 and 1896 a broad patriotic alliance of the Kenyan coastal peoples led by Mbaruk Al Amin Mazrui waged guerrilla warfare with such ferocity that forced the British to deploy a special task force from India to quell the uprising. Besides the armed struggle, our people also engaged in cultural resistance that produced some of the most inspiring and patriotic Swahili poetry and songs ever. The struggles delayed the construction of the Uganda Railway for long periods because the people saw this “Lunatic Express” as a sinister symbol of foreign invasion. All along the railway route, and at the administrative posts created to facilitate the construction, several armed engagements between patriotic peasant forces and the British forces of occupation were witnessed. 

In Central Kenya, the resistance against the I.B.E.A. Company was organised around the leadership of Waiyaki wa Hinga and Ngunyu wa Gakeere. With their ingenious military organisation, the British troops were no match for this “ragtag” force of the Kenyan peasants. It was not brought under control until the British captured Waiyaki after many battles and buried him alive on August 17, 1892 at Kibwezi. Further North West along the rail route, the Nandi patriots led by Koitalel arap Samoei sustained a decade-long guerrilla campaign against the British colonialists between 1895 and 1905. These wars severely disrupted British administration and frequently halted the progress of railway construction. The raids by the Nandi were coordinated and executed with the level of discipline that baffled the colonialists. Having failed to subdue Koitalel’s forces in the battlefield, the British resorted to treachery. They lured Koitalel into a duplicitous “peace talks” meeting at which they shot him in cold blood on October 19, 1905. Further west, the nation was in revolutionary mood with the Luo, the Samia, Bukusu and Tiriki people waging sustained resistance to the establishment. Between 1894 and 1900, British military officer C.W. Hobley led several “punitive” expeditions to subdue the Kager clan in Ugenya and parts of Alego, Bukusu militants, Abasamia and Tiriki warriors. In 1904, another expeditionary force was deployed in Kisii where it massacred villagers, burnt people’s houses and food stores and engaged in a looting spree, stealing cattle and confiscating grains. But this did not dampen the people’s spirit of resistance. In 1908 there was an uprising in West Kitutu, North Nyaribari and East Wanjare (or Bonchari) that led to a company of the 3^rdKings African Rifles being sent for a second expedition to Kisii where it repeated the earlier atrocious acts. At the end of this campaign, the British captured one of the leaders, a young woman called Moraa, and exiled her to Kismayu.

The fire that Mbaruk Al Amin Mazrui had lit at the coast was not extinguished. From 1913 to 1914, Me Katilili was Menza and Wanje wa Mandoro effectively mobilised the Giriama peasants to fight against the theft of their land by the British. They took an oath not to pay taxes to the colonial authorities and to desist from complying with forced labour regulations. Me Katilili was captured and deported to Kisii where she was put under restrictions. Determined as ever, she escaped from the colonial detention in January 1914 and walked back 700 miles to Kilifi to rejoin her comrades in the struggle and advance the resistance. She was recaptured on October 17, 1914 and died soon after. The roles of the likes of Me Katilili and Moraa – and Mary Nanjiru later on – also brought to shame the sexists who always would want to see a woman’s place as the kitchen and bedroom.

By 1920 when Kenya was declared a colony, there had already developed a sizeable Kenyan working class. The next two decades beginning 1920 marked a new and important stage in the development of anti-imperialist struggle in Kenya. The workers, who were divided along racial, ethnic and religious lines at the beginning gradually came to realise that as a working people, they had common class interests and their collective advancement depended upon their unity of purpose. They began to organise at national level and sought to link trade union struggles with the overall national political struggles. They pitched their struggles around such issues as the wanton exploitation, poor housing, poor working environment as well as more political ones like the notorious kipandesystem. Militant workers’ organisations were created. These included Labour Trade Union of Kenya, the African Workers Federation and the East African Trade Union Congress and produced brilliant, courageous and astute national trade union and political leaders like Makhan Singh, Chege Kibacia and Fred Kubai.

Colonial authorities were getting terrified by the day as workers organised on a national scale. Fearing the explosive potential of political organisation at the national level, the colonialists tried all tricks in the book to prevent the formation of nationwide political associations. Nonetheless such organisation as the Young Kikuyu Association, the Young Kavirondo Association, the Kenya Highlands League, the East African Association, and later the Kikuyu Central Association, the Taita Hills Association, the Ukamba members Association and the North Kavirondo Association acquired national character. They consulted closely and coordinated their activities. At the tender age of 25, Harry Thuku had in 1920 become a recognised national leader with considerable following among the workers in Nairobi. He played a leading role in the formation of the Young Kikuyu Association and the progressive non-racial East African Association. Thuku was active in the famous Dagoretti meeting of June 1921 that exposed the atrocities against young Kenyan women workers forced to work on settler farms, denounced the kipandesystem, protested strongly at the proposed wage reduction and coordinated the drafting of a petition that was sent to the Governor.

On March 14, 1922, Harry Thuku was arrested and detained at Nairobi’s Central Police Station. This sparked off one of the most massive protests ever witnessed in the streets of Nairobi. On March 16, 1922 as the protesters gathered at what is now University of Nairobi’s Great Court, mounted troops assisted by inebriated settlers that had been drinking alcohol at the nearby Norfolk Hotel opened fire on them killing 200 people in cold blood – including their heroic leader, Mary Muthoni Nyanjiru. YKA was banned.

As workers mounted one onslaught after another on the hated colonial government and its settler captains of industry, various Kenyan communities in their locales engaged colonial authorities with resolve. In Machakos, Ndonyo wa Kamiti led the Kamba people in demands for immediate end to forced labour and taxes. In Nyanza, Simon Nyende, Reuben Omulo, Ojijo Oteko, Jonathan Okwiri and other patriots organised a popular struggle against the kipandesystem and high taxes, land alienation and demand for clear explanation on the exact status of the new “Crown Colony.” The struggle, under the banner of Piny Owacho([people of] the land has said) articulated these grievances through a series of mass rallies between 1922 and 1923. One such rallies held at Lundha in Gem in 1922 made a declaration that the land had said that colonial occupation was inimical to people’s welfare and freedom and had to end. 

Following the proscription of the YKA, a new organisation, the Kikuyu Central Association was formed to pursue the cause YKA had initiated. It instantly became the single most powerful legal outfit operating in the colony. Under the leadership of Jesse Kariuki, Joseph Kang’ethe and James In 1928, Beautah who was the secretary and employee of the East African Postal Services was transferred to Kampala. The need for someone to keep records and write letters became dire. It was then that its leadership approached Johnstone Kenyatta, a meter reader with Nairobi Municipal Board, who readily agreed to the offer but at a fee of a bottle of whisky for every letter or set of minutes written. This was such an expensive demand given that Africans were not allowed to drink pre-bottled alcohol.  But KCA needed the services badly and agreed to the terms. Arrangements were made with sympathetic Asian businessmen to smuggle out the liquor. A year later, KCA raised money and sent Kenyatta to London to plead at the Colonial Office the case of alienated African land. Kenyatta was articulate in his presentation of the KCA demands to the Colonial Office. He was also able to link up with Pan African activists like Kwame Nkuruma, Marcus Garvey and W.E. DuBois. On return in 1930, Kenyatta convinced the KCA leadership on the need for a longer and closer engagement with the Colonial Office. It was on this understanding that KCA sent him back to London in 1931 where he ended up staying for eight years. Kenyatta’s stint in London had both gains and pain for the KCA organisation. He spent most of the time at Hyde Park making demagogic speeches. In the process, he was able to expose the Kenyan people’s case to the international community and attract solidarity from other struggling people from other parts of Africa, Caribbean, Irish, Latin America and Asia. On the other hand, he is said to have led a reckless life – excessively drinking, womanising and travelling – at the expense of the peasants who had to send him cash regularly. It is recorded that he defaulted on rent often and had to shift residences often. 

The Ukamba Members Association was initially a wing of KCA but became autonomous and full-fledged organisation during the campaign against destocking in the late 1930s. It’s members comprised peasants, workers, policemen and soldiers. Its leaders, including Muindi Mbingu, had cut their political teeth through a long apprenticeship in the militant working class movement and national politics of Nairobi in the 1920s. The massive and radical anti-destocking campaign of 1938 led by UMA was a broad-based political movement. The UMA won a sweet victory when in December 1938 the colonial government acquiesced to the demands of the people and halted compulsory culling of livestock and returned more than 2,500 heads of cattle that had been confiscated. All over the country, there were peasant resistances and even though a nationwide political organisation was proscribed, national resistance movement emerged and prospered in various communities across the length and breadth of the colony. 

November 24, 2018

(Next week: Fight to kick out "kaburus")