By the mid-1920s, the Keiyo and Marakwet119 had also found it necessary to resort to squatter labour. As the victims of pre-colonial and colonial factors, they had occupied the eastern rim of the Uasin Ngishu plateau even before 1890. In 1922 they lost 328 square miles of forest land, which was alienated for E.S.M. Grogan Ltd. This was a substantial land loss and, over time, overstocking became a major land problem, leaving the residents no alternative but to sign on as resident labourers on European farms. Living in a marginal area sometimes forced the Keiyo and Marakwet to seek employment on European farms, especially during periods of famine, which were usually brought on by the severe droughts common to the area. Signing on as squatters was thus also a way of obtaining pasture for their livestock.
The pattern of squatting among other ethnic groups was to some extent different from the trend prevalent among the Kikuyu, for whom settlement in the alienated areas was often thought to involve (though was not invariably accompanied by) a complete severing of physical ties with their original homelands.120 While the majority of Kikuyu agricultural labourers were emigrants, those from other ethnic groups were migrants who had their feet in two camps, their places of work and their areas of origin.
After the squatters, the second largest category of Africans in the colonial labour force in both settled and urban areas comprised the Luo, Luyia and Abugusii people. Although regional preferences were not exclusive, Luyia squatters tended to settle on Trans-Nzoia and Uasin Ngishu farms, Luo squatters contracted in the Muhoroni, Koru and Londiani areas, while the Abagusii were found on the Kericho tea estates. In terms of agricultural labour, especially in Nakuru District, the Luo, Luyia and Abagusii provided mostly casual labour. Abagusii, Luo, Maragoli and Banyore labourers contracted as squatters on the Kericho tea plantations for periods lasting about three years.
Apart from a concern to regulate the extensive independent Kikuyu production and presence in the White Highlands, by 1918 the government was also determined to create an abundant and controllable supply of labour for the settler plantations. Until then, the squatter system had little to do with wage employment. It was merely the product of settler undercapitalisation and of the abundance of fertile land in the White Highlands, which had satisfied squatters’ needs for land but not the settlers’ demand for labour. The squatter was an accident, a mark of the settlers’ failure to obtain labour in any other way. The next chapter examines the government’s attempts to turn squatters into labourers, a cheap source of labour, and shows how the squatters reacted to this initial assault.
Notes
1. By 1945, there were about 200,000 squatters, the majority of whom (122,000) were Kikuyu. See Leys, C., Underdevelopment in Kenya: The Political Economy of Neocolonialism, 1964–1971, London, Heinemann, 1975, p. 47.
2. For the evolution of labour during this early period see for example Clayton, A., and Savage, D. C., Government and Labour in Kenya, 1895–1963, London, Frank Cass, 1974; Leys, N., Kenya, (fourth edition), London, Frank Cass, 1973 (first published 1924); Ross, W.M., Kenya from Within, London, Frank Cass, reprint 1968 (first published 1927); and Dilley, M.R., British Policy in Kenya Colony, New York, Praeger, reprint 1966 (first published 1937).
3. Brett, E. A., Colonialism and Underdevelopment in East Africa: The Politics of Economic Change, 1919–1939, London, Heinemann, 1973.
4. See Dilley, British Policy, pp. 213–23.
5. Wrigley, C. C., ‘Kenya: Patterns of Economic Life 1902–1945’ in Harlow, V., Chilver, E. M. and Smith, A., (eds), History of East Africa, Volume II, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1965, p. 212.
6. For an account of European settlement in Kenya, see Sorrenson, M.P.K., The Origins of European Settlement in Kenya, London, OUP, 1968.
7. ibid., p. 181.
8. Sorrenson, Origins of European Settlement, p. 179.
9. Rosberg, C. and Nottingham, J., The Myth of Mau Mau: Nationalism in Kenya, Nairobi, EAPH, 1966, p. 19.
10. ibid.
11. Sorrenson, Origins of European Settlement, p. 184.
12. ibid.
13. See Report of the Native Labour Commission, 1912–13, for a discussion of problems related to labour before the First World War.
14. See Sorrenson, M. P. K., ‘The Official Mind and Kikuyu Land Tenure, 1895–1939’ in the EAISR Conference, Dar Es Salaam, January, 1963. See also Muriuki, G., A History of the Kikuyu, 1500–1900, Nairobi, OUP, 1974, pp. 13–81.
15. Sorrenson, ‘Official Mind’, p. 6. See also Muriuki, History of Kikuyu.
16. See Tignor, R. L., The Colonial Transformation of Kenya: Kikuyu and Maasai from 1900 to 1939, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1976, p. 107.
17. Van Zwanenberg, R. M. A. and King, A., An Economic History of Kenya and Uganda, 1870–1970, Nairobi, EALB, 1975, p. 35.
18. Interview, Wanjiku wa Kigo, 2 October 1976, Rongai.
19. Interview, Wanjiku wa Kigo, 2 October 1976, Rongai; Njoroge Kahonoki, 1 October 1976, Rongai, and Muya Ngari, 6 October 1976, Njoro. 1976, Njoro.
20. Interview with Muya Ngari, 6 October 1976, Njoro.
21. This was evident in the employment of relations on one farm and the prevalence of people from the same locality in Central Province to squat in the same neighbourhood. As Wangoi remembered: ‘Employment was on [a] kinship basis’. Interview, Mary Wangoi Macharia, 6 October 1976, Njoro. People moved to areas where their relations had settled and initially lived with them as they sought employment. Impressed by the livestock his relation had accumulated at Olkalau, Munge moved to the Settled Area before the First World War. Interview, Munge Mbuthia, 8 October 1976, Subukia, oral interview with Njau Kanyungu, 2 October 1976, Rongai, and Nganga Githiomi, 2 October 1976, Rongai.
22. Interview, Ernest Kiberethi, 13 October 1976, Elburgon.
23. Kitching, G., Class and Economic Change in Kenya: The Making of an African Petite Bourgeoisie, London: Yale University Press, 1980, p. 18.
24. Interview, Hannah Njoki, 10 September 1976, Turi.
25. KNA, Naivasha District Annual Report, 1922, Special Report, p. 1.
26. See Tignor, Colonial Transformation of Kenya, pp. 307—8; Sorrenson, M. P. K., Land Reform in Kikuyu Country, Nairobi, OUP, 1967, p. 78.
27. Van Zwanenberg and King, Economic History, p. 222.
28. Interview, Gitau Gathukia, 16 September 1976, Njoro.
29. RH, Microfilm AR 895, Naivasha District Annual Report, year ending March 1911, plate nos. 000908–000909. Interview, Shuranga Wegunyi, 25 October 1976, Nakuru.
30. KNA, Naivasha District Annual Report, 1916–1917, p. 2. After many appeals, the settlers did, however, release their surplus labour to the Carrier Corps.
31. Interview, Mithanga Kanyumba, 14 September 1976, Molo.
32. Interviews, Kuria Kamaru, 2 October 1976, Rongai and Muchemi Kimondo, 8 October 1976, Subukia.
33. KNA, Naivasha District Annual Report, 1919–1920, p. 2.
34. Interview, Arphaxad Kiiru Kuria, 21 September 1976, Elburgon. The Naivasha Annual Report for 1911–1912 noted that there was no arable farming in the district and that the energies of the settlers were directed toward livestock farming.
35. See Kanogo, T.M.J., ‘A Comparative Analysis of the Aspirations of the Kikuyu, Luo and Luyia Workers in the White Highlands, 1900–1930’, unpublished article, Department of History, University of Nairobi, No, 18, 1977/78.
36. Interview, Arphaxad Kiiru Kuria, 21 September 1976, Elburgon.
37. Lord Delamere,