way of trying to understand how the squatters perceived their own situation is to look at them in their role as ahoi, as they understood it, in their own society.103 Among the Kikuyu, at the time when migration and settlement were taking place, it was common for ahoi to help, not only in the task of defending the acquired land, but also in acquiring more land. The ahoi ‘. . . readily accepted such an invitation because the rutere (frontier) was regarded as the land of opportunity where an industrious person expected, sooner or later, to acquire wealth of his own to enable him to buy his own land’.104 To the pioneer squatters, the Rift Valley was a new frontier which in many ways promised to be more rewarding than Central Province.105 The early settlers were themselves instrumental in the crystallisation and consolidation of what became a widespread theory about the abundant opportunities that accrued from settling in the White Highlands. In other words, ‘advertisements circulating in the reserves led Africans to believe that life on European farms would be a “paradise” for them’.106 Like the European settlers, prospective African migrants anticipated easy and immediate prosperity in the White Highlands.
To this end, the migration of some squatters, especially those who abandoned their lands in Central Province107 and moved to the Rift Valley, was a calculated risk. An unknown, but probably a considerable proportion of these migrants were large stock owners who were attracted to the Rift Valley because of the quality and extent of the grazing land available.108 For these squatters, the White Highlands offered an opportunity not only to continue their pre-colonial mode of production but to do it on a larger and more rewarding scale. As an ex-squatter put it, ‘During the earlier squatter days, the shamba belonged to both the squatter and the European settler’.109
Hopes of retaining this wealth (for the earlier squatter) or of acquiring wealth (among prospective migrants) began to fade once the settlers started restricting squatter cultivation in the early 1920s. Till then, Kikuyu squatters looked upon themselves and the settlers as the joint heirs to the Settled Areas.
The other squatters
Though predominantly a Kikuyu practice in Nakuru and Naivasha, squatting was by no means restricted to these two districts, nor to the Kikuyu people alone. There were also Akamba, Nandi, Kipsigis, Marakwet, Keiyo and Tugen squatters, even in these two areas, and after the First World War the Luo, Luyia and Kisii squatters made their appearance in the region as well.
Nandi and Kipsigis with insufficient pasture for their livestock would squat on European farms mainly in the Uasin Ngishu and Songhor areas. By 1921 they had begun to work as hired labourers for the meagre sum of four shillings per month in return for unlimited grazing rights.110 Alternatively, they grazed on settler farms and paid their rent in livestock.
The earliest group of Nandi squatters came from the northern part of the Nandi homeland to serve as squatters on farms in the southern Uasin Ngishu District, to which they were brought in 1906. Many of them were born in the area and believed they were ‘fully entitled to live in the Settled Areas, because it was formerly owned by them’.111
By 1912, settlers were making requests for labour to Nandi chiefs.112 In that year it was observed that the cattle population in the Nandi reserve had fallen to about 12,000, as the bulk of the cattle had gone with the squatters to the neighbouring settler farms. Nandi headmen, when consulted, did not want their followers to leave, especially when they wanted to take their stock with them.113 On the other hand, by 1916, settlers were complaining about ‘the restrictions forbidding Nandi squatters to take their cattle on to farms’,114 for the Nandi refused to contract as squatters unless they were allowed to take their cattle with them. When the Veterinary Department granted temporary concessions allowing them to take a few milk cows, ‘hundreds of Nandi registered for work on the farms’.115
Immediately after the War, about 100 square acres of Nandi land were alienated, including salt-licks. This resulted in further migration to the Uasin Ngishu and Trans Nzoia farms and by 1920 there were about 1,500 Nandi squatter families. Placing the Nandi reserve under quarantine for pleuro-pneumonia, rinderpest and East Coast fever during the period 1908–24 not only prohibited the movement of stock to and from the Nandi homeland, but also limited the possibilities of trade in cattle.116 This meant that the Nandi had little or no means of obtaining cash, a basic necessity to many people during the colonial period, with the consequent result that some Nandi families drifted to the Settled Areas in search of work.
The Kipsigis too were short of land, mainly as a result of colonial machinations. In the southern part of their reserve, 130,000 acres (52,000 hectares) had been alienated for European settlement.117 Some of this land was occupied by settlers and some converted into Crown Land. When the Maasai were pushed out of Laikipia to make room for European settlers, some of them came and settled on the Kipsigis land, which had already been partly penetrated by Abagusii.
The Kipsigis found the loss of the Sotik land and salt-licks particularly hard to bear. The administration operated under a self-imposed civilising mission of endeavouring to create agriculturalists out of the ‘backward’ pastoralists. This was used as a good excuse for alienating large parcels of African-owned land which was then given for European settlement,118 forcing the unlucky Africans to resort to wage labour in the White Highlands or elsewhere. This was the fate of a sizeable number of Kipsigis. The first Kipsigis squatters were registered in 1913 and by 1917 their numbers had increased to 1,800. The introduction of the Kericho tea estates demanded further alienation of Kipsigis land, resulting in the subsequent thrust of more Kipsigis into the labour market. Like the Nandi, the Kipsigis opted for squatter labour which afforded them grazing rights.
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
