responsibility for agricultural production in the Settled Areas.48
The administration found Kaffir farming difficult to control. Since the tenants could not be classified as employees, they were protected from prosecution under the Masters and Servants Ordinance of 1906, and the authorities were reluctant to prosecute the European Kaffir farmers.49 The tenants who did provide labour to the European settlers did so intermittently and under vague verbal agreements which lasted for only three months in any one year.50 Administrative personnel did sometimes confiscate stock from the Africans on the European Kaffir farmers’ land, but the government complained of inadequate personnel and insufficient finances to maintain a close watch on Kaffir farming.51
Kikuyu migration to the Rift Valley
Kikuyu migration to the Settled Areas was initially looked upon by the colonial administration as a good opportunity for harnessing labour. Though Kaffir farming was thought to stifle the flow of labour, squatting was believed to have the opposite effect. The 1912/13 Naivasha Annual Report, for example, stated that ‘squatting . . . might mitigate the labour difficulty’.52 A year later, the 1914/15 report of the same district could boast that, ‘there was no shortage of labour in the district’,53 and that ‘80 per cent of it was Kikuyu’.54 The rest was Maasai, Kipsigis, Luo, Luyia and Baganda.
Unlike Naivasha, where the Kikuyu had established themselves as farm-labourers from an early period, in Nakuru District, the ‘kavirondo [sic.] as farm hands were [initially] much preferred by the settlers’.55 It did not take long for this situation to change, however, as the figures in table 1.1 indicate.
TABLE 1.1
Source: KNA, Nakuru District Annual Report, 1915–16, pp. 2, 3.
This early Kikuyu movement to the Settled Areas was initially profitable for both parties, the settlers and the Kikuyu squatters. The settlers were supplied with minimal but much needed labour, while the Kikuyu immigrants, for a period of at least two decades, evolved a lucrative peasant economy in the White Highlands. Both the squatters and the settlers anticipated continuous and permanent residence of the ‘squatter’ labour-force in the White Highlands. The government was especially concerned that the settlers should provide favourable conditions to encourage the workers to accept permanent employment. To this end, on 18 May 1910 the Governor, Sir Percy Girourd, issued a confidential memorandum to all Provincial and District Commissioners stating that: ‘It is . . . in the interest of the employer to make him [the labourer] as comfortable as possible and try to persuade him to settle down and accept permanent employment’.56
Before 1918, the Kikuyu squatters had been able to withstand any pressures that threatened to thwart their endeavours. For example, any attempts by a settler to control the amount of ‘squatter’ cultivation, or the size of their herds, or even demands for more labour hours than the squatter considered necessary, were counteracted by the withdrawal of the squatters’ labour. The squatters would simply move on to the next farm to continue their virtually independent existence. By changing ‘masters’, the squatters were thus able to establish and operate the labour pattern best suited to their major activities, namely extensive cultivation, herding and trading in crops and livestock. During this period, the Kikuyu ‘labour-force’ had thus created a beneficial socio-economic system, which they sought to retain in the wake of shifting relations in the economy of the Settled Areas.
Also during this laissez-faire period, the Kikuyu community began to feel very much at home in the Settled Areas: a feeling generated and reinforced by the relative prosperity that accrued from cultivation and livestock keeping in the region. And, in that this initial period was characterised by unregulated squatter production, squatter self-assertion was also enhanced.
Whatever notions the settlers held about their position in relation to the squatters, both groups were driven by the same dream of achieving a better life style through exploiting the rich Highland areas. But, to realize this dream, each group needed to exploit the resources controlled by the other. The settlers depended on African labour,57 while ‘squatters’ capitalised on the availability of unused land in the White Highlands. As Muya Ngari, a pioneer ex-squatter, put it: ‘I came because the Rift Valley was wide’.58 However, whereas the squatter was a vital spoke in the wheel of the plantation economy, the settler presented an impediment to squatter activities in the area.
Squatter settlement patterns
Whereas Kikuyu squatters from the Kiambu and Muranga areas usually went to the Naivasha and Nakuru districts, those from Nyeri tended to move to settler farms in the Laikipia region. On arrival at European farms, squatters were free to locate their homesteads anywhere within the area the settler had set aside for them on his farm.59 Thus, within certain limits, they were ‘free to build where they wanted’.60 This independence enjoyed by the Kikuyu in locating their place of residence contrasted sharply with the treatment meted out to contract labourers, who were housed in (or rather, herded into) wattle-and-daub labour camps (in lines), which the Kikuyu squatters derogatorily referred to as maskini61 (poverty stricken). This consideration for the squatter’s individuality played an important part in enhancing the Kikuyu’s sense of self-respect.
The squatter’s unrestricted use of land in the White Highlands before 1918 was aptly referred to as ‘depending on one’s hand’.62 In other words, it was the squatter’s industry, rather than the settler’s restrictions, which determined how much land a squatter brought under cultivation and how much livestock he came to own. Unlike the settler economy, squatter agriculture did not depend on financial investment or on a fluctuating labour-force. With ample labour for cultivation and grazing, the squatters thrived at a time when the settler economy was still trying to gather enough momentum to take off.
Until 1918, labour requirements were minimal. A ‘squatter and his wife might be expected to work for five months in the year between them: he would be required to work for three and a half months a year at least’.63 This gave the squatter ample time to pursue his own productive activities. Although there were times when the settler’s labour requirements coincided with the squatter’s schedule for opening up new fields, sowing, weeding or reaping, the composition of a squatter’s homestead was such that it could ensure that these labour demands were met. Wives, older men, women, any children not at school, and visiting relatives were all mobilised to cultivate the squatter’s shamba. Since, in contracting as a labourer, the head of the family acquired the right to cultivate part of the settler farm for the rest of the family, it was really their responsibility to cultivate and graze the land.
Large tracts of unused settler land were cultivated by squatters for planting with maize, their major food and cash crop. Sometimes these squatters would need to seek additional labour from fellow squatters and their families, casual and contract labourers, or relatives from Central Province, for the production of a surplus maize crop was of prime importance to them. Most of the grain would be sold to the European settlers, or to Indian and African traders at the various trading centres that had sprung up in the Settled Areas.64 A certain amount of maize was sold to labourers who did not cultivate and at times found their posho (maize-meal) rations inadequate.65 Some of the settlers insisted ‘on a compulsory purchase, at a poor price, of the squatter’s own produce’.66 Even when squatters sold to the settler voluntarily, it was always at a lower price and the settlers sometimes resold the maize at a profit. In this respect, it was obvious that the squatter economy was subsidising the settler economy and in some cases, as in Naivasha before 1918, settlers were completely dependent on squatter produce: ‘As the farms in the District are practically entirely stock farms, the
