Land and Politics in Kenya: an Analysis of African Politics in a Plural Society

• Published date: 01 September 1957
• Date: 01 September 1957
• DOI: 10.1177/106591295701000305
• Author: Martin L. Kilson
• Subject Matter: Articles

LAND AND POLITICS IN KENYA: AN ANALYSIS
OF AFRICAN POLITICS IN A PLURAL SOCIETY*
MARTIN L. KILSON, JR.
Harvard University
INCE
THE OUTBREAK of the Mau Mau uprising in Kenya in
October, 1952, the economic, social, and political complex in this
colony has shown signs of gradual but definite change. With Mau
Mau acting, perhaps, as a stimulus to change, the British colonial govern-
ment has introduced several significant and far-reaching social, economic,
and political policies. One such policy is the so-called &dquo;Villagization&dquo;
scheme.1 This scheme seeks to provide the Africans, and particularly the
Kikuyu, with a settled and secure village life, around which it is hoped will
emerge a communal spirit for social, economic, and civic advancement.
Such community activities as the building of schools, churches, and hos-
pitals, the building of community water supplies, and the establishment of
community, as well as individual, agricultural undertakings have been the
concern of the villages thus far created. In April, 1956, it was reported that
some 750,000 Kikuyu (or nearly half of the Kikuyu population) were now
village-dwellers, as a result of the new &dquo;Villagization&dquo; scheme.
Another policy introduced since the rise of Mau Mau is the so-called
Swynnerton plan of 1954 (named after the Deputy Director of Agriculture
in Kenya). This plan provides for the expenditure of £7,000,000 on the
development of African agriculture for the period 1954-59. After consulta-
tion with Her Majesty’s Government, a grant of £5,000,000 was issued for
the execution of the plan. In general, the Swynnerton plan has as it objec-
tive the creation of some 600,000 efficient African farms, and &dquo;the raising
of unit productivity from a sales-level of between £5 and £20 to a level of
more than £100 a year, after providing for the needs of the family 2 In
1955, there were approximately 25,000 licensed African coffee-growers in
Kenya, and there are currently about 58 coffee co-operatives. It is hoped
by the government that by 1958 the value of the African coffee crop will
range from £1,500,000 to £4,500,000.
Perhaps an even more striking innovation in the complex order-of-
things in Kenya has been the political policies introduced by the colonial
government. In 1945 there were only two African members in the Kenya
The author would like to express his indebtedness to two Kikuyu associates from whom
he has received many valuable insights into the development of African political
movements in Kenya. Their names, unfortunately, must remain anonymous.
1
See O. E. B. Hughes, "Villages in the Kikuyu Country," Journal of African Administration
(October, 1955), pp. 170-74.
2

The Times British Colonies Review (Third Quarter, 1956), p. 24.
559

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560
Legislative Council - the local governing organ in the colony. However,
with the introduction of the so-called Lyttleton plan (named after the
then Secretary of State for the Colonies, Sir Oliver Lyttleton) for a
multiracial government for Kenya in 1954, this state of affairs was to
change appreciably. Thus by April, 1956, there were six Africans in the
Legislative Council, all of whom were nominated members. Furthermore,
two Africans were appointed as Parliamentary Secretaries but did not sit
in the Council. Finally, in 1955 the Kenya government issued the Coutts
Report 3 which proposed a plan offering the 5,000,000 Africans of Kenya
the right of direct election of their representatives to the Legislative Coun-
cil. Thus in March, 1957, approximately five years after the outbreak of
what has been, perhaps, the bloodiest rebellion in the history of British
colonial rule in Africa, a section of the African population in Kenya will
exercise, for the first time, the democratic right to vote.
The road that the British East African Colony of Kenya has had to
travel before undergoing the changes noted above has been one of the most
interesting, difficult, and complex of all British Africa. And it is likely that
the distance yet to be traveled will be as difficult as that thus far traversed.
One factor that will be crucial in deciding whether or not this will be the
case, will be the nature and character of future political behavior among
the Africans in Kenya. It is the purpose of this paper to analyze the factors,
or forces, that have conditioned the past political activity among Kenya-
Africans, so as to enable us to obtain some insight into the possible course
this activity may take in future.
I
Aside from the obvious fact that Kenya is a colony and, therefore,
the &dquo;colonial situation&dquo; is an important factor conditioning African political
behavior,¢ the most general factor that has conditioned this behavior has
been the plural nature of Kenya society. By a &dquo;plural society&dquo; we mean
simply one in which two or more racial groups prevail (particularly where
one is of foreign, and especially of Western, origin) and each adheres to
different cultural patterns, contact between them being restricted more or
less to the realm of economic activity.
Kenya, like much of East, Central, and Southern Africa, is quite suit-
able for European settlement. With large areas ranging from 4,000 to 8,000
feet in altitude, the climatic conditions are more than favorable for this
purpose. What is more, Kenya possesses, in the Highland region, some of
3
See W. F. Coutts, Report of the Commission Appointed to Enquire into Methods for the
Selection of African Representatives to the Legislative Council (Nairobi: Government
Printer, 1955).
4
See Georges Balandier, "La Situation coloniale: approche theorique," Cahiers inter-
nationaux de sociologie, XI (1951), pp. 44-79.

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561
the finest farming land in all of Africa.5 The combination of these two
factors, among others, stimulated the rise of a plural society in Kenya -
especially European settlement. Today there are nearly 50,000 Europeans
in Kenya (who are, socially and politically, the most influential group in
the country) who live among some 5,600,000 Africans, 1,500,000 of whom
belong to the Kikuyu tribe (the largest tribal group in the country). There
also are some 131,100 Indians and about 30,000 Arabs in Kenya.
Whereas the European impact on British West African territories such
as Nigeria and the Gold Coast (whose populations are largely racially homo,
geneous) over the past half-century has given rise to a commercial and
educated middle class that has proven capable of initiating and organizing
political movements for national independence along Western lines,6 quite
a different process has been operative in Kenya. Here the white settler
presence has tended to preclude the West African pattern from operating.
Instead of Africans fulfilling the new occupational roles (e.g., clerks, junior
administrators, traders, merchants, teachers, doctors, lawyers, journalists,
etc.) created by colonial administration, European enterprise, and the
growth of a money or exchange economy - as has been the case in West
Africa - they have been filled by the white elements among the Kenya
population, or, in some cases, by the Indians. Thus the growth of an
urban-dwelling, African middle class has been delayed -
thereby hinder-
ing the rise of Western-type African political movements for national
independence. (The assumption here, of course, is that nationalism
generally is an urban and a middle-class phenomenon.7) Furthermore, the
process of colonial liquidation through the provision of ever increasingly
representative governmental institutions for Africans -
so familiar in
Nigeria and the Gold Coast - has not taken place, or rather has taken
place very slowly, in Kenya. Here the local Legislative and Executive
Councils that govern the colony have been given over largely to the
white population; the reason being, in part, that the whites have had a
near monopoly over the education and experience necessary for manning
such bodies. In short, the Africans’ capacity and opportunity for social
and political advancement have been seriously curtailed and limited by
the European presence.
5
See W. Fitzgerald, Africa: A Social, Economic and Political Geography of its Major
Regions (London: Methuen, 1952), pp. 252 ff.
6
See James S. Coleman, "Nationalism in Tropical Africa," American Political Science
Review (June, 1955), pp. 404-26; Thomas Hodgkin, "The African Middle Class,"
Corona: The Journal of Her Majesty’s Oversea Service (March, 1956), pp. 85-88.
7
Cf. Karl W. Deutsch, "The Growth of Nations: Some Recurrent Patterns of Social and
Political Integration," World Politics (1953), pp. 168-195. Cf. also E. H. Carr (Royal
Institute of International Affairs), Nationalism (London: Oxford University Press,
1939), pp. 15 ff., 239-40.

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562
However, the result of the Kenya experience, as compared with that in
West Africa, has not been the absence of political activity and organiza-
tion among the Africans. Quite the contrary; political organizations and
movements have existed among Kenya-Africans, but with many striking
di f f erences f rom those that have emerged in Nigeria and the Gold Coast.
These differences, it is submitted, have resulted from the plural nature of
Kenya society; a society in which the white population especially has been
the dominant economic, social, and political group.
For one thing, African political movements in Kenya have not been,
as in West Africa, predominantly middle,class affairs (particularly in terms
of the support and the organizational basis of these movements). To be
sure,...