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‘ARE YOU PLANTING TREES OR ARE YOU PLANTING PEOPLE?’ SQUATTER RESISTANCE AND INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT IN THE MAKING OF A KENYAN POSTCOLONIAL POLITICAL ORDER (c. 1963–78)*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 January 2015

KARA MOSKOWITZ
KARA MOSKOWITZ*
Affiliation:
University of Toronto Scarborough
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Abstract

This article examines squatter resistance to a World Bank-funded forest and paper factory project. The article illustrates how diverse actors came together at the sites of rural development projects in early postcolonial Kenya. It focuses on the relationship between the rural squatters who resisted the project and the political elites who intervened, particularly President Kenyatta. Together, these two groups not only negotiated the reformulation of a major international development program, but they also worked out broader questions about political authority and political culture. In negotiating development, rural actors and political elites decided how resources would be distributed and they entered into new patronage-based relationships, processes integral to the making of the postcolonial political order.

Keywords

Kenyadevelopmentpostcolonialpolitics
Type
Decolonizing and Developing Kenya
Information
The Journal of African History , Volume 56 , Issue 1 , March 2015 , pp. 99 - 118
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2015 

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Footnotes

*

Research for this article was supported by the CLIR-Mellon Dissertation Fellowship in the Humanities in Original Sources and Emory University's Laney Graduate School. Richard Kemboi, Oliver Kamave, and Ann Mbuga provided research assistance in Kenya. Thanks to Julia Bailey, Clifton Crais, Peter Little, Kristin Mann, the participants in Emory University's Institute of African Studies Seminar, and the reviewers of The Journal of African History for their comments and suggestions. Author's email: [email protected]

References

1 The meaning of ‘squatter’ has changed over time. The colonial state used ‘squatters’ to mean resident farm laborers. This remained the definition up until about 1965, when the independent state attempted to make a distinction between those living on property to which they had no title, and resident laborers. In this article, I use the term squatters broadly to mean Kenyans living on land in the designated Turbo forest area, since it was impossible to distinguish between those who were former resident laborers and those who were not.

2 Kenya National Archives, Nairobi (KNA) BN/85/14,‘The cabinet, Kenya pulp and paper mill, proposed Turbo pulpwood afforestation scheme’, 1964.

3 KNA BA/2/38, letter from J. H. O. Omino, permanent secretary to the minister, ‘Your folio (107) refers’, 24 Aug. 1973.

4 Similar to other parts of Africa, Kenya was, and is, a profoundly rural place. In 1960, 92.6 per cent of the Kenyan population lived in rural areas. The World Bank, ‘World development indicators 2012’, (http://databank.worldbank.org).

5 KNA AE/22/142, W. Wamalwa, permanent secretary, Ministry of Economic Planning and Development, ‘Pulp and paper project’, 9 June 1966.

6 KNA BN/85/16, letter from J. K. arap Koitie to the permanent secretary, Ministry of Natural Resources, 14 Mar. 1969.

7 Cooper, F., Africa Since 1940: The Past of the Present (Cambridge, 2002), 157CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8 In the emerging literature on independence and development, scholars have tended to focus more on national development programs. See, for example, Bowman, A., ‘Mass production or production by the masses? tractors, cooperatives, and the politics of rural development in post-independence Zambia’, The Journal of African History, 52:2 (2011), 201–21CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Lal, P., ‘Militants, mothers, and the national family: ujamaa, gender, and rural development in postcolonial Tanzania’, The Journal of African History, 51:1 (2010), 1–20CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Macola, G., ‘“It means as if we are excluded from the good freedom”: thwarted expectations of independence in the Luapula Province of Zambia, 1964–6’, The Journal of African History, 47:1 (2006), 43–56CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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17 Kelly Askew's work is informative here for its examination of ‘how some of the least privileged citizens of one emergent African nation hijacked and reconfigured the process of nationalism’. Askew, K. M., Performing the Nation: Swahili Music and Cultural Politics in Tanzania (Chicago, 2002), 12Google Scholar.

18 Interview recordings are in the author's possession. The article also uses interviews conducted with residents of neighboring villages physically unaffected by the afforestation program. The author conducted 115 interviews in total, and completed a year and a half of archival and oral research.

19 For more on the Kalenjin, see Lynch, G., I Say To You: Ethnic Politics and the Kalenjin in Kenya (Chicago, 2011)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

20 Ellis, D., ‘The Nandi protest of 1923 in the context of African resistance to colonial rule in Kenya’, The Journal of African History, 17:4 (1976), 558CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

21 Maxon, R., ‘The years of revolutionary advance, 1920–1929’, in Ochieng, W. R.’ (ed.), A Modern History of Kenya, 1895–1980: In Honour of B. A. Ogot (Nairobi, 1989), 75Google Scholar.

22 Lonsdale, J., ‘The conquest state’, in Ochieng, (ed.), A Modern History of Kenya, 11Google Scholar.

23 By independence, the ethnic composition of African squatters in Uasin Gishu had become more diverse than other regions. The ethnic division of Africans seeking work in Uasin Gishu district in 1960 was: Kalenjin 31.8 per cent, Kikuyu 38.7 per cent, Luo 13.0 per cent, and Luhya 16.5 per cent. R. O. Kisiara, ‘Labor contracts in a polyethnic agricultural resettlement in Western Kenya’ (unpublished PhD thesis, Washington University, 1998), 13.

24 KNA AE/22/142, ‘Pulp and paper company of East Africa, limited: working committee meeting’, 20 Dec. 1965.

25 KNA BN/85/14, letter from J. S. Spears, conservator of forests, to the director of settlement, 29 July 1965.

26 Moi was minister for Home affairs at the time, but he became vice president in 1967 and went on to become Kenya's second president from 1978 to 2002.

27 KNA BN/85/14, letter from Angaine, minister for Lands and Settlement, to S. O. Ayodo, minister for Natural Resources and Wildlife, 19 Aug. 1965.

28 KNA BN/85/15, ‘Turbo project afforestation scheme: notes on a meeting’, 11 Feb. 1966.

29 KNA BN/85/15, letter from provincial commissioner Western Province, ‘Squatters: Turbo afforestation scheme’, 30 Aug. 1966.

30 KNA BN/85/15, letter from P. Shiyukah, permanent secretary, to A. F. Achieng, Esq., permanent secretary, Ministry of Natural Resources and Tourism, 26 Jan. 1966.

31 KNA BN/85/16, letter from Z. B. Shimechero, special commissioner – squatters, to the minister of Lands and Settlement, ‘Re: Turbo – Kudler's Farm’, 29 July 1969.

32 The program relied heavily on the World Bank funding. From 1970 to 1975, for example, the World Bank loan funded 65 per cent of the project cost. KNA BA/6/26, letter from T. A. M. Gardner, project manager, World Bank forestry project, Eldoret, to the chief statistician, agriculture section, 2 Apr. 1971.

33 KNA BA/6/26, letter from permanent secretary, Ministry of Natural Resources, ‘Turbo afforestation scheme and Broderick Falls paper project’, 14 May 1970.

34 Ibid.

35 KNA BA/6/26, letter from T. A. M. Gardner, project manager, World Bank forestry project, Eldoret, to the chief statistician, agriculture section, 2 Apr. 1971.

36 KNA BN/85/16, letter from J. H. O. Omino, permanent secretary, Ministry of Natural Resources to Mr. N. S. Kungo, permanent secretary, Ministry of Lands and Settlement, 31 May 1975.

37 The British colonial state and the World Bank first endorsed these ideas. The World Bank, in fact, refused to fund land resettlement programs for smallholdings owned by ‘non-progressive farmers’, because they were deemed ‘liabilities’. Abrams, P. D., Kenya's Land Resettlement Story: How 66,000 African Families Were Settled on 1325 Large Scale European Owned Farms (Nairobi, 1979)Google Scholar.

38 KNA BN/97/3, ‘Minutes of a meeting of officials on squatters’, 23 Apr. 1966.

39 KNA BN/81/41, letter from the Office of the President to the permanent secretary, Ministry of Agriculture, permanent secretary, Ministry of Lands and Settlement, and all provincial commissioners, 2 Mar. 1967.

40 KNA BN/81/158, ‘Memorandum by the minister for Economic Planning and Development on government's unemployment policies’, 1970.

41 KNA TR/3/58, ‘Rural development: programme in representative areas’, 29 Nov. 1968.

42 KNA BN/85/14, ‘Memorandum to H. M. government on the Turbo afforestation scheme in relation to the expanded settlement scheme (draft)’, 27 Oct. 1965.

43 KNA BN/85/15, From the Treasury, ‘Memorandum to H. M. government on the Turbo afforestation scheme (second revision)’, June 1966.

44 KNA BN/85/16, letter from P. K. Boit, provincial commissioner Western Province, to the permanent secretary, Office of the President, ‘Land for squatters or the landless people’, 18 Mar. 1970.

45 Ibid.

46 Interview with Daniel Kebeney Bitok, Leseru, 26 Nov. 2012.

47 Numerous informants defined citizenship as owning land, and almost all informants connected development to farming. Jairo Murunga Libapu recalled, ‘[d]evelopment was cattle, milk. Being a good farmer. I used to produce 200 bags of maize.’ Interview with Jairo Murunga Libapu, Lumakanda, 3 Nov. 2012.

48 Anderson, D., ‘Yours in struggle for majimbo: nationalism and the party politics of decolonization in Kenya, 1955–64’, Journal of Contemporary History, 40:3 (2005), 547CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Anderson traces the regional, or majimboist, aims of minority ethnic groups to party politics during independence negotiations, and a fear of Kikuyu domination.

49 ‘The main motivation for the construction and politicization of a Kalenjin alliance was (and continues to be) a nexus of fear of loss and potential for gain.’ Lynch, I Say, 6–7.

50 Interview with Kiptoo arap Maina, Leseru, 23 Nov. 2012.

51 KNA KA/6/19, letter from Senator GN Kalya, Kapsabet (Nandi) to President Kenyatta, 21 May 1966.

52 Interview with Simon Limo, Leseru, 27 Nov. 2012.

53 Interview with Christopher Lelelilan, Leseru, 26 Nov. 2012.

54 KNA KA/6/19, letter from citizens of Naivasha to the KANU district chairman, 1967. Naivasha is located in Kenya's eastern Rift Valley.

55 KNA BN/85/15, V. E. M. Burke, deputy director of settlement, ‘Turbo forest station scheme’, 25 Mar. 1966.

56 For some of the historical and anthropological literature on local contestations of colonial and postcolonial development, particularly environmental and agricultural projects, see Anderson, D. M., Eroding the Commons: The Politics of Ecology in Baringo, Kenya 1890–1963 (Athens, OH, 2002)Google Scholar; Li, T. M., The Will to Improve: Governmentality, Development, and the Practice of Politics (Durham, NC, 2007)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Peters, P. E., Dividing the Commons: Politics, Policy, and Culture in Botswana (Charlottesville, VA, 1994)Google Scholar; and Schroeder, R. A., Shady Practices: Agroforestry and Gender Politics in the Gambia (Berkeley, CA, 1999)Google Scholar.

57 KNA BN/85/15, letter from P. Shiyukah, ‘Re: your conf. 143/132’, 1 Apr. 1966.

58 KNA BN/85/15, memorandum from J. H. Angaine, ‘Turbo afforestation scheme area B: settlement of squatters’, 25 Oct. 1966.

59 KNA BA/6/29, ‘Turbo afforestation advisory committee minutes of the 9thmeeting’, 2 Mar. 1973.

60 KNA DX/21/10/8, ‘Joint meeting of Nandi, Kakamega and Uasin Gishu district commissioners held at Osurungai’, 15 Sept. 1966.

61 KNA DX/21/10/9, letter from H. K. Ikenya, divisional forest officer, Turbo, to the superintendent of police, ‘Operational orders: Coopers Farm and Manzini Farm’, 15 Feb. 1972.

62 KNA DX/21/10/9, letter from J. M. Tiampati, district commissioner Kakamega, to the provincial commissioner, Western, ‘Squatters – E. A. Tanning Co.’, 9 Feb. 1977. The 1977 evictees were mostly former employees of East African Tanning and Extract Company, which sold its land to the government for afforestation in that year. The exact number of displaced employees was unknown, with estimates ranging between 152 and 600.

63 Interview with Daniel Kebeney Bitok.

64 Interview with Wilson Cheruyot Boit, Sugoi, 10 Jan. 2013.

65 Ibid.

66 Ibid.

67 Ibid.

68 Interview with Simon Limo.

69 Interview with Priscilla Murei, Sugoi, 14 Jan. 2013.

70 Interview with Christina Cherotich, Tapsagoi, 12 Jan. 2013.

71 KNA BN/85/16, letter from C. B. Looman, forestal lands estate to the estates manager, Turbo, ‘Re: Trespassers on forestal lands’, 12 Jan. 1971.

72 Ibid.

73 Interview with Chepsiror arap Leleli, Tapsagoi, 12 Jan. 2013.

74 Interview with Michael Keter, Sugoi, 14 Jan. 2013.

75 Interviews were conducted in an uncertain political climate, ahead of the March 2013 elections. Rumors of a Kalenjin-Kikuyu political alliance began to emerge in November 2012, and the jubilee alliance – with Uhuru Kenyatta, a Kikuyu, as the presidential candidate and William Ruto, a Kalenjin, as the vice presidential candidate – was announced in December 2012. This contemporaneous political uncertainty, along with longer histories of post-election violence between Kikuyu and Kalenjin in the Rift Valley, might have shaped Kalenjin recollections of Kenyatta, the first Kikuyu president. The interviews illustrated, more clearly, though, a division between how those who remained landless and those who were resettled recounted Kenyatta. This will be discussed further below.

76 Kenyans often gave their president credit for the million-acre scheme, a program to transfer land from European settlers to Africans from 1962 to 1971. By the end of 1971, about 35,000 families had been settled at a cost of 30 million pounds, mostly financed through grants and loans from the United Kingdom and the World Bank. Okoth-Ogendo, H. W. O., Tenants of the Crown: Evolution of Agrarian Law and Institutions in Kenya (Nairobi, 1991), 158Google Scholar.

77 Interview with David Tororei, Sosiani, 3 Dec. 2012. This was a common conception, in spite of the complex relationship between both Mau Mau and independence, and between Kenyatta and Mau Mau.

78 Interview with Jamin Maneno Kihinga, Lumakanda, 8 Nov. 2012.

79 Interview with Simon Limo.

80 Interview with Ruth Jepng'eno Kipkurui, Tapsagoi, 12 Jan. 2013.

81 ‘Kenyatta's preferred highly personalized way of handling government business became the dominant model. Sitting in court in his private and official residences dotted around the country, the president hosted delegations from provinces and districts, listened to their grievances and issued decrees in response … These visits steadily became highly regulated modes of interaction between citizens and their head of state.’ Branch, Kenya, 72–3.

82 KNA KA/6/20, letter from Kericho township residents to Jomo Kenyatta, 13 Dec. 1972.

83 Interview with Pauline Tum, Leseru, 22 Nov. 2012.

84 Interview with Frederick Kemboi arap Tum Kiptulus, Leseru, 22 Nov. 2012.

85 KNA AE/22/142, letter from K. S. N. Matiba, ‘The pulp and paper project’, 19 May 1966.

86 KNA BN/85/16, letter from J. K. arap Koitie, permanent secretary, Ministry of Lands and Settlement to J. N. Michuki Esq., permanent secretary, the Treasury, ‘New settlement in the Turbo area’, 5 Jan. 1970.

87 Ibid.

88 KNA BN/85/16, letter from Angaine to Kenyatta, 22 Apr. 1969.

89 Kenyatta's ad hoc promises and the piecemeal acquisition of land for settlement and forest schemes – along with the ubiquitous confusion and contestation amongst the officials planning these programs – makes it difficult to estimate how many squatters in total were settled on Turbo land once planned for afforestation, or to estimate how many remained landless.

90 KNA BN/85/16, letter from Angaine to Kenyatta, 22 Apr. 1969.

91 In other instances, particularly with the leaders of the political opposition, the Kenyatta state used repression, intimidation, imprisonment, and violence.

92 Cooper, F., Decolonization and African Society: The Labor Question in French and British Africa (Cambridge, 1996)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Cooper illustrates the varied possibilities of independence, but emphasizes less the implications for so many of these possibilities remaining unfulfilled.

93 This analysis departs from the literature on postcolonial patron-client relationships that has often drawn greater attention to the upper echelons of society, and has tended to focus on the precolonial and colonial foundations of patronage and the post-1970s period. See Berman, B., ‘Ethnicity, patronage and the African state: the politics of uncivil nationalism’, African Affairs, 97 (1998), 305–41CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Joseph, R., Democracy and Prebendal Politics in Nigeria (Cambridge, 1987)Google Scholar; Lynch, I Say; and Young, C., The Rise and Decline of the Zairian State (Madison, WI, 1985)Google Scholar. Haugerud, Angelique's The Culture of Politics in Modern Kenya (Cambridge, 1995)CrossRefGoogle Scholar is an exception to these trends.

94 Interview with Alfred Machayo, Chekalini, 1 Nov. 2012.

95 Interview with Wilson Cheruyot Boit.

96 Ibid.

97 Interview with Jemosbei Kirwa Kili, Tapsagoi, 12 Jan. 2013.

98 Interview with Priscilla Murei.

99 KNA ACW/1/425, letter from J. H. O. Omino, permanent secretary Ministry of Natural Resources, to Mr. L. O. Kibinge, permanent secretary Ministry of Finance and Planning, ‘African socialism and its application to planning in Kenya, some thoughts’, 4 Apr. 1978.