Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-xbtfd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-20T05:06:49.118Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

POLITICS OF THE SOIL: SEPARATISM, AUTOCHTHONY, AND DECOLONIZATION AT THE KENYAN COAST*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 May 2014

Jeremy Prestholdt
Jeremy Prestholdt*
Affiliation:
University of California, San Diego
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article examines the perceived interdependence of territorial rights and social identity in colonial Kenya. In the early 1960s, attempts to win full autonomy for a narrow strip of Indian Ocean coastline – the Protectorate of Kenya – encouraged an exclusivist discourse of autochthony. To establish their historical ownership of the coast, both political thinkers who supported and decried coastal separatism emphasized the correlation of race, ethnicity, religion, and physical space. Through competing claims to ‘the soil’, all parties articulated a dually integrative and divisive language of citizenship. As a result, autochthony discourse exacerbated tensions within coastal society, fortified divergent visions of the postcolonial nation, and highlighted reductive definitions of the coast as either maritime or continental in orientation.

Keywords

Kenyadecolonizationnationalismraceterritory
Type
Special Feature: Africa and the Indian Ocean
Information
The Journal of African History , Volume 55 , Issue 2 , July 2014 , pp. 249 - 270
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2014 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

*

I would like to thank contributors to the workshops, ‘Religion, Law, and Regimes of Control around the Indian Ocean’, at Roskilde University, and ‘Writing Postnational Narratives’, at the Center for Indian Studies in Africa, University of Witwatersrand, as well as those who commented on versions of this article presented to the Chr. Michelsen Institute, European Conference on African Studies 4, and Johns Hopkins History Seminar. Special thanks to Anne Bang, Felicitas Becker, James R. Brennan, Jonathon Glassman, Preben Kaarsholm, Kai Kresse, Pier Larson, Justin Willis, and anonymous JAH reviewers for their valuable criticisms and suggestions. Financial support was provided by the National Endowment for the Humanities, Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation, Norwegian Research Council, Institute for European Global Studies at the University of Basel, and the University of California, San Diego Academic Senate. The author can be reached at: [email protected]

References

1 For an elaboration of this claim, see Ngala, R. G., Nchi na Desturi za Wagiriama (Nairobi, 1949)Google Scholar.

2 In an earlier tract, Abdilahi Nassir defined coastal people as those ‘of whatever colour or creed who have their roots [at the coast]’. The National Archives of the United Kingdom, Kew (TNA) Colonial Office (CO) 822/2151/E2/4, ‘An Open Letter by Abdilahi Nassir to the constituents of Mombasa Central Area’, Feb. 1961.

3 Kenya. Legislative Council, Legislative Council Debates: Official Report, Volume LXXXVII, May 1–Jul 21, 1961 (Nairobi, 1961), 658–66; interview with Abdilahi Nassir, Mombasa, 28 July 2008.

4 Lynch, G., I Say to You: Ethnic Politics and the Kalenjin in Kenya (Chicago, 2011)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Vail, L. (ed.), The Creation of Tribalism in Southern Africa (London, 1989)Google Scholar.

5 Glassman, J., War of Words, War of Stones: Racial Thought and Violence in Colonial Zanzibar (Bloomington, IN, 2011)Google Scholar; Brennan, J. R., ‘Realizing civilization through patrilineal descent: the intellectual making of an African racial nationalism in Tanzania, 1920–50’, Social Identities, 12:4 (2006), 405–23CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

6 Brennan, J. R., Taifa: Making Nation and Race in Urban Tanzania (Athens, OH, 2012)Google Scholar; Glassman, War; Gupta, P., ‘Mapping Portuguese decolonisation in the Indian Ocean: a research agenda’, South African Historical Journal, 57:1 (2007), 93–112CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Salim, A. I., ‘The movement of “Mwambao” or coast autonomy in Kenya, 1956–1963’, Hadith, 2 (Nairobi, 1970), 212–28Google Scholar; Sumich, J., ‘Tenuous belonging: citizenship and democracy in Mozambique’, Social Analysis, 57:2 (2013), 99–116CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

7 See introductory essay by F. Becker and J. Cabrita in this issue.

8 Ho, E., ‘Names beyond nations: the making of local cosmopolitans’, Études Rurales, 163–4 (2002), 28–9Google Scholar; Ho, E., The Graves of Tarim: Genealogy and Mobility Across the Indian Ocean (Berkeley, CA, 2006)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

9 On the concept of ‘local patriotism’, see Lonsdale, J., ‘Soil, work, civilisation, and citizenship in Kenya’, Journal of Eastern African Studies, 2:2 (2008), 311CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

10 Brennan, J. R., ‘Lowering the sultan's flag: sovereignty and decolonization in coastal Kenya’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, 50:4 (2008), 831–61CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Willis, J. and Gona, G., ‘Pwani C Kenya? memory, documents and secessionist politics in coastal Kenya’, African Affairs, 112:446 (2013), 48–71CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

11 Vandekerckhove, N., ‘“We are sons of this soil”: the endless battle over indigenous homelands in Assam, India’, Critical Asian Studies, 41:4 (2009), 523–48CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Mbembe, A., ‘On the power of the false’, Public Culture, 14:3 (2002), 635CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Marshall-Fratani, R., ‘The war of “who is who”: autochthony, nationalism and citizenship in the Ivorian crisis’, in Dorman, S., Hammett, D., and Nugent, P. (eds.), Making Nations, Creating Strangers: States and Citizenship in Africa (Leiden, 2007), 29–68Google Scholar; Weiner, M., Sons of the Soil: Migration and Ethnic Conflict in India (Oxford, 1988)Google Scholar.

12 Jenkins, S., ‘Ethnicity, violence, and the immigrant-guest metaphor in Kenya’, African Affairs, 111:445 (2012), 576–596CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Ceuppens, B. and Geschiere, P., ‘Autochthony: local or global? new modes in the struggle over citizenship and belonging in Africa and Europe’, Annual Review of Anthropology, 34:1 (2005), 387 and 403CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Dunn, K. C., ‘“Sons of the soil” and contemporary state making: autochthony, uncertainty and political violence in Africa’, Third World Quarterly, 30:1 (2009), 123CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Geschiere, P. and Jackson, S., ‘Autochthony and the crisis of citizenship: democratization, decentralization, and the politics of belonging’, African Studies Review, 49:2 (2006), 5CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

13 Geschiere, P., The Perils of Belonging: Autochthony, Citizenship, and Exclusion in Africa and Europe (Chicago, 2009)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Igoe, J., ‘Becoming indigenous peoples: difference, inequality, and the globalization of East African identity politics’, African Affairs, 105:420 (2006), 399–420CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bøås, M., ‘Autochthony and citizenship: “civil society” as vernacular architecture?’, Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding, 6:1 (2012), 101–2CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

14 Li, T. M., ‘Articulating indigenous identity in Indonesia: resource politics and the tribal slot’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, 42:1 (2000), 149–79Google Scholar.

15 Glassman, J., Feasts and Riot: Revelry, Rebellion, and Popular Consciousness on the Swahili Coast, 1856–1888 (Portsmouth, NH: 1995)Google Scholar; Prestholdt, J., Domesticating the World: African Consumerism and the Genealogies of Globalization (Berkeley, CA, 2008)Google Scholar, ch. 5; Pouwels, R. L., ‘Eastern Africa and the Indian Ocean to 1800: reviewing relations in historical perspective’, International Journal of African Historical Studies, 35:2/3 (2002), 411CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

16 On claims of mythic histories of foreign origin see, for example, TNA CO 894/12/62, Memorandum submitted by Bajun Elders, 16 Oct. 1961; and TNA CO 894/13/10 Hyder Mohamed El Kindy, Memorandum presented to Sir James Robertson, 19 Oct. 1961.

17 Pouwels, R., Horn and Crescent: Cultural Change and Traditional Islam on the East African Coast, 800–1900 (Cambridge, 1987), 129–30CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Glassman, War, 38.

18 Sauti ya MADU (Mombasa), 20 July 1958. Quoted in Willis and Gona, ‘Pwani’, 8.

19 Lynch, I Say to You, 17. On the wider African context see, Forrest, J. B., Subnationalism in Africa: Ethnicity, Alliances, and Politics (Boulder, CO, 2004)Google Scholar.

20 Feardon, J. D. and Laitin, D. D. suggest that ‘sons of the soil’ civil wars, or those initiated by members of a group who consider themselves the rightful possessors of a subnational region against perceived outsiders, have been relatively constant over the past six decades. ‘Sons of the Soil, Migrants, and Civil War’, World Development, 39:2 (2011), 199–211CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

21 Willis, and Gona, , ‘Pwani’; C. Medard, ‘Les conflits “ethniques” au Kenya: une question de votes ou de terres?’, Afrique contemporaine, 180 (1996), 62–74Google Scholar.

22 Cooper, F., ‘Possibility and constraint: African independence in historical perspective’, The Journal of African History, 49:2 (2008), 167–96CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Cheeseman, N., ‘Introduction: political linkage and political space in the era of decolonization’, Africa Today, 53:2 (2006), 3–24CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Kyle, K., The Politics of the Independence of Kenya (New York, 1999)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Lee, C. J. (ed.), Making a World After Empire: The Bandung Moment and its Political Afterlives (Athens, OH, 2010)Google Scholar; Ogot, B. A. and Ochieng, W. R.’ (eds.), Decolonization and Independence in Kenya, 1940–93 (London, 1995)Google Scholar.

23 Somali irredentism in the Northern Frontier District bears many similarities to the autonomy movement. See TNA CO 896/1/10, ‘A people in isolation: a call by political parties of the northern frontier district of Kenya for union with the Somali Republic’; Lynch, I Say to You; Branch, D. and Cheeseman, N., ‘Introduction: our turn to eat’, in Branch, D., Cheeseman, N., and Gardner, L. (eds.), Our Turn to Eat: Politics in Kenya Since 1950 (Berlin, 2010), 4–5Google Scholar; Whittaker, H. A., ‘The socioeconomic dynamics of the shifta conflict in Kenya, c. 1963–8’, The Journal of African History, 53:3 (2012), 391–408CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Branch, D., Defeating Mau Mau, Creating Kenya: Counterinsurgency, Civil War, and Decolonization (Cambridge, 2009)Google Scholar.

24 Salim, A. I., ‘Native or non-native? the problem of identity and the social stratification of the Arab-Swahili of Kenya’, Hadith, 6 (1976), 65–85Google Scholar; Salim, A. I., The Swahili-Speaking Peoples of Kenya's Coast, 1895–1965 (Nairobi, 1973)Google Scholar; Kindy, H., Life and Politics in Mombasa (Nairobi, 1972)Google Scholar. For a comparative perspective, see Brennan, Taifa, ch. 1; and Lee, C. J.-H., ‘The “native” undefined: colonial categories, Anglo-African status and the politics of kinship in British Central Africa, 1929–38’, The Journal of African History, 46:3 (2005), 462–3CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

25 See, for example, TNA CO 894/12/33, ‘Some salient facts on the history of Mwambao’, n.d. (ca. 1961); Berg, F. J., ‘The Swahili community of Mombasa, 1500–1900’, The Journal of African History, 9:1 (1968), 35–56CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

26 TNA CO 822/2149/95, ‘Council of ministers: future of the Kenya Protectorate memorandum by the Cabinet Office’, 25 Sept. 1961. As nationalists began using indigeneity to leverage their demands, some Swahili political thinkers, recognizing their ambiguous position, emphasized their distinction from Arabs. TNA CO 894/11/7, Abdallah Chiraghdin, et al.; Kenyan National Archives, Nairobi (KNA) District Commissioner Mombasa (CQ) 1/31/1, The Coast African National Union Constitution, 18 Jan. 1960.

27 Willis, J., Mombasa, the Swahili, and the Making of the Mijikenda (Oxford, 1993)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Caplan, P., ‘“But the coast, of course, is quite different”: academic and local ideas about the East African littoral’, Journal of Eastern African Studies, 1:2 (2007), 305–20CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On wider debates over the political and cultural definition of the Swahili, see Eastman, C. M., ‘Who are the WaSwahili?’, Africa, 41:3 (1971), 228–36CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Mazrui, A. and Shariff, I. N., The Swahili: Idiom and Identity of an African People (Trenton, NJ, 1994)Google Scholar.

28 Mwakimako, H., ‘The historical development of Muslim courts: the Kadhi, Mudir and Liwali courts and the civil procedure code and criminal procedure ordinance, c. 1963’, Journal of Eastern African Studies, 5:2 (2011), 329–43CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

29 KNA CQ 1/1/100a, G. M. Wilson, ‘Mombasa: a modern colonial municipality’, 1958; TNA CO 894/1/107a, Mombasa District Estimated Population, 1961.

30 Ng'weno, B., ‘Inheriting disputes: the Digo negotiation of meaning and power through land’, African Economic History, 25 (1997), 65Google Scholar; Willis, Mombasa, 122–3; Kanyinga, K., Re-Distribution from Above: The Politics of Land Rights and Squatting in Coastal Kenya (Uppsala, 2000), 42–5 and 56–9Google Scholar; Cooper, F., From Slaves to Squatters: Plantation Labor and Agriculture in Zanzibar and Coastal Kenya, 1890–1925 (New Haven, CT, 1980)Google Scholar, 192–3, 273 and 275–6.

31 TNA CO 894/12, Memorandum to Sir James Robertson on Lamu District by District Commissioner, 11 Oct. 1961.

32 Cooper, Slaves to Squatters, 291–3; Willis, Mombasa, 123 and 125–6; KNA Provincial Commissioner Coast Province (Mombasa) (CA) 16/77, Malindi subdistrict Monthly Intelligence Report, Dec. 1959; TNA CO 894/14/12, A note on the problem of Giriama squatter lands in Malindi, 9 Nov. 1960.

33 Willis, J. and Gona, G., ‘Tradition, tribe, and state in Kenya: the Mijikenda Union, 1945–1980’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, 55:2 (2013), 455CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Harris, J. E., Recollections of James Juma Mbotela (Nairobi, 1977), 94Google Scholar.

34 Glassman, War, 130; Brennan, ‘Lowering’, 847.

35 Brennan, ‘Lowering’; TNA CO 894/4, Note of the meeting between Sir James Robertson and Sheikh Salim Mohamed Muhashamy, 9 Oct. 1961; TNA CO 894/12, Memorandum on Lamu District by the District Commissioner, 11 Oct. 1961.

36 Salim, ‘The movement’, 216; Salim, Swahili-Speaking Peoples, 216–17.

37 Ogot, B. A., ‘Mau Mau and nationhood: the untold story’, in Odhiambo, E. S. A. and Lonsdale, J. (eds.), Mau Mau and Nationhood: Arms, Authority and Narration (Athens, OH, 2003), 11–13Google Scholar; B. A. Ogot, ‘The decisive years, 1956–63’ in Ogot and Ochieng', Decolonization, 52–3; Gertzel, C. J., The Politics of Independent Kenya, 1963–8 (Evanston, IL, 1970), 8–9Google Scholar.

38 Harris, J. E., Repatriates and Refugees in a Colonial Society. The Case of Kenya (Washington, DC, 1987), 108Google Scholar; Willis and Gona, ‘Pwani’, 9.

39 Stren, R., Housing the Urban Poor in Africa: Policy, Politics, and Bureaucracy in Mombasa (Berkeley, CA, 1978), 79–81Google Scholar; Harris, Repatriates and Refugees, 110; Salim, Swahili-Speaking Peoples, 226. On the ‘racial-continental identity paradigm’, see Brennan, Taifa, ch. 4.

40 Stren, R., ‘Factional politics and central control in Mombasa, 1960–1969’, Canadian Journal of African Studies/Revue Canadienne des Études Africaines, 4:1 (1970), 36Google Scholar.

41 TNA CO 894/12/6, Memorandum by the Coastal League, 7 Oct. 1961.

42 Gertzel, Politics of Independent Kenya, 10; Branch, D., Kenya: Between Hope and Despair, 1963–2011 (New Haven, CT, 2011)Google Scholar, 14–15 and 86–7; Ogot, ‘The decisive years’, 66; Lynch, I Say to You, 64.

43 Anderson, D., ‘“Yours in the struggle for majimbo”: nationalism and the party politics of decolonization in Kenya, 1955–64’, Journal of Contemporary History, 40:3 (2005), 547–64CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Anderson, D., ‘Majimboism: the troubled history of an idea’, in Branch, D., Cheeseman, N., and Gardner, L. (eds.), Our Turn to Eat: Politics in Kenya since 1950 (Berlin, 2010), 47Google Scholar; Ogot, ‘The decisive years’, 65.

44 TNA CO 894/14/12, P. R. Spendlove, Note on the problem of the future of the Protectorate, 1 Nov. 1961.

45 TNA CO 822/2159/1, Statement by Mr. [Omar] Bassadiq, Coastal Strip Conference, 8 Mar. 1962.

46 KNA CQ 1/1/100a, G. M. Wilson, ‘Mombasa – a modern colonial municipality’, 1958; Salim, Swahili-Speaking Peoples. On migrant labor and administrative attempts to control workers, see Cooper, F., On the African Waterfront: Urban Disorder and the Transformation of Work in Colonial Mombasa (New Haven, CT, 1987)Google Scholar.

47 TNA CO 822/2151, Memorandum re constitutional position of the Protectorate of Kenya prepared by representatives of the Coast Arabs (ca. Apr. 1961).

48 TNA CO 822/2150/189, Press Office background paper, No. 2, The Coastal Strip, Feb. 1962.

49 TNA CO 894/12/57, Coast African Political Union, ‘Memorandum to the Commission of Enquiry to the Coastal Problem’, Oct. 1961; Stren, ‘Factional politics’, 40.

50 Kresse, K., Philosophising in Mombasa: Knowledge, Islam and Intellectual Practice on the Swahili Coast (Edinburgh, 2007), 185–6Google Scholar; Ndzovu, H. J., ‘Muslim relations in the politics of nationalism and secession in Kenya’, Program of African Studies Working Papers, No. 18, Northwestern University (Evanston, 2010)Google Scholar.

51 Interview with Abdilahi Nassir; TNA CO 822/2151/E2/4, An Open Letter.

52 TNA CO 894/10, Memorandum by the President of KADU on the Coastal Strip, 26 Oct. 1961; Aseka, E., Ronald Ngala (Nairobi, 1993), 8–9Google Scholar.

53 ‘Weekend activity over Coast autonomy’, Mombasa Times (Mombasa), 9 Oct. 1961.

54 In mid-1961, Colonial Secretary Ian MacLeod determined that the coastal strip was not a ‘viable administrative unit’. Brennan, ‘Lowering’, 849. See also Willis and Gona, ‘Pwani’, 11.

55 TNA CO 822/2149/8, Secretary of State, Draft for Preliminary Discussion with Governor: The Coastal Strip (n.d.).

56 TNA CO 894/10, Memorandum by the President of KADU on the Coastal Strip, 26 Oct. 1961; TNA CO 894/13/15, KANU Kwale Branch, Memorandum to Sir James Robertson strongly objecting autonomy for 10 miles strip, n.d. (ca. 1961).

57 TNA CO 894/12/57, Coast African Political Union, Memorandum to the Commission of Enquiry to the Coastal Problem, Oct. 1961; TNA CO 894/12/35, J. Jillo, et al., Memorandum to the Commissioner inquiring into the future of Kenya Protectorate (Coastal Strip) presented by the Pokomo Tribe (ca. Oct. 1961); Willis, J., ‘The king of the Mijikenda and other stories about the Kaya: heritage, politics, and histories in multiparty Kenya’, in Peterson, D. R. and Macola, G. (eds.), Recasting the Past: History Writing and Political Work in Modern Africa (Athens, OH, 2009), 233–250Google Scholar.

58 TNA CO 894/12/51, Mwambao Objective Memorandum to Sir James Robertson, Wadigo Shimba Location, 18 Oct. 1961.

59 TNA CO 894/13/2, Independence for Mwambao 14 Dec., 3 June 1961, filed with Memorandum on Coastal Strip Autonomy, 20 Oct. 1961.

60 TNA CO 894/8, Note of a meeting between Sir James Robertson and a delegation from the Waa Location, 19 Oct. 1961.

61 Ibid.

62 TNA CO 894/12/19, KADU Coastal Region Branch, Memorandum on Coastal Strip and 1895 Treaty, 10 Oct. 1961.

63 TNA CO 894/11/7, Abdallah Chiraghdin, et al. to Sir James Robertson, 20 Oct. 1961.

64 TNA CO 894/12/61, Khashia Abubakar, et al., Memorandum on the Coastal Strip Enquiry submitted by the Jomvu Social Club, 15 Oct. 1961.

65 TNA CO 894/13/18, Tamim of Tisa Taifa, Memorandum presented to Sir James Robertson by members of the Nine Tribes, 20 Oct. 1961; KNA CA26/5, Shiekh Ali bin Mohamed bin Yunus to the Sultan of Zanzibar, 7 Oct. 1961.

66 TNA CO 894/13/17, President of the Afro-Asian Association, Memorandum of the Twelve Tribes to be presented to the Commissioner, 14 Oct. 1961.

67 TNA CO 894/11/7, Abdallah Chiraghdin, et al.

68 TNA CO 894/13/20, Ahmed Idha Salim, et al., Memorandum presented to Sir James Robertson, 19 Oct. 1961.

69 TNA CO 894/4, Note of the meeting between Sir James Robertson and Sheikh Salim Mohamed Muhashamy, 9 Oct. [1961].

70 TNA CO 894/12/6, Memorandum by the Coastal League, 7 Oct. 1961; Letters to the editor, Mombasa Times (Mombasa), 22 Sept. 1961.

71 TNA CO 822/2151/E2/3, ‘Some salient facts on the history of Mwambao’ (ca. Apr. 1961); TNA CO 822/2151/E2/2, Abdilahi Nasser to W.B. L. Monson, Asst. Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies, 5 Apr. 1961.

72 TNA CO 822/2151/E2/4, An Open Letter; TNA CO 894/13/2, Maalim Omar Rashid Bakuli, Memorandum on Coastal Strip Autonomy, 20 Oct. 1961; TNA CO 894/11/6, Yayha Lali Omar to Commissioner of Inquiry, 21 Oct. 1961.

73 TNA CO 894/13/22, A. F. Janoo, Memorandum, 19 Oct. 1961.

74 Others relayed that up-country politicians openly discussed dismantling mosques. TNA CO 894/5, Note of a meeting held at Malindi, 13 Oct. 1961; TNA CO 894/5, Note of a meeting between Sir James Robertson and a delegation from the Kenya Protectorate Nationalist Party, 13 Oct. 1961.

75 TNA CO 894/13/8, Mwanawangu Mzee and Somoe Bausi, Memorandum on Coastal Strip submitted by Coast Peoples Party (Women's Wing), 20 Oct. 1961.

76 TNA CO 894/4, Note of a meeting between Sir James Robertson and Mr. J. Mbotela, 20 Oct. 1961.

77 Anderson, ‘Majimboism’, 29.

78 KNA District Commissioner (DC) Mombasa (MSA) 2/1/93, S.R. D. Msechu to the Publicity Committee of CPP, 27 Sept. 1961; TNA CO 894/7, Note of a meeting between Sir James Robertson and a KADU delegation (Kilifi), 14 Oct. 1961; Mombasa Times (Mombasa), 3 Oct. 1961; TNA CO 822/2158/4, Memorandum on the Coastal Strip submitted by the President of KADU to Sir James Robertson, 26 Oct. 1961.

79 TNA CO 894/4, Note of a meeting between Sir James Robertson and a delegation from the Coast African Political [Union], 16 Oct. 1961.

80 Mombasa Times (Mombasa), 3 June 1961.

81 ‘Coast not separate says Mr. Kenyatta’, East African Standard (Nairobi), 5 Oct. 1961. Former Legco member from the coast, Omar Bassadiq, recalled that during his first meeting with Jomo Kenyatta in 1961 the future president was convinced that settler designs were behind the separatist movement. Interview with Omar Bassadiq, Mombasa, 23 July 2008.

82 ‘Weekend activity over Coast autonomy’, Mombasa Times (Mombasa), 9 Oct. 1961.

83 ‘Commissioner condemns intimidation’, Mombasa Times (Mombasa), 11 Oct. 1961.

84 ‘Race tension mounts at Coast’, Daily Nation (Nairobi), 10 Oct. 1961.

85 TNA CO 894/4, Note of a meeting between Sir James Robertson and a delegation from the Coast People's Party, 20 Oct. 1961.

86 TNA CO 822/2151, A. J. Karisa to the Colonial Secretary, 30 Sept. 1962; TNA CO 822/3073, Memorandum of a meeting between CAPU, Coastal League, Shungwaya Freedom Party, and National Union of Northern Coast of Kenya and His Excellency, 16 Nov. 1962.

87 Robertson, J., The Kenya Coastal Strip; Report of the Commissioner, Sessional Paper No. 9 of 1961 (Nairobi, 1961)Google Scholar.

88 TNA CO 822/2159/4, Record of a second meeting, Kenya Coastal Strip Conference, 9 Mar. 1962; interview with Omar Bassadiq.

89 Lynch, I Say to You, 68–9; Ogot, ‘The decisive years’, 76.

90 TNA CO 822/2150/189, Press Office Background Paper, No. 2, The Coastal Strip, Feb. 1962.

91 TNA CO 822/3073, Coast KADU Delegation Memorandum to the Governor of Kenya, June 1963.

92 TNA CO 822/3073/E17(xix), Committee of the Coast United Front to Malcolm McDonald, 31 July 1963.

93 Kresse, K., ‘Muslim politics in postcolonial Kenya: negotiating knowledge on the double-periphery’, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 15:1 (2009), 76–94CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

94 Mazrui, A., Kayas of Deprivation, Kayas of Blood: Violence, Ethnicity, and the State in Coastal Kenya (Nairobi, 1997)Google Scholar; McIntosh, J., The Edge of Islam: Power, Personhood, and Ethnoreligious Boundaries on the Kenya Coast (Durham, NC, 2009), 61CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

95 Willis and Gona, ‘Pwani’.