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The Renovation of Custom in Colonial Kenya: the 1932 Generation Succession Ceremonies in Embu*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 January 2009

Charles H. Ambler
Charles H. Ambler
Affiliation:
University of Texas, El Paso
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Extract

The role of custom and tradition in the development of colonial rule in Africa has received little attention from scholars. Historians of colonial Kenya, particularly, have focused on the powerful transforming impact of the colonial state and economy and on the growth of opposition movements; they have had little to say about the processes through which previously autonomous societies negotiated their incorporation into the Kenya state. Yet by the 1920s and 1930s that state had acquired a substantial degree of popular legitimacy. ‘Customary’ institutions and rituals played an important part in the development of that legitimacy. This essay examines the institution of the genealogically defined ‘generation’ in the Embu-Mbeere area in colonial central Kenya and the ceremonies held in 1932 to mark the transition from one generation to the next. These ceremonies attracted considerable attention because they provided the occasion for the proclamation of rules, supported by the British administration, relating to the bitter issue of genital mutilation in female initiation. But this was not a crude case of the manipulation of custom. The attempt to reform female initiation was part of a larger process, of which the rituals of generation succession were elements, of building the ideological basis of a new ‘tribe’ in a society previously characterized by local autonomy and collective authority. As investigation of the succession ceremonies makes clear, the notion of a tribe dominated by appointed chiefs and identified with an exclusive territory lay at the centre of this ideology.

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The Journal of African History , Volume 30 , Issue 1 , March 1989 , pp. 139 - 156
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1989

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References

1 Tignor, Robert L., The Colonial Transformation of Kenya: The Kamba, Kikuyu, and Maasai from 1900 to 1939 (Princeton, 1976), 235–50.Google Scholar

2 His accounts are found in Kenya National Archives [KNA], Embu District, Annual Report [AR], 1932, DC/EBU/1/2; in ‘The social and political institutions of the tribes of the Kikuyu Land Unit of Kenya’, manuscript, 1945, University of Nairobi Library; and Kikuyu Social and Political Institutions (London, 1956).Google Scholar While an officer in the Kenya administration, Lambert undertook a number of ethnographic and linguistic studies; his work on the Swahili language was particularly highly regarded.

3 Lambert, H. E., ‘The use of indigenous authorities in tribal administration: studies of the Meru in Kenya Colony’, School of African Studies, University of Cape Town, Communication No. 16, (1947), 15.Google Scholar

4 Notably Saberwal, Satish, The Traditional Political System of the Embu of Central Kenya (Nairobi, 1970), 66Google Scholar; and idem., ‘Political change among the Embu of central Kenya (1900–1964)’, Political Science Review (India), xii (1973). 48 n. 33. Also interview, Kamwochere wa Nthiga, at Embu Town, 25 Nov. 1977. Unless otherwise noted, the interviews cited in this essay were conducted by the author during 1977–8 and are on file in the Kenya National Archives and the History Department, University of Nairobi. Kamwochere was the head of the Kikuyu Central Association, Embu branch, and for a time a member of the Embu Local Native Council.

5 My interest in this subject was stimulated in large part by the essays in Hobsbawm, Eric and Ranger, Terence, eds, The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge, 1983).Google Scholar I am not persuaded that it is possible to draw a practical distinction between tradition and custom, as Hobsbawm argues is necessary (‘Introduction: Inventing Tradition’, 2.) Also, Bushaway, Bob, By Rite: Custom, Ceremony and Community in England, 1700–1880 (London, 1982).Google Scholar An important early study of the mutability of tradition in Africa is Cohen, Abner, Custom and Politics in Urban Africa: A Study of Hausa Migrants in Yoruba Towns (Manchester, Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1969).Google Scholar A. P. Cheater has recently explored this question in the contemporary Zimbabwe context. ‘Contradictions in modelling “Consciousness”: Zimbabwean proletarians in the making?’ J. of Southern African Studies, xiv, 2 (01 1988), 291.Google Scholar Frederick Cooper, drawing on the work of E. P. Thompson, has pointed to the process through which custom and customary institutions may play a crucial role in the patterns of class formation and class conflict. ‘Africa and the world economy’, African Studies Rev. xxiv, 2/3 (06/09 1981), 20.Google Scholar The renewal and redefinition of custom in colonial Mexico has been investigated with great sophistication by Farriss, Nancy M. in Maya Society Under Colonial Rule: The Collective Enterprise of Survival (Princeton, 1984).Google Scholar Also, see Clammer, John, ‘Colonialism and the perception of tradition in Fiji’, in Asad, Talal (ed), Anthropology and the Colonial Encounter, (London and New York, 1973), 199–220.Google Scholar

6 The larger contest between a white state and its African opponents continues to dominate much of the research on colonial Kenya. See for example, the excellent recent studies by Spencer, John, KAU: The Kenya African Union (London and New York, 1985)Google Scholar; and Throup, David W., Economic and Social Origins of Mau Mau (London and Athens, Ohio, 1988).Google Scholar Even Gavin Kitching's study of the emergence of class divisions in Kenya is largely taken up with the ‘economic origins of Mau-Mau’, Class and Economic Change in Kenya: The Making of an African Petite Bourgeoisie, 1905–1970 (New Haven, 1980).Google Scholar

7 Martin Chanock makes a similar argument in his investigation of the creation and redefinition of customary law under colonialism. Law, Custom and Social Order: The Colonial Experience in Malawi and Zambia (Cambridge, 1985).Google Scholar See also Moore, S. F., Social Facts and Fabrications: ‘Customary’ Law on Kilimanjaro, 1880–1980 (Cambridge, 1986)Google Scholar; and Snyder, F. G., ‘Colonialism and legal form: the creation of “Customary law” in Senegal,’ J. of Legal Pluralism, XIX (1981), 49–90.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

8 Embu District, AR, 1932, KNA DC/EBU/1/2. In the early part of the decade Embu District also included Chuka, to the east of Embu. This area was later transferred to Meru District when the Kikuyu-speaking areas of Ndia and Gicugu, west of Embu, were added to Embu District. The population figure cited in the text is for the Embu and Mbeere sections of the district only.

9 The description here is drawn from Ambler, Charles H., Kenyan Communities in the Age of Imperialism: The Central Region in the Late Nineteenth Century (New Haven and London, 1988), 20–5, 43–9.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

10 Acting District Commissioner [D.C.], Embu to Provincial Commissioner [P.C.], 20 Feb. 1913, in P. C., , Province, Kenia, ‘Native courts and councils’, Minute Paper no. 19, 1913Google Scholar, KNA CP/6.1.1; East Africa: Report of the East Africa High Commission, Cmd. 2387 (HMSO, London, 04 1925), 39–40.Google Scholar

11 For the beginning of this process see Browne, G. St. J. Orde, The Vanishing Tribes of Kenya (London, 1925Google Scholar; reprinted Westport, Connecticut, 1970), 10.

12 Native Affairs Department, AR, 1931 (Government printer, Nairobi, 1932), 114; KNA, Embu District, AR, 1930, KNA DC/EBU/1/2.

13 Embu Political Records, Embu Division, KNA EBU/45/A/V. Embu District was divided into several Locations, each headed by a single chief. Mairani, an Anglican communicant, was appointed Chief of Gaturi Location in 1926. Interviews: ex-Chief Arthur Mairani, Gaturi, Embu, 24 Nov. 1977 and 12 Jan. 1978.

14 The Church Missionary Society had operated a mission in Embu, 1910–12, but had been forced to abandon the effort. Church Missionary Society Deposit, ‘Embu Medical Mission Log Book, 1910–1938’, KNA CMS 1/637. Consolata Fathers, Conquests for Christ in Kenya, 1902–1852 (Nyeri, Kenya, 1952), 63–6.Google Scholar Also, Kyeni Roman Catholic Mission, Baptismal Register, Kyeni Mission, Embu District.

15 For the circumcision crisis in Embu, see Murray, Jocelyn M., ‘The Kikuyu female circumcision controversy, with special reference to the Church Missionary Society's “sphere of influence” (Ph.D. dissertation, University of California at Los Angeles, 1974), esp. 245–63.Google Scholar The major original sources are the Embu Mission Log Book and district and provincial reports and files.

16 Kikuyu Province ARs, 1928–32, especially 1929, KNA PC/CP 4/1/1; and Embu District, ARs, 1928–32, especially, 1931 and 1933, KNA DC/EBU/1/2. Embu District, Local Native Council (LNC), Minutes, 1929–32, Embu County Council library (copies also deposited in KNA). Also, T. Colchester, personal communication, 1986. I owe special thanks to Colchester, who was a District Officer in Embu in 1932, for several pieces of correspondence relating to the issues discussed in this paper.

17 Embu District, AR, 1932, KNA DC/EBU/1/2.

18 Rosberg, Carl and Nottingham, John, The Myth of ‘Mau Mau’ (New York and London, 1966), 144–5, 155–6Google Scholar; Breen, Rita, ‘The politics of land: the Kenya Land Commission, 1932–1933, and its effects on land policy in Kenya’ (Ph.D. dissertation, Michigan State University, 1976), esp. 81.Google Scholar

19 Kenya Land Commission: Evidence and Memoranda, 3 vols. (Colonial no. 91) (London, 1934).Google Scholar John Iliffe explores the tribal basis of the colonial order in inter-war Tanganyika in A Modern History of Tanganyika (Cambridge, 1979), 318–41.Google Scholar

20 The role of the generation in central Kenya societies is discussed in Saberwal, , Political System of Embu, 47–68Google Scholar; H. E. Lambert, Kikuyu Social and Political Institutions Cavicchi, E., Problems of Change in Kikuyu Tribal Society (Bologna, 1977) [from a manuscript prepared in 1953], 207–14Google Scholar; Glazier, J., ‘Generation classes among the Mbeere of central Kenya’, Africa, XLVI (1976), 313–26CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Leakey, L. S. B., The Southern Kikuyu before 1903, III (London, 1977), 1278–84.Google Scholar

21 Glazier, , ‘Generation classes’, 314Google Scholar; Saberwal, , Political System of Embu, 47–8.Google Scholar

22 G. Kershaw has pointed out the numerous inconsistencies in accounts of generations in Kikuyu-speaking societies. ‘The land is the people: a study of Kikuyu social organization in historical perspective’ (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Chicago, 1972), 149.Google Scholar See also Glazier, , ‘Generation classes’, 315–16Google Scholar; Saberwal, , Political System of Embu, 52Google Scholar, and Mwaniki, H. S. K., Embu Historical Texts (Nairobi, 1974), 4, 31–2, 58, 112–13, 103–4, 120, 206–8, 212–13.Google Scholar The interviews I conducted produced no clear consensus. See for example, Waweru Kamwea, Nthagaiya, 11 June 1977. A particular problem for examining generations in Embu is that much of the information we have was collected by Lambert, who was not only personally involved in the 1932 ceremonies but had well developed notions of the importance and potential utility of generations derived from his experience in Meru District. Meru District, AR and Handing Over Report for 1929, KNA MRU/z.

23 Leakey, Notably, Southern Kikuyu, III, 1278–81Google Scholar; and for Embu, , Browne, Orde, Vanishing Tribes, 40.Google Scholar

24 H. S. K. Mwaniki, for example, suggests that during the nineteenth century particular ‘ruling generations’ had specific policies. ‘A political history of the Embu, c. a.d. 1500–1906’ (M. A. thesis, University of Nairobi, 1973), e.g. 292.Google Scholar

25 This passage is drawn from Lambert's account in 71s; Social and political institutions of Kikuyu’, and Embu District, AR 1932, KNA DC/EBU/1/2. This material is summarized in Saberwal, , Political System of Embu, 557–7.Google Scholar

26 Embu District, ARs, 1933 and 1934, KNA DC/EBU/1/2.

27 According to Leakey, it was the failure to complete the required payments that aborted succession ceremonies scheduled for southern Kikuyuland in the 1930s (Southern Kikuyu, III, 1278–9). Cavicchi claims that some of the initial payments were made in 1947 preparatory to succession in the 1960s in Kikuyuland (Kikuyu Tribal Society, 214, also 208–10).

28 Lambert, , ‘Social and political institutions of Kikuyu’, 275.Google Scholar

29 For a typical exposition of this view, see Rowlands, J. S., ‘Notes on native law and custom in Kenya’, J. African Law, VI (1962), 192–209.CrossRefGoogle Scholar The general point is drawn from Snyder, , ‘Colonialism and legal form’, 49Google Scholar, and Chanock, , Law, Custom and Social Order, 12–16, 73.Google Scholar

30 Lambert, , ‘Indigenous authorities in administration’, 15.Google Scholar

31 Embu District, AR, 1932, KNA DC/EBU/1/2.

32 Lambert, , ‘Social and political institutions of Kikuyu’, 275.Google Scholar

33 Tignor, , Colonial Transformation, 236–7.Google Scholar

34 Embu District, LNC, Minutes, 17 July 1925.

35 Ibid. 25 Nov, 1925; and Murray, , ‘Female circumcision,’ 277.Google Scholar

36 Murray, , ‘Female circumcision’, 316Google Scholar, and Addenda to Handing Over Report, I. R. Gillespie to J. H. Lambert, Embu District, 1939, I. R. Gillespie Papers, Rhodes House Library, Oxford, Mss. Afr. s. 663. Interviews: ex-Chief Arthur Mairani, Gaturi, 24 Nov. 1977; and Canon Daudi Petero, Kirigi, 27 Jan. 1978.

37 Tignor, , Colonial Transformation, 235–46.Google Scholar

38 Embu District, AR, 1930, KNA DC/EBU/1/2.

39 Murray, , ‘Female circumcision’, 252–3.Google Scholar Interview: Ruth Comely (Rev. Comely's daughter), Coolham, England, 22 April 1978. By this time the Anglican bishop had withdrawn his original letter.

40 Embu District, AR, 1931, KNA DC/EBU/1/2. The best sources for the crisis in the local C.M.S. missions are the mission diaries for Kabare Mission (in Ndia) and Kigari Mission (in Embu). C. M. S. Deposit, ‘Kabare Station Logbook’, KNA CMS 1/639; and ‘Embu Medical Mission: Logbook, 1910–8’, KNA CMS 1/637.

41 Interview: Canon Daudi Petero, Kirigi, 27 Jan 1978.

42 Embu District, ARs, 1930–3, KNA DC/EBU/1/2; and PC, Kikuyu Province, ‘Kikuyu Central Association (1930–1934)’, PC/CP.8/5/5. Interview: ex-Chief Arthur Mairani, Gaturi, 24 Nov. 1977.

43 Saberwal believes Lambert ‘did much to stimulate’ the 1932 ceremonies; Political System of Embu, 56. Kamwochere wa Nthiga makes the same claim; Interview, Embu Town, 11 Jan. 1978. T.C.Colchester has vigorously denied this assertion; personal communication, 30 July 1985. Lambert had only arrived in Embu District in Feb. 1932. See ‘List of officers, Embu’, DC, Embu, Embu Political Record Book, Part II, KNA DC EBU/3/2. Moreover, similar ceremonies had recently taken place in Meru and Ndia, and others were looming in Kikuyuland; Meru District, AR and Handing Over Report, 1929, KNA MRU/i; Murray, , ‘Female circumcision’, 216Google Scholar; and Cagnolo, C., The Akikuyu: Customs, Traditions and Folklore (Nyeri, 1933), 86.Google Scholar The contemporary evidence of African attitudes toward the ceremonies is sparse and suspect. The minutes of the Local Native Council, which were prepared by the district commissioner, are filled with statements by the local members which appear calculated to win official approval.

44 Embu District, AR, 1932, KNA DC/EBU/1/2. Interview: Elisha Mbogo, Kyeni, 27 Jan. 1978.

45 Rev. Rampley to Acting DC, Embu District, 4 Sept. 1931, Embu District, ‘Missions and churches’, KNA DC/EBU/9/1. Lambert and other British officials encouraged a ‘moderate’ faction of the local KCA, whose leader, Kamwochere wa Nthiga, soon eclipsed his more anti-European competitors. Before long, Kamwochere was lending support to government improvement programmes in official public meetings and from his seat on the LNC. Embu District, ARs, 1931 and 1932, KNA DC/EBU/1/2; Embu District, LNC, Minutes, e.g. 24 July 1935. Interview: Kamwochere wa Nthiga, Embu Town, 11 Jan. 1978. Also, personal communication, T. C. Colchester, 30 July 1985.

46 Interviews: ex-chief Arthur Mairani, Gaturi, 24 Nov. 1977; Daniel Ndegwa, Kevote, 31 Jan. 1978 (interview by S. Njiru). Ndegwa was an independent church leader and local political activist.

47 Interview: ex-chief Arthur Mairani, Gaturi, 24 Nov. 1977. Also, personal communication, T. C. Colchester, 30 July 1985.

48 Embu District, AR, 1932, KNA DC/EBU/1/2. Mwaniki, Embu Texts, 58.

49 Embu District, AR, 1931, KNA DC/EBU/1/2.

50 Rev. Rampley to Acting DC, Embu District, 4 Sept. 1931, Embu District, ‘Missions and churches’, KNA DC/EBU/9/1.

51 Embu District, AR, 1933, KNA DC/EBU/1/2.

52 Embu District, AR, 1930, KNA DC/EBU/1/2. Murray, , ‘Female circumcision’, 252–56, 260.Google Scholar Interview: ex-Chief Arthur Mairani, Gaturi, 24 Nov. 1977. Eventually, Chief Arthur faced church disciplinary action for his continued support and regulation of officially sanctioned clitoridectomy.

53 Murray, , ‘Female circumcision’, 261.Google Scholar

54 See ‘Kabare Station Logbook’, 13 Nov. 1935, KNA CMS 1/639; ‘Embu Medical Mission, Logbook, 1910–1938’, 28 March 1935, CMS 1/637; and ‘Inspector of Schools, Central Province, Report’, 18 April 1936, CMS Deposit, Embu Station, 1932–7, KNA CMS 1/378.

55 Embu District, AR, 1932, KNA DC/EBU/1/2. T. C. Colchester, personal communication. The creation and redefinition of customary law to enhance the chieftaincy is well documented in Chanock, Law, Custom and Social Order.

56 Browne, Orde, Vanishing Tribes, 40.Google Scholar Also, Embu District, AR, 1932, KNA DC/ EBU/1/2.

57 Interview: Kamwochere wa Nthiga, Embu Town, 11 Jan. 1978. Regarding recollections of the 1932 ceremonies that he collected during the early 1960s, Saberwal comments:‘For my informants they appear not to have had much significance’; ‘Political change among the Embu’ 48.

58 Most recently, Glazier, , ‘Generation classes’, 322.Google Scholar

59 Saberwal, , Political System of Embu, 58–63.Google Scholar

60 Glazier, , ‘Generation classes’, 322Google Scholar; Mwaniki, , ‘Political history of Embu’, 116Google Scholar; and Mwaniki, , Embu Texts, 42, 181.Google Scholar

61 Embu District, LNC, Minutes, 22 Nov. 1933.

62 Kenya Land Commission: Evidence, 1, 383 (evidence of G. St. J. Orde Browne).

63 Interview: Musa Kanyeru, Kyeni, 27 Jan. 1978. KNA: Kikuyu Province, AR, 1929, PC/CP.4/1/1.

64 Kenya Land Commission: Evidence, 1, 251, also 257. A witness from Chuka specifically denied that he was also Kikuyu, Ibid. 257.

65 Similarly, the conservatism of the Embu KCA gave it a political identity quite distinct from that of the more militant Kikuyuland KCA. See Embu District, ARs, 1933, 1934, '937. KNA DC/EBU/1/2; and DC, Embu to PC, Kikuyu Prov., 5 Jan. 1934, PC Kikuyu, ‘Kikuyu Central Association (1930–4)’, KNA PC/CP.8/5/5.

66 T. C. Colchester, ‘African land rights in Embu District: the Carter Land Commission in 1935’, manuscript, 16 March 1966, Rhodes House Library, Oxford, Mss. Afr. S 742, 1; also Rosberg, and Nottingham, , Myth of ‘Mau Mau’ 155.Google Scholar

67 Embu District, LNC, Minutes, 29 July 1932.

68 The amount was reduced to Shs. 500 because of the objections of the DC. Ibid. 2 Sept. 1932.

69 Kenya Land Commission: Evidence, 1, 89 (Chief Muruatetu), 257 (Kakuthi wa Ithogora), 249–50 (Memorandum from the KCA, Embu Branch), 388 (Orde Browne).

70 Kenya Land Commission: Evidence, 1, 257 (Kakuthi wa Ithogora). Embu District, AR, 1932, KNA DC/EBU/1/2.

71 Kenya Land Commission: Evidence, 1, 382 (Orde Browne). Also, Browne, Orde, Vanishing Tribes, 23–8.Google Scholar

72 Interview: Kamwochere wa Nthiga, Embu Town, 11 Jan. 1978. Mwaniki, , Embu Texts, 152.Google Scholar Note the assertion by J. Kenyatta that ‘the Kikuyu’ had occupied their present territory since ‘time immemorial’; Kenya Land Commission: Evidence, I, 428.

73 For the persistence of such traditions in Embu, see Saberwal, , Political System of Embu, 3.Google Scholar For their gradual disappearance, Mwaniki, , Embu Texts, 152.Google Scholar Godfrey Muriuki has described a similar evolution of Kikuyu tradition. A History of the Kikuyu, 1500–1900 (Nairobi, 1974), 6–11.Google Scholar

74 PC, Central Province, Embu District Political Record Book, KNA PC.CP 1/5/1; and Embu District, Embu Political Records, Embu Division, KNA EBU/45/A/V.

75 Kenya Land Commission, Evidence, 1, 89 (Chief Muruatetu), and 257 (Kakuthi wa Ithogora).

76 NAD, AR, 1934, p. 9. Embu District, LNC, Minutes, 1920s and 1930s, see especially 27 Nov. 1934.

77 Embu District, Embu Political Records, KNA EBU/45/A/IV.

78 Colchester, , ‘Embu land rights’, 1–2.Google ScholarGrant, H. M., DO, Keruguya, (Ndia), Kenya Land Commission, Evidence, 1, 940Google Scholar, citing the North Nyeri, AR, 1932. Senior Commissioner, Ukamba Province, ‘Native reserves: natives in reserves other than their own (I92I–I927)’, KNA PC/CP.16/1/1.

79 Kenya Land Commission: Evidence, 1, 553 (H. E. Lambert, Memorandum)

80 Kikuyu Province, AR, 1928, KNA PC/CP.4/1/1.

81 Kenya Land Commission: Evidence, 251 (Ndegerie wa Ngenu).

82 Ibid., 251 (Chief Kombo wa Munyiri).

83 Quoted in Ibid. 252.

84 Ibid. 515 (John W. Pease), and 533 (Lambert, Memorandum). Lambert's argument apparently failed to impress the Commission, which awarded Mwea to Ndia; the issue became moot after 1933 when Ndia became part of Embu District. See, Colchester, , ‘Embu land rights’, 3.Google Scholar

85 Sahlins, Marshall, ‘Structure and history’, ch. 5 in his Islands of History (Chicago, 1985), 144.Google Scholar

86 In Sahlins' words, culture is ‘the organization of the current situation in terms of the past‘(ibid. 155). See also Jonathan Friedman's penetrating critical essay on Sahlins's recent work, ‘Review Article: Islands of History, by Marshall Sahlins’, History and Theory, xxvi, i (1987), 72–99.Google Scholar

87 That these were not crudely calculated changes is evidenced by the fact that the same argument made before the Kenya Land Commission to justify Mbeere's claims to Mwea were still being repeated thirty years later. Colchester, , ‘Embu land rights’, 3.Google Scholar

88 Mwaniki, , Embu Texts, 251.Google Scholar