Squatters and the Roots of Mau Mau, 1905–1963. Tabitha Kanogo
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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 resident labour is largely employed in growing foodstuffs which are as a rule sold to the employers, the rate for maize and beans being one rupee a load’.67 As the figures in table 1.2 show, even as early as 1916–17, the extent of squatter cultivation was considerable.
TABLE 1.2
Source: KNA, Naivasha District Annual Report, 1916–17, pp. 2, 11.
While only some settlers produced enough maize for export, they all needed large quantities of it for milling into posho, which provided the main ration for their contract workers, mostly Luo, Luyia, Kisii, Maasai and some Kalenjin. Posho was also given to squatters during their first year of engagement before their crops matured.
Squatters found it surprising that contract labourers would willingly engage in labour contracts that forbade them to produce their own food crops, especially since the food rations were sometimes inadequate. Despite this, the contract labourers never put any pressure on the settlers to allow them to cultivate.68 As Karanja Kamau recalled:
The nduriri[non-Kikuyu especially from Western Kenya] labour had no shamba. They only got posho because they were monthly employees. They did not want shambas. They would even buy maize from the Kikuyu because the European posho was not enough. Yet it did not occur to them to dig the shamba.69
The Kikuyu squatters were bewildered by these contract workers who had only come ‘to work for their stomachs’. The odd contract worker might cultivate a vegetable garden, but on the whole, non-squatter labour did not cultivate land in the White Highlands. They had nothing to show for their efforts out there, which was what Kikuyu squatters found hard to understand. The bulk of these labourers were actually migrant target workers who signed on periodically when they wanted to raise money for specific cash needs at home, which might include items such as livestock for bride-wealth, taxes, school fees, or even a hoe (jembe). Once the labourer had accumulated enough money, he would return to his village ‘to rest’ and to attend to his personal and communal duties.70 Rest periods varied as much as the periods of contracted labour, although, with time, these labourers spent longer and longer periods at work, either on settler plantations or in urban areas, while their wives and families tended the family shambas in the village.71
In the period before 1918, an average squatter family cultivated between six and seven acres of land, which meant that a surplus was almost invariably available for sale. Since the African market provided a more profitable outlet for squatter produce than the settler buyers,72 most transactions were conducted at the various trading centres. Among those in Nakuru District were Subukia, Bahati, Ndundori, Njoro, Elburgon, Turi and Molo, where regular weekend markets were held, and large amounts of produce bought and sold. Urban proletarians from the various mushrooming townships in the White Highlands, especially Nakuru, were among the African customers for the squatters’ produce.
Asian traders would purchase squatter produce in bulk to dispose of, either wholesale or retail, in the various urban areas. ‘The best buyers, however, were those Kikuyu who came from Central Province’.73 These would include the new arrivals to the Settled Areas who had not yet gathered their first harvest and therefore were in a poor position to bargain. But, the most profitable trade was undoubtedly with individuals or traders from hunger-stricken Central Province.
Despite the availability of abundant land, squatter production was occasionally reduced to subsistence levels because of the low prices offered for the produce.74 Under these conditions, flooded markets discouraged the production of a surplus, and squatter produce would either be given to needy friends and relations from Central Province, or sold to them ‘at the same price as the Europeans’75, i.e. cheaply.
Squatter accumulation: livestock
In addition to growing maize and other surplus crops for sale, including cabbages, potatoes and peas, the Kikuyu squatters sought to accumulate livestock. In certain instances, they directly exchanged their foodcrops for livestock with the Dorobo, Tugen, Somali, Turkana or Maasai people.76 More often, however, goats and sheep were purchased at trading centres from their Somali, Tugen or Maasai owners.77 Sometimes squatters travelled long distances to purchase livestock: for example, from Nakuru to the Baringo District or from