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Mapping Migration, Identity, and Space pp 159–192Cite as

Palgrave Macmillan

Jumping Tribal Boundaries: Space, Mobility, and Identity in Kenya

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Abstract

Kenya has endured periodic outbreaks of violence over land which arose primarily from new meanings that land and space took on at independence. Kenyans have struggled with the legacy of the colonial regime’s attempt to link collective identity with specific physical spaces. Their choices shaped violent communal conflicts over land since 1963. Some people became targets of violence but others did not. As identity is shaped by a person’s place within broader social systems, there are risks and opportunities in migration and boundary crossing. Media reports depicting Kenyan communal violence as the result of tribal friction miss a key point. Due to the inherent flexibility of identity in East Africa, it was possible for marginalized people to acquire land by blurring, if not changing, their identities. But land is finite. Overly successful landed people, particularly if they have “foreign” origins, in marginal societies are often dangerously exposed.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Kenya, Legislative Council Debates, 8 May 1962–27 July 1962, 800–1.

  2. 2.

    Spear, “Neo-Traditionalism,” 16.

  3. 3.

    Lugard, Dual Mandate, 200–1, 212–3.

  4. 4.

    Brubaker and Cooper, “Beyond ‘Identity,” 9.

  5. 5.

    Some notable examples include the Chagga of Tanzania, the Lomwe of Malawi, and Kenya’s Luhya, Kalenjin, and Mijikenda communities.

  6. 6.

    Lonsdale, “Moral and Political Argument in Kenya,” 76, 79.

  7. 7.

    In 1959, the army specifically warned recruiters to check the identification documents of applicants in the Kamba districts to prevent Kikuyu impostors from posing as Kamba. Report on Wakamba Recruiting Safari, February–March 1959, British National Archives (BNA) WO 305/996.

  8. 8.

    Lonsdale and Berman, Unhappy Valley, 20; Waller, “Acceptees and Aliens,” 228–30; Peterson, Creative Writing, 10–13.

  9. 9.

    The Catholic Church refused to acknowledge these boundaries. Chuka-Mwimbi by J. W. Arthur, 13 January 1915, University of Edinburgh, Barlow Papers, Gen 1786/1i.

  10. 10.

    Maini, Land Law in East Africa, 21, 27.

  11. 11.

    Morgan, “‘White Highlands,’” 141.

  12. 12.

    Civil Case 626/1921, 104, Law Reports.

  13. 13.

    Kenya Colony, Report of the Kenya Land Commission, 350–1.

  14. 14.

    Pole-Evans, Report on A Visit to Kenya, 3; Anderson, “Depression, Dust Bowl, Demography and Drought,” 321–2.

  15. 15.

    Clough, Fighting Two Sides, 65, 69.

  16. 16.

    Zeleza, “The Colonial Labour System in Kenya,” 177–8.

  17. 17.

    Clayton and Savage, Government and Labour, 131–3; Lonsdale and Berman, Unhappy Valley, 112–3.

  18. 18.

    Masai Extra-Provincial District Report, 1946, Kenya National Archives (KNA) PC/SP/1/2/3; Report by E. A. Sweatman, 3 November 1947, BNA, CO 1018/27/1.

  19. 19.

    Waller, “Acceptees and Aliens,” 233, 237, 250; Parsons, “Local Responses to the Ethnic Geography,” 508–8; Parsons, “Being Kikuyu in Meru,” 76–8.

  20. 20.

    Parsons, “Being Kikuyu in Meru,” 76–7.

  21. 21.

    Sir Joseph Byrne to Colonial Secretary, 20 February 1936, BNA, CO 533/446/2/1; The Problem of the Squatter, 19 March 1946, BNA, CO 1018/28.

  22. 22.

    Kenya Colony and Protectorate, Report of the Kenya Land Commission, 2–3, 520.

  23. 23.

    Quoted in Breen, “The Politics of Land,” 198.

  24. 24.

    Hirst, The Struggle for Nairobi, 50.

  25. 25.

    East Africa Protectorate, Nairobi Sanitary Commission, 12.

  26. 26.

    Foran, Kenya Police, 68.

  27. 27.

    Hirst, The Struggle for Nairobi, 96–7.

  28. 28.

    Parsons, “Kibra is Our Blood,” 99–100

  29. 29.

    Memorandum by Chief Native Commissioner E. B. Hosking, c. September 1930, Rhodes House Library Oxford University (RHL) Mss Afr. s. 633, Box 5.

  30. 30.

    Cell, By Kenya Possessed, 124–5.

  31. 31.

    Report by Captain Kitching, Superintendent of Kibera, 12 December 1945, KNA, MAA/2/1/3/II/227a.

  32. 32.

    Interview with Ahmed Ali Farjalla, Kibera Location, December 1993.

  33. 33.

    Secretariat Circular, Statement of Government Interim Policy with Regard to Interpenetration and Infiltration in Native Land Units, 13 August 1947, KNA, OPE 1/354/71; African Land Use Settlement Board Minutes, 20 May 1948:, KNA, BV 23/47/257.

  34. 34.

    Thornton White, Nairobi Master Plan, 35, 49.

  35. 35.

    Anderson, Histories of the Hanged, 23–6.

  36. 36.

    Minutes of Kikuyu Ex-Soldiers Company, Thika Branch, 27 February 1946, KNA, MUR/3/1/11; Spencer, James Beauttah, 57.

  37. 37.

    Officer-in-Charge Masai Extra-Provincial District to Chief Secretary, 22 August 1945, KNA, OPE 1/354/23; Parsons, “Being Kikuyu in Meru,” 76; Parsons, “Local Responses to the Ethnic Geography,” 517.

  38. 38.

    Arthur Chahira Wado to Kenya Governor, 20 March 1947, KNA, OPE 1/460/137.

  39. 39.

    Ngugi Kabiro, Man in the Middle, 18.

  40. 40.

    Bennett and French, Kenya Papers of General Sir George Erskine, 25.

  41. 41.

    Nairobi Extra-Provincial District Handing Over Report by A. C. Small, KNA, OPE 1/408/1/1; Mathu, Urban Guerrilla, 20; Anderson, Histories of the Hanged, 201–5.

  42. 42.

    DC Embu to PC Central Province, 26 January 1953; KNA, PC CP 9/21/1/297; DO Ngong to DC Kajiado, 31 March 1953, KNA, PC NGO 1/1/16/60; DC South Nyanza to Secretary for Agriculture, 17 June 1954, KNA, DP 1/111/270; Kershaw, Mau Mau from Below, 336.

  43. 43.

    Kabiro, Man in the Middle, 49; Bennett and French, Kenya Papers of General Sir George Erskine, 195.

  44. 44.

    Swynnerton, Plan to Intensify the Development of African Agriculture, 58, 61; Interview with Sir Roger Swynnerton, London, 1994.

  45. 45.

    Johnson, Colony to Nation, 137.

  46. 46.

    Vinnai, “Africanization of the White Highlands,” 7; Leo, Land and Class in Kenya, 95, 104.

  47. 47.

    Adjournment Motion by L. G. Sagani, 6 June 1961, Legislative Council Debates, 11 May–21 July 1961; Secretary of State for the Colonies to Kenyan Council of Ministers, 18 January 1962, BNA, CO 822/2000/4a.

  48. 48.

    Colonial Office Memo, Special Minority Problems, 9 January 1961, CO 822/1997/28; Secretary of State for the Colonies’ Meeting with the Masai Delegation, 27 November 1961, CO 822/2000/14; Notes for 3rd Meeting of Masai Delegations, 2 April 1962, BNA, CO 822/2000

  49. 49.

    Great Britain, Kenya, 6; Great Britain, Kenya Report of the Constituencies Delimitation Commission, 1.

  50. 50.

    Arnold, Kenyatta, 153.

  51. 51.

    Comments on the Road Transportation Route in Kenya, December 1961, BNA, FCO 141/7002; Ference, “Moving Targets,” 104.

  52. 52.

    Colony of Kenya, Survey of Unemployment, 33; Vinnai, “Africanization,” 4.

  53. 53.

    Ominde, Land and Population Movements, 189–90; Précis of the Report on the Squatter Problem, 7 March 1966, KNA, BN/97/3.

  54. 54.

    Kenya People’s Union, Wananchi Declaration.

  55. 55.

    Professor Washington Olima, in Muganda and Ayieko, “Experts Warn on Explosive Land Matters.”

  56. 56.

    Karuga, Action Towards A Better Nairobi, 15, 33–4; Centre on Housing Rights and Evictions, Forced Evictions, 45.

  57. 57.

    “MP Warns of Plot to Grab City Market,” Daily Nation, 12 April 1999; “Give Station Back to City Commuters,” Daily Nation, 30 May 1999; “More Join ‘The Battle of Kenya National Theatre,’” Daily Nation, 3 October 1999.

  58. 58.

    Judicial Commission, Report of the Judicial Commission, 10.

  59. 59.

    U.S. Department of State, “Kenya Human Rights Practices, 1994, “February, 1995.”

  60. 60.

    Judicial Commission, Report of the Judicial Commission, 57.

  61. 61.

    Hintjens, “Explaining the 1994 Genocide in Rwanda,” 247.

  62. 62.

    King, “Education and Ethnicity in the Rift Valley,” 7.

  63. 63.

    Judicial Commission, Report of the Judicial Commission, 8, 43–5.

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  1. Department of History, Washington University, St. Louis, MO, USA

    Timothy H. Parsons

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Romance Languages and Literatures, Washington University, St. Louis, MO, USA

    Tabea Linhard

  2. Department of History, Washington University, St. Louis, MO, USA

    Timothy H. Parsons

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Parsons, T.H. (2019). Jumping Tribal Boundaries: Space, Mobility, and Identity in Kenya. In: Linhard, T., Parsons, T.H. (eds) Mapping Migration, Identity, and Space. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-77956-0_7

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