Abstract
Johnstone Kenyatta was in 1925 a Christian, mission-educated Kikuyu from Kiambu, not in very good odour with his Presbyterian mission (on account of beer-drinking and marital irregularities), round about 28 years of age, in good employment in Nairobi as a water-meter-reader and stores clerk. He was a dandy when dressed for best in sun helmet and plus-fours, sociable and in general cutting quite a dash. He was not politically engaged and had been no part of Harry Thuku’s enterprise. James Beauttah,2 one of the first Africans to be recruited in 1910 for training as a telephone operator, persuaded him during 1925 to take an interest in the Kikuyu Central Association (KCA), which, led from Fort Hall by Joseph Keng’ethe, Jesse Kariuki and other members of the new African trading class, claimed continuity with Thuku’s East African Association.
‘Kenyatta was a braggart, a drunkard, a great womanizer but he knew his work well. He liked clean linen and was always well dressed. He was an expensive man but he also walked with courage.’ (A Kikuyu contemporary reminiscing about the 1920s)1
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Notes and References
John Spencer, The Kenya African Union (KPI/Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1985), p. 100.
The name Beauttah, by which he was known in adult life, is an anglicized form of Mbutu wa Ruhara. John Spencer, James Beauttah (Nairobi: Stellascope Publishing Company, 1983).
Jeremy Murray-Brown, Kenyatta (George Allen & Unwin, 1972; Fontana, 1974) pp. 103–4.
PRO CO 544/18 Colony and Protectorate of Kenya, Administrative Reports and Papers 1925, Native Affairs Department Annual Review, pp. 395–448.
Spencer, The Kenya African Union, p. 100n.25.
For example, S. H. La Fontaine, the DC Fort Hall, met with Kang’ethe and sixty other KCA members on 25 July 1927 and subsequently minuted, ‘The attitude of the members was most respectful and their behaviour orderly. As I have always maintained there is far more to be gained by allowing the Association to ventilate their opinions than by driving them underground.’ K[enya] C[entral] A[ssociation] files, K[enya] N[ational] A[rchives] K 968.17.
KNA, K 968.17.
Interview with Beauttah, Fort Hall 1964. Also Spencer, James Beauttah, p. 14. ‘Ever since my days in Uganda when I saw how successfully the Baganda had dealt with the British and how useful the Kabaka was in unifying them, I had urged that we Kikuyu get a Paramount Chief.’
KNA K.C.A. file, K 968.17. Joseph Kang’ethe and others to Grigg, 31 Dec 1925. DC Fort Hall to SC Nyeri, 2 January 1926. A ‘mass meeting’ of 600 Kikuyu sent a telegram to the Chief Native Commissioner asking for a reply to their petition, adding, ‘We, the very loyal subjects of the King, beg to say that we have been deprived of [the] only one educated Kikuyu we had in [the] country [presumably James Beauttah]’. The reply was a rebuke for the telegram’s ‘very needless expense’.
For a sensitive examination of the meaning and significance of Kenyatta’s journalism, see John Lonsdale in ‘“Listen While I Read”: The Orality of Christian Literacy in the Young Kenyatta’s Making of the Kikuyu’, in Louise de la Gorgendière et al. (eds), Ethnicity in Africa (Centre of African Studies, University of Edinburgh, 1996).
Muigwithania, vol. 1, no. 3, 25 July 1928, included a letter from G. H. M. Kagika, on the theme ‘We Kikuyu speak one language from Kabete to Meru. Then what prevents us agreeing together even as our language agrees?… Let us put away sneering such as, Who are they? Who are you? You Kabete folk. You Metumi-ites. You Gaki people… The editor also calls on chiefs and wealthy men to build houses of stone or brick and have their children sent to Europe ‘to be civilized by an education which is not curtailed’. KNA, K 968.17. Police translations are used in this and subsequent quotations. The translator was A. Ruffel Barlow, a lay missionary with the Church of Scotland Mission.
Muigwithania, vol. 1, no. 3, KNA, K 968.17.
PRO CO 544/25 Native Affairs Department Annual Report 1928 Vol. II.
L. S. Amery, My Political Life Vol. II War and Peace 1914–1929 (Hutchinson, 1953), pp. 360–2.
Amery, ibid, p. 362.
President, Kikuyu Central Association to Rt. Hon Sir Samuel Wilson, 30 May 1929. KNA. The KCA also asked that Swahili should be allowed in Legco and knowledge of it counted in the civilization test or, if not, that teaching of Swahili should be abolished in Kikuyu schools and only Kikuyu and English taught.
Spencer, The Kenya African Union.
Correspondence between the Kikuyu Central Association and the Colonial Office 1929–1930 (privately printed, London 1930).
Muigwithania, vol. 2, no. 2, July–August 1929. KNA.
Kenyatta, ‘Muigwithania’s Journey, 59 Castletown, West Kensington, W. 14, 15 April 1929’, in Muigwithania, vol. 1, no. 12 (editor Henry Gichuiri), May 1929. KNA.
Kenyatta, ‘The Voice of the Disseminator of the Work of the Country. The Town of London, England, 26 March 1929’, Muigwithania, vol. 1, no. 11, April 1929. This was his first report from London. It began, I wish first to return thanks to the Almighty for bringing me into this distant country and for taking me past all danger in the Great Sea.’ Its thesis was that Kikuyu must take steps to avoid the reproach that ‘The Black People have very much land and rich land but they do nothing with it: it remains idle.’
KNA Political Situation Report, Kiambu, 12 January 1930.
See Minority Rights Group, Female Circumcision, Excision and Infibulation: Facts and Proposals for Change (revised 1985 edition).
A. Fenner Brockway, Outside the Right (George Allen & Unwin, 1963), p. 59.
Kenyatta, Facing Mount Kenya, pp. 130–54.
PRO CO 544/28 Native Affairs Department Annual Report 1929 Vol. II. ‘The policy of the Government is not to attempt complete prohibition.’
There were 14 missionary societies in Kenya, Protestant and Roman Catholic, British, American, French and Italian. They maintained 67 British mission stations, 34 American, 13 French, 20 Italian and 8 Seventh Day Adventists. Eleven were in townships; the rest in the ‘native’ districts.
Spencer, Kenya African Union, p. 76.
D. C. Kiambu, ‘Political Situation Report…’.
Kikuyu Crisis, Church of Scotland Memorandum prepared by the Kikuyu Mission Council on Female Circumcision, 1 December 1931.
Sir Edward Grigg to Dr J. W. Arthur, 16 November 1929. ‘I could not shut my eyes to the fact impressed upon me by the Provincial Commissioner that you were generally regarded as an emissary of the Government.’ KNA.
F. B. Welbourn, East African Rebels (SCM Press, 1961). On syncretic teaching in Kavirondo see, for example, John Ainsworth, ‘Extract from My Record of Service, Chapter 30’, dealing with the case of ‘an educated Christian convert known as Johanna Owalo’, who preached against the Trinity and in favour of polygamy. Rhodes House. Also C. Makokha, ‘The Rise of African Sects among the Baluyia’ (Makerere, 1951, unpublished).
Kikuyu Crisis.
‘Translation of the Words of the Muthirigu or Kurururo Ngoma’, KNA.
Murray-Brown, Kenyatta, p. 141.
Rhodes House Mss Afr s.233(1) Acting Inspector of Schools to DC Fort Hall, 17 March 1931. ‘Dances and Meetings in the Fort Hall Reserve’.
Kikuyu Crisis. Shortly after he got back Kenyatta ‘was interviewed by the Kirk session of the church at Kikuyu of which church at one time he had been a member. He expressed regret at the impasse… He then applied to the DC Kiambu for official support in an attempt to bring peace between the malcontents and the mission. This was refused on the ground that there was a recognized authority in the district, namely the chiefs, and that any peace-making necessary should be achieved through them.’
Murray-Brown, Kenyatta, pp. 146–7.
Michael D. Callahan, ‘The Failure of “Closer Union” in British East Africa’, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, vol. 25, no. 2, May 1997, pp. 267–93.
Passfield to Beatrice Webb, 30 September 1931 in Webb Papers. Quoted by Gregory, India and East Africa, p. 368.
George Bennett, Kenya: A Political History (OUP, 1963), pp. 81–2.
John Lonsdale, ‘Jomo, God, and the Modern World’, in Lonsdale and Berman, The House of Custom: Jomo Kenyatta, Louis Leakey and the Making of the Modern Kikuyu, cites Andrei M. Pegushev, ‘The Unknown Jomo Kenyatta’, Egerton Journal, vol. 1, no. 2 (1993) (Njoro, Kenya), pp. 180 and 191–2.
Dr John Lonsdale has developed in his paper ‘Listen While I Read: The Orality of Christian Literacy in the Young Kenyatta’s Making of the Kikuyu’ an illuminating comparison between Kenyatta’s earlier forward-looking journalism and the more static, idealized picture he gives in his book.
Peter Mbiyu Koinange, ‘Jomo, Colleague in the Struggle for Freedom and Independence’, in Ambu H. Patel (ed.), Struggle for Release Jomo and his Colleagues (New Kenya Publishers, 1963), pp. 21–2.
Harry Thuku, Harry Thuku. An Autobiography. Thuku renamed his party the Kikuyu Provincial Association. According to its rule book, members ‘will be pledged to be loyal to HM the King of Great Britain and the established Government and will be bound to do nothing which… is calculated to disturb the peace, good order and government’, p. 97.
E. S. Atieno-Odhiambo, ‘The Formative Years, 1945–55’, in B. A. Ogot and W. R. Ochieng’, Decolonization and Independence in Kenya 1940– 93 (London: James Currey; Nairobi: East African Educational Publishers, 1995), pp. 27–30.
John Lonsdale, ‘Constructing Mau Mau’, in Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 5th Series, Vol. 40 (London, 1990), pp. 248–9.
PRO CO 822/3171 Memorandum of European Settlement Board Farmers, 6 September 1963. ‘Humble Petition of Chairman and Members of the Association of European Agricultural Settlement Board Farmers in Kenya’, 20 September 1963.
For example, Alexander (Sandy) Storrar, Assistant Director of the Department of Agriculture, carried out a recruitment campaign in Britain in May–June 1955. He got 25 men with capital of £10,000 upwards to agree to sell up in Britain and become tenant farmers in Kenya. Another 50 were just as keen and would be able to meet the £5,000 minimum required (Sunday Post, 3 July 1955). In November 1955 the European Agricultural Settlement Board announced that it planned to spend £1.75 million on a five-year plan to settle 175 to 200 new tenants or assisted owners (Sunday Post, 8 November 1955).
Rhodes House Mss Afr 746 Blundell 16/1. ff 1–12 Lord Francis Scott, ‘Self-Government for Kenya Now, Except for Reserves. Draft Outline’, n.d. The Governor for the self-governing section would also be High Commissioner for the reserves. Although Lord Francis’s proposed self-governing colony was to be essentially white-led, it would have displayed something of a multiracial character. In the Parliament there would have been 17 Europeans, 4 Hindus, 4 Muslims, 2 Arabs and 3 educated, detribalized Africans.
George Bennett, ‘From White Man’s Country to Kenyatta’s State’, in D. A. Low and Alison Smith, History of East Africa Vol. III (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976), p. 115.
Sir Wilfrid Woods, A Report on a Fiscal Survey of Kenya, Uganda and Tanganyika (Nairobi: Govt. Printer, 1946), pp. 82, 86.
Colony and Protectorate of Kenya, Legislative Council Debates Official Report, 22 November 1943, speech of A. B. Patel. Also see letter from Zablon Oti (Nairobi) in EAS, 6 December 1943: ‘An African touring the African districts for his own nomination is as upright and correct as others who tour their non-native constituencies seeking election to the Legco.’
Spencer, Kenya African Union, p. 126.
James Gichuru, shortly after this, became a headmaster and afterwards a government chief. However, he was detained during the Mau Mau Emergency and was thus able to become a leading though moderate politician, a steadying force in nationalist politics.
Rhodes House. Mss Brit Emp s.365. James Gichuru and W. W. W. Awori, ‘Memorandum of the Economic, Political, Educational and Social Aspects of the Africans in Kenya Colony’. Minutes by British administrators show that they were impressed by the thoroughness of the survey.
The Forty Club was so named because in theory all its members were circumcised in 1940, but other young ex-Servicemen were also included.
Bildad Kaggia, Roots of Freedom, 1921–1963 (Nairobi: East African Publishing House), p. 64.
The Forty Group was founded in 1946 by Henry Kahinga and Domenico Gatu. Many years later, after independence, Gatu described the first members as ‘hooligans, unemployed youths who wanted to cause trouble to the Government’ (Gatu to Spencer, 4 September 1972). In 1947 they founded the Nyeri Kikuyu Education Association but had to disband it for lack of funds. Spencer, Kenya African Union.
Spencer, James Beauttah.
How Awori managed to lose so much money is not altogether clear. He told the author that he was cheated by money-changers. Beauttah (Spencer, James Beauttah, pp. 64–5) says that he lost his baggage.
Interviews with W. W. W. Awori and Francis Khamisi, Nairobi 1961.
Beauttah says that Awori lost his baggage again once he got to England. ‘If he could not look after his own property, how could he represent our cause as well?’ (Spencer, Beauttah, pp. 64–5).
Ambu Patel is the compiler of Struggle for Release Jomo and his Colleagues (Nairobi: New Kenya Publishers, 1963) and has always allowed researchers generous access to his large personal archive on nationalist politics, mainly centring on Kenyatta.
Jack Roelker, Mathu of Kenya. A Political Study (Hoover Institution Press, Stanford, California, 1976). George Ndegwa, a member of the Kiambu Local Native Council, had openly declared in 1946 that he was the President of the KCA. He was sent to prison.
Interview with Sir Walter Coutts, 6 September 1963, Kampala. Also Rhodes House, Walter Coutts, Mss. Afr. s.1621. Spencer, Kenya African Union, p. 175.
George Bennett, Kenya. A Political History. The Colonial Period (OUP The Students’ Library 1, 1963), p. 117.
Interview with Awori, 1961. He claimed to have made £10,000 in trading crocodile skins.
An Awori editorial in Radio Posta of 5 November 1947 sets the tone. ‘An atmosphere of unrest had raged the country, the confidence in KAU was declining… Silence from the premier African political body reigned. Then the great hour of awakening came,… another big meeting in Nairobi. The President with all his glory commandeered the platform and for some 125 minutes he spoke. It was fiery with gusto and almost a harangue.’
Spencer, Beauttah, p. 89.
Oginga Odinga says that he first met Kenyatta in Kisumu in 1948, but he did not get out of his car. Odinga, Not Yet Uhuru (Heinemann, 1967), p. 98.
Odinga, Not Yet Uhuru, p. 99. Ogot, Central Nyanza 1900–60, pp. 270–1.
PRO CO 533/566/7 Kenyatta to Dugdale, 14 August 1950.
Jomo Kenyatta, ‘A Prayer for the Restoration of Our Land. Memorial to the S. of S. for the Colonies presented on behalf of the African people of Kenya on the occasion of his visit to East Africa, May 1951’. James Beauttah, ‘Memorandum on Educational, Agrarian, Social, Economical and Political Problems of Kenya, submitted by the Kenya African Union, Central Province branch’.
‘KAU Central Province. P.C.’s Comment on James Beauttah’s Memo, 12 September 1951’. KNA. ‘Due regard of African opinion is naturally given but those who have experience of the authors of this memo have had cause to be astonished by their stupidity, hostility to government and ruthless disregard of the general interests of the African.’
Blundell, So Rough A Wind (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1964), p. 83.
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© 1999 Keith Kyle
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Kyle, K. (1999). The Rise of African Nationalism. In: The Politics of the Independence of Kenya. Contemporary History in Context. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230377707_2
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