By: Staff
Symbolism has always been at the heart of the British monarchy. So, too, was King Charles III’s recent visit to Kenya, an East African nation gearing up to celebrate its sixth decade of independence from Britain.
For Charles and Camilla, the royal couple, the symbolism was obvious as Kenya was the place where Princess Elizabeth learned of her father’s death, which meant she was to become Queen. That was February 1952.
Britain and Germany together, again
A few months later, in October 1952, a state of emergency was declared in Kenya to put down the Mau Mau rebellion, perhaps the fiercest anti-colonial struggle in the history of the British Empire. The Mau Mau were seeking an end to colonial rule, a restitution of land rights, a return to native traditions, and an expulsion of foreigners from Kenya.
Foreigners first came to Kenya after 1886, when Britain and Germany signed a treaty to agree on their respective spheres of influence in East Africa, finalizing the deal by 1890. This fact is another piece of symbolism, as Germany’s current president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, was vising Tanzania, once part of Deutsch-Ostafrika, at a time when Charles III was heading for Nairobi. Both were expected to offer an apology for their countries' wrongdoings during the colonial era.
In Kenya, these included not only the brutal suppression of the Mau Mau upheaval, which featured aerial bombings, mass deportations, even concentration camps, but also a broader legacy of white settlement. Fertile lands and an accommodating climate in the central uplands attracted the attention of British administrators, who believed Kenya could be more than a colony but “a territory admirably suited for a white man’s country.”
Incidentally, the country’s White Highlands were even deemed convenient for a Jewish homeland, with Colonial Secretary Joseph Chamberlain inviting a special “investigatory commission” of Herzl’s Zionist organization in 1903. This, however, was met with resentment from British settlers, who were coming to Kenya in increasing numbers, especially after World War I. This was facilitated by the Crown Lands Ordinance of 1915, legislation that essentially snatched away any rights that Kenya's indigenous population had to their land.
Kenya soon became Britain’s first colony to enfranchise women, albeit with the goal of consolidating the dominance of the European minority over the African population, whose interests were still represented by a nominated member of the Legislative Council, sure to be of European origin.
When the teacher Eliud Mathu was appointed as the first African member of the body in 1944, it was too late, as the local population was seeking another way to have their say. That year, the Kenya African Union was founded, with Jomo Kenyatta soon emerging at its helm. In 1951, they demanded independence by 1954, only to be rejected and banned. It was not until December 1963 that Kenya, through a quest“monstrous in its cruelty,” achieved its independence, the last in East Africa to so do.
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