Forced villagization during the shifta conflict in Kenya, ca. 1963-1968

International Journal of African Historical Studies

Volumn 45, Issue 3, 2012, Pages 343-364

  Whittaker, Hannah ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF LONDON   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 84872334093     PISSN: 03617882     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Review

References (38)

1. Command Paper 1900, Kenya: Report of the Northern Frontier District Commission (London: Her Majesty's Government, 1962).
2. Richard Dale, "A Comparative Reconsideration of the Namibian Bush War, 1966-1980," Small Wars and Insurgencies 18 (2007), 203.
3. This was particularly the case in Tanzania. Helge Kjekshus, "The Tanzanian Villagization Policy: Implementational Lessons and Ecological Dimensions," Canadian Journal of African Studies 11 (1977), 271.
4. Michael Jennings, "'A Very Real War': Popular Participation in Development in Tanzania during the 1950s and 1960s," International Journal of African Historical Studies 40 (2007), 76, 78.
5. Martha Finnemore, "Redefining Development at the World Bank," in Frederick Cooper and Randall Packard, eds., International Development and the Social Sciences: Essays on the History and Politics of Knowledge (London: University of California Press, 1997), 203, 207.
6. John G. Galaty, "Introduction," in John G. Galaty and Pierre Bonte, eds., Herders, Warriors and Traders: Pastoralism in Africa (Boulder: Westview Press, 1991), 4.
7. David Anderson, "Rehabilitation, Resettlement, and Restocking: Ideology and Practice in Pastoralist Development," in David Anderson and Vigdis Broch-Due, eds., The Poor are Not Us: Poverty and Pastoralism (Oxford: James Currey, 1999), 240, 245.
8. Mukhisa Kituyi, Becoming Kenyans: Socio-Economic Transformation of the Pastoral Maasai, (Nairobi: Acts Press, 1990), 85-96.
9. Daniel Branch, Kenya: Between Hope and Despair, 1963-2011 (London: Yale University Press, 2011), 30.
10. Without further investigation it is difficult to quantify the overall reduction of livestock holdings as a consequence of government confiscations. Nonetheless, other research that has been conducted on the pastoral economy in northern Kenya has certainly identified the shifta conflict as a period of heightened destitution in the course of general pastoral decline. While this must take into account the effects of disease, and a severe drought during 1965 and 1966, the role played by stock seizures must be considered. For an example of the literature, see Richard Hogg, "The New Pastoralism: Poverty and Dependency in Northern Kenya," Africa: Journal of the International African Institute 56 (1986), 319-33.
11. Hansard, Volume V Second Session, 3 June 1965, Cols. 144-46.
12. For one example, see "Kenya Today" program, Nairobi Regional Service, 17.00 GMT, 24 June 1966, BBC Monitoring Service, Second Series, Middle East and Africa, No. 2200, BBC World Archive.
13. See Caroline Elkins, Imperial Reckoning: The Untold Story of Britain's Gulag in Kenya (New York: Henry Holt, 2005);
14. David Anderson, Histories of the Hanged: Britain's Dirty War in Kenya and the End of Empire (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2005).
15. Anderson, Histories of the Hanged, 314.
16. Branch, Kenya, 33.
17. Hansard, Volume X Part 2, 15 December 1966, Cols. 2829-30.
18. "Aide Memoir: Shifta Operations," compiled by D.N. Ndegwa, 16 June 1966, BB/12/49, KNA.
19. This is a central finding of doctoral research on the shifta conflict. See Hannah Whittaker, "A Socio-Economic History of the Shifta Conflict in Kenya, c. 1963-8," (Ph.D. thesis, University of London, 2011).
20. Bruce Berman, Control and Crisis in Colonial Kenya: The Dialectic of Domination (London: James Currey, 1990), 8.
21. Bruce Berman, "Structure and Process in the Bureaucratic States of Colonial Africa," in Bruce Berman and John Lonsdale, eds., Unhappy Valley: Conflict in Kenya and Africa Book One: State and Class (London: James Currey, 1992), 144.
22. Berman, Control and Crisis, 347-8.
23. Proposed Post-Emergency Development Plan for Garissa, 1968-72, 5 April 1968, SK/3/1, KNA.
24. See comments made in Parliament by Mr. G.F.O. Oduya, MP for Elgon West. Hansard, Volume X Part II Forth Session, 4 November 1966, Cols. 1720-52.
25. Hansard, Volume XII Part II Fifth Session, 12 July 1967, Cols. 2077-78.
26. Mau Mau detention centers were surrounded by barbed wire fences and a fifty-foot deep trench, while rows of wooden huts were constructed at regular intervals. See Anderson, Histories of the Hanged, 311-12.
27. Proposed Post-Emergency Development Plan for Mandera, 7 February 1968, SK/3/1, KNA.
28. Report of the Annual Community Development Conference, 7-9 December 1966, PC/GRSSA/3/11/1, KNA.
29. Ton Levs and Cynthia Salvadori, Aadaa Boraanaa: A Dictionary of Borana Culture (Addis Ababa: Shama Books, 2006), 667.
30. See Johnnie Carson, "Kenya: The Struggle against Terrorism," in Robert I. Rotberg, ed., Battling Terrorism in the Horn of Africa (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2005).
31. With this in mind, the following reconstruction of d'aba village life has been achieved using the methodological precedent set by Caroline Elkins in her study of Mau Mau detention camps. Elkins argues that by conducting a range of interviews with former detainees, who all evoke similar illustrations of events passed and experiences encountered, she was able to build up a general picture of life in a detention center. Inthe case of the d'aba during shifta, where the oral data does differ in specific details, when put together nonetheless provides a broad illustration of village life. See Elkins, Imperial Reckoning, 374.
32. For a discussion of the cultural value attached to livestock among the Somali and Boran, see I.M. Lewis, Peoples of the Horn of Africa: Somali, Afar and Saho (London: International African Institute, 1955)
33. and Gudrun Dahl, Suffering Grass: Subsistence and Society of Waso Borana (Stockholm: University of Stockholm, 1979) respectively.
34. See Lewis, Peoples of the Horn of Africa, 74.
35. Gudrun Dahl makes the same point in relation to the Waso Boran. See Dahl, Suffering Grass, 35.
36. Hansard, Volume XII Fifth Session, 13 June 1967, Cols. 931-40. In making the comment Ngei seems to be drawing on his own experience of detention, and of the British use of screening during Mau Mau.
37. Rose Odengo, "Skeletons of 100 Victims Presented as Isiolo Evidence," Daily Nation, Tuesday 28 June 2011;
38. Truth, Justice and Reconciliation Commission (TJRC), NEP Special Pull-out, (August 2011).