THE OFF-WHITE HIGHLANDS
Sut,—In answer to Mr. F. S. Joelson, it is true both that Mr. Culwick declared that 'a great many of us are prepared to see the principle of Africans farming in the Highlands' and, as I wrote, that 'Right-wing Europeans of Group Captain Briggs's United Party condemned' the Sessional Paper on the White High- lands utterly—and publicly. Group Captain Briggs did so himself. Mr. Joelson must not blame me if the United Party speaks with two voices. (I am not very clear what is meant by being 'prepared to see the principle of Africans farming in the Highlands.')
I am surprised that Mr. Joelson reads the phrase 'Kenyatta's supposed but not very definite complicity in Mau Mau' as a 'misrepresentation of the plain facts' that Kenyatta was sentenced and has been arbitrarily detained in banishment ever since his term expired. I stated these facts plainly in my article. It is impossible to be satisfied that the whole truth about Kenyatta's relation to Mau Mau has ever been established. No one who thinks it has can have studied the case—or heard of Macharia. He was one of the main witnesses against Kenyatta. He sub- sequently made an affidavit that his evidence had been false and that he had been coached by the authorities and offered a trip to England and a course in social science in return for giving it. The Government denied this and he was convicted of perjury for swearing a false affidavit. But the episode did not help to clarify the case.
`Mr. Creighton implies that no European may be willing to sell or rent land in the Highlands to a non-European.' I do not understand the force of Mr. Joelson's 'may.' If he had written 'will not be willing,' I should reply that I wrote: 'Nothing com- pels any European to [sell to a non-European]; if none will, he is unlikely to get in.' Does Mr. Joelson disagree? I will add now that my bet is that very few would, though Mr. Joelson is entitled to a different opinion.
May I ask Mr. Joelson two questions? Does he deny that the Sessional Paper on the White Highlands was badly received by a large number of Kenya Europeans? And would he care to predict publicly how many Africans, approximately, will be farming in the Highlands five years after the Sessional Paper becomes law, if it does?—Yours faithfully,
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