UNCIRCUMSPECT
IT WAS daring of the feminists to hold their conference of the United Nations Decade for Women at Nairobi, the holy place of male supremacy. Indeed the mili- tant anti-feminist organisation founded in Holborn a few years ago has taken its name from the late, great Kenyan anthropologist and thinker, the Jomo Kenyatta Society. Modern feminists do not know that the first stirrings of anti-colonial agitation among the Kikuyu people arose, not so much over land but over the efforts of Christian missionaries to stop the practice of female circumcision. The Scottish Pres- byterians were especially exercised over this matter. They said the practice was not only cruel but encouraged various lewd practices at initiation ceremonies. An elderly Scottish lady was killed by some Kikuyu who had forcibly circumcised her. The incident horrified the world and is still discussed with prurient curiosity in South Africa. When Jomo Kenyatta came to England in 1930 to put the case for Kikuyu land reform he found to his dismay that liberal-minded people wanted to talk of nothing but female circumcision. In his great anthropological work on the Kikuyu, Facing Mount Kenya, Kenyatta wrote a spirited defence of the practice, which he strongly maintained was conducive to chastity.
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