A New Hope for Nairobi
By JANE MEIKLEJOHN THE. police operation 'Anvil,' carried out against the Mau Mau in Nairobi during the week-end of April 25th, was not merely the latest in a series of attempts to deal with gangs in the city; it shows an advance in technique, which gives hope at last that the inhabitants can be delivered from the terror which has oppressed them. To realise what the advance is, it is necessary to consider the methods which have been used so far; they made the life of the ordinary peaceable Kikuyu almost unbearable and had a merely negligible effect upon the Mau Mau. After a year of these attempts to sup- press the gangs, the Mau Mau were still enforcing a boycott of bus services, and of the purchase of European cigarettes, by Africans; practically every Asian and African shopkeeper was paying 'protection money' lest his shop should be wrecked (as shopkeepers had to do in the poor districts of Chicago in the Twenties), and murders of Africans who dared to oppose the Mau Mau were taking place every week.
The first expedient that was used to try to combat the gangs was frequent examination of the documents carried by Africans; there were almost daily checks in the streets of Nairobi, and at police check-points on the main roads leading into the city. At the beginning of the Emergency the documents required were an identity card, an employment card and a Poll Tax receipt; in January, 1953, every Kikuyu man was also required to have a special identity card with his photograph on it. The taking of these photographs took several months and caused much trouble; unsophisticated Africans are frightened at being photographed and many of them refused; there was nobody to explain to them in their own language, and they couldn't explain themselves to a hurried white officer, so they were sent to prison. The gangsters however were not troubled; they could rely on forged cards. (The special identity cards have now been withdrawn because so many were found in Operation Anvil to be forgeries.) In ,April, 1953, a Kikuyu living outside Nairobi had to have a pass from the police or his employer in order to enter the city. As the poorer Kikuyu are dressed in the tattered remnants of European clothing, with no proper pockets, these documents rapidly became illegible; and in any case most constables of the Kenya Police cannot read. When I saw the laborious checks of these bits of paper going on in Delamere Avenue, I used to think of the war- time legend of the character who went in and out of Air Ministry for six months, with his special pass adorned with a photograph of Hitler.
If there was anything wrong with a man's .documents, and especially if they showed . him to be unemployed, he was arrested, and if he was suspected of any crime was detained; if not, he was sent back to the Kikuyu Reserve. Sometimes a man with all his documents in order would be arrested by a particularly stupid constable; a Government office was mildly annoyed when its chief messenger, with all the departmental mail, was taken into custody; an apology from the police mollified them until the following morning, when the messenger was arrested again at the same time and place.
The possibilities of terror in this process of checking and arrest were several; every African in Kenya feared that the police would beat him up once they got him to the police station, and in some cases this fear was only too true. Even if his papers were in perfect order, a Kikuyu who was caught by constables in a lonely street might be asked for money, and beaten if he had none to give them. If he was sent to a detention camp as a minor criminal he was comparatively lucky, as he got shelter, food and safety; but if he was sent back to the Kikuyu Reserve he might be murdered out of hand if he had enemies at home, or he might drift' along for a time, living on his relations or his clan, until finally in desperation he joined the nearest Mau Mau gang. There was no work and little food in the Kikuyu Reserve; about 100,000 people had been sent back there, from Nairobi, from European farms in the White Highlands, and even from Tanganyika, by th• end of 1953, and parts of the Reserve were congested before they arrived. Many Kikuyu were sent back because they had been sacked on some trivial pretext by white employers who were afraid to keep them, and they could not get another job. The more simple types were inevitably picked up in a‘police check and sent back; the clever and dishonest managed to dodge the police somehow, and lived by theft either single- handed, or as One of a gang.
The checking of documents went on for months with no effect on the Mau Mau except to supply hundreds of recruits for the gangs. So another method was tried. It was thought that the gangs could be suppressed if all the Kikuyu were evicted from the worst parts of Nairobi; they must be harbour- ing the gangsters, who would have to leave if the other Kikuyu were turned out. A start was made with the shanty settlements on the outskirts of the city; the shanties were built illegally; so they could be destroyed without a special order; the people were rounded up and hastily screened, and their houses were pulled down. Those who were found to be minor criminals were sent to prison, and the rest back to the Reserve. The owners of the sites, who were mostly Asians, had been making profits out of the illegal rents paid by the African tenants; but a public protest had to be made before the Government department coneerned with housing would take proceedings against the owners. • This clearance had no effect on the gangs in the city; so all the Kikuyn were then turned out of two of the African locations in Nairobi itself. Shopkeepers were turned out of their shops, and other people lost their homes and sometimes their jobs as well; once again there was a hasty screening, and once again some more Kikuyu went back to the Reserve. After this had been done the hold of Mau Mau over the African population was still as strong as ever; the murders, the robberies, the boycotts and the blackmail continued. children be able to go to school? Many Kikuyu children sr* very clever and very eager to learn. And will some familia ever be re-united, if the father is in prison and the rest of themi miles away lost in the enormous crowd of the Kikuyu Reserve 74
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