Why Have Race Relations between Black Kenyans and ‘Asians’ Been so Acrimonious in Kenya?

The Mau Mau Emergency, one of the most violent episodes in Kenya’s colonial history which spanned from 1952 until 1960, has been subject to much debate amongst historians. It has on the one hand been seen as a nationalistic struggle for freedom from an oppressive colonial rule. On the other hand, it has been put forward that it was the breakdown of the Kikuyu tribe into a violent state of civil war. However, taken alone, neither of these explanations give the full picture of what Mau Mau was. Although the problems of colonial rule, in particular the issue of land and poverty, were the primary reasons for discontent amongst the Kikuyu people and Kenyans as a whole, this was not what Mau Mau itself was about. In fact, Mau Mau was the “widespread disaffection of the people brought about deliberately as part of a plan to cause a revolt”1, which amounted itself into a civil war amongst the previously unified Kikuyu people. Therefore, instead of it being a popular movement of the people, it was instead to a large extent carried out by a relatively small group of rebels as an attempt to subvert the government.

It must be acknowledged that the problems of colonial rule were the root cause of disaffection amongst the Kenyan people over this period, but this cannot be drawn out to the driving force behind Mau Mau, as other historians have argued. The primary cause of the disaffection was the issue of land. The colonial occupation meant that the indigenous people lost the vast majority of land that they had previously farmed to white European farmers, especially in the fertile White Highlands. For example, squatters were driven from their land, finding themselves without a home in the land of their birth.2 The fact that these squatters wer...

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...vil war amongst the Kikuyu, in which the once unified tribe was torn apart in a most horrific manner. However, this argument should not be taken to the extent of Africans reverting back to their primitive ways. Instead, it is clear that the sense of social injustice brought about by the flaws in the colonial rule of Kenya did bring about significant discontent amongst the indigenous population, but this was only to a limited extent what was behind Mau Mau, for it is clear that despite this discontent, there was little support from the Kikuyu for the violent ways of the insurgents. Therefore, despite the popular opinion in Kenya today that the Mau Mau fighters sacrificed their lives for freedom22, the logical conclusion from the evidence is that they were a violent minority who sought to subvert the government, which threw the Kikuyu people into a state of civil war.