by Frank Coates
He’d strayed from his prepared speech, which was more of a eulogy, but his fury and resentment swept him onwards.
‘We all know Peter, and we all know he had one enemy. Before he died he told me the name of the person who beat him to the point of death. Will we stand for this?’
A roar went up.
‘Are we going to allow them to do this to our friend Peter Gikuri?’
‘No!’
Now he had no idea how to bring the rally to any other conclusion than to bring Visram to justice.
‘Will you march with me to the house of the murderer?’
‘Yes!’
Jelani waved them to follow him and, before leaping down from his platform, noticed that the white men at the back of the crowd had gone.
When Jelani’s crowd of students and sympathetic workers arrived at Nasar Visram’s house in Owen Road, they found another group of protesters already there. According to their banners and handmade placards bearing scrawled slogans, they were members of two groups: the Labour Trade Union of East Africa and the Kenya African Union.
A short but strongly built man with a rimless beaded hat was addressing the crowd in Swahili through a loud-hailer. Jelani could sense the tension in the gathering. The line of administration police forming a cordon around the house appeared to be very nervous.
‘It is not enough that the government denies our just calls for a fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work,’ the man in the beaded cap cried. ‘But now they deny justice to our fallen brother — a young man not long from his home and now murdered by one of his supervisors.’
He gave a surprisingly accurate summary of Gikuri’s life in the village — he’d obviously prepared well for his address — and described how difficult it was for Africans in rural areas to survive under the heel of the colonial government.
‘And these people,’ he went on, ‘in the reserves and villages, or in the squatters’ camps now spread all over what was once their land, can barely survive on what they can grow. They must spend time working for the white owner so they can pay their taxes. And if they don’t doff their cap and say “please, bwana, thank you, bwana”, he can put bad words on their kipandes, and chase them away.’
Here he held up the small metal box containing his own papers.
‘And that means they may never get another job, or never be able to find a place to stay.’
He paused, his fierce eyes glaring out at the crowd. ‘Should that be allowed?’
‘No!’ came the loud reply.
‘Is it justice?’
‘No!’
‘Will you stand aside and let such injustice go unanswered?’
‘No!’
Jelani was touched by his eloquence. Here was a master at work. His own attempts to motivate his fellow students paled into insignificance. The man, a Kikuyu by his accent, had captured the imagination of the crowd. They clung to his every word. When he evoked anger, they grew angry. When he wanted them to lift their voices in protest, they did so. If he needed silence he only had to lift one finger and the mob became as quiet as churchgoers. He was more than a orator: he was a maestro commanding the emotions within the crowd.
What had begun as a protest about the death of a worker had been transformed into a powerful political event without anyone noticing. Just as suddenly he was again railing against the murder.
‘Are we going to let these people beat us and kick us until, like our fallen friend, we are lying bleeding on the ground?’ he cried.
‘No!’
Abruptly returning to his political message, he drew upon experiences in his early life to illustrate the callousness of white authority. He spoke of how the white missionaries had destroyed native Africans’ traditions and religions, and in the process forced them to Christianity and capitalism. He told of land seized and villages stolen. The stories resonated in Jelani and within the crowd. Discontent and anger grew with the number of the white invaders’ atrocities.
A chant commenced within the ranks of the mob. ‘Jomo! Jomo! Jomo!’
As it grew in intensity the speaker raised his voice.
Finally, he delivered the challenge: ‘Will we stand for this injustice?’
‘No!’
Jelani could hardly hear or recognise his own voice, added to the thunder of voices surrounding him. It wasn’t a human sound, and he couldn’t identify it as his own — it was more akin to the roar of a savage beast.
The mob surged past him, towards Visram’s house. Jelani was at the rear of the crowd and followed, chanting Jomo! Jomo! Jomo! with everyone else.
The police held their lines against the push, using their riot sticks to belt the first line of men. Unseen by the police reinforcements observing from the other side of the square, Visram appeared at his door with an ancient blunderbuss in his hands and waved it in the air before releasing a panicked volley over the men’s heads.
Hearing the shot, the officer in charge fired his revolver. From their hiding places behind the house, two columns of reservists mounted a baton charge against the crowds’ flanks.
The battle raged for ten minutes.
Jelani and his friends ran to safety before the police could arrest any of them. Others were not as lucky. Twenty men were hospitalised, and one man died from his head injuries.
The brutal bashings of his fellow students and others present shocked Jelani. But the abiding memory he took from the day was that of the speaker who had, in a short time, changed Jelani’s view of matters he had previously accepted as part of life under British law. The speaker was right: the British had no right to take away land belonging to Africans. Strangely, as they repeatedly preached the need for law and order, they had behaved in a manner simply unjust.
The gnawing pain of this injustice kept him awake all that night.
A week after addressing his fellow students in the compound, Jelani was called into the school’s head office. There were two other men present, but they were not introduced. Jelani was invited to take a seat.
‘Mr Karura,’ the principal began. ‘These gentlemen here, from our security department, have informed me that you addressed a group of students in the compound last Saturday night. Is that so?’
The principal, Mr J V Pavitt, had been involved in education since arriving in East Africa from Gujarat thirty-five years before. He was a mild-mannered man, much respected among the students in the trade school. ‘Jelani,’ he added with a smile, ‘you don’t have to answer if you don’t want to.’
Jelani looked from Pavitt to the two other men. They were hard-faced, clearly more accustomed to breaking heads than educating them. He imagined they were among the white faces he’d spotted at the back of the crowd that day.
‘I was there,’ he said.
‘And what was the purpose of the gathering?’
‘It was about Peter Gikuri.’
‘A commemorative meeting?’ Pavitt offered.
Jelani didn’t understand the term.
‘A meeting to farewell your friend, Mr Gikuri.’
Jelani nodded.
‘And what ’appened after that, eh?’ It was the closest of the other two who spoke.
Jelani hesitated.
Pavitt sent Jelani an intense look, indicating he should be cautious, but Jelani didn’t know how and wasn’t sure why.
‘You took your gang down to Nasar Visram’s house, didn’t you?’ the second white security man demanded.
Again Jelani kept silent.
The man leaned forwards in his chair. ‘Just because one of your friends — a cheeky black bastard — gets what was comin’ to him, you get all upset about it. Ain’t that so, eh?’
Jelani bristled.
‘If I had my way, I’d have a few of my lads into that dormitory of yours and teach you a lesson about obeyin’ the law. As for your little mate, well … he got what he deserved, he did. The thievin’ little prick!’
‘He was not a thief! He was working and Visram beat him to death.’
> ‘And you decided to do something about it.’
‘Yes, we marched to his house to show he can’t get away with it. Nobody can.’
‘So you led the march?’
‘Of course. What else could I do? He was a friend.’
The security man nodded, smiling.
Pavitt looked ill and let his shoulders slump.
As Jelani packed his handful of belongings into a burlap maize sack, he tried to imagine his future. The man from the Harbours and Railways security department spitefully told him that his name would be circulated throughout Mombasa, and nobody would employ him now. There was no opportunity to return to Nairobi and his previous job in the railways, and he couldn’t face going back to his shoeshine business. An ignominious return, empty-handed, to Cook’s farm appeared to be his only option.
A man appeared at the door and spoke to the nearest student.
‘That’s him, there,’ the student said, pointing to Jelani.
The man introduced himself as Chege Muthuri, and asked Jelani if he could talk to him in private.
Jelani shrugged and followed the man into the night, making a gesture to the other members of the dorm that said I have no idea.
Outside, Muthuri came to the point.
‘I’ve heard you’ve been sacked,’ he said in Kikuyu.
Jelani looked at him, wondering how he knew.
‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘I’m the secretary of the Transport and Allied Workers’ Union. We have friends here. There’s not much that happens in the railways that I don’t hear about.’
Jelani shrugged. ‘I’ve been sacked for conspiracy to damage railway property.’ It was still painful to talk about it, knowing that his hopes of becoming a qualified electrical mechanic were at an end.
‘What property?’
‘Visram’s house.’
‘Were you the one who spoke to the students that night?’
He nodded.
‘Incitement. That’s how they brought the conspiracy charge against you — it’s instant dismissal. And that’s the reason I came to see you. The union can use your help.’
‘Me?’
‘We’re looking for young leaders. People who can speak to other young people.’
‘But what do I have to say?’ His old worries about drawing attention to himself returned.
‘Only what you want to say. You could speak about your friend who died. You can speak about your life in the reserve or on someone else’s farm. It’s usually one or the other. You’ll be speaking to people who are looking for freedom.’
‘Freedom from what? All we want is food and a place to farm it.’
‘Freedom gives you that. Freedom from the imperialist British.’
Jelani looked at him. Muthuri truly believed what he said.
‘How is that possible?’
‘Listen, my friend,’ the union man said. ‘The black Africans are forming strong groups to take over when the whites leave. Yes, you think it is a strange thing to say, but even now we have many men, educated men, strong men, who are preparing for what will come. They are in the unions and political parties like the Kikuyu Central Association and the Kenya African Union. One day the KAU will be in government.’
He paused to allow Jelani to absorb the images, before adding, ‘Join us. One day, you may be a part of that government.’
CHAPTER 37
The dak bungalow at Kibwezi had served train travellers to Mombasa for half a century. Based on the system of rest houses throughout India, dak bungalows provided basic food in sufficient quantities for passengers who wanted a quick meal while the train took on fuel and filled its water tanks.
Sam alighted with the other passengers, but didn’t care for a meal. Instead, he settled into a cane chair on the veranda with a cup of tea. He was on a business trip to Mombasa, one that would take him away from Nairobi for just a couple of days. Scattered over the table beside him were some newspapers. It had been a few months since he was last in Mombasa, and he picked up a three-day-old edition of the Mombasa Post to see what was making news on the coast.
He read the front page story on North Korea’s invasion of the south, then scanned a story about an American senator claiming more than one hundred known communists were in government employment, to the local news with the headline: Rioters Routed in Kilindini.
Yesterday, police fired shots and used night sticks to break up a large and unruly crowd in Kilindini.
It was not immediately apparent why the rioters gathered at the house of a Harbours and Railways supervisor. Witnesses say that it was a gathering of mainly Indian and native employees, but there was no knowing whether it was prompted by demands for better pay — a situation increasingly common in the colony these days — or other matters.
One witness, who wished not to be named, said that a local political firebrand — a Kikuyu going by the unlikely name of Jomo Kenyatta — was the cause of the ruckus. Our informant confided that the speaker inflamed the mob’s passions by inciting them to violently protest against various decisions of the administration in so far as they affect natives and their holdings of farmland.
It is this writer’s opinion that these native upstarts be shown no mercy. If they cannot enjoy the generous benefits afforded them by His Majesty’s British government in peace, and would rather incite their brothers to violent protest, then they should not be given such benefits, but rather be shown the full measure of the law.
One officer received minor cuts and bruises and was treated at the scene. Twenty native men received injuries, one of whom was seriously hurt while attempting to flee and later succumbed to his injuries in Mombasa hospital.
Sam thought it odd that the Mombasa Post reporter had not previously heard of Jomo Kenyatta. Sam had no urge to follow his political career but as he was a member of the Legislative Council who needed to keep abreast of current events through the newspapers, it was impossible not to occasionally see his old rival’s name in print.
Kenyatta had risen quickly to prominence in the Kikuyu Central Association. A few years later he was sent back to London to lobby on behalf of the organisation’s aim of winning land rights for displaced Kikuyus. While there, he received financial assistance from the communist party to study economics in Moscow. He then attended the London School of Economics and wrote his thesis, Facing Mt Kenya. It was an exposition of Kikuyu culture and the need for it to remain intact. He conceded that the British had a lot to offer Africans, but asserted that they had withheld most of the material benefits while removing the African from his land — the pillar of his culture and his means of sustenance — so as to exploit his labour.
Sam had read the book and found he agreed with most of its contents. Kenyatta’s recent utterances, however, confirmed Sam’s impression that while he and Kenyatta might agree about the importance of land in Kikuyu culture and the immoral nature of its confiscation, they differed on the means of resolving the problem. Kenyatta appeared to be following the communists’ solution of an armed struggle. Sam had faith in the system, and believed change would come by engaging the whites in a political debate. To do so effectively, Sam knew that Africans would have to broaden their awareness of the European system of democracy so they could beat the British government at its own game.
Expanding young Africans’ view of the world and its social structures was important in winning the debate in favour of equality. Assisting in that process was the main reason Sam was travelling to Mombasa.
Sam stepped from the carriage to the platform and loosened his tie. He squinted up into the bright morning sunshine. He’d forgotten how hot Mombasa could be.
At the end of the platform he hailed a driver from the line of waiting taxis then slid into the rear seat.
‘Court Chambers building,’ he said, and the taxi jerked into motion.
When the Governor nominated him to the Legislative Council, Sam had hoped to convince his fellow members to establish a government-funded program to select black Kenyan
s who showed leadership qualities, and develop them for the day when Kenya became independent. It was the subject of his maiden speech to the council, which received a cool, but generally polite hearing, although some of the settlers’ representatives were openly hostile, saying he was a dreamer: why would the taxpayers of today pay for something that was clearly decades away. Sam persevered for a time, then gave up trying for official support.
Instead, he decided to establish a fund himself, but his finances were insufficient for what he had in mind, so he sold some of his shares in Ketterman Industries. He felt it was consistent with Ira’s wish that he make use of some of his inheritance to help his fellow Africans overcome the restrictions of poverty.
He found the offices of White and Webb on the first floor of the Court Chambers building, and introduced himself.
Graeme White shook his hand and led him into his office. He was balding, with projecting, fly-away tufts of hair reaching out over his collars.
Sam sat opposite him, reading the papers White had prepared for him.
‘I think you’ll find all the instruments of the trust are as you intended, Mr Wangira,’ he said when he’d finished.
Sam nodded, returning the papers to the lawyer’s desktop. ‘Thank you, Mr White. It all appears to be so. I’ll instruct my bank to transfer the funds as soon as I get back to Nairobi.’
‘Excellent. Is there anything more we can do for you?’
‘No. Thank you again.’ He stood to leave.
‘One more thing, Mr Wangira, if you don’t mind. Not that I’m complaining, but I’m curious as to why you have chosen White and Webb rather than one of the Nairobi law firms. I should think they would be far more convenient for you.’
‘Perhaps, but if you’ll recall our first telephone conversation, I wanted to keep this matter strictly confidential.’
‘I see. You believe the Legislative Council might think you a little, um —’