Towards a contextualisation of policing in colonial Kenya

Abstract

This paper looks at the social and legal context of policing in colonial Kenya before 1950, drawing on a range of archival sources in Britain and Kenya. It considers the methods of policing, its objectives, the difficulties it encountered and the social and political terrain on which it operated, a conflicted terrain shaped by geography, race and the existence of other sources of authority and control. Kenya can be divided into a number of zones of policing, from areas that were fairly closely policed, in which there was an increasing expectation that crime would be detected and punished, to areas where the police could do little more than attempt to keep the peace between local communities, all of which had strong traditions of self-help and no confidence in or wish for external intervention. Until 1920, the Kenya Police had a very uneven reputation, but, during the inter-war years, the force grew in numbers and effectiveness.

Keywords:

• policing
• crime
• law
• Kenya
• colonialism

Acknowledgements

This paper was first presented at the European Consortium for African Studies (ECAS) Conference, Leipzig in June 2009. I am grateful to the panel organisers, and to David Anderson and John Lonsdale for helpful discussions about crime, policing and the state.

Notes

1. Eliot to Lansdowne (tg), May 9, 1901 and Oct. 1, 1901, National Archives (PRO) FO 2/456 and 450; Jackson to Lansdowne, July 12, 1902, FO 2/573. For the wider context of concern about the methods of conquest, see Popham Lobb, “Memo on Kisii Expedition,” March 6, 1909, PRO: CO 533/43.

2. Farquhar, Report on Protectorate Police, June 24, 1902, encl. in Jackson to Lansdowne, July 12, 1902, FO 2/573; Foran, Kenya Police, 8, 15, 25, 36–40; Anderson, “Policing, Prosecution and the Law,” 184–5. Neither the Commissioner of Police, Notley, nor the Inspector General, Edwards (both 1908–22) had formal police experience. They shared a para-military background in southern Africa with several of their early subordinates, who learned policing on the job – Foran, Kenya Police, 36–7; Foran, Cuckoo in Kenya, esp. 95ff.

3. The best discussion of the origins of the colonial state in Kenya is still Lonsdale, “Conquest State.”

4. See e.g. Killingray, “Maintenance of Law and Order,” Anderson and Killingray, Policing the Empire, and McCracken, “Coercion and Control in Nyasaland.” Anderson, “Policing, Prosecution and the Law” and Anderson, “Policing the Settler State” are indispensable for Kenya.

5. Anderson and Killingray, “Consent, Coercion and Colonial Control,” 3–5, 13.

6. Collective Punishment Enquiry, Sept. 19, 1935, in CO 533/458/21; District Commissioner (DC) Laikipia to Provincial Commissioner (PC) Rift Valley, June 21 and 26, July 3, 1935, Kenya National Archives (KNA): PC/RVP 6A/17/51; PC Rift Valley to Colonial Secretary (CS), Nov. 11, 1935, KNA: AG 12/118.

7. Foran, Kenya Police, 59–60, 90, 115. Responsibility was shared with the Turkana district administration in the northwest where conditions were similar. Parts of both were under military control at various times until 1926, and they retained border garrisons thereafter.

8. Northern Frontier Province, Annual Reports (AR) (1931, 1932), KNA: PC/NFD 1/1/4; Legislative Council (LegCo) Debates (1935) vol. I, pp. 562–6, 571–7, 579.

9. Mahoney Diaries, entries for Nov. 5–6, 9, 14, 1921, Mss Afr s 487, Rhodes House, Oxford. For an example of “witness protection,” see PC Rift Valley to CS, Nov. 17, 1934 and Attorney-General (AG) to CS, Jan. 28, 1935, AG 52/25.

10. In February 1933, two Boran stock traders were murdered on the Marsabit road: Samburu were suspected. To head off reprisals from the local Boran community, the police held a meeting at which they produced suspects, who were later released for lack of evidence – Northern Frontier Province, Intelligence Reports, Feb. and April 1933, KNA: DC/MLE 3/4.

11. Anderson, “Policing, Prosecution and the Law,” 192–4.

12. LegCo Debates, second series, vol. XX (1944–45), cols. 612ff. (reprinted as The Crime Position in Kenya, Nairobi, 1945); Throup, Origins of Mau Mau, ch. 8; Inquiry and Report into Masai–Kikuyu Border Disturbances, Feb. 1945, KNA: MAA 7/736.

13. Assistant Superintendent Police (ASP) Lumbwa to DC Kericho, Oct. 6, 1929, KNA: PC/NZA 3/18/4/1; Inquiries 1/33 and 6/33 under Collective Punishment Ordinance, PC/NZA 2/7/10. Another Kipsikis “invasion” of Maasailand took place in October 1944 – DC Narok to Officer in Charge (OiC), Masai Reserve, Oct. 24, 1944, with encls, KNA: DC/NRK 2/2/2.

14. The origins of the Stock and Produce Theft Ordinance (1913) are discussed in Waller, “Stock Theft Legislation” and Anderson, “Stock Theft and Moral Economy,” 404–5.

15. For a comprehensive example, see correspondence and papers concerning Samburu unrest in files CO 533/439/26, 443/3 and 544/11–12. Colonial Office officials were not always sympathetic: settlers put themselves in harm's way by choosing to live on a thinly policed frontier and could expect only “reasonable” protection – minutes on Byrne to Cunliffe-Lister, Feb. 23, 1934, CO 533/441/1.

16. E.g. Byrne to Cunliffe-Lister, Jan. 13, 1933 and Wetherell to Freemantle, April 10, 1933 encl. in Freemantle to Cunliffe-Lister, April 26, 1933, CO 533/432/6. Colonel Wetherell, a Naivasha settler, was pressing his squatter's claim to compensation after forest guards had impounded goats which had strayed into the forest and then eaten three of them. When the squatter complained to the police he was charged and convicted of trespass. For another example, see fn. 4 below.

17. “Panic” is often applied specifically to sexual assault, but unease was deeper, wider and more complex, though frequently couched in terms of the threat to white women – see Anderson, “Sexual Threat and Settler Society.”

18. Anderson, “Black Mischief,” 851–2; “Minutes of special public meeting … to discuss the action to be taken to PROTECT SETTLERS AND THEIR FAMILIES FROM THE LUMBWA [Kipsikis] DANGER [caps in original], July 2, 1934, KNA: Naivasha Association Papers. There were calls for the public execution of the convicted men – Fox to Cunliffe-Lister, Sept. 28, 1934, CO 533/441/1.

19. E.g. “Witchdoctors and Crime,” Daily Mail, Aug. 3, 1934; Northern Frontier Province, Intelligence Reports, July 1931, DC/MLE 3/3; Cunliffe-Lister to Byrne, Jan. 15, 1934, enclosing “Lawlessness in Kenya: Astonishing Facts from Nyanza,” East Africa, Jan. 11, 1934, and reply, CO 533/441/1.

20. Settlers believed implicitly that African crime was always rising because sentences were insufficiently deterrent – e.g. correspondence re the Naivasha “crime wave” of 1931 in PC/RVP 6A/17/7.

21. Secretary, Laikipia Farmers Association to CS, Nov. 7, 1933, PC/RVP 6A/17/44; Byrne to Cunliffe-Lister, Feb. 24, 1935, CO 533/544/11. For background, see Waller, “Bringing Murder to Court.”

22. By the 1940s, Africans were voicing their own discontents with the lack of police protection through the vernacular press – Muiruri to Editor, Mumenyerere, Sept. 22, 1947, KNA: PC/NGO 1/8/1. On this occasion, government response was harsh. The writer, editor/publisher and printer were all convicted of sedition – Intelligence Summary, Oct. 1947, Secretary, Laikipia Farmers Association to CS, Nov. 7, 1933, PC/RVP 6A/17/44; Byrne to Cunliffe-Lister, Feb. 24, 1935, CO 533/544/11. For background, see Waller, “Bringing Murder to Court.”.

23. Witch killings were especially troublesome in this respect – see Waller, “Witchcraft and Colonial Law,” 248–52 and Luongo, “Legal Genealogies,” 43–53.

24. Collective Punishment Enquiry, Mashuru, March 26, 1926, encl. in Chief Native Commissioner (CNC) to AG, May 7, 1926, AG 12/124; Supreme Court Criminal Case 77/26, Kisumu, encl. in DC S.Kavirondo to PC Nyanza, Jan. 12, 1927 and PC Nyanza to CNC, Jan. 22, 1927, PC/NZA 3/52/4.

25. Discussed in Waller, “Arbitrary Proceedings.” Kipsikis informers were once forced to pay “blood money” if anyone about whom they had given information died in prison, for they were held personally responsible for the consequences. A similar view of responsibility emerged in the Gusii case discussed above – statement by Juma Bedui, Native Agent, encl. in DC Kericho to PC Nyanza, Sept. 19, 1913, CO 533/124. For a later example of argument over the limits of civic obligation, see minutes of Kikuyu–Masai [Border] Committee meetings, 1947–50, PC/NGO 1/8/2.

26. The Kenya Police did not cover the whole colony. Policing in the Reserves was undertaken separately by Tribal Police under the District Commissioners – see above, pp. 529–30.

27. Figures from Kenya Police, Annual Reports (KPAR). As Anderson notes, however, reductions in manpower did not imply a corresponding reduction in efficiency – Anderson, “Policing, Prosecution and the Law,” 193–4.

28. Police Ordinance, 64/30 Sec.66, embodying provisions of previous ordinance of 1911. Examples of proclamations can be found in Kericho District Political Record Book, KNA: DC/KER 3/2. The Tribal Police (Amendment) Ordinance, 9/33 contained a similar provision – examples in file KNA: PC/NKU 2/15/49.

29. Commissioner of Police (ComPol) to CNC, Oct. 19, 1929, PC/NZA 3/32/39; Dutton to Bottomley, Oct. 26, 1929 with encls, CO 533/391/13; DC Samburu to PC Rift Valley, Feb. 14, 1935, MAA 2/5/74; Laikipia–Samburu District, ARs (1935–36), KNA: DC/SAM 1/2; Inquiry encl. in DC Tambach to PC Rift Valley, 27/7/48, PC/NKU 2/15/49.

30. KPARs (1926, 1931); Report of the Stock and Produce Theft Committee, Nairobi, 1925 pp. 4–5 and ComPol to Chairman, July 25, 1925, Commissioner of Police (ComPol) to CNC, Oct. 19, 1929, PC/NZA 3/32/39; Dutton to Bottomley, Oct. 26, 1929 with encls, CO 533/391/13; DC Samburu to PC Rift Valley, Feb. 14, 1935, MAA 2/5/74; Laikipia–Samburu District, ARs (1935–36), KNA: DC/SAM 1/2; Inquiry encl. in DC Tambach to PC Rift Valley, 27/7/48, PC/NKU 2/15/49. pp. 9–13; Foran, Kenya Police, 122–2, 137–8; Narok District, AR (1947), DC/NRK 1/1/3.

31. In what must have been something of a coup de theatre, a fight at a Maasai Eunoto ceremony in July 1949 was broken up by the Nairobi riot squad with armoured cars hastily summoned by telephone. An earlier attempt to use airpower to convince Maasai elders of the omnipresence of “government” and thus to discourage stock raiding had been less successful – Kajiado District, AR (1949), KNA: PC/SP 1/5/3; Buxton to Whitworth Jones, Dec. 12, 1936 and Jan. 16, 1937 and replies, Buxton Papers, 1A/1, Mss BrEmp s 370, Rhodes House; Masai Province, AR (1937), DC/NRK 1/2/1.

32. KPAR (1926); Hardinge to Salisbury, July 17, 1897, FO 107/78; Tignor, Colonial Transformation, 47–8, 54, 61; Tribal Police Ordinance, 10/29; minutes on Byrne to Cunliffe-Lister, April 29, 1933, CO 533/436/15. For a more negative assessment of Tribal Police effectiveness, see Anderson, “Policing the Settler State,” 261.

33. KPAR (1926). The Police did not always exercise their right of pursuit, and thus lost cases – PC Nyanza to ASP Kisumu, Feb. 2, 1928, PC/NZA 3/51/5/1.

34. Masai Province, ARs, op.cit.; Foran, Kenya Police, 60, 65; KPARs (1925, 1945, 1950).

35. Anderson, “Policing the Settler State,” 251–2. Anderson notes the generalised authority of whites over Africans. For the symbolic authority of uniforms, see Parsons, Boy Scout Movement, 187–90.

36. Willis, “Thieves Drunkards and Vagrants,” 231–2. Over time, enabling ordinances, such as the Diseases of Animals (1906), Native Authority (1912/1937), Crop Production and Livestock (1926) and Water (1929) Ordinances, generated a massive, sometimes barely comprehensible and often contradictory corpus of rules and regulations. In some circumstances, for example, police were prevented from restoring animals which had been stolen, taken across a quarantine line and then recovered – e.g. DC Laikipia to DC Meru, Oct. 28, 1938 and DC Meru to PC Central, Dec. 23, 1938, PC/RVP 6A/17/32. For cases under the Water Ordinance (1930), see files AG 43/88 and 43/124. Dispute was most likely to arise where white property-owners and black state employees were involved.

37. There was a distinction between cognisable offences where police could act without prior warrant and those where they could not.

38. Report of the Commission of Inquiry into the Administration of Justice …, Cmd 4623, 1934 – discussed in Anderson, “Policing, Prosecution and the Law,” 188–91 and Morris and Read, Indirect Rule, ch. 3. Moreover, in outlying areas, the police routinely discussed cases beforehand with the men who would hear them in court, a practice encouraged by the procedural requirement that, to be admissible in court, confessions had to be made before a magistrate.

39. Anderson, “Policing, Prosecution and the Law,” 191; memo by CNC, Oct. 12, 1933, printed in Report, op.cit. pp.114–23. Settlers held a similar view of “all these technicalities and niceties” – LegCo Debates (1944–45), cols. 646–51; Shadle, “White Settlers and the Law.” The question was never resolved and came back to haunt Kenya during the Emergency – The Origins and Growth of Mau Mau, Cmnd 1030, 1960, pp. 249–53; Anderson, Histories of the Hanged, 157–73.

40. PC Nyanza to CS, 26 May 1930, PC/NZA 3/18/4/1; Moore (CS) to Parkinson, Aug. 7, 1930 with encls, CO 533/397/11.

41. Four squatters were wrongly convicted of murder on evidence obtained by the police “by means of intimidation and violence.” They were subsequently exonerated through the efforts of their employer who was convinced of their innocence. One of the policemen was convicted of assault but was already in gaol for a similar offence, and an internal inquiry censured or downgraded others for breaches of law and procedure – Report of Commission of Enquiry into Bagishu Murder Trial, Nairobi 1931.

42. E.g. DC Samburu to PC Rift Valley, Jan. 4, 1935, PC/RVP 6A/17/44; AG to ComPol, Jan. 11, 1935, AG 52/352; AG to CS, Aug. 26, 1936, AG 1/342; DC Laikipia to PC Rift Valley, Aug. 21 and Sept. 15, 1936, PC/RVP 6A/17/45. Between 1926 and 1930, years for which figures are available, on average 15% of defendants charged with stock and produce theft were discharged “for want of prosecution.” The average for all offences was closer to 10% – Judicial Department, ARs.

43. When convicted, Mrs Rainbow refused to pay the fine and insisted on going to gaol. She petitioned to have her case reheard and thereafter pursued a vendetta against Buxton, the magistrate. Her husband was “a somewhat poor sort of European,” an ex-soldier who had drifted from South Africa to Kenya and had been a policeman and a hunter and was now a petty trader in the Masai Reserve. He had a history of disputes with the local administration and had been charged with assault and criminal libel – correspondence and trial papers in AG 51/320 and 51/322; LegCo Debates (1924) vol. II pp. 185–7; Mrs Rainbow to Buxton, June 14, 1926 and Jan. 16, 1929, seen by kind permission of Errol Trzebinsky.

44. A Kitale settler, commenting on the case of a woman on an outlying farm who had beaten suspected stock thieves she had caught so severely that one subsequently died, justified her action on the grounds of the unwillingness of the local administration to deal with endemic border lawlessness – Kirk to Wilson, Aug. 20, 1934 and minutes, CO 533/441/1.

45. DC Eldoret to PC Rift Valley, 1 March 1934 and Labour Officer Nakuru to DC Nandi, May 9, 1938, PC/RVP 6A/25/1; DC Nandi to DC N.Kavirondo, Sept. 28, 1936 and reply, DC Nandi to Resident Magistrate Eldoret, Oct. 6, 1936, PC/RVP 6A/17/31.

46. Anderson, “Policing the Settler State,” 257–60. Defence of one's domain could be quite idiosyncratic. At the height of violence in Ndeiya in 1946–7, Colvile, whose Kedong ranch lay close to the centre of disturbance and whose squatters had been amongst the victims, refused to allow police passage across his land. Yet, a few years earlier, he had informed government officially that, because of its inaction, he was arming his night guards at Ndabibi ranch with orders to shoot thieves on sight – Riddell to ComPol, Feb. 11, 1946 and OiC Masai Reserve to CNC, March 5, 1946, MAA 7/736; Minutes of Meeting at Police HQ, Oct. 31, 1947, PC/NGO 1/8/1; Colvile to CS, April 30, 1943, MAA 7/735.

47. KPAR (1929); DC Samburu to PC Northern Frontier, Nov. 10, 1928, PC/NFD 4/1/6; Narok District, AR (1951), DC/NRK 1/1/3.

48. CS to PC Nyanza, July 5, 1938 and Resident Magistrate, Kisumu to CS, July 11, 1938, PC/NZA 2/7/10; Stock Theft Committee Report, 3; DC Nakuru to Supt. Police, Nakuru, Dec. 15, 1936, PC/RVP 6A/17/20; Asst. Insp. Police, Songhor to DC Nandi, June 4, 1935, PC/RVP 6A/25/1; ASP Nyeri to DC N.Nyeri, Dec. 2, 1930 and DC N. Nyeri to Principal Labour Inspector, Nairobi, Jan. 19, 1933, KNA: DC/NYI 2/7/1. The first police station in African Nairobi was not opened until after 1945 – Throup, Origins of Mau Mau, 174.

49. Much of this was due to Spicer, Commissioner of Police 1925–31. On his arrival from Ceylon, Spicer been left in no doubt about the shortcomings of his new command by the hearings of the Stock and Produce Theft Committee – Anderson, “Policing, Prosecution and the Law,” 192; Foran, Kenya Police, 65.

50. Waller, “Arbitrary Proceedings” and “Stock Theft Legislation”; Stock Theft (Amendment) Ordinance 10/28.

51. Waller, “Arbitrary Proceedings.” For the coercion and mistreatment of suspects and witnesses, see e.g. fn. 42 above and statements encl. in ComPol to DC Laikipia, Dec. 7, 1934, PC/RVP 6A/17/1. It is difficult to know how common physical abuse was, but the use of “robust” methods was understood and accepted – if rarely acknowledged – Waller, “Bringing Murder to Court.”

52. Griffiths Diaries (1932–34) Mss Afr r 132–3, Rhodes House. Official police diaries rarely survive. They constituted a daily record of police work, could be consulted in court and were government property.

53. Griffiths Diaries, entries for Nov. 3, 1932, Sept. 6, 1933, March 16, 1934.

54. Colvile, a successful rancher with properties in Kedong and Elmenteita as well as Laikipia, was the most prominent of these brokers of information – see Waller, “Bringing Murder to Court.”

55. Griffiths Diaries, entries Sept. 21, 1932, Nov. 26, 1932, Aug. 21, and Sept. 1, 1933.

56. Griffiths Diaries, entries for Sept. 24 and Dec. 27, 1933, Feb. 2, and April 25–6, 1934.

57. Insp. Police, Kilimani to OiC, Masai Reserve, Nov. 24, 1939 and Oct. 19, 1940, Insp. Police, Kilimani to Supt. Police, Arusha, Oct. 30, 1940, KNA: DC/NGO 1/8/13; Griffiths Diaries, entry for Oct. 5, 1932; Evidence in Native Reserve Case 1/34, AG 52/352; ASP Naivasha to ComPol, Jan. 29, 1932, PC/NFD 4/2/1; Waller, “Bringing Murder to Court.”

58. Collective Punishment Inquiry, Kangundo, June 1935, in CO 533/458/21.

59. Bribery, petty extortion and harassment by police certainly existed – Willis, “Thieves Drunkards and Vagrants,” 222. Whether informal police methods also constituted “corruption” is perhaps less easy to determine. I am grateful to John Lonsdale for pointing this out.

60. KPARs and Anderson, “Policing, Prosecution and the Law,” 192–8. Rates for recidivism, which were high, can be calculated from figures in Prison Department ARs.

61. Throup, Origins of Mau Mau, 227–8; Throup, “Crime, Politics and the Police”; Origins and Growth of Mau Mau, ch. 3. Special Branch reports on the Ukamba Members Association can be found in KNA: Strong Room 1/182.

62. Anderson, Histories of the Hanged, esp. ch. 7. Anderson argues that policing in Kenya became more professionalized and moved towards the “consensual” between the wars, but returned to a more coercive mode as the police force expanded after 1945 and increasingly became involved in “political policing” – Anderson, “Policing the Settler State,” 249–51.