By AMOS KAREITHI
The hyenas and cheetahs no longer roam the valleys and hills preying on goats grazing in the undulating plains as they did 10 decades ago. Gone, too, are the hot and tempered, pipe smoking masters. The predators have been replaced by domesticated dogs, which mind their own business without snarling at villagers going about their business as they till their land.
One hundred years ago, it was unheard of for a native to freely move around the hills without special permission from the white bwana who had just appropriated the ridges, valleys and the entire Mua Hills. Like the proverbial camel, the bwanas first pleaded to be allowed to establish their houses on top of the hills to escape from the ticks that ravaged the lower parts adjacent to Machakos town.
The plotting was meticulous and nothing was left to chance as chiefs were planted to sign away their kinsmen’s ancestral inheritance as the colonialists nodded in approval. The clamour for the priceless pieces of land was kicked off by a number of white settlers who came at the beginning of the 20th century and roamed the country in search of arable land.
When they reached Machakos, they at first settled near the town, then a bustling batter trade market, but later cast their eyes around and decided that the Mua Hills was suited for their farming needs. The Europeans’ interests in the hills started around 1901 when the first administrator, John Ainsworth, appointed Nzao Mwanzia and imposed on the people of Mua Hills as the chief.
Indeed, a survey conducted by land officers in the area concluded Mua Hills, which comprised 50 square miles, had at least 30,000 acres suitable for farming. It was this prime grazing land that offered pasture and refuge to an estimated 150,000 heads of cattle from Machakos whenever its pastures could no longer provide enough feed for livestock.
"There is no doubt that envious eyes are cast on Mua Hills by Europeans as the land is undoubtedly exceptionally good with a sufficiency of water and timber," a Nairobi PC summarised the feelings of the settlers in 1908.
The administrator just like other whites believed Mua Hills was too prized a possession to be entrusted to the hands of the ancestral owners the Wakamba, who the colonialists viewed as lazy.
"The Wakamba are very rich and are extremely lazy. I have fewer sympathies for them than other natives. If the hills are abandoned by the natives, a thousand acres shall be the maximum granted to any one person," the acting Nairobi PC, said in a memo dated May 25, 1908. Blinded by the racial blinkers, the colonial administration embarked on a plot to disinherit the locals by parceling out of Mua Hills to the settlers first by applying small portions ostensibly to establish modest ostrich farms.
Injustice to locals
One of the pioneer settlers who wanted a piece of Mua Hills was a farmer named Hill, who wanted 50 acres all by himself so that he could construct his own house and establish an ostrich hatcheries. Hill had previously tried ostrich farming in Katalembo but had given up as there was no adequate water as the nearest river, Mvunguni, was two miles away.
Another farmer, Alfred Pease staked a claim to 20 acres on the crest of the hill, which he believed afforded him an excellent view of the surrounding and was unaffected by ticks. Nine years earlier when Ainsworth made contact with Mwanzia, he indicated to his bosses the inhabitants of Mua Hills had no problem with staying with Europeans as their neighbours.
The Commissioner of Lands also indicated in a detailed report to the governor that one of the most prominent chiefs in the area, Ndeketha Mnyala was ready to lead his people out of Mua Hills to Matungulu where there was a lot of water. At the time, there were 158 homesteads on Ndeketha’s side of Mua Hills who owned 1646 heads of cattle although it later emerged that Stuart Watt, who had engineered the migration had misled Ainsworth.
While Ndeketha and his people were being convinced to move out of Mua Hills at the time, a speculator, Stuart was busy selling huge chunks of land to eager speculators at princely sums.
Stuart sold 1,000 acres to Macmillan, which a Government land officer described in a report to his seniors as the best land I saw in the whole area of Mua Hills. Although the land did not have any improvements at the time Stuart sold the land, he was still able to convince Macmillan to part with 1,300 British pounds, for the entire parcel. This convinced the Secretary of Native Affairs, JWT McClellan that since Mua Hills country had "improved itself and was now suited for fruit farming, the Government should cap the maximum size of land allocated at 1,000 acres.
The proposal of turning Mua Hills into an enclave of only 30 settlers with 1,000 acres each was however opposed by some officers in the Native Affairs office who feared this might brew a rebellion. "I have discussed the matter with the Commissioner of Lands and we have agreed it would be wrong and impolitic to alienate large tracts of land in Mua Hills," AG Hollis, wrote on March 18, 1908, on behalf of the Native Affairs Department.
Hollis proposed ach farmer on the plain be granted a small area of about 10 to 20 acres in order to enable him erect a house and start a garden. In a letter dated May 26, 1908, the then acting commissioner in charge of Nairobi predicted that if large tracts of land were alienated and granted to the whites, this would be a great injustice to the locals.
"There is already a feeling of resentment in the mind of the Kikuyu against the farmer who occupies land which originally belonged to him. We cannot tell in what shape this feeling will exhibit itself but I strongly urge that such policy should not be adopted in the province," the PC predicted.
A year earlier, another administrator, F W Isaac had also rejected the grabbing of native land, observing that, "The native population is increasing rapidly and the reserves will shortly overflow, creating a large native pauper population which would become a danger." Despite the reservations of some local chiefs and administrators, the colonial Government nevertheless portioned out the Akamba land, and designated Mua Hills as a no go area.
One hundred and four years later a witnesses who lived through the scramble for Akamba land relives his communities history and tribulations with the colonialists who displaced his ancestors. The witness, James Mwanzia Musyimi, is not sure when he was born but his identity card declares that it was an indeterminate date in 1914, just four years after Mua Hills was taken over by whites. His father, Musyimi wa Ngiti was employed by the white settlers in Machakos as herdsman, in whose farm his eldest son, Mwanzia was born and "owned’ by the settler, P H Parcival.
"My father was not allowed to keep many cows at the Parcival. I was not allowed to go to school. As soon as I could handle domestic chores at the age of 8, I was recruited to work as a unpaid domestic servant," the old man recalls. At the time he was growing up, he and his entire family had no place to call home and was squatting in Parcival’s land, where their movement, like those of other workers was closely monitored.
"At the time, we natives who had been moved out of Mua Hills were not allowed back unless with special permission from the colonial administration. Most of the time, they returned as domestic labourers," Mwanzia says. When he and other labourer’s children learnt how to lay tables, dress beds and manicure the flower gardens to perfection, they became the envy of the natives as they were paid 10 cent for ten day’s work.
In the meantime, Mua Hills had been transformed into one vast undulating orchard where varied exotic fruits flourished, nurtured by overworked, highly taxed and underpaid locals. "At Mua Hills, you lived at the mercy of your Bwana. He had a right to whip you if you did not work hard enough. If you were sacked, then you had no way of earning a living or paying your tax. You could easily end up in jail," Mwanzia adds.
Rightful owners
A century later, the trenches and terraces dug by the local labour still exist in some of the farms where the plum trees, oranges, paw paws and other fruit trees have however died from natural causes. Some gigantic blue gums and cypress trees dot the well drained all weather road meandering around hill, like the last witness of an occupation by friendly forces long gone.
Mua Hills has for the last half century been returned to the rightful owners, but there are relics of decades of occupation with Mwanzia and a few other select farms still retaining evidence of years gone by. Like the Europeans he once served, Mwanzia’s farm is planted with numerous fruit species alien to Mtituni that overlooks Mua Hills, which he diligently prunes, as he was shown at the crack of the whip by his white masters, more than century ago.
akareithi@standardmedia.co.ke
