Why colonialists banned two tribes from joining the army

By KENNETH KWAMA

KENYA: British colonial administrators banned the Kikuyu and Meru from joining the army during the years leading to independence due to their close association with the Mau Mau movement, and instead recruited heavily from the Kamba and Kalenjin communities.

 The colonial administrators adopted a policy of recruiting African soldiers from ‘warlike’ communities and they deemed the Kamba, Kalenjin and Nandi to be particularly ‘warlike’.

 As a result, the King’s African Rifles (the equivalent of the current army) comprised mainly the Kamba and the Kalenjin.

In his book titled The Roots of Political Stability in Kenya, author Mordechai Tamarkin says it was a small but compact military force nurtured on the British tradition of subordinating the military to the civil government.

 Curiously, British military officers headed the King’s African Rifles (KAR) and the Kenya Army for some years, even after independence. This was to accord the colonial masters a measure of security immediately after Kenya attained independence.

 “The government of independent Kenya made efforts to preserve the healthy character of the army by adopting a policy of slow and gradual Africanisation of the officer corps and by maintaining British influence. Until 1966, the army commander was a British officer,” states Tamarkin.

British officers

 Even after the replacement of the Briton who was heading the Kenya Army in December 1966 by Brigadier JM Ndolo, the government continued to employ several British officers in advisory roles in each of the three battalions.

 In addition, with the establishment of the navy and the airforce in 1966, the government appointed a British officer as Chief of Defence Staff. The last British advisor left in 1975, but Kenyan officers continued to train in British military academies.

The author states a wave of mutinies swept through East Africa in 1964. Although Kenya was affected slightly, this was enough to alert the government to the danger of military coups.

“Consequently, the government began to redress the ethnic balance within the army as a means towards neutralising it politically.

After 1964, the government began infusing Kikuyu ‘blood’ into the army and into the officer corps in particular. By 1967, 22.7 per cent of the officers were Kikuyu compared with 28 per cent who were Kamba.

The author states that when Ndolo, a Kamba, was appointed army commander, there were already under him a few Kikuyu lieutenant-colonels.

In addition to ethnic engineering within the army, the government established in the second half of the 1960s the General Service Unit (GSU), a paramilitary force that operates as the praetorian guard of the regime.

The GSU, he adds, was much smaller than the army, but was disciplined, well-equipped and highly mobile.

“It certainly cannot match the army as a whole, but it could be used selectively and with some measure of effectiveness should the army, or sections of it, become restive,” says Tamarkin.