How colonists used press freedom to cover themselves

John Perry, a photo journalist with The Standard in 1960 takes pictures with the flush held high. [File, Standard]

Power is transient and yesterday's aggressor, aided by the government's monopoly of violence, can suddenly be reduced to begging for mercy when fortunes change.

After 70 years of calling the shots, British settlers dreaded the granting of independence to Kenya and when they realised this was unstoppable, they panicked and started pleading for leniency.

In the build up to the writing of the independence Constitution, some lawmakers argued in Westminster that one of the tenets of democracy --where majority carry the day -- ought to be revised.

One lawmaker, Patrick Wall, argued that Kenya would gain independence on the basis of a truly multi-racial state. And that this should be structured on what each race had put into the development of the country, and not necessarily on the basis of strict counting of heads or numerical proportions of each race.

He was appalled that settlers superiority on account of their contribution to the economy had been whittled down by the 1960 Constitution which reduced their number in Legislative Council from 41 to 14 while the number of non-whites representatives had risen from 36 to 51.

"Inevitably, the African Government will have to bow to African pressure and have to elect Africans to the main posts. Kenya is to be an African country," Wall opined.

Wall was equally disturbed by the burning of Mombasa Times and Sunday Nation in the presence of Tom Mboya during labour unrest, warning that this was not a good sign for a progressive democracy.

This was strange coming from a lawmaker whose government had controlled freedom of expression and movement and had assigned spies to open personal letters during the colonial period.

During the State of Emergency, which lasted 10 years from 1952, even a letter to the editor in a regional publication had to be okayed by a government sensor whose work was to determine whether ideas canvased in such a communication portrayed government in positive light.

According to the parliamentarian, "the freedom of the press was among the things which are essential for Europeans if they are to remain in Kenya as indigenous citizens. There must be freedom of movement and the maintenance of good government."

But A G Bottomley was quite open about what whites who had mistreated Africans and Asians for decades should expect. The new government was likely to mistreat whites. He further warned that it was useless to expect the public to respect the police which had been implicated in brutality and corruption and called for reorganisation of the force.