PAPER — THE OTHER SIDE
| Published date | 01 July 1954 |
| Author | D. J. Penwill |
| Date | 01 July 1954 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1002/j.1099-162X.1954.tb00058.x |
PAPER-THE
OTHER SIDE
115
PAPER -
THE
OTHER SIDE
By D.
J.
Penwill.
DISTRICT
commissioners do not readily
put
pen to paper more often than
they must; certainly this one does not, but I feel a desire to say something on
What has become a major point of criticism of administrative officers, or of the
system under which they
serve-that
owing to an immense burden of paper
work and lack of continuity they are being forced out of touch with the people
whom they govern.
The
physical and technical problems of Africa are almost
simple compared to the human ones; on these last everything depends, and
the danger is that the administrative officer, who is above all required to know
and be known by the people, and on whom everyone and everything else depend,
is unable to perform his functions, with consequent weakness or failure of his
work in the field.
The
criticism and the danger were put excellently by Sir Ralph Furse in an
article in a recent Times Colonial Review, which most people who open this
journal will probably have read; and I do not propose to say anything more on
~hem.
I am writing because I believe that part of the answer can be seen now
in
this district (Machakos District, Kenya Colony), and it is available to any
~frican
government which cares to find the money and engage the
staff-and
incidentally accept the principle that the labourer is worthy of his hire, for it is
no use bringing Europeans of second-rate quality to Africa and first rate ones
rnust be paid accordingly. I wish also to say something to counter a myth
which is becoming generally accepted among the unofficial European population
of
Kenya-that
in Kenya, paper and overmuch
office
work had already produced
~heir
effect, and the administration, particularly in the Kikuyu districts, was
Ignorant of the feelings and wishes of the people. Too often one reads in Kenya
papers references to
the"
motor-borne administration ", and such jokes as that
an African thought a D.C. was another name for a motor car. This feeling
and its manifestation is to some extent the result of a sense of bitterness now
that the calm surface has proved to have had a storm brewing in the depths,
of which settlers feel they had inadequate warning: it is also the result in part
?f a retired generation of administrators who have retired to spend their leisure
in the pleasant climate of the colony, who feel that things were not what they
Were
in their own day. In memory their days on safari become longer and
pleasanter, and they feel that they knew far more about the tribes than their
rnodern successors. God forbid that I should denigrate them, or deny that I
personally believe that there were and are far too few administrative officers
In Kenya for the work we have to do; nor is it my place to say what if any
warnings were given in past years of the
Mau
Mau troubles to come;
but
I
d.o
believe, and will say something in support of my belief and defence of my
kind, that the hard-worked district officers of the present certainly know no
less about their peoples than their predecessors did, spend no less time out on
safari, and concentrate perhaps more into their days out than was done in the
past-motor
cars properly used are an asset not a liability .
.
lYIachakos
District (population 400,000 Kamba; area 2,400 square miles;
~~V1ded
into 20 locations each with a chief; rainfall over all save a few favoured
bill features less than 30 inches average, and, save for the same hills lying
. etween 2,500 and 5,300 feet in altitude) has been for years the most eroded
area
~n
Kenya.
It
is the money spent and the staff provided to deal with our
agranan problems, over and above what the district might normally expect in
comparison with others, that has enabled us to provide a pattern of administra-
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