A Pilot Scheme for Two Kikuyu Improved Villages near Nairobi1
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1002/j.1099-162X.1960.tb00161.x |
| Date | 01 April 1960 |
| Published date | 01 April 1960 |
| Author | D. J. Penwill |
APilot
Scheme
for Two
Kikuyu
Improved
Villages
near
Nairobi!
by
D.].
PENWILL,
D.S.a.
formerly
District
Commissioner,
Kiambu,
Kenya
Origins
THIS
scheme has its origins in certain geographical
and
historical facts. Firstly,
Nairobi occupies
an
unusual position for a town
of
its size
and
importance,
in
that
the
land
of
the
Kikuyu
tribe adjoins
the
municipal
boundaries on
the
west
and
north.
On
the
south
and
east there is crown
land
-
the
'White
Highlands';
consequently
urban
and
industrial development has tended to spread in
those.
directions.
But
on
the
other
two sides a basically
agricultural
and,
by
modern
standards, comparatively undeveloped
area
of
African-owned
land
lies outside
the
city boundaries. Secondly, this
area
is
part
of
the
Kiambu
district whose
people
have
been
involved in
the
Mau
Mau
rebellion actively or as passive
sympathisers on
the
side either of
the
terrorists or
of
those loyal to
the
Govern-
ment;
the
former category forms
the
majority.
Even
before
the
Emergency,
the
region
concerned,
which
is called Dagoretti,
tended
to collect
more
than
its
share oflawless people living on
the
fringes
of
the
city
and
engaging sporadically
in
crime;
and
to
attract
men
and
women from
more
distant
parts
of
the
Kikuyu
districts who found it
cheaper
- or
at
least possible - to
rent
bed spaces in
Dagoretti
rather
than
in
the
city itself.
There
was
already
a
marked
tendency
for a foreign 'lodger'
population
to collect, living in
poor
mud-and-wattle
conditions, working in
the
city
and
providing profit for
the
local
landowning
capitalists.
During
the
emergency
many
of
these
returned
to
their
homes or
were swept
into
prison or
detention;
the
number
of
Kikuyu
working in
Nairobi
was sharply reduced from some 65
per
cent. of
the
African working
population
to
about
20
per
cent.;
and
in
common
with
all
other
Kikuyu,
the
Dagoretti
people were compelled to
pull
down their former dwellings
and
to
rebuild
again
in villages -previously
the
Kikuyu
had
been
scattered,
each
on his
own
peasant
holding.
This
was to
prevent
the
intimidation
of
isolated families
and
to stop
the
supply
of
food to terrorist gangs.
Dagoretti
then, in 1957,
had
few
inhabitants
other
than
the
people
who
rightly belonged
there
and
these were
living in emergency villages, sometimes laid
out
as blocks, sometimes as strips
along
the
roads.
Land
consolidation
The
third
factor which has helped to
mould
the
outlines
of
the
scheme is
land
consolidation.
This
is
an
agricultural process first
and
foremost,
whereby
the
Kikuyu
are
voluntarily measuring
up
the
scattered pieces of
land
that
each
man
owns
and
then
re-surveying
the
farms in
order
to
group
the
whole
of
a
man's
property
in one single piece. Before consolidation
the
average
landowner
owned some 5.3 acres in eight different fragments,
each
acquired
through
the
processes
either
of
inheritance
or
purchase.
Though
for
the
present
the
majority
!Based on a
paper
submitted to the C.C.T.A. Inter-African Conference on Housing
and
Urbanization, Nairobi, 1959, this article is published with acknowledgements to
C.C.T.A.
61
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