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A
trial that will decide the future of Kenya
Clemency
Burton-Hill, The Spectator Magazine
November
04, 2006
Clemency Burton-Hill on Thomas Cholmondeley, who
shot dead a Kikuyu poacher and set white complacency against politicized
tribalism
The
sun is rising lazily over Soysambu, a private estate which yawns
across 100,000 acres of Kenya’s Rift Valley.
Out
of the corner of my eye I watch a gazelle lollop towards the horizon,
where Lake Elementaita shimmers against the dramatic backdrop of
the Mau escarpment. In front of ‘Delamere’s Nose’ – a squat peak
so named because of its resemblance to a supine male profile – a
herd of waterbuck graze on the acacia xanthophloea bush alongside
plentiful buffalo, eland, zebra and giraffe. Apart from the agreeable
cooing of cape turtle doves overhead, the silence and sense of peace
is absolute.
Peace,
however, is not quite the mot juste for this lavishing land. Since
Soysambu first came into the hands of Kenya’s most prominent white
family by way of a treaty signed by Hugh, Lord Delamere, in 1904
(which removed large sections of the pastoralist Maasai tribe from
their traditional grazing areas), the luscious spot in Nakuru district
has been synonymous with trouble. Not only has the occupancy of
such a vast tract of land by a single white family been a constant
source of grievance to Black Kenyans, but the promiscuous (and indeed
murderous) antics of the decadent, gin-soaked ‘Happy Valley’ set
who lived around here in the 1930s did little to improve community
relations.
Although
some degree of harmony was established in the post-independence
era, thanks largely to the fact that the Delamere meat and diary
farms around Lake Naivasha provided stable, comparatively well-paid
jobs, this fragile amity was shattered in April 2005 when Thomas
Cholmondeley, the 38 year-old Etonian heir to the Delamere estate,
shot dead a Maasai game warden on his land. Forty-four-year old
Samson ole Sisina, who worked for Kenya Wildlife Services, was allegedly
investigating the illegal bush-meat trade when he was killed, but
due to his firing a weapon and being undercover, Cholmondeley’s
action – undertaken in apparent self-defence – was within the law.
When the murder charges against him were dropped, however, many
Kenyans were outraged, suspecting the preferential machinations
of a two-tier judicial system.
Politicians
and the media capitalized on local fury, using the event to make
a make a case for Zimbabwe-style land re-distribution. Organized
crimes, carjackings, shootings, robberies and murders of whites
in the Nakuru region shot up. Nevertheless, if Cholmondeley had
not shot dead another black Kenyan barely a year later (this time
a Kikuyu poacher, 37-year-old Robert Njoya), the uneasy balance
of land and power between black and white might not have been altered
for ever. But he did – and it has. Or at least, once the murder
trial resumes in Nairobi this week, it will.
Although
it is tempting to see the events of the past 18 months as a case
of 21st-century White Mischief, or ‘The Guy Who
Kills Africans for Sport’, as Cholmondeley’s lawyer, Fred Ojiambo,
recently put it, present-day Kenya is too politically, tribally
economically and agriculturally complex for such a supposition to
wash. In this country where lives are lost in their droves everyday
– and where blacks are shot by blacks with relative impunity – the
predominant issue is not so much murder as racially charged land
reform.
Yet
unlike in Zimbabwe, land-owning whites comprise a tiny minority
here: the biggest landowners are black, with former presidents Kenyatta
and Moi topping the list. True, Soysambu is huge, but the Delameres
now live far from extravagant lives and the land itself is far from
fertile. Cholmondeley is an outstanding farmer who – by all accounts,
both black and white – used to work obsessively to keep the land
managed and conserved properly, employing local workers in their
hundreds to assist him.
When
Sisina was shot, Maasai were encouraged to grab ‘their’ land back
by any means possible. Yet far from wanting the Delameres kicked
off the land, the Maasai I met seem to believe such an outcome would
be disastrous. "We are pastoralists," one farmer explains
as I watch him tend to his herd in the village of Olkaria. "We
don’t even believe in the concept of land ownership, so long as
we can graze our animals" (which they can, within limits, on
Soysambu). Those who do lobby for the expulsion of white farmers,
such as MP William ole Ntimama, or the Nairobi bus drivers who have
started an assassination fund in case Cholmondeley ‘gets off’ again,
are probably being whipped up by manipulative Kikuyu politicians.
‘If the government gets hold of that land, citing historic Maasai
grievances and saying they are acting in our interests, do you really
think they are going to redistribute it to us?’ one Maasai businessman
demands. ‘Of course not. This is about political gain for the ruling
tribe. The Maasai will not benefit from this. Neither will the Kenyan
economy, make no mistake about that’. A local safari guide, Jack
Kipino, looks petrified when I ask if he’d prefer to see the land
redistributed. ‘No, no, no,’ he shakes his head. ‘The mzungu
treat us well, pay us well, give us lots of jobs. They must
stay.’ Lots of jobs’ is key, because unemployment is endemic in
Kenya, where Mwai Kibaki’s government swept to power in 2002 on
a promise of creating half a million jobs a year but has so far
created about 70,000.
Four
hours and 4,000 potholes after leaving Soysambu, I’m back in Nairobi.
It is the violet hour: late afternoon sun filters through the jacaranda
trees, casting sublime purple shadows over the gridlocked downtown
traffic. My car wrestles for space with endless mutatus, the
perilous communal buses crammed with locals and daubed with fluorescent
slogans (anything from ‘Arsenal FC is Great’ to ‘Allah is Great’).
I am on my way to meet Philip Murgor, former DPP, and Maina Kiai,
the chairman of Kenya’s Human Rights Commission, both of whom, it
turns out, believe that Cholmondeley was ‘deliberately targeted’.
‘There
has been a very calculated orchestration of public outrage,’ sighs
Murgor, a physically slight but intellectually heavyweight lawyer.
‘The mainstream media fell for the obvious racist line. When I told
them to come and read the file about the Sisina killing, they told
me to go to hell.’ Kiai mentions a theory that Njoya and his gang
of fellow poachers were actually intending to murder Cholmondeley
with the machetes found in their possession that day. ‘In the court
of public opinion, Cholmondeley was already guilty,’ he says. ‘Our
Mugabes want him out.’
Seeing
the racial pretext of the case as a disturbing ‘excuse for us as
Africans to get away from the harder issues’, Murgor blames political
leaders for their lack of progressive thinking. "There is no
policy,’ he says, ‘no understanding of how Kenya can compete in
an industrialized, globalised world. Instead of entering into meaningful
debate about how to move the economy towards services and skilled
labour rather than agriculture, when our farmland is not sustainable,
they peddle anti-white propaganda, rhapsodise about Zimbabwe, and
whip the poorest people into a euphoria, thinking they are about
to be given something’. Kiai looks grim. ‘Dubious politics’, he
contends, ‘not rigorous law, will decide the outcome of this trial.’
Given that Kenya boasts some of the world’s most notoriously corrupt
politicians, served by a police force which has turned law enforcement
into a for-profit business, this is not such good news.
Unlike
many African countries, tourism-centered Kenya is not mineral-rich,
and it is impossible to overstate the politicising effect of its
dwindling base of resources. On balance, the whole sorry affair
appears to be less White Mischief II than a clash of white
complacency and the manipulation of forensic legal processes and
public opinion for tribal and political leverage. Thirty-two witnesses
remain to be heard, but whichever force ultimately decides Cholmondeley’s
fate, the outcome will surely set a precedent with regard to the
precarious balance between post-colonial market-dominant minorities
and the tribally politicized local poor. As such, it will have widespread
ramifications for Kenya’s socio-economic future – and therefore
for the rest of Africa’s, and therefore for the world’s. As one
white resident declares, with conscious irony as she sips a gin
and tonic at sunset at the Muthaiga Country Club: ‘It is the end
of an era’.
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