Four - The Crisis: Decline in Squatter Welfare 1938-48

Summary

The resident native labourer may be the mainstay of the farm, but he does not always prove an asset, except as providing a cheap source of labour at the expense of the fertility of the land.

We have been sending several letters of similar kind to the government but this we hope will be the last one with the fullest confidence that it will save us from the slavery of the Rift Valley government. We do strongly oppose to remain under this slavery in the white Settled Areas. Counting from 1939 to 1946 we have been struggling sending our govert [sic] the expression of our difficulties and asking to be released from them. We hope the government will put an end of it and change the present state of deep sorrow to exotic joy.

By the late 1920s it had become clear that the active and autonomous role squatters played in the White Highlands was completely incompatible with the white settlers’ economic and political interests. Consequently, the settlers had begun to implement various measures to restrain squatter cultivation and grazing. For the squatters, these measures brought insecurity, blackmail and economic degeneration. What had happened to them before the beginning of the Second World War was negligible compared to what was to come in the post-war period, when the settlers enforced stringent measures which totally destroyed any independence the squatters might previously have enjoyed in the White Highlands.

The period between 1938 and 1948 became the turning point for squatter welfare both inside and outside the White Highlands. Anti-squatter feelings, which raged high among European settlers, fuelled the introduction of ill-conceived and unimaginative measures, which were highly disruptive to the squatter community. Although vulnerable and unrepresented, the squatters grew in strength, especially in the period between 1939 and 1947, and refused to take the onslaught lying down. This was borne out when the Department of Labour failed to force the squatters to sign the new labour contracts. Squatter resistance was embodied in the mass public defiance of regulations surrounding the white elephant of the era, the Olenguruone scheme.