Lotte Hughes

‘Truth be Told’: Some Problems with Historical Revisionism in Kenya

Historical revisionism is equally appealing to state and non-state actors during periods of intense socio-political change, especially following civil conflict, when the need for unification is paramount. This applies to Kenya as it struggles to come to terms with the post-electoral crisis of 2007/08. The need to redress state-orchestrated amnesia about Mau Mau and the struggle for independence is also important; encouraged by first president Jomo Kenyatta, ostensibly in the interests of national unity, the trend was continued by his successor. Since Mau Mau was unbanned in 2003, and a lawsuit was brought by veterans with the support of a human rights group against the British government in 2009, there has been an upsurge in public memorialisation and debate about the liberation movement in Kenya. This has been accompanied by increasing calls for ‘true’ history to be written. Veterans have persuaded the state to support a project on rewriting Kenya history, which links to efforts to commemorate heroes and broaden official definitions of heroism to include a wide range of ethnic communities and rebel leaders from different periods of anti-colonial resistance. These themes are reflected in two new history exhibitions developed by National Museums of Kenya (NMK), and in the local media, which has done more to popularise these histories and commemorative initiatives than any scholarly texts. This article draws on research interviews and the literature on resistance, social memory and patriotic nationalism to problematise and analyse these developments, within the context of constitutional change.

Mining the Maasai Reserve: The story of Magadi

Abstract Exploitation of soda deposits by foreign companies at Lake Magadi, Kenya, is the focus of one of many long-standing grievances in the Maasai community which stem from land and other natural resource alienation in the colonial era. A British company was allowed to mine soda in this corner of the former Southern Maasai Reserve as the result of a clause in the 1911 Maasai Agreement or Treaty, made between representatives of the Maasai community and British government. But there is compelling historical evidence to suggest that it had no legal right to do so. This article examines the early history of the East Africa Syndicate and Magadi Soda Companys activities in British East Africa, the circumstances in which they obtained their early leases, and connections between these and the Maasai Agreements, signed within days of each other. It traces the continuities to the present day, against a backcloth of historical and contemporary protest, placing these events in the broader historical context of early land policy, the resignation of Sir Charles Eliot in 1904, and protest in the 1930s against the Native Lands Trust Ordinance, gold mining and other commercial activities in ‘native reserves’.

Dissident Scribes: Some Lesser-known Activism In and Around Africa in the Early 20th Century

Abstract Despite a growing body of work on anti-colonialist movements and the activities of individual activists, there remain large gaps in our knowledge of early agitation in and around Africa, and the links between people. A scholarly focus on transnational networking in the 1930s to 1950s tends to overshadow earlier agitation, by people whose achievements are too often forgotten now, but who laid the foundations for later struggle, decolonisation, and modern-day humanitarian activity. This article discusses some lesser-known agitators, both European and African, active in Africa in the 1900s (though Colenso began earlier), who used copious correspondence, the press and humanitarian networks to highlight colonial abuses and challenge imperial policy. It focuses largely on, and draws parallels between, Dr Norman Leys (working in East Africa), Henry Nevinson (West Africa), F. Z. S. Peregrino (West and South Africa) and Harriette Colenso (South Africa).

Cultural rights and constitutional change

Culture, and its bedfellow cultural rights, are fast becoming ubiquitous global concepts and rallying cries in today’s world. If the second half of the 20 century saw the ascendancy of universal human rights, as this century unfolds we are witnessing the relentless rise of cultural rights in law, policy, rhetoric, and everyday practice. Some of the reasons for this flourishing (such as the concomitant explosion in identity politics, and a growing culture of entitlement) will be discussed in this Special Issue, primarily with regard to Kenya, whose new (2010) constitutional cultural rights provisions provide a useful case study whose implications go way beyond that country. Many of the articles share an analytical framework of governmentality and citizenship, linked to culture, rights and constitutionalism, which has applications across the continent. This Special Issue is the main written output of the ESRC-funded research project ‘Cultural rights and Kenya’s new constitution’, which was based from 1 September 2014 to 30 September 2017 at The Open University, UK. Core articles by members of this interdisciplinary research team are complemented by contributions from other scholars and practitioners who bring fresh and exciting perspectives that are largely, like ours, based on new empirical research. These other perspectives look beyond Kenya in some cases (for example Harriet Deacon; Jérémie Gilbert & Kanyinke Sena; Celia Nyamweru & TsaweMunga Chidongo; and Yash Ghai), and we believe the insights and analysis expressed in these pages can be applied more broadly to other countries in Africa and beyond. The team set out to examine and analyse the different ways in which Kenyans are engaging with culture and exercising their cultural rights, following the promulgation in 2010, following a public referendum, of a new constitution which enshrined such rights for the first time (see Deacon; and Ghai in this Special Issue). These rights included, for example, rights to ancestral land, cultural expression, protection for traditional knowledge, endangered languages and intellectual property, promotion of alternative forms of dispute resolution, and simply the right to ‘enjoy’ one’s culture. At the same time, the constitution outlawed harmful cultural practices, without naming any. In the event of a clash between cultural rights and human rights, it was clear (though maybe not entirely so to all citizens) that the constitution would trump ‘tradition’. It also allowed for the devolution of governance to 47 new county governments which have, since 2013, been extremely active in promoting and employing culture for economic, political and other ends. This

Alternative Rites of Passage: Faith, rights, and performance in FGM/C abandonment campaigns in Kenya

ABSTRACT Alternative Rites of Passage (ARP) are touted by NGOs and international donors as an alternative to female initiation into womanhood, but without female genital mutilation/cutting (FGM/FGC). They are becoming increasingly popular in Kenya, and with donors funding global campaigns against FGM. In these ceremonies and the instruction that precedes them, girls’ human rights (mainly to life, health, education, protection) and cultural rights (manifested in teachings and ritual elements that aim to mimic the cultural traditions of the community concerned) are intertwined in one social space. ARP is discussed here in the broader context of constitutional change that has introduced the concept of cultural rights to Kenyan citizens, while simultaneously outlawing harmful cultural practices. However, the meaning of ‘culture’ within ARP is rarely defined by external or internal actors. Moreover, the central role of Christian faith leaders – especially Pentecostal – in ARP tends not to be regarded as cultural by local actors, including NGOs, and is largely overlooked in the scanty literature. This article argues that faith leaders’ contribution to ARP constitutes significant ritualised cultural performance, but religious messages do not necessarily sit well with the more secular discourses of rights and law around FGM. ARP may be read as a newly-invented ritual that aims to replicate aspects of traditional initiation. In so doing, pick-and-mix notions of pastness, culture, social transformation and tradition are being incorporated into a hybridised ritual that its proponents present as evidence of development and modernity, and a ‘harmless’ alternative to FGM.

Heritage and memory in East Africa today: a review of recent developments in cultural heritage research and memory studies

This paper argues that the broadening over time of definitions of heritage has had strong implications for researchers working in East Africa today. Moving away from material preservationist issues of concern to governments and international heritage bodies, most scholars have recently focused their research on the entanglement of heritage with memory, politics, identity and social healing processes. They also increasingly investigate the growing agency and centrality of civil society stakeholders, as well as the negotiation of power and authority between the different levels — local, national, international — involved in heritage making and heritage promotion. Focusing on the case of slavery and the slave trade, the rise of civil society engagement and the contestations that continue to swirl around the commemoration of liberation heroes, the paper depicts how heritage and memory have become a site of struggle — symbolically, ethically and emotionally charged — in todays East Africa.

Living on the Edge

This slim volume focuses on the often forgotten people who live ‘on the edge’, in every sense of that phrase, of transfrontier conservation areas (TFCAs) in southern Africa. These areas, often refe...

Preserving the cultural heritage of Africa. Crisis or renaissance

This edited collection of 15 chapters is centred around presentations at a symposium held in Osaka, Japan, in 2003, organised by Kenji Yoshida and colleagues at the National Museum of Ethnology. To these core papers, other essays have been added. The book handsomely produced, and fully illustrated is divided into four parts: Memory and History, Preserving Heritage, Creating Heritage and Representing Heritage. Several contributors refer to their chapters as ‘papers’, however, a usage that should have been edited out. Some chapters also still read more like papers, which is problematical in several cases where references are very few or non-existent, theoretical analysis weak, and there is either no conclusion or a very short one. This results in considerable unevenness; the contrast with stronger chapters is stark. Kenji Yoshida starts well with an Introduction focused initially on the loss of material cultural heritage to the Western world. Many of these looted goods have turned up in American and European museums, as we all know. Yoshida describes the different approaches that museums have taken to their African acquisitions, which range from the ‘deeply ethnographic’ to the ‘purely aesthetic’ (a theme taken up by Shoichiro Takezawa in Chapter 14, when critiquing the Musée du Quai-Branly, Paris, for displaying objects ‘emptied of their cultural and social meaning’, p. 193). Yoshida lauds African-led efforts on the continent to create museums and initiate cultural festivals in order to preserve and present cultural heritage ‘on-site’. He also discusses the inadequacy of universal standards set by UNESCO, which do not always serve Africa well. John Mack (Chapter 1) addresses ‘Museums and Objects as Memory-sites’, discusses the tensions between memory and history and puts the case for including ‘informal indigenous narratives as an element in our construction of the past’ (p. 15). Praising the trend towards community-based heritage projects that challenge national museum models, he concludes that ‘the idea of museums as ‘‘theatres of memory’’ has much to recommend it’ (p. 24). His example of the District Six Museum, Cape Town, may be a good example of this type of institution, but Mack fails to mention the growing body of literature on this museum, saying only that it ‘will undoubtedly have its own story written up one day’ (p. 23). Rumi Umino (Chapter 2) discusses ‘doing geskiedenis’, loosely translated as ‘history’, among the Griqua people of South Africa. This is fascinating as an ethnographic case study, examining the intricate ways in which reconstructions of local history give meaning to the everyday lives of a marginalised group and how these reconstructions link to indigenous advocacy. However, although she touches on wider indigenous peoples’ rights campaigns and notes that the Griqua are trying to Azania: Archaeological Research in Africa Vol. 47, No. 2, June 2012, 231 241

Blood Oaths, Boundaries and Brothers

Before Europeans arrived on the scene, the Maasai were the acknowledged ‘lords of East Africa’, driving all before them. So why did they meekly allow white settlers to take their best lands, and why did they not violently resist the forced moves? They were not in a strong position to do so, as mentioned at the start. But the answer may also partly lie in a blood-brotherhood oath or peace treaty, said to have been made by leading settlers and Maasai representatives beneath an ancient fig tree on Lord Delamere’s Soysambu ranch in the Rift Valley, sometime before 1911. Go there today, guided by Maasai farm workers, and one finds an atmospheric spot — a natural conference site of wood and rock, bounded by a stream and an orange grove planted by the current Baron’s son and heir, Tom Cholmondeley. What might have happened here, and why do certain Maasai still talk about it a century later, even if the British have long forgotten?