(ANN GARRISON) ICC judges say Kenya's Kenyatta can skip much of his own criminal trial
Submitted by Ann Garrison on Sat, 10/19/2013 - 21:02
KPFA Evening News, 2013
International Criminal Court judges say that Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta need not be present for all of his own trial for crimes against humanity.
Transcript:
KPFA Evening News Anchor David Rosenberg: And, you are listening to the Evening News, KPFA and KPFB in Berkeley, KFCF in Fresno, and kpfa.org.
Yesterday a majority of International Criminal Court judges ruled that Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta need not be present for much of his own trial for crimes against humanity, but that he must be present during the opening and closing statements, the victims’ testimony, and, the verdict. If found guilty, he must attend sentencing hearings and the delivery of sentencing, at which point he would presumably be taken into custody, leaving Kenya to replace him. KPFA’s Ann Garrison has more.
KPFA/Ann Garrison: Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta says he’s too busy, as Kenya’s elected head of state, to attend his trial at the International Criminal Court in the Hague, and the African Union, in their recent gathering in Addis Abbaba, Ethiopia, passed a resolution that, as a sitting head of state, he shouldn’t have to. The court indicted Kenyatta for organizing violence that rose to the level of crimes against humanity, after his party lost the Kenyan 2007-2008 election, but he was nevertheless elected president in April 2013. His rival, former Kenyan Prime Minister Raul Odinga, who is favored by the U.S., said that he didn’t know how Kenyatta could run the country via SKYPE from the Hague.
Black Agenda Report Editor Glen Ford, like many other critics of the court, says that Kenyatta’s indictment is another example of the U.S. using the International Criminal Court as an imperial tool.
Glen Ford: It is a travesty of justice that the ICC only indicts Africans, but even more importantly, the International Criminal Court also only indicts those politicians that get on the wrong Kenyatta shook hands on deals worth $5 billion with Chinese Premier Xi Jinping in August 2013. side of the United States and the former colonial powers in Africa. The ICC is a tool of U.S. foreign policy.
KPFA: Some say that the U.S. is unhappy with President Kenyatta because he prefers to do business with China, and he did, in August 2013, sign five billion dollar deals with Chinese Premier Xi Jinping, to build a railway line, an energy project, and improve wildlife protection. Yesterday an energy professional and Christian Science Monitor contributor said that Kenya’s oil reserves might soar past even Uganda’s.
Glen Ford disagrees with South Africa’s former Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who says that African leaders are effectively looking for a license to kill, main and oppress their own people by withdrawing from the ICC. He says that the United States collaborates in such crimes and objects only as a matter of political convenience.
Glen Ford: And here lies the greatest irony. The very nations that most oppose the ICC have the blood of millions on their hands. Rwanda and Uganda are principally responsible for the death of six million Congolese over the past 17 years, an ongoing genocide armed and financed by the United States and Britain. The Ethiopian regime's brutality towards its Somali and Oromo ethnic groups has also been described as genocidal. But because the United States is also deeply complicit in these crimes, there is no threat of prosecution by the Black Agenda Report Editor Glen Ford International Criminal Court.
KPFA: African scholars writing in the African Pambazuka News and Black Star News have sided with Tutu, arguing that despite the court’s obvious bias and imperfection, the threat of indictment and conviction there restrains the violence of African strongmen. And that instead of rejecting the court out of hand, dissidents should demand that it live up to its stated ideals.
For Pacifica, KPFA and AfrobeatRadio, I'm Ann Garrison.
Labels: ANN GARRISON, CHINA, ICC, KENYA, UHURU KENYATTA
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(NEWZIMBABWE) Kenyan journalist detained in Harare
26/07/2013 00:00:00
by Staff Reporter
A KENYAN journalist has been detained in Zimbabwe for entering the country to cover the July 31 polls without requisite accreditation.
Charles Omondi was detained at the Harare International Airport by immigration on Thursday on allegations that he did not have adequate accreditation papers as required by Zimbabwe Electoral Laws.
The Zimbabwe Electoral Commission is responsible for the accreditation of all journalists intending to cover the polls next Wednesday.
Human rights lawyers said on Thursday they were battling to secure Omondi’s release who works for the Nairobi-based the Nation newspaper.
“We sent a lawyer, Wellington Pasipanodya from our media lawyers’ network but he was denied to see him,” said Jacqueline Chikakano, a legal officer with the Media Institute of Southern Africa Zimbabwe Chapter.
“He was told that he is not on Zimbabwe soil since he is yet to be legally allowed into the country. I called an immigration official they said there is nothing that can be done as he will be deported,” she said.
There was no immediate comment from Immigration but sources said Omondi was likely to be deported later Friday.
Labels: CHARLES OMONDI, JOURNALISM, KENYA
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(BUSINESS DAILY AFRICA KE) Sun setting on British empire?
Opinion and Analysis
By John Kamau
Posted Wednesday, April 10 2013 at 18:04
Three noteworthy events occurred this week — the death of Margaret Thatcher, the swearing-in of Uhuru Kenyatta as Kenya’s fourth president, and the departure of Mwai Kibaki from office.
If we have to remember Mrs Thatcher, it is because of the way she sustained the Kanu government, turned a blind eye to former President Moi’s dictatorship and kept pumping money into the bottomless pit that was his government as budgetary support.
But we have to understand that the relationship between Thatcher and Moi was of two hard-driving hard-headed characters who had assumed office months apart.
While Thatcher had been sworn into office in May 1979 Mr Moi was first sworn into office on October 14, 1978 — two green-horns in power seven months apart.
Interestingly, Thatcher invited Moi as the first head of state to visit the UK during her reign with Moi arriving at No 10 Downing Street on June 12, 1979. His only other State Visit being Ethiopia in January, 1979.
From then on, Thatcher made the mistake of oiling the wheels of Moi’s dictatorship and it was not until her fall in 1990 that Kenyans were able to push for sensible reforms in the country.
In all that, the British economic interests outweighed Kenya’s desire for change. So close were Moi and Thatcher that when Moi University was built in Eldoret in 1984, the library, with a sitting capacity of 2,500 readers, was named the Margaret Thatcher Library.
Moi also allowed Thatcher to have Kenya as a training ground for troops destined to defend the Falkland Islands in a pact that still brings in 10,000 troops. For all that, Thatcher will always have a place in our history.
The entry of Kibaki in 2002 was unanticipated by British top echelons who had given tacit support to Moi’s candidate Uhuru Kenyatta hoping that there would be no change of policy that would affect their geo-political and economic interests.
But months before Moi left, he had been irked by the British and called British High Commissioner, Sir Jeffrey James a “meddler” when he went to bid him bye.
Sir James’ replacement, Edward Clay, turned as combative as his predecessor with the Kibaki government cancelling British tenders and turning East for development support.
In a radical twist, the government unbanned Mau Mau and unveiled Dedan Kimathi’s monument still regarded in Westminister as a terrorist. And that explains the “they are vomiting on our shoes” remark by Mr Clay.
Mr Kibaki has left State House without paying a State visit to the UK despite being invited. His handlers said he was busy. And that shows that despite the diplomatic speak of cordial relationship with the UK London’s influence on Kenya is on the wane.
The numbers tell the story with UK aid to Kenya on the decline. Since 1997 — when the Tories lost power — the UK’s expenditure on Kenya has been cut by more than 50 per cent from a high of 2.8 per cent of the entire UK DFID bilateral programme.
“With our recent direct experience of fraud in the Ministry of Education, we will make limited use of Government systems to distribute aid, but…the 2012 elections could be a major watershed for governance in Kenya, and we will review our aid delivery instruments again after that,” says a DFID strategy document.
And that is where Mr Kenyatta’s relationship with UK will start. How things change!
Mr Kamau is the Associate Editor, Business Daily. Email: jkamau@ke.nationmedia.com
Labels: 2011 BUDGET, ELECTIONS, KENYA, MARGARET THATCHER, UHURU KENYATTA
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Kenyatta victory: Defiance to Western affirmation
Wednesday, 13 March 2013 21:35
In a week leading to Zimbabwe’s referendum on a new constitution and at a time we are experiencing bizarre claims of supernatural happenings across the country, it is a bit of a quandary for any columnist to focus on a topic far away from home.
Claims about the occurrence of godly miracles and underworld supernatural happenings in Zimbabwe now border on the ridiculous, and the sooner the country wakes up from this superstition stupor the better for the name of human civilisation and for the dignity of Africans in the 21st century.
But there is a shared feeling of relief across the Kenyan population after the conclusion of last week’s presidential election. This time Kenya did not burn — no images of barbaric Africa with victims of political violence being ferried to surgical rooms with spears and arrows stuck into their skulls. We saw these kind of images in December 2007, and the use of traditional weapons between the clashing political rivals painted Africa as a backward continent struggling to transit into civilised democracy — perhaps the same way it makes civilised people across the planet raucously laugh when they hear of Zimbabwean young men that pretend to be prophets of God with powers to create babies and cash from thin air — or weird counter claims of satanic powers that purportedly turn school kids into baboons, or any other such primitive nonsense.
At the conclusion of the election in Kenya, there were no inflammatory statements this time around. After losing to outgoing President Mwai Kibaki in 2007, Raila Odinga was asked by a BBC correspondent to restrain his supporters and he responded, “I refuse to be asked to give the Kenyan people an anaesthetic so that they can be raped.”
That was a tacit encouragement to the violent rioters, and Odinga is lucky not to be among those later indicted by the ICC for playing key roles in the violence that killed 1 200 people.
At the height of the political clashes the then Lands Minister, Kivutha Kibwana, said about Raila Odinga’s supporters: “It is becoming clear that these well-organised acts of genocide and ethnic cleansing were well planned, financed and rehearsed by the Orange Democratic Movement leaders prior to the general elections.”
This time Odinga complained that the election he lost to Uhuru Kenyatta “lacks integrity,” but he quickly called for “calm, tolerance and peace.” It would appear like the people of Kenya have learnt that violence does not pay, and as one Kenyan said to the BBC’s Karen Allen, there has been a “revolution in Kenya’s political maturity but not a revolution in the leadership.”
While young Kenyans are celebrating the election of the country’s youngest leader ever, the losing candidate Odinga seems to lack the maturity to concede defeat — or the decency to accept the verdict of the Kenyan people on his political fate. This time he seems to be licking his wounds all by himself — with no solidarity message even from his ally Morgan Tsvangirai.
The court challenge announced by Odinga might simply be a gimmick to conjure up solidarity so he can retain the leadership of his party on a sympathy vote, or a mere face-saving tactic to exit the political scene with the image of a robbed gallant fighter. From a legal perspective, the challenge looks badly compromised by the fact that Odinga simply does not have the numbers.
Francis Eshitemi, an Odinga supporter from Kibera, conceded that it was clear his candidate had lost in a free and fair election. He said: “The problem is that Raila doesn’t have the numbers. There were a few irregularities, but the gap between Raila and Uhuru is big.”
A Kenyan academic resident in Australia, Charles Okumu, had this to say: “The ethnic implications for the Kikuyu-Kalenjin-Meru alliance that gave Kenyatta and Ruto victory are huge and very significant. It is indisputable that these three ethnic groups easily make up about half of Kenya’s population, and the ‘we stand with our own’ sentiment was quite evident in the campaign leading to this election.”
Mr Okumu added: “Apart from the numerical advantage of this coalition, it must be credited to the coalition leaders that they did an excellent job of mobilising their supporters for both voter registration and for turning out to vote on the election day. Raila Odinga lacked in this respect.”
Another Odinga supporter, Isaac Khayiya, was wary of violence. He said: “This time we want post-election peace, not war. We will be the ones to suffer if there is violence. For them, Uhuru, Ruto and Odinga — they have security and they are rich.” And in comes the quandary of the West — the dilemma the West faces after their sponsored candidate, Raila Odinga, was defeated by about one million votes. Kenyatta, the ICC-indicted candidate that the West so wished to be the loser, was delivered a solid mandate by the Kenyan people, and that reality is a bitter pill to swallow for Western policymakers, let alone for the sponsors of the Kenyan ICC cases. The ICC indictment hugely boosted Kenyatta’s profile.
However paper-thin his victory margin might be described, Uhuru Kenyatta still won the election outright. The result itself shows the defiance of Kenyan people to Western affirmation in the affairs of their country, and the rest of Africa was watching.
The West’s affirmation for the leadership of Zimbabwe is on Morgan Tsvangirai and his Western sponsored-MDC-T, but perhaps it is time the West begins to realise that the financing of election victories in Africa is no longer as straightforward as the United States used to do in Central America in the seventies and the eighties.
Like Odinga proved to be a worthless leader as Prime Minister of Kenya under a coalition government with Kibaki’s party, Morgan Tsvangirai has done worse in proving his lack of leadership depth as Zimbabwe’s Prime Minister in a coalition government with President Robert Mugabe’s Zanu-PF party — and there are more chances of the scandalous Tsvangirai losing the vote to the veteran Zimbabwean leader than there ever were for Odinga losing to Kenyatta.
The alliance between Tsvangirai and Odinga can be easily described as camaraderie in confusion.
To the majority of Kenyans the matter of the ICC indictments is viewed as an inconvenience rather than an impediment, just like sanctions against Zimbabwe have rallied the masses on the side of President Mugabe. Those who voted for Uhuru Kenyatta simply do not regard him as a criminal, and to them he is an innocent man facing a smear campaign from a politically motivated international court. It appears both Uhuru and his supporters are confident that it will be easy to have Kenyatta cleared. For Kenyans it was the victory of politics over justice and at The Hague the West will want imperial politics to triumph over justice.
Kenyatta is tremendously influential in Kenya and it can be predicted that a verdict based on the travesty of justice as was seen in the Saddam Hussein conviction would certainly trigger a disastrous mob backlash in Kenya. In the run-up to the election, Johnnie Carsons, the top American envoy to Africa, bullishly warned that “choices have consequences,” and that was widely interpreted as a threat to Kenyans not to vote for Kenyatta.
Clearly the majority of Kenyans have responded by an open “game on” gesture, and the whole world waits curiously to see Carsons’ threatened consequences.
Carson’s predecessor, Jendayi Frazer, has already rubbished her successor’s utterances, saying the statement was “reckless and irresponsible,” adding, “Kenyatta knows that he needs the United States, and the United States knows it needs Kenya. While it might be awkward, there won’t be a significant change in our policy stance toward Kenya or theirs towards us.”
In addition, US Secretary of State John Kerry said: “We will continue to be a strong friend and ally of the Kenyan people.” In reiterating that the ICC indictment has no effect on his capacity to do his job, Kenyatta has also urged “the international community to respect the will of Kenyans,” and he has called on the West to recognise “the sovereignty” of Kenya.
The indictment of Kenyatta has rallied Kenyan citizens to the side of their new leader — in total defiance to the expectation of the West. This is precisely because the ICC stands as a discredited politically motivated court whose sole focus is on the continent of Africa.
Since its establishment in July 2002 the ICC has indicted 30 people and they are all from the African continent. Of these, 10 are fugitives, one is dead, 9 are either on trial or pre-trial, 4 have been arrested, one has been acquitted, 3 have had their charges dismissed and one has been convicted, and that is Thomas Lubanga of the DRC, who has since appealed.
All this is despite the fact that the illegal Iraq invasion happened almost a year after the ICC had been instituted, or that the drone bombings of Afghanistan civilians still goes on unabated, or that the deadly and ruthless Nato grazing down of Sirte in the lead-up to the murdering of Muammar Gaddafi was fully televised for the world’s full viewing.
The ICC has no political motivation to investigate any of these Western-inflicted atrocities, and that alone is enough enragement to rally Kenyans around their own leaders they perceive to be victims of this egregious conspiracy.
Ayo Johnson, the director of View Point Africa, had this to say: “Many Africans have lost faith in the ICC and view it as targeting African leaders and failing to discharge its justice among non-African leaders.” He added: “Kenya sent a loud message to the ICC — don’t interfere.” In what seems to be a strong affirmation of African resentment for the motives of the ICC, senior lawyer Ahmednasir Abdullahi wrote in the newspaper The Nation that the Kenyatta-Ruto victory “must be seen as a slap in the face of sponsors of the ICC”.
Britain committed about US$25 million to the Kenyan election, and the stakes are quite high for the former colonial power. The top five Kenyan corporations are British owned, and there is a strategic military base where British soldiers are sent before deployment to Afghanistan. These cannot be abandoned easily and certainly will not.
The United States considers Kenya a central part of its military strategy in East Africa, especially when it comes to the anti-terror efforts targeted at Somalia.
The United States should not exactly worry too much about the ICC status of Kenyatta, if only the country was principled enough to respect its own rejection of the relevance and usefulness of the court.
The US has not only refused to be a signatory to the Rome Statute that established the ICC but has vastly mobilised against the work of the ICC by arm-twisting weaker states to exempt its citizens in their commitment to the ICC.
Kenya has brought to the fore the dilemma of peace versus justice. Those that say the result of the election must be upheld to keep peace in the country now face the prospect of being labelled rule of law traitors, while those who favour the route of the ICC idea of justice risk the label peace traitors.
Kenyan patriotism has been put on trial as well, and it is hard to believe the ICC can thwart the patriotic resolve of a defiant people. It is highly likely that the ICC will drop the charges against Kenyatta and his co-accused in a show trail to save the face of the West.
Hardly after Kenyatta’s victory the ICC dropped its charges against Francis Muthaura — the president-elect’s co-accused. For once the people of Africa seem to be determining global affairs.
Africa we are one and together we will overcome. It is homeland or death!
Reason Wafawarova is a political writer based in SYDNEY, Australia. Feedback at wafawarova@yahoo.co.uk or visit www.wafawarovawrites.com
Labels: COLOUR REVOLUTIONS, ELECTIONS, ICC, KENYA, NEOCOLONIALISM, UHURU KENYATTA
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Kenyatta wins Kenya vote by slim margin
08/03/2013 00:00:00
by Reuters
UHURU Kenyatta, the son of Kenya's founding president, won the presidential election with a slim margin of 50.03 percent of votes cast, provisional figures showed, just enough to avoid a run-off after a race that has divided the nation.
Kenyatta, who faces international charges of crimes against humanity, secured victory over his main rival, Prime Minister Raila Odinga, who trailed with 43.28 percent of the vote.
To secure an outright win a candidate needed more than 50 percent of the votes. Kenyatta, the deputy prime minister, achieved that but with a margin of just 4,100 of the more than 12.3 million votes cast.
The first-round win, which must be officially confirmed by the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission, means Kenyans who waited five days for the result of the vote will not now face a second round that would have prolonged uncertainty.
The winner also needs to get at least 25 percent of the votes in 24 counties out of 47. This is expected be confirmed by the electoral commission. The commission is due to announce the official result on Saturday at 11 a.m.
But such a narrow win will almost certainly prompt legal challenges from Odinga's camp, which complained about the election process throughout. Odinga also lost in a disputed vote in 2007 that led to weeks of tribal killings.
John Githongo, a former senior government official-turned-whistleblower, urged the rival coalitions, Odinga's CORD and Kenyatta's Jubilee, to ensure calm. "Jubilee and CORD, what you and your supporters say now determines continued peace and stability in Kenya. We are watching you!" he said on Twitter.
International observers broadly said the vote and count had been transparent so far and the electoral commission, which replaced an old, discredited body, promised a credible vote.
Provisional figures displayed by the election commission showed Kenyatta won 6,173,433 votes out of a total of 12,338,667 ballots cast. Odinga secured 5,340,546 votes.
The result will pose a dilemma for Kenya's big Western donors because Kenyatta is due to go on trial in The Hague on charges of crimes against humanity, accused of orchestrating the tribal violence five years ago.
Reputation
The United States and other Western states warned before the vote that diplomatic ties would be complicated with a win by Kenyatta who has been indicted by the International Criminal Court along with his running mate, William Ruto.
Western nations have given a broad range of views on how to deal with Kenya under Kenyatta and to what extent they will be ready to deal with his government.
"It won't be a headache as long as he cooperates with the ICC," said one Western diplomat. "We respect the decision of the majority of the Kenyan voters."
Both Kenyatta and Ruto deny the charges and have said they would cooperate to clear their names. However, Kenyatta had to fend of jibes during the campaign by his rival Odinga that he would have to run government by Skype from The Hague while he attended hearings.
Kenyans hope this vote, which has until now passed off with only pockets of unrest on voting day, would restore their nation's reputation as one of Africa's most stable democracies after mayhem last time.
Cars drove through the streets honking their horns, and one taxi driver shouted "50+1, that's OK," referring to the 50 percent plus one vote threshold required by law to win the vote, as noisy pockets of people yelled on the rainy streets.
The test will be whether any challenges to the outcome are worked out in the courts, and do not spill into the streets.
Odinga's camp had said even before the result that they were considering legal action, but said they would pursue it through the courts and the newly reformed judiciary.
That is a change from 2007, when Odinga said he could not trust the judiciary at the time to treat the case fairly.
Kenyatta's camp had also complained about delays in counting and other aspects of the process.
But many Kenyans had said this race was more transparent than previous votes. Turnout reached 86 percent of the 14.3 million eligible voters, in a nation where tribal loyalties largely trump ideology at the ballot box.
Kenyatta, comes from the Kikuyu tribe, Kenya's biggest ethnic community, accounting for about a fifth of Kenya's 40 million people, and Odinga, 68, is a Luo. Their ethnic groups alone could not have secured victory, so both picked running mates from other tribes to beef up their support.
Labels: ELECTIONS, KENYA, UHURU KENYATTA
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Kenya’s Kibaki inaugurates road project in Malawi
By Lucky Mkandawire, Nyasa Times
Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki on Thursday wrapped up his two-day tour of duty in Malawi with a landmark inauguration of a multinational road project in the capital Lilongwe.
Since his arrival on Wednesday, President Kibaki undertook a number of tasks including holding a bilateral talk with his Malawian counterpart Joyce Banda.
And on Thursday, just few hours before he flew out to Kenya, the visiting president laid a foundation stone for the Lilongwe West By-pass road project which is being funded by the African Development Bank (ADB).
The by-pass road is part of the multinational Nacara Road Corridor Project that will benefit Malawi, Mozambique and Zambia.
Part of the ground breaking activities of the Lilongwe West by-pass road. President Mwai Kibaki of Kenya and President Banda
The by-pass will connect the country’s main road (M1) on the Blantyre-Lilongwe road and the Lilongwe-Mchinji road.
Speaking after laying the foundation stone, the Kenyan leader observed that President Banda’s decision to invest in road infrastructure will go a long way in transforming the country’s economy.
He urged the government to continue placing infrastructure development because it is a strategic aspect in trade reforms for any country.
“Infrastructure upgrade and expansion are the center of business reforms. This is because infrastructure acts as a key enabler of socio-economic development in any country,” said Kibaki.
The Kenyan president observed that the construction of the road will not only divert transit traffic from the city centre but also significantly reduce travel times and increase movements within it.
“This road will also improve the country’s competitiveness in export market as it is destined to contribute to the reduction of the overall costs of doing business,” noted the 81-year-old leader who will be leaving office in two months time after serving for 10 years.
Turning to Malawian traders, Kibaki encouraged them to take advantage of the new road network to explore extra business ventures within and beyond its immediate environs.
“In addition to the advantages, the by-pass will also benefit other neighbouring countries such as Zambia thus promoting intra Africa trade integration.
“This is in line with the objectives of the COMESA [Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa] master plan for infrastructure development where member countries have committed themselves to developing closer partnerships in implementation of economic corridors which will eventually reduce the cost of cross border trade,” he explained.
Kibaki said it was his expectation that the increased inter state trade within the COMESA bloc would create employment and contribute to poverty reduction.
In her speech, President Banda said the road, to be constructed by SADC regional network standards, would lead to improved mobility, generate more development in the area as well as create employment among many Malawians.
“Today’s function goes a long way in the realization of the development priorities my government set in 2012 when I took over.
“The construction of this new road is one of the excellent examples of my government’s commitment to improving the socio economic well being of Malawians by providing improved mobility, access and connectivity for our nation’s socio economic development,” President Banda said.
She said the by-pass will enable traffic going to Zambia and Mozambique pass through Lilongwe without disturbing local traffic while the domestic traffic going to the north and south of Malawi will also ably pass through the city with minimal delays.
Banda, however, urged those residing along the corridor to cooperate with the contractors to ensure that work is completed in time.
“No one should develop or cultivate in the road reserve… Compensation was paid for a road corridor of six to 10 meters implying that all land within this corridor has been reserved for future expansion,” she warned.
President Banda then pledged that her government would ensure implementation of the project does not suffer serious challenges that would negatively affect its progress.
While in the country, the Kenyan president also laid wreath at the mausoleum of Malawi’s founding president Dr Hastings Kamuzu Banda, held a high-level discussion with the business community and also met Kenyans living in Malawi.
Labels: JOYCE BANDA, KENYA, MALAWI, MWAI KIBAKI, ROADS
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President speaks on Mau Mau victory
Saturday, 13 October 2012 00:00
Takunda Maodza Senior Reporter
Africa rejoices in the victory of the Mau Mau victims of British colonial brutalities after a London Court gave them the green light to sue for damages, President Mugabe said yesterday.
Last week, the High Court in London allowed three elderly Kenyans, Wambuga Wa Nyingi, Jane Muthoni Mara and Paulo Muoka Nzili, to pursue damages for torture during the Mau Mau rebellion against British rule.
Addressing the Zanu-PF 90th Ordinary session of the Central Committee in Harare, President Mugabe said Zanu-PF should not view the Mau Mau case as a matter far removed from the revolutionary party.
“I want to acknowledge a quiet yet significant victory which Africa has won against British colonialism. As some of you may be aware, Mau Mau victims of the British colonial savagery and brutalities in Kenya last week won the right to sue the British government for atonement of the suffering they underwent as they resisted British colonialism which, in comparable circumstances, involved theft of huge swathes of land, a good part of which remain in the hands of absentee landlords well ensconced in Britain and larger Europe,” President Mugabe said.
He added: “We who also bear the scars of British colonial atrocities can never view this test case as a matter far away from us as a matter for Kenyans alone. We see ourselves in those resilient Mau Mau fighters; we see in their horrid injuries our very own un-repaid injuries and injustices from that past of white savagery.”
President Mugabe said the Mau case was a lesson not just for Africa but for victims of slavery, colonialism and other de-humanising forms of imperialism suffered by the Third World.
“Time may have come when the abused notion of ‘responsibility to protect’ may make better sense when revisited so we incorporate within it, its long ignored correlative of ‘responsibility to account’ for past offences and horrible Nazi-like human rights abuses of indigenous peoples,” he said.
He said Africa must not allow a situation where history was recalled selectively, sparing the so-called mighty.
“We know to be wrong and guilty of heinous crimes against humanity both in the past and present. We should never allow a world order where might buys right, while right succumbs to wrong,” President Mugabe said.
The President and Zanu-PF First Secretary also saluted Hugo Chavez’s victory in Venezuelan presidential elections describing it as sweet victory against forces of global imperialism.
President Chavez, a socialist, was re-elected into office on Sunday after defeating Henrique Capriles.
“I recall and recognise last weekend’s loud and resounding defeat of global imperialism by the progressive people of Venezuela, led by their revolutionary leader Hugo Chavez. It was sweet victory against forces of global reaction and imperialism, indeed, a victory made sweeter by defeating the false hopes imperialism had concocted for itself even against the outward fact of the hugely popular Bolivarian revolution,” President Mugabe said.
He said President Chavez’s victory was a victory for the ordinary Venezuelan and the Third World.
“The people won, the poor won and as a revolutionary party, Zanu-PF, shares in that victory, indeed regards it as its own, albeit vicariously.
“Any gain for forces of global progress, wherever such may be registered, is another great stride for the larger half of mankind, a gain for the broad masses of the Third World for so long trampled upon by imperialism,” President Mugabe said.
He said imperialism continued to make the world more dangerous daily.
“It continues to corrupt institutions of democracy in our world, principally the ballot box, in order to attack genuine national leaderships in order to undermine national sovereignties and of course to subvert the very notion of democracy in whose name it pitches its claim to superiority,” President Mugabe said.
He said so heartless were the imperialist forces that they not only interfered in other countries’ internal affairs but went to the extent of invading them.
“We need to study the wiles which imperialism employed in Venezuela in a bid to defeat the will of the people.
“The blatant aggression of imperialism in North Africa and the Middle East, its continuing naked provocations in the Far East, and, as we saw not too long ago, its attempts even to destabilise a powerful state like Russia, clearly show a system experiencing a crisis, but one which will not hesitate to make wars abroad in order to stave off its own problems and challenges,” President Mugabe said.
He said the world has seen the limitations of neo-liberalism, an ideology of later-day imperialism.
“Hence when such alternatives, presenting fairer and more representative systems of Government triumph, we need to celebrate.
“We must boldly express solidarity with kindred parties and movements worldwide, so we continue to build a broad front against this new and deadly strain of resource-hunting imperialism,” he said.
“We have seen the enemy make repeated, rapacious attacks to suffocate our country using even those we are meant to build the country in partnership with. It does not work, it cannot work!” he said.
Labels: BBC, COLONIALISM, KENYA
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Riots in Kenya after Somali Shabab member assassinated
Tuesday, August 28, 2012
MOMBASA: Deadly riots broke out in Kenya’s main port of Mombasa on Monday after the assassination of a radical cleric linked to Somalia’s al Qaeda-allied Shabab militants.
At least one person was hacked to death as thousands of angry protestors took to the streets after Aboud Rogo Mohammed — who was on US and UN sanction lists for allegedly supporting the Shabab — was shot dead.
“A car behind us aimed at my husband, they shot him on the right side,” said his widow Haniya Said, screaming in grief after the killing by unknown attackers. “One person has been killed, he was slashed to death during the protests,” said regional police chief Aggrey Adoli.
Cars were set on fire and two churches were looted in the city — Kenya’s main port and a key tourist hub — according to an AFP reporter. “There is chaos in town now, and our officers are on the ground dispersing the rioters to maintain peace,” added Adoli. “They are demonstrating against the killing of Aboud Rogo, who was shot by unknown people.”
Witnesses said that Mohammed’s car was riddled with bullets, and a photograph released by his supporters showed his bloody corpse slumped behind the wheel of a car.
“He died as we rushed him to hospital. Why have they killed my dear husband?” his widow added, before she and her children were taken to the hospital. Mohammed was placed on a US sanctions list in July for “engaging in acts that directly or indirectly threaten the peace, security or stability of Somalia”, specifically for recruiting and fundraising for the hardline Shabab.
The United Nations Security Council placed a travel ban and asset freeze on the cleric in July, saying he had provided “financial, material, logistical or technical support to al-Shabab”.
He was the “main ideological leader” of Kenya’s Al Hijra group, also known as the Muslim Youth Center (MYC), the UN said.
African Union and Somali troops captured the key port of Marka from al Qaeda-linked Shabab insurgents on Monday, the latest in a string of bases to be wrested off the extremists, officials said.
“We have taken Marka, we entered alongside the Somali government forces Monday morning,” said Colonel Ali Houmed, the spokesman for the African Union mission in Somalia (AMISOM). “There was some fighting, but not so heavy, most of the Shabab had fled.” The loss of Marka, some 70 kilometres (45 miles) south of the capital Mogadishu, is another major blow for the insurgents, who have been on the back foot for several months. AU and Somali troops have made significant gains in recent months against Shabab, although they remain a major security threat. Ethiopian troops are also battling the militants from the south and west.
The loss of Marka leaves the Shabab with two major ports in southern Somalia — Barawe and the key rebel bastion of Kismayo — although an international naval blockade has already greatly squeezed maritime access there. agencies
Labels: KENYA, SOMALIA
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Kenyan False Flag Bomb Plot Aimed At Tightening Sanctions Noose On Iran
Islamic Republic Falls Foul in African Cradle of America’s ‘War on Terror’
by Finian Cunningham
Global Research, July 6, 2012
An alleged spectacular Iranian bomb plot uncovered in Kenya this week has all the hallmarks of a Western intelligence “false flag” operation – with the aim of tightening international oil sanctions even further on Iran.
Two men alleged to be Iranian nationals and members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps appeared in court in Kenya’s capital, Nairobi, earlier this week on terrorism charges. Media reports on 2 July said the men are accused of planning to blow up American, British, Saudi and Israeli targets in Kenya, including the British High Commission office, a chain of hotels and a synagogue.
Then, two days later, on 4 July, the Kenyan government made a surprise announcement that it was cancelling a fresh oil deal that it had signed with Iran. The purchase agreement had been struck with the Islamic Republic only a few weeks ago. The deal would have involved the supply of 80,000 barrels per day (b/d) of Iranian crude to the East African country.
Kenya is East Africa’s largest economy and the new partnership was seen as a welcome opportunity by Iran to open up other African oil export markets in the wake of tough American and European sanctions that came into effect on 28 June and 1 July, respectively. The 27-member EU bloc was a mainstay of Iranian oil exports, representing about 500,000 b/d, or 20 per cent of Iran’s global total.
While the Kenyan deal in itself would have only gone a small way towards compensating for the loss of the EU market, nevertheless it held the promise of a wider regional destination for further Iranian exports. There were reports of similar transactions in the pipeline with Tanzania and Zimbabwe among others.
Only a day before the Kenyan cancellation, the director of the National Iranian Oil Company, Mohsen Ghamsari, spoke to Iranian media in an upbeat tone about the Kenyan contract and how this signified new export markets in Africa circumventing the loss of European markets.
“Under the current conditions, despite the oil exports' halt to Europe, new contracts with other customer countries have been signed,” said Ghamsari. “One of the new markets for exports of Iran’s oil is that of the African countries,” he added, confirming that Kenya was one of them. “Soon, more details about new Iran oil export contracts to new countries will be announced.”
That promising African development for Iran now seems to have foundered, adding to an already bleak outlook for Iran’s economy following the closure of European oil markets and, even worse, cancellations by major Asian buyers. Some 60 per cent of Iran’s crude exports had until recently been destined for Asia, including China, India, Japan and South Korea. But, despite earlier defiant talk, these buyers have recently balked at Iranian orders so as to avoid American and European financial penalties against banks and shipping insurance companies dealing with Iran.
The upshot is that Iranian oil exports have crashed from 2.5 million b/d last year to about 1.5 million b/d currently – a drop of 40 per cent, representing a loss of $3 billion every month to the Iranian economy. Over the year, that translates into a 10 per cent contraction in Iran’s oil-based national economy, according to World Bank data. This, in turn, is having a drastic impact on social conditions in Iran, with the purchasing power of the currency, the rial, plummeting, and inflation and unemployment spiralling.
Kenya’s oil ministry claims that revoking the Iranian contract was not related to the alleged bomb plot. The ministry says it was merely complying with American warnings of sanctions’ penalties being enforced if it went ahead with the oil deal.
[In other words, penalties against the Kenyan government, if they don't step in line in freezing Iran out of the world market, just as penalties and in fact sanctions were livied against Malawi, when they dared to extend a loan (for the purchase of Malawian maize) to the government of Zimbmabwe. This is how the New World Order ENFORCES the New World Order.
But they are weak. They depend on lies and deception, and bullying. As soon as a country is truly self-sufficient, all the NWO can do is invade them and put someone else on the throne or in State House. Ultimately, they can only enforce their system through a giant military. Which is the real reason why the United States' military is larger than the next 10 largest armies combined. The internal requirement is protecting the oil supply lines - the external reason is enforcing the trillionairs' business interests and contracts. - MrK]
But it seems likely that the suspected terror attacks – reported widely in lurid detail – may have been aimed at making the abrupt scuppering of the Iranian oil purchase more politically acceptable, not just in Kenya, but elsewhere in Africa. Local and international media reports immediately connected the Kenyan bomb scare with other alleged Iranian terror plots over the past year, including the plan to assassinate the Saudi ambassador in Washington DC, and a string of explosions in Thailand, India, Georgia and Azerbaijan.
Iran has strenuously denied any sinister involvement in Kenya or the other countries mentioned. No evidence has been produced to substantiate the high-flown accusations made against Iran, yet Western mainstream media continue to run with such claims months after the alleged incidents have faded into oblivion.
As if on cue, as soon as the news broke about the latest bomb plot in Kenya, Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, accused the Iranian government of “a terrorist attack in Africa”.
Netanyahu asserted: “After Iran sent its agents to murder the Saudi ambassador on US soil, the country has engaged in attacks in Azerbaijan, Bangkok, in Tbilisi, in New Delhi, and now we have just discovered a plot for a terrorist attack in Africa. Iranian terrorism knows no borders. The international community must fight against this major player in the world of terrorism.”
Apart from Netanyahu’s scripted, ready response to a breaking news story, there are other aspects about the alleged Kenyan bomb plot that indicate there is far more to it than meets the eye.
The two suspects, named as Ahmad Abolfathi Mohammad and Sayed Mansour Mousavi, are widely reported to belong to the crack Al Quds division of Iran’s revolutionary guards. But their appearance in the Nairobi court showed men who were well over middle age, with slightly disheveled figures, lacking the killer, athletic physiques that one would expect of elite commandos.
Secondly, it was reported that as soon as the men were arrested on 19 June, they voluntarily led police to a warehouse in the coastal city of Mombasa to recover 15 kilos of RDX plastic explosive. That readiness to cooperate with police in locating explosives does not sound like the behaviour of highly trained, elite commandos.
Thirdly, when the men appeared in court this week they denied the charges of a terror conspiracy. That contradicts the above claim that the suspects led police to their bomb store.
Fourthly, Kenyan police were reported in local and international media saying that they believed the alleged terror duo were planning to use 15 kilos of explosive to attack up to 30 high-profile targets.
Now, while RDX (a component of Semtex) is a powerful explosive, a blitz on 30 targets with a total cache of 15 kilos would appear to spread the demolition material a bit thin (0.5 kilo per hit), which seems an unlikely bomb ration if one was indeed planning to carry out terror attacks on embassies, government buildings, hotels, a city centre shopping mall, and a synagogue.
A fifth anomaly in the official story is the allegation that all this synchronized destruction and mayhem was to be carried out by only two men. Given the necessary logistics, surveillance, transport, not to mention the time required to execute such a complex plot, the huge task would be physically impossible for two individuals to pull off – even if they were top-notch Iranian commandos, which the two hapless suspects are clearly not.
One further question mark over the latest supposed Iranian terror plot in Kenya is the shadowy involvement of Western and Israeli intelligence in the former British colony. For several months now the US embassy has been issuing unspecified terror warnings to the public. On 23 April, a Kenya news agency reported: “An advisory from the [US] embassy said the timing of the attacks was unclear, but intelligence information showed the planning was in the final stages.” In a statement, the US embassy said then: “The embassy informs US citizens residing in or visiting Kenya that the US embassy in Nairobi has received credible information regarding a possible attack on Nairobi hotels and prominent Kenyan government buildings.”
Since Kenyan troops invaded neighbouring Somalia at the end of 2011, there have been a series of grenade attacks in Nairobi that have claimed over 10 lives. It is not clear who is behind the attacks. The Somali insurgent group, Al Shehab, which is said to have links to Al Qaeda, has been blamed by Kenyan police, but the group has denied involvement. While the grenade incidents have proven deadly, there is a distinct sense that the US embassy terror warnings were hinting at a more high-profile event.
Moreover, when the alleged Iranian bombers appeared in court, they claimed that they were interrogated and tortured by Israeli agents upon their arrest. The Israeli embassy declined to comment to media on these claims. But if they are true, that suggests a highly irregular policing matter. Why should Israeli agents be involved immediately in a criminal matter of a sovereign jurisdiction?
A deeper look into the historic role of Kenya in the American-led “war on terror” raises even more disquieting questions that cast doubt on the latest Iranian bomb plot claim.
For a start, Kenya is a key ally of Western intelligence in East Africa. It is believed to serve as a clandestine base for American aerial drone attacks in Somalia, which intensified over the past year, with reports of dozens of deaths, many of them civilians, in the southern Somali region around the rebel-held port city of Kismayu.
Kenya is also a node in the international rendition network run by the US, Britain and Israel. Young men from Somalia and other countries in the region who are suspected of Islamic Jihadi activities or sympathies are rendered to black sites in Kenya, where they are interrogated and tortured before being transferred to other such sites in Afghanistan. Human rights investigator Clara Gutteridge told the US-based Nation magazine in excruciating detail how one young Somali man was captured in Mogadishu in 2003 by a Somali warlord and handed over to American officials, who had him rendered via Kenya and Djibouti to Afghanistan for five years of detention and torture before he was released from Bagram Air Force Base without charge.
The Kenyan authorities have therefore a history of close collaboration with Western intelligence agencies, and this collaboration dates back to before 9/11 and the “war on terror”. Indeed, a case can be made that Kenya served as a crucial incubator for the American conception of fighting a global war against Islamic terrorists.
In 1998, three years before 9/11, one of the most deadly assaults against US personnel and sovereignty was carried out ostensibly by the newly formed Al Qaeda terror network led by Osama bin Laden. On 7 August 1998, a truck bomb carrying 1,000 kilos of explosive was driven into the US embassy in Nairobi. The lethal force demolished the building and killed 219 people, 12 of them American citizens, and injured more than 4,000. Minutes later, in Dar-es-Salaam, the capital of neighbouring Tanzania, a second truck bomb exploded at the US embassy there, killing 11 and injuring 85.
The twin attacks put Al Qaeda and its leader on the global map as America’s enemy number one. This was the genesis of the “war on terror” in which, supposedly, the former American mujahideen proxy army that had defeated the Soviet Union in Afghanistan was transformed from dutiful ally to mortal enemy. The rationale for the switch was said to be the arrival of US troops in Saudi Arabia – the home of the holy Muslim cities of Mecca and Medina – which began in August 1990 in the build-up to the Gulf War against Iraq’s Saddam Hussein over his invasion of Kuwait.
During the 1990s, Bin Laden’s newly formed Al Qaeda (“the base”) was reported to be expanding out of Afghanistan and setting up in Sudan, Kenya and Somalia. Recall that this was at the time of the Soviet Union’s collapse and with its demise the entire rationale of the America’s global military doctrine and spending was in danger of vanishing. During this period, Al Qaeda came to fill the void left by the collapsing Soviet Union as the new enemy for which the Pentagon’s trillion-dollar budget would have to be maintained, rather than it being furnished as a “peace dividend” for the good of American civic society.
The problem for US planners was making the nebulous Al Qaeda a credible threat to the American and world public. The devastating attacks on the US embassy in Kenya and Tanzania would provide such a crystallizing demonstration. But, as with the later, more spectacular 9/11 terror in New York, the bombings of the embassies were not masterminded by Al Qaeda Jihadis, but rather by American military intelligence. The horrific terrorist carnage would serve to mobilize the American public behind a new war agenda, no longer the one against the “evil Soviet empire”, but now against “Islamic extremists” hellbent on destroying American values and the American way of life.
American author and commentator Ralph Schoenman has been researching the 1998 US embassy bombings from that date. Schoenman is convinced that the atrocities were “false flags” to create a new official enemy of the US in the form of Al Qaeda and Muslim extremists generally. In that way, he says, the US planners were able to bestow American imperialism with a badly needed new pretext to justify foreign interventions and wars for the control of natural resources, principally oil.
The American-led wars over the past decade in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Pakistan, Somalia as well as the warmongering policies towards Syria and Iran bear that out.
A key indicator of a false flag operation in the 1998 US embassy attacks, says Schoenman, was the involvement of Ali A Mohamed, also known as Ali “the American”. He is labeled as the “point man”, who masterminded and coordinated the assaults. Two years after the blasts, Mohamed was arrested by the American authorities and pleaded guilty to conspiracy to murder.
It then transpired that the alleged Al Qaeda bomber had an impeccable US military service record, having trained at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, and later working as an instructor in explosives at the John F Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School until 1989.
The American government narrative then claimed that Mohamed, who was married to an American citizen and who had lived in California, was all the while working as a double agent for Al Qaeda and that “he turned” by the time of the embassy attacks in 1998. This narrative was dutifully circulated by the American media. One headline in the San Francisco Chronicle in 2001 conveyed the sense of treachery: Bin Laden’s man in Silicon Valley – ‘Mohamed the American’ orchestrated terrorist acts while living a quiet suburban life in Santa Clara.
Schoenman dismisses the official claim as “straining credulity” in face of the facts. He says that during the 1990s Mohamed was working for the American secret services in East Africa, including Kenya. The operative was also known to be travelling and liaising with Bin Laden’s network in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
“There is no way that US intelligence handlers did not know of every move made by Mohamed. This guy was recruited by the CIA in Cairo, where he was a major in the Egyptian army. He was then a handpicked graduate of Fort Bragg for American Special Forces and he went on to instruct green berets in psy-ops and explosives at the JFK School of Warfare. We are talking about the strictest security clearance in the US military. And yet the official account expects the public to believe that somehow Mohamed’s connections with Bin Laden’s Al Qaeda slipped their attention and that he carried out the US embassy bombings in a rogue fashion for the supposed enemy.”
Schoenman’s contention is that the Kenyan and Tanzanian US embassy attacks were a deliberate ploy by American military intelligence that was instrumented by Ali A Mohamed. The blasts involved suicide bombers and Schoenman does not rule out that there may have been willing Jihadi dupes recruited for the mission. But the bottom line is that the carnage was deliberately inflicted by US planners as a prelude to the “war on terror” and the subsequent spectacular of 9/11.
Supporting this contention is the fact that, despite pleading guilty in a New York court in 2000 to conspiracy to murder American citizens, Mohamed has never been sentenced. There are no records of subsequent court proceedings and his whereabouts are unknown. His Californian wife, Linda Sanchez, was quoted in 2006 as saying of her husband: “He can't talk to anybody. Nobody can get to him. They have Ali pretty secretive... it’s like he just kinda vanished into thin air.”
That sounds like Mohamed made a guilty plea bargain with his handlers, so that he would not have to go to trial thus suppressing all details of the embassy bombings, and in return he would be given a new identity and not have to spend a single day in jail.
To recap, Kenya holds a special place in the evolution of America’s fraudulent war on terror – a war that it is conducting with trillion-dollar budgets in the pursuit of illusory or grossly exaggerated enemies. In the name of this spurious war, the US along with its NATO, Arab and Israeli allies are justified to invade sovereign countries, absolved from committing crimes against humanity, and free to commandeer the natural resources of subjugated nations. Warmongering, criminal imperialism is thus given a badge of respect.
Meanwhile, independent, peaceful countries such as Iran are traduced as “an axis of evil”, “a rogue state”, “sponsor of global terror”, thereby justifying aggression by the self-styled “upholders of international law”.
Paradoxically, the real sponsors of terror, who possess thousands of nuclear warheads in contravention of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, are beating the drums of war against nuclear unarmed Iran and imposing crippling economic sanctions.
And when Iran peaceably seeks new oil markets in Africa to circumvent illegal sanctions, it is not only denied the right to conduct international trade, it is doubly wronged by being blamed for plotting terrorism – by the very states that are the architects of global terrorism.
Finian Cunningham is Global Research’s Middle East and East Africa Correspondent
cunninghamfinian@gmail.com
Global Research Articles by Finian Cunningham
Labels: AL-QAEDA, IRAN, KENYA, TERRORISM
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COMMENT - Today, you can find theory of eugenics, like the obsession with 'educable capacity', back in the idea of elimination exams, in the insistence by rhodies that 'Africans can't farm', and of course the whole 'bantu education' of South Africa. Outdated ideas have a tendency to survive in institutions and practices long after they have been discredited. Something to take into account when reforming the education system. I like the Malaysian education model - educate everyone, and pull along any students who fall behind. Letting children do tests and determining their future based on tests they do at age 9 or 10 is absurd and abusive, and entirely based on the notion of sifting out those with high levels of inherited intelligence, or the Factor G as the Bell Curve types like to call it. UPDATE:
(REVIEWS IN HISTORY) Race and Empire: Eugenics in Colonial Kenya. This book review is very revealing with respects to for instance eugenic thought in colonial (Kenyan) literature, especially from the writer of "Flame Trees Of Thika".
Imperial Eugenics In Kenya
Part I of II
by Michael Barker
(Swans - March 12, 2012) In recent decades there have been a plethora of studies that have demonstrated the global application of eugenic ideas, (1) but close investigations of imperial eugenic movements have tended to be left by the wayside. Chloe Campbell's book
Race and Empire: Eugenics in Colonial Kenya (Manchester University Press, 2007) helps fill this lacuna, providing a concrete example of how "eugenics served as a scientific bulwark that fortified the ideology of imperialism."
Formed in July 1933, the Kenya Society for the Study of Race Improvement (KSSRI) was the centerpiece of the colonial eugenic movement. Far from being a marginal affair," the majority" of the society's members "worked in colonial administration or were professionals based in Nairobi, or were the wives of men employed in these areas."
Dreams of applying eugenic solutions to the political problems facing colonialism were not, however, limited to the "most vociferously racially hostile members of Kenyan settler society"; and in fact, such policies were "supported by individuals who were considered progressive, and by some officials who were viewed as suspiciously 'pro-native' by local settlers." Support for eugenics by such progressives owed much to the "ultimately disingenuous" idea that the science of eugenics could "take the poison out of the debate on race"; (2) i.e., provide the means by which white "progressive" imperialists could promote "native development" and dominate Kenya without a reliance upon increasingly delegitimized racial ideological frameworks.
Two significant individuals who worked together to promote the cause of eugenics in Kenya and whose research carried much weight in Africa were Dr. Henry Laing Gordon and Dr. F. W. Vint. Gordon was an ardent propagandist for the immediate implementation of eugenically-based program of "scientific colonization." Vint, on the other hand, tended to be "more reticent about making social and political extrapolations, maintaining a position of scientific detachment." (3) Despite his outspoken approach to eugenics, Gordon was very much an accepted member of the colonial ruling class. To illustrate this point, in 1931, shortly after Gordon published an article in which "he argued that there was a high level of inherited, innate mental deficiency, or amentia, in Kenya, which caused inferior intelligence in the 'East African native'" he became president of the Kenyan branch of the British Medical Association. (4) Yet despite the high esteem his work received in colonial circles, the depression meant that substantial funding for his eugenic studies was not available in Kenya, thus:
At the end of 1933 Gordon was given special leave by the Kenya medical department to allow him to go to London and test his ideas on the more specialised scientific opinion there. An indication of Gordon's standing is given by that fact that he was granted three months' paid leave to make this trip to London and his passage to Britain was also paid for by the Kenya government. Paterson (Director of Medical services) argued that it was highly desirable that Gordon's research be communicated to a British audience, as the publicity would be valuable to Kenya and might lead to a serious research project. (p.56)
During this visit Gordon gave a paper to the African Circle at Chatham House (which was later published in their Journal of African Society), that made the case that African brains did not have the same cellular durability as European ones. Hence, this led him to the amazing conclusion (based on one dissection), that the demands placed on African minds by European education and religion led to a type of mental collapse (dementia praecox) that was not apparent in "raw natives." This outright dismissal of the potential of the African mind for civilization meant that the Kenyan eugenicists, contrary to their counterparts in the metropole, veered clear of the traditional "solutions" provided by negative or positive eugenics, because the "supposed incapacity" in this case was located in the entire African population rendering such policies impractical. (5)
Desperate to obtain support to launch a large research program in Kenya to research African mental backwardness, Gordon made the most of his limited time in London and also presented his work on amentia at a meeting of the Eugenics Society in London. Here, despite the fact that his research relied upon "crude correlations of head size and intelligence" -- an approach that used methods "that had largely been discredited by biologists in Britain" -- he still "received a warm response" from his fellow eugenicists. (6) But given the "fundamental flaws" in his research, not everyone left the legitimacy of Gordon's work unchallenged.
One prominent critic was Hilda Matheson, the secretary of the African Research Survey in Oxford. Campbell cites a personal letter that Matheson wrote to J.H. Oldham, secretary of the Conference of British Missionary Societies and the International Missionary Council, whereupon Matheson wrote that she had "spoken to Julian Huxley, who was of course fully aware of the [negative] implications" of Gordon's data, which if true (which Matheson thought unlikely) "could be used by interested people to make all kinds of unwarrantable deductions..." Other critics were likewise concerned about Gordon's "dubiously immaculate results," and Campbell argues that given the time and resource-consuming nature of Gordon's research, such critics certainly had good reasons for feeling that Gordon "was not in a position to conduct reliably a research project of the scale he described." (7)
Despite such significant reservations about the legitimacy of Gordon's work, the paper he presented to the British Eugenics Society was published the following year in Eugenics Review. In public too, the Eugenics Society was quick to rally to his cause, and in November 1933, leading members of the Eugenics Society proceeded to demand that greater resources be made available to follow up on Gordon and Vint's useful research on race and intelligence in Kenya. They did this by writing letters to The Times, the Colonial Office, and the Economic Advisory Council; and although Julian Huxley and Frank Crew ("who were both among the foremost British experts on genetics and critics of the mainline eugenic tradition") did not sign the "more temperate" letter to The Times, they did sign the two other letters. (8) In contrast to the letter sent to The Times, the two letters signed by Huxley "explicitly mentioned African inferiority." However, Huxley, no doubt with his reformist self-image in mind, was concerned with the initial draft of the letters and would only sign them if a qualification was added that there was some uncertainty about the exact causes of this inferiority -- a qualification that was duly added. (9) Following the publication of the Eugenics Society's letter in The Times, Gordon then had a letter published...
... in which he stated his and Vint's findings in a much more explicit manner than had been adopted in the Eugenics Society's letter of November 25. Gordon included a graph comparing the brain capacity in cubic centimetres of Europeans with "natives", which showed growth in African brain capacity gradually ceasing at adolescence. This was in contrast to the European brain, which was shown to rise steeply from about the age of sixteen. The peak of African brain capacity indicated in the graph was about that given for Europeans aged ten... In this letter, the extremity of Gordon's position on race and intelligence was made clear. (p.87)
Huxley's support for Gordon and Vint's research is particularly interesting given that earlier in the same year, in July 1933, Huxley had written the preface for Parmenas Mockerie's book An African Speaks for His People (Hogarth Press, 1934). Mockerie was "considered dangerously subversive in Kenya" as he was not only the founder of the Kikuyu Independent Schools Association, but also a delegate of the Kikuyu Central Association. (10)
In his foreword, Huxley argued that Mockerie himself was proof of the innate capacity of Africans and drew attention to the injustices felt under "the best-intentioned acts of paternalistic government," mentioning the kipande system (the certification system enforced under the Registration of Natives Ordinance, which required all adult African men to carry a registration pass at all times while outside the reserves), the restrictions on public meetings and political activity, and low wages. Huxley also mentioned in the foreword the belief in African mental inferiority and stated that it was impossible to say whether such a position was correct or not. He went on to say that the African was clearly far more capable of benefiting from education than believers in white superiority had held. (pp.84-5)
Huxley wanted to have his cake and eat it too, and as late as 1938 Huxley was "still supporting" Gordon, "long after many regarded him to be discredited in Britain..." Moreover, even though the British Eugenics Society's campaign to attain major funding for Gordon and Vint's eugenic research failed, Gordon "was elected to the Consultative Council of the Eugenics Society in 1939 and throughout World War Two he kept 'in close touch with the Society's head quarters'." Likewise, it is significant to note that the year after John Gilks, the former Director of Medical Services and Sanitary Services in Kenya, had retired from this position in 1933, he went on to become a member of the council of the British Eugenics Society. Having resettled in Britain, Gilk then "became an important part of Gordon's campaign" to attain support from British eugenicists. (11)
But in the end, despite the best efforts of British and Kenyan eugenicists, the campaign for renewed British support for eugenic research in Kenya proved unsuccessful, as even the "somewhat qualified support for the Kenyan eugenicists within the Colonial Office evaporated" as a result of the debate that raged in the British press in the winter of 1933/34. For instance, in 1934, Kenyan eugenicists attempted to push the Economic Advisory Council to fund research that examined the "influence of brain growth and other factors upon mental development among the indigenous races of East Africa" so that future research could be directly more effectively. However, although the terms of reference for this research were presented in a "fairly restrained tone," the British Prime Minister, Ramsay MacDonald, "had misgivings about the government being connected with the proposed research." MacDonald thus reluctantly agreed that this issue should be investigated by the British government's African Research Survey, against his preference that the work be undertaken by a "completely independent body," which in this case meant the Rockefeller Foundation. (12)
Eugenic concerns for Kenya were not, however, limited to undertaking dubious research on African intelligence. In fact, colonial educational policy toward Africa from the late 1920s onwards illustrates the "continuity" that existed between the ideas of the Kenyan eugenicists and the metropolitan movement for research into African development and education. This can be seen by a focus on the promotion of intelligence testing among natives, which by 1930 was being broadly recommended as a key part of systematizing education in the British colonies: (1) intelligence testing itself being a vital eugenic tool that the ruling class have, and continue to use, to rationalize the injustices inherent to capitalism. (2) Therefore, given these eugenic implications, it is appropriate that one of the leading promoters of both eugenics and IQ testing in the United States, the Carnegie Corporation of New York, then became increasingly involved in such enabling such educational priorities to be implemented in Kenya.
In addition to their interests in eugenics and IQ testing, the Carnegie Corporation had already gained much experience in the field of education, having helped create a tailor-made educational apparatus for African Americans in southern US states: tailor-made, that is, to ensure that humans with black skin remained relatively uneducated compared to their white-skinned counterparts. As Kenneth James King observed in his important book Pan-Africanism and Education: A Study of Race Philanthropy and Education in the Southern States of America and East Africa (Clarendon Press, 1971), following from their activities in America, throughout the 1920s the Carnegie Corporation had become increasingly involved in educational matters in Africa. Moreover, the aforementioned influential member of the international missionary community, J.H. Oldham, believed that the black educational institutes pioneered in the U.S. (both Hampton and Tuskegee), "provided a formula for combating the usual results of native education, 'the swelled head' and the openness to agitation, and if their principles could be firmly established in the new education of Africa, and the Jeanes School in particular, there was a chance that Africa could bypass the stage of Indian discontent.'" (3) (The first Jeanes School in Kenya was established in 1926 with the support of a grant from the Carnegie Corporation in Kabete.) (4)
Oldham's interest in educational solutions to colonialism makes particular sense as "Missionaries were the only European group engaged in public life in Kenya who appear not to have been won over by the eugenic, biological explanation for 'native backwardness'." (5) But although Oldham ultimately aimed to educate Kenyans in such a way that was compatible with continued imperial exploitation, hoping that intelligence testing "might help in the detection of racial differences in mentality," he was still "horrified by the extremity of Gordon's statements on race and intelligence." Like other foresighted members of the ruling class, Oldham was evidently more interested in supporting less overtly racist approaches to managing Africans. Therefore, in 1930, in order "to create appropriate educational material," Oldham and the president of the Carnegie Corporation, Frederick Keppel (1923-41) "agreed it was necessary to study African mentality; [and so] in 1932 the Carnegie Corporation sent Richard Oliver to perform intelligence tests at African schools in Kenya..." (6) Again, Oliver's educational focus "did not sit easily with the rhetoric" of the eugenicists campaign, but as Campbell points out, there is no doubt that beneath his "more tempered language... there was the same assumption of biological difference in intelligence." (7)
Openly eugenic arguments may not have been popular for all educational reformers, but one can see their attraction to many colonial authorities when one considers that educational inequality "was being increasingly disputed by the African population in Kenya" in the 1930s. And as Campbell points out, the activities of the Kenya Society for the Study of Race Improvement "can be seen as confronting this by making African educability central to the colonial eugenic problematic." Thus it is hardly surprising that eugenic arguments concerning the "educable capacity of the 'East African native' coincided with the emergence of the Kikuyu Independent Schools Movement." (8)
The Independent Schools Movement really took off in the early 1930s. The Kikuyu Independent Schools Association (KISA) was formed, which established its own schools that eventually accepted government inspection in return for grants in aid, and the movement was also closely associated with the formation of independent churches. KISA was less overtly political than another independent schools organisation, the Kikuyu Karinga Education Authority (KKEA), which was confined to southern Kiambu. ... It is striking that the Kenyan eugenicists started developing their theories on African educable capacity at a time when education was an important element of the Kikuyu political agenda and became associated with a political movement that profoundly threatened the colonial status quo. The independent schools movement connected access to education with access to social, political and economic objectives, indicated in particular by the KKEA's clear anti-colonial stance. (p.134)
One should note that at this time one of the founders of KISA, Parmenas Mockerie, had "attempted with [Jomo] Kenyatta to give evidence as a delegate of the KCA before the Parliamentary Committee on East Africa in Britain in May 1931," and had then gone on to study at Ruskin College, Oxford; while Kenyatta's own studies at the London School of Economics were eventually published in 1938 as the book Facing Mount Kenya. "This context of the well-known educational aspirations and achievements associated with Kikuyu political leaders who aroused so much hostility and fear among European settlers must be borne in mind when considering the assertions of Kenyan eugenicists about the educable capacity of East Africans." Gordon's work thus "legitimised and rationalised the settler suspicion of African education," and as Campbell observes, the coincidence of the Kikuyu's political demands and "the elaboration and success of the eugenic theories about African intelligence from about 1930 to 1937 is striking." (9)
In addition to rising concern about Kikuyu political activity during the 1930s, which resulted in a massive increase in their incarceration rates, educational issues tended to be connected "with youths who rejected the traditional, rural status quo." (10) The effects of rapid urbanisation were likewise considered to have contributed towards "a rise in the number of juvenile convictions" -- as in the minds of the settlers, the juveniles of Nairobi "seemed to represent a generation of detribalised and thus unmanageable natives." These racial concerns closely mirror similar ruling class worries with the growth of working class communities (and power) in Britain. Urbanization allegedly disturbed the African mind, and so "Kenyan and British eugenics converged in their imagery of a dispossessed, criminal and unproductive urban under class..." With the political stakes rising it should come as no surprise that the majority of the inmates of the Kabete Reformatory (which was just outside of Nairobi) were Kikuyu, and it was just here, in 1930, where Gordon undertook his first controversial intelligence studies. (11)
In 1932, the Kenyan government formed a Crime Committee to make recommendations for how to deal with what they deemed the juvenile problem. "The Chair of the committee was Armigel Wade (at that time Chief Native Commissioner) and among its members was Mary Shaw, who worked in the Child Welfare Department in Nairobi, was on the board of visitors of Kabete Reformatory and was also Secretary of the KSSRI." Shaw's husband also happened to be the Medical Officer in charge of Child Welfare; and other members of the committee also found much in common with Gordon's eugenic ideals. But while "law and order" policies were intimately entwined with eugenic policies, this is not to say that the committee's recommendation's necessarily had a eugenicist agenda. (12) That said, it is hard to tell the exact influence of eugenic concerns, and:
The negotiation of the roles of race and heredity in the post-war medical and psychiatric discourse of Kenya indicates some important continuities and discontinuities with pre-war science. Of particular interest to this study is the jettisoning of eugenic language, while retaining many of the assumptions and some of the biological interpretations. Between 1944 and 1946, several articles were published in the [East African Medical Journal] that returned to the issue of race and heredity. The first, written by Vint, addressed the question: 'Why has the African not developed a civilization of his own?' Vint used difference in skin colour as the starting point for elaborating more complex reasons for racial differences. (p.180)
Most interestingly, in 1946 O'Brien had published an article in the East African Medical Journal to attack scientific racism and "assist and defend the recently formed Race Relations Committee in Kenya and promote the establishment of a Race Relations Institute." (13) The "skeptical response" by the East African Medical Journal's editor was telling. As Campbell observed:
Of O'Brien's dismissal of the "biological conception of race" in favour of an environmental analysis of difference, an editorial commented: "This doctrine may well be regarded by many as so revolutionary as to require a good deal more proof before it is accepted." The editorial then went on to refer to the researches by Gordon and Vint on the African brain, concluding from them that "May it not be that the African while having a good brain has a different brain? Is it best to encourage educational and social progress along European lines or would it be better to evolve a different line of progress suited to a people with great though different intellectual possibilities?" (p.182)
Evidently not much had changed within the Kenyan medical profession, although admittedly they were beginning to make some concessions in line with the adoption of reform eugenics in the metropole. The editorial continued: "The solution was to locate the causes of African difference, whether in cultural development (a new concept that insinuated African intelligence), psychological stability, or physique, in the environment." "This response," Campbell continues, "enabled the doctors (in their own terms) to avoid accusations of racism, while leaving them free to pursue and emphasise the same interest in race." (14)
In this regard, the work of the "notorious" colonial psychiatrist who "had no training in psychiatry," J.C. Carothers, provides a "good example of the post-war attitudes to race and science" in Kenya. J.C. Carothers had retired from his medical work in Kenya (carried out in the 1930s and '40s) and returned to England, where influenced by the earlier work of Gordon and Vint he continued to write about Africa psychiatry. (15) Campbell writes:
The form of Carothers' scientific racism, for the purpose of analysing the role of eugenic thought in Kenyan science, was significantly different from that of the 1930s. The African mind was still treated as pathological, indeed often as psychopathological, by Carothers, but there was far heavier emphasis on the environmental effects, in the shape of social structure and physical environment, as an explanation of African psychology. The issue of nature and nurture was still addressed by Carothers, and he did not discount the role of heredity in racial differences. For example, in 1951 he published an article (again in the Journal of Mental Science) comparing the thinking of leucotomised Europeans with normal Africans. Interestingly, this article arose from an appeal by Vint for tests to find reliable Africans to work in the Medical Research Laboratory. (p.184)
In 1954, shortly after carrying out a major report for the World Health Organization, Carothers "was appointed to write a report on Mau Mau from a psychological perspective." With the Mau Mau war unfolding, this was a time of rising political tensions in Kenya; and it should come as little surprise that Carothers ignored the political context of the Mau Mau uprising, and chose to psychopathologise the African mind. To Carothers the actions of the Mau Mau were presented as owing to their "psychological inability to deal with modern life." Thus Carothers' "important and influential" work on the Mau Mau can be seen as a defense of the colonial power, (16) a defense that contributed in no small way to the brutal repression of the Mau Mau throughout the 1950s.
In fact, in many ways it is ironic that overt support for eugenic concerns were dropped as a result of the bad press Adolf Hitler had given them; as the racism undergirding such ideas never went away, and actually led to the creation of the British government's very own death camps in Kenya. A tragic history which is recounted in brutal detail in Caroline Elkins's book Britain's Gulag: The Brutal End of Empire in Kenya (Pimlico, 2005) where she chillingly acknowledges how the slaughter waged by the settlers against the Kikuyu people was accompanied by an important "shift in language and belief, from simple white supremacy to one that was overtly eliminationist." (17) It seems all too clear that, for the ruling class, the wrong lessons were learned from Hitler's Third Reich.
Notes
1. Mark Adams (ed.), The Wellborn Science: Eugenics in Germany, France, Brazil, and Russia (Oxford University Press, 1990); Nancy Leys Stepan, "The Hour of Eugenics": Race, Gender, and Nation in Latin America (Cornell University Press, 1991); Richard Cleminson, "Eugenics by Name or Nature? The Spanish Anarchist Sex Reform of the 1930s," History of European Ideas, 1815 (1994), pp. 729-40. (back)
2. Campbell, Race and Empire, p.3, p.6. Campbell adopts the misleading idea that leading eugenicists in the UK (associated with the British Eugenics Society), like their counterparts in the United States, became more interested in "reform" eugenics -- that is, eugenics minus racism -- during the 1930s. She highlights the significant reformist influence that Julian Huxley exerted over the British Eugenics Society in the 1930s and beyond, but points out that as "a liberal, in the 1920s Huxley espoused some extremely racist ideas that were in sharp contrast to his later well-known antiracist stance." (p.22) After his 1929 trip to East Africa, where he served as an advisor for the Colonial Office's Advisory Committee on Native Education in Tropical Africa, Huxley "wrote the book Africa View in which he began to question the biological validity of race." Later, writing with Alfred Haddon he coauthored the book We Europeans: A Survey of "Racial" Problems (1935), which "was a deliberate attempt to reveal the misconceptions of racism and the fallacy of Nazi racial theories." Campbell adds: "It was largely an attack on German racism and concentrated on racial questions within Europe. It argued that the notion of a genetically pure race was impossible and emphasised the importance of both nature and nurture in shaping human behaviour and characteristics; its argument was that the concept of race made little biological sense." (p.23)
"In 1980 [Elspeth] Huxley published a memoir of her mother which included her letters; significantly, she excised all the comments on eugenics and the KSSRI that Grant had frequently made in the original letters." (p.116) Elspeth Huxley (ed.), Nellie: Letters from Africa (1980). (back)
3. Campbell, Race and Empire, p.40, p.41. "The fact that practically all of Vint's work was concerned with race, and yet he avoided, except in his articles on the brain, the kind of dramatic generalisations that Dr Gordon was prone to, made him a more powerful ally in propagandising the supposed empirical reality of African mental inferiority. Thus, Vint's work was, for example, taken more seriously by the Colonial Office in London. As Flood said of Vint, 'He deals in observed facts'. In fact, Vint was not disinterested when it came to the question of African intelligence. This can be seen in his correlation of brain size and weight with intelligence." (p.52)
For a short time in the late 1930s Gordon served as Kenya's only mental health care expert at the Mathari Mental Hospital in Kenya. Although Campbell doesn't explore the politics of the incarceration of Africans in mental institutions, she directs her readers to Gail Beuschel's "valuable" study "Shutting Africans Away: Lunacy, Race and Social Order in Colonial Kenya, 1910-1963," Unpublished PhD Thesis, University of London, 2002. (back)
4. Campbell, Race and Empire, p.44. (back)
5. Campbell, Race and Empire, p.60, p.28. (back)
6. Campbell, Race and Empire, p.83, p.58. Critically, in private correspondence with influential reform eugenicist, Carlos Blacker -- who served as the General Secretary of the Eugenics Society from 1931 to 1952 -- Gordon made it clear "he was pursuing the question of amentia in Kenya from an objective point of view; [and] he was careful to distance himself from the settler perspective, which had become notorious in Britain in relation to native interests." "Both Blacker and Gordon were psychiatrists and it is clear that Blacker felt that on a personal and professional level, Gordon was an appropriate person for the Eugenics Society to support; [in November 1933] Blacker described Gordon to Julian Huxley as a 'charming man personally, and, in my opinion, entirely safe to back'." (p.82) (back)
7. Campbell, Race and Empire, p.58, p.59. (back)
8. Campbell, Race and Empire, pp.77-8. Scientists who joined the debate against Gordon subsequently included leading authorities include Louis Leakey, Cyril Burt, and J.B.S. Haldane. (back)
9. Campbell, Race and Empire, p.78. Thus with regards to this change demanded by Huxley, the part of the letter he signed that is cited by Campbell read: "The results arrived at so far tend to show the existence of a definite degree of inferiority in the average of at least certain native tribes as compared with the average European. It is, however, quite uncertain how much of the difference is truly genetic, and how much due to environmental conditions, notably nutrition and disease. It is obvious that the issues raised are of enormous importance, and will fundamentally concern the policy which will be laid down for the development of the East African territories, and for promoting the social advancement of the native." (p.78) (back)
10. Campbell, Race and Empire, p.84. (back)
11. Campbell, Race and Empire, p.85, p.86, p.61. (back)
12. Campbell, Race and Empire, p.103, p.105. Campbell adds: "The Prime Minister was particularly anxious that government involvement might have political ramifications in South Africa." (p.105) (back)
NOTES TO PT 2
Notes
1. Campbell, Race and Empire, p.97, p.99. (back)
2. Long-standing eugenicist, Lewis Terman was the American inventor of the Stanford-Binet IQ test. As Clarence Karier writes: "Terman's tests were based on an occupational hierarchy which was, in fact, the social class system of the corporate liberal state which was then emerging. The many varied tests, all the way from IQ to personality and scholastic achievement, periodically brought up-to-date, would serve a vital part in rationalizing the social class system. The tests also created the illusion of objectivity which, on the one side, served the needs of the 'professional' educators to be 'scientific,' and on the other side, served the need of the system for a myth which could convince the lower classes that their station in life was part of the natural order of things. For many, the myth had apparently worked. In 1963, the Russell Sage Foundation issued a report entitled Experiences and Attitudes of American Adults Concerning Standardized Intelligence Tests. Some of the major findings of that report indicated that the effects of the tests on social classes were 'strong and consistent' and that, while 'the upper class respondent is more likely to favor the use of tests than the lower class respondent,' the 'lower class respondent is more likely to see intelligence tests measuring inborn intelligence.'" Clarence Karier, "Testing for Order and Control in the Corporate Liberal State," in Ned Block and Gerald Dworkin, The IQ Controversy: Critical Readings (Quartet Books, 1977), p.354. (back)
3. King, Pan-Africanism and Education, p.156. Additionally, for further details on the miseducation of African Americans, see James Anderson, The Education of Blacks in the South, 1860-1935 (University of North Carolina Press , 1988); and Michael Barker, "White Philanthropy for Black (Mis)education," Ceasefire Magazine, February 21, 2012. (back)
4. Campbell, Race and Empire, p.149. (back)
5. Campbell, Race and Empire, p.179. "The incompatibility of missions and eugenics in Kenya has various underlying causes, all of which contribute to our understanding of the role of eugenics in Kenya. For a start, eugenics was never accepted by the Roman Catholic Church; in December 1930 Pope Pius XI condemned eugenics in his encyclical Casti Connubii, in which he declared that the spirit was paramount over the body and the equality of human souls regardless of material defect. Other missionaries, although not doctrinally opposed to eugenics in the same way, were likely to be suspicious of eugenics because of a longstanding conflict between traditional Christianity and the modern, atheist, Darwinian ideological roots of eugenics. The division between these traditions was compounded in Kenya by the question of native interests; the education and development being encouraged by missionaries was of precisely the kind that the Kenyan eugenicists were warning might be unsuitable and even dangerous when applied to Africans." (p.119) (back)
6. Campbell, Race and Empire, pp.99-100, p.99, p.149. Oliver had been a student of the famed psychologist Professor Godfrey Thomson (at Edinburgh University), and then with the aid of a Commonwealth Fellowship, Richard Oliver had studied at Stanford University, California, with Professor Lewis Terman -- one of the founding fathers of eugenic IQ testing. "In his early publications, like his 1916 book, The Measurement of Intelligence, Terman emphasised the innate and immutable nature of intelligence and wrote of the need to curtail the fertility of high-grade defectives, located by intelligence testing. However, in his later work, as [Stephen Jay] Gould points out, Terman became more cautious in his attribution of intelligence purely to heredity and placed more stress on environmental factors." (p.148) Gould dates Terman's change in emphasis to 1937. One should note that between 1923 and 1935 Terman had served on the advisory council of the American Eugenics Society (a council that was disbanded in 1935), and he had acted as a leading member of the Human Betterment Foundation (which had been formed in 1928). (back)
7. Campbell, Race and Empire, p.153. (back)
8. Campbell, Race and Empire, p.132. In 1935, the average annual expenditure per African in Kenya was less than 80 pence per person; while for European students living in Kenya it was approximately 32 times greater per person. (p.132) (back)
9. Campbell, Race and Empire, p.135, p.136. (back)
10. Campbell, Race and Empire, p.135. "[I]n the 1930s there was a substantial increase in the total number of convictions in Kenya's subordinate courts (29,783 in 1929, rising to a peak of 50,465 in 1934)." (p.168) (back)
11. Campbell, Race and Empire, p.157, p.27, p.158. (back)
12. Campbell, Race and Empire, p.161. It is unfortunate to note that: "The proponents of the Kenyan research into mental capacity saw their eugenic approach as highly congruent with this application of science to public welfare and understanding." (p.33) "Gordon's theories about biological racial inferiority were not considered by him to be incompatible with progressive ideas on social policy." (p.172) One can only wonder what might have happened if the Kenyan eugenicists had been given enough resources to carry out their objectives, as the main problem they faced was "that the limited administrative and welfare infrastructure of the colonial state did not allow the implementation of the ambitious policies [they] envisaged for 'scientific colonization'." (p.174) (back)
13. Campbell, Race and Empire, p.181. (back)
14. Campbell, Race and Empire, p.182. (back)
15. Campbell, Race and Empire, p.183. (back)
16. Campbell, Race and Empire, p.182, p.184. (back)
17. Caroline Elkins, Britain's Gulag: The Brutal End of Empire in Kenya (Pimlico, 2005), p.48. "In the Rift Valley, for example, one settler who operated his own screening camp was known as Dr. Bunny by the locals. It was his experimental prowess when it came to interrogating Mau Mau suspects that earned the doctor his notorious nickname: the Joseph Mengele of Kenya. One settler remembers her brother, a member of the Kenya Regiment and a pseudogangster, boasting of Dr. Bunny's exploits, which included burning the skin off live Mau Mau suspects and forcing them to eat their own testicles. Another former settler and member of the local Moral Rearmament Movement also recalled Dr. Bunny's handiwork. He, too, remembered skin searing along with castration and other methods of screening he would 'prefer not to speak of.'" (p.67)
"There is little in the colonial record documenting what happened at the famous Mau Mau Investigation Center, the brainchild of the Special Branch. If there were records, they have been destroyed or are still to be declassified. 'This [Mau Mau Investigation Center] is where we liked to send the worst gang members when we captured them sent to the forests,' recalled one settler who had joined the ranks of the Kenya Regiment sent to the Aberdares. 'We knew the slow method of torture [at the Mau Mau Investigation Center] was worse than anything we could do. Special Branch there had a way of slowly electrocuting a Kuke -- they'd rough up one for days. Once I went personally to drop off one gang member who needed special treatment. I stayed for a few hours to help the boys out, softening him up. Things got a little out of hand. By the time I cut his balls off he had no ears, and his eyeball, the right one, I think, was hanging out of its socket. Too bad, he died before we got much out of him.'" (p.87) (back)
Labels: COLONIALISM, EDUCATION, EUGENICS, KENYA, RACISM
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