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POLITICS OF THE SOIL: SEPARATISM, AUTOCHTHONY,AND DECOLONIZATION AT THE KENYAN COAST

Jeremy Prestholdt

The Journal of African History / Volume 55 / Issue 02 / July 2014, pp 249 - 270DOI: 10.1017/S0021853714000322, Published online: 29 May 2014

Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S0021853714000322

How to cite this article:Jeremy Prestholdt (2014). POLITICS OF THE SOIL: SEPARATISM, AUTOCHTHONY, ANDDECOLONIZATION AT THE KENYAN COAST . The Journal of African History, 55, pp 249-270doi:10.1017/S0021853714000322

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POLITICS OF THE SOIL: SEPARATISM,AUTOCHTHONY, AND DECOLONIZATION AT THEKENYAN COAST*

Jeremy PrestholdtUniversity of California, San Diego

AbstractThis article examines the perceived interdependence of territorial rights and socialidentity in colonial Kenya. In the early 1960s, attempts to win full autonomy for a narrowstrip of Indian Ocean coastline – the Protectorate of Kenya – encouraged an exclusivistdiscourse of autochthony. To establish their historical ownership of the coast, bothpolitical thinkers who supported and decried coastal separatism emphasized thecorrelation of race, ethnicity, religion, and physical space. Through competing claims to‘the soil’, all parties articulated a dually integrative and divisive language of citizenship.As a result, autochthony discourse exacerbated tensions within coastal society, fortifieddivergent visions of the postcolonial nation, and highlighted reductive definitions of thecoast as either maritime or continental in orientation.

Key WordsKenya, decolonization, nationalism, race, territory.

In May , Sheikh Abdilahi Nassir made his first representation to Kenya’s LegislativeCouncil (Legco). Nassir’s Mombasa constituency elected the young Swahili activist to fightfor the independence of the Protectorate of Kenya, a narrow strip of the Indian Ocean coaststretching from Lamu to the Tanganyikan border. Britain administered the protectorate,but per an treaty the sultan of Zanzibar retained titular sovereignty. As Kenyaadvanced towards independence, many in the coastal strip believed that postcolonialdomination by an up-country government would prove disastrous for racial, ethnic,and religious minorities. Thus, several coastal groups demanded full autonomy for theprotectorate. Critics denounced separatism as an attempt by British imperialists andArab supremacists to perpetuate racial privilege and deprive Kenya of its most

* I would like to thank contributors to the workshops, ‘Religion, Law, and Regimes of Control around theIndian Ocean’, at Roskilde University, and ‘Writing Postnational Narratives’, at the Center for IndianStudies in Africa, University of Witwatersrand, as well as those who commented on versions of this articlepresented to the Chr. Michelsen Institute, European Conference on African Studies , and Johns HopkinsHistory Seminar. Special thanks to Anne Bang, Felicitas Becker, James R. Brennan, Jonathon Glassman,Preben Kaarsholm, Kai Kresse, Pier Larson, Justin Willis, and anonymous JAH reviewers for their valuablecriticisms and suggestions. Financial support was provided by the National Endowment for theHumanities, Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation, Norwegian Research Council, Institute for EuropeanGlobal Studies at the University of Basel, and the University of California, San Diego Academic Senate.The author can be reached at: jprestholdt@ucsd.edu

Journal of African History, (), pp. –. © Cambridge University Press doi:./S

valuable port. Detractors added that Arab, Swahili, and other ‘autonomists’ – the termoften used for those favoring secession –were foreigners in Kenya and so had no rightto demand a separate coastal state.Against this politically charged backdrop, Nassir asserted that the coastal protectorate

had always been a distinct country. He then suggested that the conflation of race withgeography had led to confusion over the region’s true indigenes. Nassir proposed thatcontrary to popular belief black Africans were not the sole ‘natives’ of the coast region.He explained that there were two ways in which nationalists defined the African: byrace and historical presence. After dismissing the exclusive nature of any racial definitionof Africans, Nassir argued that if emphasis were placed on historical presence, ‘so-calledArabs’ might be ‘more African than those . . . regarded to be African’. Referencing theMinister of Government Ronald Ngala’s claim that his Giriama ancestors had migratedto Kenya’s coast only three centuries prior, Nassir posed the question: if by presence inKenya for three hundred years one is ‘a native entitled to African rights’, could notArabs who traced their ancestry in East Africa ‘ten times that period’ similarly be‘natives’? The chamber erupted with jeers.As barbs rained, Nassir declared that although ‘strangers’ (a reference to up-country

Kenyans) threatened ‘indigenous’ coastal people with expulsion, the coast belonged tothose who ‘have been in this land’. The birthright of the ‘children of the soil’, he con-cluded, was a separate coastal state. At this suggestion, Tom Mboya, a Luo representativefrom Nairobi and one of the Kenya African Nation Union’s (KANU) brightest politicalstars, joined the chorus of hecklers. After interrupting Nassir several times, Mboyashouted, ‘Go and buy land elsewhere!’ Minutes later, referencing Nassir’s partial Arabancestry, Mboya roared across the chamber, ‘Go back to Arabia!’ Nassir responded inkind. Alluding to Luo claims to have migrated south from the Sudan, Nassir counteredthat by Mboya’s logic he could ‘go back to the Sudan’.

The Nassir-Mboya row offers a window on racial and ethnic definitions of geography incolonial Kenya that would have long-term reverberations in the coast region. Specifically,the Legco exchange exemplifies the perceived interdependence of social identity and terri-torial rights that occupied political thinkers in the late colonial era and intermittentlyshaped political thought thereafter. Nassir and Mboya were progressive politicians whobuilt pan-ethnic coalitions and represented diverse, urban districts. Nevertheless, Mboyaresponded to the separatist threat by rejecting Nassir as a racial stranger. Nassir’s anxietiesabout the postcolonial future spurred demands for a separate state, which he and othersargued was their right as a consequence of their historical relationship to coastal soil.The Nassir-Mboya exchange thus highlights a mode of political thought in which entitle-ments are imagined to flow from historical, communal, and exclusive relationships to ter-ritory. When articulated in the language of African nationalism, such nativist territoriality

For an elaboration of this claim, see R. G. Ngala, Nchi na Desturi za Wagiriama (Nairobi, ). In an earlier tract, Abdilahi Nassir defined coastal people as those ‘of whatever colour or creed who have their

roots [at the coast]’. The National Archives of the United Kingdom, Kew (TNA) Colonial Office (CO) //E/, ‘An Open Letter by Abdilahi Nassir to the constituents of Mombasa Central Area’, Feb. .

Kenya. Legislative Council, Legislative Council Debates: Official Report, Volume LXXXVII, May –Jul , (Nairobi, ), –; interview with Abdilahi Nassir, Mombasa, July .

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fortified demands for independence in Kenya and across the continent. Yet, when appliedto subnational spaces, it produced a more precise and divisive politics of exclusion thatGabrielle Lynch has termed ‘ethnic territoriality’. Much as Jonathon Glassman andJames R. Brennan have shown for neighboring Zanzibar and Tanganyika respectively,coastal Kenya’s position at the intersection of continental and maritime social imaginariesencouraged and complicated overlapping registers of nativism. This, in turn, engenderedexplosive debates over citizenship.

The end of colonial rule precipitated a fundamental reconceptualization of macro-spatialrelations along Africa’s Indian Ocean rim. Since anticolonial rhetoric emphasized the rec-lamation of indigenous rights, nationalist politics frequently linked race and ethnicity tocontinental geography. In many of the colonies that encompassed Indian Ocean Africa,nationalist political thinkers envisaged introverted postcolonial states that emphasized acontinental rather than maritime orientation. An emerging body of scholarship on EastAfrican coastal societies demonstrates that decolonization created a conundrum for groupsdefined by diasporic or maritime identities. In Kenya, Zanzibar, Tanganyika, andMozambique diverse coastal communities highlighted their trans-oceanic genealogiesand links to a perceived Indian Ocean ‘meta-culture’. At the same time, these ‘local cos-mopolitans’ (to use Engseng Ho’s terminology), including Arabs, Swahilis, and Asians,were deeply embedded in local socioeconomic relations. Many enjoyed political influence,social prestige, and economic power. In the era of decolonization, this combination ofplace-boundness and increasingly insecure status encouraged local cosmopolitans to en-gage in a range of political movements, both in support of wider nationalist projectsand in opposition to them.The uncertain future of local cosmopolitans and many others in coastal Kenya

occasioned political tacks ranging from tentative forms of integration with KenyaColony to union with Zanzibar. Most political communities in the region viewedup-country Kenyans, or wabara in Swahili, with suspicion. Nevertheless, historical mo-bility, social stratification, and the exigencies of contemporary politics fashioned differingperceptions of the coast’s relationship with continental Africa and the wider Indian Oceanregion. More precisely, the debate over the future of the protectorate exposed and encour-aged divergent spatial imaginaries. These often emphasized either a continental African ormaritime Indian Ocean essence of coastal society, spatial definitions conceptually bound to

G. Lynch, I Say to You: Ethnic Politics and the Kalenjin in Kenya (Chicago, ); L. Vail (ed.), The Creationof Tribalism in Southern Africa (London, ).

J. Glassman,War of Words, War of Stones: Racial Thought and Violence in Colonial Zanzibar (Bloomington,IN, ); J. R. Brennan, ‘Realizing civilization through patrilineal descent: the intellectual making of anAfrican racial nationalism in Tanzania, –’, Social Identities, : (), –.

J. R. Brennan, Taifa: Making Nation and Race in Urban Tanzania (Athens, OH, ); Glassman, War;P. Gupta, ‘Mapping Portuguese decolonisation in the Indian Ocean: a research agenda’, South AfricanHistorical Journal, : (), –; A. I. Salim, ‘The movement of “Mwambao” or coast autonomy inKenya, –’, Hadith, (Nairobi, ), –; J. Sumich, ‘Tenuous belonging: citizenship anddemocracy in Mozambique’, Social Analysis, : (), –.

See introductory essay by F. Becker and J. Cabrita in this issue. E. Ho, ‘Names beyond nations: the making of local cosmopolitans’, Études Rurales, – (), –;

E. Ho, The Graves of Tarim: Genealogy and Mobility Across the Indian Ocean (Berkeley, CA, ).

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race, ethnicity, and religion. Therefore, the intellectual work of decolonization not onlyopened for debate the parameters of the postcolonial Kenyan state but it also gave signifi-cant gravity to conflicting sociocultural definitions of Africa’s Indian Ocean rim.This article examines the ways in which political thinkers in Indian Ocean Africa

attempted to define citizenship, belonging, and space at the end of empire. Specifically,it explores the politics of the soil, or the perceived link between social identity and geogra-phy and its articulation in the political realm. In late colonial Kenya, political thinkersasserted communal claims to rights and resources through land-related metaphors, trans-forming ‘the soil’ into a symbolic reference for imagined histories and contemporaryaspirations. To better appreciate this politics I trace a strategy that gained purchase inthe s: autochthony or the assertion of exclusive rights based on ‘original’ habitation.The debate over Kenya’s protectorate offers a unique vantage point from which to reassessdecolonization and nativism in Indian Ocean Africa. Because many at the Kenyan coastimagined a bleak future in which either up-country people or Arabs would dominate theregion, political thinkers struck defensive postures, shored up ‘local patriotisms’, and har-dened moral claims that first-comer status entitled certain communities to paramountrights.

As the product of an agreement between the British government and the sultan ofZanzibar, the protectorate question could only be resolved by the signatories.Accordingly, the principle strategy of each coastal bloc was to convince the two signatoriesthat they had a moral responsibility to honor the wishes of the region’s true autochthons.Histories of mobility and intermarriage complicated exclusive claims to indigeneity, butautochthony nonetheless fortified sociopolitical communities. As a result, competingclaims to ‘the soil’ led to political impasse and communal friction. Recent work byJames R. Brennan, Justin Willis, and George Gona has demonstrated that the sultan’s sov-ereignty over the protectorate provided a critical basis for separatism and the perceived linkbetween identity and rights significantly shaped political rhetoric. Here I wish to extendthese insights to suggest that by autochthony discourse had become a structuringframe of the protectorate debate. Just as important, I suggest that this nativist territorialitywas far more malleable than it would at first appear. As I will show, on the eve of indepen-dence, the collective fear of KANU domination prompted rival coast political parties tomodify their definitions of the indigene and recognize each other as members of a commoncoastal community. In doing so, political thinkers demonstrated that the concept of nativistterritoriality could be preserved even as the identities of ‘foreigners’ shifted. In part as aresult of this flexibility, autochthony would retain its political utility beyond the debatesof the s.To contextualize late colonial Kenya’s politics of the soil, I begin with a survey of recent

literature on autochthony. I then outline the relevance of this literature for reassessingdecolonization in Kenya as well as how reflection on autochthony discourse in the colonial

On the concept of ‘local patriotism’, see J. Lonsdale, ‘Soil, work, civilisation, and citizenship in Kenya’,Journal of Eastern African Studies, : (), .

J. R. Brennan, ‘Lowering the sultan’s flag: sovereignty and decolonization in coastal Kenya’, ComparativeStudies in Society and History, : (), –; J. Willis and G. Gona, ‘Pwani C Kenya? memory,documents and secessionist politics in coastal Kenya’, African Affairs, : (), –.

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era can refine our understanding of its use thereafter. In section two, I draw a thumbnailsketch of the circumstances of social stratification and communal tension in the decadesprior to independence. The second half of the article offers a deeper analysis of the con-cepts of citizenship and space in the early s by following the two main threads ofthe autonomy debate: narratives of discrete histories and harrowing projections of thefuture. For this analysis I draw on petitions, interviews, correspondences, and minutesproduced by an official commission of enquiry into the protectorate question. This materialoffers unparalleled insight into the imagination of coastal political thinkers in the era ofdecolonization.

AUTOCHTHONY AND THE COLLECTIVE SELF

Autochthony is a political strategy that anchors social identity to territory as a means ofclaiming rights. The term autochthon is most commonly used in francophone Africa,but the perceived symbiotic relationship between people and territory that its Greek ety-mology implies – being ‘from the soil’ –makes it applicable to political strategies elsewherein Africa, South Asia, and Western Europe. Over the past decade, interest in the auto-chthony trope has birthed a rich interdisciplinary literature that has established severalcommon denominators. First, the concept of autochthony is predicated on the belief thatevery bounded territory is the property of a discrete cultural group. Such ‘geo-culturallinks’, which political thinkers often paint as a natural symbiosis of land and ‘childrenof the soil’, undergird claims to rights and resources. Second, autochthony discoursestakes claims that have little to do with codified rights; rather, it embeds legal or bureau-cratic questions in emotive narratives of settlement and static concepts of geography.Third, the autochthony trope often emerges in environments of significant movementand inequality, particularly when migrants achieve high levels of success and influence.Fourth, autochthony often gains import during political crisis. The trope champions alocal identity against ‘dangerous strangers’ as a means of gaining political leverage whenresources, opportunities, and influence appear to be at stake.

Many analysts of the autochthony trope further argue that its popularization is a re-sponse to the contemporary forces of neoliberal globalization, democratization, and decen-tralization. Peter Geschiere has suggested that the desire for belonging and the crisis of

N. Vandekerckhove, ‘“We are sons of this soil”: the endless battle over indigenous homelands in Assam,India’, Critical Asian Studies, : (), –; A. Mbembe, ‘On the power of the false’, PublicCulture, : (), ; R. Marshall-Fratani, ‘The war of “who is who”: autochthony, nationalism andcitizenship in the Ivorian crisis’, in S. Dorman, D. Hammett, and P. Nugent (eds.), Making Nations,Creating Strangers: States and Citizenship in Africa (Leiden, ), –; M. Weiner, Sons of the Soil:Migration and Ethnic Conflict in India (Oxford, ).

S. Jenkins, ‘Ethnicity, violence, and the immigrant-guest metaphor in Kenya’, African Affairs, : (),–; B. Ceuppens and P. Geschiere, ‘Autochthony: local or global? new modes in the struggle overcitizenship and belonging in Africa and Europe’, Annual Review of Anthropology, : (), and; K. C. Dunn, ‘“Sons of the soil” and contemporary state making: autochthony, uncertainty andpolitical violence in Africa’, Third World Quarterly, : (), ; P. Geschiere and S. Jackson,‘Autochthony and the crisis of citizenship: democratization, decentralization, and the politics of belonging’,African Studies Review, : (), .

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citizenship that has given rise to autochthony claims are the ‘flip side’ of globalization.

Democratization and patterns of global integration since the late s have intensifiedautochthony rhetoric, but we should recall that other conjunctures encouraged similar stra-tegies. Much as in the current ‘conjuncture of belonging’, the era of decolonization broughtbasic questions of power, inclusion, and exclusion to the fore. In Kenya, the nullificationof racially discriminatory legal codes promised a reorganization of political and spatialrelations, while democratization raised concerns about the constitution of the postcolonialgovernment and the definition of the citizen. As one dimension of a global political realign-ment, decolonization engendered uncertainty on par with that occasioned by contempor-ary globalization.In the late colonial Protectorate of Kenya, claims to exclusive rights based on ‘original’

habitation were the product of precolonial maritime and territorial subjectivities temperedby the dictates of the colonial state and the political imaginations of colonial subjects.In most precolonial East African coastal communities, social prestige and certain rightswere denied many ‘latecomers’ or other outsiders, particularly migrants and slaves. Atthe same time, elites often referenced distant, mythic origins to justify exclusive rights.Hierarchies of belonging accorded prestige to Muslims of local birth or patrician back-ground, glossed as wenyeji (locals or citizens), wenyewe (owners), or wamiji (urbanites).One’s position within these citizenship regimes was negotiable, but newcomers, particu-larly those from the African interior, were often relegated to the margins. Among thecoastal elite, narratives of historical migrations from southern Arabia and Persia as wellas more immediate Arabian genealogies further cemented prestige claims. With the as-cent of Omani-Zanzibari power in the nineteenth century, the notion of ‘civilization’was conjoined with Arabness in the term ustaarabu, valorizing the link between Arabidentity and social prestige. Colonial administrative boundaries reinforced conceptuallinks among identity, prestige, and space. These boundaries firmly fixed identity to localgeography and so limited the negotiability of social identities. Across Kenya, race and eth-nicity were more completely territorialized as a result of the designation of ‘homelands’ and

P. Geschiere, The Perils of Belonging: Autochthony, Citizenship, and Exclusion in Africa and Europe(Chicago, ); J. Igoe, ‘Becoming indigenous peoples: difference, inequality, and the globalization of EastAfrican identity politics’, African Affairs, : (), –; M. Bøås, ‘Autochthony andcitizenship: “civil society” as vernacular architecture?’, Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding, :(), –.

T.M. Li, ‘Articulating indigenous identity in Indonesia: resource politics and the tribal slot’, ComparativeStudies in Society and History, : (), –.

J. Glassman, Feasts and Riot: Revelry, Rebellion, and Popular Consciousness on the Swahili Coast, – (Portsmouth, NH: ); J. Prestholdt, Domesticating the World: African Consumerism and theGenealogies of Globalization (Berkeley, CA, ), ch. ; R. L. Pouwels, ‘Eastern Africa and the IndianOcean to : reviewing relations in historical perspective’, International Journal of African HistoricalStudies, :/ (), .

On claims of mythic histories of foreign origin see, for example, TNA CO //, Memorandumsubmitted by Bajun Elders, Oct. ; and TNA CO // Hyder Mohamed El Kindy,Memorandum presented to Sir James Robertson, Oct. .

R. Pouwels, Horn and Crescent: Cultural Change and Traditional Islam on the East African Coast, –(Cambridge, ), –; Glassman, War, .

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ethnic-majority districts, though the demand for labor stimulated movement across thesesociocultural spaces.As elsewhere in colonial Africa, political thinkers in postwar Kenya reimagined the

terms of belonging in the context of multiple, overlapping, and competing registers. Onthe one hand, the larger edifice of Kenyan nationalism depended on a broad form of nati-vist thought that linked race to continental geography. Many political thinkers definedAfrica as black and by extension considered non-blacks racial foreigners, a perceptionthat accorded with colonial racial categories. For example, as the debate over the protec-torate took shape, the Mombasa African Democratic Union declared the Kenyan coast‘black land’ and so concluded that only black Africans could claim indigeneity. At thesame time, most political thinkers subscribed to the belief that each ethnic group had a dis-crete territorial home, even though such spaces were rarely homogenous. Partly as a resultof this dissonance, by the early s, ethnic territoriality had begun to resonate widely inKenya. Many saw decolonization as a zero-sum game in which the more advantagedgroups would reap the rewards of state power. Motivated by such anxieties, political thin-kers that represented less influential social groups attempted to build group solidarity as ameans to challenge the influence of ethnic strangers. One strategy was to emphasize ethnicownership of subnational territories. When applied to broad regions such as the Rift Valleyor the Coast Province, ethnic territoriality engendered a politics of exclusion fortified byclaims of autochthony.

If, as many analysts suggest, contemporary autochthony discourse is a response toneoliberal globalization and democratization, it is only the most recent manifestation ofa recurring strategy. The conflation of land and identity in the assertion of communalprerogative has long been a prominent strain of political thought in East Africa. AtKenya’s coast, this ‘politics of territoriality’ has been most virulent during periods of pol-itical flux, such as the early s, the s, and since . Each political crisis hasaffected a particular conflation of grievance, social identity, and spatial imagination.Therefore, while exclusive social definitions of geography have persisted, the identities offoreigners have changed over time, sometimes dramatically.

DECOLONIZATION AND THE SOIL

Recent studies of African and Indian Ocean decolonization have emphasized the possibili-ties and constraints that political thinkers faced in the postwar era. Reflection on the

Sauti ya MADU (Mombasa), July . Quoted in Willis and Gona, ‘Pwani’, . Lynch, I Say to You, . On the wider African context see, J. B. Forrest, Subnationalism in Africa: Ethnicity,

Alliances, and Politics (Boulder, CO, ). J. D. Feardon and D. D. Laitin suggest that ‘sons of the soil’ civil wars, or those initiated by members of a

group who consider themselves the rightful possessors of a subnational region against perceived outsiders,have been relatively constant over the past six decades. ‘Sons of the Soil, Migrants, and Civil War’, WorldDevelopment, : (), –.

Willis and Gona, ‘Pwani’; C. Medard, ‘Les conflits “ethniques” au Kenya: une question de votes ou de terres?’,Afrique contemporaine, (), –.

F. Cooper, ‘Possibility and constraint: African independence in historical perspective’, The Journal of AfricanHistory, : (), –; N. Cheeseman, ‘Introduction: political linkage and political space in the era of

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history of nativist territoriality in coastal Kenya can add greater nuance to this body ofwork. Specifically, I wish to build on a historiography that portrays late colonial Kenyaas less a nation-in-waiting than a collection of enclaves wherein political thinkers devel-oped divergent definitions of space and relation, in some cases as an alternative to a com-mon future. Claims of autochthony, I suggest, offer an ideal lens through which to viewthe multiple and conflicting ways that colonial subjects envisioned the future.To understand the permutations of nativism at the coast, and their relation to questions

of territory and social identity in Indian Ocean Africa more broadly, we must appreciatethe sociopolitical dynamics of postwar Kenya. Kenya was a highly stratified society inthe late s, and the distinction between ‘native’ and ‘non-native’ constituted themost fundamental administrative division. The colonial government deemed native allthose whose origins were within the bounds of the colony. For instance, the foreign originsof Europeans, Asians, and Arabs—referred to as ‘immigrant races’—conferred non-nativestatus. However, taxonomical distinctions between native and non-native were not neat.For instance, mixed-ancestry Swahili were technically defined as an African ‘tribe’ (there-fore native), but many enjoyed Arab (therefore non-native) privileges. The SwahiliTwelve Tribes, constituted by the sub-groups Thelatha Taifa (Three Tribes) and TisaTaifa (Nine Tribes), claimed Arabian-Persian origins as well as an indefinite history atthe coast. The Twelve Tribes maintained close relationships with other African groupsin the coast region, ties often strengthened by marriage. Yet, by referencing their IndianOcean genealogies, they also emphasized their difference from other African groups.

Moreover, in the early s, Swahili leaders successfully lobbied for privileges once lim-ited to Arabs, such as the right to enroll in Arab schools and vote for Arab Legco seats.Swahili individuals with immediate Arab ancestors even petitioned to be reclassified asArab. Despite their official designation as natives, Swahilis were popularly viewed as

decolonization’, Africa Today, : (), –; K. Kyle, The Politics of the Independence of Kenya(New York, ); C. J. Lee (ed.), Making a World After Empire: The Bandung Moment and its PoliticalAfterlives (Athens, OH, ); B. A. Ogot and W. R. Ochieng’ (eds.), Decolonization and Independence inKenya, – (London, ).

Somali irredentism in the Northern Frontier District bears many similarities to the autonomy movement. SeeTNA CO //, ‘A people in isolation: a call by political parties of the northern frontier district of Kenyafor union with the Somali Republic’; Lynch, I Say to You; D. Branch and N. Cheeseman, ‘Introduction: ourturn to eat’, in D. Branch, N. Cheeseman, and L. Gardner (eds.), Our Turn to Eat: Politics in Kenya Since (Berlin, ), –; H. A. Whittaker, ‘The socioeconomic dynamics of the shifta conflict in Kenya,c. –’, The Journal of African History, : (), –; and D. Branch, Defeating Mau Mau,Creating Kenya: Counterinsurgency, Civil War, and Decolonization (Cambridge, ).

A. I. Salim, ‘Native or non-native? the problem of identity and the social stratification of the Arab-Swahili ofKenya’, Hadith, (), –; A. I. Salim, The Swahili-Speaking Peoples of Kenya’s Coast, –(Nairobi, ); H. Kindy, Life and Politics in Mombasa (Nairobi, ). For a comparative perspective,see Brennan, Taifa, ch. ; and C. J.-H. Lee, ‘The “native” undefined: colonial categories, Anglo-Africanstatus and the politics of kinship in British Central Africa, –’, The Journal of African History, :(), –.

See, for example, TNA CO //, ‘Some salient facts on the history of Mwambao’, n.d. (ca. );F. J. Berg, ‘The Swahili community of Mombasa, –’, The Journal of African History, : (),–.

TNA CO //, ‘Council of ministers: future of the Kenya Protectorate memorandum by the CabinetOffice’, Sept. . As nationalists began using indigeneity to leverage their demands, some Swahilipolitical thinkers, recognizing their ambiguous position, emphasized their distinction from Arabs. TNA CO

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non-natives. Colonial taxonomic emphasis on origins thus created both obstacles andopportunities for coastal communities.

A critical secondary tier of social classification was race. Racial classification was basedon multiple criteria, notably origins and culture. Arabs, for instance, were defined less bysomatic traits than by the ability to identify immediate ancestors from Arabia, usuallyOman or Yemen, and by adherence to Islam. Throughout the colonial era, Arabs domi-nated the prestige economy of Islamic ritual, and a small Arab elite occupied administrativepositions such as liwali (governor) and kadhi (judge). But because Swahili sought reclas-sification as Arab, the parameters of the Arab racial category were never fixed. Despite thispermeability, political representation, status, income, education, and land ownership inKenya correlated with race. Europeans enjoyed the greatest economic and political privi-leges, followed by Arabs and Asians, a category that included diverse social groups ofSouth Asian ancestry. Africans, who represented the majority of the coast’s population, oc-cupied the lowest position in this hierarchy and could not elect Legco representatives.‘African’ was a racial super-category that included Mijikenda, Pokomo, Taita, and recentup-country migrants such as Kamba, Luo, Kikuyu, and Kalenjin. Also included in thiscategory were people of slave ancestry: the descendants of Southeastern Africans andothers brought to coastal plantations and mission stations. Though many had familial con-nections with other coastal African groups, a significant number of so-called ‘ex-slaves’maintained an identity distinct from their neighbors.In the early twentieth century, the colonial government strengthened the position of

non-natives by encouraging the commercialization of land in the protectorate. After theabolition of slavery in , the government upheld the rights of landowners in an attemptto ensure a clear division between the landed elite and landless laborers. Specifically, itrecognized exclusive freehold rights for individual subjects of the sultan of Zanzibar,defined in racial terms as Arabs. Simultaneously, the government prohibited individualcoast Africans from gaining land titles. Notably, Digos secured communal title to a ‘nativereserve’, but land not secured by private claim or designated a reserve became CrownLand. Additionally, ex-slaves who remained on their former masters’ land acquired nolegal rights of tenancy. Neither law nor labor assured coastal Africans rights to land.Instead, most were reduced to tenants of private landowners or the government, whileland rights strengthened the hand of a small landowning class. Processes of land

//, Abdallah Chiraghdin, et al.; Kenyan National Archives, Nairobi (KNA) District CommissionerMombasa (CQ) //, The Coast African National Union Constitution, Jan. .

J. Willis, Mombasa, the Swahili, and the Making of the Mijikenda (Oxford, ); P. Caplan, ‘“But the coast,of course, is quite different”: academic and local ideas about the East African littoral’, Journal of EasternAfrican Studies, : (), –. On wider debates over the political and cultural definition of theSwahili, see C.M. Eastman, ‘Who are the WaSwahili?’, Africa, : (), –; A. Mazrui andI. N. Shariff, The Swahili: Idiom and Identity of an African People (Trenton, NJ, ).

H. Mwakimako, ‘The historical development of Muslim courts: the Kadhi, Mudir and Liwali courts and thecivil procedure code and criminal procedure ordinance, c. ’, Journal of Eastern African Studies, :(), –.

KNA CQ //a, G.M. Wilson, ‘Mombasa: a modern colonial municipality’, ; TNA CO //a,Mombasa District Estimated Population, .

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designation therefore created blocs of landlords and workers defined by race and contrast-ing rights.

Drought in the coastal hinterland drove many African farmers to the more arable coastalstrip in the s. This contributed to a rise in those the administration termed ‘squatters’,and efforts to remove squatters to government-defined settlements met with mixedresults. After the Second World War, questions of land access contributed to heightenedtensions between non-native landowners and native squatters. Landowners leveled highrents and tenants’ inability to meet rising costs led to mass evictions. The greater mechan-ization of agriculture further encouraged evictions, forcing ex-slaves, Giriama, and othersinto what Frederick Cooper termed ‘relationships of subordination’ for survival. Theseinequalities politicized and cemented social identities. For instance, in the mid-s,several linguistically-related coastal African groups, among them Giriama, Rabai,Duruma, and Digo – referred to as Wanyika in Swahili, or ‘people of the bush’ – embraceda composite identity they termed Mijikenda, or Nine Tribes (distinct from the Swahilisubgroup). As Willis and Gona have demonstrated, a quasi-political organization,the Mijikenda Union, was born of this new interpretation of community. The unioninitially conceived of Mijikenda identity in catholic ways that included people ofslave descent. Yet, as coastal identity became more politicized and exclusive in thes, some Mijikenda began to refer to their ex-slave neighbors as newcomers tothe coast.

By the s, social identity and political agitation were deeply intertwined. Severerestrictions on African political organizing during the Emergency – instituted in responseto the Mau Mau uprising – only encouraged this correlation. For instance, when Africanpolitical organization was prohibited between and , ethnic social organizationswere the sole means for Africans to articulate grievances. This period of restriction and in-stability also coincided with a significant rise in Zanzibari nationalism and social advance-ment among Muslims in the coastal strip. In the early s, some Zanzibari politicalthinkers, influenced by a nostalgic, monarchist vision of a seaboard state, embracedthe idea that Zanzibar, Pemba, and the Protectorate of Kenya could be united as a singlenation. They justified this vision by reference to the sultan’s sovereignty over thecoast and the belief that the maritime triad was East Africa’s only natural geographicalunit. Being a subject of the sultan of Zanzibar once had no great significance in

B. Ng’weno, ‘Inheriting disputes: the Digo negotiation of meaning and power through land’, AfricanEconomic History, (), ; Willis, Mombasa, –; K. Kanyinga, Re-Distribution from Above:The Politics of Land Rights and Squatting in Coastal Kenya (Uppsala, ), – and –; F. Cooper,From Slaves to Squatters: Plantation Labor and Agriculture in Zanzibar and Coastal Kenya, –(New Haven, CT, ), –, and –.

TNA CO /, Memorandum to Sir James Robertson on Lamu District by District Commissioner, Oct..

Cooper, Slaves to Squatters, –; Willis, Mombasa, and –; KNA Provincial Commissioner CoastProvince (Mombasa) (CA) /, Malindi subdistrict Monthly Intelligence Report, Dec. ; TNA CO //, A note on the problem of Giriama squatter lands in Malindi, Nov. .

J. Willis and G. Gona, ‘Tradition, tribe, and state in Kenya: the Mijikenda Union, –’, ComparativeStudies in Society and History, : (), ; J. E. Harris, Recollections of James Juma Mbotela (Nairobi,), .

Glassman, War, ; Brennan, ‘Lowering’, .

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coastal Kenya. However, from the mid-s, emotional and political affinities withZanzibar sparked dreams of a maritime union and offered an alternative to Kenyannationalism. As a result, the presence of the sultan’s flag on official buildings, the cel-ebration of the sultan’s birthday, and many other symbols linking the coast to Zanzibargained significant political substance.

A number of social and culturally integrative programs also contributed to astronger feeling of commonality among Muslims in the protectorate. For instance, theinauguration of an Arab Secondary School and the Mombasa Institute of MuslimEducation offered advanced educational opportunities to coastal Muslims. Just as import-ant, the radio station Sauti ya Mvita (Voice of Mombasa), which broadcasted across theprotectorate, fostered a greater sense of community. With programs ranging fromIslamic religious services to Swahili music, Sauti ya Mvita became, in Ahmed IdhaSalim’s words, a ‘fount and focus’ of Muslim cultural awakening at the coast.

Zanzibari nationalism and a sense of community among Muslims encouraged KenyanArabs, Swahili, and others to imagine a future independent from Kenya or in unionwith Zanzibar.As the colonial state lifted restrictions on political organization in Kenya, parties slowly

took shape. The increasing popularity of pan-Africanism and race-based nationalismmeant that slogans such as ‘Africa for the Africans’ gained wide appeal. In an effort tocheck the development of colony-wide parties, between and , the colonialgovernment allowed only district-level political associations. In , pressure from mul-tiple quarters forced the colonial government to allow Africans to vote for African Legcoseats. Once in office, African elected representatives demanded additional African seats andthe release of Jomo Kenyatta. But because colony-wide parties remained proscribed,African elected leaders channeled political activity into ethnic and racial district politicalorganizations. These political bases heightened what Bethwell Ogot referred to as ‘districtself-consciousness’ and encouraged subnationalist sentiments.

At the coast, new political organizations often represented narrow ethnic or racial con-stituencies. Within coastal African communities, a concern with communal origins playeda critical role in shaping the emergent political imagination. For example, in , RonaldNgala, a Giriama, and Francis Khamisi, a member of the ex-slave community, battled for aLegco seat. Ngala won, in part because his supporters emphasized Khamisi’s Yao ancestryand dubbed him a ‘foreigner’ at the coast. When Khamisi later gained a seat inLegco, he engaged in a form of nativism that underscored race rather than ethnicity.Khamisi argued that, by definition of geography, all land in Kenya was the property

Brennan, ‘Lowering’; TNA CO /, Note of the meeting between Sir James Robertson and Sheikh SalimMohamed Muhashamy, Oct. ; TNA CO /, Memorandum on Lamu District by the DistrictCommissioner, Oct. .

Salim, ‘The movement’, ; Salim, Swahili-Speaking Peoples, –. B. A. Ogot, ‘Mau Mau and nationhood: the untold story’, in E. S. A. Odhiambo and J. Lonsdale (eds.), Mau

Mau and Nationhood: Arms, Authority and Narration (Athens, OH, ), –; B. A. Ogot, ‘The decisiveyears, –’ in Ogot and Ochieng’, Decolonization, –; C. J. Gertzel, The Politics of IndependentKenya, – (Evanston, IL, ), –.

J. E. Harris, Repatriates and Refugees in a Colonial Society. The Case of Kenya (Washington, DC, ), ;Willis and Gona, ‘Pwani’, .

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of Africans. Non-Africans, he charged, should accept that they had no long-termland rights. By the end of the s, many coastal parties had built political platformsthat emphasized land grievances, social identity, and nativist territoriality. In this volatilepolitical environment, the abstract yet seemingly immutable soil was a powerful metaphorfor imagined pasts and contemporary demands.In , the government licensed colony-wide political parties. Since political organiza-

tions had come to rely on identity blocs, national parties emerged as assemblages of ethnicassociations and local political organizations. By the end of , two parties, KANUand the Kenyan African Democratic Union (KADU) dominated the political landscape.Under the leadership of Jomo Kenyatta, Tom Mboya, and Oginga Odinga, KANU unitedvoters from Kenya’s largest ethnic blocs: Kikuyu and Luo. From this position of strength,KANU lobbied for a powerful central government. This prompted leaders of many smallerethnic groups to charge that KANU’s aim was domination. Consequently, a defensive‘community of interests’ among Kalenjin, Maasai, Mijikenda, and other less influentialgroups coalesced in KADU.

Under the leadership of coast representative Ronald Ngala, KADU advanced a platformcalled majimboism. In opposition to KANU’s centralization, majimboism sought a consti-tutional framework that allowed for greater provincial autonomy. The architects of majim-boism hoped this would preserve the political influence of minority communities andensure preferential policies in the allocation of land. Over the next four years, the contestbetween KANU and KADU constituted the primary political battle in Kenya. Yet neitherKANU nor KADU offered solace to members of smaller ethnic or religious groups such asMuslim Digo, Swahili, and Arab. Many feared that no matter which side won, their inter-ests would not be served.

THE MWAMBAO QUESTION

As the struggle between a strong central government and the devolution of power to theregions took shape, coastal autonomists championed a third way for the protectorate, ormwambao (coastal strip) in Swahili: cleave it from Kenya. Some Arabs, Europeans, andSwahili feared status reversal and saw autonomy as a means to protect individual landtitles. Pro-autonomy leaders, however, harbored greater concerns. First, they emphasized

R. Stren, Housing the Urban Poor in Africa: Policy, Politics, and Bureaucracy in Mombasa (Berkeley, CA,), –; Harris, Repatriates and Refugees, ; Salim, Swahili-Speaking Peoples, . On the‘racial-continental identity paradigm’, see Brennan, Taifa, ch. .

R. Stren, ‘Factional politics and central control in Mombasa, –’, Canadian Journal of AfricanStudies/Revue Canadienne des Études Africaines, : (), .

TNA CO //, Memorandum by the Coastal League, Oct. . Gertzel, Politics of Independent Kenya, ; D. Branch, Kenya: Between Hope and Despair, – (New

Haven, CT, ), – and –; Ogot, ‘The decisive years’, ; Lynch, I Say to You, . D. Anderson, ‘“Yours in the struggle for majimbo”: nationalism and the party politics of decolonization in

Kenya, –’, Journal of Contemporary History, : (), –; D. Anderson, ‘Majimboism: thetroubled history of an idea’, in D. Branch, N. Cheeseman, and L. Gardner (eds.), Our Turn to Eat: Politicsin Kenya since (Berlin, ), ; Ogot, ‘The decisive years’, .

TNA CO //, P. R. Spendlove, Note on the problem of the future of the Protectorate, Nov. .

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that the protectorate gained little from British rule, while up-country groups enjoyed su-perior education and economic opportunities. They asserted that integration with inde-pendent Kenya would only perpetuate this disparity and perhaps compromise recentMuslim social advancements. Second, since the influx of up-country workers in thes nearly halved the percentage of coastal workers in the regional labor force, activistssuch as Abdilah Nassir believed that integration with Kenya would lead to greater jobless-ness among coastal people. Lastly, many autonomists argued that the migration ofChristian Africans to the coast would erode the region’s Muslim culture.

Fractures along racial, ethnic, religious, and class lines hindered the emergence of asingular autonomy platform, and so from late , numerous secessionist parties tookshape. The most reactionary party was the Arab-dominated Coastal League, a groupthat lobbied for reintegration with Zanzibar. The Coastal League placed great emphasison the coast’s Indian Ocean orientation. It argued that only full autonomy would ensurethat the coast could ‘continue and expand our ancient relations with the Kingdoms,Sultanates and Sheikhdums [sic] of the Persian Gulf and Arabia’. The Coast AfricanPolitical Union (CAPU) staked out a very different, if no less extreme, position. CAPU, alargely Mijikenda organization called for the secession of the entire Coast Province, anarea much larger than the protectorate. Established in mid- by Ngala (who wouldlater join KADU), the party wrote nativism into its charter. CAPU sought to foster the‘spirit of Africanism’ as a means to ‘rid the Coast Province of British and Arab imperial-ism’. CAPU also feared the influence of Kikuyus and Luos and so championed the sloganwabara kwao, ‘up-country people to their home areas’. By asserting the rights of coastalAfricans over Arabs, Europeans, and up-country Africans, CAPU developed a particularlynarrow form of nativism.

The most progressive autonomist group was the Coast Peoples Party (CPP). The CPPdrew support from those who decried the biases of KANU, KADU, the Coastal League,and CAPU. Representative Abdilahi Nassir personified the CPP’s relatively liberal attitude.He condemned racial inequality, and his willingness to transcend the social norms of theera by socializing with people of different racial, ethnic, and religious backgrounds drewscorn from conservative quarters. Nassir also shunned ethnic associations. He believedthat only a political party that emphasized pan-ethnic unity could end British rule.

TNA CO //, Statement by Mr. [Omar] Bassadiq, Coastal Strip Conference, Mar. . KNA CQ //a, G.M. Wilson, ‘Mombasa – a modern colonial municipality’, ; Salim,

Swahili-Speaking Peoples. On migrant labor and administrative attempts to control workers, see F. Cooper,On the African Waterfront: Urban Disorder and the Transformation of Work in Colonial Mombasa (NewHaven, CT, ).

TNA CO /, Memorandum re constitutional position of the Protectorate of Kenya prepared byrepresentatives of the Coast Arabs (ca. Apr. ).

TNA CO //, Press Office background paper, No. , The Coastal Strip, Feb. . TNA CO //, Coast African Political Union, ‘Memorandum to the Commission of Enquiry to the

Coastal Problem’, Oct. ; Stren, ‘Factional politics’, . K. Kresse, Philosophising in Mombasa: Knowledge, Islam and Intellectual Practice on the Swahili Coast

(Edinburgh, ), –; H. J. Ndzovu, ‘Muslim relations in the politics of nationalism and secession inKenya’, Program of African Studies Working Papers, No. , Northwestern University (Evanston, ).

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Nassir had been a founding member of KANU’s Mombasa branch, but at the branch’ssecond meeting Nassir witnessed an event that led him to question the party. During themeeting, a popular Giriama madrassa instructor was hectored by up-country party orga-nizers who would not allow the teacher to speak and then slapped his hand down whenhe attempted to do so. Additionally, Nassir discovered that Kikuyu and Luo leaders fol-lowed multiethnic meetings with ethnically exclusive sessions. He reasoned that neitherthe atmosphere of disrespect towards coastal people nor KANU’s dominance by two ethnicblocs bode well. He concluded that the best way to preserve the rights of coastal people wasthrough regional autonomy and incorporation into an East African federation. Underthis banner, Nassir and the CPP were able to build a pan-ethnic base, albeit one thatemphasized Muslim identity.KANU and KADU denounced the CPP and other autonomists. Kenya’s oil refineries and

its largest port were located in the protectorate. The colony’s two major parties as well asthe Colonial Office therefore feared the economic repercussions of an independent coast.KANU was also deeply concerned that the separatists’ success would set a dangerous pre-cedent for other disgruntled groups. Anti-autonomists inside the protectorate feared thatan independent coast would perpetuate Arab privilege. For instance, Ngala maintainedthat the autonomy movement was an Arab ruse to maintain the spoils of colonial-era racialdiscrimination. Anti-autonomy politicians rattled audiences with the claim that auton-omy might even facilitate the return of slavery. Legco member R. S. Matano declaredthat if ‘foreigners’ succeeded in gaining autonomy, Africans ‘shall be made slaves again’.

In , the Colonial Office settled on a practical resolution to the protectorate question.To safeguard Kenya’s economic interests, it decided that the protectorate should be legallyjoined with Kenya Colony before independence. Since the sultan of Zanzibar leasedthe strip to Britain, the two governments could simply abrogate the treaty. TheBritish government, however, was sensitive to Kenyan and international opinion on theissue. Moreover, in June , Zanzibari election violence heightened concerns overmounting tensions in the protectorate. In order to unite the colony and protectorate in away that appeared even-handed – and so, in the words of the secretary of state for the col-onies, deflate the ‘pipe dreams’ of the autonomists – the Colonial Office created the im-pression that its decision was the product of comprehensive consultation. To show duediligence and defuse tensions, the Colonial Office appointed Sir James Robertson to over-see a commission of inquiry on the mwambao question. Hearings at the coast were sched-uled for late .The findings of the Robertson Commission were a foregone conclusion. Yet, the com-

mission’s hearings as well as the vast number of petitions and correspondences sent to

Interview with Abdilahi Nassir; TNA CO //E/, An Open Letter. TNA CO /, Memorandum by the President of KADU on the Coastal Strip, Oct. ; E. Aseka,

Ronald Ngala (Nairobi, ), –. ‘Weekend activity over Coast autonomy’, Mombasa Times (Mombasa), Oct. . In mid-, Colonial Secretary Ian MacLeod determined that the coastal strip was not a ‘viable

administrative unit’. Brennan, ‘Lowering’, . See also Willis and Gona, ‘Pwani’, . TNA CO //, Secretary of State, Draft for Preliminary Discussion with Governor: The Coastal Strip

(n.d.).

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the commissioners offer a valuable window on how political thinkers at the coast imaginedspace and autochthony at the end of the colonial era. The work of the commission con-veyed the image that the British government was earnestly considering the possibility ofthe protectorate’s separation from Kenya, and so many at the coast came to believe thatthe commission’s hearings were akin to a referendum on mwambao. This belief furtherpolarized coastal communities and encouraged ever more hostile confrontations betweenthose who supported separation and those who rejected it.

DISCRETE PASTS

Because political thinkers presumed that the stakes of the Robertson Commission’s workwere high, they attempted to persuade the commission that their group’s interests wereparamount. Most groups emphasized their first-comer status, believing it to entitle themto primary consideration. Most also justified their autochthon claims through historicalnarratives that laid emphasis not only on settlement but also land tenure, religion, trade,and slavery. However, petitioners rarely offered more than simplified accounts of discreteand unchanging communities bound to the soil.‘It is very obvious’, KADU President Ronald Ngala wrote in a memorandum to the

Robertson Commission, ‘that the [coastal] strip is African soil’. KANU representativesfrom Kwale similarly asserted that the coastal protectorate had always been ‘Kenyansoil’. Generally, anti-autonomists held that the boundary between the protectorate andthe colony was predicated on neither any geographical nor historical reality.Accordingly, they argued that all non-Africans were foreigners in the colony and protector-ate. For example, CAPU representatives contended that Mijikenda and Pokomo were the‘original owners’ of the coast. Other Pokomo petitioners likewise explained to theRobertson Commission that they and the Mijikenda were the coast’s ‘true inhabitants’,as opposed to Arab, Asian, and European ‘foreigners’. The entire Coast Province, theyasserted, had belonged to the Pokomo and Mijikenda ‘from the foundation of theworld’. Others staked even more exclusive claims. A Digo petitioner submitted thatnot only had Digos arrived in Mombasa before Arabs but they were also the ‘originaltribe’ among the Mijikenda. He thus arrived at the narrow conclusion that only Digoswere true autochthons.

Many anti-autonomists portrayed coastal history as typified by a long-standing dichot-omy between hosts and guests. The organizing secretary of KANU’s Mombasa branch

TNA CO /, Memorandum by the President of KADU on the Coastal Strip, Oct. ; TNA CO //, KANU Kwale Branch, Memorandum to Sir James Robertson strongly objecting autonomy for milesstrip, n.d. (ca. ).

TNA CO //, Coast African Political Union, Memorandum to the Commission of Enquiry to theCoastal Problem, Oct. ; TNA CO //, J. Jillo, et al., Memorandum to the Commissionerinquiring into the future of Kenya Protectorate (Coastal Strip) presented by the Pokomo Tribe (ca. Oct.); J. Willis, ‘The king of the Mijikenda and other stories about the Kaya: heritage, politics, andhistories in multiparty Kenya’, in D. R. Peterson and G. Macola (eds.), Recasting the Past: History Writingand Political Work in Modern Africa (Athens, OH, ), –.

TNA CO //, Mwambao Objective Memorandum to Sir James Robertson, Wadigo Shimba Location, Oct. .

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argued that while coastal Africans had welcomed foreign guests to Kenya’s shores, these‘foreigners’ subjugated their hosts. A delegate to the commission from Msambweniframed Digos’ relationship with others in similar terms. Digos, he suggested, werethe ones who ‘accepted the [Arab, Portuguese, and British] visitors’. The delegatethen rejected the sultan’s sovereignty by asserting that Arabs never controlled any partof Kenya. They were guests, the delegate asserted, little more than slave traders.

Anti-autonomists regularly referenced the slave trade as a means to vilify their opponents.Some even used the specter of slavery to discredit Swahilis as authentic coastal voices.For instance, representatives from KANU’s Kwale Branch rejected the autochthonyclaims of Swahilis because the Swahili, they alleged, were the children of Arabswho took enslaved African women as wives. The representatives concluded that bypatrilineal reckoning the Swahili were foreigners. KADU’s Coast Branch concurred.They spelled out past horrors that they claimed birthed the Swahili: the Arab tortureand rape of Africans. Such narratives vilified Arabs and painted Swahili as the childrenof oppressors, but they also confirmed Swahilis’ African ancestry. Recognizing thisdilemma, KADU concluded that though ‘mixed marriages’ are common around theworld, leadership should always remain ‘under the hands of the indigenous peopleunaffected by mixed marriages’. The soil, KADU petitioners reasoned, belonged to‘pure’ Africans.The autonomists similarly depended on contentious social definitions of geography and

claims of indigeneity to make their case. For example, Abdallah Chiraghdin and his fellowpetitioners depicted the Swahili as indivisible from other features of the Indian Oceancoastline. They argued that the Swahili were as natural to the coast ‘as the coconut treesand the sea’. The Jomvu Social Club, which represented a subgroup of the SwahiliTwelve Tribes, justified their claims to autochthony by arguing that although their ances-tors ‘originated’ in Jeddah, they were the first settlers in Mombasa. The club added that onarrival their ancestors found only animals, and so they civilized a wild Africa. The theme ofcivilizing Africa had long been a mantra of the Arab elite, but the Jomvu Social Club ex-tended the trope well beyond its common usage in order to establish Swahili auto-chthony. The tamim, or representative, of the Tisa Taifa made a similar assertion. Heclaimed that it was not the Mijikenda but rather the Swahili Twelve Tribes who werethe ‘aborigines’ of the coast as their arrival preceded the Mijikenda’s by several centuries.The tamim of the Thelatha Taifa sketched out an even narrower interpretation of the past.He claimed that only his subgroup was the lawful possessor of the coast. This was proven,he maintained, by the fact that they alone gave permission to the sultan of Zanzibar to rule

TNA CO //, Independence for Mwambao Dec., June , filed with Memorandum on CoastalStrip Autonomy, Oct. .

TNA CO /, Note of a meeting between Sir James Robertson and a delegation from the Waa Location, Oct. .

Ibid. TNA CO //, KADU Coastal Region Branch, Memorandum on Coastal Strip and Treaty,

Oct. . TNA CO //, Abdallah Chiraghdin, et al. to Sir James Robertson, Oct. . TNA CO //, Khashia Abubakar, et al., Memorandum on the Coastal Strip Enquiry submitted by the

Jomvu Social Club, Oct. .

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the coast. A Swahili ethnic organization called the Afro-Asian Association articulated theTwelve Tribes’ claims more poetically. Fixing metaphor to physical space, the associationcontended that ancient gravesites bore testimony to Swahilis’ status as ‘sons of the soil’.

The association argued that their ancestors’ remains in the soil offered incontrovertibleproof of autochthony.To strengthen their claims of autochthony, many Swahili thinkers distanced themselves

from Arabs. This was a marked departure from earlier maneuvering. In the early twentiethcentury, many Swahilis emphasized their Arab ancestry, but as nativeness gained politicalutility some Swahili made clear distinctions between themselves and Arabs. For instance,Abdallah Chiraghdin and his co-petitioners to the Robertson Commission argued thatwhile the Twelve Tribes shared certain affinities with Arabs, they were no more Arabsthan were Indonesian Muslims. Ahmed Idha Salim refined this point. He explainedthat although many Swahili claimed Arab origins, and the coast maintained close tieswith southern Arabia, most people of Arab descent were not ‘ethnically SemiticArabs’. This reframing claimed a transoceanic genealogy, an Arab past, and anAfrican ethnicity for the Swahili.Conservative Arab leaders pushed the autochthony trope further. Liwali Sheikh

Salim Mohamed Muhashamy proposed that because the coast was culturally Arab, theprotectorate was an ‘Arab country’. Muhashamy argued that ‘immigrant races’ foundedNairobi, but Mombasa was racially and culturally an Arab town. The coast,Muhashamy suggested, had a uniquely Indian Ocean orientation that distinguished itfrom Kenya Colony. In its attempt to claim ‘sons of the soil’ status, the Coastal Leaguewent so far as to argue that the indigeneity of Arab immigrants was the defining featureof the coast. Much like their opponents, representatives of the Coastal League also de-nounced those who disagreed with their interpretation of the coast’s past as ‘foreigners’.

The Coastal League was not alone in asserting that the Islamic and Indian Oceanorientation of coastal culture made the protectorate naturally distinct from Kenya.Nassir argued that the long history of coastal city-states evidenced a coherent culture, a‘common way of life, common traditions, a common language and a common religion’,linked to the wider Indian Ocean region. The protectorate, he reasoned, was a countrylong before the treaty. The CPP’s Omar Rashid Bakuli likewise asserted that whereasthe ‘concept’ of Kenya was foreign-imposed, the protectorate was an organic product of a

TNA CO //, Tamim of Tisa Taifa, Memorandum presented to Sir James Robertson by members ofthe Nine Tribes, Oct. ; KNA CA/, Shiekh Ali bin Mohamed bin Yunus to the Sultan ofZanzibar, Oct. .

TNA CO //, President of the Afro-Asian Association, Memorandum of the Twelve Tribes to bepresented to the Commissioner, Oct. .

TNA CO //, Abdallah Chiraghdin, et al. TNA CO //, Ahmed Idha Salim, et al., Memorandum presented to Sir James Robertson, Oct.

. TNA CO /, Note of the meeting between Sir James Robertson and Sheikh Salim Mohamed Muhashamy,

Oct. []. TNA CO //, Memorandum by the Coastal League, Oct. ; Letters to the editor, Mombasa Times

(Mombasa), Sept. . TNA CO //E/, ‘Some salient facts on the history of Mwambao’ (ca. Apr. ); TNA CO /

/E/, Abdilahi Nasser to W.B. L. Monson, Asst. Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies, Apr. .

J EREMY PRESTHOLDT vol . , no .

common history of Islamic praxis and maritime extraversion. Autonomists concludedthat this underlying coherence of culture and origins constituted a coastal nation-statein waiting. One proponent of the idea even gave this imagined political unit a positivelyethnocentric name: ‘Swahililand’.

BELLICOSE FUTURES

History provided abundant fodder for the autonomy debate, but the question of the coast’sfuture fired the most impassioned engagements during the period of the RobertsonCommission enquiry in late . This was in no small part a consequence of the factthat many anxieties about the future were existential. For instance, the greatest fearamong Muslim autonomists was that integration with Kenya would lead to a wholesaleassault on Islam in the coast region. One delegation to the Robertson Commissionfrom Malindi projected that the kadhi courts would be suspended if the protectoratewere joined with Kenya. In a more evocative articulation of their fears, the Malindi del-egation added that their opponents had designs to turn coastal mosques into drinkingclubs. The veil offered a similarly symbolic as well as gendered reference to the religiousdegradation that Muslims believed they would suffer. The Women’s Wing of the CPP re-layed that anti-autonomists had already humiliated Muslim women by publically forcingthem to remove their veils. By stressing the perceived threat that integration posed tothe practice of Islam, separatists emphasized that the exiting colonial administration hadan ethical obligation to grant the coast autonomy.Muslim political thinkers were not alone in their concerns about coastal culture. James

Juma Mbotela, a renowned coastal author and Christian African of slave descent, sharedthe separatists’ pessimistic view. Mbotela’s position was of particular note because hisembellished account of his father’s experience of slavery, Uhuru wa Watumwa (TheFreeing of the Slaves), was among the most popular indictments of Arab slave owners.Moreover, Mbotela’s son, Tom, had been a prominent nationalist and member of theKenya African Union, a precursor to KANU. Yet, Mbotela argued that if the protectoratewere integrated with Kenya, the fundamental differences between up-country and coastalpeople would endanger the cultural foundations of the coast’s Muslim society. Mbotelareasoned that domination by wabara would be inevitable and the ‘old culture’ of thecoast would vanish.

Anxieties about the coast’s future sparked heated exchanges, particularly during theRobertson Commission’s visit to East Africa. Bellicose rhetoric peppered the national

TNA CO //E/, An Open Letter; TNA CO //, Maalim Omar Rashid Bakuli, Memorandumon Coastal Strip Autonomy, Oct. ; TNA CO //, Yayha Lali Omar to Commissioner of Inquiry, Oct. .

TNA CO //, A. F. Janoo, Memorandum, Oct. . Others relayed that up-country politicians openly discussed dismantling mosques. TNA CO /, Note of a

meeting held at Malindi, Oct. ; TNACO /, Note of a meeting between Sir James Robertson and adelegation from the Kenya Protectorate Nationalist Party, Oct. .

TNA CO //, Mwanawangu Mzee and Somoe Bausi, Memorandum on Coastal Strip submitted byCoast Peoples Party (Women’s Wing), Oct. .

TNA CO /, Note of a meeting between Sir James Robertson and Mr. J. Mbotela, Oct. .

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constitutional debate of , and similar confrontational language colored discussions ofcoastal secession. For example, in September , KADU Coast Regional SecretaryS.R.D. Msechu declared that his party was prepared to face the CPP ‘with [c]lubs’ ifthey did not abandon their separatist aspirations. A Mombasan KADU representativetold the Robertson Commission that regardless of the British government’s decision,Africans would take their land back from Arabs after independence. KADU PresidentNgala was more diplomatic. He explained to the commission that the Mijikenda had nointention of sowing unrest, ‘provided a reasonable decision [about the coast] is made’.

CAPU President Alex J. Karisa went a step further. He proclaimed that since the buildingsof Arabs and Asians were on Mijikenda land, they would all be removed atindependence.

KANU representatives made explicit threats as well. The Nairobi branch asserted that ifthe autonomists persisted in their demands they would be interred at the infamous MauMau detention facility, Manyani Prison. Even KANU’s highest-ranking members usedmenacing language. In an overt reference to the killing of Zanzibari Arabs in June ,Tom Mboya warned autonomists to ‘take a lesson’ from the election violence inZanzibar. Future Kenyan president Jomo Kenyatta, conditioned by experiences inCentral Province, saw European settler interests as the engine behind the separatist move-ment. Europeans exerted little influence over any coastal party other than the CoastalLeague, but Kenyatta vowed to fight autonomy with ‘strength, nerves and blood’. Thisrhetoric threatened to boil over into racially charged clashes during the RobertsonCommission’s tour of the protectorate in October .One tense episode began when Nassir arrived at a separatist rally in Mombasa carrying a

miniature coffin bearing the names of prominent anti-autonomy groups: KANU, KADU,and the Kenya Labour Federation. He declared that he had come to bury his opponents.

Anti-autonomists quickly reacted to this provocation. A crowd of several hundred men, in-cluding many armed with bows, arrows, and knives, assembled outside the MijikendaUnion’s Mombasa office. They too carried a coffin, but their full-scale casket was meantto symbolize the death of mwambao as well as ‘one or more of the leading autonomists’.

Such violent imagery led to a more dangerous confrontation at Mombasa’s MwembeTayari Square the following day. Hundreds of knife and stick wielding anti-autonomists

Anderson, ‘Majimboism’, . KNA District Commissioner (DC) Mombasa (MSA) //, S.R. D. Msechu to the Publicity Committee of

CPP, Sept. ; TNA CO /, Note of a meeting between Sir James Robertson and a KADUdelegation (Kilifi), Oct. ; Mombasa Times (Mombasa), Oct. ; TNA CO //,Memorandum on the Coastal Strip submitted by the President of KADU to Sir James Robertson, Oct..

TNA CO /, Note of a meeting between Sir James Robertson and a delegation from the Coast AfricanPolitical [Union], Oct. .

Mombasa Times (Mombasa), June . ‘Coast not separate says Mr. Kenyatta’, East African Standard (Nairobi), Oct. . Former Legco member

from the coast, Omar Bassadiq, recalled that during his first meeting with Jomo Kenyatta in the futurepresident was convinced that settler designs were behind the separatist movement. Interview with OmarBassadiq, Mombasa, July .

‘Weekend activity over Coast autonomy’, Mombasa Times (Mombasa), Oct. . ‘Commissioner condemns intimidation’, Mombasa Times (Mombasa), Oct. .

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confronted an armed crowd of separatists. Only timely police intervention prevented sign-ificant violence.

Proposals by autonomist groups to build bulwarks against up-country migrants stokedtensions further. For instance, the CPP spelled out a decidedly illiberal immigration agendawherein all up-country people would be returned to their home areas. The governmentwould then set up a barrier to prevent reentry. ‘This would be done’, the CPP delegationto the Robertson Commission suggested, ‘by having control points . . . where people com-ing through would have to show a pass and satisfy the authorities as to their identity andhome area’. It was an idea reminiscent of Kenya’s infamous kipande pass system, whichrestricted the movement of Africans. It was also a program of exclusion predicated on ter-ritorial identity and origins. CAPU proposed a similar plan in which all up-country Africanchiefs and other civil servants would be repatriated to their respective regions. Once thiswas accomplished, CAPU suggested, all unemployed up-country people would be removedto reserves.

Despite the efforts of the separatists, the Robertson Commission report advised that thecoast be integrated with Kenya before independence. The commission did, however, rec-ommend a number of safeguards to protect the interests and ‘way of life’ of coastalMuslim communities. By the time the Lancaster House Conference on theFuture of the Coastal Strip convened, delegates recognized that the question of autonomywas a dead letter. The conference therefore focused on the terms of the coast’s integration.Leaders of KANU and KADU agreed that freehold land would be preserved and safeguardsinstituted, including the protection of Islamic worship, the kadhi courts, and instruction inArabic for Muslims. With such assurances, the sultan’s abrogation of the treatywas only a matter of time.As the outcome of the autonomy debate became clear, and tensions between KANU and

KADU mounted, the political landscape shifted once again. For instance, Ngala, who hadvigorously fought coastal separatism, warned of the secession of KADU strongholds ifKANU instituted a strong central government. Moreover, as fears of Kikuyu-Luo domi-nation escalated, the internal divisions of the coastal separatists seemed to pale in compari-son to the threat posed by KANU. Thus, in the CPP, Coastal League, and severalother organizations put aside their differences to form an umbrella party dubbed theMwambao United Front. More remarkably, just before Kenya’s final constitutional con-ference in , a KADU contingent from the coast broke from the national party and

‘Race tension mounts at Coast’, Daily Nation (Nairobi), Oct. . TNA CO /, Note of a meeting between Sir James Robertson and a delegation from the Coast People’s

Party, Oct. . TNA CO /, A. J. Karisa to the Colonial Secretary, Sept. ; TNA CO /, Memorandum

of a meeting between CAPU, Coastal League, Shungwaya Freedom Party, and National Union of NorthernCoast of Kenya and His Excellency, Nov. .

J. Robertson, The Kenya Coastal Strip; Report of the Commissioner, Sessional Paper No. of (Nairobi,).

TNA CO //, Record of a second meeting, Kenya Coastal Strip Conference, Mar. ; interviewwith Omar Bassadiq.

Lynch, I Say to You, –; Ogot, ‘The decisive years’, . TNA CO //, Press Office Background Paper, No. , The Coastal Strip, Feb. .

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called for the coast’s complete separation from Kenya by October , – roughly twomonths in advance of independence. ‘[W]e have discovered’, the KADU defectorsexplained, ‘that there is no honesty of purpose in the Kenya Government’.

The protectorate would be fully integrated with Kenya, and while majimboism wasenshrined in the constitution, KANU’s political strength led many to question the long-term prospects for regionalism. By mid-, the future looked grim to many at thecoast. Coast political thinkers therefore recalibrated collective identities and the parametersof inclusion. In a dramatic turn of events, once-bitter enemies from CAPU, KADU, and theCPP formed a new party: the Coast United Front (CUF). Contradicting their earlier posi-tions, CUF representatives Alex J. Karisa and S.R.D. Msechu argued that the coastal regionhad ‘from time immemorial been recognised geographically, historically, linguistically andethnologically to be a country with a separate identity of its own’. Many CUF membershad rejected this narrative when articulated by the CPP, but faced with KANU dominationCUF argued that both the treaty and the overarching culture of the coast evidencedthe inherent unity of the protectorate. ‘[T]he Coast has come to the conclusion’, CUF lea-ders wrote to the departing governor in , ‘that the only solution is for Britain and theSultan to return to the Coast people their former autonomous status in order to preservetheir identity’. CUF thus affirmed that all coastal people, regardless of origins, were citi-zens of a discrete historical territory and bearers of a common identity. Former adversarieshad embraced common geo-cultural links, and so a new definition of authentic localsemerged from the rapidly changing political climate.

CONCLUSION

Ontologically reductive concepts of culture and origins were the cornerstone of colonialKenya’s social hierarchy. In response, postwar political thinkers emphasized the exclusivegeo-cultural link implied by the concept of the native and so transformed a mark of op-pression into a badge of citizenship. In the form of racial nationalism, nativist territorialitysuccessfully challenged colonial rule and its race-based legal codes. When applied to sub-national spaces, however, nativist territoriality encouraged ever more precise and conten-tious definitions of the indigene, as presentations to the Robertson Commissiondemonstrate. These overlapping registers of nativism offered means to navigate the uncer-tain political waters of the early s, but they also produced divergent, sometimes irrec-oncilable visions of the postcolonial nation.In the Protectorate of Kenya, a region defined by mobility, diversity, inequality, and

trans-Indian Ocean linkages, both separatists and their opponents claimed rights basedon exclusive ties to coastal territory. Fearing persecution by Arab, African, or European‘foreigners’, political thinkers outlined historical narratives of autochthony that aimed todiscredit political opposition, appeal to colonial authorities, and bolster communal soli-darity. Specifically, self-identification as ‘children of the soil’ condensed claims of historicalpresence and grievances about land allocation, securing them to local geography with

TNA CO /, Coast KADU Delegation Memorandum to the Governor of Kenya, June . TNA CO //E(xix), Committee of the Coast United Front to Malcolm McDonald, July .

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emotive metaphor. In defining the coast’s future by what they perceived as either its Africanor maritime historical essence, political thinkers used history and communal identity tochart differing futures. Yet, as independence approached, political thinkers again redefinedthe parameters of belonging to accord with emergent political possibilities. Definitions ofgeography and the foreigner that had once been cast as immutable proved to be flexible.Though the protectorate became part of the Republic of Kenya, questions of belonging

and regional identity remained unresolved. Political crises and competition over regionalresources have encouraged political thinkers to return to the dually integrative and divisivegrammar of autochthony at several postcolonial junctures. For instance, claims of exclusiverelationships to local territory played a critical role in defining communal enemies duringthe violence that accompanied Kenya’s transition to multiparty politics in the s. In, perpetrators of violence at the coast targeted Kikuyus, Luos, and others they labeledforeign Kenyans. Additionally, some Swahili were exhorted to ‘go back to Arabia’. From, and particularly in the wake of the contested national elections, the MombasaRepublican Council (MRC) has drawn on multiple strands of nativism. The group stressesexclusive rights to land and other regional resources, but its rhetoric is no simple rehashingof s nativism. Rather, its message represents an interlacing of s and s auto-chthony discourses in ways more inclusive of diverse coastal racial, ethnic, and religiousgroups while maintaining a profoundly anti-up-country stance. These conjuncturesand movements are unique, yet responses to the changing political landscapes of thes and s have been shaped by concepts of space and belonging similar to thosearticulated by political thinkers in the era of decolonization.Since at least the s, political thinkers in coastal Kenya have marshaled the auto-

chthony trope as a means to leverage political aspirations and material interests.However, in this region defined by overlapping continental and Indian Ocean maritimeimaginaries, political emphasis on exclusive, communal ties to the soil has not remainedconstant. Rather, the politics of the soil has shaped popular thought during unusuallyfraught conjunctures, often when the political stakes seem high. Reflection on the coastalautonomy debate of the early s suggests that to fully understand this intermittentattraction to autochthony discourse we should not only consider the enduring frames ofpolitical thought but also how political thinkers reimagine the specific terms of belongingat each historical juncture.

K. Kresse, ‘Muslim politics in postcolonial Kenya: negotiating knowledge on the double-periphery’, Journal ofthe Royal Anthropological Institute, : (), –.

A. Mazrui, Kayas of Deprivation, Kayas of Blood: Violence, Ethnicity, and the State in Coastal Kenya(Nairobi, ); J. McIntosh, The Edge of Islam: Power, Personhood, and Ethnoreligious Boundaries onthe Kenya Coast (Durham, NC, ), .

Willis and Gona, ‘Pwani’.

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