Kenya's Maligned African Press: a Reassessment
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DOCUMENT RESUME ED 096 679 CS 201 571 AUTHOR Scotton, James F. TITLE Kenya's Maligned African Press: A Reassessment. PUB DATE Aug 74 NOTE 35p.; Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Association for Education in Journalism (57th, San Diego, California, August 18-21, 1974) EDRS PRICE MF-$0.75 HC-$1.85 PLUS POSTAGE DESCRIPTORS *African Histcry; Censorship; Colonialism; Content Analysis; *Freedom of Speech; *Government Role; Higher Education; *Journalism; *Newspapers;Press Opinion; Standards :nENTIFIERS *Kenya AeSTRACT Kenya's dozen or more newspapers and 50news sheets anted and published by Africans in the turbulent1945-52 preindependence period were condemnedas irresponsible, inflammatory, antivhite, and seditious by the Kenya colonialgovernment, and this characterization has been accepted bymany scholars and journalists, including Africans. There is substantial evidenceto show that the newspapers and even the mimeographed news sheets continued toargue for redress of specific African grievancesas well as for changes in social, economic, and political policies with responsiblearguments and in moderate language up until the Emergency Declaration proscribed the African publications in October of1952. This reassessment of Kenya's African press is based in parton examination of government records and interviews withsome African journalists of the period under study. The primarysources are clippings and tear sheets from the African press collected by Kenya'sCriminal Investigation Division. The material, along withcomments by colonial officials at the time, shows that the Africanpress of Kenya was by any reasonable standard responsible and moderate much of the time. (Author/RB) .41 SPEPAR :MEN? OF HEALTH EDUCATION ti*6LFARE NA TitNAL INISTiTuT OF EDUCATION -DC, Vt..' kEPQC t t c t Q,Oitt t.t.tnY k 16,(,AN % % T PO IE hCuCAP 1. Ch'. %I QEPi4E Oc D % c. 'C Kenya's MalignedAfrican Press: A Reassessment James F. Scotton . York College, CityUniversity of New York Pennsylvania State University A quarter of a centuryafter the United Nationscalled freedom of information"the touchstone ofall the freedoms "1 to which the UnitedNations is dedicated, there are still many restrictions on the flow of information inAfrica. There is, for example, little freedom for thepress of Africa,espe- cially if that freedom is definedas the riaht to reporton and criticize government 2 without fear of officialreprisals. Some have suggested thatthe mass media, the informationsource for an increasing number of peoplein an urbanizingcontinent, will be allowed more freedom in later stagesof development atsome unspecified date.3Freedom of expression inAfrica, they say, will have to waitfor political stabilityand economic oppor- tunity plus some nongovernmentresources adequate to supportnews- 4 papers. One can argue that at thepresent stage of developmentthe primary role of theAfrican mass media isto act as an agent of government policy. However, some extend theargument to the point of suggesting thatthe Western concept ofa free press is culture 5 bound and not applicableto the African situation. To reject 1.;) "western" ideas favoring an unrestricted flow of information viathe spoken ano written wordleads to some serious problemsfor those Ify supporting a substantial role for the mass media inthe developing t./ areas. It makes itdifficult to defend such widely heldassumptions 2-Scotton-Kenya press that knowledge is better than ignoranceand that to participate actively in one's nation is betterthan to be isolated from it.6 However, putting aside such philosophical disputesas beyond the scope of thispaper, we still would point out thatthe Western notion of a press free toreport on and criticize thegovernment has existed in some parts ofAfrica for a century. In the former British colonies of bothEast and West Africa decadesbefore in- dependence African editors consideredit proper and indeed patriotic to state their viewson public issues even if those viewswere opposed by the government.7 Several studies of the Africanpress of British West Africa have been published and itis prominently mentionedin some of the histories of thearea. The Africannewspapers of British West Africa have also becomean important source for researchers.8 For East Africa, however,there have been no importantpublished studies of the pre-independenceAfrican press of Kenya,Tanganyika and Uganda, and standardbooks on the history andpolitics of the 9 area barely mention it. The Africannewspapers of East Africa have not been an importantsource for researchers andeven those writing about them havehad to depend almostentirely on secondary sources. There are two apparentreasons why the African press of East Africa has been neglected. First, unlike the Africanpress of British West Africa, whichwas in English,10 the African press of East Africawas almost entirely in vernacularlanguages, mainly Swahili, Kikuyu andLuganda. Those writing about East Africawere 3-Scotton-Kenyapress Europeans and Americans and fewof them could read thoseAfrican languages very well. The second reason forthe neglect of the pre-independence Africannewspapers has been their unavailability. For varying reasons,no one kept copies of themfor very long. African editors had neitherthe time nor the inclinationto think about history as theystruggled to publishnewspapers without cap- ital, equipment 11 or training. Libraries, run byEuropeans, did 12 not collect the Africannewspapers or news sheets. Also, for Africans itwas dangerous to be caught witha copy of many of these papers since theywere frequently proscribed. When the 1952 Emergency was declared inKenya, persons possessingcopies of pro- scribed Africannewspapers and news sheetswere subject to jail penalties even if thepublications were datedbefore the Emergency.13 Despite this lack of originalsources or perhaps because ofit the view that the African press of pre-IndependenceKenya was almost totally irresponsible and subversive has beengradually accepted. Hachten, who has written extensively on the Africanpress, quotes a 1954 article ina British magazine in stating: In 1945 Henry Mworiastarted Mumenyereri, thefirst of a number of Africanpapers that developed in the post war years largelyas outlets for the political and economic grievancesof the energetic Kikuyus. By the time of theMau Mau Emergency therewere about forty of these "violentlywritten papers, mainly inKikuyu, mainly mineographed,mostly highly seditiofl andtaking a bitterly anti-White, 'QuitKenya' line."' A 1956 study by Kitchenstated that Kenya'a Africanpress "has con- sisted almost exclusivelyof, on theone hand, extremist news sheets and, on the other, of 15 government and missionarysponsored papers ..." 4-Scotton-Kenyapress Lord Halley in his African survey saidwithout qualification that the Kikuyunews sheets "were bitterly racia1,16 failing to distinguish them from the moremoderate Kikuyunewspapers. An exception was Rosberg and Nottingham'sstudy of the Mau Mau, a sympathetic account of the Kenyanationalist movement which called theAfrican newspapers "nationalist and rw, tant in outlook."17 Like the otherstudies andsurveys, the cs did not cite any African newspapers as originalsources i:.Lheir brief two-page report on this Africanpress. Almost all of the studies agree thatKenya's Africanpress had a role,perhaps a decisive 18 one, in the nationalistmovement. But almost all are also willing toaccept the view that thispress was usually irresponsible, sometimes violent, andfrequently sedi- tious. The only published study of this Africanpress which did examine materialfrom the newspapers themselves supportedthis view. This was Corfield's study of the MauMau, which wasspon- sored by the British Colonial Office. Corfield said theAfrican press of Kenya between the end of WorldWar II and the 1952Emer- gency Declaration published a "torrent of subversion"and was con- stantly attackingthe government andEuropeans.19 Not surprising- ly, he was ableto quote numerous colonial officialswho agreed with him. While those writingabout the Kenya Africanpress of this period may suspect Corfield'sviews to be biased,they have presented little or no evidence to suggestthey should berecon- sidered. This paper will attempt to show thatthere should bea re- eval..hation of the African press ofpre-Independence Kenya. It 5-Scotton-Kenyapress will not argue that thispress did not present anti-government and anti-European material, includingsome clearly subversive articles, since even Kenya's Africanleaders of the period have 20 admitted that it did. However, there is a substantial amount of evidence to show thatsome of the African press was, even at its worst in the eyes of colonial officials,asking for reasonable reforms and supporting gradualrather than violent change much of the time. Some of this evidence can be found in Corfield's report itself when he complainsthat Kenya's Attorney General frequently refused requeststo prosecute African pub- 21 lishers and editor.l. Official records also show thatsome colonial officials thought most Africaneditors held cooperative attitudes toward the government andwere doing a reasonable job considering their lack of training and otherproblems.22 A former Kenya Supreme Court Justice has also suggestedthat in many in- stances the African newspapers wereno more seditious than the European newspapers of the time inKenya, but colonial officials ignored transgressions by the latter.23 All this, howevc:, is secondary evidence. The primary evidence to support the argument thata responsible African press existed