International Journai of African Historicai studies Vol. 45, No. 1 (2012) 57 Settlers, Africans, and Inter-Personal Violence in Kenya, ca. 1900-1920s By Brett Shadle Virginia Tech (
[email protected]) As Fanon noted, violence was inherent in inter-racial relations in settler colonies, and Ngugi reiterated this point specifically in regard to Kenya.' When attempting to write a cultural history of white settlers, Ngugi found nothing of value. He observed only garish paintings in upscale Nairobi bars featuring scenes of colonial life: scrawny Africans pulling whites in rickshaws, a "long bull-necked, bull-faced settler" holding a sjambock (Afrikaans: whip) and his loyal (and well-fed) dog at his side. It was just such a scene, Ngugi refiected, that summed up white settlement: "The rickshaw. The dog. The sjambock. The ubiquitous underfed, wide-eyed, uniformed native slave."2 In the end, as Ngugi put it, "Reactionary violence to instill fear and silence was the very essence of colonial settler culture."3 As is so often the case, Ngugi cut to the heart of the matter: one cannot envision the settler without the sjambock, or in Kenyan parlance, the kiboko (hippopotamus-hide vvhip).'^ Often settlers considered beatings as part and parcel of life in Africa, almost akin to milking the cows or cleaning the kitchen (if, in fact, Europeans ever performed such menial tasks). In the flrst several decades of colonial Kenya, settlers certainly did not hesitate to discuss their use of the lash. In a letter to the East African Standard in 1927, Frank Watkins bragged that, "I thrash my boys if they deserve it and I will let [African defender and settler critic] Archdeacon Owen or anyone else enquire into my methods of handling and working labour."5The Times of East Africa believed, "Probably there is not ' Franz Fanon, Wretched of the Earth (New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1963); Ngugi wa Thiong'o, Detained: A Writer's Prison Diary (London: Heinemann, 1981), Chap.