The former High Commissioner to Kenya Sir John Johnson has had the welcome idea
of collecting together reminiscences of British administrators of Kenya for the
twenty-three years prior to the country's attainment of independence. He has produced a
book which is strikingly useful as a historical source as well as being a pleasure to read
as an account of those officials' experiences. There are stories amusing and poignant,
enlightening and informative. We find out what life was like in the boma and the
Secretariat, in the Council of Ministers, the Cabinet Office, Government House and the
Legislative Council, and even in the Colonial Office in London. People's foibles and
inefficiencies are not glossed over, as in the passage in which Peter Gordon recounts his
difficulties obtaining a decision from an officer who dithered endlessly over every paper
submitted to him. A barrier of files hid him from view as you entered his office; others,
in neat piles, lined the walls, and carpeted the floor. It was deeply frustrating when a file
you had passed to him perhaps two or three months before arrived on your desk with the
words "Please speak" inscribed beneath your painstakingly composed minute. You
presented yourself. A minute's perusal, and then, "Ah, Yes. Now what was it I wanted to
say? Perhaps I'd better have another look at it. Just leave the file with me, please".
The officials have a good eye for the absurd and one of them recalls with glee that a
member of the Legislative Council inserted in the speeches sent to him for proof reading
'(laughter)', '(loud laughter)' and '(prolonged applause)'. We learn much about the
Governors and Colonial Secretaries, particularly Alan Lennox-Boyd, under whom the
officials worked. There is plenty about the duties and opinions of the man in the field,
particularly when it came to keeping the peace. Those in the north were always kept on
their toes by Somali disputes. Sometimes the man on the spot was more concerned with
doing justice than observing the letter of the law, a view not always shared with the
Nairobi Judges. But running through the contributions is the administrators' perennial
concern for the welfare of the Africans. Then the outbreak of the Mau Mau rebellion put
huge burdens upon them, as they had to implement government land reform and
villagization and cope with the return from detention camps of thousands of detainees.
Of particular interest are the stories of localizing services with extreme rapidity in the
gallop towards independence, unforeseen a few years beforehand. Officials set to with a
generosity they may be forgiven for not having felt as they worked their way out of their
jobs.
As would be expected of the work of colonial administrators, the contributions are
well written and the editing accomplished. Well arranged, the book is easy to find one's
way around, with themed entries grouped together in sections. Useful thumbnail
sketches of the administrators are given at the end of the book, and Sir John Johnson
provides a conclusion in which he draws up a balance sheet of achievements and failures. The failures were the inability to prevent the Mau Mau rebellion, though
measures to counter it, such as land consolidation, he sees as having created some of the
more successful small-holding farming in sub-Saharan Africa. It was also a mistake to
delay Africanization of the civil service for so long. On the success side of the balance
sheet are placed the stability of the country in the immediate post-independence period,
'a signal tribute to the work described in these pages'. The book is a most useful addition
to accounts of the period and should be bought by many for enjoyment. It is also a
unique historical source and doubtless will be used by students and historians for many
years to come.
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