|
This book consists of an introduction by Joanna Lewis (26 pages) and some 180 pages
by Tom Askwith, on the last half of his career in Kenya, from 1945 to about 1960.
He became Municipal Native Affairs Officer for Nairobi in 1945, and Commissioner for
Community Development in 1949. He was also, until 1951, Principal of the Jeanes
School. Normal work was then drastically cut as the focus shifted to the rehabilitation of
people involved in Mau Mau activities. He opposed the later introduction of compulsory,
rather than voluntary, labour in the camps. The Hola incident proved him right. His resignation
enabled him to devote more attention to working with groups in rural areas, laying
the foundation of the still flourishing Kenyan self-help movement.
Askwith stresses the idealism that induced many colonial administrative and technical
staff to work hard for development, and the hardships and enterprise of the white settlers.
Nevertheless, he had by the late 1940s recognised that white attitudes needed to change,
particularly in relation to educated Africans, the low wages insufficient to support a family,
and the provision of land to the landless. He saw these as creating the social problems
that eventually exploded as the Mau Mau revolt. He devotes some 30 pages to reproducing
memoranda that he wrote at the time and an extract from the Royal Commission on Land
and Population of 1953. Since the latter in particular is available to scholars and well
known to old Kenyan hands, one could have wished for a greater explanation of the
influences on his thinking, including his pre-1945 career as a District Officer. It would
seem that his post-1945 work was characterised by much closer partnership with African
staff, starting with Dedan Githege as Assistant and colleague in Nairobi, and a mutual
development of ideas.
While the rehabilitation programme was for the most part successful, the most enduring
part of Tom Askwith’s work has been in community development. Anyone still working
in Kenya will know the ability of groups and communities to choose leaders, work out a
programme, organise tasks, raise funds, and achieve their goals - house improvement, or
community facilities such as schools and bridges, or a commercial enterprise or
improvement of farm land. The first efforts of the Department were geared to adult literacy,
information and sport, and it was only gradually that it was realised that the key lay in
encouraging people to use and modernise their traditional institutions for mutual help, to
select their own leaders, and choose their own priorities, seeking technical advice where
necessary. It is not from the text but from the Introduction that one gleans he was
Principal of the Jeanes School, whose courses for leaders and Community Development
Assistants he describes, and whose influence was long-lasting. (Unfortunately, the
course for CD As was closed down in the 1980s, leading to deterioration in staff quality
by the 1990s). Askwith describes the start in Machakos, where top-down destocking and
contour ditch programmes had aroused hostility, but where an African Administrative
Officer, John Malindi, working with a young DO, persuaded one village to work on their
priority, house improvement. Askwith also describes developments in other districts. He
facilitated exchange of ideas between districts, through staff conferences and the training
of leaders at the Jeanes School, which led to multiplying achievement at modest cost to
the government.
The book is marred by poor editing and proof-reading, a careless glossary and a
bibliography that generally omits publishers. The Editor could have done more to
provide a framework, both in detailing Askwith’s own career and by describing the
future development of the work he initiated. There is a reference to our own study of
Machakos in the bibliography, but not to our description of the development of the selfhelp
and women’s groups, nor to Hill’s interview with John Malindi, published in 1991,
nor to Mutiso’s 1975 work on their political importance, which led finally to the
women’s groups being partly subsumed into the political party. (Fortunately, they also
exist independently of this). Despite the faults in editing, this book will be one useful
source for future students of self-help, and a reminder of achievement for those who
were there.
|
