For his first visit to a Commonwealth country, King Charles III chose Kenya, the country where his mother, Queen Elizabeth II, learned of her accession to the throne in England in 1952, where her son, Prince William, asked for his wife’s hand in marriage. Kate Middleton. However, the king did not come to study the family history. After his face-to-face meeting with President William Ruto, the King’s program will consist of meetings with Nairobi entrepreneurs and conservation groups.
As the former British colony celebrated its sixtieth anniversary this year on December 12, 1963, he also promised not to neglect “the most painful aspects” of the history between the two countries. Charles III “will take the time (…) to deepen his understanding of the injustice suffered by the Kenyan people during this period,” particularly the bloody suppression of the Mau Mau uprising (1952-1960), in which more than 10,000 people died. . During the same period, British colonists arrested more than a million Kenyans and dispossessed hundreds of thousands of people.
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Far from the protests against France in its former colonies in the Sahel (Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger), critics of the former British colonial power are struggling to be heard in Kenya. The Kenyan government wants to prevent memorial matters from disrupting the royal visit and has banned demonstrations hostile to the monarch’s presence. Within civil society, criticism is not expressed collectively, but through local struggles, which are often linked to land conflicts.
Tea plantations
The vast tea plantations of Kericho, located on plateaus 250 kilometers west of the capital Nairobi, are at the heart of these grievances. These misty and damp valleys, bottle green and covered with tea as far as the eye can see, give a false impression of the English countryside. To cheer themselves up, locals like to claim that the British colonists settled there after recognizing a familiar climate.
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However, the reason is completely different: Kericho and its surroundings benefit from ideal climatic conditions for tea cultivation, of which Kenya is the third largest exporter in the world. The British Crown confiscated more than 40,000 hectares of Talai and Kipsigi in the area starting in 1902. Fertile land that is still owned today by several British multinationals such as Unilever.
“Here, it’s still a colony! », says Joel Kimeto, a Kipsigi representative, indignantly, pointing to the 10,000 hectares of plantations owned by the Scottish company James Finlay. She acquired it in 1925 during the colonial period after expropriation by the English army. “The multinationals are still gobbling up money by cultivating land they illegally grabbed while we have nothing,” Mr. Kimeto continues.
“Land still belongs to foreigners”
At that time, hundreds of thousands of the Kipsigi and Talai were relocated to indigenous reserves, forerunners of the Bantustans of South Africa. Tito Arap Mitei lived there with his parents in the 1930s. The centenarian, his eyes burned by the sun, held out hope that everything would change with independence in 1963. “Nothing has changed: “It’s like back then, “The land still belongs to foreigners,” he emphasizes, not far from the road that separates the British plantations from the former indigenous reserves.
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At the time of independence, the former colonial power and the first Kenyan government of Jomo Kenyatta signed land agreements confirming ownership of English companies. “The misuse of resources taking place in Kenya today is a direct result of colonial crimes that went unreported,” protests Peter Herbert, English lawyer and president of the Society of Black Lawyers.
The 120,000 Kipsigi and Talai descendants submitted a petition to the United Nations in 2019 and filed a complaint with the European Court of Human Rights in 2022. A UN report released in 2021 raises actions and concerns for both communities and recommends establishing a reparations process. “This must include measures of restitution, compensation and rehabilitation” by the UK.
But London has remained silent since 2013, when it compensated 5,200 veterans for more than 23 million euros and acknowledged its responsibility for the murder, torture and imprisonment of tens of thousands of Kenyans during the suppression of the Mau Mau uprising.
Demands recognition of colonial crimes
“We made it clear that we paid a colossal sum to the Mau Mau veterans (…). We have expressed our regret and think it is the right thing to do,” Neil Wigan, the British ambassador to Nairobi, said during an interview on Kenyan television last week. A new act of contrition could, in the eyes of the monarchy, lead to a flood of complaints in the Commonwealth’s 55 other member countries.
Because the visit of Charles III. comes at a time when calls for recognition of colonial crimes are becoming increasingly loud in the British Parliament. “This reluctance to recognize colonial crimes is counterproductive,” claims Labor MP Bellavia Ribeiro-Addy, who has Ghanaian roots. The UK must understand that it is just a small island in a changing world where acknowledgment of these crimes is becoming a necessary diplomatic act for building good relations. »
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Furthermore, criticism in Kenya is not limited to past crimes but also includes the current British presence, particularly the British Batuk military base in Nanyuki, which is at the center of several controversies. The murder of Agnes Wanjiru, a young woman found lifeless in 2021, brought to light the impunity enjoyed by the former colonial power’s soldiers who train in Kenya every year.
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A British soldier is suspected in this affair, but he was quickly buried by the Kenyan military hierarchy. In 2003, Amnesty International claimed to have documented 650 rape allegations against British soldiers in Kenya between 1965 and 2001 and denounced “decades of impunity”.