History

Colonialism and the Destruction of Gusii Economy

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Published on Saturday, 30 June 2007 23:03

The establishment of colonial rule in Gusiiland set in motion an accumulation of debilitating events, which culminated in the 1918-19 Kengere famine. Most notable of these events was the near depletion of Gusii stock; the emphasis of maize production to replace wimbi, the demand for labor and the associated hut and poll taxes. Livestock herding was one sector of the Gusii economy that was immediately affected by the imposition of colonial rule. In September 1905, 400 head of cattle were confiscated in a punitive expedition. The Gusii ambushed the patrol and killed a sergeant; 400 more head of cattle were taken in retaliation (Gordon, 1946:34). Surprisingly enough expeditions were also sent to areas which had supposedly signed "peace treaties" with the British. The objective of such expeditions was to force the Gusii into the money economy or provide their labour. Indeed those who were engaged in leveling roads near Kisii boma were paid in cows . The Gusii also sold some of their animals in order to get money to pay taxes "By 1909 there was a large trade in cattle, with many hundreds having been sold by the Gusii in order to acquire rupees for the payment of tax"(KNA/DC/KSI/1/1/1909).

Cattle were also used in paying fines and settling disputes and they were confiscated from homes of tax defaulters, labour deserters and as a form of punishment (Machani, O.I., 1989). Similarly, they were taken for crimes committed individually or collectively. However, given the importance of cattle to the Gusii mentioned earlier, some Gusii invested their savings in cattle by either offering their labor or engaging in petty commodity production.

In crop production, the prime aim was to replace wimbi production with maize because it was saleable and in demand by the settlers who wanted to feed their labour. According to Wolff (1974:71) one of the imperial goals in the protectorate included "producing those commodities whose availability for import into Britain would lessen or remove what the British businessmen and authorities deemed a dangerous dependence of foreign sources of supply". Wimbi was not such crop, and there was an element of administrative propaganda against the crop as is conveyed by the Kisii Distrct Commissioner (DC), who in 1908 asserted that wimbi was "a poor and unsatisfactory crop" which he hoped to replace with 'a good class of maize" (KNA/DC/1/21/1908). Many other crops were introduced as part of the “immediate goal of finding exportables to relieve the British treasury of the financial burden imposed by the protectorate in its early years" (Wolff, 1974:71). These included groundnuts, simsim, beans wheat and irish potatoes.
Labor extraction was of prime importance if the labor demand by settlers had to be met. The Africans, according to Brett (1973:167), had to be made to enter the world of money as wage laborers rather than independent producers, for as long as the peasant had an independent control over the means of production through his control over his own land, the African peasant would not be forced to work for the settler but would continue to produce on his own account. Consequently hut and poll taxes were introduced and the Africans were forbidden to grow profitable crops. Through legislation Africans were forced to turn out to work for European settlers.

In Gusiiland like elsewhere in Kenya, labour was forced out by chiefs and headmen, sometimes under harsh conditions. Ironically it is the young energetic men who were seized, leaving behind the old, children and women. Agricultural production was therefore hampered.