eczaui retweetledi
I'm reading about how the British, in the early 1900s, used to confiscate livestock in Turkana numbering 5,000, up to 16,000. And then when the Samburu raided the Turkana for 300 heads of cattle, the British fined them. Yani, it was ok for the British to steal cattle but not for other Africans to conduct cattle raids. Of course, the math wasn't mathing.
The Turkana successfully staged a tax boycott against the colonialists, until the colonialists had to withdraw the tax. But in 1915, the British confiscated a staggering 130,000 head of cattle from the Turkana and killed over 400 warriors.
Towards north eastern, the British used to confiscate livestock of Kenyan Somalis so that Europeans breeds would dominate the region and Somalis would be rendered poor due to loss of livestock.
The British hated pastoralism (@m_ogada often reminds us that the wazungu and GoK still do) because it made the communities difficult to control, to reduce to forced labor and extract taxes from. So they attacked their livelihoods. And they brought rinderpest.
Northern Kenya was governed as "closed districts." People from those regions were not allowed to leave without permission from the colonialists. The act was repealed in guess when? 1997. Yes.
And then I remembered Huduma Namba and SHA in which the government proposed means testing, where people's ID cards and SHA contributions included data on the livestock they owned.
What I feel reading this is a mixture of anger and horror at that level of looting, surely. And anger that GoK can still be thinking like this in the 21st century. And that this information is not readily accessible. Eesh.
pambazuka.org/index.php/nort…
English
