Delamere’s love for the African Standard

Lord Delamere, the son of the 2nd Baron Delamere and his wife, Augusta Emily Seymour, moved to Kenya in 1901, one year before AM Jeevanjee began publishing the then African Standard in Mombasa.

Hugh Cholmondeley, the 3rd Baron Delamere (April 28, 1870-November 13, 1931), styled Honourable, was a British aristocratic peer and one of the first and most influential British settlers in Kenya.

He acquired vast land holdings from the British Crown, most of which in Nairobi and Rift Valley areas of Naivasha, Elementaita and Nakuru.

Having lived in Nairobi, which later became the seat of power a few years after it was founded as a railway depot in 1899 by those who were constructing the Mombasa- Kisumu railway line, Delamare and his white peers are said to have frequented Norfolk Hotel, where they never missed copies of the then renamed East African Standard.

According to writer Andrew Harding, the Norfolk Hotel opened its doors in 1904, a year before the African Standard changed hands to be owned by two British settlers who bough it from AM Jeevanjee.

“You felt that you were part of a tradition dating to the days of Theodore Roosevelt, who stayed at The Norfolk on his 'African Safari and Scientific Expedition' in 1909-10, a hunting trip still considered the most lavish in Kenyan history,” wrote Harding after a recent visit.

Harding, who marvelled at how the status of the hotel had changed, said: “In Roosevelt's days, The Norfolk was a new hotel, having opened five years before in 1904. Back then, Nairobi barely existed.”

He said the curious, mock-Tudor building with a large interior courtyard garden soon became a focal point for the whole of British East Africa, as well as the favoured watering hole of the notorious Happy Valley set.

That was a reference to a dissolute group of aristocratic settlers introduced to a wider audience by the 1987 movie "White Mischief," starring Greta Scacchi and Charles Dance.

Harding pointed out that their unofficial leader, Lord Delamere, apparently invented the term "white hunter" – to better distinguish one of his European guides, Alan Black – and on one occasion rode his horse into the dining room of The Norfolk and jumped it over the tables.

He observed that despite such antics, or perhaps because of them, he gave his name to the wonderful Lord Delamere Terrace, the social centre of Nairobi for close to a century and one of the greatest lounge bars of the world.

Over the years, he became the unofficial 'leader' of the colony's European community. He was as famous for his tireless labours to establish a working agricultural economy in East Africa as he was for childish antics among his European friends when he was at his leisure.

In the autobiography of her grandfather AM Jeevanjeer, Zarina Patel writes that when then colonial government requested for a piece of land for recreation in Nairobi, Dalamare threatened to shoot anyone who dared touch his land at Chester House area.

The philanthropic Pakistani born Jeevanjee then offered Jeevanjee Gardens that is today a place of rest for many Nairobi residents and visitors coming to the city.

Dalamare played a big role in Kenya’s colonial land laws, such as the Devonshire White Paper, a document written in 1923 by Colonial Secretary Victor Cavendish, 9th Duke of Devonshire, regarding the status of settlers and natives in the Kenya colony.

The paper stated that whenever the interests of the native Africans clashed with those of Asian, European or Arab settlers, those of the Africans should prevail.

Although the paper had little effect on the welfare of native Africans, it nonetheless set a precedent for future conflict resolution between the various groups living in the colony.

The Legislative Council established to govern the East African Protectorate originally consisted of three appointed white settlers. However, other white settlers in the colony resented the fact that they could not elect representatives to the Council, and, led by Lord Dalamare, began to demand in 1916 that there would no taxation without representation.

The Cavendish team agreed with the white settlers who were elected to the Council, but focused predominantly on European settler issues, while the Asian community had, in 1911, been granted seats on the non-official opposition side of the Legislative Council.

Two were occupied by Indians and one by an Arab. However, seeing the success of the European settlers in demanding elective representation, they began to demand the same privilege.

They previously petitioned the colonial government for the right to purchase land in the fertile White Highlands, but were denied as that was restricted to white settlers.

Their demands for less restrictive policies on Indians, such as lenient immigration laws on Asians, frequently put them at odds with the European settlers.

From the archives at the Standard library, it emerges that missionaries in the colony, sympathetic to the native African population, were similarly alarmed with the idea of white minority rule, and sent their own delegation to London to counter the settlers' proposals.

In Britain, various people such as John Ainsworth, Nyanza Provincial Commissioner, and Lord Lugard had previously argued that Kenya was primarily a black man's country and could never be a European colony.

They said it was contrary to British colonial policy that the small Kenyan settler community should have political control over large native communities.

On July 23, 1923, after deliberation on "the Indian question", the Cabinet approved the right of the colonial government in Britain, and not the settlers, to impose limitations on immigration from India.

But they also continued to restrict Indian ownership of land in the so-called White Highlands. Based on this Cabinet decision, the Duke of Devonshire, who was colonial secretary at the time, issued the "white paper", stating:

“Primarily, Kenya is an African territory, and His Majesty's Government thinks it necessary definitely to record their considered opinion that the interests of the African natives must be paramount and that if, and when, those interests and the interests of the immigrant races should conflict, the former should prevail.

“Obviously the interests of the other communities, European, Indian or Arab, must severally be safeguarded... But in the administration of Kenya His Majesty's Government regard themselves as exercising a trust on behalf of the African population, and they are unable to delegate or share this trust, the object of which may be defined as the protection and advancement of the native races. — Victor Cavendish, 9th Duke of Devonshire.

The impact of the paper was intended to serve as a compromise between Indian interests and those of the Europeans, despite its affirmation of African paramount rights.

Nevertheless, the paper allowed for the improvement of African conditions, such as the establishment of technical schools for Africans by a 1924 Education Ordinance, as well as the appointment of Eliud Mathu to the Legislative Council, the first African to hold a seat.

It also allowed for the formation of an African party, the Kikuyu Central Association, which presented African grievances to the colonial government.

The Dalamare family still owns huge tracts of land in Kenya, including the 56,000-hactare Soysambu ranch in Elementaita near Nakuru.

It is owned by Lord Hughes George who is in his early 80s and his wife Lady Ann, where they do farming, ranching and wildlife conservancy.

The family owns several public primary schools on the expansive ranch, built near settlements where hundreds of workers and artisans live.

Their son Tom Cholmondely Delamare died in August 2017 after undergoing a hip surgery at MP Shah Hospital in Nairobi.

Hon Tom, as he was fondly referred to by workers and farm managers at Soysambu, was the fifth Lord and was twice arrested for shooting two people dead on the ranch.

During the first shooting, the Standard sent a team, led by writer Biketi Kikechi, to investigate what transpired and it emerged that Tom shot Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) ranger Samason ole Sisina who was pursuing poachers.

A group of Tom’s workers had killed a buffalo and ferried it in a pick-up truck to a yard on the Kenyan-Britons compound for slaying.

One of the workers saw Sisina and a colleague approaching the home and ran to inform their master who approached the yard from the back and shot Sisina.

Caught unawares by the gunshots, the ranger tried to run but fell on the road about 20 metres from Tom’s castle.

Efforts to speak to the father, who lived about five kilometres up the road, opposite an airstrip, failed as he left through the back when he was informed by the farm manager about the presence of journalists in the home.

The Delamare family also runs businesses in Naivasha along the Nakuru-Eldoret highway, and also exports dairy products, legumes and other horticultural products and sells heifers.