Why State banned chiefs from joining political parties

Education Cabinet Secretary addresses Chiefs and their assistants at Kisii Agricultural Training Center on 2/3/2023. [Sammy Omingo, Standard]

Could chiefs, their assistants and the village headmen join political parties?

Such was the predicament the government found itself in when a cabal of influential chiefs with the backing of rich families from Kiambu formed an association.

At first, there was apprehension when Kikuyu Association was formed in 1928, championed by powerful senior chiefs Koinange Mbiyu, Waruhiu Kiungu and Kinyanjui Gathirimu among others with the intention of presenting their grievances about land to the government.

However, when the government sobered up, it realised that if it prohibited the chiefs and headmen from airing their grievances, they would go underground, making it more difficult to learn what they were planning. The government felt that the junior administrators' presence in political meetings would offer a steadying effect because there was the danger of the associations resorting to secretive underground methods.

The associations, the government decreed, would be allowed to exist but their meetings were to serve as a safety valve to prevent pressure from Africans from reaching dangerous levels.

The saga erupted when Kiambu District Commissioner CN Fazan learnt of a meeting which had birthed the association and directed that all the headmen who had attended it resign. Further, at a meeting held at Government House on November 21, 1928 attended by the acting governor, colonial secretary, Chief Native Commissioner as well as the Provincial Commissioner, Kikuyu, it was resolved that similar congregations by Africans must be sanctioned by the Attorney General.

There had been a feeling by some members who attended a subsequent security meeting at Government House (State House) that any African association should never be allowed.

However, some of the progressive forces in government argued that such a draconian policy of banning any form of meeting by Africans would contravene the provisions that constitutional provisions of the freedom of association.

It was this meeting that bastardised any form of associations by natives and further directed if members were to apply to have a meeting, the government response would be standard: "I am in receipt of your letter dated ... You should apply to the chief of your location who will communicate with this office if he thinks the matter was sufficiently urgent, otherwise you should wait until the next baraza held by an administrative officer in your location."