Sons and Daughters of the Soil: Politics and Protest of Kenyan Resettlement to Tanzania, 1961–1968

Abstract

Abstract This article focuses on contestations over an international resettlement programme to move landless Kenyans of Gikuyu ethnicity to Tanzania during the early 1960s. It centres on three interconnected issues of decolonization: migration, statecraft and humanitarianism. Forced migration was integral to post-colonial statecraft, as both colonial and independent actors used displacement to construct their imagined nation state. In this case, the spatial ordering of politics, which focused on securing the profitable interior, departs from conventional narratives about refugees and nation-building. The colonial authorities in Kenya attempted to move Gikuyu not because of their ethnic or religious identity, but because they were poor and made populist claims to land. The withdrawing colonial power partnered with the post-colonial Tanzanian government and with humanitarian agencies. Through their involvement in this programme, aid agencies continued a long tradition of engaging in forced resettlement, and the relief they offered diminished the effectiveness of migrants’ claims to return to Kenya. Despite the power of the institutions involved, landless Gikuyu made compelling claims in the language of human rights, and local politicians encouraged dissent, while at the national level, Kenyan officials, by then part of an interim state, refused to support the programme publicly, illustrating the complexities of shared governance and bureaucracy at the end of empire.