Afrikaner (Kaburu) Settlement of the Uasin Gishu Plateau, 1904 to 1910

Compiled by Kipkemoi Araap Korir (Barmoiben) of Mombilen, from extracts of Gerrit Groen's PhD dissertation, The Afrikaners in Kenya, 1903 to 1969 (1974). Summarised here; Groen's own words are quoted only where marked.

Throughout Uasin Gishu and beyond are scattered Afrikaner settlements and houses, and names like Kapshad, Kapseet, Kapsimit and Kapkruger abound. The most visible Afrikaner legacies are the Wagon Wheel Hotel, Kruger Farm and the Reformed Church of East Africa (RCEA). There is also a story about the Standard Chartered Bank in Eldoret: that it was built around a heavy safe full of cash, brought from South Africa by the Boers. At Farm 64, the story goes, the safe fell off the wagon and the few Boers present could not lift it back, so they built a bank around it, a branch of the Standard Bank of South Africa, which at first refused to open in a mud house but later gave in.

The Zionist Detour

The Uganda Railway, completed to Lake Victoria in 1901, was expensive, and the British wanted the land along it developed. Among the settlement proposals of the time was the Zionist one, which considered the Uasin Gishu as a home for Jewish settlers. In 1905 the Seventh Zionist Congress rejected it after a three man commission sent back conflicting reports, though Israel Zangwill's Jewish Territorial Organization kept pressing until 1907, to the alarm of British settlers. Lord Delamere wrote a pamphlet against harbouring an "alien state" in the Protectorate, and Lord Hindlip objected to any compact body of settlers living apart from the rest, an objection that, Groen notes, could equally be applied to Afrikaners.

The First Afrikaners

Direct Afrikaner migration to British East Africa began with one of the van Breda brothers in 1903. In 1904 only the Arnoldi family arrived, with another van Breda brother. Then came six families in 1905, twelve in 1906, seven in 1907, and fifty eight in 1908. The van Bredas settled on the Uasin Gishu at once, taking 10,000 acres each, and one of them did survey work for the administration. Frans Arnoldi settled near Nakuru, and with him came a young man, John de Waal, who bought land from the van Bredas in 1905 and became one of the leading Afrikaner farmers on the plateau.

The Van Rensburg Trek

The largest trek was led by Jan van Rensburg, a prominent farmer from the Bethal district of the Transvaal. In 1906 he explored Fort Hall, Molo and Eldama Ravine and liked none of them. At Eldama Ravine two English hunters told him the Uasin Gishu was uninhabited. He did not go to see it himself, but a friend, Fred Loxton, explored it and sent a favourable report on the soil, while Arnoldi wrote that the government was about to mark the area out for settlement.

The trekkers wanted land above all. Van Rensburg, it was said, wanted more land for his children, and C.J. Roets, who came as a young man, said in 1969 that the promise of as much land as a farmer could work was his family's main reason. Others came for the hunting. Groen also found, in interviews, a reason the written sources leave out: the bitter split in Afrikanerdom after the Anglo-Boer War between those who fought to the end and those who had helped the British as National Scouts.

The party, between 200 and 300 people, left home on 19 June 1908, sailed from Delagoa Bay on the German ship Windhoek on 1 July, and reached Mombasa on 8 July, where a train took them straight to Nakuru. They camped on Arnoldi's farm while a committee went to look at surveyed land in the southern Uasin Gishu. They rejected it, and objected to the application fees and to having to show capital. After long negotiation, the Governor promised them a block of unsurveyed land at 3,000 acres a farmer, with improvements worth forty times the annual rent to be made within five years. They asked for 165,000 acres, then appealed over the local officials to the Colonial Secretary, Lord Crewe, who eventually halved the means test. Officials such as Montgomery and Scholefield grew impatient with them and with their interpreter, a Dane named Glieman, but the size and organisation of the party won them land quickly, under a "rapid allotment" scheme in May 1909.

On 14 September 1908 the party set out from Nakuru. Through forest and rough terrain, with untrained oxen, the going was hard. They reached Sergoit Rock on 19 October, chose their farms, and moved onto them on 21 October.

How They Were Received

The settler press was mostly welcoming. The Leader of British East Africa hailed the "long haired, long bearded, independent but deserving people" and listed what they would bring: numbers, defence, new land opened, and influence on "native policy." Its view of how Boers treated Africans was the paternalist view of its time. A German paper in Usambara was scornful, complaining of Boers shooting game everywhere and grumbling about the country. Ewart Grogan and Harry Johnston were ambivalent or opposed. The Colonists' Association, dominated by British South Africans, urged the Governor in August 1908 to find them land, and most settlers with little capital either approved or did not mind.

This is the first of a series by Barmoiben on the Afrikaners of Uasin Gishu. See also Afrikaners Presence in Uasin Gishu, The Uasin Gishu Puzzle and The Zionist Inspection.