Politics of hate that led Kenyan militia to kill British farmer
Regular invasions of white ranches are leaving a community in fear, writes Adrian Blomfield in Nairobi
Even before they killed his father on Sunday, Archie Voorspuy knew how violent the tribesmen invading Kenya’s ranches could be. From a hidden vantage point, he had watched as armed men frenziedly ransacked a tourist lodge and farm house early last month on Suyian, the white-owned ranch on the Laikipia plateau where he worked as manager. He only just got away in time.
Palpably angry as he recounted the details, Mr Voorspuy seemed bewildered both by the ferocity of the attack and by the failure of the authorities to do anything about it.
Within a fortnight, Sosian, the neighbouring ranch his father Tristan had patiently turned from degraded wilderness into a thriving cattle farm and wildlife conservancy, would suffer the same fate – trampled by tens of thousands of cattle and vandalised by the armed men accompanying them.
Yesterday, 24 hours after he had ridden out to survey some of the damage, the body of Mr Voorspuy, a former British army officer, was finally retrieved by the police. “Tristan was shot three times, once in the head,” said Martin Evans, a rancher who had led the search for his close friend. “He was totally unarmed. He went out on a white horse to be totally visible and he obviously thought he would not be attacked. But he was and that was it.”
The death of Mr Voorspuy, 60, is the first of a white farmer since the invasions of Laikipia’s, mostly whiteowned, large ranches began last year.
Yet as horrifying as Mr Voorspuy’s death has been for Laikipia’s farming community, few seem surprised.
Laikipia’s large ranches, with their tens of thousands of acres of carefully husbanded grazing, have always been subjected to invasions during drought.
But the invasions of the past few months have had such unprecedented ferocity that many suspect political orchestration. Unlike in previous droughts, invading herdsmen and their cattle have been accompanied by armed and apparently trained fighters with endless amounts of ammunition. Spent casings seem to suggest some weapons are army-issued.
Farmers in Laikipia speak of a core of between 200 and 1,000 armed men,
‘He went out on a white horse to be totally visible and he obviously thought he would not be attacked. But he was and that was it’
drawn primarily from the Samburu and Pokot ethnic groups, who are resupplied by vehicle and motorcycle and communicate on two-way radios.
“They are well organised, well resourced and clever in their planning – they are a militia,” said Maria Dodds, who has to wear a flak jacket to drive around her family’s 8,000-acre ranch after coming under repeated attack
It may seem extraordinary, but there is a growing belief that the Kenyan government has essentially lost control of swathes of one of its most important tourism, conservation and farming regions to a tribal militia so powerful as to seem untouchable.
Since the invasions began, as many as 20 people have been killed by the invaders, including at least three black workers. The government response has been muted, although extra police were drafted into Laikipia late last month. Every time officers mount an operation they have been forced back by the invaders, who are superior in both numbers and weaponry.
Britain yesterday reissued calls for Kenya “to take all necessary steps to restore law and order” in the region.
“Alongside other international partners, I have repeatedly conveyed to the Kenyan authorities over the past months the United Kingdom’s deep concern at the situation in parts of Laikipia,” Nic Hailey, the British high commissioner to Kenya, said in a statement. “I have done so again following Mr Voorspuy’s murder.”
Many in Laikipia claim that one of the orchestrators of the invasions is a local Samburu MP, Matthew Lempurkel, who is accused of stirring up animosities against white farmers as part of his bid to hold his seat in Kenya’s election this August. Some of the invaders have been photographed wearing “Vote Lempurkel” T-shirts. The MP is also alleged to have used vernacular radio to tell his supporters falsely that the leases on the ranches had expired and that it was time for his people to reclaim their “historic” land. Mr Lempurkel strongly denies orchestrating the violence.
Yet many in Laikipia say the real source is an attempt by a shadowy cabal of powerful political and military figures to grab the region’s large ranches, although no proof has yet been offered for the claim. “This is definitely much broader than [Lempurkel],” one rancher said, pointing to unconfirmed reports that the governor of a nearby region was preparing to ship weapons smuggled from Ethiopia to the invaders.
Uhuru Kenyatta, the Kenyan president, has been accused of doing little to intervene in the crisis, perhaps out of fear of alienating the Samburu and Pokot vote ahead of his re-election bid in August. But under mounting pressure, his government has begun to change tack. Two days after claiming that Laikipia had been pacified and was incident-free, the government conceded for the first time yesterday that the violence in the region was being politically incited.
It also said that local political leaders behind the violence would be arrested.
As night fell on Laikipia yesterday, shooting was heard close to two whiteowned ranches, while the proprietor of a third reported a fresh invasion onto his land. Few in Laikipia believe that peace is likely to return soon. “They are regrouping and waiting in the wings,” one farmer said. “They will be back.”
Last Sunday Tristan Voorspuy, a white Briton, was shot dead at his private ranch in Laikipia, Kenya. The suspects are believed to be pastoral herders.
This is a story from the history of southern and east Africa – where the politics of land remains mixed with the politics of race. In Zimbabwe, whites cling on to their property at the risk of violence; in South Africa, there is now a threat to seize their land without compensation. These are the bitter fruits of empire, for sure, but the empire is long gone. Africa has to build a new racial and economic consensus.
Kenyan independence was partly a fight over soil. The British colonists stole the most fertile earth, helping to create the destitute Mau Mau army that broke into farms to stake their claim with knives. In January 1953, a gang murdered the white Ruck family – Roger, Esmee, their African servants and, to the horror of the world, their six-year-old boy in his nursery. The photographs of his blood-stained toys announced the end of the happy valley. War came, then freedom. There were around 60,000 whites living in Kenya on Independence Day, 1963. Today, the figure is probably closer to 20,000 – often to be found partying hard in the gated mansions of Karen, an exclusive suburb of Nairobi.
Many Europeans think the story of Africa’s development ended when we left. This is ignorant hogwash. For a continent that has been so exploited, Africa’s achievements in the past few decades are impressive. According to the World Bank, the share of Africans who are poor fell from 56 per cent in 1990 to 43 per cent in 2012. Since 1995, literacy has risen four points and newborns can live up to six years longer than their parents. Growth has been strong, an impressive 5.9 per cent averaged out across seven years in Kenya, and some countries have stopped qualifying for British foreign aid. Commodities, telecommunications – there are fortunes to be made.
The problem is, to quote the World Bank, “while economic growth is critical for poverty reduction, it is not sufficient”. As in the days of empire, wealth remains concentrated in the hands of the few. Freedom fighters often came to power on the promise that when the whites were dethroned, Africans would benefit. But Zimbabwe today is an economic basket case; youth unemployment in Kenya is high. About 10 per cent of South Africans own between 90 and 95 per cent of their nation’s assets – and joblessness is larger than it was at the end of Apartheid. No wonder the ghost of anti-white populism has returned.
A few days ago, Jacob Zuma, president of South Africa, said that his country’s constitution must be rewritten to allow Africans to appropriate white land without paying for it. In a recent speech he spoke of his own ancestral lands that were taken by the invaders. Now, when his people want to visit family graves, the white owners say no. One can understand why Mr Zuma is angry about that. But one can also understand that he is furious at his party’s bad show in last year’s elections and that he is exploiting African resentment in a bid to stay ahead of the game.
Europeans and Americans should be careful about passing judgment. Never forget our own sins. It has taken the United States nearly 200 years to address the legacy of slavery, and it still falls short today. Anti-Semitism and Islamophobia haunt Europe.
Moreover, our problems shrink in comparison to the desperation of Africa’s new nationalists. To us, climate change is an academic debate about the thickness of the Arctic ice. In Africa, millions of human beings face starvation. They are already dying in Somalia, where bad droughts used to hit once every 10 years but now come every five. West of Somalia, in Kenya, drought has also hit the Laikipia region, that sad place where Tristan Voorspuy was shot dead. Herders looking for land on which to graze have driven their cattle on to private ranches owned by blacks as well as whites. Tourists have been evacuated; at least a dozen people have been killed. It’s reported – with depressing inevitability – that local politicians are encouraging this violence to win votes. Each one presumably fancies himself as a little Mugabe.
This has to cease. Racial resentment of the type that Robert Mugabe used to cling on to power in Zimbabwe is not only immoral but also as outdated as colonial nostalgia. Increasingly, it is the black middle-class and global corporations, not the old imperial elite, that dominate southern and east Africa’s post-agricultural economies. And millions of Africans know that. They’re already searching for higher ground. The party that terrifies Jacob Zuma, the Democratic Alliance, is multiracial and liberal.
But if progressives want to be the voice of Africa’s future, they must not make the mistake that European liberals made of choosing platitudes over action. Africa is in danger of splitting in two. The vast gulfs in riches and power have got to be closed with a mixture of education, capitalism, environmentalism and even wealth redistribution. With land comes peace, with peace comes true freedom.