Whites in Kenya
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After the end of the British colonial rule in 1963, realizing that a minority rule in the way of the Rhodesian and South African apartheid régimes was no longer possible after the Mau-Mau uprising, the majority of white settlers departed within one decade, under a willing-buyer-willing-seller scheme, which was largely financed by (secret) British subsidies. The remaining small minority of whites has mostly taken Kenyan citizenship. Economically, virtually all belong to upper middle and upper class.
The recent homicide case of the white Kenyan dairy and livestock farmer and game rancher Thomas Cholmondeley, a descendant of British aristocrats, has brought into question the class bias of the judicial system of the Commonwealth of Nations country and the resentment of many Kenyans toward what is perceived as white privilege. The book and movie White Mischief told the tale involving an earlier member of the Cholmondeley family, the fourth Baron Delamere who was married to Diana Broughton, whose lover was murdered in Nairobi in the 1940s. Her first husband was tried and acquitted. See also Happy Valley set.
The whites of Kenya formerly clustered in the country's highland region, the so-called "White Highlands", where the Cholmondeley (Delamere) family, as one of the few remaining white landowners, still owns over 100,000 acres (400 km²) of farmland in the Rift Valley. Nowadays, only a small minority of them still are landowners (livestock and game ranchers, horticulturists and farmers), whereas the majority work in the tertiary sector: in finance, import, air transport, hospitality. Apart from isolated individualists such as Richard Leakey, Kenyan whites have virtually completely retreated from Kenyan politics, and are no longer represented in public service and parastatals, from which the last remaining leftover staff from colonial times retired in the 1970s.
Today there is an estimated 30 000 Whites in Kenya. However, there has been an increasing number of British expatriates that, according to the BBC, number at about 32,000
One famous Kenyan was George Adamson. He and his wife Joy Adamson are best known through the book and film Born Free, which depicts the true story of Elsa, an orphaned lioness cub they raised and later released into the wild. Some white Kenyan sportspeople include Ian Duncan, a rally driver and Jason Dunford, a swimmer. Other sports relatively popular amongst white population include golf, horse racing and polo. Up to 70's, cricket and rugby union were mainly "white" sports, but are now dominated by indigenous Kenyans.
[edit] See also
[edit] External links
- A lost World - article on The Guardian website
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