Kenyan link in Afrikaners' land woes

Did you read or watch White South Africans, specifically Afrikaners, descendants of Dutch settlers, resettling in the US last week?

This, happening at a time when there is a backlash against immigrants in the US, the story may not have gained enough traction in Kenya and around the world.

The common name for Afrikaners is Boers or kaburu in Swahili. I wonder how the Afrikaners feel resettling in the US, just like their descendants in South Africa did 373 years ago.

The reason for their resettlement is a threat to their livelihood due to the seizure of their farms. The word genocide has been mentioned.

On my last visit to South Africa last year, specifically to the Western Cape, I did not sense any fear among Afrikaners.

Land redistribution in South Africa is easily linked to Zimbabwe and easily stirs up fear. We, too, had our moment of land redistribution with the former white highlands sold to indigenous Africans after independence.

My parents were beneficiaries, paying off the loan after 30 years. The loans' maturity saw several original landowners sell off part of their land to pay them off.

A new set of immigrants changed the demographics of the White Highlands for the second time in a century. Remember the Masai agreements? 

It’s another question if the land redistribution was done the right way after independence. Should we have left some big farms intact?

Did the “new settlers” really want to be farmers, or did they lack choices? Sixty years later, the once big plantations have been subdivided among the children, both sons and daughters.

More lately, land speculators are selling 50 by 100 plots in a place where owning 30,000 acres was not unusual.

The subdivided farms are too small for mechanisation and are uneconomic; earning a living is becoming harder.

For those who can’t leave the countryside, the choices are stark. Joblessness, which breeds alcoholism, stalks rural areas.

In my opinion, the first majority government in South Africa, headed by Nelson Mandela, took too long to redistribute land.

They should have done that immediately after their independence. Thirty years later is too late, and the backlash is not unexpected. In addition, the demand for land has gone up.

Some argue that political freedom after 342 years of apartheid was more important than economic freedom, now the focus of land redistribution.

I suspect, just like in Kenya, the generation likely to get land may not be interested in farming; they would prefer alternatives like working in factories.

Why bother with Afrikaners resettling in the US and statements from the White House? There is a Kenyan connection.

Afrikaners also settled in Kenya, mostly around Nyahururu and Eldoret. I am more conversant with their settlement around Nyahururu through several visits.

They had a school, Jan Van Riebeeck, now Ndururumo High School. Nairobi School's signboard reminds us it was once the Prince of Wales School. Why can’t Ndururumo do the same? 

They had a church too, the African Inland Church (AIC), opposite the Nyahururu Country Club.

I am told the Afrikaners sold the church after uhuru. What was the selling price? Next to the church is a cemetery with very Afrikaans names like Van Rensburg, Joubert, Van Straaten, and Botha, among others. Afrikaans is the language of Afrikaners.

The Afrikaners did lots of farming in Kenya. And they felt at home before independence uprooted them.

Western Cape surprisingly resembles the Nyahururu or Eldoret areas. Just take a drive from Cape Town to Hawston or Hermanus through breathtaking vineyards.

Old copies of the Kenya Gazette show Afrikaners' presence in Kenya as voters. You could also read a 1971 thesis, “The Afrikaners in Kenya, 1903-1969,” by Gerrit D Green, at the University of Michigan.

In addition, Afrikaners left footprints in old houses that still stand near Ol Kalou and in Uasin Gishu. 

The British 68-year rule drowned out other nationalities that made Kenya their home. That included Australians, South Africans, Germans, Jews, Poles, Norwegians, Swedes, Irish, Italians, Arabs, French, Americans, and many others. Everyone was mzungu and still are. Add the Indians.

We need more studies on the other nationalities that once made Kenya their home. Some never left and became part of our heritage, preceding globalisation by many years.

We need to rewrite our history in Competency-Based Curriculum or Competency-Based Education.

Why do our children spend so much time finding out what Zinjanthropus ate instead of more recent Homo sapiens, some still alive? Should our children talk about the diet of Ramapithecus or the human genome?

What did early man do to deserve so much space in our history and memory? Interestingly, I knew of Vasco da Gama's visit to Kenya in 1498 but not the name of the mzungu whose farm we inherited only 60 years ago. I finally met the daughter a few years ago in Norfolk, England. 

Does our fixation with prehistory make us lose focus on what matters today? Is CBE more present- and future-oriented than past? Should we talk of prehistoric tools excavated at Olduvai Gorge or AI? 

Maybe it’s time we revised our history to make connections with all the nationalities that once made Kenya their home.

They are assets in tourism, trade and investments. Such historical connections explain lots of trade and investment among countries like the US, the UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. Some families have relatives in all these countries.

How do you react when you realise a stranger is from your country or village? Doesn’t interaction become easier?

Would that not apply if all these nationalities knew they had relatives here? That would make diplomacy, trade, investment and tourism easier. Are we not looking for markets for goods and services? And jobs too.

Afrikaners may be immigrating to the US, but they had been here earlier and left. They probably ran away from Black rule in Kenya to face the same in South Africa.

They are always on the move. I can boldly suggest they will even resettle on exoplanets.