Louis Leakey, writing in The Southern Kikuyu before 1903, Kenyatta and the very sound Kikuyu historian Godfrey Muriuki all accept that the Kikuyu originally had a matrilineal society in which descent, identity and inheritance was derived not from the father’s line, but from the mother’s. In addition, women played a prominent role in governance.

Matrilineal societies were most commonly found among farmers, whereas patrilineal societies dominated by male lines were the rule among pastoralists.

The strongest evidence of matrilineality among the early Kikuyu is the traditional belief that they are the descendants of Mumbi (Muumbi) who took a husband, Gikuyu, and produced nine daughters (Wanjiru, Wambui, Njeri, Wanjiku, Nyambura, Wairimu, Waithira, Wangari and Wangui).

Ngai (the Maa term for God) provided nine men as mates for the girls, but their father Gikuyu stipulated that they could only marry if they agreed to live under a matriarchal system.

Though apocryphal, Leakey felt, “It is no doubt significant that in this tradition it was the women who took husbands, and not the men who took wives.

This supports the view — which can be based on many minor customs even in Kikuyu life today — that the tribe was, originally, matrilineal.” The strongest evidence of sustained matrilineal custom was in certain marriage arrangements.

Again in Leakey’s words, “By Kikuyu custom no girl was forced to marry against her will, and every opportunity was given to girls to contract love marriages. Those who failed to do so had two alternatives. They could become the second or third or later wives of men who had already a first or senior wife, or they could contract a matrilineal marriage, live at home, and bear children who would become members of their mother’s clan and family.” No stigma was attached to such a woman bearing children out of wedlock.

However, if the father of a woman who had opted for a matrilineal marriage was wealthy and had serfs (ndungata) attached to his household, and his daughter was agreeable, he could arrange for a serf to “marry” her without making the normal marriage payments.

This man would then be available to beget children and take on all ceremonial marriage responsibilities.

However, any children would take their names from the mother’s family, belong to their mother’s clan and live in the homestead of their mother’s father.

At some point in Kikuyu history, the tribe switched from being matrilineal to patrilineal.

Identity became determined by the father’s line, as was inheritance and governance. It is not clear when this happened.

The neighbouring Akamba, who are linguistically close to the Kikuyu, went through a similar transformation.

If, as their languages suggest, the two peoples had a common origin, did the change from matrilineal to patrilineal societies happen in distant times before they assumed separate identities?

That the matrilineal traces in Akamba society are not as apparent as they are among the Kikuyu, hints they changed at different dates.

Why would they have made the switch? One can only speculate. Perhaps it had something to do with their partial adoption of pastoralism, for while the two communities are primarily cultivating farmers, they both keep considerable numbers of cattle, sheep and goats and are thus at least partly pastoral.

As already pointed out, pastoralism and patriarchy go together and perhaps bringing livestock into their cultures initiated the change.

Where the Kikuyu are concerned, several lines of evidence suggest that the Maasai were in some way involved.

Traditional Kikuyu society was governed by rituals that, if not followed exactly, ensured trouble, not only for those who broke the rules, but for their relatives as well. This strong belief gave everyone reason to make sure one’s relatives conformed to the rules.

However, rather as within Christian Western Europe there were two major schools of religious procedure — Catholic and Protestant — so every Kikuyu followed one of two ceremonial systems for which Leakey used the term “guilds.” One was either of the Gikuyu guild or the Ukabi guild.

This is of particular interest because the term for a Maasai is Mukabi (plural Akabi) and Ukabi implies of the Masai.

This is initially strange given the commonly held view that the Kikuyu and the Maasai were enemies.

Indeed, the term Mukabi in both Kikuyu and Kikamba was commonly used as a synonym for enemy. Yet as is so often the case, common views are often at least partly wrong.

First, were the two people truly enemies? In his book Facing Mount Kenya, Jomo Kenyatta wrote, “To take a concrete case, my grandmother, on my father’s side, was a Maasai woman called Mosana, and in reciprocity for this friendly feeling, my aunt (i.e. elder sister of my father) was married to a Maasai chief called Sendeu, and was treated as the head wife. Exchange visits were made on both sides, and I had the opportunity of visiting her and staying there for some months as a member of the family.”

Leakey records that there were permanent and longstanding agreements between the two tribes in the following words, “In order to conduct trade with the Maasai the Kikuyu made agreements… whereby the women of both groups were never molested when engaged in trade activities, even when the tribes were at war… These agreements were always faithfully observed by both sides.”

Elsewhere he wrote, “Sometimes, especially in times of food shortage and of great drought in Maasai country, Maasai women would hand over their children to the Kikuyu women who had gone trading, in exchange for food. This was not in any sense a question of selling their children as slaves, for these children, if they survived, did not become slaves but fully adopted members of the Kikuyu family, with identical rights to those of the Kikuyu-born children… Blessing by the Maasai mother was essential, as was the approval of the Maasai father. Later, back in Kikuyuland, ceremonies converting the Maasai child into a Kikuyu were performed. Notably, the main ceremony was more complex if the child was being adopted into a Kikuyu [guild] family and more simple if the new parents were of the Ukabi guild.”

Later on the same subject Leakey continued, “If the child’s adopted mother and father belonged to that section of the Kikuyu who were initiated by Ukabi guild rites, then the ceremonies were less complex … Such a child did not have to be changed from a Maasai into a Kikuyu, for those who belonged to the Ukabi guild regarded themselves as sufficiently akin to the Maasai for this to be unnecessary.”

Notably, the children of these cross-tribe adoptions were always girls — boys were not acceptable.

Nevertheless, both Kikuyu and Maasai men did move across the divide.

Writes Leakey, “If a man or a woman dwelt for a time in Maasai country, either voluntarily, as was sometimes the case, or through being taken prisoner, then, either by a ceremony held in Maasai country, or simply by the fact of living there for sometime, he or she had become a Maasai (Muukabi) while at the same time a Kikuyu by birth. If, and when, such a person returned to Kikuyu country again, he or she was thereafter regarded as a member of the Ukabi guild of the Kikuyu people, and would in the future have to observe and adhere to the special rules and customs of that guild…”

While most trade between Kikuyu and Masai was conducted by women under the free passage agreement, some men also traded with considerable freedom — “… three men are famous in the Kikuyu traditional history of the 19th century as successful leaders of trading expeditions.

These men were Karua wa Muthigani, Waithaka wa Mathia, and Gitau wa Gathimba. These men had lived for quite a long time in Maasai country and had made friends with individual Maasai elders in many places.”

When the Kikuyu and Maasai did fight — which was frequently — the battle was conducted according to laid down rules.

Leakey observed, “It was a common and recognised custom that the armies of the Kikuyu and the Maasai made use of trading parties as means of exchanging challenges. The Kikuyu or the Maasai warriors would send a message, for instance, to the effect that they intended to raid in a particular area, or that they planned to come and rescue a prisoner. Or again, they would send offers of or demands for ransom.”

Not all conflicts were bloody and were occasionally resolved when two champions, one from each opposing side, stepped out before the assembled warriors and fought to the death.

The outcome was accepted as determining which side had won.

Perhaps more usually, a Kikuyu raiding party attacking a Maasai settlement, killed all the men, older women and boys, but carried off girls and younger women as prisoners. Yet even in such situations, there were rigid rules to be observed.

On page 1068 of his work, Leakey writes, “It was absolutely taboo for any warrior to rape, seduce or in any way have sexual contact with such girls and women during the raid or on the journey back to Kikuyu country, and any warrior who did so would be severely reprimanded by the others for jeopardising the raid. Moreover, once a man had brought a Maasai girl or woman back to his parents’ home as his prisoner, he had to behave towards her as towards his own sisters, and having sexual contact with her would be counted as incest… The normal procedure after capturing a Maasai girl or young woman was to send messages to the Maasai with the women who went trading asking for a ransom. If the Maasai wished to ransom the girl they would do so, and they could safely come to Kikuyu country to negotiate if they brought murica (tokens of peace) … If no ransom was forthcoming [always a possibility if the men in the girl’s family had died in the raid] the girl prisoner became a member of the Kikuyu family, and when eventually some other Kikuyu wished to marry her and she was willing, her captor received the marriage payments …”

Raiding was integral to both Kikuyu and Maasai cultures (and others in Kenya as well).

Indeed, the term war is in many instances inappropriate and the fighting, with notice in advance of where to expect a raiding party, and the attendant rules and rituals, made it more a brutal form of sport than real war. Seldom, if ever, were all Kikuyu “at war” with all Maasai.

The raiding usually involved a local group from several mbari pitting themselves against a specific section of Maasai.

Kikuyu were as likely to raid other Kikuyu as they were to raid Masai and, vice versa, Maasai to raid other Maasai as they were to raid Kikuyu. Again quoting Kenyatta, “In territories where this friendly relationship was established, especially between the Kaptei [sic — meaning Kaputei] Maasai and the southern Gikuyu, the warriors of the two tribes joined together to invade another section of the Maasai, like Loita or a section of Gikuyu, like Mbeere or Tharaka.”

Periods of peace that might last from one to over 10 years between warring groups were negotiated.

Leakey recording that the friendships that resulted from these peace treaties were so deep that it was not uncommon for parties of Maasai warriors to be invited to spend a whole dancing season in Kikuyu country as guests of the Kikuyu warriors, who would teach them their own dances and allow them the privilege of having Kikuyu girls as “sleeping partners” at night.

These periods of peace between specific groups involved rituals, and the oaths and curses under which they were established and which both believed in, brought calamity on anyone of either group who broke them. In such times, the people of both tribes mixed freely and visited each other’s country.

However, in due course, when one or other of the sides (or both) believed that their interests would best be served by resuming raiding, this was brought about by paying a Kikuyu group who had not taken the oath of peace to attack the other side. Similarly, the Maasai followed the same procedures. Once blood was shed, it was then legitimate for all to resume raiding.

One outcome of the relationship between Kikuyu and Maasai was, in Leakey’s words, that, “… there were plenty of women in Kikuyu country who were more or less bilingual. These Kikuyu women who could speak Maasai were drawn from two groups. Either they were Maasai girls who had married Kikuyu men and who had become Kikuyu in all but origin, but who, of course, spoke both languages, or they were Kikuyu girls who had been made prisoners by the Maasai as children, but who, after several years in Maasai country had either been ransomed or recaptured. These bilingual women were called by the Kikuyu hinga, which means hypocrites or dissemblers because they could appear to belong to either side.”

Yet to capture the relationship between Kikuyu and Maasai, nothing provides a better illustration than the case of “Batian” — one of the most prominent of all 19th century Maasai leaders.

Again, it is best presented in Leakey’s own words, “The Maasai were always particularly keen to make use of Kikuyu medicine men and diviners, and it was due to this that the Kikuyu sub-clan known as Mbari a Gatherimu gradually obtained enormous power over the Kaputei Maasai, some members of this Kikuyu family eventually becoming chiefs of this section of the Maasai tribe. The famous Maasai chief Lenana [Ol Onana] was the son of Mbatia, a Kikuyu. Mbatia was the son of Gathirimu and Lenana was the recognised chief of all the Kaputei Maasai at the time of the coming of the Europeans.”

Leakey used the term “chief” when leader would have been more appropriate as neither Kikuyu nor Masai had chiefs in the strict sense of the word.

Nevertheless, Mbatia wa Gathirimu, known to history as the Maasai leader Batian, was originally a Kikuyu who assumed great prominence when, in the mid-19th century, he induced a coalition of Maasai sects to unite in real civil war against the two most powerful of all Maasai groups, first the Uasin Gishu and then the Laikipiak. Both groups were all but annihilated.

The relationship between Kikuyu and Maasai was not repeated between the Kikuyu and their other neighbours, the Akamba, so it cannot be argued that it was merely the outcome of being neighbours. It seems that it was unique.

They may have raided one another, but much of this was not warfare with intent to displace or annihilate the other.

Their social organisation had many common features. They used the same weapons of war, similar shields, and similar shield designs. Their customs were similar — even to the dislike of eating wild animals. Their management of livestock was essentially the same.

Individuals could move between their respective communities and live in them for extended periods.

Personal friendships were in some cases strong enough to protect individuals from the consequences of raiding and the manner in which women of both sides could trade regardless of whether their communities were at “war” was absolutely unique.

Even if the Maasai might not acknowledge with the same certitude that Ukabi Kikuyu are Maasai, the fact that they exist is strong suggestion that it was Maasai influence that brought about the change from a matrilineal to a patrilineal system among the Kikuyu.

A great difference between the Kikuyu and the Masai was their retention of two different languages.

Were it not for this, and even if not correct, it would be understandable if the Kikuyu were described as agricultural Maasai or the Maasai as pastoral Kikuyu.

Of course, such a view pertains to the Maasai in highland Kenya within reach of Kikuyu influence.

That the two groups have not merged more than they have could reflect that within the vast territory once held by the Maasai nation there will have been Maasai who had no contact with the Kikuyu. They would have been a counterforce to merging.

Be that as it may, what Leakey, Kenyatta and Muriuki have recorded goes a long way towards explaining the ease and scale on which previously pastoral Maasai have been adapting to arable agriculture in modern times.

It gives some understanding also of the ease with which this change has been accompanied by a parallel change from communal to private land tenure. It gives insight into the extent to which Kikuyu and Maasai intermarry at rates not matched between other groups. After all, they have been at it for a very long time.

So, what is the relevance of all this to the Kenya of today?

It is this: Like no two other groups in Kenya, the Kikuyu and the Maasai have a long history of integration.

In the face of human increase, modern technology and Kenya’s “internationalised” modern economy, it is entirely natural that, wherever it is possible, arable farming will expand into areas once only used for pastoralism.

It is equally logical that sedentary cultivation, which is favoured by private land tenure, will gradually displace the communal land tenure that is essential to nomadism of any sort.

We see the process before us: The division of communal range into group ranches, followed by the division of group ranches into private farms and livestock giving way to planted crops.

Ideally it should be a gentle, gradual process, and overall, it has been.

However, here and there strife and displacement have broken out.

A potent element in fomenting this strife is the claim that the Kikuyu have taken advantage of the “marginalised” Maasai.

The term “marginalised,” favoured by Western activists and aid agencies, is difficult to equate with the Maasai, whose tribe is probably still the largest landowner in Kenya. Given their long historical association, conflict between them and the Kikuyu is where it should be least expected.

Take heed of history. Do not buy the myth that the Kikuyu and Maasai were traditional enemies, for history shows that they have had a rare degree of integration.

Take note, proof that it continues around Ngong and in a swathe south of Nairobi is in the number of mixed Maasai/Kikuyu and Kikuyu/Maasai marriages and households in these areas.

Therein, surely, lies the way forward?

In Africa South of the Sahara, history was traditionally passed down the generations orally. Information was acquired gradually throughout life by listening to one’s elders in a gentle, unhurried process.

The colonial era, modern technology, and new ways burst upon this scene as cultural tsunami. Suddenly, information was transmitted by writing – a skill that the old timers did not have.

Education gave seniority to the young and the old ceased to be teachers. Life’s pace became ruled by the wristwatch. Generations were divorced as the young and educated sought distant employment. Information came from reading which, because they were illiterate, the elders could not correct.

For these and many other reasons, history became a casualty and modern Africa knows tragically little about its unwritten past.

In his review of Louis Leakey’s The Southern Kikuyu Before 1903, Joe Gichuki recognised the work is a remarkable exception in this historical vacuum.

A white man with a formidable intellect who grew up with the Kikuyu and was accepted as a member of the Mukanda age grade and qualified as a second-class elder, had captured the old customs, traditions and knowledge in writing and immense detail.

Helped by elders, his three volumes make an historical bridge between the unwritten past and modern times. None of Kenya’s more than 40 other peoples have anything like it.

Though famous for his work on the origins of man, I think this anthropological record of the pre-colonial Agikuyu was Leakey’s greatest achievement.

The three volumes are not an easy read and so full of detail that few can absorb it in a single reading. Written from 1937-38, they were only published 40 years later and another 30 years passed before Leakey’s son Richard, Joe Gichuki and The East African brought it back to public attention.

Understanding traditional Kikuyu land law and custom is relevant to modern times.

First, briefly, who are the Kikuyu? A people of this name appear have been established over 300 years ago on the eastern slopes of the Aberdares in Muranga.

Given the similarities of language and custom, they had clear connections with the Akamba, and the people of Meru and Embu. They also had close relationships with the Maasai.

Radiating out from Muranga, the Kikuyu spread north and south along the forested lower Aberdare slopes.

By 300 years ago, some had crossed the Southern Chania river into what are now Thika and Kiambu Districts.

How did they get land? Misty folklore and oral evidence implies that early on the forest-dwelling Agumba were chased away and dispossessed of land by force.

However, Leakey records that south of the Southern Chania land was purchased from Dorobo (probably Ogiek – or a group akin to them?)

By Kikuyu law, buying land was complicated. The currency was goats or their equivalents.

If the seller was not a Kikuyu, before any negotiation could be concluded, the ground had to be set so that the legitimacy of the transaction would be recognised by both the seller’s and buyer’s societies. So, both had first to become members of one another’s societies.

Thus the Dorobo seller was adopted as a Kikuyu and the Kikuyu became a Dorobo, so that both became bound by one another’s laws. These steps were directed by the law-interpreting elders on both sides.

Once the Dorobo seller was a Kikuyu, he was protected by Kikuyu law and could appeal to the arbiters of Kikuyu law for protection in the event of any “breach of contract” or agreement. From that point on, while still a Dorobo, he had the rights of a Kikuyu; in effect, he had acquired dual nationality.

These adoption procedures were the route whereby the Kikuyu not only bought land off the Dorobo, but absorbed them and their families into Kikuyu society.

A point of great importance is that if the proper ceremonies supervised by the appropriate elders were not performed, then no land transaction would be recognised or protected by Kikuyu law.

Land was bought from the Dorobo by individual Kikuyu or by several in partnership. Such acquisitions were sometimes substantial – up to 50,000 hectares – and included all the assets such as the trees on them unless (as was the case with certain salt-licks considered essential for the community’s livestock) specifically exempted in the sales agreement.

The land bought was known as the new owner’s githaka (estate) and he became its mwathi (plural athi).

A landowner could sell or give all or part of his githaka to other individuals or partnerships.

He could stipulate (before the appropriate elders) that upon his death, part or all of should pass into the sole ownership of another person – most usually one son – or other people or specific parts of it to different sons.

Each person became the mwathi of what he had been bequeathed. In this manner, individual private land tenure could be passed down through successive generations.

Where, for example, land was purchased by or willed to several brothers jointly, the right of disposal was vested in the senior brother, though his siblings had some say in the matter, and an individual in a partnership could dispose of a part of the estate proportionate to what he had contributed towards its purchase.

Yet, as in British private company law, he had first to offer his portion to the other owners, giving them the option to keep the estate intact.

Such clear-cut wills and bequests were not common. More usually, a landowner died without making one. When this happened, his estate became the property of his descendants or mbari (sub-clan) and was controlled by the first-born sons of the deceased’s widows. They were bound to provide cultivation space for their wives, widowed mothers and younger uterine brothers.

Whether land was owned privately or by an mbari was immediately apparent in its title: that in individual tenure was referred to, for example, as “the estate of Njoroge” while that which had passed into the possession of an mbari would be “the estate of Njoroge’s mbari .”

As can be imagined, once ownership was vested in an expanding mbari and controlled by its adult male members acting in council, its management became progressively more complicated and litigious with each succeeding generation.

Kikuyu land law therefore recognised both private individual land ownership and communally owned land in the restricted sense of mbaris only.

In Facing Mount Kenya, Jomo Kenyatta stressed that all land was owned by individuals or mbaris and none was held communally in the sense that everyone had equal access to it.

The Kikuyu people certainly had a sense of what constituted “Kikuyu country,” in which settlement by non-Kikuyu would have been resisted, but they did not apparently have commons open to all.

Of extreme historical importance was the fact that ownership was not restricted to land in actual use and did not lapse when lying fallow.

Some githakas contained substantial tracts of virgin forest and the fact that it was undeveloped in no way diminished ownership of the land.

To quote Leakey:

“…Kikuyu law provided for the formation of what would now be called forest reserves… Owners of large stretches of land had the absolute right to prohibit the felling of trees… Another reason for the prohibition of forest felling was the desire of some landowners to retain forest land for the use of their descendants. For this reason, a man who had bought a large area of forest sometimes left a deathbed curse prohibiting any of his descendants from ever bringing tenants onto the estate. This meant, of course, that much more of the forest land could be left undisturbed.

“Among forest patches that were preserved by the Kikuyu by means of definite curses before 1900, and which are still at least partly virgin forest today, may be mentioned the Karura Forest Reserve lying between Nairobi and Kiambu, and the Nairobi City Park. The former was made a reserve by four landowners jointly, their names being Tharuga, Gacii, Wang’endo and Hinga. The City Park was originally preserved by a man whose name was Kirongo, and who, by his own wish, was buried there when he died.”

Leakey’s use of the word “curse” does not have the wholly dark connotations of its English usage, but more the sense of a binding commitment with penalties for those who broke it.

The curses had to be made publicly in the presence of the appropriate elders. An oath or curse broken would deeply offend the spirit world in which the Kikuyu believed implicity.

Spirits would punish not only the person who broke an oath or curse but also that person’s relatives as well. Consequently, all relatives tried to make sure that a person did not make curses and oaths lightly and once made, that they were not broken.

Thus, while not having written contracts, the Kikuyu had an effective system of making sure agreements and wills sealed by curses were not broken.

Obviously, the number of people any githaka could support was limited. Increasing numbers produced pressure to move elsewhere.

Young men hoped to become wealthy enough to buy land – either from the Dorobo or another landowner, and found their own mbaris.

Yet in relative terms, becoming a mwathi was always expensive, and beyond most men’s means.

Those who felt crowded on their natal mbaris had the option to become a residential tenant (muthami = tenant-in-residence, plural athami) of a rich man or of an mbari that had vacant land, or to cultivate on someone else’s property as a muhoi (tenant-at-will, plural ahoi).

New githaka owners usually wanted to develop them and needed manpower on hand for defence.

Consequently they were keen to have athami living on their properties. Both landlord and residential tenants had responsibilities to one another that were recognised in customary law.

Of particular importance, a muthami could only be evicted if he or his family were guilty of serious offences, or if the land was needed by the landlord’s family.

In the latter case, the tenant was entitled to ample notice and allowed to reap standing crops. A muhoi had less security and had to make certain regular but not onerous donations to the mwathi or mbari on whose land he was allowed to cultivate.

As a safeguard against eviction merely so the landowner could benefit from the tenant having cleared land and made it ready for cultivation, landowners had to let such land revert to bush before it could be cultivated again.

A tenant’s rights expired upon his death and had to be renegotiated with the landlord by his family if they wished to continue the tenancy. If a landowner sold his land to another party, his tenants had to negotiate new tenancies with the new owner. Overall, though, customary law afforded tenants security.

The foregoing is a brief synopsis of Kikuyu land tenure. It was simple in theory, becoming complex in practice when mbaris increased in size.

It illustrated that the Kikuyu were not a classless society. Through their land tenure, society was stratified between landowners, athami tenants-in-residence who could nonetheless be men of substance and the ahoi tenants-at-will at the bottom end of the scale.

There were, however, no barriers to a diligent muhoi moving up the social scale to become a landowner. While obviously not codified in writing, Kikuyu land tenure had many similarities to British land law.

Many early colonial administrators believed that because most African farmers practised slash-and-burn agriculture and had to move to new land every few years, they would not have evolved long-term land ownership.

Whatever ground they had for thinking that the absence of a cultivator in residence meant land was not owned, they were fundamentally wrong where the Kikuyu were concerned.

Yet on that false assumption, in 1903/4 the government allocated some Kikuyu land to the white settlers it had invited to come to Kenya, establishing a taproot for the Mau Mau rebellion 49 years later.

Another potent fuel for Mau Mau was the “squatter problem.” White settlers were invited by the colonial government to bring capital to Kenya and develop large-scale agriculture.

In 1903 tractors, bulldozers and combine harvesters were still tools of the future; large-scale farming rested in the main on abundant manual labour.

The new settlers felt that as the government had invited them to come to Kenya, it must help provide the labour without which they could not farm on a large scale. However, the government was ambivalent about this and because it had not foreseen the need for labour, it dithered.

This led some settlers to address the problem themselves by approaching the Kikuyu directly.

In return for providing specified quotas of work, they would allow Kikuyu and their families to live on their farms, grow crops and keep livestock.

Those making this offer were unaware that, to the Kikuyu, it was tantamount to becoming athami with access to the wide acres that had previously only been grazed by Maasai, under the protection of the white athi.

Many Kikuyu jumped at the opportunity and became athami on white-owned farms.

That the wazungu called them “squatters” didn’t change the reality. Initially, the relationship worked well, though because they stuck to crops they knew well, the squatters actually did better than their landlords.

The whites did not know the Kikuyu procedures for setting up binding agreements.

Without the appropriate ceremonies demanded by Kikuyu law, some athami were not too particular about sticking to agreements and brothers and their families arrived under guise of being sons etc. to share in the squatter opportunities.

It was not long, though, before there was friction between the two parties as some settlers began to suffer competition from squatter livestock and cultivation on their own land.

The government could see what was happening and introduced a succession of Resident Labour laws that sought to control and restrict squatters.

The detail of these laws would take a book to explain, so suffice it here that they were disliked by the squatters and not followed closely by the settlers either.

Whatever the competition between them, it is obvious that the system was beneficial to both as by 1933 there were over 110,000 Kikuyu living outside the Kikuyu districts – most of them on white farms.

By 1945 there were 121,181 Kikuyu squatters in the White Highlands – that is, for every one of the 3,000 or so white settlers, there were 40 Kikuyu.

Mechanisation, which developed rapidly after 1920, reduced the white farmers’ need for labour, while giving them the ability to cultivate more of what they owned.

Both trends put the athami under growing pressure to either become simple employees without farming rights, and/or to return to Kikuyuland.

By now, many squatter children had not only been born on the white farms, but had grown to adulthood on them.

Not unnaturally, this developed, if not a feeling of actual ownership, then at least the strong athami sense of belonging on that land and the expectation of the protection that Kikuyu land and social law would have provided for tenants.

With neither side understanding the other’s basic position, bad feeling was inevitable, contributing strongly to what ended in Kikuyu rebellion. Ignorance was at the centre of what happened in the 1950s.

The 1933 Report of the Kenya Land Commission is still one of the most reliable historical records in Kenya.

Yet where the Kikuyu were concerned, it reflects profound ignorance of their culture, and land tenure.

It complained bitterly about what it saw as Kikuyu untruthfulness, not knowing that without due ceremony and ritual under Kikuyu law, it was consistent with their ethics that when presenting evidence one could say what one felt would best serve one’s own or one’s mbari’s interests.

Indeed in 1954, Leakey criticised his fellow Kikuyu elders for not having been truthful, pointing out that it led the Land Commission to underestimate the amount of Kikuyu land originally alienated.

Ignorance is central to the loss of Kikuyu land around 1903, the mismanagement of “squatters” and the Land Commission’s difficulties.

It is tragic that Leakey’s The Southern Kikuyu Before 1903 has been virtually unknown to Kenyans for 71 years. Had it been available as soon as it was written, it might have averted much misery.

This article so far has dwelt on the past. Kikuyu society in the 21st century is so different to what it was in the 19th century, that today’s Kikuyu would find it hard to imagine those of the earlier period being of the same people, and vice versa.

This impression clearly struck Joe Gichuki, himself a Kikuyu, very strongly.

Indeed, so different are the people of modern times from their great-grandfathers’ generation that one wonders if Leakey’s book has any relevance at all beyond being an interesting historical record. I believe that it does.

The one area in which a 19th century Kikuyu would feel relatively at ease today would be where land is concerned.

He would perhaps be surprised by the disappearance of the family-owned mbari holdings in favour of privately owned githakas.

Yet he would understand the logic because the division of a growing mbari’s land into ever-smaller divisions had traditionally been the main pressure on young men to seek new land of their own.

It drove the expanding Kikuyu to cross the Chania and buy up Dorobo forests in Thika and Kiambu, assimilating many of the Dorobo in the process. Land hunger would be nothing new to the 19th century Kikuyu – although the current pressure might surprise him.

The similarity to Kikuyu traditional law with its private tenure explains why adopting British land law was easy.

It would not be stretching a point to say that the adoption’s most obvious feature was that oral records were changed for written title deeds.

The politics of this transition made for a rough passage in colonial times, but now that it has been made, a comparison of Leakey’s records with what now exists shows little, if any, change of principle.

It is this common ground between the old and the new that has made the acquisition of land from other people by Kikuyu over the past 50 years so straightforward.

In keeping with their customs, they have, after all, been buying land for at least the past 300 years.

Today, almost all land owned by Kikuyu is held under private tenure, with freehold title deeds. Kenya’s combined total of such private titles (most issued after Independence), exceeds 3,000,000, the largest proportion owned by Kikuyu.

My Kamba friends confirm that under their land laws, there was truly communal ground (weu), from which private grazing lands (kisese) could be claimed and held as long as they were used, and which in the event of non-usage could revert to weu status.

One could also take private farming land (ng’undu) out of the weu that, thereafter, was held through private, individual, inheritable tenure.

The difference between pre-colonial times and the present is that there is now little useful weu left.

Consequently, over the past century, ng’undu holdings have come to predominate. In the conversion from an oral record system mediated through the Utui elders to a written title deed system, the Akamba now share much in common with the Kikuyu.

I know little about Kenya’s other traditional systems of land tenure.

Nevertheless, a recent national Steadman Poll on the matter casts an interesting current light on the subject.

Broken into rural and urban classes, 85 per cent of rural folk and 23 per cent of urban live on land that is privately owned.

Over 90 per cent of both groups felt the government should protect their rights to land.

Over 70 per cent of both believed that owners should be entitled to dispose of land as they saw fit.

These answers imply that the population in general has broadly the same modern values as the Kikuyu and Kamba where land is concerned, regardless of what their traditions may have been.

Naturally, I am aware of the Draft National Land Policy that has been so much talked about lately.

In para 4 of its Executive Summary, it states that it “recognises and protects customary rights to land.” Notwithstanding that it is unwise to refer to customary rights without defining which customary rights, one such customary right would be the Kikuyu’s to sell private land.

Yet para 77(b) reads:

“Regulate the power of the primary rights holder [which means the owner] to dispose of land in order to ensure that such disposal takes into account all the other legitimate rights held or claimed by other persons over the affected land, including family rights. In particular, the law shall impose an obligation on the primary rights holder to obtain the written and informed consent of all secondary rights holders before disposing of the land.”

This means that no one may sell or otherwise dispose of their property without the written consent of all members of their families and anyone who makes a claim on the land concerned.

In effect, there will be no freedom to sell. Instead, land sales will become conditional on the permission of others. This would contradict not only Kikuyu customary rights, but also their present rights under Kenya’s land laws.

The drafters say the public approves their policy. The Steadman Poll indicates that 80 per cent of Kenyans are unaware of it.

To propose removing both the customary and current statutory right to sell land freely and to make it conditional, then claim the people back the proposal when 80 per cent know nothing of it, is surely playing with fire.

In January, we were reminded how dangerous land is.

The worst violence Kenya has had in 110 years has all arisen over land and largely out of ignorance.

Louis Leakey’s legacy in this regard is the knowledge that private land tenure is something ancient and central to Kikuyu life. Mess with this without their support and there are rough times ahead!