Local Native Councils and the Politics of Education in Kenya, 1925-1939

Abstract

The line between education and politics was often blurred or nonexistent in colonial Kenya. Under a political system dominated by white settlers and administrators, policy makers were required to create an educational structure for the indigenous people in harmony with the political realities of the day. For colonial officials education, if properly regulated, provided a useful mechanism for social and political control. As a result, educational development and policy formation were political processes with significant implications for the roles of whites and blacks in Kenya. For the latter education was a potential key to greater opportunity as well as a weapon against the inflated European charge that they were uncivilized and therefore unprepared to participate in the political life of the colony. Not surprisingly, the first black representative on the Kenya Legislative Council, Eliud Mathu, entered that white preserve in 1944 armed with an Oxford degree. Educational development was almost always an important prerequisite for political advancement, not only in Kenya but throughout colonial Africa. 2 Education had political implications; similarly, African political activity frequently focused on educational issues. Petitions and