'WE GOT 10,000 ACRES FOR FREE' - 3RD-GENERATION BRITISH SETTLER

In this clip from a viral video, Mike Harris, 86, a third-generation British settler in Kenya, admitted to Kenyan journalist and YouTuber Lynn Ngugi that his family got 10,000 acres of land for free.

Beginning with the Crown Lands Ordinance of 1902, the British reserved at least 10 million acres of Kenya's most fertile land for British and European settlers, who would acquire vast ranches by paying a few coins to the colonial surveyor. These plots came to be known collectively as the 'White Highlands.'

All of Kenya became ‘Crown land,' meaning that it was the property of the British Crown. With the stroke of a pen, British colonialists rendered Kenya’s Africans landless, pushing them off to less fertile lands and forcing them to slave for settlers to pay the colonial administration’s 'hut tax.’

The consequences of this historical injustice are felt today, with Kenyans suffering under the weight of landlessness, wealth inequality, slum dwellings, poverty and pro-elite politics.

Video credit: @lynn_ngugi1 (X)

Sources:

https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Historical-timeline-of-Kenyas-land-based-policies-During-the-pre-colonial-period-there_fig3_385975735

https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/kenya/history-colonial-4.htm

https://archive.gazettes.africa/archive/ke/1924/ke-government-gazette-dated-1924-02-27-no-932.pdf

https://www.declassifieduk.org/britain-stole-their-land-to-plant-tea-now-they-want-it-back/

https://www.theelephant.info/analysis/2021/09/04/white-settlers-black-colonialists-and-the-landless-majority/

https://ijisset.org/storage/Volume5/Issue6/IJISSET-050511.pdf