Kikuyu Central Association

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The Kikuyu Central Association (KCA) was a political organization in colonial Kenya .

The first mass protests and demonstrations in Kikuyu against growing colonial injustice took place in 1921 when European employers tried to cut the already poor wages of their local employees. This resulted in the Young Kikuyu Association in 1921 , soon renamed the East African Association , Kenya's first all-African political organization. Its chairman Harry Thuku was arrested in March 1922 and then deported for several years, in 1925 it was dissolved.

The Kikuyu Central Association (KCA) was founded before 1924. The founders were mostly young men who did not have the trust of their traditional tribal leaders. The KCA's original program consisted of radical demands such as the return of expropriated land in an effort to revert to the traditional pre-colonial past. The KCA was ahead of most tribal members in calling for Africa to be represented in the legislature. Much support from the Kikuyu found their positions for higher wages, against the ban on coffee growing by Africans and for the maintenance of female genital cutting , which was condemned by Christian missionaries.

The most famous member of the was Jomo Kenyatta , later the first President of Kenya. He joined in 1924 and took over the presidency from James Beauttah and Joseph Kang'ethe . In 1929 he traveled to London on behalf of the KCA to represent the interests of the Kikuyu.

The KCA was banned in 1940 when World War II reached East Africa. Successor organizations were the Kenya African Study Union , founded in 1944, renamed Kenya African Union (KAU) in 1947 and banned in 1952, and the Kenya African National Union founded in 1960 . In the Mau Mau War from 1952, some fighters saw themselves as a continuation of the KCA and called themselves KCA again.

See also

Mau Mau War # Prehistory of the War of Independence on the situation of the Kenyan population at the time of the KCA

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Jens Finke: Kikuyu - Colonial History , accessed on January 23, 2020 (English)