Spark of Hope

Behind the bright green shutters of Nairobi's Government House, hope sparkled anew for Kenya Colony. In the face of the Mau Mau war, which hurts all and benefits none, whites, blacks and browns last week took the first hesitant steps towards a multiracial government.

Sprawled in the governor's chair, wearing a crumpled white linen suit and the blue-and-scarlet tie of the Grenadier Guards, British Colonial Secretary Oliver Lyttelton listened patiently to the representatives of 6,000,000 Africans, 100,000 Indians, 40,000 whites and 25,000 Arabs The whites wanted martial law and an all-out offensive against the Mau Mau. The others wanted a share in the colony's all-white government. For nine days Lyttelton was silent; on the tenth day he spoke. He proposed a drastic constitutional revision whose main features were 1) a four-man war council to stamp out the 18-month-old Mau Mau revolt, 2) a 16-man Cabinet to act as "the principal instrument of government." The crucial new feature: the Cabinet would include, for the first time in East Africa, non-white ministers--two Indians and an African.

By linking his two proposals, Lyttelton made it impossible for the whites to get their streamlined war council unless they first agreed to give the natives at least a small voice in their government. "The plan must be accepted or rejected," he said. "It cannot be modified." "How long can we have to think it over?" asked the leader of the white delegation. Lyttelton looked at his watch and snapped his reply: "I need your answer by 5:30 p.m."

Kenya's whites were shocked. "He treated us like fourth-form schoolboys," one complained. When the plan was published, many settlers condemned it as "appeasement of Nehru," and "too much too soon." But by 5:3O p.m. Oliver Lyttelton had his reply from all four groups. Whites and Indians accepted. Negroes and Arabs said no, but it was not a fatal no. Kenya's Arab dhowmen are politically unimportant, and the Negroes, it was obvious, were only stalling in the hope of improving the bargain, which indeed was not much so far as the blacks were concerned. "I found Lyttelton very sympathetic," said shrewd Eliud Mathu, spokesman for the loyal Kikuyu. "The Negroes will not boycott the scheme. We will try to make it work."

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