Man of Character

A burly, boyish-faced farmer from the upcountry hills of Kenya stood before an audience of diehard settler folk in the Rift Valley town of Nakuru (pop. 22,481). He was Michael Blundell, 48, Minister without Portfolio in the Kenya government, come home to ask his constituents for a vote of confidence. Blundell has decided that the 2 1/2-year-old Mau Mau war can no longer be won by bullets. One of Kenya's wealthiest farmers, Yorkshire-born Blundell was seeking support for his policy of giving the colony's 6,000,000 Africans and 100,000 Indians a share in Kenya's government.

Alternative: War. To many of Kenya's 40,000 white settlers such a policy amounts to appeasement of "coolies" (Indians) and "monkeys" (Africans). They blame their trouble on the faraway British Colonial Office, which they regard as a "nigger-loving" annex of the London School of Economics. Some of Minister Blundell's neighbors openly call him a traitor, because he lent his considerable prestige to a series of reforms that admitted one African and two Indians to the governor's cabinet. But when the question was put to the white settlers at Nakuru last week, Blundell got his vote: 204 to 90.

Those who voted for him did so out of personal respect and because they understood in private what many would not publicly admit: that the only alternative to Blundell's policy is perpetual race war. For, small as it is, Blundell's growing movement for multiracial government is the only truly hopeful sign on the East African political horizon. Blundell himself is its most effective salesman, for he is no misty-eyed liberal but a man of force and character, whose feet are firmly planted in the rich Kenya earth.

2,000 Years in 50. Blundell arrived in Kenya 19 years ago as a farm apprentice. He carved out a farm from the virgin bush, and now owns 1,200 acres of asparagus, pyrethrum (a plant from which insecticides are made) and dairy-cattle country in the lush Subukia valley. In World War II, he molded a pioneer battalion of brawny East African tribesmen into a crack combat unit, led them through the Ethiopian campaign. Blundell's business connections (breweries, newspapers, canneries) and his bluff man-to-man likableness soon won him the job of leader of the white settlers in the Kenya legislature.

When the Mau Mau rebellion started, Blundell was made a member of the Kenya war cabinet. His view of Mau Mau: "We've forced the Kikuyu tribe to try to assimilate 2,000 years of civilization in 50. The result has been mental bewilderment, spiritual frustration. Mau Mau is a deliberate going back to primitive ways." Relatively speaking, Blundell is a progressive, which means, in Kenya, that he expects the white minority to go on running the government, but with a concern for and an assist from the Africans and Indians. "How can a small white oligarchy sit on top of a black Gulliver?" he asks. "If he breathes, we topple off.''

Blundell has started the United Country Party, the first significant step toward organized political thought in colonial Kenya. Opposing him is an extremist group called the Federal Independence Party. So far, most white Kenyans refuse to join either party, preferring to keep their political opinions to themselves. Blundell counts on events to swing his way before Kenya's first two-party elections in 1956. "We have our hotheads," he says. "But the solid mass of people must have learned some lesson from the Mau Mau. They will be with us, when the time comes."

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