# Kericho and Sotik tea highlands: Kipsigis land, Talai exile and multinational tea

Kericho and Sotik show the tea version of the White Highlands: Kalenjin cattle land, Kipsigis dispossession, Talai exile, Brooke Bond and Finlay estates, supervised African tea, reparations claims and multinational continuity.

*This story part of: Kenya: from the Swahili coast to the republic*
*This story parallel: The colonial map of Kenya: neglected regions and regional inequality*
*This story part of: The extraction of western Kenya: gold, tea, and labour*
*This story parallel: Western vs eastern White Highlands: Rift land and Kikuyu land hunger*
*This story part of: Land and resources*

## c. 1000 — Southern Nilotic Kalenjin communities in the western highlands

Southern Nilotic speakers, ancestors of the Kalenjin peoples such as the Nandi, Kipsigis, and Tugen, settled the western highlands and the edges of the Rift over a long period, herding and farming. Later oral traditions tie some groups to earlier highland peoples they absorbed or displaced. The consolidation of Kalenjin communities is reconstructed from language and oral history, so dates are loose and approximate.

*Source: An African Classical Age*

*Source: I Say to You: Ethnic Politics and the Kalenjin in Kenya*

*Source: Tea in Kenya: a History of Colonialism, Labour and Power*

*Source: Tea-volution*

*Source: Kenyan Land Dispossession*

## c. 1750 — The Nandi and Kipsigis cattle economy and raiding

The Nandi and their southern cousins the Kipsigis built their wealth and pride on cattle, herding on the highland grasslands and measuring standing in stock. Warriors raided neighbors, above all the Luo, Luhya, and the Maasai, to seize herds and win reputation. Success at raiding fed a fierce military tradition that later made the Nandi one of the hardest peoples for the British to subdue.

*Source: I Say to You: Ethnic Politics and the Kalenjin in Kenya*

*Source: Tea in Kenya: a History of Colonialism, Labour and Power*

*Source: Tea-volution*

*Source: Kenyan Land Dispossession*

## c. 1860 — The orkoiyot and Kimnyole

In the nineteenth century the Nandi adopted the office of orkoiyot, a supreme ritual prophet drawn from the Talai clan, an institution borrowed and reshaped from the Maasai laibon. The orkoiyot blessed raids, foretold events, and gave the scattered Nandi clans a rare central figure. The prophet Kimnyole arap Turukat held this power until, tradition says, the Nandi turned on and killed him after prophecies they blamed for disaster.

*Source: I Say to You: Ethnic Politics and the Kalenjin in Kenya*

*Source: Tea in Kenya: a History of Colonialism, Labour and Power*

*Source: Tea-volution*

*Source: Kenyan Land Dispossession*

## 1903 — Tea starts as a settler highland experiment

White settlers introduced tea seedlings at Limuru in 1903. Commercial cultivation began in the 1920s and remained a settler preserve until Africans were allowed into smallholder tea in the 1950s. Tea is a clean example of how climate, altitude and exclusion turned the highlands into an export machine.

*Source: History of Kenyan Tea*

*Source: I Say to You: Ethnic Politics and the Kalenjin in Kenya*

*Source: Tea in Kenya: a History of Colonialism, Labour and Power*

*Source: Tea-volution*

*Source: Kenyan Land Dispossession*

## 1915 — The White Highlands and the settler plantation base

The Crown Lands Ordinance of 1915 secured the fertile highlands for European settlers and locked Africans out of the best farmland. Large estates grew coffee, tea, sisal, and pyrethrum for export using cheap African labour. This plantation base made Kenya a producer of raw cash crops for British and world markets.

*Source: I Say to You: Ethnic Politics and the Kalenjin in Kenya*

*Source: Tea in Kenya: a History of Colonialism, Labour and Power*

*Source: Tea-volution*

*Source: Kenyan Land Dispossession*

## c. 1920 — The Kipsigis and Other Kalenjin Lose Land

The Kipsigis and neighbouring Kalenjin communities of Sotik and Kericho were pushed off grazing and farming land so the cool uplands could be planted with tea and settler crops. The 1905 Sotik punitive expedition was the violent hinge: a British force under Major L. R. H. Pope-Hennessy, using King's African Rifles, police, levies and machine guns, punished the Sotik/Kipsigis, seized cattle, and opened land for colonial control. Large tea estates later rose on ground that had carried cattle and millet.

*Source: Origins of European Settlement in Kenya*

*Source: I Say to You: Ethnic Politics and the Kalenjin in Kenya*

*Source: Tea in Kenya: a History of Colonialism, Labour and Power*

*Source: Tea-volution*

*Source: Kenyan Land Dispossession*

## c. 1925 — Kipsigis and Kalenjin grazing land is alienated for European settlement

Through the 1920s and 1930s the colonial government alienated large blocks of Kipsigis and neighbouring Kalenjin grazing and farming land in the Kericho and Sotik highlands. The land was handed to European settlers as part of the White Highlands, where Africans could not own farms. Communities that had grazed and farmed the highlands were pushed into smaller reserves.

*Source: I Say to You: Ethnic Politics and the Kalenjin in Kenya*

*Source: Tea in Kenya: a History of Colonialism, Labour and Power*

*Source: Tea-volution*

*Source: Kenyan Land Dispossession*

## c. 1926 — Brooke Bond and James Finlay plant the great Kericho tea estates

On the alienated highlands, companies such as Brooke Bond and James Finlay laid out large tea plantations from the mid 1920s onward. Brooke Bond later passed to Unilever, and the estates grew into one of the biggest tea complexes in Africa. They were worked by resident labourers and by migrants drawn from the surrounding districts.

*Source: History of Kenyan Tea*

*Source: I Say to You: Ethnic Politics and the Kalenjin in Kenya*

*Source: Tea in Kenya: a History of Colonialism, Labour and Power*

*Source: Tea-volution*

*Source: Kenyan Land Dispossession*

> The Talai story makes land loss personal: prophecy, threat, exile and estate land.

## 1934 — The Talai clan is deported from the tea highlands

Under the Laibons Removal Ordinance of 1934, the colonial government deported the Talai, the Kipsigis ruling clan whose orkoiik led resistance, away from the highlands to Gwassi in South Nyanza. The removal broke community leadership and cleared people from land wanted for settlement and tea. The Talai remained in detention and exile for decades.

*Source: The Laibons Removal Ordinance Act*

*Source: I Say to You: Ethnic Politics and the Kalenjin in Kenya*

*Source: Tea in Kenya: a History of Colonialism, Labour and Power*

*Source: Tea-volution*

*Source: Kenyan Land Dispossession*

## 1956 — Africans enter tea through supervised smallholder schemes

African smallholders were allowed to plant tea in the mid-1950s, but not as a free market. Factories, nurseries, extension, buying centres and finance were organized through state-supervised schemes. Tea gave some African farmers a route into export income, but the route was planned, inspected and managed from above.

*Source: History of Kenyan Tea*

*Source: Our History*

*Source: Kenya's New Breed of Tea Planter*

*Source: I Say to You: Ethnic Politics and the Kalenjin in Kenya*

*Source: Tea in Kenya: a History of Colonialism, Labour and Power*

*Source: Tea-volution*

*Source: Kenyan Land Dispossession*

## 1964 — KTDA turns smallholder tea into a managed growth machine

The Kenya Tea Development Authority was established in 1964, replacing the Special Crops Development Authority as the main manager of smallholder tea. KTDA built a powerful system of nurseries, factories, buying centres, transport, extension and payments. The result was real smallholder growth, but inside a centralized crop machine.

*Source: Our History*

*Source: Kenya's New Breed of Tea Planter*

*Source: I Say to You: Ethnic Politics and the Kalenjin in Kenya*

*Source: Tea in Kenya: a History of Colonialism, Labour and Power*

*Source: Tea-volution*

*Source: Kenyan Land Dispossession*

## c. 2018 — Kipsigis and Talai bring reparations claims against Britain and the tea firms

Descendants of the Kipsigis and Talai organised claims for reparations over the colonial taking of their land in the Kericho highlands. The claims targeted the British government and the tea multinationals that still hold the estates. Community groups put the number of affected people in the hundreds of thousands.

*Source: I Say to You: Ethnic Politics and the Kalenjin in Kenya*

*Source: Tea in Kenya: a History of Colonialism, Labour and Power*

*Source: Tea-volution*

*Source: Kenyan Land Dispossession*

## 2019 — UN experts write to Britain over the Kericho land injustice

In 2019 United Nations human rights experts, through the OHCHR, wrote to the British government over the historical alienation of Kipsigis and Talai land for the tea estates. The letter raised the forced evictions, the killings and abuses, and the long failure to make amends. It gave the community's case an international hearing.

*Source: I Say to You: Ethnic Politics and the Kalenjin in Kenya*

*Source: Tea in Kenya: a History of Colonialism, Labour and Power*

*Source: Tea-volution*

*Source: Kenyan Land Dispossession*

## c. 2020 — The Kericho tea estates remain in multinational hands

The great tea estates around Kericho are still owned by multinationals, with Unilever's former holdings and James Finlay long dominant before recent sales to other global buyers. The land taken from the Kipsigis and Talai in the colonial period is still worked for export profit. Ownership has changed hands but the pattern of who holds the land has held.

*Source: I Say to You: Ethnic Politics and the Kalenjin in Kenya*

*Source: Tea in Kenya: a History of Colonialism, Labour and Power*

*Source: Tea-volution*

*Source: Kenyan Land Dispossession*