Trigger happy settlers killed with impunity

As the trapdoor opened and he dropped through the space, 28-year old Peter Poole must have regretted ever moving to Kenya. An Essex man, the young Poole was being executed for killing his African servant.

The life of the African was then considered less important than that of the white settler. The settler community thus viewed Poole’s execution as a betrayal.

Peter Poole remains the only white person in Kenya to be executed for killing an African.

Born in 1932, Poole moved to Kenya in his 20s as an engineer and a shop owner. In 1959, he was arrested and charged with the murder of his houseboy, Kamawe Musunge, in Nairobi. Musunge had thrown stones at one of Poole’s dogs, an act that so incensed Poole that he shot him with a Luger Pistol.

He was found guilty of the murder and sentenced to hang. Poole’s heinous act was seen as being justifiable and in the efforts to force the governor of the colony to grant him clemency, Poole’s parents gathered over 25,000 signatures. Many did not believe the government would go through with it and flocked outside the prison on the appointed day.

At his trial, Poole’s defence team claimed that his service in the British Army had impaired his mental health. Although the insanity defence was not convincing enough for the white jury, it offered a glimpse into the past life of the tormented, arrogant young man.

Musunge’s murder had been preceded by numerous acts of violence and shows of arrogance. Poole had once drawn his gun and threatened a shopkeeper who had refused to give him a discount on a torch. He also later shot a plain-clothes African constable. The police officer, like Musunge, was defending himself after being attacked by Poole’s dogs.

Poole’s death had a big effect on the white community. It is said to have profoundly changed Sir Patrick Renison, the man who signed the execution warrant.

The 1950s had been a decade of bloodshed and unprecedented violence. The settler community had suffered the brunt of the initial Mau Mau attacks and then spent much of the 1950s armed and ready to shoot. A good number of them joined the Police Reserves and participated in the expeditions to hunt the Mau Mau in the forest while others joined the Operation Anvil Pipeline as interrogators.

Heightened paranoia

The Ruck and Gray Leakey murders had heightened the paranoia and placed the colonial government in a precarious position. On the one hand, the government had to contend with a powerful white settler community keen on maintaining its power. On the other, loyal African tribes would definitely view unjustifiable crimes as insults. The latter group had already survived years of random murders for which the perpetrators, most of them agents of the government, were not punished.

In recently released FCO documents, there are numerous confessions by former colonial officers of their role in carrying out torture related murders, often referring to the victims as ‘johnnies.’

The racially offensive label probably helped the perpetrators to dehumanise their victims. They also knew that the government was more interested in results than in methods.

Decades before Poole’s crime, Richard Meinertzhagen had been demoted from an officer position in Kenya to a desk job in London for his notorious sprees and raids. His most famous victim was Nandi resistance leader Koitalel arap Samoei, whom he tricked into a meeting and then shot at point blank range. In his report to his superiors, he claimed he had shot the chief in self-defence, a lie for which he was rewarded.

While Meinertzhagen and later Ian Henderson were lucky enough to merely get demoted and expelled from Kenya, Peter Poole was executed in a Nairobi prison.

The two soldiers had perhaps a longer litany of crimes than the young Poole, but they had a government keen to protect itself from embarrassment. In most cases, the government ignored the crimes of its officers and justified them as necessary for the success of the colony.

During the famous Cholmondely murder trials, there was a sense that the outrage from Kenyans had little to do with the man’s misdeeds only. There was constant mention of racial discrimination, ironically, of Africans by Africans.

The system was perceived, perhaps with good reason, as set up to protect the rich white settler and his descendants.

The Cholmondeley cases brought back the memories and outrage that decades after independence, the descendants of the settler community could still get away with murder.

In fact, the conviction of Tom for manslaughter in the second case, the first having gone away after the Attorney General entered a nolle prosequi, is still seen as an extension of class power.

Peter Poole did not benefit from any privileged position or class beyond the racially motivated worth of his skin colour. His near martyrdom among his fellow settlers was not necessarily about his actions as an individual, but how his death would affect the perceived racial superiority.