When the hut tax was first imposed in 1903, men had to pay depending on the number of wives they had, and it was the first time that the government was taxing marriages. Each hut paid a separate tax, which now meant the poor could not enter polygamous marriages.
| FileNews
Premium
How Ruto’s Housing Levy mimics the colonial Hut Tax 120 years later
What you need to know:
- After men in polygamous families were asked to pay the tax for each wife, they started building houses to accommodate them in different areas.
- Like the Hut Tax, Ruto’s housing tax is as unpopular – 120 years later.
Forget William Ruto’s controversial Housing Tax that is now being implemented. A similar hut tax generated so much more noise in colonial Kenya that it had to be repealed after more than two decades.
The Hut Tax forced men to live under the same roof as their wives as society was reconfigured. It also forced Kenyans to go slow on polygamy since every extra wife attracted an annual Hut Tax of three rupees.
I see some parallels: Whereas President Ruto is coming up with Housing Tax to create employment through construction, the colonial government instituted both the poll and hut tax to force bachelors and married men into waged labour.
Both ways, Ruto’s housing tax, and the colonial hut tax, are pegged on labour – or lack thereof.
A good friend recently asked me when Kenyans were taxed first. The records indicate that Hut Tax was introduced in 1903, meaning we should ‘celebrate’ 120 years of taxation.
But it is the way that taxation reconfigures society that has always interested historians and anthropologists. When the hut tax was first imposed in 1903, men had to pay depending on the number of wives they had, and it was the first time that the government was taxing marriages.
Each hut paid a separate tax, which now meant the poor could not enter polygamous marriages – unless they had the wealth. Husbands were forced to leave home to seek waged labour to pay the new tax.
Also Read: Housing levy - Payslip deductions explained
But it was soon realised that men were delaying marrying to escape the hut tax payment, which saw the poll tax introduction in 1910.
This poll tax was targeting men above the age of 15. But looking at the targeted age, some of those taxed were children. The intention was to force them into waged labour in the colonial farms, and scrutiny of some of the colonial pictures reveals significant use of child labour.
Those who worked in the homes were known as the “kitchen toto”; the name “ boy” was used to refer to everyone else. Previously, the bachelors were not taxable.
There was a history to that. The settlers, led by Lord Delamere, had, on March 23, 1908, marched to the Governor’s House (now State House, Nairobi) and asked the government to force Africans to seek waged labour in the colonial farms.
They proposed enacting the poll tax for unmarried men above the age of 15, in addition to the existing hut tax targeting the dwellings of married African men. The Governor later approved a poll tax of two rupees per annum for males not paying the hut tax and an extra three rupees for every additional wife.
When the hut tax was introduced, the British government had appointed chiefs to be the revenue collection officers, and they charged one rupee in 1903 for every hut within a homestead.
The chiefs maintained a small force of askari, which would later evolve to be the Administration Police, to enforce the collection. Any resistance by the community would lead to “punitive expeditions”.
For instance, in January 1908, a punitive expedition was sent to Kisumu after the locals attacked the district commissioner over the hut tax.
There was once outrage in London in 1936 when Graham White reported in the House of Commons that women and children in Kenya and Malawi (then Nyasaland) were being arrested and held hostages after men could not pay hut and poll taxes.
The hut tax collection was synchronised with seasons when the demand for labour was high. For instance, in central Kenya, it would be synchronised with the coffee picking season and cotton in Western Kenya.
What was shameful was that while Africans started paying the hut tax in 1903, it was only in 1913 that Europeans experienced the first direct taxation.
So brutal was the collection of taxes that chiefs and their police would burn down huts that were unpaid for.
This arson attack became a major issue, and by 1934 the Secretary of State for the Colonies, Malcolm Macdonald – who later became a governor in Kenya – was asked whether he would “issue instructions to the Kenya government (to cease) the burning of huts of native men and women who are unable to pay hut and poll tax”.
According to the then Hut and Poll Tax law, the hut of a tax defaulter was automatically forfeited to the State after 21 months.
In his response, MacDonald said “there is no reason” to burn the houses and that it was not the practice of the government to burn the huts even when they were forfeits. But the burning of defaulter’s homes was a norm in colonial Kenya.
There was the next issue of taxing women. In most African traditions, widowed women had to be inherited; otherwise, they would be forced to pay the hut tax.
When the Secretary of State was asked why they were taxing African widows, he said they were not.
“The huts which they occupy are liable to hut tax, but in most cases, the hut, together with the widow, becomes the property of the deceased husband’s heir, and he, not the widow, is responsible for paying the tax. In the exceptional cases where a widow can find no such protector… she is normally exempted from the tax.”
Thus, the British adopted a system that would force widows to look for suitors – or seek exemption from paying the tax. But failure to do that exposed them to the huts to forfeiture by the state.
Another parallel is how the hut tax revenue was used. When Deputy President Rigathi Gachagua recently argued that the government was a “shareholding company”, he almost fell into the colonial trap where Africans were taxed without representation – an issue that is part of the discussion between Kenta Kwanza and Azimio la Umoja.
So brutal was the collection of taxes that by 1910, the direct taxation of Africans constituted 85 percent of the government revenue – meaning they were paying to be colonised.
The money was used to develop the White Highlands – where the Europeans lived. Initially, the Colonial administrator John Ainsworth had suggested that the collected taxes should be used to create the African reserves – and that this would encourage the locals to pay the increased taxes.
But the Governor disagreed, arguing that it would be “indiscreet to fetter the discretion of government by giving such an undertaking.” The same discussion has been happening today in Kenya in the one-man one-shilling debate on the share of government revenue.
Also Read: The man who bought Mount Kenya
As Kenya governor, Sir Percy Girouard once said: We consider that taxation is the only possible method of compelling the native to leave his reserve to seek work. Only in this way can the cost-of-living increase for the native, and it is on this that the supply of labour (increase)”.
After men in polygamous families were asked to pay the tax for each wife, they started building houses to accommodate them in different areas. This practice was contrary to local customs, which demanded the wives live in separate huts.
But a hut tax changed society by forcing men into waged labour, leaving their homes, and migrating to urban areas. It is this migrant population of labourers, and jobless youth, living in slums that William Ruto wants to house by taxing Kenyans.
Like the Hut Tax, Ruto’s housing tax is as unpopular – 120 years later.
