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From most farms around the Aberdares, and from the Rift Valley, Kikuyu families are being evicted by the thousands (25,000 people, men, women & children from the Rift Valley alone). These families had "squatted" on the white farms, giving labor in exchange for a little land and a little cash. Now they are being returned to the Kikuyu reserves—whether they had land in the reserves or not. Most had not; the Kenya government hopes their relatives will feed them.
Most farms in the danger zone never even had locks on the doors before the Mau Mau terror began. Often built of cedar logs or even clapboard, added to when the farmer wanted more space they are difficult places to fortify. Some farmers have put wire-screening over their windows and long verandas, hoping that at least they'll get some warning if attacked. They all, of course, keep watchdogs, and carry guns.
The white settlers are not cracking under the strain—yet—but they are playing it rough. After the massacre of the Ruck family, Kukes were rounded up in large numbers, marched to a barbed-wire camp for "screening," beaten and kicked (reliable witnesses say) en route, including women with babies strapped on their backs. The number of Kikuyu "shot trying to escape" has risen in remarkable fashion. One Kenya police reserve unit hauled in four Kikuyu men. The prisoners were taken away in a truck, but when the truck reached its destination, all four Kikuyu were dead. It was said that they had "tried to escape." None of the four was armed. Kikuyu (including at least one woman) have also been shot dead "while trying to wrest a Sten gun from a guard"—although the settlers all swear the Kikuyu are a cowardly, not a desperately suicidal, people. Stray Kikuyu picked up by the commandos in the forests (called jungilis), who may or may not be working with Mau Mau gangs, are asked for information. They are seldom prepared to talk.
"But we bloody well make the beggars talk," said a commando leader grimly without going into further details.
Most of Kenya's white farmers are hard-working men who, if they despised the Kukes as "only 50 years out of the trees," did not ill-treat their labor. Now circumstances are making them as tough and ruthless as South Africans. They are men who have a lot to lose—including their lives. The Mau Mau hit first, now they are hitting back, without drawing fine distinctions between Kikuyu who are or are not Mau Mau.
Since the war against the Mau Mau is run from Nairobi, and Nairobi is by & large run by the sons of old Colonel Blimp, the ex-Indian army colonels, the not-so-young younger sons of aristocratic families with hyphenated names, it is not surprising that the embattled farmers explode with numerous complaints about Nairobi's incompetence and muddle-mindedness. Kenya, though by population a small country, has a baffling superstructure of government departments. "There is no liaison whatsoever," an upcountry district commissioner complained. "God knows what happens to my reports when they reach Nairobi; they never bear the slightest relevance to the instructions I receive afterwards—if I receive any."