In my last London Calling column (Vol 20, Issue 3, 2023) I had expressed a somewhat gloomy prediction for 2024 and it has been largely borne out. So, what awaits us in 2025? We can only hold our collective breath for now.
But first let me say that at around this time, I list my cultural highlights of the past year (books read and cinema, concert and theatre outings etc) on my blog site, not as an exercise in vanity but rather to prove to myself that life in old age is not wholly unproductive! Have a look at www.ramnikshah.blogspot.com
Looking back at 2024, as it happens, a Kenya related story that appeared in The Times on Saturday 16 November immediately captured my interest and led me to question its accuracy. It featured a claim that one Mayo Walters who “died in April, aged 76” … “had been the first female judge in Kenya”. This was in the wider context of a report on the then topical discourse on assisted dying that was going on in the country and it contained a few case histories including hers, which touched on some aspects of her background also.
Instinct and my knowledge of Kenyan legal history told me that there was something not quite right about it, especially as no other details were provided. Before seeking to challenge it, however, I consulted senior counsel Pheroze Nowrojee and the retired Chief Justice Willy Mutunga, both of whom promptly responded to the effect that there had never been a white female judge in Kenya, and in fact could not find any mention of a Mayo Walters in their recollections or references in the annals of Kenyan judiciary; that accorded with my understanding anyway.
I therefore wrote to The Times on Thursday 21 November formally asking for a correction to the claim. That led to a flurry of exchanges that day with the paper`s feedback team, who carried out an internal investigation and came back, at first, with the finding that “Mayo Walters would have been known as Mayo Price at the time”, and in the next email quoted her daughter: “They [Mayo and her first husband] moved to Kenya and she became the first white female judge in Kenya …. kind of around the time that independence was happening … she was a judge in Nairobi and then moved back to our home, Northern Ireland, when we were children.”
I replied that that only partially cleared up the mystery as I had previously made the point that the term judge implied the status of a High Court judge and that both my informants and I were clear that there never was a white female judge in Kenya at any time, and that the more likely scenario was that she had been appointed to the lesser rank of a magistrate, whenever that was. Then on 22 November, The Times received clarification from the lady`s widowed husband that she was the first white female magistrate in Nairobi and on that basis the paper published a correction on Saturday 23 November in succinct terms as will be seen in the cutting displayed.
In the meanwhile, I had also enlisted the help of Jill Ghai, who was equally curious and did some research of her own, which unearthed the Kenya Gazette Notices of the appointment of Mary Elizabeth Perceval-Price as Resident Magistrate and Deputy Registrar effective from 10 January 1977 and of the revocation of those appointments on 28 February 1978 – as per the Kenya Gazette issues dated 14 January 1977 and 10 March 1978 respectively.
Even after publication of the correction, I continued with my feedback and what emerged was that her full name would have been Mayo Perceval Price, and later with a further and final clarification that Mayo was her informal family name that she had adopted, while her official first names were Mary Elizabeth.
I had left Kenya towards the end of 1974 and knew that there was a shortage of qualified local lawyers who could be recruited to the bench, but even so it was extraordinary that she, an expatriate, had been appointed a magistrate when she was barely 30! At any rate, she didn`t stay there long enough to have made a lasting impression.
The Mayo Walters saga however prompted me to dig into my own archives for material relating to certain homegrown Kenyans who had made a real impact both in domestic terms and in the outside world. I would like to share this now with AwaaZ readers.
What I have selected first are obituaries of four pre-eminent individuals of immense stature in their respective fields of the law, academia, politics and public service, whose passing was noted in the august columns of The Times. Scanned copies of these accompany this piece and readers may wish to read them to get the full measure of their achievements and accomplishments, and their historical significance from a Kenyan perspective. What follows are summaries thereof with quotations and comments as appropriate.
To begin with the obituary (09/09/99) of Sir Amar Maini, a minister in the colonial government of Uganda between 1955 and 1961, Speaker of the East African Central Legislative Assembly 1961-67 and member of the East African Common Market Tribunal 1967-69. He was a “confidant of the first post-independence presidents of Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania” and a “trusted presidential arbiter on the thorny issues (of) closer economic and political co-operation between the three East African states”. This is a bare outline of his distinguished career, which included quite a few `firsts` also. “Both in his native Kenya and in Uganda, where he later settled, his political and public service spanned 35 momentous years of East Africa`s history”. He was born in Nairobi in 1911, sent to Britain for higher studies in 1928, graduated from the LSE with a B.Com degree in 1932 and then was Called to the Bar in 1933 by Middle Temple, “one of the first East African-born barristers to qualify in England”. Returning to Kenya, he successfully practised in Nairobi and within a short time was elected to the Kenya Legislative Assembly and to the Nairobi Municipal Council. But due to a family rift, he and his father left Kenya to settle in Kampala in 1939 where too he flourished. He was knighted in 1957 at a comparatively young age of 45. He retired to Britain in 1969 with his wife and, though this is not mentioned in the obituary, I know that he served as a respected member of the all-party `Justice` organisation where among other things he produced a report on the state of British Nationality law in 1980.
Second: Thomas Odhiambo (obituary, 12/06/03), entomologist, was born in Mombasa on February 4, 1931 and died in Nairobi of liver cancer on May 26, 2003. Educated at the Maseno Primary School, he came first in the country in the Kenya Preliminary Examination of 1945; from there he went to Makerere and then on to Queen`s College, Cambridge. Then, armed with an MA in natural science and a doctorate in insect physiology he returned to Kenya in 1965, and started out at Nairobi University on what (in his case also) was to turn into a distinguished career “of more than 40 years … crucial to the establishment of one research institution that continues, four scientific academies and societies, an internationally acclaimed postgraduate training programme, and a plethora of other science-related organisations and activities.” All this, and a great deal more, is contained in the obituary, which covers a whole page of the paper that underlines his stature.
Third: Pranlal Sheth (obituary, 22/07/03) “was a campaigner for equal rights in his native Kenya, and then in Britain, his adopted home, for more than 30 years”. “It was a life of contrasts. In 1950, while editor of a Kenyan daily newspaper championing African independence, he was charged with sedition against the British Crown. Forty-six years later, he was appointed CBE by the Queen. He was a founder of the first Kenyan Trades Union Congress … banned by the colonial government as a `subversive` organisation.” When press freedom was severely restricted under the Mau Mau emergency, he switched to law and spent his final year of study in London as a mature student. He was called to the Bar at Lincoln`s Inn in 1962. Incidentally, I too was Called to the Bar later the same year, and had a nodding acquaintance with him during our dining and `moot` sessions at Lincoln`s Inn, though it was much later, after both he and I had settled in Britain that we came to know each other better. Briefly, upon his return to Kenya in 1962 he practised in Kisumu. He was close to the Luo opposition leader Oginga Odinga but then “became a victim of the rift between Kenyatta and Odinga and was arrested and deprived of his citizenship by presidential decree. Allowed no judicial appeal he was put on a plane to India in 1966”. Later the same year however “he was admitted to Britain to take up permanent residence, and was soon joined by his wife and young family.” The obituary gives a full account of his trajectory and how he became a key player in his field of insurance in the City of London and in several public institutions, including the BBC and the Commission for Racial Equality. As the profile picture of him in the paper shows, he was a kindly man, always helpful and considerate. Whenever I had my letters published in The Times or I spoke on radio or TV, he would make a point of mentioning it when our paths crossed at some social or other functions. His premature death deprived the ethnic minorities of Britain of an influential voice, yes, but also the wider society of the benefit of his sound judgment on many issues.
Fourth, Achhroo Kapila (obituary 08/12/03), who hardly needs any introduction as a revered lawyer who was part of the legal team that defended Jomo Kenyatta and his co-accused (the Kapenguria Six) at their trial in that remote location in 1953. As the opening paragraph of the obituary notes: “Achhroo Kapila was undoubtedly East Africa`s pre-eminent trial lawyer. His name was synonymous with justice and decency, and his reputation as one of the most brilliant barristers of his age stretched way beyond Kenya and Tanzania to his native India and Britain, where he was called to the Bar at Lincoln`s Inn in 1946.” The copy of the obituary is difficult to read in its entirety but most readers of AwaaZ would be aware of his career path anyway and i need not dwell on it here. I knew him well, as a fellow practitioner, and he used to tell me that he appreciated my activism on the Law Society and in the newspapers. There is reference in the obituary to his having been convicted of a minor foreign currency infringement for which he was prosecuted and served a term of imprisonment. This should never have happened (it was the result of petty jealousy and seething resentment on the part of certain bureaucrats and rivals), and when I met him afterwards on one of my visits to Kenya, I told him that and expressed my commiserations. At any rate, his professional standing was such as to warrant an obituary in The Times.
One other noteworthy Kenyan who has left a huge contribution to British society was Khadambi Asalache (aka Nathaniel Asalache), artist, poet and writer. He was born in 1935 at Kaimosi, Kenya, educated at Mangu High School and Royal Technical College. He settled in London in 1960 (after a spell in Rome, Geneva and Vienna) and died there in 2006, aged 71. His death also was the subject of an obituary in The Times (on 24 June 2006) but sadly it is lost somewhere in my papers. His Wikipedia entry at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khadambi_Asalache can however serve as a first point of reference to his life and legacy. A search of the internet will also yield several other sources of information, largely to do with his property at 575 Wandsworth Road, Lambeth, London, which he left to the National Trust in his will. The Trust`s own website at https://www.nationaltrustcollections.org.uk/place/575-wandsworth-road is the most authoritative guide to the unique collection of his rare artifacts and other features of the property, for which the National Trust obtained museum status in 2019. I have yet to visit it.
Apart from these five notable examples, I have also included a newspaper report in my local paper, the Epsom Guardian, dated 15 March 2012, of the tragic death of one, Titus Musee, who was mugged and murdered in Kenya while on holiday there. He had come to Britain from Kenya to settle here in 1967 at the age of 23. He was a well respected charity worker, who worked as a staff nurse in a care home and lived in another part of my Borough of Epsom and Ewell. While his case differs from those of the others described above, he too deserves to be remembered in this context of Kenya related stories. Kenyans can be justly proud of them all.
So now, as we say farewell to 2024, is there much to look forward to in the coming new year? As things stand, it looks as if the present turmoil that the world is in will continue and so let`s keep our fingers crossed. Happy New Year anyway!
Ramnik Shah
(c) 31.12.24
