Abstract
Communal forced labor remained instrumental to the colonial economy of Kenya up to its independence in 1963. Even the post-colonial Chief’s Authority Act gave chiefs the power to “issue orders to be obeyed by the persons residing or being within the local limits of his jurisdiction” for duties that were clearly the same as communal labor.1 Despite the humanitarian “victory” in 1921 that brought an end to forced labor for private purposes and the apparent curtailment of forced labor for state projects after 1925, communal labor remained. The passage of the International Labour Organization (ILO) Forced Labor Convention of 1930 had little real effect on communal forced labor since it was defined as mere minor communal service, an abstraction.
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Notes
Republic of Kenya, Laws of Kenya (Nairobi: Government Printers, 1998), Cap. 128, 4–7. The Native Authority Ordinance became the Chief’s Authority Act in 1964 after Kenyan independence in 1963.
Quintin Hoare and Geoffrey Nowell Smith, eds., Selections from the Prison Notebooks of Antonio Gramsci (New York: International Publishers, 1971).
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© 2012 Opolot Okia
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Okia, O. (2012). Conclusion. In: Communal Labor in Colonial Kenya. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230392960_8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230392960_8
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, New York
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