Lowering the Sultan's Flag: Sovereignty and Decolonization in Coastal Kenya

Abstract

On 17 December 1961, Ronald Ngala faced an audience of some five hundred supporters in Malindi, a town on the East African coast of the Indian Ocean. The crowd had come to watch Ngala lower the flag that symbolized colonial rule along the coast. This was not the Union flag of Great Britain, but the red flag of the Sultan of Zanzibar. It flew over a number of towns located along the ten-mile coastal strip “Protectorate” of what was then Kenya Colony and Protectorate. The flag symbolized this latter legal distinction, representing the sovereignty that the Sultan of Zanzibar retained over the coastal strip of Kenya after leasing its administration to Britain in a treaty signed in 1895. The flag's lowering was an act of political theatre—Ngala's supporters had hastily arranged the flag and flagpole, while the Sultan's real flag flew over the Malindi courts office nearby. The crowd celebrated its lowering with loud and wild cheers. Anxious onlookers later complained that Ngala had performed an act of treason. In Zanzibar, tense with the specter of racial violence, local press expressed outrage at this insult to the Sultan.

Accommodating, Opposing, or Dismissing? Ethno-Regional Mobilization, (De)Centralization, and State-Wide Party Strategies in Nigeria and Kenya

“…The Arab and Swahili communities in the Coast People's Party demanded independence for the Coastal strip, while the Mijikenda organized in the Coast African People's Union, soon incorporated into the Kenya African Democratic Union (KADU), which pushed for the integration of the Coastal strip into a federal Kenya. 48 The KADU line held sway, but the 1963 federal independence constitution was abandoned the following year. As a consequence of this and of the incorporation of KADU into the governing Kenya African National Union (KANU), the political voices of the Coast became weaker and more fragmented; their deepening social grievances about land, unemployment, and lack of influence could find no forceful or united political outlet.…”

Preaching politics: Islam and Christianity on the Kenya coast

“…Advocates of secession feared that Islamic education and Kadhi courts would be abolished by an independent Kenya (Brennan 2008). But this religious issue was trumped by race and ethnicity: while the economic and political elite of the coast were Muslim Arabs or Swahili, they were a minority of the population.…”

Islam and Democracy: Debating Electoral Involvement on the Kenya Coast

“…The coastal strip became the subject of political debate in the early 1960s, as Kenya moved towards independence. Fear of domination by 'up-country' people inspired an unsuccessful movement for the strip to be reunited with Zanzibar, or to achieve a separate independence 19 . But a sense that 'the coast' has been excluded from power and wealth has been persistent since independence, despite chronic uncertainty over the central question of what 'the coast' means, both in terms of territory and identity.…”