How African leaders spend our money part 5 - by Aidan Hartley - The Spectator

'Get off the corruption thing,' says Bob Geldof. The point is that nobody has got on to it properly yet. Aid-giving nations pretend to be tough on corruption, while African leaders pretend to change. Aid bureaucrats care less about financial probity than the press releases claiming that an economy is on a positive reform track. They are not helping Africa's young entrepreneurs. By throwing fiscal discipline to the wind and shovelling aid at Africa, the international bureaucrats will fuel a new renaissance in corruption.

Meanwhile, NGOs refuse to focus on corruption because it's simply not a priority for them. They blame corruption on Western multinationals. Charities are ideological museums stuffed with socialists and anti-globalisation activists. They loathe private enterprise. I sometimes wonder if they would prefer to see Africans stay poor so that aid workers could carry on doing good works for them.

Western pundits say the WaBenzi still exist because African culture is inherently sick, that black Africans can't help but admire the Big Men. This does ordinary Africans an injustice. The West needs to help them get better leaders before it increases aid. Make the WaBenzi declare their wealth to their electorates and donors. Name and shame those who drive expensive cars while their people starve. Encourage policies that will create wealth so that the only Africans buying Mercedes-Benzes are honest men and women. Unless this happens Africa's new aid package will not alleviate poverty, disease and ignorance. What it will definitely mean is more flashy limousines.

How African leaders spend our money - part 4 - by Aidan Hartley - The Spectator

Here's how the WaBenzi get around. Nigeria's Olusegun Obasanjo and Libya's Muammar Gaddafi have motorcades that can extend a mile long. At the very minimum an African president needs at least 30 cars: the S600L for himself, perhaps a couple more identical vehicles to confuse assassins, outriders, ministers, yes-men and chase cars bristling with guns. Snarling police in advance vehicles force you off the road up to an hour before the big man zooms past. In Kenya, I often wonder how much it all costs, to make the capital city, Nairobi, grind to a halt. When almost the entire city police force is ordered to line the roads from State House to the airport, how many rapes, murders and robberies are perpetrated in the slums?

When you hear Him coming, the back of your neck tingles as the tension mounts. Zimbabweans call Mugabc's motorcade 'Bob and the Wallers' on account of the blaring sirens and flashing lights. Woe betide you if you get in the way. Early this year the Tanzanian president Benjamin Mkapa visited Mugabe, who picked him up in the five-ton Mercedes and was heading back to the palace when a lowly motorist stopped too close to the motorcade's path. In Zimbabwe it is an imprisonable offence to make rude comments or gestures in 'view or hearing of the state motorcade'. This man had done neither, but police surrounded him, viciously beat him and then dragged him away.


Apart from shielding his friend Mugabe from all criticism, Mkapa is one of Blair's Commissioners for Africa. Mkapa, you might recall, was the president whose police killed a lot of people around the rigged elections in Zanzibar. Mkapa's sidekick politician Salmin Amour allegedly spent £160,000 on - yup - a Mercedes S600L.

When he's at home Mkapa has his own motorcade, which in the last five years has been involved in three separate road accidents in which 22 people have died (including a child of three) and 47 others have been seriously injured. Most were pedestrians. Mkapa escaped this road slaughter without a scratch to himself, but no wonder he often chooses to fly in the £15-million presidential jet he used state coffers to buy in 2002. A jet? Not even Blair has his own jet, but Mkapa is just about to have his entire misruled country's debt forgiven.

Who benefits from aid? Germany gives the East African Union E8 million for the regional organisation's secretariat in Arusha - and the car park is filled with Mercedes-Benzes. Is Germany giving the money just so that it can get it back while giving a bunch of WaBenzi in suits their sets of wheels?

Aid has not worked. A Merrill Lynch report estimates there are 100,000 Africans today who own £380 billion in wealth. At the same time more than 300 million other Africans live on 50 pence a day. Forget about the gap between north and south. The wealth gap within countries like Kenya is far, far worse than in any other part of the globe.

It doesn't have to be like this. Africans themselves have always seen the WaBenzi as the symbol of Africa's ills. The first martyr for the cause was Thomas Sankara, the Burkina Faso president who forced his ministers to swap their Mercedes for Renault 5s. He also made them go on runs. Sankara was overthrown and executed in 1987 by Biaise Campaore, who remains in power today. In 2001 Sam Nujoma of Namibia traded in his Mercedes for a Volvo. He said if all ministers did likewise it would save £550,000 annually. 'We are servants of the Namibian people,' he said. 'It is high time that we start behaving as such.' What a party-pooper - at least he was until this year, when as part of his huge retirement package he got a S500 worth £80,000 plus two other cars. In 2002 Zambia's President Levy Mwanawasa went to the airport in a public bus and urged his ministers to do the same. Last year the opposition Ghanaian politician Dr Edward Nasigre Mahama proposed selling President John Kufuor's Mercedes to pay for children's education.

How African leaders spend our money - part 3 - by Aidan Hartley - The Spectator

'Why target Yengeni alone?' the opposition's Bantu Holomisa said at the time. The President himself test-drove a similar one for six months.' The following year Muammar Gaddafi gave Mbeki an S600L as a present. ANC officials claimed the President was 'truly embarrassed', but did he refuse the gift?

One of the most flagrant abuses of 'good governance' in Africa today is occurring in Kenya - original home of the WaBenzi. After decades of dictatorship voters in December 2002 swept Mwai Kibaki to power at the head of his NARC rainbow coalition on an anti-corruption ticket. 'Corruption will now cease to be a way of life in Kenya,' Kibaki promised. The very first law Kibaki's parliament passed rewarded politicians with a 172 per cent salary increase. MPs' take-home pay is now about £65,000 per annum (compared with a British MP's £57,485 gross) and the Kenyan MPs' fat package of allowances includes a £23,600 grant to buy a duty-free car, together with a monthly £535 fuel and maintenance allowance.

These grants fall way short of what many politicians actually spend on their official and private cars, Kibaki's ministers especially. Soon after taking power the government spurned its 'corrupt' predecessors' Mercedes E220 models and upgraded with the purchase of 32 new vehicles for top officials, including seven for the Office of the President. Most of these were new E240s, while the minister in charge of Kenya's dilapidated roads, Raila Odinga, went for a customised S500 at a probable cost of £100,000. Not to be outdone, Kibaki got himself - you guessed it - the S600L limousine.
How can Kibaki spend up to £350,000 on a car when Kenyans' average annual per capita income is £210 - less than the cost of a box of decent cigars? His purchase is legal because parliament approved it, but does that make it acceptable when Kenya is on the bones of its arse and demanding more aid?

Ministers say they should be paid so well because it stops them taking bribes. But the British High Commissioner to Nairobi, Sir Edward clay, last year denounced the ruling 'Mount Kenya Mafia' as gluttons who were so overfed they left the signs of their theft in their trail as clearly as if they had puked up. He said, 'The evidence of corruption in Kenya [amounts to] vomit, not just on the shoes of donors but also all over the shoes of Kenyans . . . and the feet of those who can't afford shoes.'

In February this year clay boldly produced another set of accusations, alluding to the fact that about £550 million has been stolen since Kibaki's government assumed power two years ago. Kenyan ministers responded by accusing the British envoy of being a white colonialist whom nobody need listen to. Britain is the nasty former colonial power that has just increased aid massively in 2005-06, from £30.5 million to £50 million. Despite the corruption alarm bells going off in Kenya, Blair's government has ruled out suspending aid.

Does any of this sound familiar? That's right: by deploying the WaBenzi co-efficient you can see that more aid equals more Mercedes-Benzes. Take a look at Kenya's 2005-06 budget, read out by finance minister David Mwiraria to a cheering parliament in Nairobi on 8 June. According to the local Daily Nation, the government has allocated £3 million for the purchase of a fleet of new vehicles for the Office of the President. A further £2.9 million has been set aside for the maintenance of the existing car-pool of vehicles. One has to wonder if this expenditure of nearly £6 million, no doubt a lot of it on Mercedes-Benzes and far in excess of the sums involved in Malawi's 'Benz Aid' scandal, has anything to do with the increased aid supply.

How African leaders spend our money - part 2 - by Aidan Hartley - The Spectator

Of course, not all Africans who own Mercedes cars are WaBenzi and nor am I suggesting DaimlerChrysler are at fault in any way. Thanks in large part to anti-state corruption drives by the World Bank, a middle class of hard-working, talented entrepreneurs has emerged in Africa in the last two decades. Africa's future depends on these young entrepreneurs, and they want to buy quality cars for the same reason successful Westerners do. As one Kampala businessman says, 'I am a serious person and I want that to be portrayed even through the car I drive.' Free trade for Africa would certainly create more Mercedes-Benz owners. The WaBenzi, by the way, loathe free trade. Reduced bureaucracy means less opportunity for graft, and the traditional way of getting someone else to buy your German-built machine.

Take, for example, Malawi's 'Benz Aid' scandal. In the year 2000 Bakili Muluzi was hailed as a paragon of African 'good governance' following the demise of Life President Hastings Kamuzu Banda. The Economist rated Blantyre as the best city to live in in the world. Britain promised to increase its aid from £30.8 million to £52.4 million in a single year specifically to help the 65 per cent of Malawians existing on less than 50 pence a day. Malawi's government celebrated by purchasing 39 top-of-thc-range S-class Mercedes at a cost of £1.7 million. In the furore that followed, Clare Short, then international development secretary, ruled out a ban on aid to Malawi, explaining that the money used for the car purchases had not been skimmed off British aid but some other donor's.

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Last year King Mswati III of Swaziland went against the grain. He passed over Mercedes and went for a £264,000 Maybach 62 for himself plus a fleet of BMWs for each of his 10 wives and three virginal fiancées selected annually at the football stadium 'dance of the impalas'. Imagine if he continues buying BMW for his wives; his dad collected 50 spouses and 350 kids. In May southern Africa's Mr Toad changed his mind about Mercedes and roared up to his rubber-stamp parliament in a new S600L limo. The total bill for his car purchases alone will be about £750,000, or three quarters of the annual figure for British assistance. Of the £14 million Swaziland gets in foreign aid, £9 million goes on the king's balls, picnics and parties - and cars. Yet 70 per cent of Swazis languish in absolute poverty and four out of ten have HIV/Aids, the highest rate in the world.

No corner of Africa escapes the WaBenzi effect, including South Africa. Mercedes gifted Nelson Mandela one, and he accepted it. In 2001 the ANC chief whip Tony Yengeni was charged and later jailed for accepting a Mercedes ML320 at a 48 per cent discount in return for lobbying on behalf of Daimler-Chrysler companies in the European Aeronautic Defence and Space consortium (Eads). At the time Eads was bidding for huge defence contracts, and Mercedes-Benz unilaterally admitted making dozens of cars available at discount prices. Some 32 officials, including the national defence chief General Siphiwe Nyanda, benefited. Most shocking of all, according to local press reports, President Thabo Mbeki himself had been given an S600L armoured limousine for a 'test drive'. He kept it for a full six months, only handing it back in March 2001, just as the Yengeni scandal broke.

How African leaders spend our money - part 1 - by Aidan Hartley - The Spectator

How African leaders spend our money
Spectator, The, Jun 25, 2005 by Hartley, Aidan
Bob Geldof has urged us not to dwell on 'the corruption thing' -but, says Aidan Hartley, corrupt African leaders are using Western aid to buy fleets of Mercedes-Benz cars

'Oh Lord, won't you buy me a Mercedes-Benz,' prayed Janis Joplin, and the Lord obliged. With or without divine intervention, the late Pope had one. So does the Queen. Erich Honecker hunted at night by dazzling the deer in his Mercedes jeep's headlights until he got close enough to blow them away. Mao Tsetung had 23 Mercs. Today Kim Jong II owns dozens, all filled to the gunwales with imported Hennessy's cognac. Hitler, Franco, Hirohito, Tito, the Shah, Ceausescu, Pinochet, Somoza - they all swore by Mercedes. Saddam Hussein liked them so much he probably had shares in the company.

Today, though, there is one man who is doing more than the Lord himself to buy a Mercedes-Benz for the leading creeps of the world. That man is of course Bob Geldof, the spur to our global conscience. Africa's leaders cannot wait for the G8 leaders -hectored by Bob and Live 8 into bracelet-wearing submission - to double aid and forgive the continent's debts. They know that such acts of generosity will finance their future purchases of very swish, customised Mercedes-Benz cars, while 315 million poor Africans stay without shoes and Western taxpayers get by with Hondas. This is the way it goes with the WaBenzi, a Swahili term for the Big Men of Africa.

The legacy of colonialism is a continent carved up by arbitrary frontiers into 50-odd states. But the WaBenzi are a transcontinental tribe who have been committing grand theft auto on the dusty, potholed roads of Africa ever since they hijacked freedom in the 1960s. After joyriding their way through six Marshall Plans' worth of aid Africa is poorer today than 25 years ago; and now the WaBenzi want more.

Let us take Zimbabwe, where millions of people are starving, 3,000 die weekly of Aids and life expectancy has fallen to 35 years. In 2005 Britain will give Zimbabwe £30 million in aid, making it one of the three biggest donors. The government will say this money funds emergency relief. Try telling that to the hordes of people whose homes have been burned down and bulldozed in recent weeks. Giving corrupt governments money frees up budgets to squander on cars.

As an example of hypocrisy, it is hard to beat the call for 'clean leadership' in Comrade Robert Mugabe's recent address to Zanu-PF's Central Committee. The old dictator condemns:

'Arrogant flamboyance and wastefulness: a dozen Mercedes-Benz cars to one life, hideously huge residences, strange appetites that can only be appeased by foreign dishes; runaway taste for foreign lifestyles, including sporting fixtures, add to it high immorality and lust.'

He is clearly talking about the WaBenzi, and their preferred version of the marque, the S600L, a long-wheelbase limo with a monstrous 7.3-litre V12 twin-turbo-charged engine. It's as powerful as a Ferrari and 21 feet long. Basic price £93,090, but extras could be £250,000 more.

And who is the most notorious Zimbabwean owner of an S600L? Robert Mugabe, of course. Mugabe's was custom-built in Germany and armoured to a 'B7 Dragunov standard' so that it can withstand AK-47 bullets, grenades and landmines. It is fitted with CD player, movies, internet and anti-bugging devices. At five tons it does about two kilometres per litre of fuel. It has to be followed by a tanker of petrol in a country running on empty. Mugabe has purchased a carpool of dozens of lesser Mercedes S320s and E240s for his wife, vice-presidents and ministers.

You may wonder why men like Mugabe did not go for Rolls-Royce, Bentley or Jaguar. The answer should be obvious: whatever their other disadvantages, British cars were associated with imperialism. Look at history and you see that up to the 1960s Mercedes-Benz was ticking along, doing nothing special. Then at about the same time as the 'Wind of Change' swept Africa, Mercedes produced the stretch 600 Pullman, a six-door behemoth with a 6.3-litre V8 engine. For Africa's new top dogs, it was love at first sight. The WaBenzi were born. Idi Amin snapped up three, Bokassa more when he crowned himself emperor in central Africa. Zaire's Sese Seko Mobutu bought so many that he kept six for his summerhouse on Lake Kivu alone. Liberia's Sergeant Samuel Doe splurged on 60.

Since those days Africa has been through 186 coups, 26 wars and seven million dead, and the Mercedes has been ideal - both for conveying dignity and for getting out of trouble. I wondered what it was like to drive the old Pullman, so I asked veteran trans-Africa rally driver Anthony Cazalet. 'You don't drive it, your chauffeur does,' he said. 'Look, it's a Queen Mum of a car: gentle, smooth, quiet; growls when necessary. Huge amounts of legroom and enormous seats for very big bottoms.' Cazalet recalls taking a friend's Pullman for a spin in Nairobi. 'I floored the throttle and the old girl pulled up her skirt and let rip. Everybody in the car was screaming.'

A bloody rift 3 : source : Men's Vogue

The Cholmondeley trial has gripped Kenya. The British Spectator, in a recent headline, referred to the case as "a trial that will decide the future of Kenya." It's also one that has resurrected the past. Cholmondeley's great-grandfather—the Lord Delamere affectionately known as "D" in the 1985 film version of Isak Dinesen's Out of Africa—virtually founded Kenya in the wake of the 1901 completion of the Mombasa Railway. The railroad connected the coast with the Great Rift Valley and also helped establish the highland city of Nairobi (the word means "cold water" in Masai). Great farming estates opened up around the railway, bulldozing the Masai herdsmen out of a long corridor of grazing land by treaties in 1904 and 1911. The Masai population, meanwhile, had been decimated by internal warfare and smallpox. This paved the way for a brace of baronial English families to sweep into what was then British East Africa. Along with Delamere, who settled in 1903, came fancifully named friends—Lord Hindlip, Lord Egerton of Tatton, Lord Cardross—looking for agricultural fortunes.

They rarely found them. Instead, decades of hardship, disappointment, and bankruptcy followed, as English farming methods floundered amid African diseases and crop pests. The Delameres, who had sold their ancestral estates in Cheshire to finance their African adventure, didn't find commercial luck until the thirties. This crucible created a distinct breed of men: tough, sometimes embittered entrepreneurs and frontiersmen who were always at war with the rule-loving British bureaucracy.

Meanwhile, a younger, more cosmopolitan crowd emigrated to Kenya, which had been officially established as a British colony in 1920, initiating an influx of flashier money and causing the Rift to be redubbed Happy Valley. Later immortalized by James Fox's 1982 book, White Mischief, the Happy Valley set scandalized Britain with its cocaine habits and wife-swapping. White Mischief was one of those books I devoured at school, sorry that its debauched sangfroid was consigned to the past. It was the brazen, metallic quality of its characters that fascinated me, the fierce, hard edge of their repulsive personalities: the cruelty and neurosis of rootless aristocrats who, in colonial Africa, had lost all their social bearings—or relevance.

The book itself was an investigation of the 1941 murder of the womanizing Lord Erroll, the lover of Diana Broughton, an unstable socialite prematurely married to a morbid middle-aged lord named Jock Delves Broughton. The cuckolded Broughton probably had Erroll shot in revenge on a lonely road outside Nairobi as the self-confessed serial adulterer—who frequently boasted of his marriage-busting prowess—drove home from a night of dancing. Broughton committed suicide in a Liverpool hotel in 1942, and, in 1955, Diana Broughton married Thomas Delamere—Cholmondeley's grandfather. And just as Broughton had been famously acquitted, so Cholmondeley was exonerated of killing Sisina in 2005. Agence France-Presse talked ominously of "colonial-era resentments" being revived. The Times of London ran a piece called "Trigger-Happy Valley." It was guilt by association.

The Cholmondeley case has been widely portrayed as a flashpoint in a racial struggle for land and power, an echo of colonial injustice. "We now know why Robert Mugabe acted the way he did," Kenyan deputy immigration minister Ananias Mwaboza is reported to have said before the Njoya trial began, referring to the president of Zimbabwe's notorious "land reform" campaign to kick whites off their ill-won estates. "Which independence are we talking about if the settlers continue occupying more than half of our lands?" Mwaboza's rhetoric aside, Kenya is quite different from Zimbabwe.

A bloody Rift 2 : source: Men's Vogue

On that day, Cholmondeley and his friend Carl Tundo, a rally-car driver, were prospecting a remote area of the Delamere estate near Lake Elementaita. They were looking for a suitable site for a house Tundo wanted to build. The place was thick with mpilipili trees, which look a little like densely growing olive trees, and it was late afternoon. In the fading light, the two whites stumbled upon a poaching party—three men from Kenya's majority Kikuyu tribe and as many as six dogs (accounts vary)—and their slaughtered impala. These men allegedly set their dogs on Cholmondeley and Tundo. Cholmondeley was armed, as Africans often are in a bush filled with dangerous Cape buffalo, and he shot at the dogs with a Winchester .303 hunting rifle, killing two but also hitting Njoya. A game warden at nearby Nakuru National Park later testified that Cholmondeley had phoned him after the shooting and uttered the Swahili words "Nimechapa mmoja matako"—"I have hit one in the buttocks." Cholmondeley then brought Njoya to officials, who took the man to a local hospital, where he bled to death.

"So you turned and ran when you heard the shot?"

"I dropped the impala and ran. I didn't see anything as I was running." Kamau said that he and the other surviving poacher, Peter Gichuhi, went back to the scene and showed police the snares they had set to catch game: crude wire nooses attached to fences that scooped up the animals as they forced their way under. The moments leading up to the shooting were exhaustively recounted: The three men met at Njoya's house in the nearby village of Kiongururia at 4:00 p.m., then slipped onto the Soysambu lands, where they found a snared impala. They decapitated it and carved out the intestines for the dogs. "So," Ojiambo roared, "the dogs had their lunch?" In single file, Kamau, Gichuhi, and Njoya then made their way to a prominent tree to hang the impala carcass in preparation for butchering. They were a yard apart from one another. When the first shot rang out, the three dispersed, but none of them fell. It's a crucial detail, because it suggests that Cholmondeley might have been shooting at men who were fleeing.

"You kept running for ten minutes?" Kamau nodded, and then said he heard five shots, rapping five times on the stand to demonstrate the intervals between them.

"So that was six shots in all?"

"Yes," Kamau said in Swahili.

The following day, I heard it reported on the radio that Cholmondeley had shot Njoya as the poacher was running away. Ordinarily, the details might not have been reported at all: In Kenya, poachers are shot dead on estates nearly every week, and rarely are the killers white. But on April 19, 2005, Cholmondeley had also shot dead another man, one he had presumed to be a robber but who was, in fact, an undercover ranger with the Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS), a 45-year-old Masai named Samson ole Sisina. The circumstances surrounding the first Cholmondeley killing were as chaotic as those of the second. According to Cholmondeley, Sisina fired first, and he returned five shots with a Luger pistol, killing the ranger instantly. The KWS had been called to the estate—by whom, or why, no one knows. Cholmondeley had supposed that Sisina and his fellow unidentified KWS rangers were armed intruders holding his employees at gunpoint.

The case, with Ojiambo arguing for the defense and the possibility of the death penalty for Cholmondeley, was dropped by the director of public prosecutions, Philip Murgor, at the urging of the attorney general's office. The ambitious young lawyer accused the police of shoddy investigative work, but was then himself dismissed in May 2005 by the government amid Masai protests against what they interpreted as favoritism toward Cholmondeley, the high-profile heir to the Delamere estate, arguably the most storied swath of land in the country. (Murgor had also been pursuing a broader inquiry into corruption within the Kenyan police force. He believes his firing was a response to these efforts.) The media soon began to cast Cholmondeley as a holdover from the string-'em-up colonial days. But others pointed to a breakdown of law and order throughout rural Kenya—the escalating tensions between herdsmen and farmers as well as between poachers and landowners—and to the ineptitude of the police. Four months before the shooting of Njoya, armed intruders broke into the house of Lord Delamere, Cholmondeley's father, and shot one of the estate's property managers in the stomach, leaving him for dead. The man survived. But in the lonelier parts of Kenya, some argue, you might do well to shoot first—and Lord Delamere's son might have felt the same way.

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A lost world ( source : The Guardian )

A lost world


The furore surrounding Tom Cholmondeley, accused of shooting two black people on his land, has thrown the spotlight on Kenya's 30,000-strong white community. Despite 40 years of black rule, many white Kenyans lead hugely privileged lives - and some still own vast swathes of the country. Chris McGreal on life in 'Trigger Happy Valley'

Thursday October 26, 2006
The Guardian


After the first killing, there was a great deal of sympathy for the Honourable Tom Cholmondeley among Kenya's disparate white population. The aristocrats who own vast tracts of land, the alcohol and drug-fuelled "Kenya cowboys" living the fast life in tourism and conservation, and the middle-class suburbanites who "love Africa" but despatch their children to school in England could all understand how the 38-year-old scion of the country's most prominent white settler family, and heir to the Delamere baronetcy, shot dead a black game warden who ventured on to his ranch last year. Old white families in Kenya's Great Rift valley are so besieged by poaching, murder and crime, his sympathisers said, that life has become very difficult for the haves. It was a mistake any one could have made. The authorities agreed, and let the Eton old-boy go.

The second time, even before the evidence was heard, sympathy was in short supply. This time Cholmondeley was accused of killing a black poacher. "The sense here among both communities [white and black] is nail him," says Michael Cunningham-Reid, a stepbrother to Cholmondeley's father. "Once is forgivable, twice is inexcusable."
Cholmondeley, who is now on trial for murder - which he denies - has become a liability for Kenya's 30,000-strong white community, which, through more than 40 years of black rule, has clung on to its privileged lifestyle - and in the case of 12 or so old settler families, great swathes of land - largely by keeping its collective head down. Cholmondeley, who can expect to inherit a 100,000-acre ranch along with the title of Lord Delamere, had committed the unforgivable sin of rocking the boat.

The white community had spent decades trying to shake off the image of Kenya's Rift Valley as the "Happy Valley" playground of decadent and racist toffs, a view shaped by wartime Britain's fascination with the salacious details of adultery, drugs and debauchery provided in the trial of Sir Jock Delves Broughton (who was eventually acquitted of murdering his wife's lover, Lord Erroll). Infuriatingly, the story was given new life in the 80s by the film White Mischief, starring Greta Scacchi and Charles Dance. Now Cholmondeley's killings have prompted wags to redub the place "Trigger Happy Valley".

The trial coincides with the latest wave of doubt among white people over their future in Kenya - people who have always wondered whether they truly belonged, and whether one day they might be expelled like the Asians from Uganda and white farmers from Zimbabwe - and growing insecurity after a spate of murders of white people.

Kenya's independence came in 1963. A majority of the 60,000 white settlers were gone by the end of the decade. Those who remained generally took out Kenyan citizenship (although many secretly, and illegally under Kenyan law, keep their British passports). One who stayed was Michael Cunningham-Reid, a nephew of the late Lord Mountbatten and part of the extended Delamere clan that forged the path for aristocratic settlers into East Africa with an energetic enthusiasm for hunting, drinking and sex. Cunningham-Reid's mother, Ruth Ashley, the daughter of Lord Mount Temple, was on to her third marriage by the time she wed the Fourth Baron Delamere, Thomas Cholmondeley, during the second world war. When they divorced in 1955, Cholmondeley went on to marry Diana Caldwell, the by-then famous widow of Sir Jock Delves Broughton.

Today, Cunningham-Reid, 78, lives in the heart of Happy Valley, the exclusive town of Karen (named after the author Karen Blixen, who memorialised her life in Kenya in Out of Africa). "When I came out of the army in 1948, my stepfather, Lord Delamere, said, 'You've only been in the army three years. You haven't learned to do anything. No one's going to employ you in the City because you've got no training. You'd better come to Kenya and work on my farms.' That was 1948. I'm still here," he says.

The family trustees bought him an 800-acre farm and, a couple of years after that, Cunningham-Reid was successful enough to buy a 6,000-acre ranch to farm sheep and wheat. In the 1950s, during the Kenya Emergency, when Mau Mau rebels rose up against the crown, Cunningham-Reid found himself back in the army and in charge of Kenyan soldiers loyal to the UK. His views of that time - and the language he uses, redolent of old-school racism - have not changed greatly despite the recognition today of the atrocities committed by British forces. "The atrocities of the Kenya regiment were there but not on the scale of the Mau Mau," he says. "The amazing thing about the Kenyan is you could find him in the forest, shoot two of his pals, capture him and he would be working for you two days later."

At independence, much of the white population weighed up the benefits of a glorious lifestyle against what they considered the nightmare of black rule - and decided to get out.

Cunningham-Reid took a gamble. He believed that the big issue was the land, and his best hope of remaining in Kenya would be to get rid of it. "All my friends were hooking it, saying, 'We can't live with a fucking black man telling us what to do,'" he says. "I farmed happily until independence in 1963. But the British government made £22m available to buy out farmers in the Rift Valley. I was the first in the queue. Although I intended to stay, I thought all the farms would be broken up into small plots and we'd be plagued by squatters and the land would be a big political issue."

He used the money to buy a mansion in Karen, a house that was being left behind by Lady Twining, wife of the former governor of Tanganyika. "I basically liked the African and I couldn't picture myself going back to England and buying a very small farm or something," he says. The money also extended to a house on the coast and a hotel next to Lake Naivasha, which was to become the crucible of the family's future in conservation.

The gamble paid off. More than four decades later he is still installed in Lady Twining's sprawling old house, with servants to hand and the chauffeur ever ready with the Mercedes for the swift drive to his club. He has no regrets about staying. "There were times when I had serious doubts: have I been a complete fool? Am I going to lose everything? There have been moments when I considered sending my family away. Not myself though. I'd stay and go down with the ship," he says. "The white community has survived by laying low, keeping their mouths shut. We stayed out of politics. That was the big taboo. We must be no challenge to the black man's political power."

Not everyone stayed out of politics. Richard Leakey, who heads Kenya's other most prominent white family, confronted white Kenyan society's deep-seated paternalism - at times hardly removed from the views of the old colonial officers who proclaimed they had brought Christianity and civilisation to the natives - by wading into the forbidden territory of politics. Leakey's parents, Louis and Mary, made the Leakey name with a multitude of anthropological finds; Richard established himself as a paleoanthropologist in his own right with the discovery of the oldest human skull yet found, before going on to make a name as head of Kenya's Wildlife Service. He saved the country's elephants by winning a worldwide ban on ivory trading and brought Kenya's 51 parks from the brink of collapse. He is also one of the few Europeans to openly distance himself from the white clan in Kenya.

"These people bore me stiff and I'm not part of that set at all," he says. "Some of them are pretty racist people deep down. They don't mix and have very negative attitudes to their fellow Kenyans. I keep them at arm's length and I find them offensive."

Leakey is unusual among white Kenyans in having sent his two daughters to a Kenyan government school where almost all the other pupils were black. "They are both real Kenyans," he says. "They speak perfect Swahili and they know all the important networks in this country because they went to school with people who are now part of them."

White Kenyans revelled in the kudos Leakey brought them until a decade ago, when he scared the hell out of them by daring to point the finger of responsibility for rampant corruption, mismanagement and cynical political violence at the man responsible - President Daniel arap Moi. He broke the taboo on white people embroiling themselves in opposition politics, launching Safina, a party that promised to combat police brutality and shambolic public services. Moi accused Leakey of being a neo-colonial racist, traitor and atheist.

Another white Kenyan who joined Leakey in Safina, Rob Shaw, also found himself under attack from the neighbours. "I had several come round to me and say, 'We've had a good life here since independence, we've kept our heads down. Why are you putting your head above the parapet?'" he says. "If I look back to my parents' generation, through independence and after there was a large element of, 'We don't know how long we've got here.' That sort of insecurity was ingrained."

White people were, however, welcome to serve the government. Leakey's brother, Philip, was an MP for the ruling party for 15 years and briefly a minister. He led 88 white Kenyans to pay homage to President Moi on bended knee and distance the white community from Richard. "Some were starting to think of us as a potential target," says Philip Leakey, "and we felt it was necessary to prevent ourselves from becoming a target by clearing the air and getting the response we got from the president - that we should carry on being good Kenyans, as we've been."

Richard Leakey says white Kenyans' fear of politics is a reflection of their failure to integrate and their desperation to hang on to privilege. "I feel sufficiently sure that Kenya is my home to be able to criticise the president," he says. "Very few Europeans have got involved in public life and politics, and that's because they haven't felt integrated. They haven't made the effort to integrate. So many of these people live a privileged life. They don't want to integrate socially. They don't speak the language. They send their children to schools in England and South Africa, and then say there's no future for them in Kenya. They must feel like fish out of water. I suppose it's because they have a very privileged life. It's very peachy."

Life is still very privileged in Happy Valley, but the whiff of scandal is never far off, and the detail is astonishingly reminiscent of another age. Cunningham-Reid's daughter, Anna, established herself as a designer whose clothes proved a hit with the likes of Kate Moss, Princess Caroline of Monaco and Jemima Khan. She married Antonio Trzebinski, an artist from one of the most prominent and long-standing white families in Kenya. He was murdered five years ago by a single shot through the heart as he drove to see his Danish mistress, Natasha Illum Berg, the only licensed female big game hunter in East Africa. Trzebinski, a surfer and big game fisherman renowned for his drinking, drug use and womanising, was killed little more than a mile from where Lord Erroll was shot.

Then, a year ago, Anna raised eyebrows by marrying a semi-nomadic warrior, Loyaban Lemarti, in a ceremony that involved the slaughter of a bull. Lemarti wore a toga and lion skin. She now divides her time between her husband's rural village, white society in Karen and fashion shows in London. Michael Cunningham-Reid describes the marriage as "an experience" that has not gone down universally well among white Kenyans. But he calls Lemarti "a very close friend of mine". "I think [racial] attitudes have changed with some families," he says. "With me it's changed. Tom Delamere was my stepfather. He considered the black man a necessary evil. You had to have him around to do the work. Since then I've found out that the black man is a human being after all," he says.

The unwelcome attention caused by Tom Cholmondeley aside, the old family names are increasingly an irrelevance in Kenya. They have largely ceased to matter. The white community is now better represented by a comfortable middle class that has carved out a future in tourism and conservation. New white immigrants continue to arrive. Arabella Akerhielm, who hails from a wealthy family in Chelsea and was part of the Sloane Ranger set in the 80s, first came to Kenya in 1990. Four years later she married Baron Carl-Gustav Akerhielm, a member of one of the first Swedish families to settle in East Africa.

"I'm here to stay," she says at her relatively small home in a Nairobi suburb. "I was in financial advertising in the City in London. To me the quality of life is better here, although we're not as rich financially. I suppose it's somewhat colonial. Our husbands do the work. There are moments of insecurity, but there's the freedom. Life's wilder here, more cavalier. It's not so materialistic. In England I came from a very privileged background. I like being away from the City boys talking about their cars."

Baroness Akerhielm - as she says she does not like to be known - says there is not much racism but recognises there is not much integration either. "Some people are quite scathing [about Kenyans], but as a general rule I don't think there's much racism. If anything there's racism against whites in getting jobs," she says. "But we are quite tribalistic. I suppose I don't have a lot of black friends. My husband, even being brought up here, does not have a lot of black friends, but I believe my daughter will mix more freely. A lot more children educate their children here or in South Africa than in the past. There are still the school flights to England, but fewer go." Nonetheless Akerhielm has already put her own seven-year-old daughter down for a place in 2011 at her old Catholic private school in Ascot.

Ask Michael Cunningham-Reid if his family will still be in Kenya in two or three generations and he is doubtful. "My feeling of 100% belonging here may not be right for my children and grandchildren. I am completely sure I will die here peacefully rather than have a panga in the back of the neck. I don't know about my children," he says.

Others are already making plans to leave. Barry Gaymer is a professional big game hunter who lives on an island in Lake Naivasha. Since hunting is banned in Kenya, he takes his rich American clients to Tanzania. "People say we're racist, but we've never been comparable with anywhere south [Rhodesia or South Africa] in the way we treated the blacks," he says. "I think the majority of blacks in my area like me. I drink with them. I get along with them. Generally, I think they like the old-time whites. In this country, the word for respect is fear. Because they fear me, they respect me."

Gaymer's father was one of those who came on a grant after the war and became a ranch manager. Gaymer bought land but sold up in the late 70s and turned to tourism. Today he is chairman of the Naivasha wildlife conservancy that has 23 members who own or farm a combined total of 380,000 acres that is home to 55,000 head of wildlife. About half of them are white. "I didn't even think of myself as coming from England. I could hardly imagine the place. But now, very recently, I've been thinking about moving, leaving Kenya. It's getting too much," he says.

Naivasha is not the happy place that the white population once imagined. Seven white people have been murdered in the area in the past two years (no one can tell you how many black people have been murdered). In January, a renowned British conservationist, Joan Root, 69, was killed at her home on the banks of Lake Naivasha where she had lived for decades. Root had been trying to put an end to the illegal fishing on the lake that has caused a collapse in the fish population over the past five years. The water level is falling alarmingly, and the lake is increasingly polluted by pesticides and sewage.

The established families blame the sprawling flower farms that provide roses and carnations to Marks & Spencer and other European stores. The farms tap into the lake and spew out waste. They have also caused an influx of black Kenyans to Naivasha to work, or in search of work, that has seen the population of the town rise tenfold to 300,000 people, many living in considerable poverty. With that have come the killings and other crimes.

Gaymer also believes that Kenya's wildlife will be wiped out in the coming years unless there is a dramatic change in government policy to permit licensed hunting. "I'm looking at Tanzania now," he says. "I've bought 2m hectares there with antelopes, hippo, buffalo, zebra. The country was a mess because of socialism, but the one thing they did was get rid of tribalism. I think it has a future".

Short Biography of Tom Cholmondeley (source:wikipedia)

Thomas Patrick Gilbert Cholmondeley (born 19 January 1968) is a Kenyan farmer of British ancestry. He is most famous for his controversial release from a murder charge.

Biography
Thomas P. G. Cholmondeley was educated at Eton College. His family is one of the largest landowners in Kenya. He is a great-grandson of the 3rd Baron Delamere (1870-1931), a pioneering settler in Kenya. He is the only son and heir of Hugh George Cholmondeley, 5th Baron Delamere (b. 1934) and the former Anne Renison.

Cholmondeley shot Kenya Wildlife Service game warden Samson ole Sisina on 19 April 2005 at his ranch in Gilgil division, Nakuru District. Cholmondeley admitted the shooting, but insisted it was self-defense. The Attorney General Amos Wako discontinued the case through emission of a nolle prosequi. This decision was widely criticized by Kenyan media and public, with many claiming he walked free due to the influence of class and position, although Kenyan whites have little political power or influence any longer, although some have retained their wealth and lands.

On 10 May 2006 he was taken again into custody for the killing of a stonemason and accused poacher, Robert Njoya Mbugua, who had trespassed on his private land at Soysambu Farm, and whom Cholmondeley assumed was a thief.

He again has admitted the shooting, but claimed it was in self-defense. He has been held at the Kamiti Maximum Security Prison since the incident and during the ongoing court proceedings. The trial began 25 September 2007 .

A bloody Rift 1 ( source : mensvogue )

Inside Kenya's historic Delamere estate, wildlife still roams free, along with the poachers who hunt the animals down. But then the property's scion shot and killed two Africans, stirring up the country's colonial past—and revealing what could be a troubled future. By Lawrence Osborne
Thomas Cholmondeley, on trial for murder, entering the Nairobi High Court.

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All trials are trials for one's life," Oscar Wilde wrote in De Profundis, "just as all sentences are sentences of death."

It was a sentiment you could see all over the face of 38-year-old Thomas Patrick Gilbert Cholmondeley, son of the fifth Lord Delamere and scion of Kenya's grandest white family, as he shuffled handcuffed into the Nairobi High Court on October 30, 2006. In the coming days, as the second leg of his trial, which began in late September, played out, Cholmondeley sat in a tense, cross-legged pose, as if he were following a particularly gripping cricket game relayed by radio. His zip-up ankle boots, windowpane shirts, and perfectly knotted ties cut some dash in a courtroom filled with poor Africans: "Old Etonian," the British press, from the Daily Mail to The Independent, has repeatedly reminded us in its coverage of the trial. But Cholmondeley (pronounced CHUM-lee) didn't look up as photographers massed around him. He seemed to be consumed in a long inner monologue. And during the endless hours of testimony, he mostly stared down at the floor, as if wondering what strange karma had brought him to be tried for the murder of a black Kenyan on his family's breathtaking 56,000-acre estate in the Great Rift Valley—the second such charge brought against him in little more than a year.

In the gallery, Masai tribesmen with dangling earlobes stared down at him with cool curiosity. Cholmondeley has long been famous in Kenya. But now he is also notorious. As the court rose at around 9:00, they watched the accused stand to a gigantic height, their mouths hanging open a little as his blond curls elevated above all present. Cholmondeley is six foot six, and even next to the frocked African lawyers in their fantastical blond and white wigs, he appeared vaguely extraordinary, outsize, and not at all like a killer who had been arraigned for shooting two men on his estate on two separate occasions. He looked more like a beneficent headmaster whose sole beastliness might be with a cane. If convicted, he could hang.

Court No. 4 was full and the air was chilly. Above Judge Muga Apondi's throne hung a coat of arms with Kenya's rather shopworn national motto, "Harambee"—Swahili for "Let us all pull together." Testimony was agonizingly slow. There was no stenographer and Judge Apondi had to write down everything himself. There was a jury of three "court assessors" but, under Kenyan law, the judge can ignore their findings. The first witness of the day was called. Joseph Kamau, a thin youth in awkward mitumba clothes (hand-me-downs), clambered into the witness box and began talking in a barely audible whisper. He took one look at the man accused of shooting dead his friend Robert Njoya, 37, during a May 10, 2006, poaching incursion into the Soysambu Ranch—the Delamere estate where Cholmondeley grew up amid herds of Cape buffalo and zebras, two hours northwest of Nairobi—and then he, too, looked down. Despite the notices in the corridors demanding Kimya kabisa—total silence—the court was a roar of gossip and laughter. Kamau, part-time poacher, had to speak up.

"What were you doing on the Soysambu estate?" the defense counsel, Fred Ojiambo, head of litigation at the Nairobi firm of Kaplan, Stratton, boomed at him. "You knew you were doing something illegal?" The youth hesitated. He seemed stunned to be at the center of a media circus. "I see," Ojiambo continued. "Then why didn't you walk in through the front gate? Why didn't you just say to the Delameres that you enjoyed picking up game on their land?"

Kenyan landowner kills black man on land(source:Zimbabwe political analyst)

Kenyan landowner kills black man on land
01.14, Thu July 26 2007

Nairobi - A Kenyan court ruled on Wednesday that Thomas Cholmondeley, descendant of one of the country's most famous white settlers, should present his defence in a murder case that has stoked longstanding racial tensions.

The great-grandson of Lord Delamere has admitted shooting black Kenyan stonemason Robert Njoya, whom he accused of poaching on his 22 000ha Soysambu farm in May 2006.

Cholmondeley, who is the son of the fifth Lord Delamere, denied murdering Njoya, saying he was acting in self-defence.

The aristocrat's family is one of Kenya's largest landowners and is famed for its association with the wealthy white settlers of colonial east Africa's Happy Valley set whose passions for big game hunting, adultery and lavish parties inspired the book and film White Mischief.

'Second murder case against the aristocrat'

Kenya's judicial system allows a court to terminate a trial before a defendant presents his case, if the judge deems that prosecutors do not have enough evidence to make their case against the accused person.

"After carefully considering the evidence adduced by 38 witnesses, the prosecution has established a prima facie case for the accused to be put on his defence," Justice Muga Apondi told a packed Nairobi courtroom.

Defence lawyer Fred Ojiambo told the court he would present seven witnesses including a police officer from the national firearms bureau.

The trial is the second murder case against the aristocrat, who was also accused of killing a black wildlife ranger in 2005.

That case was dropped for lack of evidence, to major public outcry and suggestions from many Kenyans that there were still two sets of laws - one for whites and one for blacks.

"Famed for his gin-soaked antics'

The cases have fanned simmering colonial-era resentment against white settlers who carved out large swathes of land for themselves during British rule in Kenya.

In the Njoya case for which he is now on trial, Cholmondeley told police he and a friend were walking on his ranch when he saw five men with machetes, bows and arrows and a dead impala.

Cholmondeley told police he shot at Njoya and a dog after he asked the men to stop but they set their dogs on him instead. The men however say he fired as they fled from him.

The original Lord Delamere was famed for his gin-soaked antics and his name was given to a bar at the Norfolk Hotel that was one of his favourite haunts and remains a must-stop for European visitors to Nairobi.

Although many Kenyans complain about white farmers, many others are also resentful of wealthy black Kenyans who allocated themselves massive tracts of land after independence from Britain in 1963.

Delamere case in Kenyan court IX (source:channel 4)

Prison
We're arriving at Kamiti prison where Tom Cholmondley has been held on remand for 18 months. I'm told conditions inside are pretty awful and Tom is very low.

"It's absolutely desperate in there. It's destroyed my life. I haven't seen my children in a quarter of their lifetime, it's very very miserable and it's living in limbo."

They certainly weren't making any headway today in court. After hours of waiting for other appeals to be heard the Cholmondley case was again adjourned. Who knows until when.

The fate of the next Lord Delamere and of the Delamere estate hangs in the balance.

Delamere case in Kenyan court (source:channel4 news)

"It's destroyed my life. I haven't seen my children in a quarter of their lifetime, it's very very miserable and it's living in limbo."
Tom Cholmondeley

Delamere case in Kenyan court VIII

Family
Across the estate Robert Njoya's widow now has four children to bring up alone. She knew he was going out hunting that evening.

Meat is a powerful commodity here - it buys favours and opens doors. It is illegal to kill game but people turn a blind eye to those who hunt to feed their families. Poaching for profit however is not allowed.

Fresh traps are found on the Delamere's land every day.

Njoya's brother Joel works in a restaurant beside the estate. Today goat and lamb are on the menu.

Njoya's funeral was very well attended. His death had provoked anger in the community. Politicians saw there was capital to be made. Four cabinet ministers turned up.

Delamere case in Kenyan court VII (source:channel4 news)

Charges
The prosecution says Cholmondley deliberately shot at the poachers as they ran off. He maintains he fired at the dogs and that he then heard screams. Both sides accept Cholmondley tourniqueted the man's leg before calling the police.

Robert Njoya suffered a single gunshot wound to the buttock. He later bled to death in hospital.

Earlier in the trial the court travelled up to Soysambu to visit the crime scene. There's nothing wrong at all with the judge seeing where the witness stood.

Cholmondley listens to his friend Flash Tundo give his version of events. He's already told the prosecution how he saw Tom kneel, take aim and fire. He disappeared directly after the shooting. When cross-examined by the defence he denied he was armed that day.

But the defence will argue that the police failed to cordon off the crime scene and could not establish which gun bullet fragments found in the victims body had come from.

Delamere case in Kenyan court VI ( source:channel 4 news )

"Kenyans value land. When you own land you feel you have a sense of belonging. We have a lot of squatters, people who don't own anywhere. When they look out and see this large expanse of land owned by one individual obviously questions will be raised about how fair is that."
John Kihara MP, election candidate

Delamere case in Kenyan court V (source:channel 4 news )

Land issue
We left the bustle of Nairobi and head to the Rift Valley and the vast open land of Chomondleys estate, Soysambu.

This was originally Masai land. They claim it was stolen from them at the beginning of the last century and they now want it back.

A local MP told us: "Kenyans value land. When you own land you feel you have a sense of belonging. We have a lot of squatters, people who don't own land anywhere. When they look out and see this large expanse of land owned by one individual obviously questions will be raised about how fair is that."

Lady Delamere said: "The Delameres believe this land issue is playing in to the fate of their son, but to them Soysambu is the family seat, and has been for generations."

But Tom's relationship with people on the estate changed dramatically two years ago. It's April 2005 and a group of armed men are holding up some of the farm workers who have a dead buffalo at gunpoint.

Cholmondley hears there's a robbery taking place and takes a friend who's staying on the farm with him to sort it out. As they approach, Cholmondley says, someone inside fires a shot at them - they return fire. One of the supposed robbers is shot dead.

This provoked outrage as two hours later the police established the robbers had been working undercover for the Kenyan Wildlife Service.

Hostilities increased when a murder charge against Cholmondley was suddenly dropped - people lost faith in Kenya's legal system.

Less than a year later poachers were on this remote part of the estate at dusk hunting impala. According to them they hung an impala on a wire. Tom and his friend Flash Tundo were walking nearby when they heard voices and dogs barking.

Delamere case in Kenyan court IV ( source:channel 4 news)

Elections
As the case rumbles on the presidential elections are in full swing. Raila Odinga, President Kibaki's main challenger, is rallying his people today.

Kenyans are passionate about their politics. It can spill over. 12 people have been killed over the past week here.

The two candidates are neck and neck in the polls. Neither can afford to look weak. Can this white landowner get a fair trial in such a highly charged atmosphere?

The defence lawyer told us: "It's very difficult for a judge in a case like this not to be under pressure from forces not from within the building. This case has aroused a great deal of interest and a lot of anger."

If found guilty Cholmondley faces the death sentence for what happened that day in Happy Valley.

Delamere case in Kenyan court III (source : channel 4 news )

"It's very easy to jump to stereotype if you know nothing about me personally. A stereotype without any truth is nontheless a winner in the court of public opinion."
Tom Cholmondley

Delemare case in Kenyan Court II ( source channel 4 news)

The case
The man's death - an act of revenge against him for poaching the game on his land. Cholmondley wasn't under attack, he just aimed and fired, claims the prosecution.

Details of this poacher's death provoked a firestorm in the Kenyan media. We asked Cholmondley why he thought he'd been portrayed so badly in the press?

He said: "It's very easy to jump to stereotype if you know nothing about me personally. A stereotype without any truth is nontheless a winner in the court of public opinion."

"I had no idea I'd be involved in something like this. Something which is very political. I'm seeing the darker side of Kenyan life."

Delamere case in Kenyan court PART 1 source : channel 4 news

The Hon. Tom Cholmondeley is in a Kenyan prison cell, the second time in two years he has been accused of shooting dead a black man.
We're inside the High Court in central Nairobi where the only case Kenyans want to watch is that of Tom Cholmondley - the sole heir to the Delamere estate.This old Etonian is being tried before a judge for the murder of a black man who was poaching on his land. After a three month delay he's come to court to appeal against a ruling that the defence must hand over all witness statements to the prosecution.We have very little idea about what their defence is. After 13 months only the prosecution's case has been heard. Kenyans were aghast as the court described how Cholmondley had gunned down a trespasser as he was running away.

Justice for Tom Cholmondeley Delamere

The Delamere Clan has now launched it's own website to support Tom Cholmondeley Delamere .
http://www.justicefortom.com
This website has been created by the close friends and family of Tom Cholmondeley, who is in Kamiti jail in Kenya. The purpose of it is:
To give a voice to Tom and those who know and love him
To publicise what is happening in the trial and Kamiti jail
To give hope and information to those concerned about Tom and his welfare
Tom has been in prison since May 2006, and his trial started in September 2006. His spirits are very low but he is an honourable man and is doing what needs to be done to bring this trial to some kind of conclusion. Being in jail in any country is tough - Kamiti jail is something else. We do what we can to keep him sane - please do what you can to keep him in your hearts and prayers, and help us raise awareness that all might not seem as simple as some stories have made it out to be.
The site is created using blogging software, which simply means that you can ‘talk’ to us using the comments buttons on each page. We encourage you to do so as Tom’s mother, Lady Delamere, and girlfriend, Sally Dudmesh, print and take these messages to Tom when they see him.
Please read through all of the information on the other pages to understand what is happening; the Case page will give you the background and the Posts page will have the latest updates from Team Tom. Please keep coming back to see what is happening

Who was Lord Delamere ?

Who was Lord Delamere ? ( published in The Standard )
By John Kamau
When Lord Delamere first set foot in Kenya in 1887 the Uganda Railways was just starting to be laid down and when he came back to acquire land for farming Nairobi –or what colonialists baptised "Tinville" because it was simply a tin shack- was beginning to take shape- at least by 1901.
It would seem that unlike many of his descendents, the Third Baron Delamere got along very well with his Maasai neighbours. So well, indeed, that fears were expressed among the contemporary white community that he might ‘go native’.
Lord DelamereThat Lord Delamere pioneered the dairy industry in 1905 has been one of the most repeated stories. He was also credited with experimenting with cross breeding, after importing a herd of exotic breeds for mating with local Boran cattle.
But from the word go the experiments at his Soysambu Farm went awfully wrong. For 29 years he struggled to build a farming enterprise along the shores of Elmenteita, rising at 4am and compromising his health as his health and wealth went. He started off by experimenting with sheep and poultry and by the time he realised he had made a mistake, a fortune estimated at 40,000 pounds had been squandered.
Many of the sheep perished as a result of the foot and mouth while Red water disease annihilated the cattle he had shipped from Australia.
Frustrated by bad luck Delamere mortgaged his property in Britain and decided to grow wheat in Njoro. But before he could harvest it was hit by rust! He had to spend the rest of his final years looking for a variety that could withstand rust.
But it was a meeting at his house in Kileleshwa that turned the Dairy industry into what it is today. In that house he met other farmers and they decided to form the Kenya Cooperative Creameries, which made sure that they locked Africans from selling milk to hotels and other households without passing through KCC.
It was this policy that persisted for many years until Independence when that policy was done away with.
For more than 30 years Delamere was the undisputed unofficial leader of both politics and agriculture and when he died in 1931 at the age of 61 he told the whites on his deathbed h: "Kenya cannot afford to give such a large proportion of her time to politics. Let us all (meaning whites) concentrate on getting on with our work and consolidate our economic position and leave political arguments (among ourselves) ".
By this time he had left unpaid bank loans that stood at 500,000 pounds.
As a member of the house of lords he had got a loan that enabled him to buy and establish the Soysambu farm which then covered more than 200,000 acres. He also had farms in Laikipia, Naivasha, Nairobi where he displaced many locals who formed part of his labour force.
As a big spender he left his family almost bankrupt for he had sold the 15,000 acre estate at Chesire, Britain.
When his son, Thomas Pit Delamere inherited the title, as forth baron, in 1931 the National bank of India came asking for its 20 million pounds or else…
Thomas revived his father’s colonial dream –it was just that – and borrowed more cash to plough into farming and dairy projects. With beef exports to United Arab Emirates money started flowing back and the dairy industry was back on its foot.
Forth baron Delamere who still lives in the Soysambu farm, later became president of the Kenya national farmers Union, a colonial outfit of white settlers.
It was through this that he had stormed governors residence demanding an end to Mau mau terror.
It was not surprising during the Lancaster talks he became the chief adviser to the three European delegates and argued on retention of British citizenship even after independence. But Kenyatta would not hear of that. But he had the trust of two people: Jomo Kenyatta and his neighbour Bruce Mackenzie who owned a neighbouring Gongongeri Farm.
It was Delamere who organised white farmers to attend the Nakuru meeting in 1962 where Kenyatta made his famous "forgive and forget" speech. With that in August 1964 he took a Kenyan citizenship ending speculation he was about to leave. London had assured him that he would retain the title as long as Kenya remained within the commonwealth.
In 1962 he had a row with Paul Ngei after he tried to block the election of Ngei as chairman of Kenya African national Traders and African Union (Kantafu) to rival his Kenya National farmers Union describing it as "a pity".
In 1970 he was warned in Kenya parliament that he would lose his citizenship if he took a seat in the House of Lords. Martin Shikuku, then assistant minister for home affairs warned: If he takes the seat he will be finished.
After Independence his father’s name was erased from Nairobi and Delamere Street renamed Kenyatta Avenue. The 8-foot statue cast in his honour at the junction of Kenyatta and Kimathi Street was removed by City Mayor Charles Rubia after consulting with the family.
"In these changing times individuals must be prepared to make adjustments", Lord Delamere said.
But he will be remembered as the man who tried to force segregation in Kenya prompting the British government to issue the Devonshire White Paper of 1923 that proclaimed Kenya as an African country.

Widow in "Happy Valley" shooting seeks justice (The Independent,23/9/2007)

Widow in 'Happy Valley' shooting seeks justice
By Steve Bloomfield in the Rift Valley, Kenya
Published: 23 September 2006
Sarah Njoya walked through a 6ft gap in the hedge and looked out across the rolling hills of Kenya's picturesque Rift Valley. "Now we are trespassing," she said with a laugh. The land she had entered is the 100,000-acre ranch owned by the fifth Baron Delamere, Kenya's most famous white-settler family.
Just four months ago Mrs Njoya's husband, Robert, walked through the same gap with four friends. He never came back.
Tom Cholmondeley, Lord Delamere's son and heir, spotted Mr Njoya and his friends. One of them carried a dead impala on his back. Mr Cholmondeley claims the men set their dogs on him and he fired at the dogs in retaliation. What is not in doubt is that one of the bullets struck Mr Njoya in the pelvis. He died on the way to hospital.
Mr Cholmondeley, who took Mr Njoya to hospital, handed himself in to the local police station. Since then, the old Etonian has been held in remand at Kamiti maximum-security prison in Nairobi.
The murder trial, which starts in the capital on Monday, threatens to reopen old wounds in Kenya over race and land. It is not the first time the 38-year-old Mr Cholmondeley has killed a black Kenyan. He was acquitted of murder last year after shooting a Masai game warden he thought was a robber.
His release provoked angry protests in Nakuru where Masai lay claim to the Delamere land; they say it was taken from them using deceit, by the British colonial authorities more than a century ago. They have mounted a non-violent campaign to reclaim it.
There were more pro-tests in May after the second killing and some fear that if Mr Cholmondeley is acquitted again, it could lead to more violence.
The trials of Tom Cholmondeley are not the first time the Delameres have found themselves involved in an explosive Kenyan court case. Mr Cholmondeley's grandfather was one of the elite and wealthy colonialists whose activities gave Rift Valley the name "Happy Valley".
Their hedonistic drink- and drug-fuelled exploits during the first half of the century were exposed in the 1941 murder trial of Sir Jock Delves Broughton and later featured in the novel White Mischief by James Fox.
Sir Jock was accused of murdering his wife's lover, the 22nd Earl of Erroll. He was acquitted, but later killed himself. His widow, Diana - who was played by Greta Scacchi in the film version of White Mischief - married the fourth Baron Delamere.
The difference between the two families - Delamere and Njoya - could not be more stark. As well as the farm, the Delameres own land across Kenya and have their own dairy business. Robert Njoya was a stonemason and farmer.
His widow now does odd jobs when she can find them just to be able to feed her children. She cannot even afford the 500-shilling (£4) daily bus fare to get to Nairobi next week for the trial.
"My husband was the breadwinner of the family," she said. "I don't have much work, small things here and there. I am waiting for my God to help me." The Njoya family, Sarah and four boys, the oldest of whom is nine, live just off the main road linking Nairobi to Nakuru, some 100 miles from the capital. Their small plot of land pales into insignificance when compared to the 100,000 acres owned by the Delameres just 200 metres down the track.
The day Mr Njoya was killed, he left the family home with his friends at about four o'clock. "At seven, his friends came back to tell me they had heard a gunshot," Mrs Njoya said. "They didn't know what had happened to Njoya. I thought he had been arrested for trespassing."
The next morning Mrs Njoya and her husband's brother, Philip Mbugua, went to Nakuru police station to see if he was there. When they arrived police officers told them her husband had been shot dead. Standing in the corridor, in handcuffs, was Mr Cholmondeley. "I didn't talk to Tom," she said. "I couldn't."
Her life has been turned upside down with the death of her husband, but Mrs Njoya said she was ready to forgive Mr Cholmondeley. The feelings of anger she had towards the Delamere heir have gone, she said. "I am a Christian. The Bible says we should forgive others. If Tom confesses then I can forgive him. I just want justice."

British aristocrat had no excuse for killing poacher court told(Times online,25/9/07)

The heir to Kenya’s most famous white settler family appeared in court at the start of his trial for murder amid chaotic scenes today.
Spectators pushed and shoved their way into Nairobi’s colonial era courthouse for a glimpse of the honourable Tom Cholmondeley, 38, who stands accused of killing a black trespasser on his land.
It is the second time in little more than a year that he has been accused of murder in a case that has electrified Kenya, reigniting old tensions over race, land and class.

The sole heir to the fifth Baron Delamere stared impassively at the floor and was forced to close his eyes to avoid the cameras thrust in his face, even after proceedings had begun.
He admits shooting Robert Njoya, a 37-year-old father of four, but says he fired his hunting rifle at the poacher’s dogs.
Mr Cholmondeley’s quivering jaw was the sole sign of emotion as the prosecution outlined its case.
Keriako Tobiko, director of public prosecutions, said Mr Njoya was shot by a high-powered rifle as he fled from Mr Cholmondeley.
"We shall prove that the accused attacked the deceased and his companions as a retaliation or revenge for trespassing and poaching on his land," he said.
"We shall present evidence to prove beyond reasonable doubt that the accused by his unlawful act with malice aforethought caused the death of Robert Njoya.
"The accused has no legally recognised justification or excuse for causing the death of the deceased," he told the court.
A selection of exhibits spilled on to the floor at his feet as spectators pushed closer trying catch every word. Snares, a machete and the victim’s clothing tumbled from boxes and brown paper packages lending an African air to a very British-looking scene.
The upright figures of Mr Cholmondeley’s parents - Lord Delamere and his wife Ann, wearing pearls with the khaki uniform favoured by many white Kenyans - were among his supporters in the wood-panelled courtroom.
Theirs is an increasingly anachronistic way of life and one that has all but disappeared in England.
Today the descendants of white settlers still own some of Kenya’s most fertile farmland or run ranches teeming with wildlife.
Some breed horses for racing and the polo that forms much of the social scene.
Their daughters design jewellery or work on conservation ranches; their sons run safari companies or train as pilots.
Mr Cholmondeley’s friends and family in court today heard evidence from Peter Gichuri, 28, who had been poaching with Mr Njoya on the day he died.
He said they had collected a gazelle from a snare and were planning to hang its carcase from a tree.
"Near the tree we heard a load sound. It was a gunshot. I heard one and then three more so we started running," he said in faltering Swahili.
He and a third poacher were separated from Mr Njoya, and it was only later that they realised he had not fled the scene.
Mr Cholmondeley, who wore a cream linen suit, has pleaded not guilty to murder, maintaining he shot Njoya by accident on the vast Delamere ranch in Kenya’s central Rift Valley in May.
The case is the second in which the Eton-educated aristocrat has been accused of killing a Kenyan on the Soysambu farm, about 75 miles northwest of Nairobi.
He pleaded not guilty in the first as well, claiming to have killed a wildlife ranger he mistook for a thief in self defence. That charge was dropped for lack of evidence last year, prompting widespread outrage.
Supporters of Mr Cholmondeley say he has been portrayed unfairly as a racist, gun-toting toff.
The Delamere family released a statement at the end of today’s proceedings saying they were glad the case was under way after week’s of speculation.
"We are confident in the due process of Kenya’s judicial system and the court. We are grateful for having the court to bring out the truth," it said.
Earlier, Mr Cholmondeley emerged from a prison van wearing a cream linen suit alongside dozens of filthy inmates from Kamiti maximum security prison.
He faces the death penalty if convicted of murder although it is a decade since Kenya carried out an execution.
However, Judge Muga Apondi is allowed under Kenyan law to convict him of a lesser crime if he believes the evidence fails to prove murder.
It is understood that Mr Cholmondeley has been told to prepare himself for a two-year sentence inside Kenya’s notoriously rough prison system.
But with the prosecution’s case resting with the testimony of two self-confessed poachers nothing is certain.
Many ordinary Kenyans fear this case could go the same way as last year’s.
Nancy Njeri Mwenja, a neighbour of the Njoyas, said anything less than a conviction would prompt widespread anger.
"If justice is done then the problem will be solved," she said."If not, then there will be a lot of chaos - there will be no peace."

TIMES ONLINE , 25/9/2007

The end of a dynasty ?

The end of a dynasty? Aristocrat faces second murder trial in Kenya· Delamere heir at centre of highly charged case· Calls for death penalty after shooting on estate Chris McGreal in NairobiSaturday September 23, 2006 .
The Honourable Thomas Cholmondeley, sole heir to some of the largest family landholdings in Kenya and likely to be the next Lord Delamere if the gallows do not intrude, will step into the dock of a Nairobi courtroom on Monday to plead not guilty to a murder charge for a single killing.
But much of Kenya will view the outcome of the trial as a verdict on two deaths, for it is the second time Mr Cholmondeley has appeared in court accused of murder in little more than a year over the shooting of poor black Kenyans.

The first time the prosecution dropped the charges for lack of evidence, although the decision last year was widely taken as proof of the continued influence of the Delamere family more than a century after it led the British aristocratic charge to grab Kenyan land and establish the Rift Valley as a decadent colonial playground.
This time Mr Cholmondeley, 38 and divorced with two sons, faces a tougher time winning the benefit of the doubt in a politically and racially charged trial that has captivated Kenya.
Some of those demanding his neck - he potentially faces execution if convicted, but it is a long time since Kenya hanged anyone - see the trial as a stand against the legacy of imperialism symbolised by the Delameres. No other African country has the almost subservient relationship with the descendants of white settlers found in Kenya.
For others the trial is more personal. Mr Cholmondeley, a 6ft 2in Eton-educated aristocratic anachronism with a reputation for a fierce temper and a scar running the length of his leg after he was attacked by a buffalo in Tanzania, is particularly loathed by many of the Masai villagers living on the edge of this sprawling 22,600 hectare (56,000 acre) estate.
Accounts swirled around in the Kenyan press of his alleged abuse of people venturing on to his land to collect firewood or allowing their livestock to encroach. But the killings have prompted more serious accusations.
"In this case the lies are being orchestrated to make him look like the guy who shoots Africans for sport," Mr Cholmondeley's lawyer, Fred Ojiambo, said.
That is precisely what some Kenyans think.
"The Delameres have always treated Kenyans with contempt," said William ole Ntimama, a Masai MP and long-term critic of Mr Cholmondeley. "They stole our land in the first place and now they think we are part of the wildlife."
Mr Cholmondeley, the financial director of the vast family estates owned by his septuagenarian parents, Lord and Lady Delamere, was first charged with murder last year for killing an undercover ranger with the Kenya Wildlife Service.
Samson ole Sisina was questioning estate staff about the slaughter of a buffalo which, it turned out, had been illegally killed by Mr Cholmondeley. Mr Cholmondeley told police he saw his staff being held at gunpoint and thought they were being robbed. He said Mr Sisina shot at him - it was later established a bullet was fired from the ranger's gun - and he returned five shots from his Luger pistol.
"I am most bitterly remorseful at the enormity of my mistake," Mr Cholmondeley told police.
The police charged him with murder but prosecutors told the court there was insufficient evidence to prove he did not act in self-defence and the charges were withdrawn a month later.
Mr Sisina's widow, Seenoi, was left to rely on handouts to feed their eight children while Mr Cholmondeley returned home. His release prompted widespread protests in Nairobi and from Masai who threatened to occupy Delamere land, a reflection of the long and difficult relationship between the tribe and the family.
The decision to halt the trial was so politically charged that the government lawyer responsible for freeing Mr Cholmondeley was sacked.
In May, a year almost to the day after the murder charge was thrown out, Mr Cholmondeley shot dead another black Kenyan. Nairobi's The Standard newspaper summed up the national outrage on its front page: "Oh no, not again!"
Mr Cholmondeley said he was walking through the bush on his land with a friend when they came across four men carrying a dead impala. He said the men were poachers who set their dogs on him and that he defended himself by attempting to shoot the animals but accidentally killed Robert Njoya.
The men at Mr Njoya's side when he was shot dispute that account but give widely differing versions of what happened. One has said they did not even see Mr Cholmondeley when he opened fire but another has described how they were questioned at gunpoint and then shot at when they tried to escape.
Masai villagers demanded that the landowner "not be allowed to get away with it a second time". The Kenya Human Rights Commission described Mr Cholmondeley as "trigger happy".
Cabinet ministers and tribal leaders tramped to the door of Mr Njoya's widow, Sarah Waithera, ostensibly to offer their condolences. She calls Mr Cholmondeley heartless and an animal.
"I have four young children and no one to buy the food," she said.
While Mr Cholmondeley has been awaiting trial in Nairobi's grim Kamiti high-security prison, the murder charge has prompted wider questioning of the nature and role of these descendants of white settlers. Many ordinary Kenyans wonder how it is that the Delameres continue to cling to their land and retain their influence to the extent that seven years ago Kenya's then president, Daniel arap Moi, awarded Mr Cholmondeley a national medal.
Some are now speaking favourably of the redistribution of land by Zimbabwe's president, Robert Mugabe.
Among the hundreds of people who turned out for Mr Njoya's funeral was Stephen Tarus, a deputy local government minister. "It is time for these white settlers who are killing our sons to be kicked out of the country as they are of no assistance," he told the mourners.
Backstory
The Delameres put Kenya's Rift Valley on the map for many Britons. Hugh Cholmondeley, the 3rd Baron Delamere, arrived in 1903 trailed by a troop of aristocratic friends.
They swindled the Masai out of large tracts of land and turned the valley into a playground for the over-privileged, giving rise to the tag Happy Valley, immortalised in the book and film White Mischief about sex, drugs and murder among the aristocracy in Kenya during the second world war.
The clan kept most of its lands, planes and luxury cars after independence in 1963, currying favour with the government. Daniel arap Moi, president from 1978 to 2002, looked favourably on the family and it still wielded considerable influence.

THE GUARDIAN , 23rd September 2006

Aristocrat in court over shooting

Aristocrat in court over shooting

Thomas Cholmondeley is heir to a 100,000-acre Rift Valley farmThe trial has opened in Nairobi of an aristocrat accused of murdering a black Kenyan man he suspected of poaching on his family's 100,000-acre estate.
Thomas Cholmondeley, 38, great-grandson of one of Kenya's first white settlers, Lord Delamere, denies the murder of 37-year-old stonemason Robert Njoya.
It is the second murder charge the divorced father-of-two has faced.
He admitted shooting a Maasai ranger but denied murder last year. The case was dropped, sparking national outrage.
The accused tampered with the scene after shooting the deceased and two dogs
Keriako Tobiko, prosecutor
Reports say the court was packed to overflowing as the state prosecutor outlined the case against Mr Cholmondeley.
He was led, handcuffed into court, and while surrounded by photographers and television cameramen, sat impassively waiting for the trial to begin.
His father and mother, the fifth Baron, Lord Delamere and Lady Delamere, sat in the court room, surrounded by friends and family, and the family of Mr Njoya were also in court.
Keriako Tobiko, Kenya's director of public prosecutions, offered revenge as motive for the killing, dismissing claims Mr Cholmondeley feared for his safety.
"The accused attacked the deceased and his companions as retaliation or revenge for trespassing and poaching," he told the court.
"The accused was not under any attack or threat from the deceased or any of his companions.
"In an attempt to conceal his crime or hinder investigations the accused tampered with the scene after shooting the deceased and two dogs."
The court was told that Mr Njoya was hit in the pelvis by a bullet and died later from his wounds.
Poacher testimony
BBC correspondent Adam Mynott said the court also heard from one of the two fellow poachers, Peter Gichuhi.
He described how the three men had walked deep into the estate belonging to the Delamere family when suddenly shots rang out.
Mr Gichuhi said he dropped a large blade and a Thomson's Gazelle that they had found trapped in a snare and fled on foot, but never saw Mr Njoya alive again.
Correspondents say this case is likely to spark more controversy in the central Rift Valley where resentment still rankles with the region's Maasai community over the dropping of the last case.

The old Etonian could face the death penalty if convicted.
Mr Cholmondeley and a friend were arrested in May after he phoned the police to tell them about the incident.
He told police that the man had three companions and a pack of dogs and he suspected them of poaching a gazelle.
He said he shot at the group after they set their dogs on him, hitting the man, who died later on the way to hospital, and killing two dogs.
Last year, Mr Cholmondeley admitted shooting Maasai ranger Samson Ole Sisina, but said he acted in self-defence mistaking the warden for an armed robber.
That case highlighted the security fears of landowners and the resentment of the local Maasai population in the Rift Valley region.

BBC News , 25th September 2006