African Oral Law and the Critique of Colonial Modernity in The Trial of Jomo Kenyatta

In his book The Trial of Jomo Kenyatta (1955), author Montagu Slater claims to offer a "fair" and "true" account of the Kenyan nationalist leader's trial in a British colonial court. However, by including a mere fraction of the 2000+-page trial transcript, Slater amplifies certain aspects of the proceedings, including an instance of literal amplification: at one point, the judge considers whether or not an audio recording of one of Kenyatta's public speeches to a group of mostly illiterate Kenyans is admissible as documentary evidence. In this moment, the question is asked: what, according to the law, is a "document," particularly when the culture in question is an oral culture? This essay situates Slater's representation of this question, and the court's answer, in the context of African oral law, conflicts between orality and literacy in colonial Kenya, and the war with Mau Mau, the militant liberation movement that Kenyatta was accused of leading. Slater's text ultimately offers, through selective amplification, a crucial critique of colonial law, showing how its claims to modernity are undermined by its inability to keep up with its own narrative of progress, whereas African "traditions" freely adapt to and, thereby, redefine modernity in a moment of intense political, cultural, and legal crisis.