KENYA’S PEACEMAKER

Taranaki Daily News, 27 May 1933, Page 7

KENYA’S PEACEMAKER

CONSTABLE SLATTER’S TACT. SERIOUS RIOT PREVENTED. Police-Constable Slatter, the man who single-handed quelled what looked like becoming a serious riot between gold miners and natives on the new Kenya goldfields at Kakamega, has returned to civilisation. The situation at Kakamega is now . back to normal. Throughout Kenya, Constable Setter’s name is such a household word that when there is any danger of intertribal trouble, he is the man upon whom the Government rely to clear things up. The Nairobi correspondent of tna Sunday Chronicle says: “To-day I can reveal for the first time the inside story of the work this smiling Irishman is doing to keep the-peace in the vast territory for which he is responsible. Slatter is a typical - Irishman,” one of his intimate friends told me. He is always smiling, and always on the spot when there is the slightest suspicion of any trouble. “When complaints began to reach the Kenya Government recently about the situation in the new goldfields, it was Constable Slatter who was told to take the job in hand. By the time he reached the district scores of white prospectors had already started their digging operations in the native territory, and feeling was running high. The position was critical, but Slatter soon put things right. , “There is nobody in the country who knows how to handle the natives like Slatter,” an old prospector told me. “He speaks dozens of different tribal dialects and knows their most secret customs, but nothing would induce him to talk about them. Perhaps that is why the natives respect and like him so much. . . “Constable Slatter first came into prominence hi Kenya by his handling o an ugly situation in 1929 between we Massai and the Lumbwa, two of the greatest cattle-raising tribes in the Colony. They had been rustling, each other’s cattle for some time until intertribal feeling ran so high that spears and hide shields were brought out. It looked as if nothing could stop serious trouble and bloodshed. ‘Then Slatter arrived. He spoke: to the leaders of both tribes in their own language, and when a few days lat the Governor of the Colony hurried to the disturbed area from Nairobi, h found that the two tribes were quite friendly.”