Grogs & the Yappers

His most ardent admirers often prefer to remember gruff, octogenarian Colonel Ewart Scott Grogan as he was in the old days, when rugged individualism and a respect for white-skinned authority were the stuff of which empires were made. While still an undergraduate at Cambridge, "Grogs" Grogan earned the envy of Empire Builder Cecil Rhodes by walking the 4,500-mile length of Africa from Cape Town to Cairo "just for the hell of it." "You have done what has been the ambition of every explorer," Rhodes wrote, "and it makes me the more certain that we shall complete the [Cape toCairo] railway,* for surely I am not going to be beaten by the legs of an undergraduate."

A few years later, Grogan was defeated for Britain's House of Commons, largely because his opponent dwelled on the time young Grogan, back in Kenya, had set upon and thrashed a young Negro who had just been acquitted of trying to rape a white woman. After his electoral defeat in England, Grogan settled permanently in Kenya.

The Simple Solution. As a forceful and outspoken member of Kenya's legislative council, he was a constant thorn in the side of Colonial Office authority, inveighing now against the menace of the growing Indian community, now against softness in treatment of the blacks, now against the excessive pomp of the colonial governor himself. Instead of wasting money on a swank new government house, young Grogan told testy old Governor Sir Edward Grigg, he ought to be made "to live in a tent." The governor soon thereafter curtailed his original ambitious building plans.

Grogs's manners improved not a jot in the years that followed, and his firm voice never lost its strength. An ardent believer in the future of Kenya, he became one of the colony's richest men, but he never ceased to flay those with whom he disagreed. His suggested solution in the early days of Mau Mau terrorism was characteristically simple: "Catch a hundred of these rascals and hang 25 of them in front of the others . . . they are just black baboons." This view outraged the Colonial Office, and left-wing sentiment in Britain, but the government's later (1953) building of a gallows on the golf course might properly be considered by Grogan an endorsement of his position.

It was the other side of British policy--the political and economic promises given Kenya's nonwhites that most distressed Grogan. Three months ago, still a potent member of the legislative council, Grogan made a final bid to halt Britain's plans for giving the Kenya blacks a greater say in their own government. With calculated absence of tact, he let it be known that the plans were well rooted in a secret government promise to keep the main seat of power firmly entrenched in the hands of an all-white council.

Stepping Down. For the moment at least, the blunt statement effectively ruled out all further cooperation between blacks and whites on the problems of constitutional reform. And for the moment at least, 81-year-old Grogs Grogan was satisfied, as he enjoyed the daily plaudits of his admirers and the company of a bottle of cognac in the bar of the Nairobi hotel which he owns.

Last week, with Kenya's political future still dimmed as a result of his remarks, Ewart Scott Grogan gave up the seat he had held on the legislative council since 1929. Kenya conservatism's most flamboyant defender was quitting on a snort of triumph, even though it was apt to be short-lived. "I had to do something positive amid all that yapping and whispering," he said. "I did it, and now I have retired."

* They didn't.

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