A Death Retold in Truth and Rumour: Kenya, Britain and the Julie Ward Murder (African Articulations, 2)

Re-examines this unresolved murder in Kenya and the underlying role of rumour, the media and inter-state relations on how the death has been reported and investigated. Julie Ann Ward was a British tourist and wildlife photographer who went missing in Kenya's Maasai Mara Game Reserve in 1988 and was eventually found to have been murdered. Her death and the protracted search for her killers, stillat large, were hotly contested in the media. Many theories emerged as to how and why she died, generating three trials, several "true crime" books, and much speculation and rumour. At the core of Musila's study are thefollowing questions: why would this young woman's death be the subject of such strong contestations of ideas and multiple truths? And what does this reveal about cultural productions of truth and knowledge in Kenya and Britain, particularly in the light of the responses to her disappearance of the Kenyan police, the British Foreign Office, and the British High Commission in Nairobi. Building on existing scholarship on African history, narrative, gender and postcolonial studies, the author reveals how the Julie Ward murder and its attendant discourses offer insights into the journeys of ideas, and how these traverse the porous boundaries of the relationship between Kenya and Britain, and, by extension, Africa and the Global North. Grace A. Musila is a lecturer in the English Department of Stellenbosch University, South Africa Frontcover Contents Photograph Timeline Maps Acknowledgements 1 Introduction: Versions of Truth Who was Julie Ward? Exchanges in Contact Zones: Modernity and Africa Fictions of the State 2 Portrait of an Assassin State The Ledger of Kenya’s Assassinations From White Man’s Country to Uhuru 3 Sex, Gender and the ‘Criminal’ State Shadows of the ‘Black Peril’ The Criminal State The Sex Question in the Julie Ward Case 4 Julie Ward’s Death and the Kenyan Grapevine Mapping the Julie Ward Grapevine The Paradoxes of Modernity in Africa Modernity and the Grapevine 5 Wildebeest, ‘Noble Savages’ and Moi’s Kenya: Cultural Illiteracies in the Search for Julie Ward’s Killers In the Footsteps of Mr Kurtz and Baroness Blixen Tourism and the Maasai Question in the Julie Ward Case Double Realities and Trompes l’OEil: Playing Hide and Seek with the Master’s Truths 6 Farms in Africa: Wildlife Tourism, Conservation and Whiteness in Postcolonial Africa Land, Wildlife and Whiteness in Post/Colonial Kenya Poachers and Murderers: Ivory Hunters (1989) and the Cholmondeley Killings Julie Ward and Postcolonial Whiteness in Kenya 7 Fault Lines in the Official British Response to the Julie Ward Murder Binary Lenses in John Ward’s The Animals are Innocent Behind The Scenes: The Foreign Office, the Secret Intelligence Service and the British High Commission in Kenya Fictive Imaginings of British Interests in The Constant Gardener 8 Engaging Modernity Afterword Bibliography Index Julie Ann Ward was a British tourist and wildlife photographer who went missing in Kenya's Maasai Mara Game Reserve in 1988 and was eventually found to have been murdered. Her death and the protracted search for her killers, still at large, were hotly contested in the media. Many theories emerged as to how and why she died, generating three trials, several 'true crime' books, and much speculation and rumour. At the core of Grace Musila's study are the following questions: why would this young woman's death be the subject of such strong contestations of ideas and multiple truths? And what does this reveal about cultural productions of truth and knowledge in Kenya and Britain, particularly in the light of the responses to her disappearance of the Kenyan police, the British Foreign Office, and the British High Commission in Nairobi. Building on existing scholarship on African history, narrative, gender and postcolonial studies, the author reveals how the Julie Ward murder and its attendant discourses offer insights into the journeys of ideas, and how these traverse the porous boundaries of the relationship between Kenya and Britain, and, by extension, Africa and the Global North. Grace Musila is a lecturer in the English Department of Stellenbosch University, South Africa