"Natives" and "Nonnatives"
The strain on the community resulting from the separation of segments of the sections and the reuniting of these segments according to ethnic ties rather than section allegiance was continued and reinforced by the ability of some members to achieve what was, under British rule, the politically and economically more desirable status of Arab. The interest in doing this is seen in the fact that continued appeals from Swahili to the colonial government led, in 1934, to the ruling that
persons who could prove before a magistrate that one parent was of nonnative descent could press a claim for nonnative status, thus opening the possibility for Twelve Tribes claims. . . . Until World War II bickering continued about whether Twelve Tribes persons should be allowed to claim Arab status as nonnatives. Technically, "Swahili" were given Arab status in 1952, but relations between the two communities remained strained (Stroebel 1979:40–41).
The interest in being classified as an "Arab," that is, a nonnative, which had provided tax benefits for decades, received further impetus with the outbreak of World War II when food rationing was instituted. Those classified as natives were given coupons to buy cornmeal, while those classified as Arabs were, like Asians, allowed to buy rice (Kindy 1972:109). This was especially significant because of the meanings attached to rice and to cornmeal. For the Mombasa Swahili, eating cornmeal is inappropriate for proper group members. True Swahili of noble birth (waungwana , sing. mwungwana ), that is, those without slave forebears, simply do not eat simi , the heavy cornmeal paste[3] eaten throughout East Africa or, at least, do not let it be known that they do. Rice is the starch suitable to waungwana, and not to have it is a degrading and shameful indication of abject poverty and/or low taste.
Informants report that even for those who received it, the rationing did not provide enough rice for it to be the dietary staple, as the Twelve Tribes members I know insist it must be. Still, being closed off from legal access to the noble grain while their fellow group members, the ones claiming Omani origin, had it was an extremely bitter experience that is remembered with rancor more than forty years later.
Crucially for the thesis being developed here, the resentment went not only to the government[4] but also, and mainly, to the group members who claimed Omani roots. Again, this united part of the Nine Tribes with most of the Three Tribes against the Swahili Arab subgroup drawn from both.