Fitz R S de Souza

Fitzval Remedios Santana Neville de Souza (born 1929, Mumbai), often known as Dr. F. R. S.N. de Souza and Fitz De Souza, is a Kenyan lawyer and ex-politician of Indian origin, who was an important figure in the campaign for independence for Kenya, a member of the Kenyan parliament in the 1960s and Deputy Speaker for several years. He helped provide a legal defence for those accused of Mau Mau activities including the Kapenguria Six, and he was one of the people involved in the Lancaster House conferences held to draw up a constitutional framework for Kenyan independence.

Born to a Goan family in Mumbai, de Souza lived in Zanzibar before settling in Kenya in 1942. Fitz de Souza took a first degree in England and trained as a barrister at Lincoln's Inn.

As a young man in 1952 he joined a team of lawyers from various Commonwealth countries, including the British barrister Denis Nowell Pritt and other lawyers educated in England but not born there, defending Kenyans accused of Mau Mau activities by the British colonial administration, in a series of trials including that of Jomo Kenyatta. Feelings in the country were running high, with some settlers of European ancestry disrupting any legal process for people they considered assassins, while other people in Kenya were convinced of bad faith amongst those involved in the all-white British prosecution. In this atmosphere, de Souza and an Asian colleague faced implied allegations of 'encouraging' defendants to criticise police witnesses, but judges at the East African Court of Appeal supported them, praising their assistance to the court.

For part of the 1950s Fitz de Souza was studying for a PhD at the London School of Economics and was politically active both there and in Kenya. His doctoral thesis was on "Indian Political Organization in East Africa" (1959). He knew Kenyatta and was a major figure in the movement towards an independent Kenya. He has been described during this period both as a "freedom fighter" and as someone "organiz[ing] Africans and Asians against the colour bar".

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