The tale of a 1978 Kenyan number plate on a car in 1958

Many movies that are set in historical points have the singular challenge of getting all the factual details

right. This is never easy. The 1985 adventure film King Solomon Mines was a fantastic but horrible little tale full of anachronisms and replete with inaccuracies.  Based on the book of the same name by Sir H. Rider Haggard, the book created the genre known as lost world. I remember reading this book in the eighties and being fascinated with the adventures in dangerous lands full of cannibals, witches, powerful African kings, and priceless wealth that was only rumored about. (It helped dehumanize Africans making the colonists perceive us as subhuman, an idea that still persists to this very day.) So what is that thing, anachronism?

Anachronism is a literal device placing someone or something out of its proper time period. It comes from a compound Greek word meaning ‘against time’ to show events, places or things that are out of their time. This technique is sometimes used to make it easier for people to understand stories set in a different historical and social plane.

This is widely used in popular culture that is movies, music, and film. Their use can be either deliberate or accidental. For example, Martin Lawrence starred in Black Knight (2001), a comedy that used anachronisms effectively for comedic purposes. Other times it may be accidental showing poor research on the part of the scriptwriter and producer.

Breathe (2017) is the true story of Robin Cavendish, an activist for the rights of disabled people and a responaut.  This is a person who is permanently dependent on a ventilator for breathing.  Robin became one after contracting polio while on honeymoon in Kenya in 1958.  With his wife Diana, the couple had only one son, Jonathan Cavendish, the film’s producer.  Robin died in 1994 aged 64 years, one of the longest living survivors of polio.

The movie has certain scenes depicting Kenya in 1958.  These were shot on location in South Africa. They are the source of several anachronisms.  A blue plane lands with the newlyweds in Kenya (6.09).  The yellow subtitle records this in Kenya, 1958.  At the end of the airstrip, a buxom African woman runs her vegetable stall.  She is unconcerned with the plane landing in this dirt airstrip.  She has put an advert for oranges and bananas, and it’s in English.  This is highly unlikely since there were few Africans who could speak the English language leave alone a Mama Mboga selling by an airstrip. 

The newlyweds sampling Kenyan tea at a Mombasa-based tea brokerage company. (6;35) The newlyweds take a ride in the pristine African wilderness on a Land Rover series 1 registration KTT 8211. (6;55) According to Kenya vehicle registration records, vehicles were registered in the format LLL NNN (L standing for a letter while N stood for digit).

Between 1920 – 1980, vehicles were registered in 14 districts across Kenya. All had a uniform letter ‘K’ standing for Kenya, followed by a second letter denoting a region, and a final letter for the time period.

First, KTT 8211 would not have been possible since this number plate utilizes four digits.  This is obviously contrary to the law. Secondly, the ‘KT’ series was issued in 1977 for the Mombasa region.  The ‘KA’ series was used in Mombasa between 1950- 1966. It is therefore impossible for the KTT 8211 series to have been issued in 1958.

From 1980, the number plate changed from a regional to a sequential system.  In 1989, as the number plates came to an end, Kenya introduced a new format, LLL NNNL.  The additional ‘L’ guaranteed that every generation of the number plates would register 23,976 vehicles. (A generation means KAA 001A – KAZ 999Z.) There are projected to be 23 generations with the exemption of KAF, KAI, KAO. 

This means 551,448 vehicles will be registered at the end of ‘KZZ 999Z’.  The first generation ran from 1989 to 2007.  The second-generation (KBA) run for seven years until 2014 while the third (KCA) was issued between 2014 – 2020. We are currently in the fifth generation (KDA 001A) which was issued in September 2020.

This anachronism is not obvious to any Kenyan. It is also near impossible for the international viewer to spot it, but someone has gotten it for you.