This panel will explore the impact of personality, parochialism, ethnic identity and corruption on Kenyan politics between 1957 and 2002. A multi-disciplinary and grassroots view of politics will be presented in order to explore the continuities from periods of political transition in both colonial and post-colonial eras.
The aim of this panel, to be made up entirely of young scholars, is to explore continuities in the Kenyan political system by examining the connections between some of its most conspicuous features: personality, parochialism, ethnicity and corruption. It is anticipated that the diverse interests of the participants will be reflected in a strong multi-disciplinary element to the panel, which will incorporate political, historical and anthropological studies. Based on local examples, it is intended that the papers will offer a view from below of politics throughout the period, and focus on the expectations of the electorate and the extent to which their representatives were able or willing to meet them. The panel will begin with the birth of African electoral politics in the late 1950s, and bring the debates up to date with analysis of the 2002 elections and the aftermath. Continuities and changes in the political culture at grassroots level and methods of popular mobilization will also be explored. Drawing on a variety of theoretical insights, the papers will bridge the divide between the colonial and post-colonial periods. Among the issues to be discussed are the role of individuals in cultivating disorder for political and financial gain and the formation of politicised and localised ethnic identities. Through comparisons with other major periods of transition, the extent to which the NARC election success in 2002 can be seen to have been a significant turning point in the daily lives of Kenyans will be assessed.
Drawing on extensive archival and oral research, the paper will discuss the Central Province constituencies during a series of elections held either side of independence in 1963. These elections took place in the aftermath of the Mau Mau rebellion in the region. Following the military defeat of the insurgents, the colonial government turned to ensuring the political victory of its own allies among the African population of Central Province and the disenfranchisement of Mau Mau sympathisers and activists. The paper will assess the long-term impact of such meddling with the electoral process and the murky precedents set for the post-colonial era.
This paper will seek to demonstrate three key continuities that run through Kenyan politics from the colonial era to the current multi-party state. These continuities are both structural and cultural and demonstrate the relative lack of change in the core practice of Kenyan politics over the last fifty years. Moreover, the explanatory power of the three continuities when taken together illuminates the importance of the legacy of the colonial period and the forces that shaped the emergence of the one-party state. The first major continuity to be identified is the tension between political centralization and majimboism. It will be argued that this tension was essentially a product of the colonial period where the contradiction between dominant nationalist movements and fearful minority groups was established. This conflict between majority and minority was fundamental to the formation of the one-party state and is also crucial for understanding Moi’s strategy upon coming t o power and the development of the pro-democracy movement in the 1980s. The second continuity the paper will address is the attitude of Kenya’s dominant personalities towards power and political participation of Kenya’s dominant. This attitude can be characterised as a grudging acceptance of the right to some form of political participation combined with a severe reluctance to give up power. The impact of this attitude can be seen throughout the one-party state and in KANUs actions in the early multi-party period. The final continuity to be described is the prevalence of a bureaucratic-authoritarian mode of governance. This stems mainly from the inheritance of the structure of the colonial state, a state which was much better placed to control and exclude than to consult and include. It will be argued that the combination of these three continuities can explain much of the continuity in Kenyan politics over the last fifty years. That all of these continuities have the ir roots in the colonial period only serves to demonstrate the importance of placing current events in their historical context.
The blame for many of Kenya’s ‘problems’ is often laid squarely at the politicians’ door. Politicians are, for example, viewed as corrupt, as inciters of ethnic violence, and/or as ambitious opportunists. However, while past and current actions of many of Kenya’s politicians do little to disprove these assertions, in general, too little thought is given to why politicians act as they do, to their tactics of political survival and to the expectations of their supporters.
This paper proposes that an existing pervasive cultural logic of political legitimacy and loyalty in Kenya, which emphasises direct and personalised assistance, encourages aspiring and acting politicians to behave in ways that have a negative impact on citizens’ welfare. In brief this understanding of legitimacy: causes great political significance to be attached to the political theatrics of gift giving and to public displays of wealth and personal style, encourages the development of personality cults, encourages corruption at the same time that it is nominally vilified, eases defection encouraging almost incessant politicking, increases the political productivity of ethno-nationalism, and in certain areas promotes assertions of difference and a discourse of marginalised minorities. It is therefore naïve to think that a change of faces will solve Kenya’s problems; the roots of which lay deeper in public understandings of how the political system does and should work.
This paper examines the power relations that exist between donors and advocacy NGOs in Kenya. The main research question is whether power asymmetries influence the design and implementation of advocacy campaigns undertaken by donor-funded NGOs. This issue is addressed within the context of a case study of the National Civic Education Program (NCEP), an ambitious enterprise that aimed to improve the level, and quality, of public participation through the design and delivery of a standardized national civic education curriculum. In 1999, NCEP’s architects, a collective of ten of Kenya’s main donors, agreed to pool financial and administrative support for civic education within a central management structure. According to donors, the ‘basket funding’ model enhanced the program’s coherence and strengthened the effectiveness of donor partnerships with civic education providers. However, many of the NGOs that participated in NCEP describe the relationship between donors and civ ic education implementers as an asymmetrical one; critics argue that NCEP’s donor-appointed management structure dominated both the design and delivery of civic education in the run up to the 2002 election. This paper explores the notion of ‘local ownership’ within the context of civic education programs and investigates whether the donors’ alleged violation of this principle compromised NCEP’s aims and objectives.