Grappling with the Past: Wrestling and Performative Identity in Kenya

Abstract

This article explores the decline of indigenous forms of wrestling under colonial rule in Kenya as well as contemporary attempts to revive the sport. Highlighting the role the colonial and post-colonial state played in marginalising ‘traditional' sports reveals a long history of hierarchical control of sport in Kenya. Local responses to this top-down approach also show how cultural lobbies and grass-roots organisations have tried to preserve, reinvent and market the sport as a moral symbol of masculine ethnic pride and cultural identity amidst a sometimes tense political landscape. With the current historiography of sport in Africa heavily imbalanced in favour of studies that highlight the adaptation of European sports within the continent, this article also serves as an initial examination of the historical roots and colonial decline of indigenous sporting traditions in Kenya.