History Of Kenya Research Articles

Reading Praise, Protest, and Subversion in Thomas Wasonga's Tawala Kenya Tawala

Throughout Kenya's history, patriotic music has created and fostered community, and continues to sensitise people's needs, hopes, aspirations, and fears. Patriotic music is often evident and popular, especially during national day celebrations. The Permanent Presidential Music Commission (PPMC), established in 1988 under the then government of President Daniel arap Moi, is the body responsible for selecting and presenting music for entertaining the presidency on these important days as well as during state functions, presidential tours, or on the president's return from international trips. Commentators have observed that the process of selecting the music to be performed for the president entails scrutiny of both the quality of the songs and the message they communicate to ensure that they conform to the social and political ideals of the government. The PPMC's process in deciding on what and whose music is to be selected can be read as a process of curation towards a political agenda, reinforcing government slogans and agendas. A search for literature on music censorship in Kenya disclosed a limited number of articles that either deal with the specific functions of government-appointed music bodies within national holiday celebrations performances, or that engage to varying degrees with the possibility of regarding the said performances as sites of resistance and subversion. The body of scholarly works on censorship within the context of performance and musicology in Kenya remains limited. Using choral music as the main genre, I show how the internal discourse of the songs analysed in this article palimpsestically call attention to the problematics of viewing political choral music as only songs of “praise” while remaining blind to the way in which music negotiates oppressive undercurrents.

Conceptualising nationalism, revolution and opposition in political discourse by use of metaphors: the case of Raila Odinga in Kenya

This paper utilises a critical discourse analysis approach to analyse the different metaphors manifest in Raila Odinga's utterances during political rallies at varied periods in Kenya's history that portray nationalism, revolution and opposition. Raila Odinga is one of Kenya's leading political players and Africa's contemporary revolutionist. He has played a major role in shaping, informing, influencing and maintaining a public attitude towards political leadership and governance in Kenya and Africa. Political discourse needs to be very persuasive in order to win votes and move people, hence we discuss how Raila uses metaphors to persuade and move crowds in an effort to further the themes of revolution, nationalism and patriotism. It is therefore important to study Raila's language use to establish how he epitomises nationalism, revolution and opposition in the country and region. Studying the political discourse of those in power is important because language is a powerful tool that shapes and informs society's behaviour and attitudes. Moreover, language is capable of making war or peace. Language also has power to make presidents. Political discourse thus has implications for the socio-economic development of society. It shifts quite often to guarantee some policy or policy-makers’ survival. The findings of this study indicate that the metaphors served to arouse people’s emotions in regard to the revolutionary and opposition activities while keeping the horrors and negatives of the clamour for political change concealed.

Influence of Transformational Leadership on Change Management in the County Governments in Kenya

The environment in which the County Governments in Kenya operate is dynamic and changes often. The 2017 elections brought in new changes such as 3 female governors for the first time in the history of Kenya. Despite this the county governments continue to apply old and traditional methods to solve new kind of problems. This has led to numerous reported cases of corruption, political rivalry, conflict of interest, mismanagement of funds and undue procedures followed contrary to the existing regulations. The general objective of this study was to establish the influence of transformational leadership on change management among devolved units in Kenya. Specifically, the study aimed at determining the influence of idealized influence, inspirational motivation, intellectual stimulation and individual consideration on change management. This research adopted the Transformational-Transactional Leadership Theory, Kotter’s 8 Step Change Model and ADKAR model of change. A descriptive research design was used in this research. The 47 devolved units in Kenya served as the research population. This research relied on primary data collected through questionnaires. The collected data was converted into quantitative format to make analysis using statistical package for social sciences. The statistics generated were descriptive statistics which included mean and standard deviation and inferential statistics which included both correlation analysis and multiple linear regression analysis. The study revealed a significant positive relationship between idealized influence, inspirational motivation, intellectual stimulation, individual consideration and change management among devolved units. Regression analysis revealed that 51.5% of changes in change management among counties were attributed to the four indicators of transformational leadership. In conclusion, idealized influence, inspirational motivation, intellectual stimulation and individual consideration are essential in enhancing change management. Based on the findings, intellectual stimulation had the greatest influence on change management followed by inspirational motivation while individual consideration and idealized influence had the least influence. As a result, it is recommended that policy makers among the county governments should concentrate on transformational leadership because this improves change management.

On the History of the Restoration of a Multi-Party Political System in Kenya

On the eve of the declaration of independence in 1963, the specifics of the alignment of political forces in Kenya consisted in the struggle for future power between two large nationalist unions – Kenya African National Union (KANU) and Kenya African Democratic Union (KADU). The outcome of this struggle brought victory to KANU and largely determined the vector of the future political history of this country. Under its first President, Jomo Kenyatta (and Chairman of KANU), multiparty Kenya became a de facto one-party state after KADU was dissolved in 1964 and the activities of the opposition Kenya People Union (was emerged in 1965) was banned in 1966. Kenya became officially the one-party state under Kenyatta’s successor D. аrap Moi in 1982. In the process of further establishing the authoritarian regime, he used KANU to extend state-party control to all forms of socio-political life of the country (parliament, judiciary, trade unions, public organizations, etc.). The main guarantor of ensuring order was repressive measures against any forms of dissidence. After the adoption in 1991 of the amendment to the Constitution on the liberalization of the political system, Moi managed to remain as president twice more (after the 1991 and 1997 elections), thanks to the disunity of the opposition represented by parties created on ethnic grounds. Only in 2002, the opposition managed to create a multi-ethnic short-term alliance National Rainbow Coalition led by M. Kibaki. As a result, the first president was elected in Kenya, who was not a member of the party that had been in power for 39 years before. It also put an end to the 24-year «Moi era», which was characterized by the flourishing of corruption, the crisis in the economy, political repression and tribal strife. But the same challenges, and the unresolved land issue among them, again led to the unrest during the next presidential campaign of 2007–2008. The culmination was the largest ethnopolitical crisis in the history of Kenya, which was stopped only thanks to the efforts of international mediators. In 2010 a new constitution was adopted, in which an attempt was made to reform the political system in order to prevent the aggravation of interethnic conflicts in the future during presidential election campaigns in multiparty Kenya. The purpose of the main provisions of the Constitution is to make politics more inclusive, to expand the participation of the population in decision-making, to overcome of the population distrust to their results of a presidential elections.

Promised Land: Settlement Schemes in Kenya, 1962 to 2016

Smallholder settlement schemes have played a prominent role in Kenya's contested history of state-building, land politics, and electoral mobilization. This paper presents the first georeferenced dataset documenting scheme location, boundaries, and attributes of Kenya's 533 official settlement schemes, as well as the first systematic data on scheme creation since 1980. The data show that almost half of all government schemes were created after 1980, as official rural development rationales for state-sponsored settlement gave way to more explicitly welfarist and electoralist objectives. Even so, logics of state territorialization to fix ethnicized, partisan constituencies to state-defined territorial units pervade the history of scheme creation over the entire 1962–2016 period, as theorized in classic political geography works on state territorialization. While these “geopolitics” of regime construction are fueled by patronage politics, they also sustain practices of land allocation that affirm the moral and political legitimacy of grievance-backed claims for land. This fuels on-going contestation around political representation and acute, if socially-fragmented, demands for state-recognition of land rights. Our findings are consistent with recent political geography and interdisciplinary work on rural peoples' demands for state recognition of land rights and access to natural resources. Kenya's history of settlement scheme creation shows that even in the country's core agricultural districts, where the reach of formal state authority is undisputed, the territorial politics of power-consolidation and resource allocation continues to be shaped by social demands and pressures from below.

Kenya and the Second World War: A review of the historiographical landscape

AbstractThis article examines the landscape of scholarship on Kenya and the Second World War. Inspired by various scholars over the years lamenting about the dearth of publications on Africa and the Second World War, the article outlines the context of these observations as far as Kenya and the war are concerned; examines the nature of the literature on Kenya and the war; and evaluates how the publications measure up to the standard in the field while at the same time bringing us up to date on the existing literature on the field. What is the nature of the historiography on Kenya and the Second World War? What kind of publications exist on Kenya and the Second World War? How many books, monographs, articles, and chapters and even newspapers have been published on Kenya and the Second World War since the war began? What kinds of approaches do they bear in their analysis of Kenya and the war? What kinds of issues do they focus on and how do they focus on them? Are they comprehensive in their approaches and analyses? What are some of the problems and challenges of working on the history of Kenya and the Second World War? Those, in a nutshell, are some of the issues this article seeks to address

The Impact of COVID-19 on the Kenyan Economy

The COVID-19 shocks have affected Kenya's economy in several ways. They include contraction of the economy, productivity losses, and social welfare losses. The preliminary data so far indicates that Kenya's economy will contract in 2020 by -0.3%. However, the contraction could be as high as five per cent. The contraction rivals the contraction of 1992. Over the 30 years, the years 1992, 2008, and 2020 will be the most difficult in recent Kenya's history. They should take a more targeted approach. Policymakers should devise specific social welfare infrastructure that can target the population already rendered vulnerable by the Pandemic. The topmost priority now is to deal with the public health crisis; which is suppressing the infections

“It’s a Battle for Information”: Mau Mau as the Boogeyman of Decolonization

This paper sought to place a collection of newsreels from Pathé News about the Mau Mau rebellion in Kenya into the historical narrative of the revolt. The current understanding of the Mau Mau has not included a comprehensive discussion of the coverage of the group and the way that news of the revolt shaped the history that follows it. What was observed throughout the reels was an increasingly hostile propaganda campaign against the Mau Mau. This stronger rhetoric coincided with greater atrocities committed by the British as the war dragged on. The main findings of the paper were that the Mau Mau became a kind of “boogeyman” for the British about the dangers of decolonization, as well as the way that the news about the revolt served to paint the revolt in explicitly racist terms. The Mau Mau play an important role in the history of Kenya, and collections like that of Pathé News help to illuminate the narrative that the British developed for the independence struggle.

Ethnic or Economic Violence: The Real Cause of Kenya's 2007 Election Violence

Violence between various ethnic groups when sudden and out of context may not be about ethnicity at all. In this paper I seek to unveil the causes of the violence in Kenya after the 2007 elections by examining Kenya’s economic and political history. I begin, in Section I, with a brief overview of the post-election violence in Kenya, noting the overly simplistic approach taken by many Western Media sources in pointing to ethnic hatred as the root cause of this violence. In Section II, I review the history of Kenya’s economy during colonialism, and the level of inequality among Africans under the colonial regime. Next, in Section III, I explain the independence movement in Kenya, noting that the Luo and Kikuyu represented the two major poles of influence in the anti-colonialist movement. In Section IV, I then document how ethnicity politics came to dominate Kenya’s post-colonial political economy, first with Kenyatta and then with Moi. In Section V analyze ethnicity politics, arguing that the colonial policies set the stage for a competition over resources, which evolved into ethnic competition. Finally, in Section VI, I reassess the conflict in Kenya by incorporating Kenya’s economic and social history and the nature of ethnic politics. I conclude that ethnicity is only a superficial cause of the violence in Kenya, and that fundamentally the violence is the result of an inadequate state capacity to ensure the basic needs of its citizens. In Section VII I summarize the historical factors that have influenced the violence in Kenya.

Hair Is Not Just Hot Air: Narratives about Politics of Hair in Kenya

In an article titled “Historic Hair” in The Economist, Muthoni wa Kirima, an 83-year-old Mau Mau freedom fighter, typifies her long, dreadlocked hair as “the history of Kenya.” I use Muthoni's symb...

Echinococcus spp. in central Kenya: a different story.

Research on cystic echinococcosis (CE) has a long history in Kenya, but has mainly concentrated on two discrete areas, Turkana and Maasailand, which are known to be foci of human CE in Africa. Here, we report on a survey for CE in livestock from central to northeastern Kenya, from where no previous data are available. A total of 7,831 livestock carcasses were surveyed. CE prevalence was 1.92% in cattle (n = 4,595), 6.94% in camels (n = 216), 0.37% in goats (n = 2,955) and 4.62% in sheep (n = 65). Identification of the parasite was done using an RFLP-PCR of the mitochondrial nad1 gene, which had been validated before against the various Echinococcus taxa currently recognized as distinct species. From a total of 284 recovered cysts, 258 could be identified as Echinococcus granulosus sensu stricto (n = 160), E. ortleppi (n = 51) and E. canadensis (n = 47) by RFLP-PCR of nad1. In cattle, fertile cysts occurred mostly in the lungs and belonged to E. ortleppi (31 of 54), while the vast majority were sterile or calcified cysts of E. granulosus s.s.. Most fertile cysts in camels belonged to E. canadensis (33 of 37); sterile or calcified cysts were rare. Goats harboured fertile cysts of E. ortleppi (n = 3)--which is the first record in that host species--and E. canadensis (n = 1), while all cysts of E. granulosus were sterile. Only sterile cysts were found in the three examined sheep. Typically, all cysts in animals with multiple infections belonged to the same species, while mixed infections were rare. Our data indicate that the epidemiological situation in central to northeastern Kenya is clearly different from the well-studied pastoral regions of Turkana and Maasailand, and the apparently low number of human CE cases correlates with the infrequent occurrence of E. granulosus s.s.

Does Local Ethnic Segregation Lead to Violence?: Evidence from Kenya

When ethnic conflict is likely people seek safety in homogenous neighborhoods, but does this ethnic segregation decrease the likelihood of communal violence? This paper argues that local segregation causes violence by eroding interethnic trust. Although segregation reduces the likelihood of violent disputes between individuals, the possibility of positive interethnic contact is also lower in segregated areas. Where levels of interethnic trust are low, it is easier for political leaders and other extremists to build support for communal violence. I demonstrate that segregation increases the incidence of violence using a new dataset measuring ethnic composition and violence across approximately 700 small localities in Kenya's Rift Valley Province during Kenya's 2007/08 post-election crisis. Because segregation is likely endogenous to violence, I draw on Kenya's history of land settlement to instrument for segregation. I also demonstrate that it is unlikely that local segregation increases violence by increasing groups' organizational capacity for violence.

Engendering an Alternative Approach to Otherness in African Women's Autobiography

This paper proposes an alternative approach to the reading of otherness in African women's autobiography. It is inspired by the Oloto proverbial of the Yoruba people of South West Nigeria which projects otherness as the uniqueness and power of the individual to speak for ‘self’ as an ‘other’. It examines the strategies employed by Wambui Otieno in her autobiography, Mau Mau's Daughter: A Life History to celebrate her otherness as defined by the Oloto proverb and demonstrates how the socio-political history of Kenya has shaped her life narrative. It concludes that her autobiography exemplifies the uniqueness of the female subject-narrator within the ethos of communality in African societies.

“The cat with nine lives”: Paul Ngei and the making of modern Kenya

Every Kenyan knows a story about the Kamba politician Paul Ngei. Ngei fought for Kenya's freedom from British colonial rule during the 1950s, then remained at the pinnacle of the political system in independent Kenya for almost three decades. Yet despite Ngei's prominence, he is almost entirely absent from the large volume of academic scholarship on Kenya. Bringing together testimony from his remaining family and past political associates, as well as utilizing archival records, this article presents a portrait of Ngei. It demonstrates the important role he played in shaping the history of colonial and independent Kenya. As one of the greatest orators in Kenya's history, with an ability to rally rural support like none other, Ngei was a profound threat for Kenya's presidents, especially Jomo Kenyatta. Ngei's ability to hold on to power despite controversy and scandal led the press to nickname him “the cat with nine lives”.

Kenya: between hope and despair, 1963-2011

On December 12, 1963, people across Kenya joyfully celebrated independence from British colonial rule, anticipating a bright future of prosperity and social justice. As the nation approaches the fiftieth anniversary of its independence, however, the people's dream remains elusive. During its first five decades Kenya has experienced assassinations, riots, coup attempts, ethnic violence, and political corruption. The ranks of the disaffected, the unemployed, and the poor have multiplied. In this authoritative and insightful account of Kenya's history from 1963 to the present day, Daniel Branch sheds new light on the nation's struggles and the complicated causes behind them. Branch describes how Kenya constructed itself as a state and how ethnicity has proved a powerful force in national politics from the start, as have disorder and violence. He explores such divisive political issues as the needs of the landless poor, international relations with Britain and with the Cold War superpowers, and the direction of economic development. Tracing an escalation of government corruption over time, the author brings his discussion to the present, paying particular attention to the rigged election of 2007, the subsequent compromise government, and Kenya's prospects as a still-evolving independent state.

Reform and Political Impunity in Kenya: Transparency without Accountability

Abstract:Kenya has been going through a period of political reform since 1991, when section 2A of the constitution, which had made Kenya a de jure one-party state, was repealed. This reform followed a prolonged struggle on the part of citizens both inside and outside the country, and their call for democracy was one that, after the fall of the Berlin Wall, was embraced by Western countries. Via diplomatic pressure and conditionality on aid, Western donors played an important role in the repeal of section 2A, the return of multiparty elections, and the creation and reform of a number of political institutions and offices via a separation of powers. But although these changes were supported by the political opposition and much of civil society in Kenya, they did not rise organically from the national struggle over political power. Nor did these reforms lead to a determination in the country to hold the political elite accountable for their transgressions. This article argues that modern Kenya's history of economic and political inequality has resulted in a population whose very divisions make it difficult for politicians to be disciplined. Accountability has two dimensions: the horizontal accountability among branches of government that is assured by checks and balances, and the vertical accountability of the state to its citizens. Vertical accountability depends on a constituency of like-minded citizens defending broad national interests, or an electorate with a collective identity or set of identities attached to the Kenyan nation. But in the absence of such shared goals and demands, narrow personal and local interests prevail, and politicians remain unaccountable to the nation as a whole.

Anticolonial Homelands across the Indian Ocean: The Politics of the Indian Diaspora in Kenya, ca. 1930–1950

ON THE VERY FIRST PAGE OF THE very first “nationalist” history of Kenya, published in 1966, Carl Rosberg and John Nottingham proclaimed that the “largely middle class oriented and religiously fragmented Indian population played only a marginal role in the expanding conflict between the white power elite and dominated African population.”1 While this book opened up new and exciting avenues of research into the history of nationalism in colonial Kenya, it closed off the same spirit of inquiry for the study of the politics of Indian immigrants, who appeared irrelevant and marginal to the story of anticolonialism in the country. Furthermore, it anticipated two interrelated arguments made by scholars three decades later. First, diasporas are a priori assumed to be politically insular, leading to a focus on their internal social and economic organization. Second, territorially and racially bound nationalist narratives of anticolonialism are privileged over diasporic articulations of the same, thus reinforcing the myth of their political obscurity. A closer analysis of the politics of diasporic Indians in Kenya calls these conclusions into question. While the 1940s did witness a political fragmentation among Indians along seemingly religious lines, as highlighted by Rosberg and Nottingham, those cleavages did not signify Indians’ marginality within the anticolonial conflict between European settlers and Africans. Rather, the debates that took place underscored the deep political engagement of a diasporic Indian community with anticolonial nationalist movements in both Kenya and India. In moving the study of diasporas beyond social identity to explore anticolonial nationalism across territorial boundaries, and in taking seriously the political ideas that emerge in diasporic contexts, we can create a new paradigm for analyzing diasporic politics that is located squarely and simultaneously within both the homeland that migrants leave and the hostland where they arrive. In this conceptualization, diasporas emerge as the embodiment of transnational history, in whose political articulations the extraterritorial resonance of anticolonial nationalist discourses can be identified. Scholars have situated contemporary South Asian diasporic identity in between

‘Truth be Told’: Some Problems with Historical Revisionism in Kenya

Historical revisionism is equally appealing to state and non-state actors during periods of intense socio-political change, especially following civil conflict, when the need for unification is paramount. This applies to Kenya as it struggles to come to terms with the post-electoral crisis of 2007/08. The need to redress state-orchestrated amnesia about Mau Mau and the struggle for independence is also important; encouraged by first president Jomo Kenyatta, ostensibly in the interests of national unity, the trend was continued by his successor. Since Mau Mau was unbanned in 2003, and a lawsuit was brought by veterans with the support of a human rights group against the British government in 2009, there has been an upsurge in public memorialisation and debate about the liberation movement in Kenya. This has been accompanied by increasing calls for ‘true’ history to be written. Veterans have persuaded the state to support a project on rewriting Kenya history, which links to efforts to commemorate heroes and broaden official definitions of heroism to include a wide range of ethnic communities and rebel leaders from different periods of anti-colonial resistance. These themes are reflected in two new history exhibitions developed by National Museums of Kenya (NMK), and in the local media, which has done more to popularise these histories and commemorative initiatives than any scholarly texts. This article draws on research interviews and the literature on resistance, social memory and patriotic nationalism to problematise and analyse these developments, within the context of constitutional change.

Mungiki, Vernacular Organization and Political Society in Kenya

ABSTRACTThis article uses the concept of ‘political society’ as unfolded by the ‘subaltern studies’ in India to shed new light on present‐day political actors and democratic transitions in Africa. It discusses the political practices and discursive terrains of organizations within ‘really existing’ civil society that are based on identities and regarded as outside legitimate civil society. It looks at politics from below, taking the example of the 2007 elections in Kenya, and the role of Mungiki, an organization characterized by the intersection of class, generation, religion and ethnicity. Mungiki builds on Kenya's history and rich archive of indigenous popular culture. It originated in the early 1990s’ turmoil of ‘ethnic clashes’ and population displacement and now operates in rural and poor urban areas, providing income opportunities, service delivery and extortion/protection. During elections, sections of Mungiki have been recruited by political leaders and functioned as violent militia; concurrently, it seeks representation in formal and parliamentary politics. The organization is distinct from ‘respectable’ segments of Kenya's civil society who participate in NGO activities and mainstream churches. The article ends by calling for an inclusive and non‐normative approach to the study of state–civil society engagement that recognizes culturally based discourses and organizations when analysing the transitions to and the broadening of democracy in post‐colonial societies.

Governance, Technology and the Search for Modernity in Kenya

An Information and Communications Technology policy that produces broad access quickly is better than one that does not. Accordingly, success in ICT policymaking can be measured by three empirical measures: speed of passage, scope of implementation, and distribution, as well as one normative measure, process. Process represents an important normative dimension of ICT policymaking. Process measures the extent to which the ICT policymaking involves the citizenry, as represented by individuals, civil society groups, local private sector groups, and ideally, urban and rural residents. Kenya is a case of slow speed of passage, low scope of implementation, low distribution, but high process. The political history of Kenya‘s ICT policymaking explains why this county, with such capable people and relatively open ICT policymaking, has struggled to keep up with its poorer neighbors.