Postcolonial Kenya Research Articles

Interrogating Impediments to Women Participation in Political Leadership among the Abagusii in Post-Colonial Kenya

The trend on elective political positions in the Gusii region shows that, women have not been getting equal opportunities as their male counterparts in elective seats of members of parliament, the seats of the governor, senator and members of county assembly in the counties in Gusii region. The objective of the study was to establish challenges to women participation in political leadership among the Abagusii Community from 1963 up to 2015. The study was guided by the feminist theory. According to this theory, the discrepancies in the decision-making in societies emerge from a social framework that espouses inequality. This study was based on qualitative approach and phenomenological design. The target population was made up of 682,481 women participants from the 8 Sub-Counties and 29 wards in Kisii County from where a sample size of 422 respondents was sampled purposively. The research instruments were interviews and focused group discussions from key informants. Archival sources were used as well as secondary data from books, articles published in journals and periodicals, unpublished articles and newspapers. Piloting was carried out in Kisii County on 10% of the sample size to test dependability and credibility. The data was analyzed thematically and presented qualitatively in the narrative form. The findings of this study are that cultural factors, stereotyping of women, economic factors, political barriers, lack of husband support, stigmatization, and gender-based violence are among the factors that have contributed to low participation of women in political leadership among the Abagusii community. The recommendations of the study were change in cultural perception towards women, gender equality awareness, emphasis on women empowerment and amendment of political party policies this will bring gender equality in leadership among the Abagusii

Evolution of Kenyan Citizenship Regime: Pre- and Post-2010 Eras

Abstract Debates on citizenship are never conclusive as this is an evolving idea and practice. Formal citizenship in Kenya has its genesis prior to independence when the country was drafting its 1963 Independence Constitution. Before then, most Kenyans were considered subjects by the colonial administration, governed by a racialised hierarchical colonial order. This phenomenon changed in postcolonial Kenya as the nation’s primary focus was on eliminating these racial hierarchies to include those previously excluded as citizens. However, some of the statutory provisions on citizenship were contentious as they promoted discrimination and inequalities. The endorsement of Kenya’s new constitution in 2010 is termed transformative as it addresses the controversial provisions on citizenship. Through secondary source research, this paper aims to trace the development of formal citizenship in Kenya from colonial times to date and maps out the milestones made over time and space in citizenship on its acquisition, duality and statelessness.

Colonial legacies and wealth inequality in Kenya

This article discusses the evolution of Kenya's wealth distribution from the late 1950s to the present. Utilizing previously untapped probate and administration sources, it measures the share of Kenyans leaving estates at death, and maps how this wealth-owning strata has changed over time. It shows a growth in African estates after independence, and by the 1980s roughly 8 % of Kenyans left estates at death, largely a consequence of land titling and land reform. Meanwhile, European estates dwindled as settlers divested. Since the 1990s, Nairobi-based estate-holders are growing in share, reflecting the importance of urban property to the portfolios of the wealthy. Measures of top wealth shares suggest high wealth inequality in both the late colonial period and the present, but today's wealth inequality is driven by the uneven distribution of housing wealth, more so than by agricultural land. These findings illustrate how a variety of colonial legacies influenced wealth accumulation in postcolonial Kenya.

Socio-Cultural Dynamics and Women’s Identity in Post-Colonial Kenya: An Interrogation of Marjorie Oludhe Macgoye's Coming to Birth and the Present Moment

Published two decades after Kenya's independence, Marjorie Oludhe Macgoye's Coming to Birth and The Present Moment are post-colonial writings that explore the struggle for both national and personal identity. Through the eyes of Marjorie Oludhe Macgoye, the mentioned texts explore the construction of women's identity through social and cultural dynamics. Leaning on the Feminist Theory that seeks to provide an understanding of the women's and girls' situations, roles and responsibilities in the societies they live in, within the cultural and societal dynamics and expectations, this paper seeks to analyze the social and cultural dynamics in the post-colonial societies the two texts are set in, in relation to the individual identity of the female characters. The paper has the objective of interrogating how the social and cultural dynamics work to shape the identity of female characters. Consequently, this paper concludes that the identity of the female characters in Coming to Birth and The Present Moment is shaped by societal social and cultural dynamics and norms. The female characters, through self-autonomy and active participation in societal aspects, reassert themselves in a bid to reconstruct and accord themselves a new image, different from that which had been shaped and distorted, given the patriarchal socio-cultural dynamics. The paper concludes that the female characters in Coming to Birth and The Present Moment remain resolute to eventually egress from the subjective societal demands and dictates to attain cultural and social independence

‘Back Home in the States’: The African’s Quest for Home in Postcolonial Africa in Chains of Junkdom by Okiya Omtata Okoiti

ABSTRACT This paper is a reading of the Kenyan psychological drama, Chains of Junkdom by Okiya Omtata Okoiti as an artistic contribution to a long-running debate on the definition of home in postcolonial Kenya. The two major positions in the debate are shown to have their origins in colonialism. The first position holds that a home is a house that is located in a territory deemed to belong to the ethnic community of the house owner, and is a locus of the correct social relationships, that is, of the immediate and extended family, the clan, and the ‘tribe.’ The second position insists that a house is a home to the person who owns and lives in it. The reading focuses on the relationship that the main character in the play, an African who is back in his country of origin after spending several years in the USA, has with a house he builds as he tries to make a home in his ‘native land’. An examination of the relationship surfaces the link between the debate on the definition of home to postcolonial identity-based politics that gives the debate its enduring quality in Kenya.

Eye to I: Panoptic Muslim Surveillance and Warsan Shire’s Poetics of Liberation

In 1786, French architect Jeremy Bentham envisioned the panopticon, a structure in which prison cells surround an opaque tower where guards surveil the prisoners. In the panopticon, prisoners could be observed by guards without knowing when they were being watched, making them trained for constant vigilance. My research places this centuries-old theoretical model against contemporary Muslim surveillance, arguing that the panopticon is a way to more deeply and thoroughly understand the omnipresent surveillance weaponized against Muslim communities after 9/11. More broadly, I refuse to dilute the impact of internalized and externalized policing on marginalized communities. I investigate how post-9/11 surveillance in Nairobi places Muslim communities into a prison-like structure in which they are repeatedly watched, affecting their internal psyche— the art form of poetry written by these marginalized groups allows for a deeper viewing and dissection of this surveillance. Invoking French philosopher Michel Foucault, who drew from the panopticon in his literary theories on discipline, with first-hand ethnographic research on Muslim surveillance from contemporary scholars living in Nairobi, Kenya, I pose a literary-ethnographic stance regarding how we can view the lasting impacts of Muslim surveillance. In analyzing the detrimental conditions of surveillance in postcolonial Kenya, I also investigate how a key contemporary poet, Warsan Shire, breaks free from these boundaries through her artistic work, which focuses on the generational and haunting implications of surveillance in her own Muslim community. Shire herself was born in Kenya and migrated to the United Kingdom with her family when she was a young child. Her poetry, both spoken and written, has now reached global audiences in North America, Germany, and South Africa and has influenced the contemporary literary canon. Catechizing Muslim surveillance through meshing literary and anthropological research, I hope to dismantle the post 9-/11 prison-panopticon of inspection, emphasizing the role of artistry in liberation and resistance.

“Renaissance” of Akamba Benga Music in Postcolonial Kenya

“Renaissance” of Akamba Benga Music in Postcolonial Kenya

Women and Patriarchy in Post-colonial Kenya: A Critical Interrogation of Marjorie Oludhe Macgoye's Coming to Birth and The Present Moment

Women and Patriarchy in Post-colonial Kenya: A Critical Interrogation of Marjorie Oludhe Macgoye's Coming to Birth and The Present Moment

Meditations on ‘international friendship’: Situating twinning in global struggles for solidarity, recognition, and restitution

Abstract This article takes the practice of twinning as an entry point for problematising conventional accounts of ‘international friendship’ in the field of International Relations. In particular, the paper zeroes in on three examples of twinning practice, past and present, that have challenged the status quo: twinnings established in opposition to the Contra war in Nicaragua; twinning as an act of recognition for communities in the Occupied Palestinian Territories; and twinning as a vehicle for the recovery and return of sacred artefacts to post-colonial Kenya. Through these examples, it argues for an alternative conceptualisation of international friendship – one that pushes beyond the methodological nationalism and ontological rigidity of dominant approaches.

Peace Initiatives in Resource Based Conflicts in Post-Colonial Kenya: A Case of Lower Nyando River Basin of Kisumu County, Kenya

There is growing literature focusing on resource extraction and unbalanced sharing of natural resources in the exploitation community and conflict especially in the developing countries. Whereas a lot of attention has been directed at grievances of conflicting parties in natural resource based conflicts, limited attention is being given to peace initiatives including the role of local peace committees and community led peace building networks. This paper provided an insight on the role of peace initiatives in resource based conflicts in post-colonial Kenya, with particular attention to lower Nyando River Basin of Kisumu County, Kenya. Specific objectives were to determine the magnitude of resource based conflicts among communities in the Lower Nyando River Basin, analyse the role of local peace committees in resource based conflicts among communities in the Lower Nyando River Basin and to establish the contribution of community led peace-building networks in resource based conflicts among communities in the Lower Nyando River Basin, Kenya. Conflict transformation theory which articulates transforming the causes of conflict as the right approach for resolving and curtailing emerging disputes was adopted to guide the study. Mixed method design involving quantitative and qualitative data collection and analysis approaches was adopted. Target population comprised of (Ogenya=153; Kakola Ombaka=704; Jimo Middle=131, and West Kabodho=225) who were natural resource reliant in both Nyakach and Nyando Sub-counties with a sample size of 278 respondents obtained based on Gill et al’s Table of Desired Accuracy with Confidence Level of 95%. The study also interviewed 4 elected community leaders from each sub location. Findings showed that the magnitude of resource based conflicts in the area was high (M=3.91; SD=0.08). The study also found that local peace committees were important peacebuilding initiatives (M=4.17; SD=0.23), while peacebuilding networks existing in the study area had contributed in resolving conflicts to a large extent (M=4.01; SD=0.25). It was concluded that unfounded apportioning of the wetland by the feuding communities has made the magnitude of conflict to be high in the study area. The study also concludes that local peacebuilding initiatives have helped in managing resource based conflict in the area due to their acceptability and incessant peace messaging.

Maina wa Kinyatti: The Patriot Who Stood at a Time Many Would Have Preferred to Lie Down

In beautiful and captivating prose, Mzalendo Wanjira writes about Maina wa Kinyatti’s detention and ordeal in the hands of his captors - the pain, anger, frustration, resilience, commitment and loyalty to the cause. She recollects how her first encounter with Kenya: A Prison Notebook made her question the history she’d been taught, and more fundamentally, to understand the truth about post-colonial Kenya and its attempt to hide its glorious struggle against imperialism and in turn blind coming generations from their generational objective.

Haunting "Presences": A Discourse on Dreams and Dedications in Francis Imbuga's Drama

This essay offers a critical reappraisal of Francis Imbuga's three plays that were written in the 1980s as response to sociocultural constraints and political turmoil in a highly disguised postcolonial Kenya: Man of Hafira (1984), Aminata (1988), and The Burning of Rags (1989). It uses specter hermeneutics to broaden understandings of cultural and political ideologies in these selected texts. First, it anchors the author's argument in hauntology; then, it traces how Imbuga's dedicatees and dreaming characters resurface throughout these plays as haunting "presences." The essay conceptualizes Imbuga's configuration of these presences as a subtle means of critiquing cultural and political realities within post/neocolonial contexts.

3 - Strategic Submission as Resistance? Nabongo Mumia in the Struggle for Post-Colonial Kenya’s Histories

This article pursues the debate on the role that various regional leaders in late pre- to colonial Kenya played in their people’s responses to colonialism and its agents, and the contests for moral historical spaces that have continued to be played out in intellectual and public discourse. Focusing on Nabongo Mumia, the political and cultural figure of the Wanga people in western Kenya, the article examines the fluidity between collaboration and resistance as processes that have been presented mistakenly as dialectical oppositions. Situating my argument within the counter-revisionist trajectory, I demonstrate that the earlier presentation of Nabongo Mumia – and indeed a few other leaders – as a ‘collaborator’ largely simplifies the dilemmas that many a leader were confronted with in the wake of colonial violence, and is used in the current political setup to rationalise deliberate forms of exclusion from central political structures in the country. I further show that for regional leaders in colonial Kenya, strategic submission guided by a variety of legitimate considerations, was often misread as ‘collaboration’, a line that was picked up by earlier Africanist inclined scholars whose nationalistic impulses dr ve them to a search for ‘heroes’, often guided by the matrices of ‘resistance’.

Legacies and pitfalls amongst the African Evangelicals: A Kenyan experience from a historical perspective

The research study sets out to explore the contribution of the African Evangelicals in both the colonial and post-colonial Kenya to the social lives of the nation. Can’t it be viewed as a positive social influence or an ecclesiastical pitfall? In utilising a socio-historical design, it poses the question: how did the Evangelical European Missionaries demonstrate their theological and social influences in Kenya, and how did the post-missionary Evangelical-leaning leaderships play out? And was Muthirigu Dance an extremist reaction against the rigidity of the Evangelicals? Methodologically, this article will attempt to explore the Evangelical European Missionary Christianity, especially the Church Missionary Society that entered Central Kenya in the early 1900s, and assess the way in which they handled indigenous cultures of the local Africans. It has also attempted to critically explore their social influences in both colonial and post-colonial Kenya (1895–2021). The CMS has been given more emphasis in this article as an Evangelical society so as to help in bringing out the specific Evangelical activities in the Kirinyaga County of Kenya. Overall, the article has endeavoured to hypothesise that Eurocentrism was not the Evangelical problem, as there were diverse European missionaries, such as the High Anglican Church, the Roman Catholic and the Lutherans who were non-Evangelicals, and who were not necessarily dogmatic and rigid.Contribution: This study adhered to the HTS journal’s vision and scope by its focus on the histories of the Evangelical European Missionaries of the 19th and 20th centuries, their interactions with the local religio-cultures, and how it later played out amongst the Africans.

Legacies and pitfalls amongst the African Evangelicals: A Kenyan experience from a historical perspective

The research study sets out to explore the contribution of the African Evangelicals in both the colonial and post-colonial Kenya to the social lives of the nation. Can’t it be viewed as a positive social influence or an ecclesiastical pitfall? In utilising a socio-historical design, it poses the question: how did the Evangelical European Missionaries demonstrate their theological and social influences in Kenya, and how did the post-missionary Evangelical-leaning leaderships play out? And was Muthirigu Dance an extremist reaction against the rigidity of the Evangelicals? Methodologically, this article will attempt to explore the Evangelical European Missionary Christianity, especially the Church Missionary Society that entered Central Kenya in the early 1900s, and assess the way in which they handled indigenous cultures of the local Africans. It has also attempted to critically explore their social influences in both colonial and post-colonial Kenya (1895–2021). The CMS has been given more emphasis in this article as an Evangelical society so as to help in bringing out the specific Evangelical activities in the Kirinyaga County of Kenya. Overall, the article has endeavoured to hypothesise that Eurocentrism was not the Evangelical problem, as there were diverse European missionaries, such as the High Anglican Church, the Roman Catholic and the Lutherans who were non-Evangelicals, and who were not necessarily dogmatic and rigid. Contribution: This study adhered to the HTS journal’s vision and scope by its focus on the histories of the Evangelical European Missionaries of the 19th and 20th centuries, their interactions with the local religio-cultures, and how it later played out amongst the Africans.

Squatters, access to land, and production of national narratives in post-colonial Kenya

ABSTRACT This article harnesses the concept of the “usable past” to explore multiple strategies employed by squatters in post-colonial Kenya to access land since the 1960s. It argues that the conventional land reform program inherited at independence has largely failed to solve landlessness and the squatter problem. Consequently, inspired by past promises and pledges – exemplified by the optimism of the 1950s nationalist struggle, the pre-independence promises by nationalists to eliminate landlessness, and the independence government’s commitment to end poverty through agricultural enterprises – squatters have over the decades devised effective strategies to fend off competing interests in land. These interests – mainly government agencies, commercial companies, and private landowners – have been forced to accede to the squatters’ initiatives. While these initiatives have been relatively successful in addressing landlessness, they have by no means succeeded in eliminating the most vexing aspect of Kenya’s national land problem. Nevertheless, this success attests to their effectiveness outside government channels.

Carcerality and the legacies of settler colonial punishment in Nairobi

From the beginning of its colonial settlement in Kenya, the British administration criminalized Kenyans. Even now, colonial modes of punishment, incarceration, closure, interrogation, curfew, confiscation, separation, displacement, and detention without trial are deeply embedded in the spatial and ideological arrangements of post-colonial Kenya. Initially assumed to herald a rupture from colonial modes of criminalization and punishment, the post-colonial period instead normalized them. Through ethnographic, scholarly, and visual encounters, the paper engages five interconnecting structures that engendered the legacy of a seamless system of control, containment, and punishment evident in the ‘afterlives’ of empire. These are settler colonialism, violence, racism, colonial corporeality, and capitalism. The paper attends to the violence and brutality that endures in the very geographies that were the urban targets of colonial siege and links the carceral practices of settler colonialism and the everyday post-colonial governance of Nairobi’s poor neighbourhoods, encounters with the debris and ruination of empire found in the material and spatial fabric of Mathare. We take up a critical encounter with colonial files to both discern the continuity and lineage of carceral practices and to disrupt the authorial totality and continuity the colonial archive files assembled. The paper includes archival and authored photographs:

Public Debates on Women's Issues in Postcolonial Kenya: Selections From Viva

Vol 3. No. 1 (2022) With contributions by Emma Rose Ryan and Ainhoa Leoz Asiáin. This issue of SourceLab introduces readers to the history of Viva: The Magazine For Kenyan Women, a Postcolonial Kenyan publication that discusses women's rights and issues. This publication is part of the digital documentary edition series SourceLab, based at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Our Editorial Board conducts rigorous peer-review of every edition.

Narrating Kenyan Silenced Histories through Fiction in Yvonne Owuor’s Dust

ABSTRACT The primary focus of this paper is to examine the intersection of history and fiction in Yvonne Owuor’s novel Dust to unearth silenced (hi)stories in colonial and postcolonial Kenya while locating the text within its historical context. By examining intersection of history and fiction, the paper sees fiction as an effective device in reflecting and breaking Kenyan silenced socioeconomic and political stories. It postulates that through fictionalised history, creative writers create new insights to represent the past, as a way of recovering alternate histories that might have been stifled in the official historical account. Therefore, fictionalised history challenges the implicit closure present in the official version of history.

African Internationalisms and the Erstwhile Trajectories of Kenyan Community Development: Joseph Murumbi’s 1950s

This article sheds new light on the relationship between internationalism, decolonisation and ideas about development through a reassessment of an overlooked period in the life of Joseph Murumbi (1911–90), cultural collector and Kenya’s second vice-president. It follows Murumbi’s engagement with three internationalist spaces during the 1950s: in the Afro-Asian worlds of India and Egypt he honed his vision for community development and the practical coordination of internationalism; in London he pushed British activists to take a more internationalist approach to anti-colonialism in a case of ‘reverse tutelage’; disillusioned with the British Left, in Scandinavia and Israel he questioned the translatability of community development and the practical role of external sympathisers as Kenyan independence approached. Murumbi’s trajectory confirms the inseparability of internationalism and nationalism in 1950s Africa, reinserting internationalist thought into narratives of Kenyan freedom struggles and suggesting how alternative visions for post-colonial Kenya were lost. Moreover, we argue, this reassessment of Murumbi’s life advances the burgeoning scholarship on internationalisms in the decolonising world by showing that Murumbi’s internationalist practices and his interest in the supposedly ‘local’ question of community development drove one another. Murumbi thus shows us a particular set of entanglements between the ‘local’ and the ‘global’.