Politics In Kenya

As with his critically acclaimed book on Suez, Keith Kyle revisits as a scholar ground that he first covered as a print and television journalist. After three introductory chapters covering the years 1895-1957, the core of the book examines in lively detail how Kenya moved from Mau Mau trauma to national freedom. The immediacy of the eye-witness, which older readers will remember from television reports, is now combined with the fruits of reflection and meticulous archival research to create a unique authoritative study of this vital period for Kenya, for Africa and for the British Empire.

From the upheavals of recent national elections to the success of the #MyDressMyChoice feminist movement, digital platforms have already had a dramatic impact on political life in Kenya – one of the most electronically advanced countries in Africa. While the impact of the Digital Age on Western politics has been extensively debated, there is still little appreciation of how it has been felt in developing countries such as Kenya, where Twitter, Facebook, WhatsApp and other online platforms are increasingly a part of everyday life. Written by a respected Kenyan activist and researcher at the forefront of political online struggles, this book presents a unique contribution to the debate on digital democracy. For traditionally marginalised groups, particularly women and people with disabilities, digital spaces have allowed Kenyans to build new communities which transcend old ethnic and gender divisions. But the picture is far from wholly positive. Digital Democracy, Analogue Politics explores the drastic efforts being made by elites to contain online activism, as well as how 'fake news', a failed digital vote-counting system and the incumbent president's recruitment of Cambridge Analytica contributed to tensions around the 2017 elections. Reframing digital democracy from the African perspective, Nyabola's ground-breaking work opens up new ways of understanding our current global online era.

In 2007 a disputed election in Kenya erupted into a two-month political crisis that led to the deaths of more than a thousand people and the displacement of almost seven hundred thousand. Much of the violence fell along ethnic lines, the principal perpetrators of which were the Kalenjin, who lashed out at other communities in the Rift Valley. What makes this episode remarkable compared to many other instances of ethnic violence is that the Kalenjin community is a recent construct: the group has only existed since the mid-twentieth century. Drawing on rich archival research and vivid oral testimony, I Say to You is a timely analysis of the creation, development, political relevance, and popular appeal of the Kalenjin identity as well as its violent potential. Uncovering the Kalenjin’s roots, Gabrielle Lynch examines the ways in which ethnic groups are socially constructed and renegotiated over time. She demonstrates how historical narratives of collective achievement, migration, injustice, and persecution constantly evolve. As a consequence, ethnic identities help politicians mobilize support and help ordinary people lay claim to space, power, and wealth. This kind of ethnic politics, Lynch reveals, encourages a sense of ethnic difference and competition, which can spiral into violent confrontation and retribution.

This book discusses Kenya’s transition from authoritarianism to more democratic forms of politics and its impact on Kenya’s multi-ethnic society. The author examines two significant questions: Why and how is ethnicity salient in Kenya’s transition from one-party rule to multiparty politics? What is the relationship between ethnic conflict and political liberalization? The project explains the perennial issues of political disorganization through state violence and ethnicization of politics, and considers the significance of the concept of justice in Kenya.

Since independence in 1963, Kenya has been a classic personalised patronage state, run by a corrupt elite for its own benefit, as became tragically evident in December 2007's stolen election and its aftermath. Kenya is also said to be 80 percent Christian. Under the bland label 'Kenyan Christianity', several different overlapping realities can be distinguished, and it is these which Gifford investigates in this book, relating them to the country's politics and public life. The politically engaged form that challenged the dysfunctional one-party state in the early 1990s is given due prominence, but Gifford contends that today the mainline churches, both Catholic and Protestant, are marked less by such political engagement than by their involvement in development, in which foreign missionaries and global networks play a huge role. The theology of Kenya's mainline churches is consciously focused on African culture, as a non-negotiable foundation, and the Catholic church has an additional agenda - to Africanise its religious congregations. Kenya is also noted for its rich variety of African indigenous Churches, all originating in a defence of Kenyan cultures, while in recent decades countless Pentecostal churches have also sprung up. They range from affluent middle class churches to refuges for the poor, but nearly all are characterised by a stress on power, success, achievement and prosperity that prioritises modernity rather than traditional culture. Gifford discusses their deployment of the media, crusades, organisation, theology and use of the Bible, and above all the economics that has made this phenomenon possible. Yet another distinct form is an enchanted Christianity in which demons or spiritual forces are deemed responsible for almost everything

An analysis of land and natural resource conflict as a source of political violence, focusing on election violence in Kenya.

Shows how the struggle for democracy has been waged in civil society, through opposition parties, and amongst traditionally marginalised groups like women and the young. This book also considers the remaining impediments to democratisation, in the form of a powerful police force and damaging structural adjustment policies.

This book provides an overview of the troubled process of nation-building in post-colonial Kenya. Despite the distinctive features of the Moi and Kenyatta regimes, contributors make the case that since the late colonial period continuity, and not change, has been the dominant theme in Kenyan political life. Through a range of methodological lenses and empirical material, the chapters highlight different aspects of this continuity: the strength of the provincial administration, the weakness of formal party structures, the central role of ethnicity in shaping political competition, the understanding of the state as a resource in itself, and the ultimately incompatible beliefs held by different communities regarding how power can be legitimately exercised. Taken together, the persistence of these factors over time helps to explain the failure of the nation-building project in Kenya, and the context within which disputed elections in late-2007 could lead to the collapse of political order and the deaths of over 1,000 Kenyans.

Once the major success story of a troubled continent,by the early 1990s Kenya came to be regarded as its fallen star. This book challenges such images of reversal and the analytical polarities which sustain them. The analysis ranges from telescopic to microscopic fields, and combining many disciplines and perspectives to give a rich and varied picture of the culture of politics in twentieth-century Kenya.'...a highly perceptive and interesting analysis, deconstruction is not too strong a term, of Kenya's politics....[A] well researched, documented and enlightening book' African Affairs