12 - Jomo Kenyatta & the Rise of the Ethno-Nationalist State in Kenya

Summary

THIS chapter sets out to explore the role played by Jomo Kenyatta in establishing the place of ethnicity and ethnic sub-nationalism in the politics of modern Kenya. The chapter traces the historical events that established the political culture within which Kenyatta and other African leaders in Kenya came into political consciousness, and the influence that this had on their perception of the ethnic question in African politics. Secondly, it investigates Kenyatta's personal response to the challenge of ethnic nationalism. It endeavors to demonstrate that, whereas Kenyatta himself may have had a nascent commitment to Kenyan nationalism, he inherited from the colonial government a political culture and a political class that placed ethnicity at the heart of politics and conspired to derail the nationalist agenda at every turn. Finally, the chapter seeks to show that, while Kenyatta's personal charisma and autocratic grip on power served to conceal the growing significance of ethnicity as the basis of political mobilization and organization, his own captivity by the Kikuyu power elite served to fuel a deadly ethno-nationalism and to expand the potentially destructive nature of this force.

Most traditional scholarship on the issue of ethnicity and politics in Africa has tended on the whole to be ahistorical accounts seeking to demonstrate how primordial forces continue to dominate contemporary political processes. We contend that several issues remain underinvestigated. Three are particularly important. The first is the enduring legacy of the colonial state as the cradle of ethnic consciousness and politics. The second is the character of contemporary ethnicity as a response to powerful forces of social change. The third is the complex issue of the making of ethnicity by political leaders like Jomo Kenyatta.

The state, as constituted at independence, was essentially a compromise of ethnic claims to power and resources. It bore little relevance to the reality of the political lives of the majority of the people. For most people the focus of political obligation and loyalty remained the ethnic group. For most of the leaders as well, in the absence of any coherent ideology, the ethnic group remained the basis for and the focus of political mobilization. Jomo Kenyatta started off unpretentiously as a reluctant leader of the Kikuyu people.