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2 results

  • 2 - From Prison to Party Leader, an Ambiguous Ascension (1958–1961)

  • Anaïs Angelo, Universität Wien, Austria
  • Book:
    Power and the Presidency in Kenya
    Published online:
    11 October 2019
    Print publication:
    31 October 2019, pp 66-94

  • Summary

    Chapter 2 narrates how the campaign to release Kenyatta from jail, launched in 1958, culminated with him taking over the leadership of the nationalist party, the Kenyan African National Union, in 1961. Using the new “migrated files” from the British National Archives, it argues that Kenyatta emerged as a national figure out of a deeply divided and inimical political scene. This chapter shows that Kenyatta’s rise to power was largely accidental. His name was merged with the myth of the father of the nation, which his comrades had created, and wrongly thought they could manipulate and control. In fact, no politician who campaigned for Kenyatta’s release expected that he would dominate the political scene and frustrate their own political ambitions. No one had anticipated how the power of this ambiguous Mau Mau past managed to unite a fragmented electorate. Once released, Kenyatta chose to remain silent, refusing to speak publicly. His almost unexpected political rise would have a profound impact on Kenyan decolonisation: he became the “sole spokesman” of a nationalist elite he could not trust, and yet he alone could unite.

  • 4 - Colonial Origins of Parliaments in Kenya and Zambia

  • Ken Ochieng' Opalo, Georgetown University, Washington DC
  • Book:
    Legislative Development in Africa
    Published online:
    17 June 2019
    Print publication:
    20 June 2019, pp 99-131

  • Summary

    To explore the mechanisms behind the observed variation in legislative institutionalization and strength in Africa, this chapter provides a comparative historical study of legislative development in Kenya and Zambia. Both countries’ colonial Legislative Councils (LegCo) had a common Westminster origin and were dominated by European immigrants. However, contingencies of political development in the late colonial period put the two countries’ postcolonial legislatures on different trajectories of institutional development. First, colonial restriction of cross-ethnic political mobilization in Kenya produced district-cum-ethnic parties. Its independence party (KANU) was therefore little more than a confederacy of ethnic parties. In Zambia, urbanization in the Copperbelt created the social infrastructure to support mass politics under UNIP. KANU’s weakness enabled the Kenyan legislature to function as the main arena for intra-elite politics and the sharing of governance rents. In Zambia, UNIP’s organizational strength crowded out the legislature, relegating it to a mere constitutional conveyor belt of the party’s policies. Second, the two countries differed on the nature of interracial politics. Interracial discord in Zambia resulted in extra-institutional nationalist politics. Kenya’s nationalist political development took place largely within the LegCo. As a result, independence brought institutional legislative discontinuity in Zambia and continuity in Kenya.