Chapter 7 explores how Kenyatta’s presidential authority evolved after the stabilisation of his regime. It first analyses how the politicization of the land market was an exercise of regime-building, establishing a network of shared dependencies, allocating land to local political “big-men”. This is followed by an examination of the early years of the politics of succession. By 1965, the fragile alliance of convenience set up between Kenyatta and his main contenders, Oginga Odinga and Tom Mboya, was beginning to crack, while Kenyatta’s old age and fragile health revived the question of presidential succession. The government’s merciless repression against any form of opposition and dissidence culminated with the murder of Tom Mboya in 1969. Throughout these years, Kenyatta used the same strategy that had salvaged him during the “Release Kenyatta” campaign: preserving the status quo. He was left with the role of ruling over a divided political family, using his unrivalled access to state resources.

Chapter 8 covers the last decade of Kenyatta’s life and rule. As signs of Kenyatta’s age became more visible, the 1970s were not only marked by an increasingly tense struggle for succession, but also by a more acute “tribalisation” of politics. The assassination, in 1975, of the promising young Kikuyu leader J. M. Kariuki, whose dissident politics alarmed the government, signalled a clear descent into factionalism. This chapter shows that Kenyatta was unnerved by factional disputes and rising popular disaffection. Fears of a potential coup against his regime led him to tighten his control over state institutions. The succession of Daniel arap Moi upon Kenyatta’s death in 1978 confirmed that the core of Kenya’s post-colonial state was the president’s isolated status and unrivalled ambiguity, which is the central argument of this book. By expressing his preference for Moi as a potential successor, Kenyatta not only chose a non-Kikuyu, but an isolated political player, like himself ten years earlier. Far from preparing the ground for tribal inclusion in the top sphere of government, Kenyatta’s choice helped the institution of the president to prevail over a divided elite, to compensate for weak institutional ties through presidential favours, and to preserve parochial family interests.

This chapter attempts to review comprehensively the interconnection between ethnicity, development and social cohesion with special reference to modern history and contemporary circumstances in Africa. Ethnicity is a historical construct, changeable in relation to the political economy of the modern state. At the same time, ethnicity is a given and overwhelming reality for people, thereby reciprocally affecting politics and economy. Ethnicity dynamically changes in accordance with vertical and horizontal cleavages and thus intra- and inter-ethnic relations and given competitive situation for limited resources in the state and market has tended to result in exclusionary ethnic cohesion and political tribalism in Africa. African ethnicity and its interconnection with development and social cohesion should be understood, referring to phenomena occurring in the contemporary context of globalization: increasing migration causing ethnic diversity and exclusionary reactions, increasing corruption and decline of trust in the state, international spread of organized crimes, increasing incapability of national governments towards global crisis, destructive impact of unregulated markets, and yawning inequality as a global issue. We then examine five critical issues with grave political and economic implications: building democratic institutions, constitutions and governance devolution, media and education, land and territory, natural resources and foreign investment. We conclude the chapter with argument that achieving growth with equity and social cohesion through overcoming relevant problems is not unique challenge to Africa in this acceleratingly globalizing world.

This chapter argues that ethnicity is a universal human characteristic; it is an identity whose moral economy of mutual social relations causes internal dispute more continuously than external contexts cause interethnic competition. Ethnicities are mixed, shared, and subject to constant change in their own self-awareness and their inter-relations with others. The last two centuries of Kenya’s history illustrate this point. In the stateless, precolonial, past, different ways of taming the varied regional environment were the greatest influence on the nature of “ecological ethnicities” that shared ideas, took in each others’ economic migrants, and engaged in little “inter-tribal war”. Under colonial rule, access to scriptural literacy and arguments about how best to resist subjection caused much a sharper, patriotic, ethnic self-awareness. Regional inequalities in development, especially the triumph of agriculture over pastoralism, made ethnicity more competitive – a condition greatly emphasised when independence gave some Africans a centralised coercive power over others. Kenya has only recently adopted a devolved constitution that may defuse this often lethal competition but it is as yet too early to say.

This chapter argues that ethnicity is a universal human characteristic; it is an identity whose moral economy of mutual social relations causes internal dispute more continuously than external contexts cause interethnic competition. Ethnicities are mixed, shared, and subject to constant change in their own self-awareness and their inter-relations with others. The last two centuries of Kenya’s history illustrate this point. In the stateless, precolonial, past, different ways of taming the varied regional environment were the greatest influence on the nature of “ecological ethnicities” that shared ideas, took in each others’ economic migrants, and engaged in little “inter-tribal war”. Under colonial rule, access to scriptural literacy and arguments about how best to resist subjection caused much a sharper, patriotic, ethnic self-awareness. Regional inequalities in development, especially the triumph of agriculture over pastoralism, made ethnicity more competitive – a condition greatly emphasised when independence gave some Africans a centralised coercive power over others. Kenya has only recently adopted a devolved constitution that may defuse this often lethal competition but it is as yet too early to say.