Penn Undergraduate Law Journal
  • Home
  • About
    • Mission
    • Masthead
    • Faculty Advisory Board
    • Partner Journals
    • Sponsors
  • Submissions
  • Full Issues
  • The Roundtable
    • Pre-Law Corner
  • Events
  • Contact
    • Contact
    • Apply
    • FAQs
  • Home
  • About
    • Mission
    • Masthead
    • Faculty Advisory Board
    • Partner Journals
    • Sponsors
  • Submissions
  • Full Issues
  • The Roundtable
    • Pre-Law Corner
  • Events
  • Contact
    • Contact
    • Apply
    • FAQs

The Roundtable


Welcome to the Roundtable, a forum for incisive commentary and analysis
on cases and developments in law and the legal system.


INTERESTED IN wRITING FOR tHE rOUNDTABLE?

The Legacy of Colonialism on Kenya’s Fragile Democracy

2/23/2016

1 Comment

 
Picture
By Edna Simbi

Edna Simbi is a student at Columbia University studying receiving degrees in international relations, affairs, and security policy.

On December 30, 2007, the Electoral Commission of Kenya, an independent body whose members are appointed by the president, announced the results of a highly contested election. During the election, two major tribes, the Kikuyu and Luo, led by their respective tribal leaders, Mwai Kibaki and Raila Odinga, accused each other of electoral fraud with each camp claiming to have won the elections. Immediately after announcement of the results, Kibaki was hastily sworn into office in a secret ceremony. Soon after, violent protests, lootings and killings, rocked the country.

Since independence, Kenya had been largely peaceful, so what caused the 2007 post-election violence? The violence is significant because it is representative of broader groups, and increasing instances of dissension after 2007 seem to have the potential to foment future violence. My thesis is that Kenya’s new democracy after only 44 years of independence was too fragile and was still an anocracy—a political system that is half democratic and half authoritarian—and the violence was facilitated by identity politics and elite instrumentalization, all of which were legacies of colonialism.
Even though identity based explanations can help explain the violence in Kenya, they do not fully explain what else caused the post election violence. The “what else” are legacies of colonialism and elite instrumentalization which both worked to facilitate the violence.

The primordial view sees identities as set in stone and defines ethnic groups as innately at odds with “others” because it is inherently in their nature. We see the concept of the “other” where ethnic groups rely on kinship ties to define outsiders. The constructivist, however, defines identity as malleable, changing and socially constructed. From Samuel Huntington’s perspective in his book Clash of Civilizations, the Kikuyu and Luo fought because it is in their nature to do so since the world is divided into cultural clusters that are incompatible. [1] While this might explain why people fight, it does not explain the sudden violence between the Luo and Kikuyu, who had previously peacefully coexisted for 44 years. The primordial identity explanation also fails to look at how the elite manipulated the citizens to perpetuate the violence and instead opts for an easy way out to explain that the two groups fought because it is in their nature to be savage and brutal.

The constructivist-based identity explanation, on the other hand, helps us better understand identity as contributing to the violence through elite instrumentalization. In Kenya, the two elite political leaders set groups against each other by emphasizing post independence political and ancient hatred between the two founding fathers: Jomo Kenyatta (Kikuyu) and Jaramogi Oginga (Luo), in order to mobilize support among their respective followers. Historically, Kenyatta and Oginga were bitter political rivals due to conflicting political and ideological goals. The Kikuyus felt that the presidency was theirs by right; after all, it was the Kikuyu-led Mau Mau rebellion that had assured Kenya’s independence. This in turn created tension among the Luo, who were excluded from political leadership. Some Kikuyu leaders using political rallies as a platform to mobilize support, declaring that the presidential motorcade would “never cross River Chania”(a Kikuyu district). [2] The Luo reacted by constructing stereotypes of the Kikuyu that dehumanized them as killing machines in order to justify the violence against them.

However, identity politics do not fully explain the violence in Kenya for two reasons: it does not explain why the other 40 tribes in Kenya followed the two leaders with whom they had no ethnic affiliations. It also assumes that the elites who mobilized their followers along ethnic lines all had the same goals, while in Kenya’s case, they had different goals for wanting political power: the Kikuyu wanted land, the Luos wanted a decentralized government. Therefore, to help us better understand the violence, we must examine how colonial legacies constructed identities and created a weak and anocratic state which was manipulated by the elite to mobilize followers.

Kenya’s colonial history gave rise to a form of ethnic nationalism that was accentuated by the fear that different ethnic tribes aroused in each other. Colonizers created tribal identities to deflect anger from the colonial administration by creating the idea of “others” and this colonial past has Kenyans falling back on stereotypes of  “us” vs. “them.” Post independence, these ethnic identities took on a more sinister dimension where instances of bias and prejudice resulted in governments preferring and polarizing districts and peoples through the inherited indirect rule that gave tribal chiefs power. Mahmood Mamdani refers to this form of indirect rule as  “decentralized despotism,” a form of power that excluded “others.” [3] Even though legacies of colonialism are only one of the many reasons for violence, this institutional legacy did not disappear with independence. Kenya opted for minimalist reforms, retained the dual system, and while this deracialized the country, it did not democratize the system of decentralized despotism. De jure, leaders of Kikuyu and Luo sided with the democratic tradition based on the elections and other freedoms for Kenyans. De facto, it was about tribalism, and decentralized despotism, on both sides of the conflict. These tribal ethnic tensions took the form of inequality, election fraud, and limited (in the Luo) or unlimited (in the Kikuyu) access to political resources. In effect, colonialism created ethnic discrimination that gave one group unequal advantage over the other and that was manipulated by the elite instrumentalization under the guise of identity politics.

The regime type most linked to violence and civil wars is transitional democracies—that is, those moving from dictatorships to democracies [4]. This is because the relationship between democracy and peace is not a continuum but rather, an asymmetrical process. Countries in transition are more war prone, and Kenya was no exception after only 44 years of independence. It was by tapping into the anocratic government that the intense domestic competition for power between the Luo and Kikuyu defied the state, which was not competent enough to regulate competition and mobilization of followers along racial, political, or ethnic lines. The elite therefore mobilized followers along ethnic identities and unified these groups against each other successfully and the manifestation was the 2007 post-election violence.

In order to understand what caused the violence, we must analyze the conflict as a cleavage of identity politics, regime type and colonial legacies. Only then will we be able to understand how colonialist constructed identities that the elite were able to manipulate in a weak anocratic state.


[1] Huntington, Samuel P. The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996.
[2] Munene, Mugumo. "When a Police Chief Slapped Moi and Other Battles from the past." Nation Newspapers (Nairobi, Kenya), September 1, 2014.
[3] Mamdani, Mahmood. Citizen and Subject: Contemporary Africa and the Legacy of Late Colonialism. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996.
[4] Autesserre, Severine. "How Regime Types Contribute to Violence." Lecture, Lecture, Diana Center Rm 504, New York, February 2015.

Photo Credit: Flickr User Defense Images


The opinions and views expressed through this publication are the opinions of the designated authors and do not reflect the opinions or views of the Penn Undergraduate Law Journal, our staff, or our clients.

1 Comment
Othieno link
1/24/2017 08:55:00 am

This is an interesting commentary that could do with additional reading (for a post-grad student), as I illustrate in a few instances below:

1. While the presidential contest in 2007 was primarily between the out-going/incumbent president, a Kikuyu candidate and a former prime minister Luo candidate, the ethnic spread of the Luo candidate's votes was such that he got more votes from non-Luos than he did from the Luo alone (even if all the Luos voted for him literally to a man). See the Kriegler Report on the mismanaged election at: http://www.fidakenya.org/dr7/sites/default/files/kriegler-report.pdf

2. While the trigger of the violence was the declaration that the Luo candidate had lost, the first violence was in Eldoret, a place with hardly any Luos. It was perpetrated by the 'indigenous' Kalenjins and initially largely targeting 'emigrant' Kikuyu small-holders. In the capital city, Nairobi, there were initially skirmishes that broadly pitted the Kikuyu against most of the rest; but the decisive reaction of the national Kikuyu elite in Nairobi's response to the Eldoret slaughter of Kikuyus was to organise - seemingly with Kenya Police collusion - the notorious Kikuyu vigilante group, the Mungiki, to attack the workers in the Naivasha flower farms, among whom were many Luos and Kalenjins. These developments triggered violence in other parts of the country. Read the Waki Report and others at:

http://www.kenyalaw.org/Downloads/Reports/Commission_of_Inquiry_into_Post_Election_Violence.pdf

https://file.wikileaks.org/file/full-kenya-violence-report-2008.pdf

3. "The snake that must never cross the River Chania" was not a Kikuyu/Luo affair, despite the tensions between them in national politics. Instead, it was a Kiambu Kikuyu vs. the rest of the Kikuyus. During the Mau Mau struggle of the 1950s, the Kiambu Kikuyu were the 'home guards' of the colonialists while the other Kikuyus - from Murang'a, Nyeri, etc - took to the forests as guerillas. At independence, it was the Kiambu Kikuyu who took power - Kenyatta; Koinange; etc. So even as Kenyatta fought against Odinga ("Not Yet Uhuru"), he was also conscious of the threat posed by the former Mau Mau districts, and he even outlawed the movement and detained its members. So Kenyatta rallied the Kiambu Kikuyu to take an oath aganist the presidency ever crossing the R. Chania, which is the border between Kiambu and Muranga districts - meaning the presidency should never go to the ex-Mau Mau districts.

Reply

Your comment will be posted after it is approved.


Leave a Reply.


    Categories

    All
    Akshita Tiwary
    Alana Bess
    Alana Mattei
    Albert Manfredi
    Alexander Saeedy
    Alexandra Aaron
    Alexandra Kanan
    Alice Giannini
    Alicia Augustin
    Alicia Kysar
    Ally Kalishman
    Ally Margolis
    Alya Abbassian
    Anika Prakash
    Anna Schwartz
    Ashley Kim
    Astha Pandey
    Audrey Pan
    Benjamin Ng'aru
    Brónach Rafferty
    Bryce Klehm
    Cary Holley
    Christina Gunzenhauser
    Christine Mitchell
    Christopher Brown
    Clarissa Alvarez
    Cole Borlee
    Connor Gallagher
    Dan Spinelli
    Dan Zhang
    David Katz
    Davis Berlind
    Derek Willie
    Dhilan Lavu
    Edgar Palomino
    Edna Simbi
    Emma Davies
    Esther Lee
    Evelyn Bond
    Filzah Belal
    Frank Geng
    Gabriel Maliha
    Georgia Ray
    Graham Reynolds
    Habib Olapade
    Hailie Goldsmith
    Haley Son
    Harshit Rai
    Henry Lininger
    Hetal Doshi
    Iris Zhang
    Irtaza Ali
    Isabela Baghdady
    Ishita Chakrabarty
    Jack Burgess
    Jessica "Lulu" Lipman
    Joe Anderson
    Jonathan Lahdo
    Jonathan Stahl
    Joseph Squillaro
    Justin Yang
    Kaitlyn Rentala
    Kanishka Bhukya
    Katie Kaufman
    Kelly Liang
    Keshav Sharma
    Ketaki Gujar
    Lauren Pak
    Lavi Ben Dor
    Libby Rozbruch
    Lindsey Li
    Luis Bravo
    Lyndsey Reeve
    Madeline Decker
    Maja Cvjetanovic
    Maliha Farrooz
    Marco DiLeonardo
    Margaret Lu
    Matthew Caulfield
    Michael Keshmiri
    Mina Nur Basmaci
    Muskan Mumtaz
    Natalie Peelish
    Natasha Darlington
    Natasha Kang
    Nayeon Kim
    Nicholas Parsons
    Nicholas Williams
    Nicole Greenstein
    Nihal Sahu
    Omar Khoury
    Owen Voutsinas Klose
    Owen Voutsinas-Klose
    Pheby Liu
    Rachel Bina
    Rachel Gu
    Rachel Pomerantz
    Rebecca Heilweil
    Regina Salmons
    Sajan Srivastava
    Sandeep Suresh
    Sanjay Dureseti
    Sarah Simon
    Saranya Das Sharma
    Saranya Sharma
    Sasha Bryski
    Saxon Bryant
    Sean Foley
    Sebastian Bates
    Serena Camici
    Shahana Banerjee
    Shannon Alvino
    Shiven Sharma
    Siddarth Sethi
    Sneha Parthasarathy
    Sneha Sharma
    Sophie Lovering
    Steven Jacobson
    Suaida Firoze
    Suprateek Neogi
    Takane Shoji
    Tanner Bowen
    Taryn MacKinney
    Thomas Cribbins
    Todd Costa
    Tyler Larkworthy
    Vatsal Patel
    Vikram Balasubramanian
    Vishwajeet Deshmukh
    Wajeeha Ahmad
    Yeonhwa Lee

    Archives

    January 2023
    December 2022
    November 2022
    September 2022
    June 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    November 2014
    October 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013

Picture
Picture
​