Headache that Awaits Kenya's Fourth President

EXCLUSIVE

A new book published about Kenya has painted a grim picture about challenges that will confront Kenya’s Fourth president ranging from devolution, ethnicity, new opportunities and risks lie ahead.
The book entitled Kenya: A History Since Independence authored by Charles Hornsby and published by I.B. Taurus in London comprehensively documents Kenya’s historical journey from independence to 2011.

Kenya has had three presidents, Jomo Kenyatta -1963-1978, Daniel arap Moi -1978- and 2002 and Mwai Kibaki 2002 to date.
With the presidential race becoming dramatic day by day, and at least a dozen politicians offering their candidature for the polls under a new Constitution, he warns of tough times ahead.

Many leading lights have declared interest among them Raila Odinga, Kalonzo Musyoka, Uhuru Kenyatta, Musalia Mudavadi, William Ruto, Martha Karua, Prof George Saitoti, Peter Kenneth, Eugene Wamalwa, Raphael Tuju and Mutava Musyimi but the big question is whether they are ready for the hard task ahead.

“It is a cocktail of expectations and constraints that will be hard for any leader or structure to satisfy,” he says of devolution.

Hornsby documents the roots of Kenya’s problems since independence to 2011 and a how a select group of elites have conspired with the Western powers to deny Kenya a true rebirth.

“Much of what happens in Kenya can only be understood as a struggle within the elite for personal reward and to direct resources toward specific communities for their political benefit,” he says.

The author is concerned that the same families appear to run the country, and the same arguments over land, ethnicity, presidential authority, corruption and foreign intervention seem to continue decade after decade.

“Corruption is simultaneously an economic, political, administrative and social process.” He says.

The only bright spot the historian argues in the grand coalition government is the enactment of the new constitution. But even that he warns its implementation in parallel with events at ICC had the potential to catalyse a change more fundamental than anything else since 1965.

He argues that the grand coalition regime shows the country has not changed. Corruption remains rampant, ethnicity has been institutionalised in the administration and security remains elusive.

“Kenya is therefore a less stable state than a brittle state: resistant to change, but liable to fragment if social pressure exceeds the tolerance of its inflexible shell.”


The new constitution appears to offer an alternative, devolved model, but there is a strong risk that the greater spider will become 47 spiders, small buts just as authoritarian and venal.

Kenyatta, Charles Njonjo, Moi and Kibaki were all conservative figures, patriarchal and authoritarian, but always pragmatist, willing to turn back from the brink at moments of crisis.

The 2003 Kibaki regime was to offer growth once more, at the expense of growing inequality, but was near eviscerated in 2008 by accusations of election rigging to sustain itself in office against the popular will.

He notes that in 2008, the coalition government was headed by a president who had been part of the government at independence and a prime minister who was the son of the first-vice president.
Since independence in 1963, Kenya has survived nearly five decades as a functioning nation-state, with regular elections, its borders intact, and without experiencing war or military rule.
However, Kenya's independence has always been circumscribed by its failure to transcend its colonial past: its governments have failed to achieve adequate living conditions for most of its citizens and its politics have been fraught with controversy - illustrated most recently by the post-election protests and violence in 2007.

The decisions of the early years of independence, and the acts of its leaders in the decades since - from Kenyatta, Tom Mboya, and Oginga Odinga to Moi and Kibaki - have changed the country's path in unpredictable ways, but key themes of conflicts remain: over land, tribalism - including the simmering Kikuyu-Luo rivalries - money, power, national autonomy, and the distribution of resources.

The political elite's endless struggle for access to state resources has damaged the political repute adding that Kenya's economy and the political exploitation of ethnicity still threatens the country's stability.
In this definitive book cataloguing Kenya’s highs and lows, Hornsby demonstrates how independent Kenya's politics have been dominated by a struggle to deliver security, impartiality, efficiency, and growth, but how the legacies of the past have continued to undermine their achievement, making the long-term future of Kenya far from certain.

The author is an international manager with a multinational corporation and completed his doctor of philosophy on Kenyan politics at St Anthony’s College, Oxford.
This book is a must read for all Kenyans.
What Experts say about the book:
‘This is the first full history of Kenya’s half-century of independence. And it is more than that. Hornsby roots independent Kenya’s problems in its many colonial crises, particularly the brutally divisive Mau Mau war. -John Lonsdale, Emeritus Professor of Modern African History, University of Cambridge.

‘Charles Hornsby has followed Kenya intensely for decades and watched the twists and upsets of its dramatic politics. Now he has written a heavyweight and lucid history of this fascinating and important country. His account is a grand narrative full of sharp insights.’
Richard Dowden, Chairman Royal African Society
‘The definitive study of independent Kenya. Hornsby has an encyclopaedic knowledge of Kenyan politics and politicians.’
David Throup, Senior Associate, Africa Program, The Center for Strategic and International Studies, Washington, DC