Changed political landscape swallows post-independence leftist movement

Sometime last year Prof Mwangi wa Githinji of the University of Amherst in Massachusetts, USA, and I were reflecting on what happened to left wing politics in Kenya following the advent of multi-party politics and the current political dispensation occasioned by the 2010 Constitution. Is it still possible to talk about “the left” or has the left of the 1970s and 1980s been consumed in “conventional politics”? Has the left been dispersed in diverse political formations where room for “left wing politics” is extremely limited?

This issue cannot be unravelled unless we first acquaint ourselves with why the left was there in the first place. What actually qualified as the left? What was its politics? How did it distinguish itself from the then conventional politics?