Abstract
This chapter examines how and in what ways the weakening of state legitimacy in Kenya is caused by elite manipulation of ethno-cultural diversity in the country. It relied on a review of recent literature discussing the problem of Kenya’s episodic political instability, as well as the primary research method of in-depth interviews with some of the key Kenyan political analysts and activists. The chapter argues that ethnic communities in the country have overtime come to distrust one another because of development imbalances while cultural traditions, historical relations, and competition over state resources have become avenues of accentuating hostilities among ethnic communities and denying the state its political and moral legitimacy to govern effectively.
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Notes
- 1.
This commission was appointed by the President and the Panel of Eminent African Personalities in line with the mediation agreement, which ended the violence. The Commission was led by Justice Phillip Waki, a Court of Appeal Judge.
- 2.
See the Report of the Commission for Investigation into the Post Election Violence (CIPEV), October 2008, pp. 346–353. According to the AU Panel of African Personalities that assisted in the mediation exercise, 600,000 people were displaced; see http://www.dialoguekenya.org/default.aspx
- 3.
Cases of Mombasa Republican Council (MRC) and the Saboat Land Defence Forces (SLDF) around Mt. Elgon.
- 4.
For more comprehensive theoretical foundations see Tong (2009) and Varshney (2012). In their discussions, the writers show that instrumentalism approach cannot explain inter-ethnic peace as well as co-operation. Instead another approach, the Constructivist theory, which underscores institutional dimensions of political and economic systems, is canvassed.
- 5.
- 6.
Horowitz (1985) has described ethnicity as a distinct, compelling and rigid identity different from other forms of social class differentiation because of these very aspects. His psychological explanation of subsequent conflict between ethnic groups is that arising from different claims of legitimacy and entitlement, their competition for worth is fueled by an anxious fear of extinction.
- 7.
According to Elkins (2005), by the end of the state of emergency declared to deal with the Mau Mau, somewhere between 130,000–300,000 Kikuyus were unaccounted for.
- 8.
Interview with Ngunjiri Wambugu, National Coordinator, Kikuyu for Change and campaigner for ethnic tolerance in Kenya.
- 9.
Interview with Caroline Ruto, National coordinator, Smart Citizens.
- 10.
The Nandi Council of Elders Memorandum to the TJRC, February 2012. In the same year, the Elders called for a boycott of the Olympics by Kenyan athletes of Kalenjin extraction if the International Criminal Court (ICC) does not drop charges against a prominent Kenyan politician from the community facing charges over the post election violence.
- 11.
The Bukusu are a sub-set of the Luhya ethnic community who live in Western Kenya. Although the Dini ya Msambwa was declared unlawful by the colonial administration, it still exists. Elijah Masinde’s who was the sect founder, has numerable followers (post humus) in Trans Nzoia and parts of western Kenya and his political philosophy is occasionally a subject of public campaigns by politicians seeking from the area.
- 12.
Observations of Jeremiah Owiti, Researcher and Policy analysst, Director, Center for Independent Research, Nairobi.
- 13.
Official figures on Kenya’s unemployment rate are hard to get. However according to a study commissioned by UNDP and the Danish Embassy in Nairobi and conducted by Kenya Institute of Public Policy Research and Analysis (KIPPRA), this figure is quoted as the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics’ estimate on open unemployment of the youth in ages 15–24 in the year 2006/6.
- 14.
Violent political militia groups are a growing trend in Kenya. The examples of militia groups cited here represent formations within some five main ethnic groups in the country. Interview with Olang Sana, NGO founder and Director, Citizens Against Violence (CAVi).
- 15.
In a newspaper commentary, Hold talks over MRC problems, an analyst compared the MRC to the Bloc Quebecois federalists of Canada seeking a separate sate of Quebec, and argued that the agitation for secession of the coast is ‘not noise from a lunatic asylum’. See The Star, 26/4/2012, p. 25. Meanwhile the state maintained that the group is outlawed under sec. 22 of the Prevention of Organized Crimes Act because it is a threat to national security, p. 12. In July 2012, the High court in Mombasa lifted the ban on the group adding to the controversy surrounding it.
- 16.
A former legislator and shadow minister for Finance, Hon. Billow Kerrow, publicly supported these claims, noted that the MRC is demanding economic and social rights after years of exclusion. Kerrow does not come from the Coastal region. See Standard on Sunday, 29/4/2012, p. 14.
- 17.
MRC members forcefully disrupted a civic education exercise in Kilifi County, near the Coastal town of Mombasa organized by the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC), the country’s electoral body: Sunday Review, pp. 15–16 – The Sunday Nation, 22/4/2012.
- 18.
The Kenya National Commission on Human Rights (KNCHR), the country’s statutory body on the subject detailed these accounts in the report Mountain of Terror.
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Aluoka, O. (2016). The Social Foundations of State Fragility in Kenya: Challenges of a Growing Democracy. In: Olowu, D., Chanie, P. (eds) State Fragility and State Building in Africa. United Nations University Series on Regionalism, vol 10. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-20642-4_2
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