Decolonization And The State In Kenya

David F. Gordon

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9780367155629
• eBook ISBN: 9780429711800
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: African Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

In this book the author examines the efforts of the colonial regime to shape the process of decolonization in Kenya from the end of World War II until independence in 1963, focusing on the conflict between the state's two imperatives–promoting economic development and establishing and maintaining control. Dr. Gordon reviews the different political

Part One
Concepts, Issues and Context

For decades, Kenya has captured the imagination of visitors to the beautiful East African land. It has inspired novelists, poets, romantics of all sorts. For most of the first six decades of the Twentieth Century, Kenya was at the center of debates and discussions in Britain about the purpose and direction of Britain’s imperial venture. Since gaining independence in 1963, Kenya has become a focal point of debates concerning the meaning of decolonization and the efficacy of different strategies and patterns of development. This study is a further contribution to those discussions.

The first section of the book is intended to provide two kinds of background for the reader. Chapter I discusses some of the main conceptual debates in the study of decolonization and in the analysis of the state. In this chapter I develop a framework for analysis that is applied in the body of the text. I relate my approach to the study of decolonization in Kenya to many of the most prominent scholars who have focused on this theme before me.

Chapter II provides background on both the history of Kenya and, on the global context in which the events discussed in this book took place. The material presented has been selectively chosen from a wealth of secondary source materials. It is neither particularly original, nor in any sense exhaustive. A basic knowledge of both of these contexts is necessary for proceeding into the actual themes of my study.

For those interested in either the conceptual debates or the historical and global context, the many citations in the text will provide guidelines for further study. Those knowledgable about the context and/or uninterested in the conceptual issues involved may proceed directly to Part Two.

I
Decolonization and the State: An Analytical Framework

At the stroke of midnight on December 12, 1963, the Union Jack was lowered for the final time as the official colors of the East African country of Kenya. In its stead was lifted the banner of independent Kenya; at the same time, Mzee Jomo Kenyatta, the Prime Minister of Kenya, accepted from Prince Philip the instruments of sovereignty. Another jewel had been snatched from the rapidly shrinking crown of what had been the British Empire. As significantly, the inheritors to British rule in Kenya were the leaders of the indigenous inhabitants of the country. In the mid-1980s that appears quite unremarkable. But less than a decade before independence, when the British had succeeded in putting down the rebellion of the Kikuyu uprooted known as Mau Mau and when Kenya’s 60,000 Europeans still had a monopoly of economic, social and political influence, the notion that Kenya would so quickly accede to independence under an African nationalist regime would have appeared far-fetched.

The goal of this study is to better understand how this transition occurred by exploring the actions of and the changes within the colonial state in Kenya. The study is not a definitive political history of decolonization.¹ Rather, it hopes to illuminate the processes of change by taking the view from the top. The focus on the colonial state inevitably means that other factors get relatively short-changed. In particular, while both the African nationalist movement and the Kenyan economy play a major role in the story, in my analysis they do so substantially from the perspective of the state. Both economic change and the nationalist movement have been the focus of major scholarly works.² I am obviously heavily indebted to these scholars and have drawn heavily from their works.

To focus on the colonial state is not to imply that the colonial state effectively controlled and dominated the process of decolonization. The importance of the colonial state should not be confused with its strength. Several analysts of decolonization in Kenya, especially those wishing to argue that the independent regime has been ‘dependent’ and ‘neo-colonial’, have viewed the colonial state as dominating the de-colonization process.³ A major theme of my analysis is to question this view. My study emphasizes the limits of the colonial state in shaping the decolonization process, while stressing its centrality to that process.

In this chapter I wish to develop a framework for analyzing the role of the state during decolonization in Kenya. I will begin to do this by placing the themes of the study into the context of the relevant literatures.

Theories of Decolonization

In the past ten years, after a brief hiatus, decolonization has again emerged as a major focus for students of African history and politics and, more broadly, for those interested in problems of development and underdevelopment.⁴ This renewed interest is a result of several factors: the gaining of historical distance from the events, thus offering a deeper perspective; frustrations over the failure of development efforts in Africa and an interest in exploring possible historical roots of this failure; the rise of new paradigms and methodologies for understanding African realities. Debates concerning decolonization are part and parcel of the broader question of how to understand and evaluate the nature of changes occuring in politics, economics, and society within the Third World.

Numerous theories have emerged concerning the development process and particular components within it, such as decolonization. In recent years, two broad conceptual schools have dominated the theoretical debate—the ‘modernization’ school and the ‘dependence’ school.⁵ Within each of these schools there has been substantial disagreement, but each school shares a conceptual language that has facilitated debate within the school but limited the possibility for cross-fertilization between the schools. Rather than discuss the general propositions of the various “modernization” and “dependence” theories, I will distill the major arguments of each as they relate to the analysis of decolonization, discuss the relationship between the two sets of theories, and point up the strengths and weaknesses of each of the analyses.

Early scholars of decolonization shared the epistemological foundations of modernization theory.⁶ They emphasized functional differentiation of political structures, sub-system autonomy, increasing capacity of the political system, and shifting mass orientations from parochial to subject to participant. Modernization, that is, the penetration of traditional society by the market nexus, the growth of a money economy, the expansion of physical and institituional infrastructure linking center to periphery, leads to social mobilization which in turn gives rise to political demands and movements. In line with these basic formulations, and also in line with the political rhetoric of African nationalism which employed many similar terms, these scholars painted a picture of decolonization made up primarily of the following features: mass movements led by modernized, often charismatic, leaders demanded independence in post-World War II Africa. These movements became powerful parties which successfully struggled for independence against a recalcitrant colonialism. After independence, the main goal of the new regimes was to integrate both reticent tribes and diverse regions for a sustained thrust towards moderinity.

The key group in this process was the “modernizing elite”, those educated Africans who had escaped the stultifying bonds of “traditional society.” The entire process was to be tied together by a practical ideology, “African Socialism”, and a flexible institutional structure based upon the victorious nationalist party. In an optimistic confluence of interests, independence would lead to development along pragmatic yet egalitarian lines, the main dynamic of the process being the confrontation between forces of modernity and forces of tradition. This perspective emphasized the strength and integrative capacity of politics and the emergent institutions as well as the underlying view that Afrian political systems were basically similar to Western systems at an earlier stage.⁷

The ‘dependence’ model of decolonization owes its inspiration to Frantz Fanon and to the analytical work of Andre Gunder Frank emphasizing the continuity of external control in Latin America.⁸ The Fanon-Frank perspective can be summed up by the phrase “false decolonization.” In the Wretched of the Earth, Fanon writes,

The former dominated country becomes an economically dependent country. The ex-colonial power, which has kept intact and sometimes even reinforced its colonialist trade channels, agrees to provision the budget of the independent nation by small injections…the national liberation of colonized countries unveils their true economic state and makes it even more unendurable.⁹

In the African version of the ‘dependence’ model, Marxist concepts and methods are often invoked, with greater or lesser methodological rigor as the case may be.¹⁰ The basic outline of this model is as follows: colonialism engenders a class (or classes) who act as intermediaires between the international economic system and the existing African societies. In this role, their allegiance and interests are transferred to the international economic order. In the post-war period, with the weakening of the traditional European imperial powers, the rise of multinational corporations, and the growth of this intermediary class, direct colonial rule became too costly, and at the same time, no longer necessary to ensure the continuation of the colonial socioeconomic order. Decolonization is the cementing of the bargain between the “new class” and the international economic order. In Fanon’s words, the “new class” becomes “the Western bourgeoisie’s business agent,” playing its role “in a most dignified manner.”¹¹ For the masses, change is minimal. Decolonization brings not development but the continued deepening of underdevelopment, a process that has been occuring ever since the initial impact of Western capitalism. The African “new class” replaces the colonialists as the key actor in the process. This class’s ideology, “African Socialism”, is but an ideological cover for the continuity of neo-colonial oppression. Their organizations—the nationalist party and the state—become the mechanisms of control that maintain the neo-colonial status quo.

The ‘modernization’ and ‘dependence’ models appear to be diametrically opposed, to have nothing in common with each other. A closer look, however, reveals an essential structural similarity; the theories are diametrically opposed—as a mirror image is to its object. Both theories are rather gross over-generalizations. Broad generalizations tend to reduce widely varying outcomes and phenomena to single categories and explanations. Potentially useful concepts get “stretched” to imprecision, losing analytical validity.¹² Both thoeries also share unilinear views of the development process. Modernization theory does so consciously, dependence theory does so in a more implicit manner with the direction being away from development. Both theories are also externally-oriented, at least in terms of the crucial impetuses for change. The changes wrought by modernization have an external source—the colonial impact; the same is true of the dependence model. In neither view is a really important role given to African structures, processes or values.

The analytical structure of the two theories are also similar. Modernization theory utilizes pattern variables based on Parsonian sociology. The language of dependence is full of similar binary opposites—core and periphery, development and underdevelopment, metropole and satellite. Colin Leys, in an important critique, has discussed the Frank-Fanon model as a “polemical inversion” of the modernization model.¹³ Finally, both models partake in what E.S. Atieno-Odhiambo describes as a “good guys-bad guys” version of history. Again, the good guys of modernization (the Western impact, the moderized elite) are the bad guys of dependence (the metropolitan bourgeoisie and the comprader bourgeoisie). Thus, the analytical process gets unfortunately imbued with political meaning. Both general models impart a uniformity to the experiences of decolonization that, while satisfying in its neatness, fits poorly with the empirical reality and in the end is mechanistic and deterministic.

Weaknesses in the two basic models has motivated ‘revisionists’ in both schools to move away from ‘grand’ theorizing to lower-range propositions. Recently, the case-study’ approach has dominated the literature. Out of the revision of the modernization model has developed a new perspective based upon what might be described as a political conflict and bargaining approach. This approach focuses on the range of strategies and relationships that the urban nationalists undertook to mobilize rural opposition to the colonial authorities. In this perspective, the decolonization process consisted of tacit and open bargaining b...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
• PART ONE: CONCEPTS, ISSUES AND CONTEXT
• PART TWO: THE EVOLUTION OF COLONIAL POLITICAL STRATEGIES
• PART THREE: COLONIAL CRISES AND STATE RESPONSES
• INDEX