Indigenous Elites in Africa

The Case of Kenya's Maasai

Serah Shani

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781000482218
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

This book investigates the formation, configuration and consolidation of elites amongst Kenya's Maasai.

The Maasai ethnic group is one of the world's most anthropologized populations, but research tends to focus on what appears to be their dismal situation, analysing how their culture hinders or challenges modern ideas of economic and political development. This book instead focuses on the Maasai men and women who rise to the position of elites, overcoming the odds to take on positions as politicians, professors, CEOs, and high-end administrators. The twenty-first century has seen new opportunities for progression beyond the social reproduction of family wealth, with NGOs, missionaries, tourists and researchers providing new sources of global capital flows. The author, who is Maasai herself, demonstrates the diverse local, national, and global resources and opportunities which lead to social mobility and elite formation. The book also shows how female elites have been able to navigate a patriarchal society in their journey to attaining and maintaining elite status.

This book will be of interest to researchers across the fields of anthropology, political science, international development, sociology, and African studies.

1 Maasai historicity

DOI: 10.4324/9781003183990-1

Most research about the Maasai of Kenya has mainly focused on their culture as the culprit behind their continued dismal situation. Culture is especially blamed for the Maasai’s socioeconomic position, which remains well below most other Kenyan ethnic groups in all economic development indicators. Yet other explanatory factors for their situation exist. This chapter reveals the social and historic complexities involved in explaining why members of this marginalized and minoritized ethnic group still struggle attain elite positions.

In order to understand how indigenous groups in general come to be minoritized and underprivileged, one must interrogate the historicity of each culture and examine modern political, educational, and economic developments. In the case of the Maasai, all of these factors have been influenced by global processes, such as the history and legacy of British colonialism, coupled with national and local processes, like the geographic positioning of and access to centralized social amenities. Seen as a whole, these variables help explain most indigenous and marginalized groups’ socioeconomic positions and their minimal elite representation at national levels compared to majority groups.

In most parts of Africa, elite configuration and consolidation were based on geography, luck, and state policies during the colonial period. However, to debunk the myth that there were no indigenously political organizations in Africa before the coming of the Europeans, I would point out that the coming of Europeans and colonial administration was preceded by many African states, kingdoms, and empires: Ghana, Mali, and Songhay are some of the paramount kingdoms that rose one after the other in West Africa. They had notable political elites, like Mansa Musa, the great King who ruled Mali for many years. Africa was home to all categories of political organization, from bands and tribes to kingdoms and states, each with their corresponding types of elites. Those elites governed with the use of political power ranging from influential power in simpler societies to authoritative power in complex societies, with corresponding political elites. It is, however, the elites from the postcolonial government era that this book is focused on.

In this chapter, I will elaborate on the influence of the colonial administration on the social reproduction of elites. I further illustrate how early missionary work caused geography and chance/luck to play a part in the recruitment of elites. With the rise of globalization, elite reproduction from preselected people is changing as new paths to eliteness appear. Nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), missionaries, tourism, and Western researchers are providing the global capital flows needed to pave the way for emerging elites, which I demonstrate in Chapter 2. First, let’s look at the impact and legacy of colonialism in Africa before we focus on Kenya and the Maasai in Narok.

The impact and legacy of colonialism in Africa: Preselection and the early production of elites

Kenya was a British colony until 1963 when it gained its independence. Much has been documented about the colonial impact on African communities and societies (Decker and McMahon 2020), particularly the impact on their traditional economies, agriculture, education, and culture (Boahen 2020). The continuing legacy of colonialism has also been documented in neocolonialism studies, economic development studies, and peace and conflict studies (Mamdani 2018, 2020). Most of these studies acknowledge the primacy of colonization and its creation of many current challenges facing African countries, including harmful ethnic clashes and poverty (Mamdani 2020). While there is a lot written about the persistence of the colonial legacy in Africa, little is written about how established colonial structures predetermined those who would become the elite or how European powers preselected, consciously or unconsciously, who the elite would be via missionization, Western education, and the geographic locations where they positioned themselves within African countries. It is not a coincidence that in each colonized African country, areas of European economic exploitation, such as the Gold Coast in Ghana and the White Highlands in Kenya, became more economically developed than unexploited, far-removed areas. Parts of northern Ghana, northern Kenya, and some coastal provinces lag behind in all development indicators, such as health, education, and political participation and representation (Shani 2019). This is a pattern that cuts across most African countries: initial European interests determined whether an African region would develop and succeed or fall behind and sometimes stagnate (Michalopoulos and Papaioannou 2020). This determined where the majority of African elites would come from, including their ethnic identities. Unfortunately, the Maasai were not part of any geographic or ethnic stroke of luck, and they are one of the groups that fell behind.

Ethnic groups that lived near European settlements, such as the Kikuyu of Kenya, though opposed to the colonial administration, became advantaged because of the new, valued Western-style education. The ethnic groups that were far removed from European settlements, like the Maasai in Narok, the Samburu of Marsabit, or the Somalis of Wajir, are just now gaining access to university education, more than fifty years after gaining independence. It is not surprising that the children from areas of European interest were able to go not only to primary schools but also to high school, to university, and even to international schools in Europe and the United States. Among those children were the future founding fathers of their newly formed nations after independence. For example, one Kenyan founding father, Mzee Jomo Kenyatta, attended the London School of Economics and studied anthropology under Malinowski, who wrote an introduction to Jomo’s popular book Facing Mount Kenya, published in 1962. Similarly, Kwame Nkrumah studied in the United States and became the founding father of Ghana, the first country in Africa to gain its independence, in 1957.

Knowingly or unknowingly, the colonial government preselected who would become elite at the wake of independence. By settling in certain geographic locations, the colonial government set up resources for the production and reproduction of elites. The same can be said of colonial-era Christian missionaries; they preselected which denomination ethnic groups would convert to by settling in certain places and not others and by providing missionaries in some places but not others. With regard to missionaries, some of the Maasai were luckier than others, because those who were near missionary stations benefited from missionary education. Thus, geographic location, luck, and educational policies played a major role in the preselection of elites. This historicity is crucial to understanding elite trajectories in Narok.

Geography, ethnic luck, and fate of the Maasai

Historical factors and government policies influenced how the Maasai were incorporated into the postcolonial government. The Maasai were pushed into areas where the colonial government had no interest, places where it was not agriculturally possible to farm and where there were no minerals to mine. In the areas with resources, the Maasai were pushed out and replaced by colonial settlers.

The introduction of Christian mission settlements, such as the Kijabe Mission in the Central Province and the Siyapei Mission in Narok, brought religion, hospitals, and schools to those areas, which ended up benefiting ethnic groups living nearby. Ethnic groups living in areas where missionaries arrived much later fell behind. Similarly, the colonial settlement areas were ripe with economic resources to benefit the colonial government and European settlers, so these areas received schools, hospitals, roads, railways, and other infrastructural development. These innovations and improvements were mostly for the benefit of settlers during the colonial period. However, ethnic communities living in close proximity to these resources began their postcolonial independence with ready access to education, jobs, churches, and other privileges that benefitted the new forms of government and new political organizations. Some of the newly minted elites even bought houses from Europeans who chose to leave after independence.

Even after independence, however, the Maasai still had the lowest educational and religious exposures. Their geographic location was far removed from schools, hospitals, and other developmental infrastructure. This is an example of how geography, history, and politics can have an intergenerational effect on the well-being of people and, in this case, the formation of elites among marginalized, minority groups in Africa. Historically, Maasai land was not considered profitable by the colonial government or the white settlers who were interested in farming. The land is semi-arid, meaning cash crops that dominated most of the settler’s economy could not be cultivated. The Maasai were also pushed farther into drier areas as their land was confiscated (see Figure 1.1).

Figure 1.1 Map of Kenya showing Maasai land before and after colonization (Censotti 2019).

These factors meant that colonial development projects like roads, schools, universities, and hospitals were far removed from the Maasai, thus disadvantaging them from the beginning. Central Kenya, on the other hand, became the epicenter for colonial and economic development, leading to the proliferation of development markers and giving nearby communities more access to educational, economic, and social services. The proximity to resources furthered their economic and educational power as many qualified for jobs in government positions, thus privileging these ethnic groups intergenerationally. While secondary and tertiary educational institutions were made available during the colonial period in central Kenya, the Maasai only received their first university in the twenty-first century. For example, Nairobi University was established in 1956 in Kenya, before independence; Maasai Mara University was established in 2013, similar to other universities in far-removed parts of the country, like those in the northern parts of Kenya. These patterns are also ethnicized, since geographic locations in Kenya, except for the cosmopolitan cities like Nairobi, are ethnically charged. Thus, in Narok, the majority are from the Maasai group, where geography and ethnicity collide and where political economy and history define their socioeconomic positions. For a long time, there has been a centralized Kenyan government, with social amenities that create both immediate (those near centralized social amenities) and distant (far from social amenities) communities that have varying degrees of access to the same amenities. Thus, the elite and their numbers also differed; fewer elites exist in peripheral communities than in central communities.

During the colonial government era, the agricultural communities near the White Highlands in Kenya were displaced from their land and forced to work on farms as cheap labor, if not as enslaved people. These populations’ political structures were also disrupted by the introduction of a stratified form of governance, with power vested in chiefs and other administrative personnel. Instead of giving back to the community, they took a monitored hut tax and administered it to the people as perpetrators of indirect rule. This shift in the power structure—from a structure where power had been vested in a council of elders and was based on an age-set political organization to a stratified form of power distribution—happened in most East African communities. Appointments to these new, powerful positions were also external and did not involve members of the community, causing a shift from local influential power to authoritative and coercive power.

In spite of the many challenges arrayed against them, there are still elites among minority ethnic groups. How did individuals from these impoverished and considerably unprotected rural areas become educated and elite? The answer to this question is loaded with politics and has a lot to do with the “civilizing” mission of the British colonizers. Education was imposed upon the native population and sometimes forced through the coercive exercise of power. Prompted by the rhetoric of “education for human capital and development,” parents were required to take their children to school.

Education, preselection, and elite production and reproduction

The colonial government had a one-child policy for education. Each family was supposed to choose one child to be educated. The child, its mother, and a few cows would move next to the school, creating a village (Ekang oo Nkera). This village was a major social change. While a Maasai boma previously was comprised of kin and close friends who, by their own will, chose to live together in one manyatta/boma, Ekang oo Nkera was a new Maasai village made of different people from different places, a village that was going to produce the first generation of educated Maasai. One such village was near Kanunka Primary School in Naroosura, in rural Narok County. Most educated Maasai people from Naroosura trace their familial education history to this school. Since there were no secondary schools in rural areas, rural children had to move to boarding schools in the nearest town, which was Narok. The school that was in Narok Town is now called Ole Sankale Primary School, renamed after Paramount Chief Sankale. Students attending these schools became Christians by default, at least while in school, and the most common indicator was a change of names or the addition of Christian names to their ethnic names.

Understanding this preselection is crucial to understanding Maasai history. The intended consequence of forced education was to equip the Maasai with Western education, but these students ended up being the only group that fit into the postcolonial government, a government that required Western education to access new government jobs. This educated group formed a new category among the Maasai: they were referred to as oloolmisheni (male)/enoolmisheni (female) (belonging to the Christian missionaries), oloompala/enoompala (belonging to letters), meaning someone that goes to school. They no longer fit the definition of a real Maasai. They were different enough that their uneducated counterparts could talk about these differences, thus giving them labels. Over the years, their houses, clothes, food, and means of transportation looked different from those of their fellow Maasai. Their children went to school; they wore suits and ties, dresses, and Western shoes. In addition to their Maasai names, they had Christian/Western names, such as Joel, Livingstone, Mary, and Jane. While sometimes despised by their fellow Maasai, they have come to be the main elites in their community. They occupy most professional positions as doctors, religious leaders, and teachers. After colonialism, the Kenyan government continued to come up with policies that encouraged the Maasai to go to school.

The new elites also did not receive traditional Maasai body enhancements, cultural markers like elongated ear piercings, elaborate body scarifications, and long, twisted hair. In addition to their ethnic languages, they acquired two more languages: English and Swahili. These linguistic capabilities allowed them to interact with other educated children from various ethnic groups, opening a whole new world to them. Those who were not selected for schooling had less access to resources outside of their ethnic and geographic boundaries. Groups of children who were both educated and religious were able to avoid many...