Transition in Kenya, 1995-1998.

Abstract

To write a current history of Kenya from 1995 to 1998 requires judgement and maturity. In modern Kenya, writing especially current history, can be more than the pleasantly "subversive activity" advocated by post-modernists. The author has the necessary academic qualities and he has produced the kind of history which urgently needs writing - and reading - in Kenya. The author is a professor of history at the United States International University, Nairobi, Kenya. Those familiar with contemporary Kenya will not find much here that is new. However, this little book is probably not intended to be pathbreaking. Instead the author has produced an authoritative and persuasive political history which underpins the challenge to build a strong and lasting democracy in Kenya. This was entirely a phenomenon of the events that occurred in Kenya between 1995 and 1998. These events culminated in the political crisis that virtually threatened to shake the edifice of genuine multipartism that had been ushered in 1991. This is solidly liberal historiography aimed at the middle ground, the kind of responsible opinion to which Jomo Kenyatta, the first president of Kenya, once appealed: but it is neither bland nor unengaged. It takes issues first with the circumstances that made the public to lose faith in the political class, whether within government or the opposition. These, the author traces to the first decade of the independence era, maintaining that the seeds of the present presidency wielding highly centralised powers were sown in 1964 when the minority opposition party (the Kenya African Democratic Union - KADU), voluntarily dissolved itself and joined the Kenya African National Union - KANU. The result was that Kenya became a defacto one-party state, thereby providing the occasion for the presidency to start amassing enormous powers and also creating a personality cult comparable only to that of a feudal monarch. This is the central thesis of the book. Thus when in 1978 President Daniel arap Moi took over the reigns of power following the death of President Kenyatta, the former inherited a highly constructed authoritarian one-party state.