Abstract:
Politics in developing countries are influenced by their precolonial heritage, (sic)
colonial and postcolonial experiences (James Chiriyankandath, quoted in Burnell
& Randall 2008:38).
There are three important pillars in the debate on postcolonial politics in Kenya:
the precolonial pillar (also known as the traditional pillar), the colonial pillar, and
the postcolonial pillar. This chapter examines the three pillars within the framework
of contending discourses on postcolonialism.
Proponents of the modernization theory (a highly influential intellectual discourse
in colonial history) argue that developing countries can only achieve effective
development by more or less following the developmental processes, policies and
strategies that the developed Western countries went through. Exponents like Rostow
(1960) and Organsky (1965) have propounded the stages of development supposedly
applicable to every society, further arguing that ‘development’ and ‘underdevelopment’
a reproducts of internal conditions that differ between economies.
Two distinct engines of postcolonialism emanate from the modernization
approach. The first is the view of the colonial state as a central agent tasked to
modernize the ‘primitive’ or underdeveloped societies. This view subsumes an
image of power and culture where the colonizing power perceives the colonized
as infantile and inferior in culture. The second is the perspective that development
requires the developed countries to facilitate and enable the developing countries
to develop through provision of foreign aid. Consequently, the developing countries
are required to learn from the progress, challenges and mistakes of the developed
countries. Colonialists extensively used the first viewpoint to subdue and exploit
Africa while the second theory is still used by the ex-colonial and imperial powers
to continue their subjugation and exploitation of Africa.
