Chapter Three—
The Struggle in the Rift Valley, 1970–1975

The early 1970s marked a second stage in the rise of the Kenyan party-state—a stage in which the dominant faction extended its ability to control the "political space" available to others, diminished the power of new opposition factions to assemble enduring bases, and triggered increasing fragmentation. The period from 1970 to 1975 thus saw changes in the way factions arose and competed with one another. It set the stage for the increasing difficulty Kenyans would encounter in resisting later bids by the Office of the President to merge the functions of the party and the administration.

Specifically, the 1970–75 period witnessed the rise of an opposition within the ranks of KANU, followed by the restriction of political life, as members of the dominant faction seized control of key administrative offices and used these to defend themselves against the newcomers. By the end of the 1960s, Kenyatta's close associates had predominated over the remnants of the KANU radicals. As the ranks of the landless and land-poor increased in the early 1970s, however, the demand for redistribution of government resources grew too. Although he was very different in style from Oginga Odinga and the members of the Kenya People's Union, the Kikuyu politician J. M. Kariuki fell heir to the populist cause and began to build a political base among these groups. He became an articulate spokesman for the interests of the "disadvantaged" in Kenya, even if his own private interests were not entirely consonant with theirs, and he used his position as a junior minister in the

Kenyatta government to try to change policy. By 1972, some of the Gatundu Courtiers had started to perceive Kariuki as a threat, however, and members of the group steadily moved to acquire control of administrative positions that would give them greater power to circumscribe their fellow party member's ability to organize (see Table 1). They split over this issue, among others, into two groups: the "Family," consisting of Kenyatta's closest associates and relatives, and a smaller, weaker faction, which included Charles Njonjo, who later helped broker Moi's accession to the presidency. Although Kenyatta resisted most efforts to use the party machinery to control the new movement, the Family, or main conservative faction, eventually succeeded in shattering the populist coalition and increasing the level of fragmentation within KANU. By the end of 1975, J. M. Kariuki was dead, and the vision of political competition articulated at the Lancaster House independence negotiations was buried with him.

This chapter outlines the grounds for resurgence of a "populist" movement within KANU, profiles the bid to organize an opposition,

explores the responses of the dominant faction and the Office of the President, and considers the implications of the actions taken for the long-term character of party-state relations in Kenya.

The Source of Competition

Awareness of disproportionate allocation of public funds to Central Province and a few favored constituencies in other areas began to crystallize for Rift Valley residents during the early 1970s. Three issues brought discussion of redistribution into the political arena. The first was the release of the 1972 International Labour Organization (ILO) report Employment, Incomes, and Equality and the subsequent debate on the floor of Parliament to determine which, if any, of its recommendations the government should adopt. The ILO team had documented ethno-regional imbalances in level of "development" and advocated measures that would redistribute capital expenditures and recurrent budget allocations for services so as to benefit areas outside of Central Province. The second issue was the termination of several land-distribution programs and concern about the policies and programs that would replace them. Finally, the period 1973-75, in particular, was one in which producers of maize and other cash crops suffered lost income as a result of inappropriate marketing practices on the part of some of the country's agricultural parastatals, sharp increases in the prices of essential inputs, and poor weather conditions. The agricultural crisis sparked further debate about the allocation of government resources to rural areas and to large- as opposed to small-scale farmers.

The ILO Report

In 1970, at the invitation of the Kenyan government, the International Labor Organization initiated an evaluation of the distribution of employment opportunities and other means of income generation. The committee reported to the government in early 1972, and published its analysis and recommendations shortly thereafter. The research depicted regional differences in welfare statistically for the first time, highlighting the privileged position of Central Province. The policy proposals urged a redistribution of public resources to achieve greater equity in levels of "development" and income-earning opportunity between people of different regions and backgrounds. The recommendations included two main lines of action to reduce differences in level of welfare, including

(1) provision of new facilities in neglected regions through "fundamental changes in the pattern of government revenue and expenditure," and (2) implementation of quota systems in vital sectors "to ensure more equitable access to secondary education" and to make access to civil service and military careers more equal.^[1]

The government deliberated the evaluations and recommendations for several months without bringing the issues before Parliament, until Elijah Mwangale, MP for Bungoma East, then a backbencher, moved independently to adopt the report and its recommendations. Mwangale feared that Central Province advisors to the president would block an effort to bring the study to the floor and so moved preemptively. In so doing, he observed:

The reason why I am moving this motion rather than waiting for Government to bring a Sessional Paper to this House is because our experience in the past has been that where there are very strong sectional interests . . . it has been the practice of Government to refuse to bring a Sessional Paper in this House. I want to mention, specifically, the Ndegwa Report. We have had hon. Members clamouring for the Ndegwa Commission Report for almost a year. As you will recall, the Ndegwa Report specifically raised salaries of those well-to-do and ignored the low-paid group to the extent that we, in this House, insist that this particular report be brought here so that we can debate it and, perhaps, have a chance to raise the scales of the low income groups.^[2]

Mwangale went on to invoke the ideals of the Mau Mau uprising. "The purposes of Mau Mau activities were based on one thing, namely, imbalance. . . . What is so surprising is that after ten years of independence, these imbalances still exist."^[3] The MP envisioned growth but expressed concern about the size of the shares some groups were likely to receive. The emphasis of his statement was not on the mild egalitarianism promoted by the World Bank's philosophy of "redistribution with growth"; instead, it highlighted the need to address more fundamental inequalities, and as such represented a major change from the thinking behind the economic policies of the 1960s. "As you know, today, in this country, we have a lot of disparities in development in that you have certain areas or certain districts which seem to have more services than other districts. You also have certain groups having much more, in terms of wealth, than others, and in order to achieve some economic integration there has to be a complete change in our economic policy," Mwangale noted.^[4] He refrained at first from trying to evaluate the political consequences of continued imbalance, but another MP, in a later

debate, showed greater temerity, warning, "nobody can fiddle with the members of the public in this country. You may think that the masses are foolish today, but tomorrow you will be having a different opinion about them."^[5] Eventually, Mwangale too issued a warning: "If we are going to build a stable society, let us not talk of miracles of economic development when there are no miracles at all. In fact, the miracles are there only for a few people. . . . Government has been bold enough to ask these people [ILO] to come and give us a very good report. If we are going to be of any help, let us accept it."^[6]

Support for Mwangale's move and for the ILO report came primarily from members of Parliament representing districts in the Rift Valley. "What the International Labour Organization document has said is, in fact, what many of us in this House have been saying but in a different language," commented J. M. Kariuki, MP for Nyandarua North and assistant minister for tourism and wildlife.^[7]

Have we attempted to do something to combat the pressure and the issues of tribalism? . . . If so, what has the peasant farmer in Kilgoris, Kinangop, Kajiado, Turkana, Machakos, Meru or the pastoral Masai in Narok District gained? Have decisions been made to effect equitable distribution of economic benefits to the various parts of our country and among the various income groups of our community as stated in the KANU manifesto of 1963, and also as repeated by the same people in this House in the years 1969/70?^[8]

He echoed Mwangale's dissatisfaction with policies that concentrated on generating absolute gains for all without attention to the size of shares held by particular groups, arguing, "We have, in fact, widened and not bridged the gap between the rich and the poor . . . the planners we have here have looked at what is internationally known as the Gross National Product and because they think that the people living in the urban areas have achieved this, even the people in the rural areas have attained the same."^[9] Other representatives raised questions about particular aspects of policy. For example, one MP urged equal sharing in the bid for industrialization. "We should not concentrate all the industries in one place. . . . People in Malindi would like to see an industry there; people in Meru District would like to see an industry and so forth," he observed.

If we work for the welfare of society and just government of men in Kenya, then our Government should use its influence to ensure that our industrial development is enjoyed in all parts of the country. It does not matter even if the industry would employ only 100, or even 50 people, since these people would benefit . . . we think that it is only our children who would like to

have butter; we must know that even the people in Naivasha would like to have the same.^[10]

Mwangale's own efforts to argue on behalf of the motion illuminated the variety of concerns involved. Early in the debate, Mwangale linked attention to the agricultural problems of his district to consideration of the report, requesting that, as a step toward its adoption, restrictions on transport of maize between regions should be dropped. Bungoma and other districts in the central Rift Valley were major maize producers, but it was alleged that the benefits were reduced by inappropriate policies that favored those outside the area. Mwangale equated the system of licensing movement of maize to "black marketeering" and noted that at times "people from Central Province were given licenses to go and transport maize down from Western Province, while [residents] . . . were denied the opportunity of transporting their own produce to market places in Kenya."^[11]

Mwangale sought increased educational opportunities for his district as well. "If you look at the admissions to the university in the years 1970, 1971, and 1972, you will see that most of these are from Central Province, not for any reason but just because the teachers in some of these districts are better than those in other districts," he claimed. "So, let us get admissions to the university on a quota basis. We should not only find the Mwangale and Wanyonyi from the Abaluhya community. Let each place have a share."^[12] Published at about the same time as the ILO study, the Ndegwa Report, although less concerned about maintaining equality between groups, had nonetheless advocated quotas in university admissions. Mwangale went beyond the earlier report, however, in calling for quotas in the secondary school system as well.

The debate of the ILO report set the stage for revision of the distributive agreements then in effect and for renegotiation of the coalitions supporting and opposing government policy. It made the allocation of services an issue, providing an opportunity to raise questions that just a few years previously had proven much more difficult to bring to the floor of Parliament, on the grounds that such discussions would shatter the overarching loyalty to the nation that all hoped would override undue pursuit of sectional interests.

The Recurrent Problem of Land

The second issue to rise to new prominence during the early 1970s, and especially in 1974-75, was the "politicization of the land market."^[13]

During the first decade of independence, large tracts of land were purchased by the Kenyan government and resold to African settlers. The disposition of the acreage in the Rift Valley had fueled much of the disagreement between KANU and the Kenyan African Democratic Union (KADU) at the Lancaster House Conferences. The KADU bid for a federal system—or "majimboism"—was in large part an effort to keep the land in the former Masai Reserve, Kericho, Nandi, Uasin-Gishu, Trans-Nzoia, and Nyandarua, under the control of the groups living in the Rift, or at least under the control of the local elite. KANU instead urged central control of the region in an effort to forestall local legislation restricting land transfer to those born in the area and to maintain the foothold of the party's Kikuyu supporters in the Rift Valley land market.^[14] KANU's victory and the subsequent allocation of plots on subdivided Rift Valley farms to large numbers of Kikuyu settlers provoked resentment among others. The exact proportion of the settlement area held by large farmers or by Kikuyu smallholders is uncertain. Apollo Njonjo's study of landholding in Nakuru District indicates that in 1971, over 50 percent of the acreage under cultivation by individual large-scale farmers was in the hands of Kikuyu owners.^[15]

Disaggregated data on migration patterns, which would give some sense of the magnitude of the influx into the Rift, are unfortunately difficult to obtain. A World Bank study based on 1962 and 1969 census data found that nearly half of all out-migrants from Central Province and Western Province settled in the Rift Valley during Kenya's first years of independence.^[16] These estimates suggest settlement of about 166,300 former residents of the Kikuyu districts and 100,450 residents of Western Province in the Rift during the seven-year intercensal period.^[17] The shortage of acreage for increasing numbers of landless people and the agribusiness interests of Kenyan entrepreneurs also generated concern that foreigners had succeeded in obtaining acreage at the expense of Kenyans. In 1967, the government had disclosed that nearly a million acres of land had been bought by foreigners during the first four years of independence,^[18] despite a ban on such transfers.

The 1972-75 period also witnessed a change in government land policy. During Kenya's first decade, three different settlement programs were in effect, as noted in the previous chapter. In 1971, the government introduced a fourth kind of settlement, the Shirika scheme, in which entire farms would be taken over and managed as going concerns on behalf of members, each of whom would be allotted one hectare for private use. The three original programs were phased out during the

early 1970s, leaving only the Shirika scheme by 1974. The objective was to permit economies of scale in agricultural production, but one side effect was to constrain access to land; absent participation in a land company, it was difficult for a household to resettle.

With the gradual termination of land distribution programs, save the Shirika schemes, land speculation and land prices increased. One sign of the increased demand for land was a concomitant rise in illegal land transactions. These were reportedly most common in the high tea country of Kericho (a Kalenjin stronghold), where, in only one settlement zone, in 1970, 627 illegal transactions came to government attention.^[19]

Kenyan MPs had never displayed reticence in discussions of the land problem. The debate over the ILO report provided yet another occasion for negotiation of claims, however. Waweru Kanja, MP for Nyeri and a former Mau Mau militant, was one who spoke up. After acknowledging that "the land issue is very sensitive," he complained: "Whenever we mention that problem either in this House or outside we are accused of payukaring [bickering]. . . . We shall keep on payukaring because we were elected to do that."^[20]

Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, this country consists of very many tribes and whether or not we like it all the tribes in this country will continue to live in Kenya because they are part and parcel of this country. It is wrong for any tribe to think that it will dominate other tribes for ever. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, we should learn from experience and history, because similar things have happened in other African countries.^[21]

Kanja went on to call for a complete change in the system of land allocation, angrily summing up: "We would like to share the national cake, but that is not possible because some of our own people are opposed to such a move."^[22]

Trouble in the Maize Industry

The third problem felt during the 1972-75 period was the consequence of mistaken agricultural policy. Many Rift Valley residents had shifted from subsistence production to smallholder cash-cropping during the preceding years. The minister for finance, Mwai Kibaki, noted a 20 percent increase in marketed agricultural produce during 1972 alone. The dramatic change in the economy of the region was not greeted by adequate extension of services, however. Storage facilities proved too limited to handle increased maize production and farmers found that they were unable to sell all of their surplus. A good maize crop in the latter

part of 1972 filled available storage with more than two million bags of surplus grain.

By January 1973, the lack of storage and government refusal to permit export meant that the farmers who had produced so much would not receive payment. No income, no new planting. Unable to purchase seeds and fertilizer, the farmers retreated to subsistence production. A Daily Nation editorial urged that the problem receive emergency attention, "for the majority of these farmers have children who will need school fees within the next few weeks."^[23] Indeed, by mid January, officials in neighboring Kisii District, in Nyanza Province, suggested that 250 teachers were in danger of losing their jobs because children could not afford to come to school. The local education officer appealed to cooperative societies to help farmers pay the requisite fees.^[24] The permanent secretary in the Ministry of Agriculture hurried to assure farmers that the government was trying its best to increase maize storage facilities but acknowledged that the Maize and Produce Board had failed to buy all the maize crop in some areas because of a shortage of space.^[25] By February, the board had constructed open shelters in some parts of Eldoret, part of the vice president's home territory. William Saina, MP for Eldoret North, suggested that the government should further consider issuing "a cereal finance" to enable farmers to plant in time for the rains and prevent shortages later in the year.^[26]

Agricultural fortunes moved from one extreme to the other. In 1973, the long rains failed and large quantities of imported wheat were required to make up the deficit caused by climatic problems and reduced acreage. "Lack of foresight and bad planning" were also at fault, the minister for cooperatives and social services suggested.^[27] Wafule Wabuge, MP for Kitale West, told Parliament later that year that poor access roads and increases in fertilizer costs without corresponding increments in the maize price conspired against greater production and farmers' welfare.^[28] Complaints about shortages of essential agricultural inputs continued into 1974. Suppliers of seeds and fertilizer refused credit to customers, in spite of assurances that maize and wheat growers would receive backing from the Agricultural Finance Corporation, and headlines in May that year read: "Cash Crisis Hits Rift Valley Farmers."^[29]

Other problems accentuated the perception of a need for change. Delivery of fertilizer was plagued by delay and high price markups. Between 1972 and 1973, before the brunt of the oil-price shock, fertilizer prices climbed by 75 percent.^[30] The consumer price index rose sharply,

fueled in part by the oil-price increases and in part by abandonment of income taxes for sales taxes. "Kibaki Soaks the Rich"—a reference to heavier levies on luxury goods—was the headline with which the Daily Nation prefaced publication of the 1972 budget.^[31] In reality, the new lists of taxable items included consumer goods used by the less wealthy, and the budget elicited the opposite reaction from several members of Parliament, one of whom attacked what he saw as government efforts to "keep the wananchi [common people] under taxation suppression."^[32] The sharp increases in the prices of consumer goods heightened the perception, then widespread, that some Kenyans were profiting at the expense of others. Skyrocketing prices for nearly all commodities sold in the region were attributed to unfair profit margins taken by shopowners after the introduction of a sales tax in June 1972; traders were accused of raising prices 50 to 100 percent, although the tax on local and imported goods was only 10 percent.^[33]

As in the case of land, food shortages and increases in the problems faced by maize growers were quick to generate controversy. Unlike land allocation, however, the problems and their consequences made themselves felt swiftly, strongly, and in almost all parts of the country. Shortages of maize could not be disguised, delayed, or justified as necessary for some greater, long-term benefit. They made themselves felt in the marketplaces and ultimately in the physical well-being of citizens. If the ILO report provided an opportunity to renegotiate distributive arrangements, and disputes about land ownership fueled the debate, the maize problems broadened participation and piqued the interest and concern not just of parliamentarians but also of their constituents. The Kitale West MP, Wafula Wabuge, commented in his introduction to a committee's report: "If we have no maize in this country, then it means that we have no government."^[34]

Organizing an Opposition

The perception of inequity in the distribution of public resources quickly generated efforts to lobby for the redistribution of services and re-targeting of development projects. Policy influence requires some sort of sustained organizational base, however—one that can coordinate voting power, help members engage in strategic logrolling, and thereby persuade others to support enforcement of new laws or the implementation of new programs. Without such capacity, an opposition has little hope of being able to represent constituents' broad economic interests and must be content with securing patronage and "constituency ser-

vice" projects that yield only particularistic benefits. In the context of a one-party-dominant political system, constituting an organizational base can be an extremely difficult enterprise. As the leadership of the Kenya People's Union had discovered earlier, oppositions in single-party-dominant systems must survive a difficult phase in which they have insufficient votes in the party to influence policy or secure access to the party machinery, while at the same time lacking the votes in the legislature to block passage of restrictive election laws, should they decide to break off and form an alternative political association. Even when members of the most powerful faction oppose legislation restricting association, it is difficult to assemble a defense of "political space" if the party contains multiple factions; each faction will attempt to "free ride" on the investment of time and energy and the assumption of risk by the others, and ultimately no defense will materialize.

The period 1970–75 offers a textbook case of the difficulties oppositions face under these circumstances. Those who argued for a "populist" platform sought to organize within KANU. They used the harambee system to build a coalition that posed an increasing threat to policies the Family favored. Before the leaders could assemble a majority within the party or take their positions to the public in the form of an opposition party, however, the dominant faction succeeded in using the positions it held to deny members of the opposition access to soapboxes within KANU and to obtain passage of restrictive legislation. In the period 1972–75, however, the opposition was able to assemble a substantial base of support before it succumbed, because internal party factions had not yet proliferated. Even when some of their constituents had interests at odds with those advanced by the opposition platform, some politicians broke ranks with the dominant group and joined the effort to defend freedoms of association. In later years, as factions proliferated, this form of legislative behavior became less and less common.

The Rise of a Populist Coalition

The areas affected most strongly by the problems of land distribution and cash-crop production were the districts that included the former White Highlands: Nyandarua, Nakuru, Nandi, parts of Baringo, Uasin-Gishu, Trans-Nzoia, and Elgeyo-Marakwet. Widespread participation in maize production made Bungoma and Kakamega in Western Province potential bases for allies. Parts of Kisii District, near Lake Victoria, also suffered from the vagaries of pyrethrum marketing. Instead of making proportional claims or bids for representation in decision making

and administration, group spokesmen moved rapidly to bargain with one another for support.

Two men served as catalysts. In Nyandarua North, on the western edge of Central Province, J. M. Kariuki had won a reputation as an articulate opponent of the Family surrounding Kenyatta. A wealthy member of the Kikuyu elite, Kariuki was in many respects an unlikely leader of "populist" criticism. Born in 1929, he had attended King's College at Budo, in Uganda, and had then gone into the hotel business and quickly made money from enterprises in Nakuru District. Although detained for the duration of the Mau Mau Emergency, "J.M.," as he came to be known, returned to the ranks of the new political elite quite quickly and appears to have developed a strong rapport with Kenyatta. He traveled to England to study briefly at Oxford and then returned to Kenya, where he was elected to Parliament in 1963. He headed the National Youth Service, then a vocational training program for Kenyan secondary school students who were not university-bound, and also became chairman of the Betting and Lotteries Licensing Board, a position he appears to have used to his advantage.^[35] He held several positions as a junior minister, including those of assistant minister for agriculture and assistant minister for tourism and wildlife. Even in 1973, two years before his assassination, and several years after increasing state restriction of his activities, he was a guest at the establishment wedding of the son of James Gichuru, minister for defense and a leader of the Family.^[36] The residents of Kariuku's constituency, which was host to forty-nine settlement schemes, were predominantly Kikuyu, although not all of them had been landless prior to relocation. Kariuki himself had tried to purchase extensive parcels of land in the area at the expense of those still without acreage but met with opposition from foreign purchasers and Kiambu-based land-buying companies.

At the same time, Kariuki had credentials that set him apart from most of the Kikuyu elite. His parents had moved from Nyeri District to Kabati Forest in the Rift a year before he was born. His heritage therefore resembled that of the Mau Mau militants more than it did that of many of his fellow members of the Kenya African Union. He had participated in the Mau Mau rebellion and been detained by the British, an experience he documented in his autobiographical book "Mau Mau" Detainee . He became a leader among the prisoners in the camps where he was interned. After his election to Parliament and his selection as head of the National Youth Service, he developed a strong interest in the condition of the country's "dispossessed." In 1965, he traveled to the United States to study antipoverty programs there and carried some of

what he learned back with him. A populist platform was thus consonant with his earlier experiences, his government role, and his personal political interests. Rhetoric and policies that championed the interests of the landless and the rural poor furthered Kariuki's individual interests against those of his competitors in the land market and won him the support of local residents, many of whom produced pyrethrum (used for insecticide), the area's most important cash crop, at a time when government policies discriminated strongly against growers of the chrysanthemums from which it was derived.

The other man who stood most to gain from a change in government policies was John Marie Seroney, deputy speaker of the National Assembly and MP for Tinderet, in Nandi District. Seroney had the reputation of being a stronger advocate of Kalenjin interests than Vice President Daniel arap Moi (a member of the Tugen subgroup), perhaps because of his relative freedom as a backbencher to push for partial interests.^[37] The government had charged Seroney with sedition in 1969 after he issued the "Nandi Hills Declaration" laying claim to all settlement land in the district for the Nandi people.^[38]

Seroney's father, a teacher, had been a highly respected Kalenjin leader and had in fact served as one of Moi's instructors. The land issue had created a division between the two contemporaries and former friends. Moi succeeded in advancing the interests of his constituents by turning a blind eye to Kikuyu expansion into areas claimed by neighboring Kalenjin subgroups. He secured the settler farms of the Lembus Forest and the Essageri salient for his own small subgroup in the face of competing bids by the Nandi and Elgeyo,^[39] who also faced incursions by the Luo and Luhya to the west, and he obtained credit assistance for some Kalenjin interests.^[40] To maintain his electoral base and his power within Nandi District organizations, both contested, Seroney had to gain leverage over government land policy and use that bargaining strength to secure remaining settlement areas within the district or in neighboring districts for his own people. To do so, he had to compete with Moi's leadership of the Kalenjin and strike a different set of deals with the State House. Mobilizing a national coalition that could compete with the group surrounding the president was an essential step in gaining leverage.

By 1971–72, cooperation between J.M. and Seroney in the National Assembly was apparent. Throughout the 1972–75 period, the MP employed populist appeals but machine tactics. Harambee contributions from J.M. to potential supporters were the cornerstone of his coalition-building strategy, although full documentation of these is unavailable.^[41]

The sources of J.M.'s funds remain unclear. Certainly, he had made a great deal of money himself in land deals and small business enterprises.

A measure both of J.M.'s impact, through harambee, and public recognition of the State House's disapproval came on August 14, 1972, when hundreds of members of the African Independent Pentecostal Church assembled at Kariuki's home, near Gilgil. The church's leader led a ceremony "to pray for the continued strength and willingness of Mr. Kariuki to support Harambee projects in the country." The visiting Nyeri MP, Waweru Kanja, speaking of the rationale behind the prayer meeting, is quoted as having said: "Mr. Kariuki had been a very helpful person in respect of self-help projects in the country."^[42] Backbenchers from Nyeri, Kiambu, and Murang'a, as well as from Nyandarua, participated, an indication of increasing inroads into the government's Central Province support.

Personally less well-off than Kariuki, and with less capital at his disposal, Seroney was more constrained in his use of harambee to build support, but his doing so was no less controversial. Government objections to Seroney's activities surfaced in the press in February 1973, when the Tinderet MP alleged in Parliament that he had received a threat that the government would "crush" the proposed Samoei Institute for Vocational and Technical Education, for which he had raised harambee funds. Seroney held a news conference in Nairobi and announced that his project had been "obstructed by jealous politicians mainly from outside the District," with the collaboration of civil servants.^[43] On February 4, the local administration refused to license further fund-raising for the institute, and five days later, the entire Samoei project was unlicensed. Official sanction was provided instead to a newly registered Samoei Boys and Girls Harambee Boarding School. The Daily Nation reported only that "the people of Nandi Hills have thanked Vice-President Daniel arap Moi for his efforts toward raising KSh. 150,000 for construction" and that the school would be managed by a former MP from the district instead of Seroney.^[44] The efforts to undermine Seroney continued, with reception of a "Nandi Hills delegation" by the vice president and minister for home affairs at the end of the month. In contravention of standard procedure, the sitting MP was not included.^[45] Several members came from outside of Tinderet or even Nandi.

Calls for Redistribution

This push for greater equity by the Rift Valley rebels touched several spheres of policy. Land, education, and agricultural services were at the

core of the platform, although the demands of coalition members were not always consistent within any one sphere—something the leaders tolerated in an effort to extend their base of support.

The inconsistency of claims was greatest on the subject of land. In order to build a national movement capable of opposing and dislodging the "inner circle," it was necessary to build support within Central Province and the Kikuyu stronghold. The disproportionate benefit received by the Kiambu Kikuyu during the first years of the Kenyatta government meant that making inroads into that district would be difficult. Not all residents of Central Province had benefited to the same degree from the extension of services, however. The former Mau Mau centers of activity had received a disproportionate share of resources compared to other parts of the country, but fewer of their local leaders had acquired positions in government or on the boards of private sector businesses. The division between the largely loyalist business and farming elite on the one hand and the former Mau Mau, the subsistence farmers, and the landless on the other provided an opening. The Rift Valley rebels crafted a strategy that used a populist appeal to create division among the Kikuyu.

Given his role as a moderate during the Mau Mau rebellion and a mediator at independence, Kenyatta could, of course, find support within both Central Province groups. The idea of the J.M. coalition was not to challenge the president's rule but to convince the president that a small group had taken power behind his back and that the way to restore control was to oust that faction in favor of another, or at least to limit the resources the Family sought to aggregate under their control. The strategy was also practical because Kariuki hailed from a Nyeri family originally and could still generate support there. Thus, early in the campaign, the Nyeri politician Wareru Kanja was brought into the periphery of the coalition, calling for a land policy that would give plots to the people who had fought for independence.^[46] Other men and women assumed important roles too. Charles Rubia, assistant minister for education, who was originally from Murang'a but had a political base in Nairobi, became a stalwart defender of the right of coalition members to speak freely on the floor of Parliament. Martin Shikuku, MP from Butere, an area of small farms in Western Province, was to become a vocal advocate of the less well-off.

The plea for a land policy that would benefit the landless, although a means of capturing wider Kikuyu support and bolstering J. M. Kariuki's position, stood diametrically opposed to the interests of some of the other parties in the coalition. True, a populist appeal placing ceilings on

land ownership would benefit Rift Valley groups by excluding the big Kikuyu landowners from the land market there. But it would not help stem the influx of Central Province settlers into the Rift or enable local machine bosses to reward their supporters with participation in land ventures. A policy to benefit the landless, in general, would operate by formulas that would exclude important local figures whose electoral backing candidates would welcome.

In the actual event, debate over group entitlements gave way to the need to build a coalition broad enough to fracture the Family base. Members of the coalition began to push strongly for populist land policies in mid September 1972.^[47] Kariuki introduced the topic repeatedly over a period of several days, calling, at one point, for a change not only in policy but in the policy-making process. Before an audience at Kamusinga, the assistant minister for tourism and wildlife called for "a complete overhaul of the existing social, economic, and political systems in Kenya," claiming that "a small but powerful group of greedy, self-seeking elite in the form of politicians, civil-servants, and businessmen has steadily but very surely monopolised the fruits of independence to the exclusion of the majority of our people. We do not want a Kenya of ten millionaires and ten million beggars."^[48] Picking up the refrain, Elijah Mwangale, MP for Bungoma East, warned: "The gap between the 'haves and have nots' in Kenya is widening with only ten percent of the population controlling everything at the expense of others."^[49] The period of intense mobilization had started.

Land distribution and land prices remained public issues throughout 1973 and 1974, with the number of critics of government policy steadily growing. A Murang'a District MP, supported by several other backbench Kikuyu politicians, attacked the use of quit notices to eliminate squatting by landless peasants in Central Province and introduced a motion to give those dispossessed plots of their own.^[50] When the group later moved that ceilings be placed on land prices,^[51] Kariuki announced that the motion was the most important in the history of the House.^[52] Resale of land to foreign owners and to large landowners came under fire too, particularly from the Luhya areas, where Martin Shikuku and the MP for the neighboring constituency of Lurambi South had joined forces with J.M.^[53]

The leaders of the Rift Valley opposition maintained the pressure for two years, making increasingly concrete calls for change. In July 1974, members of the opposition coalition disclosed evidence of "land rack-

ets" and appropriation of government farms by cabinet ministers. J.M. and Assistant Minister for Education Charles Rubia called for a commission of inquiry. "Cabinet Ministers, Permanent Secretaries, and Provincial Commissioners [are] being allocated land supposed to be set aside for experimental farms in Masailand," Kariuki is quoted as telling the House.^[54] John Marie Seroney and a representative from Busia, on the Ugandan border, supported J.M.'s call for an impartial body to deal with land transactions.

The call for equity also extended to provision of educational and economic opportunities, particularly the latter. Members of the Rift Valley coalition made the first bid for local development monies shortly to be made available under the Special Rural Development Program,^[55] urging that the Kerio Valley, in the north-central part of the Rift, be the site of the initial project. When Attorney General Charles Njonjo tried to introduce an amendment to make the program nationwide, the backers of the original motion remained firm. They argued that the great potential of the area should long ago have attracted attention from several ministries and tried to force the administration not to follow a strategy that would grant some of the money to portions of Central Province, as Njonjo had proposed.^[56] Picking up the refrain, Kitale leaders similarly used the 1973 Kitale agricultural show as a platform to call for location of more industry in the district.^[57]

Typical of the exchanges on the floor of Parliament was a debate led by the Kerio South MP, who challenged the government to "embark on a crash program to develop all areas of Kenya which were neglected"^[58] and moved:

That, in view of the fact that Harambee spirit has accelerated and is booming in all advanced parts of the Republic, except in the backward districts which are likely to remain behind for a long time, this House urges Government to assist financially and morally those areas which need crash programmes of development in order to catch up with the rest of the country.^[59]

The MP congratulated the government on providing free education in neglected areas but remarked that other districts in need of such opportunities had not been included. He concluded by observing that the gap between haves and have-nots had widened, saying that "in about five years' time [some Kenyans would] be living on top of the Hilton," while the rest would roam the streets. "Equal opportunity for all!" was the resounding finale. Others voiced their approval of the Kerio South MP's

motion and called for "equal opportunities for all tribes living in Kenya."^[60]

GEMA and the Bid to Rejuvenate Kanu

The dominant faction moved quickly to preserve its access to the president and its influence over policy, using a variety of political tactics, including the expansion of its financial base to facilitate efforts to lure marginal "rebels" from J.M.'s coalition, capture of critical "gatekeeping" positions in the administration, and a bid to strengthen the party in ways that would potentially decrease the power of rival groups. Its leaders developed these responses with some presidential toleration but not with full presidential support. Kenyatta continued to pursue an independent strategy of accommodation until illness and the growing power of the Family in government removed control from his hands.

The redistribution of resources toward Rift Valley groups did not appeal to Family leaders, who stood to lose benefits and status. The group decided to fight back by strengthening the Kiambu-based ethnic welfare society, the Gikuyu, Embu, and Meru Association (GEMA), mobilizing resources to generate a tighter organization and signal its bargaining power, always under the guise of "cultural preservation." In February 1973, Dr. Njoroge Mungai, the foreign minister and a nephew of Kenyatta's, launched the first GEMA-sponsored social event in Nairobi. Shortly thereafter, GEMA also inaugurated activities in parts of the country where it had never done so before, using its significant and growing financial base as a source of funds for promoting the fortunes of potential supporters throughout the country.

However much GEMA's leaders protested that the organization was not a political body, its actions often crossed into that sphere. For example, in December 1973, GEMA's Nyeri Branch asked the government to divide Nyeri District into eight parliamentary constituencies instead of the four that then existed, some of which were controlled by opponents of the Family. And in 1974, the Family pitted Peter Ndirangu Nderi, a relative of the head of the Criminal Investigation Department, against the Nyeri MP Waweru Kanja and lost by a very narrow margin. Perception that GEMA had become an ethnically based political organization with substantial leverage was reflected in J. M. Kariuki's statement in February 1974 that the "ten years of independence have neither been great nor truly independence. . . . The inauguration and strength-

ening of such bodies as GEMA, Luo Union, and the New Akamba Union in my view is the most retrogressive step we have ever taken, and constitutes a tragedy in terms of our own advance toward nationhood."^[61]

Rejuvenating KANU and its nationalist ideology became one of the main planks in GEMA's strategy. The push for a stronger party started in mid 1972, at the same time that Kariuki and Seroney began to criticize top officials for constraining political association. An assistant minister for works said that Kenya would be "doomed to failure" if KANU did not reorganize to protect the country from those who launched "unwarranted attacks" against the vice president and senior officials.^[62] Inaugurating a new recruitment drive in mid 1972, the party's organizing secretary denounced leaders who were "cleverly and cunningly dishing out national seats on a provincial basis and tribal affiliations."^[63] William Odongo Omamo, Luo patriarch Oginga Odinga's rival in Siaya, joined the predominantly Kikuyu-inspired push for reorganization in March 1973, in "a determined bid to reawaken the Nyanza people in defence of party democracy."^[64] Omamo's support was repaid by the participation of another central Kiambu Family figure, Njoroge Mungai, in a harambee meeting at Ukwala, Siaya, in the Luo country of Nyanza on May 6, 1973.

As 1973 progressed, the KANU reorganization leaders took the first steps toward using the party as a means of political control. In April, Minister of Defence James Gichuru and the Central Province KANU chairman, James Njiru, both GEMA members, violated an unwritten rule in Kenya that during visits by politicians or public officials to constituencies the sitting MP for the area must also be present. The two men held a KANU meeting in Nyandarua, Kariuki's home territory, in his absence. The MP for Laikipia West introduced Gichuru with the words: "The party is much alive and we all know it. Perhaps those who suggest that the party is dead are not politically alive." According to the Daily Nation, Njiru boasted: "Just as KANU had managed to crush other parties such as KADU, APP (the African People's Party), and KPU, so it would crush 'any other party these people may be trying to form.'"^[65]

A month later, at a KANU meeting in Nakuru District, Gichuru expressed his concern over the attacks of a Rift Valley coalition member, Martin Shikuku, on senior government officials. Those attending the meeting promptly resolved: "Anyone who continues to abuse or level unwarranted charges against President Kenyatta, Mr. Mbiyu Koinange,

or Mr. James Gichuru will be dealt with 'mercilessly.'" Gichuru went on to criticize those who preached "sectionalism and regionalism," although, apparently unaware of any inconsistency, he concluded by calling on the wananchi, or common people, to join GEMA, "which he described as a unifying factor among the Kikuyu, Embu, and Meru people."^[66]

The bid to strengthen KANU was short-lived and unsuccessful, however, because of suspicion that it was a Kiambu effort to disguise privilege through appeals to nationalism and to meritocratic considerations. Where GEMA's boundaries ended and those of the KANU reorganization group began was unclear. Most of the meetings took place in Central Province, and many of the early speeches urging party reorganization were delivered by Gichuru.^[67] Indeed, the first conference to consider reorganization strategy was announced not by national-level party officials but by the KANU executive officer for Central Province. Held in Nyeri township, the meeting was chaired by Gichuru, KANU's vice president in Central Province. Although the 300 delegates and observers came from all parts of Kenya, the choice of speakers was peculiarly unrepresentative. The list, when announced, included Minister for Foreign Affairs Mungai, Minister for State Mbiyu Koinange, and an array of other Kikuyu speakers, including Margaret Kenyatta.^[68] Most Luo leaders, save Odongo Omamo, appeared reticent to extend support, despite their relative lack of involvement in the Rift Valley opposition and their historical role as part of the KANU alliance against a "majimboist," federalist system.

Kenyatta did not come out as a public spokesman for party revitalization, although neither did he did express disagreement with those who argued for a stronger, de jure single-party system. In the end, the prospect that Central Province sectional interests would capture the effort to define nationalism made the party a poor vehicle for managing political conflict, as Kenyatta appeared to realize. Eventually, GEMA retreated. In the early months of 1974, the organization's leaders issued frequent protests that they were not involved in party politics, in response to complaints that the reverse was true.

The President's Strategy

In a style that had brought him success during the independence transition period, Kenyatta initially responded to the "rebellion" in the Rift with increased resources to meet some of the demands for equity and compensation of those who stood to lose. He had paid attention to

J.M.'s demands for greater KANU openness in 1969, when the assistant minister had proposed a system of open primaries. At first, he chose to accommodate again. As oil-price shocks and agricultural problems constrained availability of funds and the demands of both the Rift coalition and the Family escalated, the president would eventually seek to make coalition-building more difficult, placing constraints on speech and association. In the early part of the period, however, maintenance of a loose but broad coalition appeared to be Kenyatta's objective.

The president's first move was to stave off dissatisfaction in the Rift by responding to some of the demands posed by the "rebels." The gestures targeted small numbers of particularly vocal citizens. In April 1973, for example, the president presented land in Nakuru District, to 200 families, 65 of whom were drawn from the landless register. "Kenya Has No Room For Land Bloodsuckers—Mzee" read the Nation's headline the next day. At the ceremony, the provincial commissioner for Rift Valley made a speech thanking the president for his attention to needy families and said that "whenever the President visited the province people knew that a portion of landless people would be provided with shambas [plots of land]."^[69] Public demonstrations of responsiveness were intended to forestall more politically difficult changes in land-use policy. At the end of the year, the government initiated sugargrowing schemes in Nyanza and Western Province. The first months of 1973 also brought a tour of Eastern Province, announcement of extensive road-building in Meru District, and distribution of 1,600 plots on the edge of the Rift to landless Kikuyu squatters. Finally, in July 1974, the Ministry of Lands and Settlement announced that it was poised to buy around 60,000 acres for redistribution to landless squatters.

Other gestures communicated a sense of greater attention to "neglected areas" in the government's economic decision making. As the agricultural problems of 1973 intensified, Kenyatta embarked on a tour of the districts in the central and northern parts of the Rift, giving away more land at Molo, in Nakuru District,^[70] and opening the Kitale, Nakuru, and Eldoret agricultural shows, traditionally important forums for political announcements and coalition-building. In August, he toured the area a second time, and again in September he embarked on a one-week trip. Promises of free primary education, at least in a student's first four years, and announcement of additional road construction in the Rift followed in short order.

In the early years, the president also compensated the leaders of the GEMA elite through harambee contributions and Ministry of Finance purchases of shares in companies they owned, or in which they held part

equity. The president himself rarely appeared at these functions, except those in his own constituency. Instead, Vice President Moi, Minister of Finance Kibaki, and Minister of Defence Gichuru, in particular, made public appearances on behalf of the president.

In 1974, as GEMA gathered strength and demanded that the president grant fewer concessions to less privileged regions, the pattern of harambee giving shifted, with much greater flows of funds into Central Province and the Kikuyu areas of Nakuru, presumably as a tactic for staving off still more strident demands by GEMA leaders.^[71] The GEMA chief Njenga Karume participated heavily in Central Province harambee in 1974, and Moi often sat on the dais with him. Of particular note was the appearance of the vice president in Gichuru's constituency, Limuru, during the campaign period before the 1974 elections.^[72] Given the identification of some of the senior ministers with the Family, it was sometimes difficult to distinguish whether a harambee contribution was an effort to build stronger ties between local members of Parliament and the State House or whether the intention was really to strengthen GEMA's base. It may have been a bit of both, an effort to tame the increasingly strong Family faction within the government and keep its demands limited while at the same time ensuring the predominance of the commercial class over the less well-off.

Harambee was not the only vehicle for dispensing patronage, of course. Government spending on stock purchases skyrocketed in 1973–74. The list of beneficiaries included many companies in which GEMA leaders had a significant stake. Although the primary reason for the increases in purchases may have been economic, the program provided a useful vehicle for political trade as well.

A third form of patronage used to limit disruption was to try to quell the fears of Family members that they would lose access to decision making if their shares of development resources diminished. During the period, none of the Kiambu Kikuyu officials attacked by the opposition lost their appointments to public office. The first cabinet shuffle since 1969 took place in January 1973, its most significant change being the promotion of Eric Bomett, a Family opponent of the Rift Valley coalition, from the portfolio of assistant minister for housing to that of assistant minister for home affairs, where he would have influence in internal security. Another critic of the Rift Valley opposition, William Murgor, MP for Eldoret South, rose to become chairman of the Agricultural Development Corporation, a position that placed him in control of loans to troubled farmers during the 1973–74 agricultural crisis and gave him potentially valuable patronage resources.^[73]

In the debate about appointments, J. E. Mbori, MP for the Nyanza constituency of Kasipul Kabondo, confronted Assistant Minister of State, Kamwithi Munyi, arguing that civil service and parastatal employment was inequitably distributed. "Since it is the Government's policy to discourage tribal animosity in this country, what measures has the Minister taken to ensure that in all Ministries and statutory bodies civil servants are equitably mixed?" asked the MP. The assistant minister replied that appointments were based on merit and were blind to tribal origin; therefore, one could not talk of "representative" distribution as "equitable" distribution: "The Member's question is vague and contradictory. He wants officers to be posted regardless of their tribal origin and at the same time he talks of even distribution. You cannot have both. If the member's suggestion was implemented the Government would be acting tribally."^[74] The utility of patronage and pork-barrel politics in maintaining habits of competition and compromise between KANU's two main factions diminished over the period, however. J.M. posed a particular kind of challenge. His campaign threatened to divide the country, but particularly the Kikuyu, on class lines. Kenyatta had long worked to avoid such divisions—or their subjective perception. His own health poor, Kenyatta was less and less able to move about the country. Instead, he listened to his closest advisers, many of them tied to GEMA, and perceived a developing threat to stability.

Warnings began to appear in the speeches of government officials as economic problems made Kenyatta's strategy of accommodation more difficult to implement without requiring Central Province to accept losses in development outlays. By May 1973, as rumors of a second political party in the making began to circulate, a change in strategy was put into effect. Vice President Moi attacked a "few troublesome" MPs who were allegedly going behind the scenes to establish another political party.^[75] He condemned the "power seekers" again on June 4, at a rally in Nakuru District. A month later, Defence Minister Gichuru also denounced the dissidents who were behind the formation of a new party, arguing that Nakuru Town, in the Rift, "had become the headquarters for a new subversive group of rebel and disgruntled elements."^[76] The same day, the president warned the public of saboteurs. "Let me inform you that the Government is watching these developments with both eyes and when the time comes these individuals will be picked up one by one," Kenyatta announced. The next week, a rally in Kiambu denounced the formation of an opposition to KANU, and coupled the attack with the promise of shambas for landless families in the area. Hints continued through the following year, all to the effect

that the government would not allow formation of a second party, regardless of what the law permitted.

The Battle for Political Space

The Family and the members of the Rift Valley Opposition were quick to recognize that parliamentary and judicial processes were critically important in determining to what degree a group's assets and opportunities, or lack thereof, could affect distributional outcomes. A coalition built on behalf of particular policy changes could only be effective if the members could disseminate their views, and if government officials could be forced to the negotiating table. Kariuki and Seroney thus had a strong interest in preserving their "political space," the ability to assemble and to obtain enforcement of parliamentary decisions through the law. A necessary element of their strategy was therefore a strong defense of freedom of association and the sovereignty of Parliament. The Rift Valley populists were engaged not just in a bid for greater allocation of resources to their areas but also in an effort to negotiate the rules governing discussion of distributive issues.

Parliamentary procedures, consultative processes within the executive, and the strength of the judiciary could affect access to opportunities and the costs of coalition-building, and might thus favor one group over others. Both the Family and the Rift Valley rebels recognized that the procedures could be used to secure or deny "political space" necessary to build bargaining strength. The procedural changes inaugurated during this period were to have further-reaching consequences for the character of party-state relations than the substance of the bargains struck. As many of the politicians realized at the time, the restrictions imposed on political activity by the mid 1970s would make it nearly impossible to organize issue-based political movements, political movements that had change in national-level policies as their end, and to prevent an impending merger between the Office of the President and KANU.

The Right to Associate under Threat

The Kenyatta government had challenged freedom of assembly in its proscription of the Kenya People's Union in 1967. Nonetheless, MPs and members of the government, such as J. M. Kariuki, felt able to criticize policy on the floor of Parliament during 1970–71 and to conduct

harambee fund-raisers. The protection of these activities was not guaranteed, however. Family allies in Parliament and in government sought almost immediately to constrain the Rift Valley opposition by urging changes in the rules defining "tolerable" behavior. Wherever possible, they sought to replace legal guarantees with procedures allowing administrative discretion.

The right to convene harambee meetings came under attack first, followed by more controversial issues relating to control of Kenya's security apparatus and parliamentary privileges. Harambee sponsorship came under fire in 1972. In April, government restrictions on association became a topic for discussion in Parliament in the aftermath of complaints from Kariuki and others that members of the administration had intervened to stop harambee meetings and gatherings of constituents at which they were present. Attorney General Charles Njonjo stated on the floor that only political meetings needed licenses, but Seroney questioned the extent of the provincial administration's adherence to the rule and the acceptability of having such regulations in any case.

Over the course of the next year, the disputes about the licensing of harambee meetings rapidly evolved into a confrontation between two groups within the government. Controlling the security apparatus and a number of key posts in the administration were members of the Family and associates, led by Minister of State Mbiyu Koinange. Junior ministers and their representatives from areas outside Kiambu found it increasingly difficult, they claimed, to express their views about appropriate policies. The assistant ministers and their allies on the back bench sought to reduce the ability of the Family to determine who could speak and why. Over the objections of Koinange, Njonjo, and other Family members, Seroney introduced a motion to modify the Public Order Act, which had provided the legal grounds for regulating harambee participation. Said Seroney:

The mischief of this Act lies in the section where the D. C. [district commissioner] has to comply with directives from the Ministry of State, the Commissioner of Police, and the Provincial Commissioner. This means that even if the DC decides to allow a meeting by an MP . . . he still has to follow directives from any of those three services. . . . The very concept of the Act is wrong. . . . We do not need a permit to address the very people who elected us to this parliament.^[77]

A Nyanza MP, G. O. Migure, of Mbita constituency, charged that the increasing hindrances to association that emanated from the Office of the President were sponsored by Minister of State Koinange, a key Fam-

ily member. J.M., too, claimed that a small group of high-ranking officials had entrenched themselves by "belittling and minimising" others.

These comments triggered retaliation. A month later, the district commissioner for Nandi, Seroney's district, banned all meetings—political and harambee—and halted all collection of funds for land purchase.^[78] The Western Province commissioner followed suit shortly thereafter and prohibited the Rift Valley opposition member Martin Shikuku, MP from Butere, from addressing meetings in his constituency for an indefinite period.^[79] As the debate heated up, the vice president stepped in to clarify the government's position, which, he said, required licensing of all collections of harambee funds, except those conducted by churches, and even then on the condition that no politicians would be among the speakers.^[80] The major means available to the opposition for securing a soapbox from which to speak and for cultivating ties with potential allies in other provinces and districts disappeared. Indeed, in the 1974 general elections, the administration canceled all but one of J.M.'s public meetings.^[81]

The Crumbling of Parliamentary Sovereignty

The ability to associate was not the only dimension of political space the Family faction sought to restrict. Ability to debate policy in Parliament and the knowledge that decisions taken according to the rules of the assembly would be obeyed were also critical to the capacity to constitute an opposition, and it was precisely these that came under fire during this period as well. Confirmation of parliamentary sovereignty was as important as the ability to convene meetings. MPs, and, indeed, members of the government, could exercise far more bargaining leverage in the formation of government policy if they could air grievances on the floor of Parliament and alert their colleagues and the public to issues they believed important. Likewise they had to have confidence that the civil service and executive would abide by the regulations established by elected officials. The early 1970s brought a steady assault on these parliamentary prerogatives.

The competition to determine the ground rules of political debate in the country began with Kenyatta's request that members of the government critical of current policy choices resign their positions:

This is a Parliament of Kanu, the national front, and it must function as a primary instrument of our national resolve. To do this properly, there must be certain conventions and rules.

If any Member of my Government feels what is called a crisis of conscience in regard to any Bill approved by my Cabinet, he should resign as a Member of the Government, whereupon he will become a backbencher. He will then be free to oppose the measure under Standing Orders of the House and his action will be judged by the people within his own constituency.

Mr. Speaker, this is not a question of blocking any parliamentary opposition. The whole business of giving service to the people becomes more complex with each passing year. One of the vital requirements within a stable Government is discipline, and this discipline must be maintained otherwise there is betrayal of the people's trust.^[82]

Although the request was not entirely unreasonable, as stated, it was supportable only on the two conditions that members of the government could criticize policy within the cabinet and that backbenchers could organize their views through a formal opposition party. The latter option, although not legally proscribed, was de facto prohibited. The assistant minister for education, Charles Rubia, tried to find a middle ground between Kenyatta and those members of the government who had criticized policy by urging that a forum be provided in which assistant ministers would be able to offer their views and suggestions. He noted that the president's statement appeared to indicate a crisis within government ranks.^[83] Assistant ministers had sought an audience with the president and vice president, he remarked, and they had been denied. A way to mend the cleavage the president perceived was to take the comments of assistant ministers seriously.

The focus of the debate shifted to parliamentary sovereignty in May 1972, when Seroney won approval of a motion granting leave for the introduction of a bill that would amend provisions relating to the election of members of the National Assembly. Both Vice President Moi and Attorney General Njonjo attempted to block consideration of the proposed bill, which Seroney and Kariuki claimed would make the electoral system more democratic, in part by protecting balloting from government influence. J.M. suggested that Seroney "consult the Attorney General for ideas and then frame the motion together so that when it is introduced, the Government will also be part and parcel of this motion."^[84]

The Kenyatta cabinet wanted nothing to do with the idea, however. One week after his remarks, Seroney's passport was held at the airport, on the grounds that he had no approval for foreign travel from the president or the minister for home affairs.^[85] Seroney's fellow MPs quickly condemned the seizure and ruled that the action was unconstitutional. One Rift Valley opposition member introduced a motion stating that a

passport held by a "loyal Kenyan citizen is his right and not a privilege" and was given "wild applause," according to reporters at the scene.^[86] The motion passed after a stormy debate.

The frontbenchers were divided on a proper response. On June 30, one of Seroney's foes, an assistant minister for housing, alleged that the passport incident was simply a move by some members of the government to "assassinate the character of certain leaders." He echoed previous claims by other MPs that the issue was simply the latest manifestation of a power struggle taking place within the government.^[87] The next week Vice President Moi stated that MPs did not have a right to a passport. Seroney stood up in Parliament, waved the edition of the Nation that contained the vice president's remarks, and argued that the statement amounted to "a ridicule of the House."

The actions of the minister of state in the Office of the President, Mbiyu Koinange, provoked the next round in the tug-of-war. The minister was responsible for provincial administration, internal security, and a range of related functions, including, at that time, some of the responsibility for land consolidation. Kenyatta's brother-in-law and a member of a prominent loyalist Kiambu family, Koinange had long served as a "palace guard" in the view of several members. One MP insisted that the minister was not "suitable to be in charge of protocol where he could be humiliating Members of Parliament at State functions."^[88] He urged Koinange to resign his post, a call echoed by others. The Nairobi MP Charles Rubia again tried to strike a middle ground by reframing the problem as one of accountability. Seroney accepted Rubia's argument but pushed it to its extremes, asking members to redraft the constitution to establish the office of prime minister, so that the chief of the cabinet would serve at the pleasure of Parliament. On that note, the debate ended, at least until year's end.

In the interim, Seroney organized broad support, and when the role of Parliament once again came to the fore, at the end of March 1973, MPs from a number of districts across the country added their voices to the defense of parliamentary sovereignty. For the next three months, the power of the civil service came under periodic scrutiny by members of Parliament allied with the Rift Valley opposition. Seroney chastised parliamentarians who had "surrendered power to civil servants." G. G. Kariuki, MP for Laikipia East, countered, on the side of the government: "We must accept our failure because politicians have surrendered their powers to some people who are executing those same powers very efficiently, powers the politicians were unable to carry out."^[89]

The tension within the government heightened during April and May 1973, with the vice president calling for the resignation of those ministers and assistant ministers who "were not ready to support Government policy," a statement to which J.M. responded by asking, publicly, whether he, the MP from Nyandarua North, was the intended reference.^[90] Other members of the government entered the conflict on both sides. Assistant Minister for Agriculture Maina Wanjigi told Parliament that "a few individuals calling themselves the 'inner circle' are trying to isolate President Kenyatta from his own people."^[91] He urged members of the government to accept criticism in good faith. The government's eventual response was at odds with Wanjigi's suggestion, however. On October 17, 1973, the National Assembly suspended its normal business to debate a special motion tabled by the vice president. The motion read, in part, "that noting the occasion of the twenty-first anniversary of the unjustifiable arrest and subsequent detention of our beloved President and Father of the Nation, Mzee Jomo Kenyatta. . . . This House (1) solemnly reaffirms its confidence and unflinching loyalty and support for His Excellency. . . ."^[92] In future months, the motion would give carte blanche to members of the Family in their efforts to circumscribe the activities of the Rift Valley rebels.

Resolution

There was one more act to the drama played out between 1972 and 1975. The manipulation of procedure in which the Family faction engaged jeopardized Kenyatta's search for accommodation through a system of political barter or exchange. The president's ability to secure agreement by facilitating trading of interests depended on his ability to maintain control over the resources used in compensation. Family members had extended their power over those resources during the mid 1970s, however, by maneuvering to win critical positions in the security forces and in business and by using these positions to hamstring parliamentary procedure. Only electoral competition between organized groups, each with a stake in preserving its ability to compete, could make individual seats sufficiently insecure that officeholders would have incentive to observe and maintain the rules of the game and limit their own claims. But the Family had now effectively captured control over the very apparatus responsible for maintaining elections.

No longer content to accept calls for redistribution, the Family coa-

lition, now secure in key governmental posts, obtained the president's support for policies that would further restrict the ability of opponents of government policy to organize. Unable to use the threat of loss of electoral power to keep his subordinates in line and seemingly at the end of his energy, Kenyatta acquiesced. The year 1974 brought increasing attacks on the opposition from the president and vice president, despite Kenyatta's earlier distance from the conflict. At the end of January, the Daily Nation reported a speech in which the vice president assailed critics of the government.

Mr. Moi stated that certain people were going around the country and also issuing statements in the Press which tended to suggest that there was no democracy in Kenya.

The Kenya Government, Mr. Moi added, did not believe in using coercive measures to suppress freedom of expression, individual liberty, or worship. . . .

However, the Government would not entertain destructive criticisms or views which transgressed these freedoms such as claiming that the Government rule was based on dictatorship.^[93]

Moi maintained his attack over several months, arguing particularly against proponents of redistribution, who were "envious of other people's achievements."^[94] When the restrictions on political participation came to international attention, the vice president and officials, including some members of the National Assembly, lashed out at the messengers, the foreign press, calling, in particular, for the deportation of British Broadcasting Corporation personnel, and on February 26, 1974, the University of Nairobi was closed indefinitely because of disturbances there.

The president entered the debate in June, first urging Kenyans to cultivate a spirit of unity and brotherhood and to discard tribalism and sectionalism.^[95] As calls for equitable distribution of development funds throughout the country persisted, Kenyatta's statements became more emphatic, however.^[96] At a meeting in Nakuru the day after a parliamentary debate on equity, the president attacked the "disgruntled elements" who sought to undermine the government. These "elements" included "sitting MPs who move around the country, payukaring that the Government has done nothing for wananchi ," he said—a refrain picked up by many of his subordinates.^[97] A week later he made a special appeal to the residents of J.M.'s home area, Nyandarua, to "discard feelings of sectionalism and clanism in order to create a united front capable of advancing economic and social targets in the district."^[98]

Despite the government's admonitions, the core members of the Rift Valley opposition retained their seats during the 1974 elections, with J.M. receiving a landslide victory even though unable to hold campaign meetings. Two important Family candidates, Odongo Omamo and Njoroge Mungai, lost their seats, and Minister of Defence Gichuru, won by only a narrow margin against a strong opposition candidate in his constituency, Limuru. Gichuru's son, Gitau Gichuru, lost in Kikuyu constituency. It was not until after the election that the president chose, finally, to act on his words and remove the dissident group from the cabinet, while appointing Omamo and Mungai nominated MPs. At the end of October, J. M. Kariuki, Martin Shikuku, Charles Rubia, and Burudi Nabwera were all dropped from their posts as junior ministers.

Although the gradual redistribution of public monies quietly proceeded, the careers of those who had fought for these policies came to untimely ends (see Table 2). J. M. Kariuki was assassinated in March 1975, last seen in the company of members of the Government Services Unit (GSU) and police. The special investigative committee assembled to handle the case numbered many of J.M.'s friends, including Seroney, Maina Wanjigi, and Rubia, and produced a report suggesting that members of the police force under Family control may have been involved in the murder.

Three assistant ministers, John Keen, Masinde Muliro, and Peter Kibisu, lost their posts after voting against the government on whether to accept the report of the special investigative committee or merely acknowledge it. Seroney and Martin Shikuku were both detained later in 1975, after Shikuku announced to the Assembly that KANU was "dead" and Seroney, then deputy speaker of the House, replied that Shikuku's motion did not need a second as the point was "obvious." Moi protested these comments by leading a walkout by frontbenchers and a significant number of backbenchers. Whenever Seroney was in the chair, thereafter, walkouts occurred. Mark Mwithaga, the Rift Valley opposition leader from Nakuru, was unseated after an election petition. Mwithaga and one of the dismissed assistant ministers went to jail in 1975 on charges of assault and malicious damage to property, most likely the victims of an operation to frame potential successors to J.M. and remove them from the political scene.

Within Nakuru District, GEMA official Kahika Kimani's Kiambu-based Ngwataniro group of land companies became a political force and quickly ousted J.M.'s allies. The Nyeri politician Waweru Kanja moved further toward the periphery of the opposition coalition. Even

Seroney lost by a large margin when he ran for Parliament after release from detention. Without J.M.'s assistance and without the prospect of wielding substantial bargaining leverage on behalf of Tinderet in Parliament, Seroney was a less appealing candidate than he had once been. Although a master of patronage politics, Kenyatta had found that repression had its uses. In his own words, "People seem to forget that a hawk is always in the sky ready to swoop on the chickens."^[99]

Conclusions

The period 1970–75 saw important changes in the character of party-state relations in Kenya. KANU provided a framework within which individual MPs could represent the particularistic interests of their constituents; MPs could lobby for projects and question ministers on the performance of tasks within their constituencies. But KANU remained a weak party in several senses. It possessed no internal mechanism for resolving differences between members and forging a common party platform and thus had little role in producing national policies or in aggregating interests—functions parties in multiple-party states often perform. Indeed, the reconfiguration of the electoral rules to eliminate the KPU challenge in the late 1960s removed any electoral pressure to do so, and in the single-party context, such a "rejuvenation" would have meant banishing some views and interests from politics. Moreover, the party exercised little control over policy. Most legislative initiatives originated in the Office of the President, or executive, and appeared on Parliament's agenda for discussion and adoption. The modified republican system of government removed any obligation the chief executive might feel to implement and enforce legislation enacted by the majority party; Kenyatta himself was not dependent on the electoral fortunes of his party. In consequence, the KANU leadership lacked the ability to propose significant new legislation and to control the executive's actions through recourse to a vote of no confidence. As a result of changes in the rules of representation theoretically introduced to reduce "sectionalism," legislative activity became, increasingly, simply a way to divide the spoils.

In two main ways, the period 1970–75 exaggerated KANU's weakness and made it increasingly difficult for members of Parliament to defend their ability to represent the broad economic interests of their constituents. First, the dominant group within KANU, the Family, succeeded in securing legislation that gave the administration and the president greater ability to deny MPs occasion to communicate with their constituents and to build coalitions with other politicians. By the end of the period, the executive had acquired the ability to require licenses for all meetings, including harambee gatherings, and to police church services to ensure that politicians did not use these as political pulpits. It had also gained the power to control the movements of MPs between regions and to proscribe meetings with representatives of for-

eign countries or international organizations. Finally, by capturing key administrative positions and politicizing some parts of the provincial administration, the Family gave the Office of the President the power to remove MPs whose views appeared especially troublesome. The events of 1975 enlisted the civil service in the business of framing politicians for crimes they had not committed, simply to remove them from the public arena.

Competition between organized and enduring points of view with broad national bases became extremely difficult under these conditions. Party and parliamentary debate degenerated into localism and sectionalism, and coalition-building through exchange of harambee resources lost effectiveness because of the restrictions placed on political involvement in such activity. The kinds of policy positions the Rift Valley opposition leaders had adopted did not bring the promise of special benefit to those who gave their votes to the cause. For the individual voter, casting a ballot for one of the Rift Valley rebels was to throw one's vote away unless the Rift Valley candidate could claim a large number of friends in other constituencies nationwide who promised to support the "populist" national platform in Parliament. J.M. and Seroney could only assemble such a base if they could communicate across district boundaries and build an organization that would endure and permit them to offer credible promises of electoral assistance in future years in return for support of a "rebel" platform in 1974. Although they succeeded in forging such a base and in winning landslides in several districts in the 1974 elections, the events of 1975 cut their aims short and ensured that Kenyan politicians would find it nearly impossible to emulate J.M.'s successes in future years.

Further, in undercutting the ability of politicians to organize, the measures put into effect in the period 1970–75 promoted a new factionalism. Ad hoc groupings replaced organized political association within KANU. These factions came and went depending on the access their leaders had to the Office of the President. This splintering process affected politicians from a number of different regions. The unity of the conservative wing of the party disappeared, as did the coherence of the "populist" coalition J.M. had forged. Ultimately, this fragmentation would make it difficult for any member of Parliament to defend his or her "political space" and to preserve a separate voice within KANU. In future years, members of the Family and the former GEMA leadership would suffer as much from the situation they had helped to create as would the ideological descendants of the Rift Valley rebels.

The Rift Valley rebels were unable to muster sufficient economic clout to block the measures that circumscribed their activities. Although civic associations existed, these were not adequate bases for a nationwide defense of political space. Large private-sector entrepreneurs, with control over significant numbers of employees or capital and hence bargaining leverage in the president's eyes, were few, and the number of such men and women who found the appeals of J.M. compelling were even fewer. J.M. himself and Charles Rubia were the exceptions, but neither could use his position to threaten economic boycotts or other reprisals in their efforts to prevent further encroachment on speech and association. Smallholders in many locations organized behind J.M., but they lived too close to the margin of survival and were too divided over distribution of patronage to use their economic positions as leverage—for example, by retreating en masse from the market.