Chapter Four—
The Transition Period, 1976-1980

If the period 1970–75 modified the allocation of functions between KANU and the Office of the President and imposed new restrictions on political association, the period 1976–80 witnessed the effects of the accumulated changes on the way politicians mobilized support, as well as further shifts in the allocation of functions between the State House, Parliament, and the party. By 1980, the end of the transition, the ability of citizens to resist the aggregation of functions of representation and maintenance of order in a "party-state" had eroded significantly. The stage was set for the significant changes in Kenyan political life that would take place during the 1980s.

First came change in the endogenous variable described in chapter 1: the degree of faction within the dominant party. There were two dimensions to this phenomenon. The Kiambu Family members in the Gikuyu, Embu, and Meru Association (GEMA), the ethnic welfare society that served Kikuyu interests, had succeeded in ousting their original opposition; the J. M. Kariuki faction disappeared from the ministerial ranks, and from the party leadership, on orders from the State House. But those who had opposed the Rift Valley movement were themselves divided. The signs of fragmentation were apparent during the bid to rejuvenate KANU as a means for controlling dissidence. Although previously allied with the conservative faction in KANU, at least informally, neither Moi nor Attorney General Charles Njonjo appeared at Minister of Defence James Gichuru's Central Province meetings to reorganize the

party. Both would have found it difficult to participate in the GEMA-backed effort, Moi because of his own responsibilities to the Kalenjin and to maintenance of his electoral base in Baringo and Njonjo because of the particular features of his own political position. From a Kiambu loyalist family, but without a post as an elected representative, Attorney General Njonjo would have had to subordinate his ambitions to those of Njoroge Mungai, the man best placed for leadership of the Family clique.

Kenyatta's ill health generated psychological insecurity about future opportunities for participation and intensified the struggle for access to policy influence and public resources. By 1975, it was clear that Vice President Moi would be Kenyatta's successor, barring changes to the constitution. Ability to provide well for constituents from his home area was a popular litmus test for assessing the strength of a leader. If he hoped not only to assume the presidency but also to ensure his tenure in office, Moi would have to continue to increase the share of resources going to areas in the west of Kenya. In Moi's imminent accession to the presidency, the Kiambu elite saw a danger to their positions in government and, ultimately, to their ability to hold on to economic power in the country. The leaders of GEMA believed they could supplant the vice president and put their candidate in the presidency, thus maintaining Central Province control over key economic opportunities.

The strategies these two groups used in their struggle for access accelerated the process of fragmentation. After the demise of J.M., few politicians were willing to try to assemble cross-regional coalitions based on common economic interest. Instead, they chose to emulate the Family and establish bases within the ethnic welfare societies then undergoing a resurgence in response to GEMA. These appeared attractive, not only because they provided a response to what looked like "sectionalism" in the Kikuyu community, but also because their status as "cultural organizations" initially made them less vulnerable to state control. The period 1976–79saw a sharp rise in the formation of ethnic welfare unions—lobbies for sectional interests—in consequence. Success in electoral competition came to mean ability to assemble ad hoc coalitions of these groups, not through promises of future support, for there were no enduring political organizations to help guarantee these, but rather through exchanges of money—harambee funds and private resources. They did not provide stable bases for campaigns and contesting of policy, however, as history would show.

The executive also altered its strategies in this changed political en-

vironment. As groupings at KANU meetings divided increasingly along community boundaries and as these groups began to advance unlimited claims for resources against each other, the Office of the President moved to intervene directly in KANU. Provincial commissioners were ordered to extend their control over licensing of harambee meetings to include supervision of party gatherings. This new power was used both before and after Kenyatta's death in 1978 as a way to control GEMA's expanding influence. It constituted a significant alteration in the division of functions between the party and the administration—one that eroded the representative and decision-making powers of the party and constituted another step toward the fusion of functions in a party-state.

This chapter outlines the way the restrictions of political space enacted in the first years of the 1970s altered the incentives politicians faced and made organization of broad-based coalitions with positions on national issues difficult. Through an account of the three major events of the transition period, it documents the increasing factionalization of Kenyan politics. It concludes with a summary of the effects of this process on the relationship between KANU and the executive.

GEMA and the Change-the-Constitution Movement

The fragmentation of KANU was evident, first, in the growing visibility of GEMA, the champion of Kiambu interests, and comparable communal organizations in Kenyan politics. With the conclusion of the J.M. affair, the organizational resources of GEMA might have appeared less important to the Family and its efforts to secure influence over policy. After all, the major contender for GEMA's power had been removed from the political scene. That was not the case, however. The Rift Valley period had witnessed increasing restriction of political space. As quasi-cultural organizations, ethnic welfare societies fell less clearly within the State House's sphere of concern than political meetings. The provincial administration and security forces left ethnic welfare societies alone, at least for the time being. GEMA thus retained its raison d'être, inasmuch as it could shelter continued political activity where other organizational forms could not.

The second half of 1975 also saw the first effects of a boom in coffee prices. Earnings were concentrated in the coffee-growing country of Central Province, but most particularly in Kiambu, benefiting the personal bank accounts of many of those allied with the Family—and, of course, the treasury of GEMA, which became an even more powerful

vehicle for political activity in consequence. Using these funds and others it had accumulated, the Family faction within KANU's conservative wing moved rapidly to strengthen its political ties in the Rift through land-trading schemes. The GEMA leader Kahika Kimani chaired several land-buying companies with claims in Nakuru District, and these provided the necessary platform. It was from Kahika Kimani's base in the Ngwataniro Companies that Mbiyu Koinange, James Gichuru, and Njoroge Mungai launched yet another effort to seize control over access to the policy process.

In its bid to control resources and policy making, the GEMA group had three options. The first and second of these entailed voting a new president out of office, either by electing someone else to the presidency of the party or by campaigning for a vote of no confidence in Parliament. Neither of these stratagems appeared especially promising. The element of surprise would have to play a major role to prevent Kenyatta's likely successor from marshaling a counterattack, but the need to bargain for support would make that impossible. News of coalition-building efforts would surely leak.

Alternatively, it would be possible to install another Kiambu leader as president, or someone acceptable to the group, by persuading Kenyatta to reshuffle his cabinet and move Moi out of the vice presidency. This Kenyatta did not do—an indication of the disagreement he must have had with Family members, who, it is alleged, did in fact propose such a solution.^[1]

The third option was to seek to change the constitutional provisions for succession. These read:

Chapter II, Part I, Section 6

(1) If the office of President becomes vacant by reason of the death or resignation of the President, or by reason of his ceasing to hold office by virtue of Section 10 or Section 12 of this Constitution (qv) an election of a President shall be held within the period of ninety days immediately following the occurrence of that vacancy, and shall be held in a manner prescribed by Section 5 (5) of this Constitution (qv).

(2) While the office of the President is vacant as afore said, the functions of that office shall be exercised—

(a) by the Vice-President; or

(b) if there is no Vice-President, or if the Vice-President considers that he is for any reason unable to discharge the functions of the office of President, by such Minister as may be appointed by the Cabinet."

By changing the constitution to prevent the immediate assumption of power by the vice president, who could, it was feared, use the ninety-

day preparation period to rig the elections in his favor, it might be possible to block the formation of a Moi government.

GEMA's plan called for a change in the wording of the constitution. Instead of the temporary appointment of the vice president as acting president for a ninety-day period, in the event of the president's death, the speaker of the National Assembly would take over. The GEMA group apparently thought it could secure the speaker's position, or that Njoroge Mungai, the MP for Dagoretti, a former foreign minister,^[2] would win enough votes to be elected president if Moi could be blocked from using the administration to his electoral advantage.

The first steps toward building support for a bid to change the constitution took place in the last month of 1975 and the first half of 1976. The GEMA-backed group pursued a strategy similar to the one it had used in 1974–75, trying to consolidate Kikuyu support while winning Luo and Kamba participation in an alliance. Although KANU's early success over KADU had depended on cooperation between Luo politicians led by Tom Mboya and Kikuyu politicians under Kenyatta, the former partnership between the political elite of the two groups had suffered from Mboya's assassination, allegedly at the hands of Kikuyu, and the proscription of Oginga Odinga's KPU. Ironically, it was the Odinga group, known for its willingness to flaunt Soviet contacts and anti-capitalist points of view, to which the Family business elite now looked for support. Although Odinga's political views departed strongly from those of the Kiambu group, precluding alliance on grounds of common perceptions or style, the Luo politicians agreed to lend support to the movement. The actual provisions of the deal remain obscure, although there is speculation that a combination of financial resources and agreement to modify or terminate the state's detention policies might have captured Odinga's interest.^[3] Odinga is alleged to have believed that Attorney General Charles Njonjo, a Moi ally, was behind his detention in 1969 and the continuing refusal to clear his further participation. Although formerly an outspoken enemy of the Kikuyu elite, Odinga suddenly appeared as an honored guest at the wedding of Mbiyu Koinange's daughter. Peter Muigai Kenyatta, the president's son, received similarly cordial treatment when he visited Bondo, Odinga's home, as a guest of honor at a harambee function that included Odinga.^[4] The GEMA leader James Gichuru also met with Odinga on a special trip to Nyanza District.

Consolidating Central Province support consumed much of the group's time during the first half of 1976. Gichuru had not been the only

member of the Family to encounter troubles in the 1974 election. In some constituencies, Family members had barely held onto their seats. Near Nairobi, in Juja, home to many Luo and Kalenjin migrant workers, Peter Muigai Kenyatta, an outspoken opponent of J. M. Kariuki, had won by fewer than 200 votes, despite the family name and relationship. In Nyeri, the group's candidates faced strong opposition from the followers of J.M.'s ally Waweru Kanja. The Murang'a leader Julius Gikonyo Kiano was in Moi's camp too; GEMA could not automatically carry any of the Kikuyu districts of Central Province.

Throughout the period, GEMA sponsored numerous harambee meetings, at which not only the familiar Family faces but also Peter Muigai Kenyatta and Ngengi Muigai, the president's nephew, appeared. The group waged a struggle for control of the local KANU branches, potentially important bases for generating votes, which were then holding elections.

The Family's supporters clashed with members of the Moi faction. So intense were the rivalries that the provincial commissioner for Central Province, Simeon Nyachae, held meetings of reconciliation in Murang'a and in mid August suspended all KANU branch elections in Kirinyaga.^[5] Similarly, confrontations between supporters of different factions at Nairobi KANU rallies led the provincial commissioner for Nairobi to adopt the practice of personally reviewing and licensing every KANU meeting in the area. Commenting on the campaign, the Nairobi leader Charles Rubia, a former ally of the Rift Valley opposition, said:

You know, Kanu being the only political party in our country, people will claim to be Kanu followers when they really are not observing the rules and regulations of the party. It is common knowledge that people will group together especially at the time of an election and really gang-up. This political ganging up is not something new entirely, but what I condemned is any ganging up against other people and employing thugs to harass political opponents.^[6]

Maina Wanjigi, who had played a similar role earlier during the Rift Valley "rebellion," followed suit.

According to press reports, in September 1976, the Family constituted what was later called the Change-the-Constitution Movement. Kahika Kimani, the GEMA leader and Ngwataniro land company chief, was the main speaker at the first public meeting of the Change-the-Constitution group. The purpose of the meeting was to float the proposal that the rules of succession be modified. Over 20 members of Parliament attended, including the former KPU leader and Odinga ally

Achieng Oneko.^[7] The group must have assessed the response as largely favorable, because on October 3, the call for amendment of the constitution was repeated by Kimani at a fund-raiser near Limuru, in Kiambu District.

The reaction of the Moi group came quickly. The Mombasa politician Shariff Nassir was first to condemn Kimani's move, followed by the Masai leader Stanley Oloitipitip, who obtained the signatures of 98 MPs opposed to the amendment. The petition suggested that the Moi coalition held a slim majority of the 158 elected members and 12 appointed members of Parliament. It also contradicted Kimani's claim that his group could muster 80 percent of the votes in the Assembly on behalf of the change in the constitution.

Two days later Attorney General Charles Njonjo issued a simple, official-sounding warning: "It is a criminal offence for any person to encompass, imagine, devise, or intend the death or deposition of the President." The editorial page of the Nation picked up the theme the next day, chastised Kimani, and pointed to a GEMA effort to disrupt the country. The Standard took GEMA's side, however, noting that Njonjo had signed the statement himself, and that the absence of the presidential imprimatur indicated that the announcement was but another volley in the war between the two groups of ministers. Kenyatta himself made no pronouncement. Officials in the provincial administration were quite perplexed about their responsibilities in choosing whether to license meetings of either group. Provincial commissioners separately traveled to see the president and seek guidance in making these new decisions.

One more time, however, GEMA sought to assert the primacy of the Family in the political party and to suggest, by extension, that its effort to change the constitution was totally consonant with the interests of the party and with the intentions expressed at the nation's founding. Kahika Kimani sponsored a large meeting in Meru that attracted thousands of GEMA members. "We are the defenders of this constitution," Kimani told the crowd. "During the J. M. Kariuki affair when the nation faced a crisis we were the people who spoke for the Government because we have the interests of this country at heart."^[8] Identifying GEMA with the KANU nationalist cause, he continued:

We do not want people attacking GEMA and KANU. We do not want KANU to attack GEMA or GEMA to attack KANU. . . . We want all of us to remain under one party. KANU is the Government and GEMA is under them just like young chicks under the wings. KANU should not be opposed

by GEMA at Meru. . . . And KANU should not oppose GEMA. For it was GEMA which was instrumental in laying the foundation of the KANU Government. So if I may ask: Are these unions not the same thing?

Attacking Attorney General Njonjo in particular, Mungai sought to advance the candidacy of Minister of Defence Gichuru, a senior GEMA official:

We elected Gichuru as chairman of Kanu, and when our leader came from Lodwar,^[9] James Gichuru vacated the chairmanship for Kenyatta. . . . Were it other people they would have dug a grave in which to inter Kenyatta. These are the same people who are now claiming that Gichuru is not a genuine supporter of Kenyatta.

The meeting put an end to the bid to change the constitution. The group misread or intentionally failed to heed Kenyatta's wishes. On the day after the meeting, the president moved against GEMA and supported the Njonjo warning with a simple statement reported in the government press: "The Government reiterated its earlier statement by the Attorney General." With those words, Njonjo's warning acquired the presidential imprimatur it had lacked. Unity became the watchword. In a short speech Kenyatta gave a week later, the word unity appeared over thirty times. "I want to stress that what is vital in our nation is unity," he told a crowd at Uhuru Park in Nairobi. "Unity has more value than anything else."^[10]

Again the Family had failed in its effort to use GEMA as a vehicle for guaranteeing continued influence. The bid to place the party under the control of Family members in the government collapsed in the face of division between members of the Kikuyu elite and Kenyatta's own disapproval of the organization's disproportionate claims. The continued strength of other groups from food-exporting regions of the country within the Office of the President may also have been influential. The western regions of Kenya and the north central part of the Rift Valley produced substantial quantities of maize. Dissatisfaction in those areas could easily cause problems with the country's food supply.

GEMA's prominent role signaled the beginning of a new era in Kenyan politics, in which the effects of the single-party state on civil society became increasingly apparent. Absent ability to convene even small-group political discussions without a license, politicians looked to the reinvigoration of cultural organizations, principally welfare societies, as vehicles for participation and communication. GEMA's flamboyance would rapidly draw other ethnic welfare associations into politics, but

the root cause of the sudden proliferation of such societies in the mid 1970s was much deeper. Restrictions on political association between citizens with common economic interests forced those interests to adopt new guises where they could do so. Because most of the country's commercial elite hailed from Central Province, GEMA could claim to act as an organization bent on cultural preservation, while at the same time advancing a distinct set of economic interests. The extent of GEMA's avowed ambitions led other groups to revive the welfare associations that had lain dormant since the colonial period. The pressures these groups generated would shortly bring about the demise of the old KANU nationalism GEMA favored and the rise of KADU-style federalism within the KANU shell.

The changes would also make the Family's political ambitions much more difficult to realize as well. Once parliamentary groupings began to lose their corporate character and rise and fall on their ability to assemble the ad hoc support of welfare associations, it became much more difficult to mount a sustained bid for control of the Office of the President, or the state. Those difficulties made themselves felt in the second event of the transition period—the abortive elections for national posts in KANU.

Ethnic Arithmetic and the Party Elections of 1977

The year 1977 assured a larger role for ad hoc distributional coalitions in Kenya and sealed the fate of efforts to constitute sustained movements for policy change or reform, even on behalf of a particular set of economic interests, such as those of the Family. Both factional groupings learned firsthand the difficulties of trying to secure the support of party delegates or members of Parliament who had little incentive to cut long-term deals or participate in logrolling that depended on the future reward of concessions. Those with votes traded these to whomever offered the highest price in the days leading up to the balloting, without regard for previous commitments made. There was no reason to do otherwise. Without clear platforms and enduring organizations behind them, faction leaders had no means with which to guarantee either future returns or future sanctions.

GEMA proved tenacious. Having failed in their bid to change the constitution, Mungai, Kimani, Gichuru, and company did not retreat but instead changed strategies. The Kiambu group still believed it could

take power from Moi. Some of the spokesmen alleged that Oloitipitip's petition, with its 98 signatures, was not an accurate reflection of sentiment within the Assembly. The members had not understood the statement, and some were coerced into affixing their names the GEMA leaders argued. Mungai may have believed that if he could challenge Moi in an electoral battle, the votes, when cast, would show the old KANU faction victorious.

The prospect of KANU national elections in 1977, the first party elections since 1966, handily offered the Mungai group another way to pursue state power. Electing a slate to the top party positions would enable Mungai to use the party organization, such as it was, to ensure the continued influence of the Family. Although the provincial administration would still maintain some control through its power to license party meetings, a monopoly of the senior party posts would provide the group with a soapbox and ability to initiate clearance of candidates or disciplinary action. Furthermore, because, by law, the president and vice president had to be members of a registered political party, capture of the top party positions would theoretically give GEMA the power to remove the president or vice president.

The contest between the Mungai and Moi factions was waged so openly that as early as January 1977, the Weekly Review published maps documenting the progress of each candidate in winning district-level support. The Luo areas received early attention from both camps, with Mungai continuing to pursue a revitalization of the original KANU alliance and Moi seeking to prevent consolidation of the Nyanza vote, by playing on existing divisions in the Luo community. Both men embarked on harambee fund-raising tours of Nyanza in February.

In the month before the elections, the vice president and his backers moved swiftly to build a coalition that would simultaneously capitalize on existing ties in western Kenya and draw attention to Mungai's reliance on a GEMA- or Kiambu-dominated network—forcing Kenyatta's nephew to scramble to include representatives of other groups and expend energy forging alliances he did not have and might not secure in time for the polls. The Moi group had proposed that Minister for Finance Mwai Kibaki, previously unassociated with either camp, run for the national party chairmanship. Although Kikuyu, Kibaki was a technocrat and lacked a strong base in Central Province. His candidacy was acceptable to many Central Province residents left out of the Family network and was therefore useful in undercutting accusations that Moi had blocked the Kikuyu from access to the state.

Packaging a slate was no easy matter, however, as both groups would learn from the troubles they encountered. There were eight party posts under contention: chairman and vice chairman, secretary general and assistant secretary general, organizing secretary and assistant organizing secretary, treasurer and assistant treasurer. The position of party president was not seriously at issue; Kenyatta's authority went unquestioned. The vice presidency was a more complicated matter, inasmuch as vice presidency of the party was generally equated with vice presidency of the republic. The winner of the position would most likely succeed Kenyatta.

The new importance of ethnic welfare societies in Kenyan political life created problems for faction leaders. The existence of eight party posts made comprehensive provincial representation a possibility; Kenya had eight provinces. There were too few seats, however, to permit inclusion of all of the newly organized ethnic groups. Coalition leaders faced a two-part challenge. First, they had to seek cooperation between different communities within the same province. Second, they had to figure out how to prevent defections. In the actual election, posts would be voted for sequentially. Thus, it would be possible for the delegates of a province to lose an intended spot early in the voting and undermine the rest of the slate by switching votes to a candidate from the same province but from a different coalition. The brokers of any slate had to win agreement from delegates to vote as promised or the entire strategy would fail.

Both groups encountered problems in winning enduring support. Swapping of allegiances took place so often in the first weeks that the Weekly Review began to speculate that the groupings had disappeared altogether. The protracted negotiations that went on within the Moi coalition provided an example of the difficulties. At first, it appeared that no post would be found for the Akamba, who then insisted on running a candidate against the Masai leader Stanley Oloitipitip, a stalwart Moi supporter, and that the main Luo supporters, William Odongo Omamo and David Okiki Amayo, wanted the position of secretary general, a post earmarked for the incumbent, Robert Matano, a coastal politician and Moi ally. Omamo and Amayo switched their candidacies to the post of treasurer for a time, but that position had just tentatively been allocated to Ngala Mwendwa, the Akamba candidate for whom Oloitipitip had stepped aside in return for the promise of a cabinet appointment. To improve their bargaining positions, delegates could

simply hint that they would throw their votes behind the GEMA-backed candidate for secretary general instead of Matano.^[11]

In an effort to reduce the time and costs of negotiating a slate, the Moi group convened two meetings, one in Mombasa and one in Nairobi. The Mombasa group was supposed to choose the candidates for the top three posts, which it did, proposing Kibaki as chairman. The Nairobi meeting, whose members became known as the "Kamukunji Group," selected the remaining candidates. Substantial sums of money were rumored to have changed hands during the course of the two meetings, with one source reporting that the Kamukunji group alone had spent almost KSh. 15 million.^[12]

In the meantime, the Mungai slate was shaping up, with the Kalenjin MP Taita Toweett to challenge Moi for the vice presidency, Luhya leader Masinde Muliro pitted against Robert Matano for the post of secretary general, and the Masai John Keen, an Oloitipitip rival, nominated for organizing secretary. Nyanza Province Odinga allies received the nominations for treasurer and assistant secretary general. The chairmanship was left to Central Province, as it was in the Moi coalition. Just prior to the election, the slate still had no room for Paul Ngei, an old ally—or for any candidate from the Akamba areas of Eastern Province.

The last-minute scramble was for nought, however. On April 2, the day before the polls, the elections were called off. The constantly shifting allegiances had wrought havoc in the election process and threatened extended court battles over the use of money to purchase support. No outcome was secure from legal challenge, and the existing leadership, working with the State House, canceled the event.

The succeeding months would show just how much the character of the Kenyan political community was changing. Ethnic welfare associations proliferated and grew in strength. The mobilization of the Luo Union in response to GEMA's challenge and the capture of the organization first by Odinga and then by Isaac Omolo Okero showed the growing importance of ethnic welfare societies as political bases at a time when members of Parliament still recalled the treatment J.M. had received when he attempted to forge a broadly based producers' coalition. Kenyans all over the country began to ask whether they, too, might be well served by stronger societies. Luhya leaders publicly queried the "absence of a recognised, acceptable, and respected pressure group."^[13] In November 1976, in the aftermath of the Change-the-Constitution bid, Oloitipitip had announced plans to revive the Masai United

Front.^[14] The Central Province provincial commissioner, Simeon Nyachae, subsequently sparked controversy when he urged students from his home area, Kisii, to form a new Abagusii Union.^[15] Mulu Mutisya confronted Paul Ngei over the creation of the New Akamba Union.

Having exhausted two options for achieving dominance, GEMA turned to a third. If the party posts could not be secured, then it might be possible to challenge Moi's power in Parliament. A shift in parliamentary seats or alignments might so undermine Moi's base of power that Kenyatta would reshuffle the cabinet. Alternatively, if Kenyatta died, then it might be possible to dislodge Moi by a vote of no confidence.

The major site of activity throughout the remainder of 1977 and 1978 was Nyanza, where both factions continued to seek allies. During the last week of April 1977, a large group of Luo leaders met at Oyugis and resolved, "that for the foreseeable future, Odinga would remain the reference point for political developments among the Luo." The Oyugis Declaration, the document signed at the meeting, called for cooperation with GEMA, a step that would bring greater power to an increasingly divided and peripheral community. In Achieng Oneko's words, the declaration created "an alliance between GEMA and the Luo Union."^[16] By June, leaders of the earlier Change-the-Constitution movement began to make regular appearances and contributions at harambee meetings in Bondo, Odinga's stronghold.^[17]

To deliver on its commitments, the Odinga faction had to strengthen and extend its hold on the Luo community, rejuvenating the three million-member Luo Union as a vehicle for marshaling electoral support. The reform of the organization, the choice of a "leader of the Luo people," and projection of a unified community image became major news items for the next year and a half.

To strengthen the Luo Union so that it could become "as active as GEMA"^[18] was not necessarily to create a Luo Union allied with GEMA or controlled by Odinga, as Mungai and the former KPU leaders were to discover, however. Odinga had competition for leadership of the Luo in the person of his local rival, William Odongo Omamo, whom the Moi coalition had carefully cultivated, and in Isaac Omolo Okero, another Luo politician. Omamo had previously tried to maintain a nonaligned status. In 1977, he broke with that position. Asked what kind of leader the Luo sought, Omamo replied, "We are looking for the kind of leader who does not behave like the legendary banian tree which grows to be a great tree with branches and sub-branches, twigs and

plenty of leaves but allows nothing to grow under it."^[19] Odinga's presence, he argued, left no room for the range of views so characteristic of the outspoken members of the Luo community. A leader of the Luo would have to be someone who could tolerate many different types of leaders within the various branches and sub-branches of the Luo Union.

Although the GEMA group sought closer ties with Odinga, the Kenyatta State House perceived an Odinga-led Luo community or a possible GEMA–Luo Union alliance as potentially troublesome. It moved to discourage the agreement then under negotiation. The Mungai slate's Luo candidate for KANU assistant secretary general, George Anyona, was detained in May, and at the end of the year, Odinga was denied permission to attend harambee meetings on the grounds that the Luo Union had been accused of trying to raise KSh. 20 million to back Luo candidates in general and local elections.^[20]

By a series of maneuvers over the next several months, the government sought to force the Luo Union to detach itself from the Odinga camp and, indeed, to define its activity in provincial rather than ethnic terms. In March 1978, Kenyatta agreed to meet with a delegation led by the Luo Union leader Paul Mbuya. Ngengi Muigai, the president's nephew and a GEMA backer, allegedly arranged the meeting. By the time the audience took place, however, it was no longer a Luo Union affair. Neither Odinga nor Oneko were present, and the function was billed as a Nyanza gathering, including residents of Kisii District, an ecologically and ethnically distinct section of the province. Almost 250,000 walked through the gates of State House Nakuru on the appointed day, led, not by Mbuya, but by the Nyanza provincial commissioner, Isaya Cheluget, a Kalenjin and a sharp critic of the Luo Union, which he had long considered a political organization in the guise of a welfare society.^[21] No Luo Union officials spoke, and Mbuya stood on the sidelines, watching.

The effort to take control away from the Odinga faction continued in May and June 1978, through a series of offensives to discourage the Luo from seeking a single leader. "Any attempt to find a super Luo leader has no place in Kenya," Omolo Okero announced. "In any event there is no provision in the Republican constitution for tribal leaders." The Okero group was determined to project the area's parliamentary representatives as the community's only legitimate spokesmen.^[22]

On June 30, 1978, William Odongo Omamo, then a nominated MP, moved into the Luo Union headquarters and took control. At a Nairobi press conference, Omamo argued "that the move to suspend union of-

fice bearers had been directed by ten branches of the Luo Union after a unanimous decision made at a special general meeting in Kisumu."^[23] Mbuya retaliated with the charge that of the 17 people allegedly present at Kisumu, only one was a member of the Luo Union. Although the members of the Luo community were split in their evaluations of the takeover, little was heard from the former union leaders during succeeding weeks, and in an effort to quell dissent, the government inaugurated two large irrigation schemes, one in Kano and the other in the Yala swamp in Bondo, where 10,000 people would be settled on reclaimed land at a cost of over KSh. 1 billion.^[24]

The strengthening and proliferation of welfare societies undercut the GEMA nationalist strategy by establishing pressure groups capable of lobbying effectively for group-based concepts of equity instead of settling for a Kikuyu-dominated meritocracy. It was, in some respects, a boon for the Moi coalition. It required GEMA to reveal itself as an ethnic pressure group along with other such groups, abandoning its claims to represent Kenya as a whole.

From the government's perspective, there were drawbacks as well. What if, as in the case of GEMA, the societies fell under the principal control of one of two national coalitions? As powerful instruments for generating resources, the societies could potentially compete with the State House as a base for a national patron. To work, a system of bargained exchange required involvement of multiple parties and fluid alliances. If one group acquired control of local machines, it could block participation of contenders with political bases in other coalitions. This concern was especially strong among senior members of the new government, who did not desire to rid the country of machine organization but did worry about the extent to which control of existing organizations lay in the hands of a potentially strong opposition. The first line of attack was to redefine the memberships of the organizations—especially that of the Luo Union—and to diminish their power.

In January 1978, the government convened a meeting at the Kenya Institute for Administration (KIA) entitled "The Kenya We Want," and high on the list of issues was a review of the role of "tribal organizations." The transformation of the Luo Union audience at State House Nakuru into a Nyanza delegation was partly a response to the agenda set at the KIA conference. GEMA received similar treatment, its scheduled meeting with the president in April being postponed and finally downgraded. Some members of Parliament urged the State House to do away with delegations backed by welfare societies altogether. Merit as

the principal criterion for distribution again began to enter public discourse, this time through Moi associates seeking to contain interest-group pressures. Isaac Omolo Okero remarked, for example:

When we had uhuru we came together on the basis of tribal communities. We cannot approach politics in this country the way we did in 1963. The country has changed. Those of us who are of a slightly younger generation are now interested in merit, ability, and the people who can deliver what the electorate want, not merely those who want to see themselves as tribal leaders or spokesmen. We, as leaders, have got to offer our people more than just the claim to tribal loyalty or leadership. It is a different kind of Kenya and it calls for a more national approach to issues rather than what in the past was adequate.^[25]

Distributional Coalitions and the 1979 General Election

The death of President Jomo Kenyatta in August 1978 created a further opportunity to renegotiate the distribution of access. During the ninety-day period after Kenyatta's death, the country prepared for elections. In the interim, Moi was designated acting president by the cabinet. Although the Moi coalition had learned much about the management of ad hoc alliances in the interim, the difficulties of creating a solid electoral base were apparent—and would have been even more so in the absence of patronage to purchase loyalty.

Some of the irregularities the Change-the-Constitution group had envisioned earlier materialized quickly. Only the London Daily Telegraph printed the accurate rules for carrying out the transition. Before the local papers could do so, the attorney general announced a slightly different set of arrangements. The government imposed a ban on political meetings between late August and December, the period in which the country would fill the presidential slot. Moreover, the Moi faction quickly seized control of the KANU headquarters and used its influence in the executive committee to limit debate about election sequences and procedures. The party's supreme bodies, the All-Delegates Conference and the National Governing Council, never met.

Njoroge Mungai and his Family supporters proved unable to parry these measures in a sophisticated way. Court challenges were not part of the Mungai group's tactical lexicon. Indeed, some former Family members received an object lesson in the difficulties of containing and reversing encroachment on political space, including some of the same

kinds of measures they had used to limit the influence of others in earlier years.

Ethnic welfare societies again provided one of the few available avenues for activity, and their spokesmen quickly voiced their claims. A Weekly Review headline summarized parliamentary debates with the words "Equity Issue: Tribalism Becoming a Major Issue in Post-Kenyatta Era."^[26] Pressure for redistribution of government and parastatal positions was especially intense, and the State House responded quickly, expanding the size of the cabinet and reshuffling civil service personnel. The creation of new parastatal corporations in the wake of the 1977 collapse of the East African Community conveniently expanded the number of such jobs.

The growth in the number and size of competing welfare associations accelerated as GEMA once again marshaled its forces in a bid to maintain Family influence. Increasing equity meant reducing the proportion of funds spent on development activities in Central Province at a time when recession was limiting growth in the government budget and defense expenditures were taking up an increasingly large share of what was available.^[27] The response of those Family members who stood to lose was to try again, cautiously, to construct a coalition for the general elections slated for late October. This time, wary of government reaction, GEMA chose not to push its views openly, however. In September President Moi warned that the police had started to monitor night meetings in Central Province and chastised those who engaged in subversive activities.^[28] And after the parliamentary debate about equity in allocation of public revenues, the new president traveled to Nyeri and reminded a gathering there that "traditionally in Africa when a family slaughtered a cow, they did not eat all of it by themselves. They shared with their neighbours, for without their neighbours' vigilance against the cattle rustlers and wild animals like leopards, the owners of the cow may not have managed to keep it."^[29]

Again, as in 1977, the Moi-Kibaki group employed a provincial strategy and "ethnic arithmetic" with great success. Replying to his fellow Kikuyu who criticized the approach as an invitation to tribalism, Kibaki commented:

These unfortunately are the realities of Kenya politics. Obviously we would love to have the best man voted into the job irrespective of where he comes from. But in a plural society, talent alone cannot be the determining factor. People feel that equitable representation is just as important in a democratic society. So we thought that we should have every province represented in the national executive of the ruling party. It is only fair.^[30]

The Kibaki group had learned several organizational lessons from its previous efforts. In 1977, the Kamukunji leaders had expended substantial time and energy trying to win consensus among the delegates from a province on the choice of an appropriate representative. In many cases, ethnic groups in multi-ethnic provinces put up their own candidates, upon finding that the Kamukunji's choice hailed from a different background. In other cases, the agreement failed to endure even among delegates from the ethnic group represented, the multiplicity of Luo candidates in 1977 being a case in point. In 1978, the Kibaki group decided that the leadership would not try to negotiate with each delegation directly but would ask that the delegations themselves arrive at a consensus by October 28, and that they would agree not to put up anyone else for other national posts.^[31] The national-level leaders would decide which provinces would receive which seat. Then a Moi ally in each area would campaign for support of the strategy among local delegates and try to obtain agreement on the particular candidate all Kibakialigned delegates would support.

In this political environment, the eventual success of the Moi-Kibaki slate in the 1979 general elections depended on (1) willingness to expend the last-minute energy necessary to keep delegates from defecting to the faction that offered the greatest concessions in the hours before balloting, and (2) expenditure of harambee resources in Central Province to reassure supporters there. To ensure that the agreements worked out at the provincial level would hold, Kibaki organized a group of "envoys" or brokers to assist in ascertaining levels of support and to bargain with uncommitted sub-branch delegates. Commenting on the mechanics behind the strategy, the vice president said:

The main problem is not so much getting every delegation to support you. The important thing is to go for a number of major blocks, and then work gradually for smaller units. There are areas where, of course, one cannot be terribly sure. Sometimes you get a pledge from a branch chairman and you have to do your own canvassing with the delegates at the sub-branch levels. But for some other branches—people from Taita, for example—once you have got a pledge from the chairman, you can be sure that they will deliver the votes of their different delegates.^[32]

The provincial strategists had learned that to prevent defections it was important to lobby supporters right up to the last minute. This time, delegates arrived in Nairobi early and distributed themselves by province among the city's hotels, Central Province commandeering the Jacaranda, a favorite haunt of the Kikuyu political elite. Kibaki and his "brokers," G. G. Kariuki and Stanley Oloitipitip, crisscrossed the town,

consolidating their bases of support in the days and nights before the vote. Oloitipitip composed a "pink card" listing the names of those on the Kibaki slate under the heading "Kenya has decided that the following leaders should be elected today 28/10/78" and circulated copies among delegates and members of Parliament.^[33] The reaction was not entirely favorable; those opposed to the slate and many of those who supported Kibaki claimed that the naive might assume that the wording implied government indications of the proper way to vote. Whether within the rules or not, the card may have proved an effective reminder to supporters. The Kibaki slate was elected handily.

That Kibaki was able to capture a majority of Central Province delegates was in part a function of the substantial harambee contributions Moi and senior officials poured into the area, both to win support for their candidate and to compensate the Kikuyu politicians for the drubbing they were receiving in Parliament. Harambee from the president and senior officials to Central Province reached an all-time high, with the province taking 84.8 percent of all contributions made that year.

The success of the Kibaki group may also have owed something to the new president's halt on all land allocation. The Kiambu group was well situated to buy and distribute land in its effort to attract support. Kahika Kimani's Ngwataniro companies had already showed themselves powerful brokers in Nakuru. Moi put an end to Kimani's Ngwataniro base and to the use of land as a form of side payment by suspending allocations. The reason given was the need to revise guidelines given to the district land control boards to ensure that transfers of farmland did not produce excessive concentration of ownership and to reduce speculation.

KANU at the End of the Transition Period

By the end of the transition period in 1980, fragmentation among the KANU parliamentarians increased, putting at risk the ability of members of Parliament to defend their political space from further encroachment. The blocs that Kibaki and Mungai organized for the 1979 general elections were subject to last-minute defections, in large part for one of the reasons outlined in chapter 1. Absent a credible threat to defect to an opposition party, a candidate who debates a party position or takes issue with the most powerful members of the party is likely to find that access to patronage diminishes or that he or she faces sanctions, including possible expulsion from politics. The example of J.M. was ample

illustration for many politicians, who began to eschew pledges of allegiance to any one group. Few MPs were willing to accept the costs and risks that sustaining a coherent policy group entailed. Ad hoc coalitions or factions were preferable in this context. Kibaki's frustration with the amount and kind of bargaining involved was symptomatic of these changes.

Factional division increased, too, because the "glue" that had held some of the more enduring blocs together, patronage, suddenly became less readily available. With Moi now president and the Moi-Kibaki slate in control, the patronage and access available to Family members diminished sharply.^[34] The electoral success of the Family changed accordingly. The former GEMA leader and Nakuru politician Kahika Kimani lost his parliamentary seat to Koigi wa Wamwere, a detainee and strong populist. A prominent J.M. supporter, Mark Mwithaga, the opponent of the Kimani faction in Nakuru Town, regained his parliamentary seat, while another populist politician who had once worked with Mwithaga as part of the Central Rift Labour Party won in Nakuru East.

Further, in the wake of the restrictions imposed during the Rift Valley struggle, the replacement of the two main cross-regional groupings within KANU by a plethora of rejuvenated ethnic welfare societies made it increasingly difficult to constitute stable bases for policy change or for institutional reform. Fragmentation did not enhance the representation of minority points of view. Instead, it created incentives for political elites to "free ride" on the lobbying efforts of faction leaders and to defect to the faction that offered the most at any given moment. These conditions made it extremely difficult for any one group to forge an organization that could support sustained action.

The transition period also witnessed a change in the allocation of functions between KANU and the executive. For the first time, at the direction of the State House the provincial administration involved itself in the internal affairs of KANU. Hesitatingly at first, provincial commissioners took responsibility for reviewing and clearing party branch meetings and overseeing the selection of speakers. In the first years of the Moi government, the administration would take on even larger roles, eventually obscuring the lines of division between the structures of representation and the structures for maintaining public order. As the party came increasingly under State House control, the ability of members of the political elite to seek institutional reform and to restore their political space to its former dimensions would diminish further.