The Party-State in 1985

In early February 1985, Mwai Kibaki, then Kenya's vice president, stood before a crowd of farmers in the dusty center of Karatina Town, a crossroads in densely populated, coffee-growing Nyeri District. Elections for local and national posts in KANU, the country's only legal political party, were shortly to take place, and the Karatina rally was one in a series sponsored by local officeholders throughout the district. A center of Mau Mau resistance activity during the 1950s, Nyeri was Kibaki's home, although the vice president had left his birthplace, first to study for a degree in economics at the University of London and later to represent a constituency in Nairobi. An urbane man who had served as minister of finance under Jomo Kenyatta, Kibaki had subsequently reestablished himself in Nyeri as representative of the rural people of Othaya, a hilly area of small farms, well served, compared to national standards, by a network of schools, health centers, and paved roads. The vice president made the two-and-a-half hour trip between Nairobi and his constituency so routinely that some had accused him of lavishing contributions and attention on local initiatives at the expense of his responsibilities in other areas.

But this visit to Nyeri was strikingly different in tone from earlier tours. The vice president sported his usual business suit and tie, but his characteristic civility had disappeared. Flanked by members of Parliament from local constituencies, the vice president, who was also the second-ranking official in the party, threw off his usually reserved demeanor and warned his listeners not to be duped by "political tourists"

from other districts who were out to stir up local animosities. Politicians from other areas were traveling Nyeri's roads at night in "pick-ups full of fat rams" to give to their local "godfathers" so as to convince people of their strength. He alerted his listeners to the activities of "losers" of previous elections who intended to regain political standing by capturing party positions during the upcoming KANU balloting. The opening remarks contrasted sharply with Kibaki's image as a technocrat for whom "politics was probably too dirty a game," a man of measured statements and carefully supported argument.^[52] The statesman had turned sharp-tongued politician.

If Kibaki's departure from his previous style and tactics elicited surprise, the reaction of other politicians from the area in which Karatina Town lies brought a still more shocked reaction. At the next gathering, Ngumbu Njururi, a local MP, took issue with the vice president. A relative newcomer to parliamentary politics who had won rapid promotion to the front bench as an assistant minister in the Office of the President, Njururi boldly chastised Kibaki. He said that the man to whom the vice president had elliptically referred as "a godfather," and who had allegedly hosted "political tourists," was his good friend Waweru Kanja, one-time Mau Mau leader. Njururi challenged the vice president to put evidence on the table to support his accusations. His remarks constituted the first public effort by a fellow politician from Nyeri District to take the vice president to task.

Vice President Kibaki was not present to hear Njururi's remarks, but at the next in the series of rallies, held in his own constituency, he heard them elaborated by Kanja himself. More surprising still, he heard Kanja bring greetings to residents from the president, whom the MP had recently met at the official residence in Kabarak. To transmit the president's remarks in such a way was a faux pas in Kenyan political etiquette—or a deliberate slight. By unwritten agreement, delegations to visit the president must include all of the elected officials from an area and especially the senior parliamentary representative, who is always considered the key spokesman. Moreover, it was always the sitting representative from the constituency in which a meeting took place who relayed any messages the president might wish to convey. Kanja's remarks violated these conventions in a manner that implied to some the strong backing of a senior politician outside the district. Kanja had gone so far as to request that the district officer and local KANU sub-branch chairman note in the official record that the people had received the president's greetings and that it was he who had transmitted them.

Kibaki first showed restraint on hearing Kanja's remarks at the Othaya meeting, but later he attacked his former colleague, lashing out once again in uncharacteristic fashion and attacking Kanja's record of participation in local development efforts. Why had Kanja and his allies not helped during the struggle to finance and construct the district's new Standard 8 classrooms? he asked. Why had he failed to participate in school construction in Kieni Division, his home area, during the desperate 1984 drought, when the people could ill afford to build new classrooms? And what was all this about Kanja playing a leading role in the Mau Mau uprising against the British when no one had ever heard who the real leaders were?

Kanja brought the debate back to "political tourism," claiming that the vice president was needlessly upset. It appeared that the vice president worried that he, Kanja, had struck a deal with the Western Province politician Elijah Mwangale. The vice president apparently feared that Mwangale, the minister for foreign affairs, had contacted Kanja in a bid to build opposition to Kibaki's vice presidency. The vice president's fears had no basis, Kanja claimed.

Other politicians and the press quickly adopted the expression "political tourism." The Daily Nation columnist Benson Riungu wrote a satire entitled "Sampling the Thrills and Spills of a Political Safari," clothing his political tourists in typical tourist garb and packing them off to various parts of the country in mini-buses labeled "KANU '85 Political Safaris."^[53] In place of hotel pamphlets, each "clutched a political map of Kenya," and "all led fat rams on leashes." The tour leader announced to his charges:

As the leading influence peddlers in Kenya . . . we're duty-bound to ensure that only candidates of our choice get elected to top party posts. This, taking the level of corruption in this country, will obviously mean spreading money around like confetti. And this is the reason why you were chosen—men with the financial means to afford to dish out a million bob [i.e., KSh.] without a qualm, and with no hope of immediate financial gain.

Our mission is to tour the whole country stirring political sentiments as with a stick, to turn brother against brother, location against location. Slipping a couple of thousands into a district party boss' pocket here, a couple of hundreds in the hand of a hoodlum's gang leader there.

Shortly thereafter, President Moi called for an end to such "tourism" and for rules preventing politicians from entering constituencies without the consent of the sitting MP.

Even if the vice president's reaction to politics-as-usual seemed a bit

excessive, the press suggested, Kenyan politics had become less a matter of bargaining between the sponsors of coherent platforms than a constant scramble between factions to ensure continued access to state resources. Or, as the Weekly Review 's Hilary Ng'weno had observed, personalities and one-on-one negotiation behind closed doors had replaced coherent alliances in support of particular stands on public issues, rendering Kenyan politics completely opaque.

The "political tourism" episode is interesting to the social scientist because it illuminates the ways Kenyan political life had changed during the 1970s and early 1980s, paving the way for the rise of a party-state in a country long famed for its relatively closer adherence to the norms of Westminster parliamentary democracy than most of its sub-Saharan neighbors. It reveals the increasing difficulty politicians faced in building enduring coalitions to support positions on national-level issues—most particularly to oppose the reallocation of functions and privileges between the party and the Office of the President. The event and Kibaki's fears suggest (1) erosion of the effectiveness or usefulness of harambee participation as an essential component both of political success and of coalition-building across political jurisdictions, (2) a high degree of factional fragmentation, inspired or aggravated, to some degree, by direct intervention by the Office of the President in party elections, (3) a high degree of instability in the composition of political groupings, and (4) the absence of well-defined, independent economic interest groups from political debate.

In response to the "political tourism" episode, the Weekly Review urged the State House to tolerate the "canvassing for support" entailed in "tourism" of this type. It pointed to the trend toward increasing limitations on political association, which had started to threaten Kenyan stability, and urged a return to greater openness to diverse points of view both within KANU and within Parliament:

A natural consequence of elections—if they are free and fair—is the creation of alliances, whether of individuals or groups, for the purpose of ensuring victory for those with a common interest. The incumbents, as well as their challengers, will succeed in their respective bids to retain or gain power within the party hierarchy through diverse ways, but the most effective will probably be one that entails bargaining for electoral benefits.

. . . [This] democracy is essential to the public playing out of a struggle between contending interests in accordance with the rules and procedures agreed upon by society. Often the struggle is given most attention, and concern is expressed about the effect of struggles upon the fabric of society. But the greater emphasis ought to be placed on the openness of a democratic

struggle. What would threaten the fabric of society in Kenya is not the open squabbling of leaders in search of votes; what would threaten the fabric of society in Kenya, as indeed in any country, is any process which affects national politics in a fundamental way but is not open to public scrutiny.^[54]

The threat to the welfare of Kenyan state and society lay not so much in the maneuvers and invective of the leaders of political coalitions within the party, but rather in the elimination of the linkages between the grass roots and the political elite through restriction of bargaining, the Weekly Review 's editor noted. Absent the ability to campaign and to try to secure support through participation in both local development and national policy matters, the fortunes of members of Parliament and party officers would depend on the favor of those in high office, not on accountability to constituents.

Of special concern was the change under way in the relationship between KANU and the Office of the President. Under Kenyatta, KANU had dominated the political scene, to the de facto exclusion of opposition parties. It had remained a weak party, however, with no clear platform and limited political functions. It played relatively little role in articulating and aggregating interests, in formulating legislative proposals, or in socializing young Kenyans into the operation of a parliamentary system. Nor did it assume functions that usually reside with the executive—powers of law enforcement or of policy implementation. In his early years as president, Kenyatta intervened in the affairs of the party principally to prevent "rejuvenation" or capture by a particular set of interests, whether those of the less well-off or of the Kiambu commercial elite. Until the period of his illness, he sought to keep both groups within the party and to encourage compromise between interests and between regions by insisting that people should take participation in local development as an important criterion of a candidate's acceptability. Then the need for funds to contribute to these causes would encourage politicians to bargain with one another and to limit their demands against one another's communities: the slogan "Harambee! Harambee! Harambee!" with which Kenyatta ended his public speeches pointed to an important component of the founder's strategy for keeping disputes within the ruling party.

By 1985, KANU's relationship to the state, to the Office of the President, had changed significantly. The party was increasingly a vehicle for transmitting the views of the president to the grass roots and for controlling the expression of interests within the country and their influence over policy. Party elections had helped organize local interests into co-

herent platforms to only a very limited degree in the past, but they now ceased to serve that function at all. The intervention of the State House to ensure that its candidates for top party offices ran unopposed, and to reduce the electoral prospects of those whose power the president feared, undercut articulation of interests and aggregation within KANU. The strengthening of party disciplinary committees and screening procedures at the State House's request meant that KANU would become, increasingly, a vehicle for controlling dissent. The on-again-off-again establishment of youth wings further conferred on the party part of the state's surveillance and law-enforcement functions.

The year 1985 saw the rise of a party-state in Kenya, but a distinctively Kenyan party-state nonetheless. Despite severe restriction of political activity by the State House, at no point did KANU acquire the all-inclusive corporatist character or the expanded functions of the Mouvement populaire de la révolution in Zaire, which absorbed all other associations, political and otherwise, and whose cadres operated as official adjuncts of the internal security forces. KANU continued to lack the organizational efficacy to carry out significantly expanded law-enforcement functions, and only later did it seek to absorb economic, sports, cultural, and religious bodies.

Further, the division of functions with the executive varied from year to year. For example, although the youth wings eventually assumed an important place in the party, their members sporting "Moi buttons" to indicate their fidelity to the president, their existence was often barely tolerated. The celebration accorded the KANU youth wing during the 1985 party elections was not unanimously appreciated. Within the ranks of the party were many who disagreed with efforts to use the youth wing for purposes of political or social control, and after the KANU elections, a quiet debate about the role of the organization ensued. Former Secretary General Robert Matano had earlier cautioned against blanket condoning and encouraging of youth-wing activities. The youth wings did not formally have the power of arrest, but several groups in Nairobi, Nakuru, and elsewhere had assumed that right anyway, while others had become bodyguards for local officials.

The new party chairman, David Okiki Amayo, noted in December 1985 that youth-wingers were not provided for in the party structure, and that the idea of a youth wing had developed informally, through pronouncements by party leaders. Vice President Mwai Kibaki also sought to restrain the bid to strengthen the youth wing, saying that it was only in "communist states" that the party acted as a militia too.

Further, he remarked, because "youth-wingers were a creation of party bosses," it was the party leadership's responsibility either to contain the problem the youth wing now posed or disband the organizations.^[55] The institutionalization of the party youth wing did not take place until the end of the 1980s, and remained controversial.

Some hesitation also characterized the inauguration of a strengthened disciplinary function. The leadership did constitute a party disciplinary committee, as it had announced earlier, and proceeded to consider the suspension or expulsion of several politicians. Here again, however, the dangers of this step were at least partly acknowledged, although a reversal of policy did not take place. By January 1986, increasing numbers of party members found their names given to the committee for investigation; the committee had provided another vehicle for contending candidates to eliminate opponents. In mid January 1986, the president pardoned the first eighteen people suspended or expelled, however, and said that "misunderstandings among party leaders" had provoked some of the charges and that the "immediate priority" was to ensure unity and happiness in the country.^[56] As in the case of the youth wings, however, the disciplinary functions were later restored.

Nonetheless, the relationship between party and state was quite different from what it had been earlier under Kenyatta. At the end of the Kenyatta period, tremendous power was concentrated in the president, but some protections still existed. The judiciary was still independent. Although the government had frustrated formation of opposition parties—indeed, perhaps done away with J. M. Kariuki, the leader of one party in the making—the legal right to constitute an opposition was still on the books. The right to vote was respected. Under Kenyatta, ballot-rigging was the exception rather than the rule. KANU remained quite weak while Kenyatta used the administration to implement policy.

Although not a party-state of the same character as the MPR in Zaire, the Tanzania African National Union (TANU), or Nkrumah's Convention People's Party in Ghana in the early 1960s, in the first years of the Moi period, the Kenyan state nonetheless came to share with these systems a merger of representative and law-enforcement functions, extremely limited pluralism, and concentration of power in the head of state. By the end of the 1980–85 period, most of the key elements in the new relationship between KANU and the Office of the President were in place. The Office of the President controlled the election of candidates to high party office and converted KANU into a vehicle for monitoring opposition at the local level—something the provincial

administration and other police forces could do only at the risk of politicizing their own ranks. The youth wings and new disciplinary committees were key elements in this system. Their own excesses prompted greater centralization of the party and enforcement of a vague "party line" indistinguishable from the will of senior decision makers at the State House. KANU was no longer an organization for the representation of views and the aggregation of divergent interests into cogent platforms. And in that sense Kenya had become what some have called a "no-party state." The use of party structures by the Office of the President had distinct consequences for patterns of political behavior, however, and for that reason, the concept of the "party-state" remains useful in helping observers understand Kenyan political life. There was increasing pressure to "follow in the footsteps," not of Kenyatta, but of Daniel arap Moi.