Chapter Five—
From "Harambee!" to "Nyayo!" 1980-1985

Between 1980 and 1985, the kinds of strategies used to manage competing claims on resources and roles shifted dramatically. There could be no better summary of this change than the difference between the slogans employed by Kenyatta on the one hand and Moi on the other. The celebrated cry of "Harambee!" with which Kenyatta concluded his speeches had encapsulated the late president's approach to politics. At one level harambee bespoke a preference for local-level community action to achieve collective benefits or "development." At another level it embodied a strategy of bargained exchange; Kenyans could "pull together" by compromise—by sacrificing rewards or labor in the knowledge that at some other time or through private means the contribution would be reciprocated—and by refusal to enshrine the interests of one group above all others in the party, or, indeed, in the cabinet. Moi introduced a different slogan and a different conception of appropriate political strategy. "Nyayo!" ("Follow in the footsteps") took the place of "Harambee!" Although the slogan was intended to convey respect for Kenyatta and highlight the need to pursue the course the first president had set for the country, nyayo acquired a second interpretation: do what the Office of the President tells you to do. Politics as control began to take the place of politics as exchange.

In December 1978, Moi was hailed internationally when he released all of those held under Kenya's detention laws. The move seemed to herald a "new era of tolerance" in the view of Amnesty International

and local observers alike. Although Kenyatta had emphasized that the country's human rights record was far better than that of its neighbors, Amnesty International had decried the detention of politicians associated with the Rift Valley opposition of 1972–75. Moi's action seemed a step toward greater pluralism and greater openness. But that assessment ignored the more likely significance of the release, which had the practical effect not only of demonstrating goodwill but also of reviving the careers of some potential allies against a Kiambu-based coalition.

What the international press did not remark, but the local press quietly noted, was that although the new president had released detainees, he had also reserved the ability to invoke the detention laws whenever he believed necessary, and, further, that the government's first move was to strengthen its control of the police and security forces. Moi shifted the portfolio of the Family member and Minister of State Mbiyu Koinange to Natural Resources, removing the Family from control of internal security and the affairs of the Office of the President. Moi's ally Stanley Oloitipitip took over the Ministry of Home Affairs, but the police force, traditionally part of Home Affairs, moved to the Office of the President. Police Commissioner Bernard Hinga was forced out on charges that his ranks lacked discipline and replaced by the former commander of the Government Services Unit (GSU), Kenya's paramilitary force. Several other senior officers in the police and security forces lost their jobs. The Rift Valley police commissioner, James Mungai, fled the country.^[1] On several occasions in November, the government warned that it had started surveillance of subversive activities and that its agents had infiltrated the organizations responsible.^[2] The final move of the year was to shuffle personnel in the top ranks of the military, promoting some of the highest-ranking officers and moving others out.

The measures were certainly not unusual, but in this case they presaged further-reaching changes. There were two main alternative strategies for preventing GEMA from gaining additional strength. One was to restrict association. Escalating the risks that political meetings would be discovered by using plainclothes police to monitor activity was one tactic within that strategy. Expanding the scope of licensing restrictions on meetings of any sort was another. The proscription of ethnic welfare societies in 1980 was the major component, however. Between July and December of that year, Moi secured the "voluntary" liquidation of the welfare societies that had proliferated and gained in strength during the 1970s.

The second option, which could be used in conjunction with the first,

was to tie KANU more closely to the Office of the President and use it as an instrument for monitoring political splinter groups and controlling political association. Earlier, the Gikuyu, Embu, and Meru Association had sought to rejuvenate and strengthen KANU as a way of projecting Kiambu economic interests and securing the dominance of Family members over the distribution of public resources. During the Kenyatta era, GEMA had consistently failed in this objective. The 1980–85 period saw the Moi government begin to succeed where GEMA had not.

The relationship between KANU and the executive changed markedly as part of this shift. In 1982, the Moi government proposed a constitutional amendment to make Kenya a de jure single-party system. The changes won passage in the Assembly and went into effect during June and July of that year. By the mid 1980s, the party had tightened its disciplinary procedures and invoked rules that permitted the leadership to screen candidates for office and apply a loyalty test. The idea of establishing a party ideological institute and training center resurfaced. Subsequently, the division of functions between party and executive that had prevailed under Kenyatta altered significantly. Under Moi's leadership, KANU began to create youth wings to patrol the country, instill support for the party, and monitor dissent. The party thus acquired a more direct role in law enforcement. The provincial administration became much more active in helping party branches collect dues and membership fees, eventually assuming full responsibility for generating party revenues.^[3] Beginning with the 1985 party elections, the Office of the President began to involve itself directly in the selection of the party leadership, arranging that its own candidates for top party offices would run unopposed.

Although not a system in which the party monopolized all association and assumed major powers of law enforcement, along the lines of the Mouvement populaire de la révolution (MPR) in Zaire or even the Convention People's Party in Kwame Nkrumah's Ghana, the Kenyan pattern of governance in the early 1980s was increasingly characterized by the fusion of party and state.^[4] What captures the interest of the social scientist is why this transformation occurred in Kenya when it did and in the way it did. Assuming that most politicians, regardless of national origin, follow Plunkitt's adage, "I seen my opportunities and I took 'em," why did those who sought to use KANU as an instrument for controlling political opposition meet less resistance to their pursuit of opportunity than the Family and GEMA had a decade earlier? Why did

Kenyatta feel compelled to permit limited pluralism within the party and to eschew use of the party as a vehicle for controlling dissent, whereas Moi did not?

This chapter proposes an answer to that question. It suggests that although the country's population was becoming more stratified on the basis of wealth, "civil society" remained much the same as it had been earlier. That is, increasing differentials in income between the matajiri (the small group of extremely wealthy Kenyans) and new entrants into the labor market who were unable to find either jobs or land did not translate into changes in associational life. What did alter was the capacity to build enduring organizations to support platforms that focused either on broad issues that could be characterized as public goods or on the delivery of pork-barrel benefits for particular localities. It argues that the character of party-state relations altered as factional fragmentation made it increasingly difficult to mount sustained campaigns for national-level policy reform, including resistance to restriction of the political space permitted members of Parliament. The difficulties Kibaki and Mungai encountered in packaging electoral slates and preventing defections by delegates and candidates during the late 1970s became still more pronounced in the 1980s. Furthermore, the expanding powers of the administration to license meetings and associations undermined the use of harambee as a vehicle for constructing cross-regional and cross-ethnic coalitions. By the mid 1980s, it was no longer possible for candidates to venture into areas outside their constituencies with impunity or to hold harambee meetings without the express consent of the Office of the President. These measures heightened the problems associated with forging enduring bases of support for resistance to initiatives from the executive. The chapter outlines the changes that took place in the relationship between the party and the Office of the President and provincial administration during the first part of the 1980s. It then profiles the difficulties members of Parliament encountered in opposing the creation of a party-state in Kenya.

Moi's Accession to the Presidency

If Kenyatta had enjoyed a reputation as a conciliator before he became chief of state, Daniel arap Moi came to the presidency as a man whose qualities as a leader were largely unknown. Although Moi served as vice president for twelve years, the Kalenjin leader and former KADU chairman had acted primarily as Kenyatta's agent in building bridges be-

tween the country's different cultural communities and had had little opportunity, perhaps little inclination, to articulate his own views. He was the nephew of Senior Chief Kiplabat of Baringo and had attended the African Inland Mission school at Karbatonjo, but he had fewer advantages than a chief's relative usually did. His own father had died when Moi was only four. His mother's household was distant from the school he attended, and the family was not well-off. Eventually, he trained as a teacher, partly under the tutelage of the nationalist leader C. M. G. Argwings-Kodhek. Finally, he took up a post as a teacher at the Government African School at Tambach.^[5] His early career was marked by a rapid rise through a series of educational posts. He became headmaster at the Kabarnet Intermediate School in 1948, assistant principal at the Tambach Teacher Training College in 1949, and headmaster of the Government African School in Kapsabet from 1954 through 1957.^[6]

Moi's first experience in politics came in 1955, when he was appointed to replace the Rift Valley District Council's regional representative to the national Legislative Council, who had decided to step down. He remained as one of seven African members of the national Parliament in 1957. Moi then served as one of the delegates to the Lancaster House independence talks, where he allied himself with KANU. At the time, Odinga described him as "influenced by the missions, overawed by settler power and making a slow adjustment to political trends and the need to make independent judgement."^[7] By contrast with the flamboyant Odinga style, however, the same might have been said about most Kenyan politicians. Along with several other politicians, Moi left KANU to form the Kenya African Democratic Union, headed by Ronald Ngala. Concerned that a Kikuyu-Luo coalition had come to dominate, he joined forces with other politicians to create a party that supported a federal system of government in the independence discussions and received a warm reception from some members of the British community, who approved the presentation of this alternative point of view.

Moi held multiple cabinet positions, first as a KADU member, then as a KANU member. In the interim period 1961–63, he served as a minister in Kenyatta's coalition government. Kenyatta appointed him minister of education in 1961, then moved him to the Ministry of Local Government in 1962. Late in 1964, Moi joined other leaders of KADU and agreed to shift his allegiances to KANU. Thus, in the first independence government, Moi received an extremely important portfolio: Kenyatta appointed him his minister for home affairs, a post that had been expected to go to Oginga Odinga, whom Kenyatta designated vice

president but gave only limited powers. Moi retained this portfolio even after he became a vice president in 1967, although Mbiyu Koinange long held the ultimate say in the management of the police force, which was part of the ministry.

As minister for home affairs, Moi supervised the police and some of the security forces. At the time, the police outnumbered Kenya's defense forces and played many of the same security roles as the military. Home Affairs oversaw not only regular police activities but also the application of the Public Security Act, which made legal preventive detention of political dissidents perceived to threaten the security of the country. Indeed, no doubt at Kenyatta's direction, it was Moi who oversaw the detention of the eight leaders of the Kenya People's Union. He explained his actions on the grounds that "any government worth its salt must put the preservation of public security above the convenience of a handful of persons who are doing their utmost to undermine it."^[8] In spite of this role, Moi appears to have achieved substantial personal popularity with other politicians and with constituents.

What other political lessons Moi acquired from his experience in office are unclear. In his early experiences as an elected representative, Moi developed ties with the politicians from the communities bordering Central Province. These solidarities came largely from a shared interest in expanding employment opportunities in the regions. The neighboring Luhya community and the Kamba community suffered from comparatively high population densities and low earnings levels during the colonial period. Moi joined with the representatives of these areas in the Legislative Council to push for a faster, more comprehensive response to the problem of unemployment.^[9] Moi's later "populist" image derived in part from these early stances, in part from Moi's harboring of five Mau Mau rebels on his farm for several weeks of the Emergency (although Moi never articulated a strong nationalist position himself), and from elevation of some former Mau Mau to government positions during the early years of his presidency.

Moi's limited experience in managing the divisions within KANU in post-independence Kenya consisted chiefly in his having run the 1966 conference of party delegates at Limuru that resulted in the withdrawal of the radical faction (see p. 58 above). It was said that Moi had handpicked some of the delegates to the conference to ensure this outcome. In general, in his dealings with the party and with political associations, Kenyatta relied much more heavily on Tom Mboya both to rout KPU sympathizers from KANU's ranks and then to hold the party together.

After Mboya's death, he carried these negotiations forward himself. In consequence, Moi had relatively little opportunity to learn to manage factional division through bargaining. Indeed, there is some evidence to suggest that he disliked the internal party debates characteristic of KANU in its early years. Odinga recorded in his memoirs that when Moi met Kenyatta while Kenyatta was still in prison at Lodwar, Moi refused to back down from his support of KADU on the grounds that "within KANU there were personality clashes and lack of discipline; KANU had to try to clean up its house before it could expect unity with other groups."^[10]

Moi's speeches reflect a continued dislike of debate. In Kenya, as in much of sub-Saharan Africa, the political speech has a ritualized form and is not a good indicator of the actions a leader is likely to pursue. Which kinds of subjects are perceived to require ritual acknowledgment can provide useful clues to a leader's broad attitudes, however. Moi's public utterances are filled with constant allusions to the needs of those less well-off, to his willingness to use a strong hand against politicians who undermine national unity, and to the nyayo "doctrine" of "peace, love, and unity." The populist themes are probably both genuinely felt and politically useful; they remind the public of the need to pay attention to the needs of those whose interests stand most opposed to the disproportionately Kikuyu matajiri. Mixed with these are strong remonstrations against political debate—statements that draw no distinctions between policy debate and "rumor-mongering." For example, in his opening remarks to the KANU Delegates' Conference of April 1980, Moi said:

This particular conference is an indication of my determination to ensure that the KANU party gives guidance to all the institutions in our republic. . . . You have . . . every right to ask any questions you wish to ask not only on party matters but also on government affairs. But be as positive as possible in your contribution. As a nation . . . we have no time for idle talk or debates.^[11]

The threat of police force against those who cross the line between acceptable and unacceptable speech is also a constant theme in Moi's public talks. "I shall not hesitate to take disciplinary action against those Party members of parliament . . . should I find them working against the interest of our nation and our people," Moi reminded the delegates at the 1980 KANU conference.^[12]

In his first months in office, Moi won a reputation as a "populist," an advocate of those less well-off. He spoke out often on behalf of the

"little people," the wananchi, and released twenty-six political detainees who were in jail at the end of Kenyatta's presidency, most of them spokesmen for the interests of the "dispossessed." (Ngugi wa Thiong'o was among them.) Later he elevated several local politicians who were longtime opponents of elites allied with the Family or the old KANU A. These measures won the president some popular support among those who saw these efforts as attacks on privilege.

These steps were also convenient, however. They gave greater latitude to politicians whose interests were quite opposed to those of the Kiambu matajiri class. As such, they were part of Moi's efforts to secure a base of political support at a time when many of the leaders of the civil service and private commerce were arrayed behind Njoroge Mungai, the leader of the "shadow cabinet" Moi had defeated during the Change-the-Constitution Movement. In his Jamhuri Day speech, Moi announced the release of the detainees, but his next words were: "All those who have been in detention are now . . . at their homes. However, I want to warn everyone that my government will not hesitate in taking immediate and firm action against anyone whose activities threaten our peace, unity and stability." Three days later, he rushed a bill through Parliament granting him emergency powers in peacetime.^[13]

Moi also sought to secure his base by using the part of the civil service he knew best, the police, to wage an assault against corruption in the upper reaches of the ministries, undermining the patronage networks of the Kiambu elite who were participants in these. He first moved to clean up the police, making its leadership more responsive to his authority. The commissioner, Bernard Hinga, and many senior officers tendered their resignations when the new attorney general, Charles Njonjo, presented charges of corruption against them. Moi and Njonjo then turned to the ministries. In a BBC interview, Njonjo explained that the changes were part of an effort to streamline the lines of command within the government.^[14]

Faction and the Proscription of Ethnic Welfare Societies

The success of the Njonjo-Kibaki coalition-building efforts in the 1979 elections led not to consolidation of political groupings but to new fragmentation. As René Lemarchand has observed, in authoritarian systems, factions form around those believed to have access to central decision-making authority and re-form as the fortunes of senior officials

change.^[15] The two brokers of the Moi coalition, Charles Njonjo and Mwai Kibaki, were each believed to hold substantial influence with the new president, and politicians clustered around them, forming highly unstable, ad hoc "political splinter groups." In March 1980, public confrontation flared over the flourishing growth of these divisions. One member of Parliament stirred anxiety by saying that Central Province people were in the vanguard of all of the groups.^[16] But the president retaliated, saying that he would take disciplinary action against any civil servant, member of Parliament, or party official who sowed disunity.

The president's own actions aggravated fragmentation, however. For a Kenyan head of state from a less powerful community, one of the imperatives for securing authority was to obtain the support of the Kikuyu entrepreneurs, who controlled key parts of the economy, while making sure that Kikuyu in the cabinet were never themselves allowed to build clienteles enabling them to assume power smoothly and quickly in the event of the president's death. It was therefore important that Mwai Kibaki not be allowed to amass legitimacy within the Kikuyu business elite and with other key groups; if Kibaki, the vice president and minister for finance, developed a strong rapport with the Kiambu elite, sponsoring attempts to remove President Moi would be all too attractive to segments of the Central Province community. From Moi's perspective, it was necessary to ensure that Kibaki never won access to such power and that he faced competition for legitimacy as a Kikuyu spokesman from other ministers not in the line of succession.

To carry out this objective, the president began to assemble a number of coalitions, each headed by a competing Central Province politician but including MPs from other regions as well—the better to challenge Kibaki's own "brokered" coalition. These groups not only factionalized support for senior officials such as Kibaki; they also, by their composition, made it difficult for any one Central Province politician to build a solid national base. Indeed, in one of the year's most controversial parliamentary exchanges, Mrs. Wambui Otieno, a Nairobi KANU delegate, accused the government of originating and spreading rumors of political division, thereby encouraging the mushrooming of splinter groups.^[17]

Three factions emerged in opposition to the Kibaki group, led respectively by Waweru Kanja (formerly one of J.M.'s allies), by Charles Njonjo, and by the GEMA leader Njenga Karume. Waweru Kanja joined forces with the "Nakuru radicals," the populist successors to

J.M., and with several politicians from the Coast to constitute the most populous of the three factions.^[18] The Kanja group sought renewed allocation of public lands to the burgeoning community of squatters in central Kenya and the Rift. On behalf of those who had fought in the Mau Mau rebellion, Kanja pursued claims to land formerly held by white settlers. The Nyeri MP received sharp censure from the president for his stance, however. Recalling the early 1970s, the members of the group realized that they had to guarantee their ability to meet and discuss these issues in public, and the defense of political space assumed a position at the top of their agenda. Conforming to the model established by J.M. and John Marie Seroney, the Nakuru coalition leader Koigi wa Wamwere and others condemned detention without trial. They congratulated Moi for releasing detainees upon his rise to the presidency in 1978, but made a plea for abolition of the detention laws, still on the books and again under consideration. "All the sciences, democracy, and inventions are the result of critical minds," Wamwere said, adding that people should not be punished for being outspoken.^[19] "Those who express any views against the leadership should not be viewed as enemies of the country. Instead, they should, all the time, despite the different opinions they express, be considered legitimate citizens of this country and be accorded all their legitimate rights." Subsequently, supporters from other regions supported Wamwere's plea for tolerance.^[20]

The movement was short-lived. In his bid to articulate economic demands, Kanja named two high government officials, Charles Njonjo and Ignatius Nderi, as the men behind the detentions of the 1970s and portrayed the two as enemies of the dispossessed. In November 1980, only a few months after the group's formation, the State House relieved Kanja of his post as assistant minister for local government because of his accusations and dealt a definitive blow to the power of the group. Koigi wa Wamwere was later detained.

One of the men against whom Kanja had leveled his accusations, Charles Njonjo, led the second main faction. In April 1980, he quit his post as attorney general, allegedly because he had reached retirement age, and announced that he would run for Parliament in the Kikuyu constituency in Kiambu District, also the site of constituencies held by former "Family" members. The sitting MP, Amos Ng'ang'a, who had won a narrow victory the year before, stepped down in Njonjo's favor. Shortly thereafter, Ng'ang'a became chairman of the Tana River Authority, and the strongest of the candidates he had edged out in the No-

vember 1979 election received a prestigious job as chairman of the Kenya Ports Authority.

Speculation about Njonjo's intentions were rife. Reporters immediately hinted that the new MP wanted to create a prime ministerial system that would place the presidency in the hands of a KANU-selected leader.^[21] The former attorney general prudently denied this, but rumors and speculation persisted. The Weekly Review commented:

Njonjo's rise in active politics can only be at the expense of Vice-President Mwai Kibaki who comes from Nyeri and who has hitherto been regarded as the undisputed senior politician in Central Province. The issue is seen in some quarters not merely as a struggle for Central Province leadership but for the Number Two spot in the political structure of the country.^[22]

Indeed, back in March, two Njonjo allies had accused Kibaki of distorting perceptions and encouraging people to think that a group of Kenyan politicians had their eyes on Kibaki's job and on the presidency. G. G. Kariuki, an ally of Njonjo's from Central Province who was assistant minister in the Office of the President with responsibility for internal security, told the public that the vice president was wrong to suggest that opposition had formed against him and against the president; there were no political groupings in the country. In a direct affront to Kibaki, Kariuki retorted: "We do not have to waste time talking about imaginary issues just because they are spoken of by the leaders of government business [the vice president] and his deputy."^[23]

Protestations to the contrary, however, there was substantial evidence that Njonjo associates had assembled to wage war on Kibaki and those around him, and that the president had had a strong hand in Njonjo's elevation. The campaign took two forms. One component was to try to undercut the favor extended the vice president in some parts of Central Province by upstaging Kibaki in local fund-raising appearances. For example, in April 1980, the district commissioner in Murang'a agreed to license a harambee meeting at which the vice president would speak and raise funds for primary schools. A week before the scheduled event, the district commissioner refused an Njonjo ally, Joseph Kamotho, a license to sponsor a harambee gathering to raise funds for a local school on the grounds that he had submitted his request only two days in advance, whereas the law required fourteen days' notice, and that in combination with the vice president's meeting, Kamotho's fund-raiser would place too great a drain on the resources of residents. The gathering would certainly have upstaged Kibaki's visit. Kamotho went ahead

anyway and was met at the site by riot police. The story made the papers, and the district commissioner lost his job, in spite of his respect for the letter of the law.

The Njonjo group also sought to persuade the public that Kibaki was responsible for the country's agricultural woes, which had brought maize and milk shortages.^[24] The first charges to that effect were aired during March 1980, but the strongest statement of the view came in June, when the Standard , a newspaper whose editor was later subject to charges that he had collaborated with Njonjo, started what some called a campaign to place blame on the vice president and on a former minister for agriculture.^[25] Shortly thereafter, Africa Confidential printed an article suggesting that Kibaki was being encouraged to leave Kenya for a World Bank job. The article received wide circulation in Kenya and necessitated a public refutation by the vice president. At the end of June, Moi bolstered Njonjo's fortunes by making the MP from Kikuyu the new minister for constitutional affairs.

The third faction organized itself through the agency of GEMA. GEMA leaders focused their attacks on the vice president and led business criticism of Kibaki. One GEMA executive remarked, "Kibaki is turning this country into a communist state where the government does everything and leaves no initiative to the private sector."^[26] The criticism of the vice president escalated as the organization's strength increased. The assets of the financial operations department of the association, GEMA Holdings, reached KSh. 90 million in May, and in a demonstration of skill in netting benefits for its members, the company announced that it would pay dividends to its shareholders and participate more heavily in charitable activities.

Although President Moi had a hand in creating division among the Central Province politicians who were in the best positions to constitute a challenge to his leadership, the continued involvement of GEMA in national affairs appeared to evoke his fear and ire. Kenyatta had tolerated subgroups within his cabinet, and Moi began by following suit. He expanded the number of cabinet posts from twenty-three to fifty-two, and he left several GEMA leaders in positions of power. The GEMA candidate for the vice presidency, Jeremiah Nyagah, was retained as minister for agriculture. James Gichuru was made one of three ministers of state, along with Nicholas Biwott and G. G. Kariuki. Moi may have believed it possible to lessen the strength of the ties holding the GEMA group together by including some former "opposition" leaders but not others in the cabinet.

Beginning in July 1980, however, the president began a campaign against dissidents and "political splinter groups" of all sorts but with the clear aim of eliminating the financially powerful Kiambu welfare association once and for all. On July 21, the State House announced that all officials of the government would have to demonstrate "100% loyalty or quit" and announced a leaders' conference to discuss the matter. Although it was billed as a sequel to a 1978 conference on "The Kenya We Want," the main outcome of the meeting was a call to wind up all ethnic welfare societies, for so long the rather limited organizational bases of political coalitions. The Kalenjin Union was the first to terminate its affairs, possibly on the understanding that if the president's own ethnic group acted quickly, the residents of Central Province would not view the new policy as an attack on the Kikuyu and would move similarly. In the actual event, GEMA was the last to conclude its operations.

After Moi's July request that ethnic welfare societies wind up their activities, GEMA's chief, Njenga Karume, had initially acceded, then reported that a vote of the membership had urged that the association not be disbanded immediately—an action that bought Karume time to make sure that other societies complied with the directive before GEMA surrendered its power. Arranging for transfer of the organization's extensive business holdings took time, and GEMA had still not disbanded by the end of November. Much of GEMA's portfolio was to be moved to Agricultural and Industrial Holdings, Ltd., an organization led by the former GEMA leader Kahika Kimani. During the first week of December, however, Kimani took a strong stance against this apparent surrender to the president and led a move by four directors of the firm to oust Karume as chairman and to take a stand against disbanding.

Seizing the opportunity, Moi leant his support to Karume, attending a big harambee meeting for primary and secondary schools in Kiambaa, Karume's constituency. By splitting GEMA members between Karume, who could now boast of presidential patronage, and Kimani, Moi undermined the solidarity of the coalition.

Moi's use of harambee funds in this manner represented a significant change over previous strategy. Before, harambee contributions from the president, vice president, or senior officials had been used to compensate those members of Parliament whose constituencies or districts lost resources through changes in public policy (see Table 3). The president's appearance in Kiambaa inaugurated a new period, in which contributions would be used, increasingly, to generate factions by making it in

the interest of members of potential opposition coalitions to turn against their associates and support the Moi government.

The New KANU Monopoly

The proscription of ethnic welfare societies did little to reassure Daniel arap Moi that his grasp on the country's highest office was assured. State House had not necessarily undercut the power of GEMA or the Luo Union in his view. The leaders of these societies could salvage the financial resources they had accumulated and seek to advance their interests in other ways, he argued. His mind turned increasingly to fear of underground opposition, rooted, he believed, in the university system but fomented by the former leaders of the welfare unions.

In fact, significant political organization on a scale that could have led to the president's ouster and replacement by a government acceptable to a majority of Kenyans was extremely difficult at this time. Ability to organize sustained backing for cross-regional initiatives was now sharply circumscribed in two ways. First, the presence of multiple factions exacerbated the problem of defections for coalition-builders. Disaffected members of Parliament and local leaders constantly shifted their allegiances to the leader who promised the greatest advantages at any particular moment. Because no one faction chief could offer the prospect of long-term benefits in return for support, opportunism began to run rampant, increasing the negotiating costs associated with promotion of a national platform. Second, restrictions on political space

made it very difficult for local and national leaders to assemble. Because the government controlled the registration of societies, it could simply disapprove the papers submitted by an opposition party and refuse to grant the necessary certification, as had happened in the case of the KPU in 1966–69.^[27] Only a coalition with a very strong parliamentary base could forcibly have brought the State House's refusal to register a party to the floor of Parliament for discussion.

Notwithstanding these bars to the effective organization of an opposition, the president appeared increasingly fearful of dissidence in any form. During the period before and after the measures to eliminate welfare societies, he continually cautioned Kenyans to beware of disgruntled elements and warned that traitors would receive ruthless treatment.^[28] Moi employed three tactics to try to secure his grip on power. First, he tried to expand the scope of restrictions on political activity. For example, he requested that Parliament contemplate limits on press freedom as a way to deny potential opposition leaders an audience. The minister for information and broadcasting announced that Kenya could no longer afford a free press. "As a young developing country, we cannot afford the luxury of permissive reporting practised by the developed countries. We must therefore use our mass media systems for nation-building and in uplifting the standard of living of our people."^[29] The years 1980 and 1981 witnessed implementation of a number of other measures aimed at safeguarding presidential power, including closure of the university, harassment of foreign journalists, seizure of lecturers' passports, warnings of "crackdowns," and a call for the reopening of detention camps.

Expenditure on police services, especially in rural areas, expanded greatly. Beginning in 1978 and 1979, the approved budget allocations for the Office of the President, which in Kenya at this time had responsibility for the police forces, shot up.^[30] Disaggregated by type of expenditure, the budget appears to have increased most rapidly in the category of personal emoluments for the police, Criminal Investigation Department, and Government Services Unit staff, and in the category of GSU transport (the latter a possible indication of increased activity, as well as of increased numbers of personnel, although it is not known whether purchases of trucks and other transport may have been to replace aging equipment). Because the rates of growth in personal emoluments exceeded the rates of growth in numbers of personnel, it can be assumed that in addition to enhancing the capability of the police, Moi was seeking to increase their fidelity to him by purchasing their loyalty. By 1985,

the budget of the Office of the President was greater than that of any other ministry or government function, with estimates totaling K£74,932,700.^[31]

Simultaneously with the increase in security budgets, evidence of more government surveillance emerged. An unfortunate consequence of strategies that emphasize restriction of political activity and factionalizing opposition in order to maintain stability is the politicization of information. Information "costs" more and becomes something to be bargained and traded because of its scarcity and importance in decision making.

Moi's second tactic was to render illegal any attempt to constitute an opposition to KANU. In June 1982, two months after a statement by the Luo MP George Anyona that he and Oginga Odinga planned to found a new political party, the Office of the President proposed that Kenya be declared a single-party state. Anyona had said that the time was ripe for creation of a second political party, an assertion for which KANU expelled him from its ranks. In May, with Oginga Odinga, he established the Kenya African Socialist Alliance (KASA).^[32]

By himself, Odinga did not command sufficient power to warrant such a strong and politically costly reaction on Moi's part. A GEMA-Luo combination, however, could conceivably have rallied sufficient support to force the issue of party registration to the floor of Parliament and Moi's decision most likely reflected an assessment by the president that a party involving Odinga would also involve either the GEMA machine, now underground but not defunct, or the new Rift Valley populists. A Luo-Rift coalition would have wielded less parliamentary power than a GEMA combination but might have elicited substantial popular support during a period when economic difficulties had stirred general unease.

The constitutional amendment to make Kenya a de jure single-party system moved quickly through the legislature, with little overt objection from the honorable members. The difficulty of organizing a parliamentary opposition did not indicate general support for the president's proposal, however. MP Koigi wa Wamwere complained that at a KANU parliamentary group meeting, MPs were threatened with detention without trial if they did not go along with the proposal.^[33]

A little more than a month later, Kenyan political life was disrupted by a shadowy coup attempt that startled the country's allies, who had always considered the nation a stable point in an otherwise turbulent continent. The exact character of the "August Disturbances," as they

were euphemistically known, has never been clarified and is likely to remain indecipherable. Members of the air force, a youthful and highly educated segment of the military, allegedly combined with university students and disaffected members of the Luo community to dislodge the Moi government. After eleven days of skirmishing in the capital, the rebel group met defeat at the hands of Government Services Unit (GSU) elite forces. The slowness of the army to respond to calls for assistance has led some observers to speculate that the uprising was really two or even three coup attempts launched from different quarters and gone awry. The demands of the coup plotters were never clear, although opposition to the move to a single-party system was widely believed to have been one of the motives.

The Office of the President embarked on a series of moves to try to curtail underground associations. The arrest of a large number of Luo, including Odinga's son, Raila Omolo Odinga, for participation in the August Disturbances, and the detention of the Rift Valley populist and Nakuru North MP Koigi wa Wamwere followed the collapse of the resistance. Surveillance of the university expanded and resulted in periodic questioning and detention of lecturers. The police Special Branch stepped up its monitoring of foreign press organizations and aid agencies, at one point closing the Associated Press offices after AP placed on the wire a story describing food shortages in Meru. The Ford Foundation representative came under fire when a report on the events of 1982 he had prepared for the foundation's New York office was intercepted and passed to the internal security agencies.

State House also moved to limit even more severely the political space available to members of Parliament. One senior minister initiated an inquiry into the funding received by radical MPs for harambee meetings. Next came an end to parliamentary privilege, the provision that enabled members to obtain information from the executive, and on which ability to hold the government responsible for the actions of its officers depended. Finally, on June 4, Parliament voted to reinstate the detention laws, suspended between 1978 and 1982.

Thus, the failure of members of Parliament and extra-parliamentary leaders to resist imposition of restrictions earlier had triggered a poorly planned and coordinated attempt to restore room for political opposition in Kenya. The failure stemmed largely from the difficulty of assembling stable bases of support in a single-party-dominant system with a high degree of fragmentation and from the limitations placed on politicians' ability to use exchange of private harambee funds to secure one

another's support. Over the next three years, resistance to further assumption of party functions by the Office of the President would become more and more challenging. The move to a party-state was almost assured.

The Njonjo Affair

Unnerved by the August disturbances and conscious of the effectiveness of fragmentation as a strategy for controlling opposition, Moi began again to sow the seeds of division among the Kikuyu representatives in the cabinet. In December 1982, only four months after the coup attempt, he launched an attack on Charles Njonjo to reduce the power his former ally had aggregated. The move ended in the former minister's expulsion from the government and from the party in the summer of 1983. Moi then turned a former Mau Mau Central Committee member, Kariuki Chotara, into a machine politician, channeling harambee contributions his way in order to create a counterweight to Mwai Kibaki and to a new faction that had developed around Kenneth Matiba, the successful Kikuyu businessman who was MP from Murang'a.

Over the years Njonjo had accumulated sufficient political power, as chief of several branches of the country's internal security operations, to constitute a threat to the president. The events of August had clarified the dangers of disloyalty among those who controlled the security apparatus. In December 1982, a group of Luhya MPs spearheaded an attack in Parliament, confronting Njonjo on a series of minor issues. State House's involvement became clear when, on January 22, Moi became a member of the Butere Development Fund and promised a personal appearance at a fund-raiser for the Luhya districts, areas previously neglected in the harambee participation of senior ministers. In May, with the assistance of Martin Shikuku, MP for Butere, the senior Luhya MP, Elijah Mwangale, launched a full-scale challenge to Njonjo, and Moi revealed that Kenyans had a traitor in their midst. The president's speeches never mentioned the traitor by name but dropped clues to his identity: an MP who wore a three-piece suit and a flower in his lapel—both well-known characteristics of the minister for constitutional affairs. On June 30, Shikuku also directed remarks against the senior ministers Stanley Oloitipitip, Joseph Kamotho, Charles Rubia, G. G. Kariuki, and Robert Matano, most of whom had ties to Njonjo, and suggested that Parliament was engaged in witch-hunting. The Luhya MP Fred Omido picked up the attack on Njonjo, and Lawrence Sifuna

made the first request that Njonjo be expelled from Parliament. Mukasa Mango, minister for health and MP for the Luhya constituency Busia East, suggested that expulsion from the cabinet was not enough, and that Njonjo should be brought before a court to face treason charges.

On July 1, 1983, Njonjo resigned his position. Two days later KANU suspended him, along with a less well known figure, the former Butere MP Chief Richard Litunya, a strong rival of Shikuku's. Litunya's suspension came as a result of a meeting called to discuss a telegram he was alleged to have written to Njonjo apologizing for the behavior of the Luhya MPs.

The Shikuku group received its first reward for its alliance with the State House in late July, when Moi visited Butere and raised KSh. 3.1 million for Shikuku's Butere Development Fund. In Vihiga, Moses Mudavadi's constituency, one opposition candidate, Peter Kibisu, was forced out of the race for Parliament, and another, Bahati Semo, fell into disgrace when he refused to follow the bidding of a group of elders who claimed that the people wished Mudavadi unopposed. Vihiga was one of the few sites of possible government interference in an otherwise relatively clean election, by all reports. In the October 1983 cabinet reorganization, the former minister for tourism and wildlife, Elijah Mwangale, was promoted to minister for foreign affairs. Martin Shikuku moved to the Office of the President as an assistant minister for state. Moses Mudavadi maintained his position as minister for local government, and Mukasa Mango exchanged his portfolio as minister for health for that of the minister for cooperative development. Stanley Oloitipitip and G. G. Kariuki were removed from government. Two years later, in 1985, Robert Matano, the third man who had once worked with Njonjo to orchestrate Kibaki's success in the KANU elections, was asked to resign his ministerial portfolio and was defeated in his bid to hold onto his position as secretary general of KANU.

The second attempt to reduce the power of the Kikuyu in the government through a strategy of faction came in the early months of 1985, with the elevation of the former Mau Mau leader from Naivasha, Kariuki Chotara, as an alternative center of power within the Kikuyu community to rival Mwai Kibaki and Kenneth Matiba, the wealthy minister for culture and social services from Mbiri, in Murang'a District. With Njonjo out of the picture, the possibility of unity among the Kikuyu factions presented itself, with Kibaki or Matiba as likely leaders.

In the wake of the Njonjo affair, Moi appointed two leaders of the

Mau Mau rebellion, Kariuki Chotara and Fred Kubai, nominated MPs. With the exception of Bildad kaggia, leader of the long-banned populist Kenya People's Union, and the former Nyeri MP Waweru Kanja, the leaders of the post-independence Kikuyu community had always come from loyalist backgrounds. Former Mau Mau leaders had played relatively little part in Kenyan politics since 1963. Chotara and Kubai had no connections to the business elite and to "establishment" politics in Kikuyu areas. Indeed, both had opposed Jomo Kenyatta for his moderation; Kenyatta's jailer during the Mau Mau Emergency reported that Chotara had attempted to kill Kenyatta while the two were detained together, and in 1985 Kubai recalled on film for Grenada Television the Mau Mau Central Committee's intention to eliminate Kenyatta had the leader's moderation proved a hindrance.

Chotara established a strong base in Nakuru District, where he replaced Kimani as chief of the local machine and served as KANU branch chairman. The currency he used to establish these relationships was harambee, the funds being provided by the State House. Many of the harambee gatherings he sponsored were held on behalf of the KANU youth wing, which subsequently supported Chotara's ambitions and monitored activities in the district. In spite of an unenforced ban on harambee during the campaign period for the 1985 party elections, Chotara held fund-raisers as often as twice a week without attracting official censure.

In April 1985, Chotara, Kubai, and the Luhya politician who had participated in the ousting of Njonjo, Elijah Mwangale, joined forces to generate opposition to Kibaki within Nyeri District. The group allegedly sought to advance the interests of Mwangale for the vice presidency in an effort to reduce Kibaki's power. In April, Mwangale visited Nyeri District without informing the vice president, a breach of etiquette that generally signals a visitor's strength. Kibaki immediately denounced what he called "political tourism," or unannounced visits between politicians from different districts, and tried, unsuccessfully, to obtain a ruling that members of Parliament not be allowed to enter one another's constituencies except in the company of the incumbent. Chotara was able to influence Nyeri politics, however, through his old Mau Mau ties, one of whom, Samuel Thiberi, had been responsible for the early stages of Kibaki's career and now expressed disenchantment with his performance.^[34] At the end of April, Mwangale and Chotara met with the president at State House to discuss the issue further.

Nyayo: Following in the Footsteps

One of the central questions that had arisen in the May 1982 debate about the move to a single-party system was whether KANU would continue to remain open to a variety of points of view. At the time, the national executive had just expelled Odinga and Anyona, both of whom were subsequently accused of seeking to establish a competing party. Did these expulsions prefigure a stronger party platform and stricter enforcement of the loyalty pledge that all members signed? Less than a month later, during a speech in western Kenya, the party's organizing secretary, Nathan Munoko, warned that KANU would "not hesitate to throw out of the party people who refused to toe the party line."^[35] The August Disturbances put the issue even more clearly at the top of the Kenyan political agenda.

Munoko's remarks heralded a series of changes, most enacted three years later in the course of the 1985 grassroots and national party elections. The conduct of the 1985 party elections and the modifications in party structures and practices that occurred subsequently indicated a shift in party-state relations. There were three elements of the program: (1) an effort to prevent the formation of branch machines with bases of power independent from the national executive committee, (2) extension of the control exerted by the State House over party elections, and (3) introduction of structures that could enable the party to become a stronger instrument of social and political control.

One of the first moves was to require that every party official have won election to a sub-branch before assuming a higher post. MPs who had lost their seats but retained party chairmanships had, in the past, frustrated the efforts of new MPs to promote local development projects.^[36] After the conclusion of the 1985 polling, the president declared, "It should be made clear that if you don't get elected at the grassroots, you will not be considered at any other stage, otherwise wananchi will be wondering how you got elected at the national level when they had rejected you."^[37] His intention was to prevent the formation of a party machine that could be controlled by a small group of people who remained in office because they had access to resources useful to candidates in elections and could therefore control sections of the party. When the time came for local delegates to elect district officials, these would be the men chosen. Access to resources, not party loyalty, was their mainstay. One way to help ensure that the party bureaucracy did not develop a base of power independent of the executive council was

to force all officials to face continual reelection campaigns. "If you are cleaning your cattle, every animal should get into the dip, including their calves," the president noted. "That kind of system will clean the party thoroughly."^[38]

Forcing officials to run for election from the sublocation level instead of allowing them to serve whether or not they had campaigned and won in their home areas might enable the government to turn some party members out, but it did not solve the problem permanently. If only elected party members could hold office, then what could prevent incumbent officials from refusing to allow their challengers equal meeting time—or even the necessary clearance papers? It was the obverse of the problem of harassment of new MPs by those they had beaten. During the 1985 elections there were several instances in which registered party members were never given the opportunity to choose among candidates, because incumbent politicians had caucused in advance and agreed to support one candidate unopposed. For example, in Kisii, six of the district's seven MPs (over the objections of the seventh, Zachary Onyonka) agreed to support Lawrence Sagini, a senior politician allied with the powerful chief secretary of the civil service. Although the requirement that officials be reelected at the grass-roots level appeared to undercut the growth of a party machine, given the electoral rules the party followed, the new policy was not likely to have the intended effect.

The problem of choice also arose in connection with the relationships between the civil service, State House, and KANU. The 1985 elections brought three types of changes. One was the incorporation of civil servants into the party, in a major departure from the Westminster model on which Kenya's governmental system was originally based.^[39] Whether the measure was adopted as a means of bringing the civil service under the control of the party or simply of raising money from membership fees was unclear. After a series of contradictory exchanges, it was decided that although civil servants would be required to join the party, they would not be allowed to run for party office or involve themselves in debates about party policy. The ruling did represent a significant change in the way people thought about the party and the civil service, however. Traditionally, Kenyatta had used the civil service as a vehicle for exercising control and discerning local opinions.^[40] Incorporating the civil service into the party while denying a role for the new members in making policy reversed the relationship.

A second change was less a matter of substance than degree. Previously the civil service had acted on the president's orders to control

night meetings, harambee appearances, and political gatherings. During the 1985 KANU electoral period, some officials in the provincial administration abbreviated these steps and simply banned campaign meetings and rallies altogether. The provincial commissioner for Central Province did so on June 18, and his Nyanza counterpart followed suit two days later. Just prior to polling, three Nyanza politicians were arrested and held without charge in Kisumu District.^[41]

The third change was in the way State House handled elections for national posts. In 1978, Njonjo, Oloitipitip, and G. G. Kariuki had brokered the slate that won Kibaki the vice presidency. Each candidate they put up was opposed by a candidate from the Mungai slate and several other challengers. At no point did Moi publicly declare himself for or against any contender. In the July 1985 party elections, by contrast, the broker was none other than the State House itself. All candidates ran unopposed, except Burudi Nabwera, who faced a challenge from the incumbent Robert Matano, who refused to step down. The withdrawal of Mwashembu Mwachofi, who had opposed the Moi nominee, Justus ole Tipis, for the treasurer's post, was announced by the president, not the candidate.

The participation of the State House in the conduct of the national elections was only one indication of the increasing control exerted over party affairs by the president. The new requirement that national party officials work at the highest levels of the government meant that either the party would have to choose its managers from among the members of the cabinet or the president would have to appoint elected party officials to senior positions.^[42] In either case, the officials were beholden to the State House.

Changes permitted other forms of political control to be exerted by the State House through the party organization as well. The most significant of these was the creation of a disciplinary committee to censure members who deviated from the party's policies. The July 2, 1985, announcement was accompanied by a warning from the president that ministers and other leaders who were "raising their heads" must "sing the song of the government or resign."^[43] The first crackdown by the committee came before the end of the month. Describing the campaign, the new KANU chairman, David Okiki Amayo, said that leaders must stop "hankering after power" and "the politics of survival that can only lead to darkness and destruction." The party treasurer, who was also minister for State in charge of security, said that KANU would track and "crush dissidents" and that the country's security personnel would locate subversive elements "even if they go underground."^[44] He equated

anti-nyayo sentiment with mental illness, saying, "Let those who don't want peace go to Mathare [site of the mental hospital] to have their heads examined."^[45] By the end of the year, the disciplinary committee was considering several cases, among them that of Martin Shikuku, one of those who had spearheaded the attack on Njonjo; Shikuku had stepped out of line by accusing the chief secretary of the civil service of owning too much land.

Other practices had the effect of helping the government leaders locate "political groupings" and eliminate them. Although the party constitution called for use of secret ballots, Moi announced that the party would now consistently employ the "queuing system," to which it had often resorted in the past. Under this system, voters line up behind the candidate of their choice. The advantages ascribed to it are that it prevents "stuffing the ballot box" and makes voting simpler for people who are illiterate and cannot read a ballot (the reason Kenya and many other African countries use symbols in addition to names to distinguish candidates). From the administration's point of view, of course, it had the added benefit of exposing which electors cast their votes for which candidate.^[46]

There were two other aspects of the use of the party as a vehicle for controlling "tribal groupings," "sectionalism," and "wolves in sheeps' skin acting as an opposition."^[47] One was to encourage more people to join the party, where they would be exposed to the nyayo influence—a course of action that also corresponded neatly with the party's financial objectives, which may have been of paramount concern. In March, Minister for Labour Robert Ouko asked local chiefs in his area, Kisumu Rural, to use social gatherings such as funerals, sports meetings, and church services "to preach the need for KANU registration"^[48] The South Nyanza district commissioner announced subsequently that wananchi (common people) would not be allowed into markets, shops, or bars without KANU tickets. In parts of Central Province and the Rift Valley, residents were warned that they could be questioned by police on night patrols to determine whether they were party members.^[49]

The most visible aspect of the program to use the party as a means of social control was, however, the youth wing. KANU branches had long been allowed to maintain youth groups, which acted as vigilante organizations and rather frequently made news as a result of their abuse of power. The party's former secretary general had been suspicious of the youth wing, warning members not to take the law into their own hands, and most politicians seem to have exhibited similar ambivalence. Dur-

ing the 1985 campaign, the activities of the youth wing were advertised as part of the defense of nyayo. Youth-wingers were celebrated for their anti-crime campaigns in Nakuru and Nairobi and their arrests of suspected thieves. The youth wing played an especially large role under the patronage of the Nakuru boss Kariuki Chotara. In August, KANU announced it would build a college in Machakos that would "aim at making youth-wingers . . . disciplined watchdogs in society."^[50] The Standard recorded that "until a few months ago the party had, to a large extent, been a monopoly of a few individuals without any meaningful political socialization taking place. There are, however, indications that President Moi wants to take the party to the people—both old and young—and it is hoped the party will play a greater role in providing political education to the youth."^[51]

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.