Kenya

By: Robert Fay

Source:

 Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African and African American Experience, Second Edition

Kenya

Kenya is on the Indian Ocean coast of eastern Africa, bordered by Ethiopia, Tanzania, Somalia, and Uganda. Fringed by coral beaches, crowned by Mount Kenya, and cut through by the majestic Rift Valley, Kenya’s physical landscape is among the most beautiful and varied in Africa. It is a landscape made familiar to many in the West through novels, Hollywood films, and the country’s well-developed tourist industry. But safari tours in Kenya’s national parks provide little more than a glimpse of a country that has one of the world’s longest histories of human habitation and an enormously diverse—and often divided—society.

Kenya

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British colonialism helped turn cultural differences into ethnic animosities, and it established a lasting gap between the land-rich and the land-poor. Rights to the fertile land in central Kenya, in fact, were at the heart of a bloody anticolonial uprising—the so-called Mau Mau rebellion—and after independence, export crops produced on that land contributed to the young nation’s economic prosperity. But years of economic mismanagement, corruption, and political repression, especially after President Daniel arap Moi came to power in 1978, dimmed Kenya’s early promise. With a population estimated at 31.6 million in 2003, Kenya is burdened with massive foreign debt, a failing infrastructure, accusations of widespread human rights abuses, continuing ethnic tensions, and a high rate of HIV/AIDS.

Prehistory and Early History

Millions of years ago, early hominids, or humanlike beings, evolved in the East African region now known as Kenya. Archaeological digs in the Rift Valley and around Lake Turkana, Kannapoi, and Allia Bay have uncovered remains of distant human ancestors, such as Australopithecus anamensis and Australopithecus boisei, as well as of more recent and direct human ancestors, including Homo habilis and Homo erectus. The latter are believed to be about 1.8 million years old. Archaeological research in Kenya’s Malewa Gorge has also uncovered evidence of Stone Age toolmaking, dated at 238,000 B.C.E.

The earliest known human societies in the East African interior were speakers of the Khoisan languages. They inhabited the savanna, forests, and lakeshores, using sophisticated stone tools to hunt, forage, and fish. Approximately five thousand years ago, speakers of Cushitic languages migrated south from Ethiopia and settled in the Rift Valley. These people cultivated dryland crops such as sorghum and millet and kept herds of sheep, goats, and cattle. Approximately three thousand years ago, Bantu-speaking farmers migrated east from the rainforests of Central Africa to settle around Lake Victoria.

The drier climate of East Africa, combined with interaction with their Cushitic neighbors, led the Bantu speakers to take up grain farming and Pastoralism, or animal herding. Bantu-speaking communities expanded and spread rapidly, displacing or absorbing surrounding peoples. By about the fourth century C.E.., Bantu-speaking communities had reached the Indian Ocean in the east and Zambia in the south.

Other early migrants to Kenya included Nilotic-speaking herders from the Sudan, who migrated in waves between one and two thousand years ago, and the Eastern Cushitic-speaking ancestors of the pastoral Oromo and Somali peoples, who moved south from Ethiopia into northern Kenya around 1000 B.C.E. Eventually Bantu-speaking peoples, such as the Kikuyu and Kamba, occupied much of central and southern Kenya. Nilotic-speaking Kalenjin peoples predominated in western Kenya, Nilotic-speaking Turkana lived as nomads in the arid north, and the closely related Maasai herded cattle in the fertile Rift Valley. Kenya’s ecological diversity encouraged the development of distinctive regional economies and cultures.

For centuries, political organization in the Kenyan interior remained decentralized. Most trade occurred either locally, between farmers and herders, or between groups in Kenya’s diverse ecological zones. Food, SALT, iron tools, and pottery were the primary goods traded among inland peoples. IVORY made its way through networks of traders to the coast, where it was exported.

Although the history of the East African or Swahili coast is generally better documented than that of the interior, patterns of early coastal settlement are not entirely known. Hunters and gatherers were probably the first inhabitants of the coast, later joined at some point by Cushitic-speaking herders. The pastoral Oromo and Somali peoples in the coastal region are believed to be descendants of these groups. Finally, Bantu-speaking peoples migrated to the coast during the Iron Age.

They were primarily farmers and fishers, but they also hunted, kept livestock, and engaged in regional trade. After merchants from the Arabian peninsula began trading and settling along the African coast, the regional economy turned increasingly toward long-distance and sea-based trade. According to a second-century C.E.. Greek text called Periplus of the Erythraean Sea, this trade dates back at least two thousand years.

Generations of intermarriage between coastal Africans and Arabs produced the Swahili people, who had a distinctive culture. They were among the first East African Muslims—a mosque excavated at Shanga, a settlement in the Lamu Archipelago, dates to the eight century C.E..—and they created numerous independent coastal city-states. Ocean commerce in high-value goods such as RHINOCEROS horn, tortoise shell, ivory, GOLD, and slaves contributed to the prosperity of cities such as Mombasa, Malindi, Lamu, and PATE during what Swahili history calls the “golden age,” between the twelfth and eighteenth centuries.

The largest Swahili cities competed for domination of the coastal and sea trades. At the end of the fifteenth century, Malindi’s power was waning and Mombasa’s was rising. Then the arrival of Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama began a new era of power struggles along the coast. The Portuguese, seeking to control Indian Ocean trade routes, allied with the Swahili dynasty in Malindi to take over Mombasa, which resisted Portuguese rule until 1529.

Portuguese efforts to tax the Swahili city-states led to repeated revolts. In 1593, the Portuguese built the formidable Fort Jesus at the entrance of Mombasa harbor, where its ruins still stand. The ruler of the Arabian state of Oman finally drove the Portuguese out of Mombasa in 1660, but the Portuguese held onto the fort until 1699. Although the Portuguese had few lasting effects on Swahili culture during their two-century-long occupation of the Kenyan coastline, they did introduce the American crops cassava, maize (corn), and tomatoes, which have since become part of both coastal and interior cuisines.

Oman

Oman’s victory over the Portuguese signaled growing Omani interest in East African trade, but Oman did not gain control of Kenya’s coast. Instead, Mombasa’s Mazrui clan, who claimed descent from Omani settlers, took control of the city after the Portuguese were driven out. They extended their influence through an alliance with the rulers of Pate, at that time the most powerful city-state in the Lamu Archipelago, but their allied forces were defeated by soldiers from Lamu in the early nineteenth century. The Mazrui were deposed, and many were later driven out of Mombasa by the Omani sultan Sayyid Sa’id ibn Sultan, who claimed all of the Swahili city-states north of Cape Delgado between 1820 and 1830.

After 1840, the sultan oversaw his East African trade empire from the capital he established in Zanzibar. With a large navy and support from the British, he was able both to rule the coast and develop inland trade routes. These caravan routes opened the East African interior not only to Swahili traders, but to Europeans as well. Exports of ivory, slaves, and hides, as well as cloves, sesame, and other crops produced on coastal plantations, helped revive the economies of Swahili communities that had been in decline since the arrival of the Portuguese.

European Colonization

Meanwhile, European powers had begun competing for control over the East African mainland. In the so-called Scramble for Africa, Germany claimed the mainland across from Zanzibar, which led the British to claim the region directly to the north. In Berlin in 1886 the two countries agreed on the boundary between their territories, and the following year they met to determine the sultan of Oman’s holdings. They granted him all of the islands along the coast as well as a strip of coastline extending ten miles (sixteen kilometers) inland; in the British territory, this extended as far north as the mouth of the Tana River. In 1888 the Imperial British East Africa Company obtained royal permission to undertake economic development in East Africa north of Mount Kilimanjaro. Although the region had few natural resources other than fertile land, the British wanted to secure their interests both on the coast and in the Buganda kingdom around the headwaters of the Nile River.

The British East Africa Company proved ineffective, however, and in 1895 it lost its territory to the British government, which declared it a protectorate. That same year, Great Britain signed a treaty with the sultan that gave it control of the coast in exchange for yearly payments. The transfer of power sparked a nine-month rebellion along the coast, beginning in Mombasa—the so-called Mazrui rebellion. The Swahili Mazrui clan took part in the rebellion, but so did others, including the Mijikenda people. The British later transferred administration of the coast to the sultan of Oman, an arrangement that continued until Kenyan independence in 1963.

Great Britain’s initial goals in the East Africa Protectorate were to make it economically self-sufficient and to build a railway from Mombasa to Lake Victoria. For the latter task the British recruited not only African workers but also indentured laborers from India. Many of the Indian laborers remained in Kenya afterward, becoming merchants in the towns that arose along the railway, which reached Nairobi in 1899 and was completed in 1901. In 1907 the British moved their administrative capital from Mombasa to the more centrally located Nairobi, a former railroad depot.

The completion of the railway, combined with the addition of Uganda’s fertile eastern province to the East African Protectorate in 1902, spurred increased European and Indian settlement in Kenya. The railway also let the British bring in the troops needed to suppress resistance in several different parts of the interior. Between 1900 and 1908, the British troops put down uprisings among the Nandi, Embu, GUSII, KIPSIGI, Bakusu, and Kabras peoples.

From the beginning, Kenya’s white settlers enjoyed government representation and support far out of proportion to their numbers. The all-white Legislative Council, established in 1906, gave settlers a voice in colonial affairs. Even more important, the colonial government set aside Kenya’s fertile highlands for settler farms. To create what became known as the “White Highlands,” the government declared pastures and fallow farmland to be unoccupied, making them available for white settlers. Only Africans working on settler farms could use land in the highlands, and they were subject to abrupt evictions. At the same time, the government forced hundreds of thousands of Africans into crowded “native reserves,” where farmland was often too poor and too scarce for households to support themselves.

Colonial rule in Kenya depended on defining and dividing “tribes.” The government assigned Africans to reserve lands according to what tribe they claimed to belong to, and it appointed chiefs as tribal authorities. Many of Kenya’s ethnic groups had not historically recognized political powers higher than their village councils or clan elders, however, and Britain’s attempt to rule indirectly through traditional authorities was, in many cases, not traditional at all. The British also drew on ethnic stereotypes to create a colonial division of labor: the Kikuyu, for example, were considered suitable for lower-level civil service, while the Maasai were preferred for police and military service.

One of the appointed chiefs’ main responsibilities was to recruit labor. The Native Authority Ordinance of 1912 authorized chiefs to recruit their tribal subjects for up to two months of compulsory labor, either on public works projects or for a private employer, typically a white farmer. The Native Registration Act of 1915 helped prevent laborers from fleeing by requiring all African adult males to carry identification whenever they left the native reserves. During World War I (1914–1918), approximately 195,000 black Kenyans were recruited to help as porters; an estimated 50,000 of them died from poor treatment. Another 10,000 served as soldiers.

The colonial government also used taxation to force Africans into wage labor. Men and women alike worked on the coffee and tea plantations of white settlers, while men predominated in the wage labor forces of Nairobi and Mombasa. Although some women also migrated to the cities—beer-brewing and prostitution were among the few income-earning options open to them—those who remained in rural areas often had to assume greater responsibility for farming.

The government of the protectorate based its plans for economic self-sufficiency on export crops such as coffee and tea that were produced by white settlers. By 1915 the settlers had not proven to be very productive farmers, but still the Colonial Office extended their land leases from ninety-nine to 999 years. Kenya’s new governor, Major General Sir Edward Northey, encouraged British soldiers to settle in the colony, seizing an additional 12,810 acres (5,186 hectares) of land from native Kenyan peoples. In 1921, the East African Protectorate became a Crown colony named Kenya.

The World War I era saw the emergence of African political protest in Kenya. This protest was urban, led largely by the mission-educated elite, and moderate in tone. Its leaders, such as HARRY THUKU of the Kikuyu Central Association, objected to colonial land and labor policies and called for unity among tribes. The colonial government arrested Thuku in 1922, but not before his speeches had inspired a young mission-educated man named JOMO KENYATTA.

Kenya’s Indians also began to pressure the colonial government for reforms. By the mid-colonial period, many Indians had established shops and other small businesses, but they objected to the urban segregation policies that barred both Indians and Africans from living in certain neighborhoods. They also protested limits on Indian immigration. In 1923 the colonial government granted five seats on the Legislative Council to Indians, also agreeing to loosen segregation and immigrant restrictions. The highlands, however, remained reserved for whites. Meanwhile, the European settlers pushed, with little success, for greater independence from the British Crown.

Excluded from the colony’s political institutions and from most of the social services available to Europeans and Asians, many educated Africans put their energies into self-help associations, such as the Kavirondo Taxpayers’ and Welfare Association and the Kikuyu Central Association (KCA). Although these were initially established to provide social services, they later became some of the driving forces of Kenyan nationalism.

During World War II (1939–1945), Kenya was mobilized against the threat of an Italian invasion from Somaliland. Mombasa and Nairobi grew rapidly as laborers poured in, seeking work on the docks or in industry. Labor unions began to flex their muscles—strikes rocked Mombasa in 1939 and again near the end of the war. In the countryside, the forced-labor policies used to secure workers for European farms spurred protest. Although the administration had used the invasion threat as an excuse to ban African political activity, it attempted to calm the unrest by agreeing to modest wage increases for urban workers. The administration also nominated Eliud Mathu, a politically prominent school principal, to an unofficial seat on the Legislative Council in October 1944. Africans gained an additional three seats (all unofficial) the following year.

Mathu was supported by a group of Nairobi activists called the Kenya African Study Union (KASU). Their name was purposefully nonpolitical, but their goals—among them, the return of settlers’ land to Africans—were not. Still, KASU remained a small, elite organization until Jomo Kenyatta, by then a KCA leader, returned from university studies in Great Britain and became its president. Renamed the Kenya African Union, the group grew rapidly, attracting members from all socioeconomic groups. Its leadership was divided, however, between militant nationalists who wanted immediate independence and land handovers, and moderates like Kenyatta, who were willing to work for gradual independence through constitutional reform.

By the early 1950s, rising violence among Kenyans led the British to fear a general uprising. They suspected Kenyatta as the ringleader, and although he denied any involvement, in October of 1952 he and approximately one hundred other activists were arrested and jailed. The administration then declared a colony-wide state of emergency, which sparked the Kikuyu-dominated uprising known as the Mau Mau Rebellion. Support for the uprising in Nairobi was quickly crushed; afterward, many of its organizers hid in the forests around the capital city. The Mau Mau Rebellion was mainly aimed at the British, but its forces also attacked Africans who were loyal to Great Britain. By the end of the fighting in 1956, the British had detained more than 80,000 Kenyans. More than 12,000 Africans and 100 Europeans had died. Great Britain won militarily but lost faith in its future as a colonial power in East Africa. It agreed to grant Kenya its independence.

The state of emergency ended in January 1960, and a delegation of Africans, including TOM MBOYA and Jomo Kenyatta, traveled to London to negotiate a transitional constitution for Kenya. Completed by February 1961, the constitution gave Africans the majority of seats in the legislative council and made political parties legal. Soon afterward, African council members formed the Kenya African National Union (KANU).

KANU candidates won a majority in the legislative council in 1961 but refused to form a government while Kenyatta remained in prison. Released in August of that year, Kenyatta became president of KANU. In general elections in May of 1963, KANU was the overwhelming victor. Kenyatta became prime minister at Kenyan independence on December 12 1963. One year later, Kenya officially became a republic, with Kenyatta as its president.

Postcolonial Development and Nationhood

Kenya’s first independent government was moderate. Kenyatta favored free-market economic policies and close ties with the West. He set in motion a plan for land distribution in which the government purchased European-owned farms and settled landless Africans on them. During the first ten years of independence, approximately 150,000 landless people were given about 640,000 acres (259,000 hectares) of land. The pace of government reform, however, was unsatisfactory to some more militant KANU members. By 1965, the party was divided into two broad camps. Tom Mboya led the conservative wing, while OGINGA ODINGA, a fellow Luo and Kenya’s vice president since 1964, led the radical wing. In 1966 Odinga and many of his supporters left KANU and formed the Kenya People’s Union (KPU). Kenyatta responded by broadening the government’s power to censor and detain critics. He also merged the two legislative bodies into one. Minister of Home Affairs Daniel arap Moi became the new vice president.

In July 1969, Mboya was assassinated in Nairobi by a Kikuyu man, aggravating tensions between the Luo and the numerically and politically dominant Kikuyu. Luo demonstrations in the western town of Kisumu gave Kenyatta an excuse to ban the KPU and place Odinga under house arrest, without charges, until 1971.

Throughout the 1970s, the aged Kenyatta grew more reclusive and took more rule into his own hands. But high prices paid around the world for Kenya’s tea and coffee exports, along with a thriving tourist industry, brought relative prosperity and helped ensure the president’s reelection to a third five-year term in 1974. Kenyatta died in office in August of 1978. Vice president Moi succeeded Kenyatta despite opposition led by Kenyatta’s nephew, Njoroge Mungai.

Moi, an ethnic Kalenjin, made no immediate moves to end Kikuyu political dominance. For his administration he took the motto Nyayo, Swahili for “footsteps,” indicating his wish to follow in Kenyatta’s path. A year later, however, he banned ethnic associations and began giving former Kikuyu properties to his Kalenjin supporters. In 1982, discontented air force officials attempted a coup d’état against Moi. They failed, and Moi reorganized the armed forces and outlawed all political parties except KANU. Over the next several years, Moi tightened his hold on power by replacing Kikuyu in his administration with fellow Kalenjin and eliminating press freedoms. Critics claim that he also encouraged ethnic violence to divide his opposition.

By the early 1990s, Kenya had lost its reputation as one of Africa’s most stable and prosperous countries. Pressure from foreign aid donors forced Moi to hold multiparty elections in 1992. He was elected then and again in 1997, although opponents claimed that both elections were rigged. His regime did little to improve its record of corruption, ethnic favoritism, and human rights abuses. Before and after the 1997 elections, towns on the coast and in the Kikuyu regions—centers of opposition to Moi—were violently attacked by what many believe were Moi’s Kalenjin henchmen. Some 1997 presidential candidates had campaigned for an end to “tribalism,” but in April of 1998, the human rights organization Amnesty International warned that ethnic tensions had made Kenya a “powder keg waiting to explode.”

Kenya’s open-door investment policies promoted diversified agricultural exports—for example, Kenyan coffee, fresh-cut flowers, and green beans are known throughout Europe. Overall, though, the economy suffered not only from widely acknowledged government corruption but also from mounting debt and a crumbling infrastructure. Heavy rains associated with the 1997–1998 El Niño weather patterns inflicted especially severe damage on the road system, lengthening the five-hour trip from Mombasa to Nairobi to two days. Political instability also hurt Kenya’s tourist industry, one of the country’s primary sources of foreign exchange.

The 2002 elections appeared to open a new era in Kenyan political life. Mwai Kibaki, the candidate of the multiethnic National Rainbow Coalition, became president after campaigning on promises to crack down on corruption and to promote tribal unity. Such hopes, however, were short-lived. After Kibaki appeared to win reelection in the elections of 2007, suspicions of vote tampering and other irregularities touched off protests in the country that led to widespread violence and the deaths of some 1,500 Kenyans. Shortly thereafter, the United Nations brokered a power-sharing agreement in which Kibaki’s Orange Democratic Movement-Kenya (ODM) party rival Raila Odinga joined the new unity government.

See also Bantu, subentry on Dispersion and Settlement; Human Rights in Africa; and Indian Communities in Africa.

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