ABSTRACT
Upon Moi’s ascension to power in 1978, he sought to refocus Kenyan politics and axis of power from the Kikuyu to the Kalenjin. To accomplish this he created a parallel Kalenjin elite within the military and the public service sector (Branch and Cheeseman, 2008). Coming from the Tugen, a small group within the Kalenjin, Moi sought to build a trusted support base in the Rift Valley. Over time, through the reorganization of national alliances and patronage networks, Moi ensured he had patrimonial control and KANU succeeded in alienating many within Kikuyu and Luo constituencies (Klopp, 2001: 477). Moreover, the fact that the Kikuyu were already fragmented into various camps hostile to one another effectively helped Moi to exploit these deep-seated divisions, enabling him to garner Kikuyu support when he needed it (Ogot, 1995). Like his predecessor, Kenyatta, Moi used positions in the civil service to create a patronage system that disproportionately favored Kalenjins at the expense of every other ethnic community. Table 8.5 shows the rapid ascent of Kalenjins to high-ranking positions in the civil service while the representation of the Kikuyus declined from the same positions. Moi’s continued propensity for exclusionary tactics exasperated several interest groups such as Luo intellectuals, Kamba military officers, Kikuyu businessmen and politicians. The discontentment culminated in an ill-fated attempt to oust him through a military coup in 1982. This failed coup led to a decisive turning point in Kenyan politics where Moi sought to establish his dominance over Kenyan political life by introducing a dramatic phase of elite rotation. Many Kikuyu ministers, administrative officers, and senior officers in the upper ranks of the military and police were replaced with loyal Kalenjin. Tables 8.3 and 8.5 illustrate this shift in ethnic composition. To further enhance their power in the political arena, and the dominance of oneparty rule, the executive branch (president, vice president and ministers) and
bureaucratic elite in the 1983 general elections imposed a policy of an outright “clampdown of political dissent which went hand in hand with acute “tribalisation of politics” (Kagwanja, 2003: 31). Multi-ethnic movements such as the Mwakenya12 were portrayed as being tribal in their constitution, specifically “as a Kikuyu tribal movement” (ibid.). As a direct result of this, the Kikuyu were portrayed as being against the interests of the Kalenjin and the state in general. As calls for multiparty democracy grew, Moi consistently expressed his distaste for multiparty politics asserting that it would create ethnic conflict. This was in contrast to his statements in the 1960s when, during his tenure as vice president of KADU, “he vigorously defended the rights of free association and ethnic parties,” (Ndegwa 1997: 610). It should be noted that Moi indeed had legitimate fears and these were very much realized when the repeal of the constitution, which allowed for multiparty elections, led to the well-educated, articulate and wealthy petty bourgeoisie (who were part of the new opposition parties) becoming ensnared in conflicts that centered primarily on political competition, accentuated by ethnic suspicion (Ogot, 1995). As Table 8.6 shows, the five largest groups voted largely along community lines as parties based on ethnicities were formed. However, it is also worth noting that Moi made a political calculation to encourage the further fragmentation of rival parties by exacerbating ethnic tensions, which ultimately created disunity.13 He accomplished this by portraying multiethnic movements, such as the Mwakenya, as being tribal while tacitly supporting ethnic militia groups. This disunity was a major contributing factor to the repeated failure by opposition leaders to create a sustainable political alliance until 2002 (Branch and Cheeseman, 2008). As the 1992 elections, the first within the era of multiparty elections drew closer, a movement emerged to counter the calls for multipartyism by appealing to the reconfiguration of Kenya along territorially defined ethnic constituencies. Ideally, these constituencies would at least follow provincial boundaries. The attraction of such a model for elites in power was that even if they lost control of the central government, they could use these ethnic enclaves as bargaining chips with the new leaders since their grip on local politics would ensure dominance (Klopp, 2001). This reconfiguration was often couched in the language of Majimboism within which the fear of Kikuyuism and with it the ostracization of the Kikuyus was dominant. Witnesses testifying before a Special Parliamentary Committee after the 1992 elections suggested that politicians had incited locals to engage in conflict using utterances urging the Kalenjin to remove madoadoa (stains) from the area (Klopp, 2001: 474). The witnesses further claimed that politicians had ferried “warriors” to the area, paying them for each person killed (ibid). To mobilize ethnic support in the Rift Valley, Kalenjin politicians again employed the discontent over land. This led to violence during elections and would plague Kenya’s transition to multiparty democracy in the 1990s. Politicians continually argued that those in the opposition and demanding multiparty democracy (especially the Kikuyu) had occupied land in the Rift Valley meant for the Kalenjin and the Masaai who had historical territorial claims to the area (Kanyinga, 2009).
