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The Succession Story: The Fate of History in Kenya |
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Resource Centre
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The Succession Story: The Fate of History in Kenya
By Patrick Ochieng§
Kenya today is a deeply divided society. The bubbling last term of President Moi’s era seems to be tumbling the country nearer to the edge of the world. Will Kenya fall off or collect its pieces together as we approach the new elections? Here in Mombasa the succession battle has assumed a very significant position. First it is here that KANU ’s supremo Hon. Shariff Nassir has waged the fiercest of battles against Professor George Saitoti the country’s Vice President. Nassir and the many who think like him are unequivocal; Saitoti must not be allowed to ascend to the top seat of the land.
§ The writer is a resident of Mombasa
That anxiety is growing about the country’s political future is not in doubt. What is doubtful is the purport of the intriguing and confusing signals that attend to the issue of succession in Kenya. Will the transition of power that is glaring loudly at us be peaceful? Will the balance of forces within the ruling alliance remain intact? And what will happen to the class forces, which have been repressed in the struggle for power? In this article we would like to juxtapose the structural, institutional framework and social basis of Moi’s state with Kenyatta’s state in order to understand Kenya’s political stability. This analysis will rely on a study by M Tamarkin an authority on Middle East and African studies who wrote a piece “From Kenyatta to Moi – The Anatomy of a Peaceful Transition of Power.” in the journal Africa Today. (Vol. 26 – 1979 No. 3) We have chosen to share this comparative analysis to unravel the closed book of our succession politics.
In analyzing the succession story, should we be concerned with Moi or Moism or as Tamarkin puts it shift emphasis from the President to the presidency, that is from Kenyatta to the elaborate power structure that he built around him and by extrapolation from Moi to his power structure? Tamarkin argued that Kenya’s stability rested on a balance of power within the military system, on the centralization of power within the state structure and on the neutralization of potential foci of organized opposition.
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