By Anyang’ Nyong’o
When the great Guinean nationalist, Amilcar Cabral, was once asked in a lecture he was giving somewhere in Europe whether he was a revolutionary or not, he gave a very simple answer: "I am a simple African man doing the best to help my people in the context of our time."
There was no doubt in the minds of the people he was addressing that he had already done a great deal for the liberation of Guinea Bissau from Portuguese colonialism although the struggle had not led to independence at that time.
But Amilcar was not one known to blow his own trumpet. Like Fidel Castro, he wanted to leave history, rather than that particular audience, to absolve him. But the enemies of the Guinean Revolution assassinated him not too long after this lecture; Guinea Bissau took a turn towards an authoritarian state at independence and little is known of it today in African affairs.
In 1989 the journal African Affairs published my essay on "the disintegration of the nationalist coalition and the rise of presidential authoritarianism in Kenya: 1963-1978".
In this essay I sought to explain how the highly centralised presidential system of government had evolved in Kenya. In essence, the Kanu government that ruled Kenya after independence was a coalition of nationalists who coalesced around a programme they generally called "nation building": One Kenya, one nation and one president all committed to a social democratic agenda that would uplift the plight of the ordinary Kenyans.
Within no time, however, an ideological rift emerged within the coalition. A sectarian fraction emerged which had little sympathy for social democracy. Although Tom Mboya tried his best to bridge the emerging ideological gap through Sessional Paper No. 10 on "African Socialism and Its Application to Planning in Kenya" in 1965, the sectarian centrists were already far advanced in their plans to vanquish any pretence at social democracy.
The Sessional Paper sought to preserve some tenets of social democracy in a largely liberal market economy. Couched in the terms of pursuit of "mutual social responsibility", it cleverly veered away from any overt commitment to state welfarism.
Even this attempt at ideological compromise did not go well with the sectarian centrists, and very soon Mboya himself had to go (through assassination), as had Pio da Gama Pinto before him and Jaramogi Oginga Odinga, Bildad Kaggia, Achieng’ Oneko and the whole of the KPU brigade — lampooned together as Marxists —and thrown into detention without trial.
The practice of eliminating leaders, or potential leaders, that could bring together progressive nationalists became the tactic of building the presidential authoritarian state and keeping its beneficiaries in political power.
The whole idea was to scuttle the nationalist coalition, leave the presidential state as a monolith ready to assert a firm authoritarian political order on society so that this sectarian centrist bunch of the bureaucratic bourgeoisie would accumulate power, wealth and riches with abandon.
With this model of state centred individual accumulation would arise impunity as the rule of law flew out of the window and the concern for social welfare became a philanthropic pass time of this nobility called "Harambee".
Thus was the presidential authoritarian state born and bred under Kenyatta, passed on to Moi to mature and grow into unhealthy obesity, with all types of political charlatans claiming parentage of, and offspring from, this rapacious animal that bled ordinary Kenyans dry as the privileged few revelled at what they saw as the success of independence.
The progressive forces, however, had taken the queue from Jaramogi’s Not Yet Uhuru in 1966 and resolved to continue the struggle against this presidential authoritarian system in all sectors of society in the 70s and 80s until the temporary triumph of the Forum for the Restoration of Democracy in 1992, which showed Kenyans that "Moi Could Go" and another nationalist coalition could successfully emerge to take over state power and democratise it.
The forces of sectarian centrists, however, struck again within the centre of Ford and Moi ruled us for yet another decade.
The National Rainbow Coalition was another near successful attempt for a nationalist coalition taking over power to democratise the State and set in motion the building of a national democratic and developmental state as the Economic Recovery Strategy for Wealth and Employment Creation envisaged.
For three years the coalition held together in a tense atmosphere in which the sectarian centrists, determined to restore the presidential authoritarian state in their hands and carry on "accumulation as usual" (eg through Anglo Leasing), finally got their way after the referendum of 2005.
The leaders of ODM found themselves, willingly or unwillingly, as parents of the popular Constitution voted by the people at the Bomas of Kenya Convention, and hence the champions of a broad nationalist coalition opposed to the sectarian and authoritarian politics of the centrists now left in Government. On this basis ODM became popular, and took this popularity to gain majority votes in the disputed 2007 General Election. This was reflected by spontaneous rebellion by the people against the results.
The National Accord signed in February 2008 to chart the way for a new democratic Kenya free of presidential authoritarian politics under the new Constitution has finally recaptured the aspirations of the post-independence nationalist coalition.
Leaders of this coalition Government need to be aware of the demands of such a nationalist coalition in order to institutionalise a national democratic and developmental state — the key tenet of this Constitution. Kenyans, at this juncture, should know who our Amilcar Cabrals are: The simple Kenyan men and women prepared to build our national democratic and developmental state in the context of our time. Let us nurture such people and not eliminate them.
The writer is Minister for Medical Services
anyongo@yahoo.com
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