Unit 1.1:
What is Kenya?

Handout

Scenario 1:  A poster of the Uganda Railway from early 20th century, saying:
“The Highlands of British East Africa as a Winter Home for Aristocrats has become a fashion.”

Questions

Scenario 2:  The photograph of Kisoi Munyao planting the new Kenyan flag on top of Mount Kenya to mark Independence, 12 December 1963.

 


Questions


Background Information

Nation, state, government and ethnic group (tribe)

 

The words nation, state and government are often used as if they have the same meaning.  In fact, all three have different definitions.

A nation is traditionally a large grouping of people bound together by a common historical origin, ancestry, language and cultural practices; in international law, a nation has no legal status. The concepts of nation and ethnic group are very similar, though an ethnic group refers to a common socio-cultural identity, and not necessarily a political identity. In Kenya, which has many ethnic groups, it is common for people to refer to their ethnic group as their ‘tribe’. This word has colonial roots and it was used to mean the same thing as ‘primitive’ and ‘dangerous.’  Thus, you had not people but ‘tribesmen’ and ‘warrior tribes,’ not cultural practices but ‘tribal rituals.’ This has had the unfortunate effect that, in modern Kenya, any attempt to promote traditional culture and language is likely to be condemned as ‘tribalist’ and against the spirit of national unity. In Unit 1.2, we will look at how this presents problems in the search for a national identity.

A state is a precisely defined geographical territory under one government and one set of laws, with usually its own currency, army, national symbols, system of taxation, etc. It is sovereign – that is, politically independent from other states and not subject to outside control. The people living in that territory are either citizens of that state or citizens of another state legally permitted to live and/or work in it.

A nation-state is a state where the population is made up of one nation under one government. Africa has few nation-states in the true sense of the term. Most African states consist of groupings of several nations lumped inside the lines on the map drawn up by the colonial powers at the Berlin Conference at the end of the 19th Century.

A government is the machinery through which the state operates. It is made up of the legislature, the executive and the judiciary. The legislature makes laws, the executive enforces them and the judiciary interprets and applies them. In a democratic society, the purpose of a lawfully elected government is to carry out the people’s will.

 

Is Kenya a nation or merely a state?

When the Kenya Colony was created in 1920, it grouped together and also cut through a number of neighbouring ethnic groups with their own more or less functioning economies – let us call them ‘micro-nations’. The subjects of the new colonial state – it was not yet a sovereign state as we have defined it above – included the Maasai, the Somali, the Luo, the Luhya, the Swahili, the Gabbra and Boran, the Karamajong. But each of these ethnic groups had been part of a larger micro-nation that had now been split between two or more states – the Maasai between Kenya and Tanganyika; the Somali between Kenya and Somalia; the Luo and Luhya between Kenya and Uganda, the Gabbra and Boran between Kenya and Ethiopia, and the Karamajong between Kenya and Uganda. Any way you looked at it, the Kenya Colony was an artificial thing.

But as time went by, this artificial creation became more and more an inescapable reality. At Independence, the colonial state became a sovereign state recognised by the rest of the world as such. The lines drawn on the map were unchanged even though the colonial powers had left, and the lines have remained so for the next 40 plus years. Now, the sovereign states of Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda are talking seriously about political federation. Even so, those lines on the map will not change overnight.

But, can we say with confidence that a state that initially came into being as lines drawn on a map by the colonial powers meeting in faraway Berlin has become a nation in the sense that we have defined it? If it has, is that enough? Can we just turn our back on our ‘pre-Kenya’ histories? Or do they still continue to define us in many unnoticed ways? Are the sporadic ‘ethnic clashes’ that Kenya continues to experience merely a product of backward thinking and the evil scheming of politicians, or are they the unsolved problems of the past breaking through into the present, demanding our attention? Can a nation that has not come to terms with its past really come to terms with its present and take charge of its future? How much of our history do we really know, and how much of it have we chosen to forget?

These are important questions for civic educators, because they affect not just intellectuals in the universities but the day-to-day lives of the ‘common people’ who are the targets of civic education – and also the victims and foot-soldiers in the ‘ethnic clashes’. Introducing these questions into your discussions may produce surprising insights.

But before we turn to Kenya’s secret or forgotten histories, let us examine the processes of nation-building leading to nationhood to see how they apply to Kenya.

 

Nation-building, nationhood and their elements

Nation-building is a process whereby the population of a state develops a sense of pride in belonging to that state. The entire population feels united by certain common values. Where a state is made up of several ethnic communities or nations, such as in Kenya, these communities can still form a single nation if they develop a common culture and identity in addition to their own ethnic cultures.  The end result of such nation-building is nationhood.

The elements of nationhood are a common territory and a common history – for example, the different ethnic groups within a state such as Kenya have varying histories, but they still have a significant common historical experience in colonialism and the struggle for independence.

Other elements include common public property and resources – such as rivers, lakes, forests, minerals, and Kenya’s fabled wildlife and plant life – that are sources of national pride and whose protection is seen as being in the common national interest.

A national language is an element of nationhood when it bridges ethnic and cultural differences – as has happened with Kiswahili in Tanzania.

A common cultural heritage can be called upon to create a sense of nationalism and patriotism. In Kenya, ironically, colonialism introduced a common ‘Western’ heritage in religion, education, modern medicine, dress and civil codes relating to marriage, inheritance, etc. Other elements of nationhood can include a national dress. In Kenya, a ‘national dress’ has been designed though it is yet to be widely adopted. Meanwhile, it can be argued that a national dress of sorts already exists, at least for rural women, in the shape of the leso/khanga and kitamba.

Then there are national symbols such as flags, anthems and currency. In Kenya, the national flag specifically evokes the history and aspirations of Kenya from its colonial beginnings, with its four colours: black, red, white and green. Black symbolises the people of Kenya; red symbolises the blood that was spilled during the struggle for independence; white represents peace; and green represents the fertility of the land or countryside. In the middle of the flag there are a shield and two spears symbolising the defence of life, truth, justice, freedom and peace.

Kenya’s national anthem also reflects a strong sense of patriotism; while its coat of arms, with its two lions holding a shield and a spear each, symbolises the spirit of ‘Harambee’ - ‘Let us all pull together’ – the modern adoption of traditional community systems of mutual support common to many of its peoples.

There is also the National Assembly – as the supreme law-making and resource-distributing organ in the land, made up of participants representing the interests of people from different parts of the country, it is the ultimate symbol of unity amid diversity. 

And national days remind Kenyans of important national events in their shared history. 
The important national days are:

 

Again, the question is: Is this enough? Are these factors that bind us together enough to keep us united? How can the historical suspicions and mistrust that remain between communities be overcome? How secure is our future as a nation?

Let us turn once again to Kenya’s secret histories.

Nation-building and Kenya’s secret histories

We asked above: How much of our history do we really know, and how much of it have we chosen to forget?

Kenya’s pre-colonial history was treated by the colonialists and a regrettable number of their historians and intellectuals as a black hole – nothing significant, nothing worth recording had happened here before the Europeans came. The colonial, ‘civilising’ project was supported by a racist narrative that portrayed Africans as naked savages existing in a state of nature – lazy, ignorant and prone to sudden irrational violence. Unfortunately, many Africans, dazed by the wiping out of their old way of life and the technological and military might of their conquerors, seemed to implicitly accept this version of history.

The enduring discomfort of the educated classes with the fact that many communities still have a relaxed approach to the definition of nudity, goes to show how deep this acceptance went. ‘Primitive’ remains a powerful pejorative term in African societies, not to be lightly used of any person, process or thing. Education since Independence has tried to correct this distorted self-image but with limited success. There is by now solid evidence that there were functioning agricultural, pastoralist and trading societies occupying ecological niches alongside remnants of older hunter-gatherers at the dawn of the colonial era. But it is not disseminated in such a way as to have real psychological impact.

Psychologically, in fact, history is experienced by many Kenyans as an absence, at best as a history of humiliation; the reference point for many of our actions is not our own past or achievements but those of other people. Those who feel they have no historical being of their own will naturally want to become someone else. Because of this, ‘development’ is implicitly seen as ‘catching up’ with and acquiring the same material culture and technology as Europe or the Asian Tigers or whoever the ‘success story’ of the moment is. This leads to waste, misplaced investment and confusion.

The heirs of the unstoppable Bantu expansion across central, eastern and southern Africa, the fastest expansion by any economic and cultural system ever seen in history, are as puzzled about their real needs today as are the heirs of the Maasai, who for hundreds of years effortlessly and sustainably moulded the vast ecosystem of the Rift Valley to their needs. The entire leadership class, for example, sees it as self-evident that they need absurdly expensive cars to cope with the bad roads that nobody can find the money to repair.

But history has strange ways of taking away with one hand while giving with the other. The loss of old identities and the humiliations of the colonial era led to the dawn of a more universal consciousness, of pan-African solidarity and solidarity with the black Diaspora outside Africa. Colonial rule and the introduction of the market greatly increased the interaction among different ethnic groups, and despite the pass laws and efforts to keep Africans from interacting and organising themselves to resist colonialism, inspired the growth of the real nationalism that led to the struggle for Independence.

The humiliation of scientific and technological backwardness suddenly seems less important in the Information Age, when theoretically we are once again on a level playing field, with the possibility of leapfrogging historical stages of development that the West is committed to. Already it is evident that Africa is experiencing a unique mobile communications revolution, as all sorts of micro-entrepreneurs – farmers, pastoralists, fishermen, mama mbogas, mechanics, taxi drivers, mgangas find brand new business uses for mobile phones, computers and the Internet. Africa is at last beginning to make its own technology to serve its own needs…

So, there is no reason not to believe in a bright future for Kenya. But, as we asked above: Can a nation that has not come to terms with its past really come to terms with its present and take charge of its future? In Kenya, coming to terms with the past means coming to terms with historical injustices, real or perceived, half-forgotten or still painfully vivid in the memory, all of which have some ethnic, racial or religious dimensions. For Kenya’s communities to see themselves as Kenyan, they must also learn to see the other communities as equally Kenyan too...

Which brings us to Unit1.2, ‘Who is a Kenyan’

 


Notes for Facilitators

Objectives

Sequence
1. The scenarios: There are two scenarios that you could use for promoting a discussion about the history of Kenya – and about the extent to which Kenya can be said to be a ‘nation’.
The first scenario is a poster that was used by the Uganda Railway in the years after the First World War that ended in 1918 – at a time when the British government was encouraging its own citizens to emigrate and to develop farms in the highlands of what in 1920 was to become the Kenya Colony.

Both the picture and the text are significant in understanding how Europeans perceived Kenya in the period from the first European settlement in the late nineteenth century to the Second World War that ended in 1945 – the war that brought about a ‘sea-change’ in perceptions about colonialism.

Some questions you might raise about the poster:

The second scenario is a photograph of Kisoi Munyao planting the new Kenyan flag on the top of Mount Kenya to signify the end of British colonial rule.
Some possible questions:

Depending on the size of the group, you could facilitate a discussion in plenary (the whole group) or you could divide the participants in sub-groups, to debate the issues and then report back on their main conclusions.

To handle the question related to national symbols, you can refer to the Background Information which comments on the symbolism of the national flag, comments on issues relating to national language, national dress, the National Assembly – and lists the important national days in Kenya.

2. Identification of Issues: Whether the discussion takes place in the large group or in sub-groups, make sure to log (record) on a flipchart or blackboard the key points that emerge related to factors promoting or inhibiting a sense of nationhood in Kenya.

3. Analysis of Issues: Most likely, the issues identified by the participants can be related to the questions raised and the commentary provided in the Background Information for this unit and, therefore, the remainder of the session could follow the flow of argument presented in the text of Unit 1.1. (But, hopefully, you will be able to guide a discussion signposted by the following questions, rather than using the material for a lecture!)

The key questions:
In working through these issues, it will be important to draw out the points that, ‘though the different ethnic groups in Kenya have varying histories, they still have a significant common historical experience in colonialism and the struggle for independence’.

 

 

 

 

 


Alternative Activities

The Trainers’ Manual for NCEP-I contained a few other suggestions for encouraging discussion on issues related to the concepts of nationhood:

Kenya’s History

 

Kenya’s Peoples