George Gona

Tradition, Tribe, and State in Kenya: The Mijikenda Union, 1945–1980

The apparent mobilizing power of ethnic sentiment in recent African history has been the subject of vigorous debate. Studies that emphasize the centrality of colonialism and the instrumental use of ethnicity have been criticized by a scholarship arguing that the affective power of ethnicity is culturally rooted through longstanding experience and practice, and that both manipulation and invention are constrained by this. This paper contributes to that debate through a discussion of the history of the Mijikenda, one of the “super-tribes” of modern Kenyan politics. It suggests that there were indeed “limits to invention,” but that there was nonetheless substantial entrepreneurship and creativity in the politics of Mijikenda identity. This drew heavily on the productive, discursive tension between tradition and modernity that lay at the heart of colonialism and was drawn into vigorous debates over legitimacy and representation in the “critical juncture” of the final years of colonial rule.

Changing Political Faces on Kenya's Coast, 1992–2007

Abstract The voters of Kenyas coastal province largely supported the ruling party of President Moi in the elections of 1992 and 1997, yet in 2002 they turned away from KANU and toward the NaRC coalition led by Mwai Kibaki. The results of the 2007 poll show a marked turn away from the party of government, amid a general decline in the numbers of votes polled. This paper examines the 2007 parliamentary election in four constituencies of Kenyas coastal region. It questions several of the prevailing orthodoxies and generalisations about Kenyas coastal politics, suggesting that the election of a candidate is a matter of local as well as national politics, and that this varies greatly from one constituency to another. The cases of Ganze, Bahari, Likoni and Malindi constituencies will be studied to illustrate these issues, exploring a variety of factors including the personalities of the candidates, their association with the key persons leading the national campaigns, and the relationships of the candidates with past regimes.

Towards a Concrete East African Trade Union Federation: History, Prospects and Constraints

Contemporary globalisation has sparked many institutions and social actors into action. These social actors and institutions are trying to slow its pace, coming to terms with it or strategising to cope. Globally it is affecting every aspect of human endeavour. In the context of labour, one response to the onslaught of globalisation has been the development of vigilantism against capital. More recently the tendency for translocation of enterprises to countries where labour costs are cheap (a common agenda of globalisation) has meant that the labour movement has to organise itself across borders to counter the anti-trade union tendency inherent in globalisation, hence the transnationalisation of trade unionism.

Preaching politics: Islam and Christianity on the Kenya coast

ABSTRACT Focusing on the Kenya coast, this article analyses the developing contrast between the place of Islam and Christianity in public politics. It argues that Islam’s association with criticism of the political order contrasts with Christianity, but that this is not the result of inherent difference between the religions. Both have previously provided a language, and space, for political commentary and activism in Kenya. The contrast is rather the contingent result of particular circumstances in Kenya. Christianity has become increasingly associated with affirming clientelism and the accumulation of wealth in a way which is avowedly non-political but in practice legitimates the current political order. Meanwhile, although individual Muslims are more likely to enjoy high political office than was previously the case, Muslims are also more likely to locate their experience as symptomatic of a wider pattern of exclusion in Kenya and link this sense of local injustice to global inequalities.