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Periodical article | Leiden University catalogue | WorldCat |
Title: | Ethnic Cleansing and Civil Society in Kenya, 1969-1992 |
Author: | Atieno Odhiambo, E.S. |
Year: | 2004 |
Periodical: | Journal of Contemporary African Studies |
Volume: | 22 |
Issue: | 1 |
Period: | January |
Pages: | 29-42 |
Language: | English |
Geographic term: | Kenya |
Subjects: | ethnicity political repression Ethnic and Race Relations History and Exploration Law, Human Rights and Violence Peoples of Africa (Ethnic Groups) |
External links: | https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0258900042000179599 http://ejournals.ebsco.com/direct.asp?ArticleID=K6221MT613768475 |
Abstract: | Kenya's political culture is marked by a mutual suspicion between ethnic groups and an intolerance of ideas. The centrality of ethnic politics was launched as a State project right from the moment of independence. Under Kenya's first president, Jomo Kenyatta (1963-1978), the treatment of political power as an ethnic resource became legitimized and routinized as a practice of politics. It remains one of Kenyatta's most durable legacies. Ethnic sovereignty is now the fulcrum on which politics turns. Its primary goal is centralized despotism. Regimes in Kenya have become known as the 'Kikuyu government' under Kenyatta, or successively as the ' Kalenjin government' under Daniel arap Moi, and most recently as the 'Mount Kenya Mafia' under the current president, Mwai Kibaki. The ethnicization of politics makes the practice of opposition politics qua politics virtually impossible. Worse still, both the incumbent regimes and those excluded from the parameters of power accept the ethnicization of politics as a matter of routine. In the Moi era, this situation manifested itself most glaringly in State-sponsored violence. Bibliogr., notes. [ASC Leiden abstract] |