Obstacles to Sovereignty and Democracy in Kenya

Western scholars and media often proudly refer to their liberal democratic societies as “mature democracies” or “developed democracies,” and to most of their former colonies as “immature democracies.” This suggests that Western liberal democracy is the standard to which non-Western societies must aspire, and the non-Western countries to which the pejorative reference is made are often chided for “the failure of democracy.” Yet this evaluation is flawed because liberal democracy developed gradually in modern Western societies from the eighteenth century and thus reflects their worldview, but it was imposed on colonial territories in Africa and elsewhere with markedly different worldviews during the sunset of classical colonialism. Indeed, what those Western academics and media houses refer to as “the failure of democracy in Africa” is really “the failure of liberal democracy in Africa,” since liberal democracy is only one version of democracy.

Consequently, those of us in non-Western societies must reject the lopsided judgment of our political arrangements, smother the desire to be like the West, and work out models of governance that effectively respond to our realities and resonate with our worldviews. To do so, we need to identify the physical, social, economic and political factors that frustrate our attainment of this goal. Put differently, we need to identify obstacles to sovereignty and democracy. Sovereignty refers to the right and ability of a person or group of persons to chart their own course of life. Democracy, on its part, refers to government by the people—all the people—and not simply that of the majority. I endeavor to undertake this very task in this volume in reference to my own country, Kenya. Needless to say, no single person can fully accomplish it on his/her own; but individuals and groups can contribute to it.

The nurturing of ideas that culminate in a book is accomplished over many years by family, friends, teachers, numerous authors, and colleagues, among many other people. As the saying goes, a child is brought up by a village. I am therefore very grateful to the many people who have influenced my thinking over the past six decades or so, but whom I cannot possibly list here.

I am deeply indebted to my mentor, Prof. Aloo Osotsi Mojola, who more than two decades ago challenged me to view liberal democracy as just one version of democracy among many, thus highlighting the fact that the West as foisted it as a universal on the bulk of humanity.

I am very grateful to the blind peer reviewer who urged me to address the question of leadership in the contemporary polities of Africa, resulting in my writing of Chapter 7. I also deeply cherish his/her advice to include the thought of Hugo Grotius in his The Law of War and Peace and the excellent explication of Grotius’ work by Richard Tuck, which I have now done in Chapter 1.

I thank those of my students at the University of Nairobi who have interacted with me as I have taught them the course on “African Social and Political Philosophy” over the past 18 years or so. They have given me opportunities to clarify and refine my views on various pertinent issues pertaining to this important area of scholarly inquiry.

I am very grateful to my Acquisitions Editor, Peter Lang’s Dr. Philip Dunshea, for his support throughout the process of preparing this book for publication.

My sincere thanks to Shivneri Kale, my copyeditor, for a job well done. I am deeply grateful to my niece, Yvonne Akinyi Njoroge, for her help as I corrected the proofs. I am also very grateful to Karthika M, my Publishing Success Manager, for shepherding the production process to completion.

I am deeply indebted to the following publishers for permission to reprint some of my earlier works in this volume:

Sovereignty and democracy are two of the foundational concepts in contemporary political thought. Individuals yearn for personal sovereignty, that is, the right to chart the courses of their lives without undue interference from other members of society.1 The aspiration for individual sovereignty logically leads to the aspiration for democracy through which sovereign individuals combine their efforts to put in place governments that serve the interests of those they govern. Similarly, states aspire for sovereignty, which, from their perspective, refers to the right and ability to conduct their internal affairs without external interference from state and non-state actors. Put simply, sovereignty is the right and ability of individuals and states to freely manage their affairs. States typically claim to be both sovereign and democratic. However, the number of incidences of inter-state wars and intra-state civil unrest suggest that both sovereignty and democracy continue to be perceived by many as elusive. In this book I examine these two concepts in the context of Kenya in particular, and of contemporary states in Africa in general.

Kenya launched out into her political independence in December 1963 with a liberal, parliamentary and federalist constitution. However, by the end of 1964, the Jomo Kenyatta regime had eroded many of the constitutional provisions designed to forestall the abuse of power. The erosions included transferring the powers of district authorities to the central government, and ultimately abrogating the federalist structure of government by abolishing the federal units and the Senate which had been established to protect the federalist structure. Besides, he engineered an amendment to the Constitution to turn Kenya from a dominion into a republic, thereby changing his position from a Prime Minister directly answerable to Parliament to that of an executive president with structures that made it extremely difficult for parliament to oversee his presidency (Badejo 2006, 254–255). Furthermore, at the beginning of 1964, Kenyatta cajoled the opposition party, the Kenya African Democratic Union (KADU) to dissolve itself and join the ruling party Kenya African National Union (KANU), thereby turning Kenya into a de facto one-party state (Ndegwa 1997, 604; Ajulu 2002, 258–259). The further deterioration of Kenya into autocracy during the Jomo Kenyatta and Daniel arap Moi regimes is well documented (see, for examples, Atieno-Odhiambo 2002; Muigai 2004; Kihoro 2005; Badejo 2006).

Many Kenyans received the promulgation of their country’s 2010 Constitution with renewed hope for genuine democratization. However, their hopes were quickly dashed, as the Kibaki regime exhibited unwillingness to put into place the subsidiary legislation that would have translated the ideals of that supreme law into practice, and by frustrating the implementation of the devolved system of government in a manner reminiscent of Kenyatta’s frustration of the federal units at the dawn of independence. Subsequent regimes have continued on the trajectory of exercising political power as though they were still under the highly adulterated independence constitution.

In mid-2024, Kenya gained attention around the world when, on Tuesday, June 18, 2024, a group of youth in the country staged a peaceful protest in Nairobi’s Central Business District (CBD). They are the “Gen Z”—born after 1997 and also known as the fully “digitally native” generation because they were born during the internet age (Warah 2024). They were protesting against the Finance Bill 2024 with its unprecedented raft of taxes on essential goods such as bread, milk and sanitary towels, as well as on fuel, all of which threatened to plunge the vast proportion of the country’s population into deeper poverty. In line with the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) agreement with the Kenyan government, the Bill sought to raise more than U.S.$2.7 billion through taxes in order to increase state revenue, offset the budget deficit, and reduce the country’s debt (Patterson 2024). The protest passed peacefully to the surprise of many Kenyans who are accustomed to seeing stone-throwing demonstrators take on the police. The next morning, June 19, there were mass protests around the country against the Bill.

Nevertheless, on Thursday June 20, 2024, Parliament went ahead to vote in favor of the Finance Bill despite further peaceful demonstrations against it on the streets of Nairobi on that day. However, on that afternoon, one of the peaceful young demonstrators, Rex Kanyike Masai, died as a result of the violence of anti-riot police against the peaceful demonstrators. In response, Gen Z embarked on “7 Days of Rage,” which included actions mobilized through hashtags such as “#OccupyStateHouse” and “#totalshutdown” to express their outrage against the killing, as well as their resolute opposition to the Finance Bill.