Moi used the military to consolidate his power. On 2 August 1982 the Kenya Air force attempted to stage a military a coup. It was an episode that framed Kenya’s subsequent history. The reasons for the coup were:
- Junior officers at the Eastleigh airbase had expressed discontent with their housing condition and that when their grievances were not addressed sufficiently quickly they rebelled against the government.
- The more educated airmen were identifying with the relatively deprived citizens and that the coup was a reaction to the stagnating economy.
- An additional contributory factor may have been the President’s inability to restrain high-level corruption.
The coup however was not entirely responsible for the swing towards authoritarianism, and was preceded by a crackdown on radical lecturers and politicians. Among them were university lecturers Alamin Mazrui, Katama Mkangi, Maina wa Kinyatti and Willy Mutunga were arrested.
The politicians arrested were George Anyona and Koigi wa Wamwere. They were said to have been unsettling Moi with their radical stances against him. The coup certainly shook Moi’s power base and he had to reconsolidate it. This involved an exercise of centralization that expanded Moi’s power in relation to the cabinet, parliament, the judiciary, civil service, local government and civil society organizations.
The coup gave the President the ammunition to justify his own actions and those of his cronies’. He first dealt with the military and security apparatuses. Prior to the coup, the armed forces were not prominent in the political arena.
Subsequent to the coup, soldiers were paid salaries and allowances that parliament ceased to sanction. They were made owners of land and once they became institutionalized state stakeholders their professionalism was compromised.
Another area in which the President consolidated his power was the Police Force and its related wings of the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) and the Special Branch. For instance in February 1982 the President reshuffled the cabinet to bring the control of the Special Branch and CID exclusively within the President’s office.
The Police Force was already informed by a culture of repression and torture inherited from the post-colonial state. While the Police Act and Administration Police Act gave precise direction about whom the police were legally authorized to arrest, most of political arrests in the 1980s were made without warrants of arrest.
The Special Branch in particular was expanded under President Moi. The Special Branch gained prominence after the attempted coup of 1982. Its role expanded in the mid-80s when its officers were detailed with the task of monitoring and ‘hunting’ down dissident elements, who were viewed by the state out to cause ‘chaos and despondency’ in the country.
Nyayo House housed many of those apprehended by the state security service. It is here that the infamous torture chambers were located where those arrested were tortured into admitting to offences, which they had never committed. Detention therefore became a hallmark of the Moi regime.
University lecturers, students and journalists were among the main targets of detention at the height of the state crackdown (1986-1988). The drive toward a de jure one party state paralleled these developments. Failure to join those publicly condemning the dissidents invited grilling and disciplinary measures.
The Mass Media
A crucial part of Moi’s power consolidation was an offensive against mass media. Various acts of intimidation instilled fear on the mass media thereby impairing objective reporting.
- i) Reporters covering Ministers functions were forced to read back their notes to them.
- ii) The official media-the Kenya News Agency and the Voice of Kenya (VOK), which later became Kenya Broadcasting Corporation (KBC 1988) -were, reduced to platforms for party activities.
iii) Scheduled programmes were cancelled and shifted to pave way for broadcasts and screenings of KANU public rallies, presidential functions, state and party propaganda.
The government-controlled media became an important link between the party, different corporatist interests and the patronage-clientelist arrangement. Thus the media was gagged into reporting what the President and his patronage bosses expected. The public was denied views that were critical of the government and the party.
Party Supremacy and Presidential Authoritarianism
From 1982, the party was portrayed as a mass party whose policies were unquestionable. The public sphere came to be dominated by the party; KANU became baba na mama (the father and the mother) of everything and everybody.
Moi also began to undermine those who occupied senior positions in KANU and quickly surrounded himself with supporters. Already, in 1979 the President had tried to weaken the position of the vice-president of the party by encouraging Jeremiah Nyaga to contest the position even though a presidential slate of candidates had been drawn up in which Mwai Kibaki featured as vice-president.
Between 1979-85, the secretary general’s position of the party was held by Robert Matano. Moi saw in Matano- like himself former adherent of the federal system of government as less of an ethnic threat since he came from the Coast. More significantly, Moi used Matano’s eloquence in the national language Kiswahili to propagate KANU’s agenda all over the country.
Other important figures during this period were Justus Ole Tipis, a Maasai and also a former KADU adherent and Nathan Munoko, a Luhya who served as treasurer and national organising secretary respectively. Omolo Okero held the national chairmanship until 1985 after which Moi chose to work with the abrasive but astute David Akiki Amayo. It was under Akiki Amayo that KANU’s supremacy was systematically entrenched.
KANU’s aim was to draw citizens into its ranks. The 1979, 1983 and 1988 KANU elections exemplified this endeavour. At each of these elections, recruitment drives were vigorously carried out.
The provincial administration played a crucial part in the whole exercise. A major intention of these drives was to popularize the party and to create a sense of belonging to it. One outcome of these KANU drives was the competition that it generated.
The initial response to the recruitment drives was immense with large crowds attending the launching of the campaigns by the President.
In fact to show the public how serious the recruitment drives were to the party, the President launched them, monitored their progress and even extended the period of recruitment if he thought that not enough people had joined.
Cases of confiscation of property by the Provincial Administration for not attending these rallies however had the opposite effect of suppressing people’s enthusiasm for attending these rallies and resulted in some not registering as KANU members. Gradually, KANU became unpopular.
It was the business of party bosses to interpret and expound the President’s ‘noble ideas’. Politicians did anything to popularize the President’s ideas, which were equated with popularizing KANU. Politicians and public figures were therefore careful not to ‘dilute’ the President’s message.
To keep in check errand members the party initiated a code of discipline. Part of the strategy to strengthen the party was the implementation of this code of discipline.
The code of discipline was used selectively, primarily against those seen not to conform to the party line. Tolerance and freedom to dissent was lost: party leadership increasingly did not make even the pretense of maintaining a balance between freedom and discipline.
At both the district and national level committees there was blatant disregard of rules of justice. People were suspended and expelled from the party without good course. The subsequent suspensions and expulsions were a negation of the regeneration and rejuvenation of the party.
Through the party disciplinary committee the discourse of loyalty to the President was sustained. Whereas it was treasonable to talk of the ill health of Kenyatta in the 1970s it now became equally suicidal to utter words that were construed to be anti-KANU and therefore anti-Moi in the 1980s. A culture of silence and resignation took root among the people resulting in a weak democratic base in the country.
The campaign to make KANU a mass popular party was not without costs. Party patronage bosses created fiefdoms for themselves in the name of delivering clients to their leaders. MPs vied with one another in carrying out favour with Moi.
Differences among leaders were personalized, which led to those wielding power exercising it against their opponents unjustifiably. This behaviour deprived citizens a role in the decision-making processes who could say they ‘owned’ the development process.
From 1988 the party began to require that all KANU members seeking elective positions sign forms and swear at a magistrate’s court their loyalty to the President.
In the Pledge of Loyalty/ Statutory Declaration form, aspiring candidates declared that upon election as MPs or councilors through KANU, they would remain loyal to the President and the party and give full support to the constitution and manifesto of the party. The party became personified in the name of the President. This gagged individuals with oppositional views into compliance.
By the late 1980s Moi had succeeded in displacing the Kikuyu dominated state. Through a strategy of building temporary alliances and recycling and rehabilitating his former political enemies, he succeeded in entrenching his power and authority over Parliament and society. Through the strengthened KANU apparatus, the ruling party became more powerful than Parliament.
References
Chege, M. ‘The Return of Multiparty Politics,’ in J.D Barkan (ed). Beyond Capitalism Vs. Socialism in Kenya and Tanzania. Nairobi: East African Educational Publishers, 1994.
Diamond, L. ‘Promoting Democracy in Africa: US and International Politics in Transition,’ in J. Harbeson and D. Rothchild (eds). Africa in World Politics: Post-Cold War Challenges. Boulder: Westview Press, 1995.
Throup, D. and C. Hornsby. Multiparty Politics in Kenya. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995.
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