EXPLAINING THE CRISIS OF CAPITALISM IN KENYA

INDEPENDENCE FROM COLONIAL RULE came to Kenya in 1963 under a Westminster style government with Kenyatta as Prime Minister. By 1970 the Senate had been abolished, the Prime Minister had become the President, the opposition Kenya People's Union had been banned and a one party state controlled by the Kenyan African National Union had been established. In this, Kenya followed a pattern familiar in most parts of the decolonized world. The euphoria of liberals who wanted to believe in the survival of democratic regimes in Africa now gave way to a 1 new pesslmlsm. The work of the Modernization school in the 1960s had faithfully reflected the optimism of the early period. This discourse was Europecentric in its assumption that economic and social development in African states would allow African states to 'catch up' with more 'advanced' states; it assumed that changes during the colonial period had already assisted this process to some extent; it implied a continuation of Europe's earlier civilizing mission, now interpreted in terms of capital input and aid of various kinds; it provided the raison d'etre for the presence of thousands of foreign nationals, living well at the expense of African Governments and of a variety of international bodies, representing themselves as working in the interests of 'progress'.2 In the early 1 970s this discourse came under attack from the writers of the so-called Dependency school who characterized the new undemocratic regimes of Africa as, at best, inferior partners, at worst, puppets of international capital, serving the interests of a new African comprador class.3 The three most influential writers of this school, who set the parameters of the debate about post-colonial Kenya until the early 1980s, were E. A. Brett