Bent On Self Destruction The Kibaki Regime in Kenya

Journal of Contemporary African Studies
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Bent on self-destruction: The Kibaki regime in

Kenya
Godwin R. Murunga & Shadrack W. Nasong'o
To cite this article: Godwin R. Murunga & Shadrack W. Nasong'o (2006) Bent on self-destruction:
The Kibaki regime in Kenya, Journal of Contemporary African Studies, 24:1, 1-28, DOI:
10.1080/02589000500513713
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Journal of Contemporary African Studies, 24, 1, Jan.2006
Bent on Self-Destruction: The Kibaki

Regime in Kenya
Godwin R. Murunga and Shadrack W. Nasong’o
In 2002, I thought I had President Mwai Kibaki figured out. He was the
ideal candidate, the man who would play Moses to our Israelites and
lead us to Canaan after decades of distorted politics in which the
leader invariably morphed into a small god. It was not an unreason-
able expectation: despite years of working within the system, he was
the least tainted of a bad lot and had enough of a cosmopolitan image
to appeal to Kenyans across the board. How can he and his team have
managed to throw it all away in just two years?
Lucy Oriang (Daily Nation, February 11, 2005)
Whichever way you look at it, the Narc Government is the same old Kanu Gov-
ernment, minus Moi.
Barrack Muluka (Standard, February 12, 2005)
The democratic transfer of power from an authoritarian incumbent to an opposi-

tion party leader heralds heightened expectation of new political and socio-eco-
nomic possibilities. This was the case when Fredrick Chiluba, under the slogan,
“The Hour has Come”, trounced the long-serving President Kaunda in Zambia’s
1991 elections. A similar situation obtained in the Ukraine in November 2004
when the “Orange Revolution” propelled the opposition leader Viktor
Yushchenko to electoral victory over the incumbent Prime Minister Viktor
Yanukovich, the favourite of Ukraine’s corrupt elite. Yet the record of such new
regimes invariably falls short of expectations. By the time Chiluba left office in
2001, he was a discredited leader under whom corruption was adjudged to have
been more pervasive than under Kaunda (Nasong’o 2005). In the same vein, 10
months after supplanting the incumbent, the Orange Revolution in Ukraine was
stuck in political wrangles and in-fighting that saw President Yushchenko sack
his prime minister, Yulia Tymoshenko, in September 2005, who in turn accused
the president of tolerating corruption (Karatnycky 2005). With regard to Kenya,
the enthusiastic euphoria that attended the assumption of power by the National
Alliance Rainbow Coalition’s (NARC) Mwai Kibaki saw the country ranked the
most optimistic in the world. This enthusiasm was captured in the chants Yote
yawezekana bila Moi (everything is possible without Moi). However, this enthu-
siasm was replaced by disappointment and despair over the performance of the
new regime, which within a short period of two years had lost both national
ISSN 0258-9001 print / ISSN 1469-9397 online/06/010001-28 © 2006 Journal of Contemporary African Studies
DOI: 10.1080/02589000500513713
2 Journal of Contemporary African Studies
popularity and goodwill.

The immediate post-election popularity of the Kibaki regime among the general
public in Kenya rested on a contrast between his potential, encapsulated in the
NARC electoral campaign platform, and the disastrous legacy of President Moi.
Even those who were cautious about the transformative capacity of the new re-
gime held out hope that anything but Moi and the Kenya African National Union
(KANU) was better for Kenya. Why then did the Kibaki regime lose popularity
and goodwill so rapidly and so dramatically? This study explores this question
and explains it in terms of the continuities between the Kibaki and Moi regimes.
Whereas most Kenyans are surprised and aghast at the extent of continuity de-
spite a few notable discontinuities, we argue that a critical look at the political bi-
ographies of the new power elite; the nature of the Kenyan political culture
coupled with the institutional context of governance; the class linkages between
the new elite and those they replaced; as well as rational self-interest on the part
of politicians, demonstrates why the new regime was predisposed to reproduce
the kleptocracy and corruption of the defeated regime rather than engage in state
reform and efficient economic management. We examine the political implica-
tions of this continuity and posit that, given this reality, the NARC regime is set
to self-destruct.
Regime Change and Expectations of Political Renewal

The electoral victory of NARC over KANU in Kenya’s December 2002 general
elections was historic in more ways than one. First, it marked the first time that
the ruling party, KANU, was bundled out of power after close to four decades at
the helm. Second, for the first time in the country’s history, an incumbent presi-
dent retired from office to honour a constitutional provision for a maximum two
five-year-term limits. Third, the change of regime was achieved against the back-
drop of a united opposition that coalesced into a grand alliance to provide a
united front against the incumbent. Against this background, there was unher-
alded jubilation and heightened expectation that the change of regime in Kenya
marked the dawn of a new era: a complete break with the past authoritarian and
kleptocratic mode of governance and personal rule (Southall 1999); and the birth
of a new mode of broad-based consensus politics within the rubric of a new coali-
tion government. The euphoric optimism on the part of the general public was
captured in a Gallup poll conducted three months after the historic December
2002 elections that ranked Kenya the most optimistic nation on earth! Indeed,
those who remained cautious retained the attitude that anything but Moi or
KANU was better (see Makali quoted in Nasong’o 2005:186). At the more for-
mal level of commentators, two trajectories of optimistic expectations are dis-
cernible. The first focused on the person of the new president while the second
was rooted in the older civil society paradigm.
The first trajectory is constituted by a set of laudatory literature and commentar-
ies that came soon after the December 2002 Kenyan general elections. Writing
The Kibaki Regime in Kenya 3
within this immediate post-election context, some scholars praised Kibaki as a

man of “integrity and efficiency” who, “despite his association with the worsen-
ing performance of the Moi regime took a leading role in fostering the multiparty
opposition” (Anderson 2003:334). Others, even though they criticised his
post-election ethical agenda, noted Kibaki’s reputation as a gentleman (Shisanya
2003:16). Indeed, Kibaki’s image stands in contrast to the well-known view of
politics as a dirty game. He was described as a man of the moment because, as
Michael Chege put it in a Public Broadcasting Services interview in the United
States, he was a consensus builder, someone able to bring people of different per-
suasions together.1 Concurring, Macharia Munene writes that “Kibaki’s advan-
tage, therefore, was that he has the ability to attract a team to work with, a team
that included professionals as well as political prima donnas each capable of pull-
ing the crowd” (2003:81). As a man of integrity, an efficient economist, and a
gentleman, therefore, it was expected that President Kibaki would make a signifi-
cant difference in Kenya’s badly tainted politics.
The second trajectory of formal optimism about the possibilities of a new mode
of politics in Kenya was rooted in the perspective of civil society as agent of
change and catalyst of political transformation. This perspective lauds civil soci-
ety as the bastion of democracy and the realm within which democratisation
ought to be engineered. Associated with the World Bank and International Mone-
tary Fund notion of state failure in Africa, this approach vouches for non-state ac-
tors as the main players in Africa’s democratisation. It calls for greater financial
backing for non-state actors such as NGOs to facilitate the thickening of civil so-
ciety as a buffer against the corrupt state (Orvis 2003; Barkan 2003, 2004;
Harbeson 1994, 1999; Callaghy 1994). Indeed, civil society organisations played
a crucial role in the politics of democratisation in Kenya and, on assumption of
power, NARC brought into government a number of luminaries of the civil soci-
ety realm. These include the likes of Kiraitu Murungi, Kivutha Kibwana and
Mirugi Kariuki, even as others including Gibson Kamau Kuria and Maina Kiai
were appointed to key positions as lead counsel in the Goldenberg Commission
of Inquiry, and head of the government Kenya Human Rights Commission re-
spectively. In view of this, expectations were high that these individuals would
use their democratic credentials, honed within the realm of civil society activism,
to nurture and promote a new mode of politics for the overall betterment of gov-
ernance in the country. The expectation was reinforced further with the tapping
of John Githongo from directorship of Transparency International’s Kenya chap-
ter to become permanent secretary for ethics and governance in the office of the
president.
Joel Barkan (2003, 2004) in particular, represents this belief as exemplified by
his faith in “new forces shaping Kenyan politics”. Despite some caveats,
Barkan’s baseline assumption is that there is “a demographic shift that is produc-
ing a generational change within the political elite”. This development is paral-
leled by “emergence of institutions of countervailing power, especially the
development of an increasingly independent legislature and a more pol-
icy-oriented and pragmatic civil society” (Barkan 2003:1, 2004:87–100). Barkan

refers to this new generation as the New Young Turks (NYT) and distinguishes
them from the original Young Turks (YT). While the YT led the push for democ-
racy in the early 1990s, the NYT have been more instrumental towards the end of
the millennium. Highly educated, smart and precocious, the NYT are not very
well known within Kenya or outside. Barkan is able to name Paul Muite, Peter
Anyang-Nyong’o, James Orengo, Raila Odinga, Gibson Kamau Kuria, Kivutha
Kibwana and Willy Mutunga as belonging to the original YT but is unable to
name members of the NYT beyond John Githongo. From a separate publication,
he seems to consider Kiraitu Murungi a member of the NYT (Barkan 2004:93).
Nevertheless, in spite of the above optimism and high expectations of political re-
newal, analysts such as Stephen Ndegwa and Rok Ajulu welcomed the change of
regime in Kenya but remained sceptical about the capacity of the incoming elite
to achieve fundamental change in Kenyan politics. These analysts took a lon-
ger-term view of Kenyan politics and recognised the influence of the old classes
of capital whose socialisation in Kenya’s politics is intense and extensive.
Ndegwa cautioned “against too much optimism” arguing correctly that “African
countries that had ushered long-reigning dictators out of power have tended to
fall short of achieving truly transformative (or in some cases, even significant)
change” (Ndegwa 2003:154–5). For his part, Ajulu argued that the coalition that
wrested power from Moi represents “the old classes of capital and property (pre-
dominantly but not exclusively the Kikuyu bourgeoisie)”. These classes are in-
vested in the status quo and prefer continuity as long as their interests are
securely safeguarded. Their disagreement with Moi was in the sharing of the loot,
not with the overall nature of the state. For Ajulu, the inability of NARC to make
a radical break with the past rests on the fact that it was not driven by any “pro-
grammatic political ideology”. Rather, it was
an amalgam of recycled KANU politicians glued by their common hostil-

ities to Moi’s imposition of Uhuru on them rather than any grand demo-
cratic principle. Indeed it was, and still remains, a ragtag army of political
opportunists, philistines and quislings who in a large measure were not
much different from their KANU opponents. (2003:8)
Ajulu further argues that the central focus of NARC affiliates is “state power and
through it, access to resources and privileges that it guarantees”. He correctly
concludes that such a focus reflects the predatory and kleptocratic interests driv-
ing this new administration. Similarly, though David Anderson lauded Kibaki,
his piece also concludes with a caution that Kenya’s tradition of “pork-barrel pol-
itics” has been too widely embraced to be so easily overturned (2003:341).
Ajulu and Ndegwa’s conclusions are informed by a long-term vision of Kenya’s
transition politics, whose dynamics are the subject of other studies (Southall
1999, 2000). Southall documented the dilemmas of political transition in Kenya,
noting the advantaged position Moi held as he tried to manage the process in his
own favour. Reviewing the fear that the KANU barons had as the impeding de-
parture of Moi neared, he considers their intention to push through a third uncon-
stitutional term for Moi and how this possibility was withdrawn following
internal rebellion within KANU. KANU, Southall argues, “is riven with personal
rivalries and is unable to unite around any single project except, at the most gen-
eral level, that of clinging to power” (2000:210). Building on this conclusion,
Brown (2004:327) demonstrates that “the results of Kenya’s most recent elec-
tions depended in large part on a series of contingent events that make the com-
pletion of the transition process a more case-specific phenomenon, with
important challenges remaining”. Brown questions the significance of opposition
co-operation, the centrality of the media, and the transformative attitudes and im-
pact of civic education in explaining regime change in 2002, and shows how the
contingent factors attending the 2002 elections in Kenya led to the implosion of
KANU from within and allowed new coalitions to emerge. He, however, shows
that these contingent factors also poisoned the prospects of a workable coalition
politics in the post-Moi era. Of the few analysts who have discussed the conduct
of politics under the Kibaki regime, Holmquist (2005) confirms the fears dis-
cussed by Ajulu and Ndegwa. According to him, “disappointment and recrimina-
tion colour the political landscape. There is a sense that, while some reform has
occurred, it threatens to stall, and may even be reversed” (ibid:209).
Thus, only two years into the Kibaki regime, the cautious analysts were vindi-
cated. Since assuming the reins of state power, the Kibaki regime has not distin-
guished itself as committed to the basic tenets of good governance; as keen on
making a clean break with the old corrupt and kleptocratic politics; and as a con-
sistent defender of the basic rights of Kenyans (Holmquist 2005). A cloud of con-
tinuity hangs over this administration in governance and management of
corruption. The new regime failed to nurture the inclusive coalition politics that
brought it to power, stalled the constitutional review process, and oversaw the
re-emergence of grand corruption in the highest echelons of government among a
myriad other failures to meet the electoral promises that convinced Kenyans to
vote the coalition into power. Accordingly, the high rates of approval for Kibaki
that saw Kenya ranked the most optimistic nation in the world following the
NARC assumption of power slumped to disenchantment and despair. For in-
stance, in a Steadman Research Services opinion poll in April 2004, 40 per cent
of those polled expected a better year ahead, 25 per cent expected it to be the
same, while 27 per cent expected a worse year. These ratings have since plum-
meted. A Steadman opinion poll in February 2005 showed that whereas 21 per
cent of Kenyans say life is the same under the NARC regime as it was under
KANU, a whopping 61 per cent say life is worse under the new regime. Concom-
itantly, the poll indicated that if elections were called in February 2005, 40 per
cent of those polled would vote for KANU’s Uhuru Kenyatta, 26 per cent for the
Liberal Democratic Party’s (LDP) Kalonzo Musyoka, and only 13 per cent indi-
cated they would vote for President Mwai Kibaki (Standard, February 19, 2005).
In essence, the Kibaki regime squandered, within two years, the political good-
will and support, both national and international, that attended its assumption of
power. Why did the Kibaki regime lose support so rapidly and so dramatically?
We posit herein that this political eventuality is a function of four key factors. It
can be explained in terms of the political biographies of the new key political ac-
tors, especially that of President Mwai Kibaki. Another variable lies in the nature
of the Kenyan political culture. We can also explain the disappointing turn of
events with the Kibaki regime in terms of the fallacy of the civil society promise.
And finally, the dynamics of rational self-interest on the part of the new political
elite also contributed in a crucial way to the politics of continuity. A close look at
these four variables sheds light on our understanding of the problematics of ef-
fecting regime change as the first major step towards democratising the political
system.
Old Wine in New Wine Skins: The ‘New’ Power Elite

The scholarly analyses and commentaries that depict Kibaki as “a gentleman” of
Kenyan politics (Shisanya 2003); a consensus builder (see note 1) who, despite
his association with the worsening performance of the Moi regime “took a lead-
ing role in fostering the multiparty opposition” (Anderson 2003); as capable of
attracting political prima donnas, each capable of pulling the crowd and thus hav-
ing a “moment in history” to change Kenyan politics (Munene 2003) and ignore
Kibaki’s past history as a diehard KANU member and his well-known creden-
tials as a fence-sitter. Indeed, it is arguable that those who gravitate toward sup-
porting Kibaki do so not because of his leadership and personal integrity, as
Munene and Chege would have it, but because nobody knows what he stands for
and hence appears to represent less of a threat to vested interests. Such analyses
have sought to sanitise Kibaki and present him as a democrat, in complete con-
trast with known historical facts.2 It is noteworthy that Kibaki served loyally as
vice-president to Moi for a whole decade before he was shunted aside and his
place taken by a political novice called Josephat Karanja. He quietly settled in his
demoted position of minister of health without raising a finger. Indeed, at a time
of heightened activism for political reform in Kenya, he equated attempts at re-
moving KANU from power to attempting to cut down a mugumo tree using a ra-
zor blade! Accordingly, Kibaki remained safely ensconced in KANU until
opposition forces had pushed the Moi regime into acceding to multiparty politics,
at whcih point he decided to jump ship on Christmas Eve of 1991 to found the
Democratic Party of Kenya (DP).
As if to repudiate the accolades, two years into his presidency Kibaki’s prima
donnas degenerated into ‘politics as usual’, crowning their waning local popular-
ity with high levels of corruption at the top, internal bickering in the political par-
ties within the ruling NARC coalition and within the government of ‘national
unity’, and their reconstitution into ethnic enclaves that the pre-election coalition
promised to defeat. Evidence of increasing disappointment with Kibaki’s
presidency in Kenya and within the international lending community is wide-

spread. This shift in popularity raises the question whether the views in these lau-
datory commentaries reflect a hard and critical look at Kibaki’s political
biography or whether they are part of the well-known desire for hagiography
within scholarship. Indeed, viewing Kibaki as a fence-sitting conservative inca-
pable of making bold decisions, James Orengo, a maverick opposition leader,
argues:
Moving Kenya from the Moi state to a new order needed a progressive
and decisive leadership. We needed somebody with a record of making
quick and hard decisions that would translate into addressing the people’s
problems. Even Moi’s first two years were very inspiring. People were
willing to give him a chance. He was involved in national discourse. He
was going to the people and we knew where he stood on what. Yet in a re-
cord two years, Narc’s fortunes have already dwindled. It takes extraordi-
nary qualities of the negative type to reduce the 2002 euphoria to the
despair we see today. (Interview in Sunday Standard, March 6, 2005)
Concomitant with Kibaki’s old-guard, pro-status-quo orientation is the group of

close associates he brought with him to power. The major discontinuity with Moi
in this regard is that power shifted away from the Kalenjin elite to the `Mount
Kenya Mafia’. That this class of property and capital, with interests and opera-
tions dating back to the Kenyatta era, was set to exercise influence in Kibaki’s
administration became apparent when Kibaki cobbled together his first cabinet
from senior officials in his bureaucracy and parastatal heads. Many of the living
central figures of the Kenyatta regime were reconstituted as the main advisers of
Kibaki. They include people such as Njenga Karume, George Muhoho, Charles
Njonjo, Matere Keriri, Joe Wanjui, Peter Kanyago, S.K. Macharia and Nat
Kang’ethe. Their access to and influence on Kibaki is considerable, to the extent
that in 2003 Muhoho, Wanjui, and Harry Mule constituted a group of Kibaki’s
`wise men’ who vetted and determined appointments to the various parastatals
and other plum jobs (Saturday Nation, February 8, 2003).
But this group has a mix of political appointees and private businessmen, some-
thing that is worrying about a government that came to power promising to curb
corruption and nepotism and to institute greater transparency, accountability and
professionalism. Of these, only Njonjo has not been allowed a position of influ-
ence in the government. Keriri was Kibaki’s State House controller before he fell
out with the First Lady and was reappointed in February 2004 as the executive
chairman of the Electricity Regulatory Board. Muhoho was appointed managing
director/chief executive officer of Kenya Airports Authority, while Wanjui be-
came the chancellor of the University of Nairobi. In spite of the fact that Karume
disowned Kibaki and defected from DP to KANU prior to the 2002 general elec-
tions, Kibaki appointed him to the cabinet, claiming that he was not expected to
ignore marafiki wa utotoni (childhood friends). Then there are those who owe
their positions to Kibaki’s belief in outdated Kenyatta-era economics or to net-
works forged during the Kenyatta era. They include ministers such as John
Michuki and David Mwiraria, and the head of public service and secretary to the
cabinet, Francis Muthaura.
Three things are distinctive about these appointees and the groupings around
Kibaki that signal continuity. First the appointees are all past their retirement age,
which raises issues about Kibaki’s observance of the civil service code. At the
time of their appointment, Keriri, Muhoho and Muthaura were all past their offi-
cial retirement age. Kibaki has simply recycled them out of cronyism à la Moi
and to satisfy his faith in Kenyatta-era technocrats and politicians, friends, class-
mates and business associates. This explains the talk in Kenyan newspapers
about an old guard who believe that the future for Kenya rests in a return to the
Kenyatta model of governance.3
The second distinctive aspect is that they all have previous official experience
with KANU governments in one capacity or another.4 This is not necessarily a
positive experience, going by what we know about the Kenyatta and the Moi re-
gimes (Ochieng’ 1995). Indeed, apart from those mentioned above, Kibaki’s first
appointments as permanent secretary included five former KANU officials.
These appointees had no distinguished record of good service and cannot there-
fore be said to bring to their appointments indispensable credentials.5
Finally, though this group mixes cabinet and civil service and parastatal appoint-
ees with private businessmen, they are linked by their close relations to Kenyatta
or the Kenyatta ‘family’ and in different realms to the Moi regime. Karume en-
joyed such ties to Kenyatta through GEMA (a project made up of Gikuyu, Meru
and Embu ethnic groups) and was instrumental in defeating the former Kiambaa
strongman Mbiyu Koinange when Moi took over the presidency. Muhoho was
Kenyatta’s brother-in-law and served a long stint as MP for Juja and minister for
tourism and wildlife under Moi. The ragtag nature of this group complicates
rather than simplifies things since Kibaki relies on a concatenation of profession-
als, former classmates, business associates and kin for policy advice. The result is
a revival of tribalism and patrimonialism and a continuation of many of the dis-
credited practices characteristic of the Kenyatta and Moi eras.6
It is no wonder then that only two years into Kibaki’s presidency, KANU legisla-
tors were brought back into government. In large measure, the political opposi-
tion in Kenya was already KANU in diaspora and their re-entry into government
through the Kibaki administration had a political precedent. This re-entry pre-
pared the way for the development of a “new-found working relationship be-
tween top money men of the Moi era and key members of the Kibaki
administration” (Standard, January 7, 2005).7 By careful investigation, the Stan-
dard traces how this relationship developed and shows the numerous historical
dealings between Moi and Kibaki and their allies and cronies. Starting with four
companies (Alico, Heritage All, Celtel, and CFC Bank) it shows that directors of
these companies and their recent business dealings seem carefully calculated to
benefit Kibaki’s business associates, friends and election financiers such as
Naushad Merali and Eddy Njoroge, the managing director of the Kenya Electric-
ity Generating Company. This new network had connections to an old network
to which Kibaki and Moi belonged during the Kenyatta era. For instance, Moi
and Kibaki had interests in an old company called African Liaison and Con-
sulting Services (Alico). The network of Alico shareholders included Njonjo,
Geoffrey Kareithi, Ben Gethi, Jeremiah Kiereini and Duncan Ndegwa, all top of-
ficials in Kenyatta’s government. This is largely because its founding was man-
dated by Kenyatta’s cabinet. Alico was later to be supported by another
company, Heri Shareholding, in which Kareithi was the major shareholder and
both Moi and Kibaki had shares.
According to the Standard (January 7, 2005), Merali is the glue sticking the
Kenyatta, Moi and Kibaki business interests together. Merali made his entry into
these corridors of high politics when his company Sameers Investment acquired
majority shares in Firestone East Africa in 1983 after ‘beating’ another consor-
tium of five companies. The decisive factor in this acquisition was a visit to State
House by the Firestone East Africa CEO Mr Kraemer, organised by James
Kanyotu. But jostling over control at State House did not end with Moi. Two
main contenders for “control of money bags in Kibaki’s State House” have al-
ready emerged. The first is a group of Young Turks made up of sons and a
daughter of highly placed businessmen and politicians and the second is made of
veteran old-money groups. In the former group are Kibaki’s sons and daughter
Jimmy, David and Judy, and Alfred Gitonga, Kibaki’s personal assistant. They
are supported by John Macharia, George Thuo, Francis Michuki, Jimmy
Wanjigi, and Victor Gitobu. This group is also allied to the former national secu-
rity minister Chris Murungaru and his former permanent secretary, David
Mwangi.8
Of particular interest is the ethnic composition of this group, which is almost ex-
clusively Kikuyu. If the members of this group are not old KANU hands, their
entry into the present administration came through the DP. This reinforces the
belief that Kibaki’s DP, and by extension his new leadership, sees itself as a de-
fender of Kikuyu bourgeoisie interests – interests that owe its wealth to the
Kenyatta regime, sections of which suffered under Moi rule. The continuity that
Ajulu (2003) writes about is therefore reflected not just in the key figures in-
volved in the Kibaki administration but also in the class and ethnic composition
of their grouping. Nevertheless, the regime has also been flexible enough to ac-
commodate new entrants from civil society including Murungi and Muite or po-
litical novices such as Murungaru. However, it seems that such entrance comes
at the cost of shedding the radical anti-government stand that people such as
Murungi, Muite, Koigi wa Wamwere, and Kuria spewed during KANU’s hey-
day. Of course it is significant that such strong opposition voices as James
Orengo, Njeru Kathangu, Martin Shikuku, and Joe Donde are written out of the
script.
The Nature of Kenyan Political Culture

Kenyan politics, as elsewhere in most of Africa, is ethnic-based. This, and the
manner in which the state has been used for self-aggrandising activities of the
dominant political elite, has heightened the perception of politics as a zero-sum
game. In this scheme of things, the President and his close associates, invariably
from his ethno-region, have unfettered access to state resources. The rest can ac-
cess state resources only at the pleasure of the former. This reality has promoted
the culture of patronage politics, cronyism, personal rule, and the concomitant
malaise of corruption and kleptocracy that have characterised Kenyan politics
since independence. During his inauguration, President Kibaki declared that this
mode of politics had come to an end; that the era of one-man rule was over; and
that the politics of roadside declarations was now past. Hence the expectation
among Kenyans was that the coalition spirit embodied in the NARC Summit
would live on in the new regime, where key decisions would be reached by con-
sultation and consensus within the rubric of the NARC Summit. However, the
entrenched nature of ethnic behaviour in Kenya soon obviated any claims to a
transformative shift.
The expectations of coalition politics were soon trumped by the re-emergence of

political tribalism. This became evident when Kibaki appointed his cabinet and
top officials in the civil service and parastatal sector. Contrary to expectation, he
did this without consulting any of the top players in the NARC coalition. Instead,
as noted above, those who arrogated to themselves the duty of vetting top ap-
pointments were George Muhoho, Joe Wanjui, and Nat Kang’ethe in a conjunc-
ture that illustrated the fact that the DP section of the National Alliance Party of
Kenya (NAK), dominated by people from the Mount Kenya region, was now at
the centre of power. In essence, whereas the political dominance of the GEMA
elite had replaced the previous KAMATUSA (Kalenjin, Masai, Turkana and
Samburu ethnic communities) pre-eminence, it was politics as usual.
The greatest betrayal of the NARC coalition spirit and the possibilities for the
dawn of a new mode of politics came with the Kibaki trashing of the Memoran-
dum of Understanding (MOU) which had sealed the alliance of opposition forces
that facilitated their electoral victory over the incumbent KANU. One of the key
provisions of the MOU, which in essence was a covenant among the political
elite on behalf of the people they represented, was that the position of prime min-
ister would be created, and Raila would be appointed. However, once they as-
sumed power, Kibaki and his Mount Kenya allies had no qualms reneging on this
promise. They argued that to create this position would be tantamount to estab-
lishing two centres of power, which to them is a recipe for instability. Yet it was
these same individuals, including Kibaki and Murungi, who during their opposi-
tion days had argued the case for the establishment of the position of prime min-
ister in order to devolve the overwhelming powers of what they called “the
imperial presidency”. Nevertheless, it was Minister John Michuki who let the cat
out of the bag. While addressing a rally in his home province of Central, he
pointed out that they had argued the case for a premiership so that “one of our
own could share power with Moi”. Now that Moi is no more, he reasoned, there
was no need for power devolution because Kibaki, unlike Moi, is a good presi-
dent! (Standard, September 18, 2003)
Having been betrayed by this turn of events, the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP)
felt isolated from a government in which it was supposed to be an integral part
and moved to identify with the opposition in order to frustrate government opera-
tions in parliament. Thus acrimony and factional fighting became the hallmark of
the NARC government. Apprehensive of the difficulties the government was sure
to face in parliament against a united force of the opposition and the LDP, Presi-
dent Kibaki, borrowing from the KANU book on political survival, moved to pull
the rug from under LDP by appointing opposition members into his cabinet, in-
cluding the Forum for the Restoration of Democracy’s (FORD) Simeon Nyachae,
KANU’s John Koech, and Njenga Karume, as well as a host of assistant minis-
ters under the guise of constituting a “government of national unity”.9 In actual-
ity, however, the move was simply geared to ensure self-survival on the part of
Kibaki and his close associates. The pre-eminence of the Mount Kenya actors in
Kibaki’s government and the attendant acrimony between this group and those
from elsewhere obviates any claims that his is a government of national unity. In-
deed, as one commentator has observed, the war on corruption was predestined to
fail, given the prevalence of political ethnicity in the Kibaki regime. He notes that
“we cannot have a president, head of civil service, security minister, finance min-
ister, justice minister, chief justice, CID boss, KACC boss, etc, from the same
tribe [region]” (Standard, February 19, 2005). Worse still was that the new faces
Kibaki brought to the cabinet were all diehard KANU politicians implicated in
one or the other of the previous KANU misdeeds.
To be sure, the destructive behaviour associated with the Kibaki regime also
stems from general problems of managing a coalition that are beyond Kibaki.
The specific expressions of these problems in Kenya result from the circum-
stances under which the coalition was cobbled together. First, it is obvious that
the coalition was a reaction against trends in KANU, not a result of a
well-thought-out political programme aimed at instituting a long-lasting alliance.
Second, the key players had little time to achieve their objective and were forced
by circumstances merely to focus on the elections. Third, given the time limita-
tions, no effort was expended on honestly addressing the tensions and conflicts
that had prevented these opposition groups from mounting a united front against
KANU in 1992 and 1997, especially those tensions resulting from ethnic suspi-
cions among the power elites. The result was an opposition coalition tentatively
united by its hate for KANU and willing to bring anybody into the fold including
discredited ex-KANU barons for the sake of defeating KANU. There is a lot of
blame to go around on who is wrecking the coalition and much of it has been cor-
rectly placed at the feet of ex-KANU barons, whose presence in the NARC gov-
ernment makes it difficult to act against past KANU misdemeanours (Brown
2004; Holmquist 2005). Obviously, Kibaki is willing to make this concession of
going easy on the war on corruption in order to secure the support of the KANU
elements in his cabinet and in parliament for purposes of facilitating government
parliamentary business and, ultimately, his regime survival.
However, to focus exclusively on the group of ex-KANU barons in the NARC
government as a basis for perpetuation of corruption is to ignore three things: a
major section of the KANU parliamentarians who defected and constituted the
LDP wing of NARC had been in the opposition as NDP before they decided to
join KANU; many of them like Raila have a better record of political activism
and struggle against KANU’s authoritarianism than, say, Kibaki; and finally, the
most notable cases of corruption pointed out in the Kibaki regime reveal the
emergence of new networks of corruption among people who were in the opposi-
tion prior to the coalition. Tolerance of this ‘new’ corruption on the part of Presi-
dent Kibaki can be explained in terms of a structural rationale. As indicated in
Table 1 (p.17) below, Kibaki relied on the support of a host of leaders who mobi-
lised their ethnic regions to support his election. In return, Kibaki appointed these
individuals to key positions and has afforded them a free rein in their ministerial
portfolios. This is what accounts for Kibaki’s ‘hands-off’ management style.
Hence the corruption that goes on at the ministerial levels is a replica of what
happens at the highest governmental level.
Arguably, therefore, the nature of the Kenyan political culture, coupled with the
political biographies of the new power elite who were weaned on the KANU way
of politics, was set to ensure continuity rather than a clean break with the past on
the part of the NARC government. This is particularly so given the fact that the
change of power elite was effected without a fundamental restructuring of the in-
stitutions of governance. At the end of the day, by jettisoning the MOU, ignoring
the NARC Summit, incorporating KANU members into his government, and pre-
siding over the entrenchment of political ethnicity, Kibaki has demonstrated be-
yond doubt that he is committed to the politics of continuity rather than change.
This fact constitutes a major betrayal of the enthusiastic trust the people be-
stowed in him and explains in large measure his dramatic loss of popularity
among Kenyans.
The Fallacy of the Civil Society Promise

The vision of civil society as a bastion of liberty and good governance ranged
against the state as institutionalised authoritarianism is what informs enthusiastic
expectations on the part of scholars like Barkan (2003, 2004), Diamond (1999),
Harbeson (1994) and Callaghy (1994). For them, entry into government of hith-
erto civil society luminaries represents great promise for sustained political re-
form, accountable government, and possibilities for political and socio-economic
renewal. The major problem with this perspective is that it takes for granted the
democratic credentials and commitment of individual leaders of amorphous
groups that emerged within civil society ranks to fight authoritarianism but some
of which, viewed critically, actually represented individual, family, or sectarian
interests. Many of these groups had complex relationships with the very corrupt
state that they hoped to challenge, and could not simply be presented as opposed
to it and therefore pro-democracy (Fatton Jr. 1995:67–99; Mamdani 1995;
Nasong’o 2000:3–16).
Some of the civil society actors, like those of the opposition political society,
were driven by their common hostilities to Moi. Like opposition political society,
civil society comprises people of different persuasions and democratic creden-
tials and the outcomes of its initiatives have necessarily been mixed.10 While part
of this leadership has credible people whose convictions rested on a belief that
Kenya deserved better leadership and KANU was not providing it, many others
relied on this argument as an avenue to power, wealth, and prestige. In Kenya,
civil society is populated by affiliates of politicians and many of them were
driven by the desire to gain access to state power lost when their benefactors fell
out with Moi. This group included people who had fallen out with Moi previ-
ously for one reason or another. Thus, we have to contend with tension in
Kenya’s civil society between the broad objective of fighting for democratisation
and the expedient use of this fight for personal gain related to access to state
power. This tension made it difficult to identify firmly the commitment of vari-
ous people and groups to democratisation. Matters were worsened by the fact that
few of the politicians and activists under consideration have a record of consis-
tency that lends itself to easy analysis. Many in fact used civil society as an ave-
nue to join active politics (Mutunga 1999). Once the 2002 elections loomed,
there occurred a massive exodus of civil society activists into political society.
This included people such as Kivutha Kibwana as well as Maina Kiai and
Mutava Musyimi, who were appointed to government positions. Some illustra-
tions would suffice at this point.
In their days as chairmen of the Law Society of Kenya (LSK), Paul Muite and
Gibson Kamau Kuria espoused and actively fought for human rights and the
opening up of political space in Kenya. They built their credentials as strong de-
fenders of social justice and basic civil liberties. In fact Muite’s tenure as chair-
man of the LSK marked the society as “one of the last defenders of Kenya’s
democratic institutions, the church being the other one” (Ross 1992:438). But
Muite’s meteoric rise to prominence owes much to the patronage of the Moi state
through Charles Njonjo, Kenya’s conservative former attorney-general. The
prominence of his legal firm Waruhiu and Muite Advocates grew out of state pa-
tronage through Njonjo, leading to its monopolisation of lucrative government le-
gal contracts. Indeed, Throup and Hornsby reveal that Muite, acting as Njonjo’s
lawyer, drafted the Bill that turned Kenya into a de jure one-party state in 1982
(Throup and Hornsby 1998:32).
It is instructive that Muite began to champion freedom and democracy only when
Njonjo fell out with Moi in the mid-1980s (Tamarkin 1984:59–77). Prior to this,
and because of his conservative outlook and relationship with Njonjo, Muite
twice sought to be elected LSK chairperson and failed. But his tenure as LSK
chairperson represented a high point in Kenya’s struggle for democracy when he

effectively mobilised the society to demand the expansion of democratic space in
Kenya. The conviction with which he did this, and the courage he marshalled to
challenge a regime at the height of authoritarianism, have been celebrated
(Throup and Hornsby 1998:56–57; Ross 1992). But with the election of the
Kibaki regime, the old pro-establishment Muite seems to have re-emerged. This
time, he comes out as the self-appointed defender of Kibaki fighting to retain the
President’s over-concentrated powers.11
On the other hand, there are self-made activists such as Kiraitu Murungi, whose
legal practice grew because he mustered the courage to take on politically sensi-
tive cases during the bad days of Moi’s authoritarianism. While Muite’s opposi-
tion to Moi stemmed from Moi’s fallout with Njonjo, Murungi was driven by
distaste for Moi’s human rights record. From law school, Murungi teamed up
with Aaron Ringera and Gibson Kamau Kuria to set up a firm that took on many
sensitive political cases involving human rights abuses. But the talk about human
rights did not thrill Ringera, who soon got appointed into the Moi government.
Murungi was in exile until 1991, when he returned to join the growing group of
activists including Muite, Anyang Nyong’o, James Orengo, and Mukhisa Kituyi,
whose efforts had seen the formation of FORD as a pressure group. With the
1992 elections, Murungi was elected MP for Imenti South, from which position
he continued to fight for human rights and the rights of coffee farmers. In 1997
Murungi, together with other members of political society joined the Inter-Parties
Parliamentary Group (IPPG) reform group. This move pulled the initiative from
the civil-society-sponsored push for major reforms before the 1997 elections.
Their move stitched together an election reform strategy which Moi seized to win
the 1997 election and immediately reneged on the IPPG agreement. The expedi-
ency of Murungi and Muite’s political struggles have become clear with their to-
tal about-turn on issues, particularly corruption and a people-driven constitution
review, and their insensitivity to pro-democracy forces. Others such as Kamau
Kuria have capped their career by instituting nepotistic claims to monopolising
government contracts even in areas where such monopoly smacks of conflict of
interest.12
How does this group of activists perpetuate continuity within the Kibaki regime?
Firstly, they do not invest their energies in the radical transformation of the state.
A prerequisite for a new dawn in Kenya is the transformation of the state and the
institution of a new politics that eschews the continuation of ‘Kenyattaism’ and
‘Moi-ism’. But Murungi, Muite, and Kuria seem to have easily capitulated and
re-emerged as strong defenders of the status quo. Secondly, they engage in or
overlook acts of corruption and nepotism for which they reviled the Moi regime.
As we demonstrate below, not only has grand corruption in high places
re-emerged, the brazenness and alacrity with which corruption is perpetrated in
the Kibaki regime is startling. But in response, Murungi dismissed known cases
of mega-corruption as “scandals that never were”. Thirdly, some invoke their
democratic contributions to justify their inclusion in the current government or
their monopoly of lucrative government contracts. Their actions also bolster the
case against radical constitutional review, allow for higher levels of conspicuous
consumption that makes economic recovery difficult, perpetuate re-emergence of
political tribalism, and limit the potential to guarantee basic civil liberties such as
freedom of the press. In short, they are witness to Kibaki’s abrogation of his
pre-election and inauguration pledge to meet the basic needs of Kenyans – provi-
sion of affordable health care and the like – and shift the governance paradigm by
fostering the rule of law and fighting corruption.
Essentially, therefore, Barkan’s (2004) categorisation of civil society actors who
played a prominent role in unseating KANU as New Young Turks constituting a
demographic shift that is producing a generational change within the political
elite, change that is, in his view, reinforced by emerging institutions of counter-
vailing power, has several problems that limit its relevance and wider applica-
tion. First, beyond their common anti-Moi stand, it is unclear whether this group
exist as a homogenous entity espousing concrete ideals and a common vision for
Kenya which will shape Kenyan politics for the better. It seems from their
post-Moi actions that the basis of their seeming unity was the commonality of
grievances against Moi and KANU. Their lack of homogeneity also explains why
Barkan is unable to mention members of this group beyond only one or two. And
because they are not known within the country and outside, they lack any hege-
monic force. Second, Barkan’s distinction of the Young Turks and the NYT is
imprecise and unrealistic. By all counts and with the advantages of writing three
years into the Kibaki regime, Murungi cannot conceivably be in the same group
with Githongo, their convictions on issues like corruption are completely oppo-
site. Third, by attempting to define the NYT on the basis of age, Barkan’s thesis
falters even more. In terms of consistent support for a new, just, fair and demo-
cratic dispensation in Kenya, age is not necessarily a defining factor. Thus,
Githongo would easily fit in the same category with Njonjo Mue, Mutunga and
Anyang-Nyong’o. In short, it is not enough to identify new forces shaping Ken-
yan politics simply on the basis of age.
The perspective of civil society as an unmitigated bastion of liberty, agent of po-
litical change, and midwife of regime transformation is thus flawed, given the re-
production of corrupt and authoritarian tendencies within civil society (Chabal
and Daloz 1999:17-30)13 that spill over into political society when civil society
actors join politics as the foregoing analysis illustrates. On the other hand, if we
see civil society as a realm of contradictory possibilities, as Mamdani (1995),
Olukoshi (1998) and Nasong’o (2005) do, it becomes easy to fathom how this
group might succumb to continuity. As a differentiated realm, actors within civil
society carry conflicting inclinations. Some, as with John Githongo, are consis-
tently committed to the struggle irrespective of their location while others such as
Murungi, Kamau Kuria, and Kibwana get socialised into the ethos of the state. As
Ludeki Chweya (2004:40) argues, the post-second-liberation situation in Kenya
shows that former civil society actors who joined the state became “spontane-
ously socialised or deliberately inducted into the ethos and practices of the state”.
The result has been continuity due to the contradictory nature of civil society and
complex interpenetration of civil and political societies.
Dynamics of Rational Self-Interest

Politics is about power, the power to control and determine the distribution of na-
tional resources, both material and symbolic. Rational politicians thus seek to en-
hance their electability and maximise their power. But how has Kibaki’s
‘rational’ calculation to enhance his electability and maximise power fared in re-
lation to his pre-election promises and prospect for managing the political coali-
tion?
It is noteworthy that prior to his election to the presidency in December 2002
Mwai Kibaki had made two unsuccessful bids for the seat in 1992 and 1997, both
times on the DP ticket. In 1992 he came third with 19.83 per cent of the votes cast
to second-placed Kenneth Matiba’s 25.95 per cent and the victorious President
Moi’s 36.91 per cent. Having been defeated twice even as they collectively won
more votes than KANU, the opposition rationally decided to come together in a
coalition in 2002. The groundwork was laid by ‘the big three’ in the then opposi-
tion– Mwai Kibaki, Wamalwa Kijana, and Charity Ngilu – whose parties, DP,
FORD-Kenya and National Party of Kenya (NPK), respectively, coalesced into
the National Alliance Party of Kenya (NAK). In the interim, unfolding events in
KANU saw incumbent President Moi, acting in raw self-interest, decide sin-
gle-handedly to pick Uhuru Kenyatta as his successor. This generated an acrimo-
nious fallout in the party that saw the departure of, among others, Raila Odinga,
Moody Awori, George Saitoti, Kalonzo Musyoka, and the former KANU secre-
tary and diehard party hawk Joseph Kamotho. These KANU renegades, who
dubbed themselves the Rainbow Coalition, took over the moribund LPD and
linked up with NAK, constituting a new grand alliance, NARC, in which individ-
ual parties were corporate members.
It was in this context that Wamalwa, Ngilu, Musyoka, Saitoti and Raila decided
to shelve their own presidential ambitions to support Kibaki as the sole opposi-
tion presidential candidate on the NARC ticket in the 2002 elections.14 Within the
purview of NAK, Wamalwa was to be Kibaki’s running mate and vice-president
designate while Ngilu was promised the position of prime minister. With the en-
try of LDP into the coalition equation, a readjustment was made whereby
Wamalwa retained his promised position, while Raila was promised the premier-
ship with Ngilu and Kipruto Kirwa settling for deputy-premier positions. It is
noteworthy that the positions of prime minister and deputy prime minister do not
exist in the Kenyan constitution. The foregoing agreement was premised on the
commitment of the coalition to conclude the constitutional review process within
100 days of its assumption of power that would create the new positions. Ndegwa
(2003:154) rightly argues that “had the constitutional-reform process not been
going on at the time of the campaign, it is virtually inconceivable that any opposi-
tion leader would have agreed to give up his or her slim chance at the imperial
presidency and settle for the certainty of exclusion in its shadow”. Negotiations
on power-sharing in this regard culminated in the signing of the Memorandum of
Understanding among the key players. The establishment of the eight-member
Summit as the top decision-making organ of NARC underscored the unity of the
coalition and heralded what was seen as the new dawn of consensus politics.
Members of the Summit included Kibaki, Wamalwa, Ngilu, Raila, Awori,
Musyoka, Saitoti and Kirwa.
The cohesiveness of the NARC coalition was such that even when the presiden-
tial candidate Kibaki was injured in a road accident and hospitalised for a lengthy
period of time the campaigns went on smoothly, spearheaded by the NARC Sum-
mit with the support of the NARC Coordinating Committee chaired by Noah
Wekesa. It was in this context that Kibaki garnered 62.2 per cent of the votes in
2002 against his closest competitor, Kenyatta’s, 31.3 per cent. Kibaki won this
landslide mandate not because he was popular among Kenyans but because of the
support of Wamalwa, Raila, and Ngilu among others. The votes he received in
Western and Nyanza Provinces and from the Kamba of Eastern Province were
thus proxy votes. Indeed, as a percentage of votes per province, Kibaki received
the highest votes not in his own Central Province, but in Nairobi and Western
Provinces as shown in Table 1 below. It was, therefore, not Kibaki that won the
election, but the NARC coalition.
Table 1: 2002 Distribution of Presidential Vote by Province
Province Kibaki (in percentages) Kenyatta (in percentages)

Central 68.9 30.3
Coast 62.8 33.4
Eastern 72.5 26.1
Nairobi 76.5 20.8
North Eastern 28.1 67.1
Nyanza 61.4 07.6
Rift Valley 43.2 53.3
Western 76.3 21.5
Source: Electoral Commission of Kenya
Once Kibaki ascended to power, however, it was no longer in his self-interest and
that of his close allies to see through the constitutional review process and de-
volve power from the presidency. Accordingly, in January 2003 the target date
for a new constitution was pushed back by six months. Ten months down the
road, the constitutional review process was adjourned to January 2004! In Janu-
ary 2004 President Kibaki promised that all efforts would be made to have a new
constitution by June 30, 2004. This date also passed with the promise unmet and
with Kibaki and his colleagues now evasive about setting a deadline. By the turn
of 2005, any concern for constitutional review on the part of the Kibaki regime
was now focused on withdrawing the process from the control of the people and
returning it to the control of parliament, yet another negation of their previous
stand that the process must be “people-driven” (Ng’ethe and Katumanga 2003).
In July 2005 the Kibaki-led forces pushed through parliament a watered-down
draft document that occasioned street demonstrations and riots in Nairobi and
many parts of Kenya where one person was killed through police suppression of
the people who supported the enactment of the Bomas draft in full.
The stalling of the process is a function of disagreement over power-sharing be-
tween the presidency and a proposed premiership. Those who had advocated this
arrangement during the Moi incumbency such as Kibaki, Murungi, Koigi wa
Wamwere, Muite, the clergymen Peter Njenga and Timothy Njoya, and the hu-
man rights activist Kamau Kuria became its chief opponents. Concentration of
power in the presidency was bad under Moi; it became reasonable once “one of
our own” assumed power. Indeed, to ensure that the new regime, like the previ-
ous one, controlled the review process and micromanaged it to its own advan-
tage, a plan was executed that replaced the then chairman of the parliamentary
select committee on constitutional reform, Raila Odinga, with Paul Muite. Ac-
cording to Peter Anyang Nyong’o, this was the moment when the future of the
coalition was jeopardised (see interview in the Sunday Standard, October 23,
2005). Curiously, whereas Raila belonged to the ruling NARC, Muite was a
member of SAFINA, an opposition party, who had campaigned against the coali-
tion in the 2002 elections. His only qualification was that he was a member of the
`Mount Kenya tribe’ and could thus be trusted to defend the interests of the new
power elite. It was in this context that the Constituent Assembly drafting the new
constitution was scuttled. The peak of the machinations of the new power elite
against constitutional reform was the assassination of Dr Odhiambo Mbai, chair
of the Devolution Committee, whom the DP faction in NARC viewed as allied to
the LDP faction and thus committed to the idea of power devolution.15 Ulti-
mately, the chair of the Constitution of Kenya Review Commission, Professor
Yash Pal Ghai, was frustrated into resigning, contending that the president had
reneged on his June 30, 2004 deadline for a new constitution. The attack on Pro-
fessor Ghai was vicious and was fronted by, among others, Muite, Murungi,
Makau wa Mutua, chair of the Kenya Human Rights Commission, and Ahmed
Nasir Abdullahi, chair of the LSK.16
The change of position by the Kibaki regime on constitutional review is ample
testimony to the fact that constitutional re-engineering has no support from the
ruling elite. It also shows that these elite saw it merely as an instrument to fight
Moi. Now that they are in power, they have assumed the very reactionary posi-
tion held by KANU in its heyday. Arguably, therefore, the strong support that the
new power elite committed to constitutional review during their opposition days
was not a function of their commitment to the struggle for democracy itself. It
was, rather, a strategic posturing intended to engender the requisite conditions for
the ouster of KANU from power and their own takeover so that they could ex-
perience the powers enjoyed by the Moi regime and the concomitant access to
state largesse that such power brings. As Oloo (2004:15–16) argues:
Underlying the ruling elite’s lack of support for reforms is its fear of
institutionalisation of politics and the likely emergent social order.
Institutionalisation comes with the need for evolution of an inclusive pro-
cess and a mechanism for bringing in the excluded. Indeed it is for this
reason that devolution is one of the most contentious issues in the review
process. Devolution in its pure sense threatens the hegemonic exercise of
political power by the elite who are unwilling to cede even the smallest
amount of power to a perceived or real alternative ‘centre of power’.
Similarly, a columnist with Sunday Nation laments the fact that President Kibaki
has …very deliberately killed the people’s constitution in cold blood. Now we
have to wait for another regime to deliver on this promise”.17 This reality in the
case of Kenya vindicates Munyonze Hamalengwa’s contention that all social
struggles for democracy anywhere, at any time are fundamentally aimed at serv-
ing the interests of particular segments of the populace. Their only redeeming
grace is that they may, by default, serve the interests of the larger society in gen-
eral (Hamalengwa 1992; Press 2004).
Implications of the Politics of Continuity

As this analysis demonstrates, power transition in Kenya did not occasion much
change in the mode of politics (see also Holomquist 2005). This has some serious
implications for the Kenyan polity, the most devastating being the malaise of cor-
ruption and the impunity with which it is perpetrated. In spite of a much pro-
claimed war on corruption on the part of the Kibaki government, allegations of
corruption against cabinet ministers and senior government officials have caused
donors to fear a return to what they call ‘bad old habits’. Expressing concern
about corruption, donors cited such cases as the award of a Ksh45 million insur-
ance contract to a company run by the son of a cabinet minister, and the Kiptoon
Report on ‘cowboy contractors’. Similarly, some of President Kibaki’s closest
advisers have been linked to doubtful dealings involving billions of shillings with
shadowy companies. Failure to act decisively on his ministers, linked to the twin
Anglo Leasing and Finance Ltd scams that would have cost the government
nearly Ksh7 billion (US$93.3 million), has cast a shadow on the war on graft.
The scams involve the controversial Ksh4 billion deal for the construction of a
CID forensic laboratory for which the government paid Ksh241 million (US$3.2
million) without any work having been done. The scam was compounded by the
decision to expand an Ksh800 million (US$10.6 million) passport-issuing equip-
ment contract to one costing Ksh2.7 billion (US$36 million) and then awarding it
to the shadowy Anglo Leasing and Finance Ltd without competitive bidding, and
paying Ksh900 million (US$12 million) as commitment fee.18
The storm in October 2004 over looming maize shortage, the pre-qualification of
companies to import sugar, the monopoly sought by a little-known coffee factory
from Central Province to market Kenyan coffee abroad, and the emerging prac-
tice of cabinet ministers to have their own companies awarded major tenders by
the ministries they preside over are some of the suspect dealings that have placed
the government squarely against declared transparency. The corrupt-free image
has not been helped by conspicuous private spending and love of ostentation by
senior officers including ministers. Several have embarked on building palatial
residences which, juxtaposed against known earnings, should simply be unaf-
fordable. Ministers who were facing bankruptcy proceedings on the eve of the
2002 general election are now flaunting wealth of unimaginable dimensions. The
government’s penchant for extravagance has also been fuelling further fears of
the return of 10 per cent kitu kidogo in sourcing public goods and services. For a
government that touted prudent use of public resources, the spending spree on
luxurious official cars and expensive ‘renovations’ of its buildings, including the
proposed construction of a Ksh100 million (US$13.3 million) new home for the
President, hardly pass the suspect test (Standard, August 13 and October 17,
2004; Daily Nation June 10, 2005).
Clearly, therefore, there is no commitment by the Kibaki government to fighting
corruption; otherwise no one mentioned in the Goldenberg Commission of In-
quiry, such as the Education Minister George Saitoti, would still be in the cabi-
net. In view of this, it is argued that if former President Moi followed Mzee Jomo
Kenyatta’s footsteps in institutionalising corruption, then Kibaki is more `Nyayo’
than Moi. Only two years into his leadership the level of conspicuous consump-
tion and corruption far outweighs Moi’s over the same period of time (Standard
August 13, 2004). Indeed, some commentators argue that Transparency Interna-
tional may have unwittingly fallen for the deception of sophisticated graft under
Kibaki when in 2004 they downgraded corruption in Kenya from “acute” to
merely “rampant” (Standard October 21, 2004). The Kibaki government is cred-
ited as being genuinely intolerant of the undisguised and brazen corruption that
characterised the Moi regime. Yet, this does not mean that malfeasance has
ended. As in the Kenyatta government, on which the Kibaki one seems to be
modelled, corruption has simply been privatised and polished (ibid). To give the
regime a modicum of legitimacy in the fight against corruption, too many
anti-corruption bodies have been set up, none of which, however, seems to be
registering appreciable gains in routing out corrupt bigwigs. But in the meantime,
Kibaki’s allies have launched their own private war to purge critical NGOs such
as Transparency International (TI). The TI Kenya Board of Trustees is composed
of Kibaki’s close associates, who are not particularly keen on criticising the re-
gime. When its new director, Gladwell Otieno, issued stinging indictments of the
Kibaki regime on the question of corruption, she was unceremoniously kicked
out by the board of trustees.
The effect of corruption on the government’s ability to meet its electoral prom-
ises is yet to be appraised. But one thing Kenyans cannot comprehend is why the
government would claim a lack of funds to implement basic programmes such as

the National Social Health Insurance Fund or the free primary school education
programme while at the same time overlooking the corruption of known guzzlers
of public funds. Matters have been further complicated by ostentatious govern-
ment expenditure on the purchase of numerous fleets of cars.19 As Charity Ngilu
put it in her public altercation with her cabinet colleague, Finance Minister David
Mwiraria, “The finance minister has given approval to ministers to buy fleets of
luxurious limousines amounting to hundreds of millions of shillings with some
cars costing the taxpayer Ksh17 million apiece”. “But when it comes to finding
money to alleviate poverty and suffering and in particular to provide an essential
necessary basic health care service, the same minister says his hands are tied by
the World Bank and International Monetary Fund” (Daily Nation, November 24,
2004). Indeed the finance minister’s hypocrisy is accentuated by the fact that,
while the health insurance scheme for the masses was rejected “for lack of
funds”, legislators were reviewing their own medical cover to include treatment
in reputable hospitals in Europe and North America to increase the number of
their dependants from four to eight children and from one to two spouses! This
increased the premium for the 222 Kenyan legislators to Ksh32 million
(US$426,667) annually, paid entirely by the taxpayer. Such obvious contradic-
tion between government policy and practice has made it difficult for the Kibaki
regime to convince many of its commitment to the betterment of the dire situa-
tion facing most Kenyans.
The fact that President Kibaki condones corruption among the ranks of his inner
circle of cabinet ministers is illustrated by events in February 2005 following the
exposure of questionable procurement contracts in the ministry of defence
(which falls directly under the office of the president) by the British high com-
missioner, Sir Edward Clay, among others. Amid a popular uproar and demands
for the president to sack the corrupt ministers, calls that were made even by some
within the president’s cabinet, including less aggrieved ministers such as
Musikari Kombo and Mukhisa Kituyi as well as the aggrieved ones such as Char-
ity Ngilu and Raila Odinga, met a lame response: the president simply transferred
the minister in charge of the suspect defence contracts, Chris Murungaru, to the
ministry of transport and communications, changing places with Michuki.
Kibaki’s response to another scandal further underscores his business-as-usual
approach to governance. In an undertaking that smacks of conflict of interest and
abuse of office, Cooperatives Minister Peter Ndwiga bought a farm, on which
purchase his counterpart, Finance Minister David Mwiraria waived land tax total-
ling Ksh6 million (US$80,000). Ndwiga then used the farm to secure a Ksh40
million (US$533, 333) loan from the Cooperative Bank, which falls under his of-
fice (Standard, January 16, 2005). As if this were not enough, the same minister
had his insurance company awarded a multi-million-shilling insurance tender by
the New Kenya Cooperative Creameries, a public company also under his minis-
try. Amid public protestations at this flagrant abuse of office and demands that
the minister be sacked, Ndwiga reported after a meeting with the president, that
Kibaki rhetorically asked whose goat he (Ndwiga) had eaten! (Sunday Nation,
February 13, 2005)
Within the month in which these events occurred, John Githongo, the governance
and ethics permanent secretary in the office of the president charged with spear-
heading the fight against corruption, resigned while on an official trip to Europe.
Githongo’s resignation dealt a major blow to the credibility of the Kibaki re-
gime’s war against corruption. His appointment, plucked from the directorship of
TI’s Kenya chapter, had boosted confidence, both locally and internationally, that
the new government’s anti-corruption commitment was beyond reproach –
Githongo had a fine reputation as the “high priest of good governance” and
anti-corruption crusader. However, his indefatigable fight against the Anglo
Leasing stream of scandals led to strained relations with the head of the civil ser-
vice and secretary to the cabinet, Francis Muthaura, who issued a statement exon-
erating senior government officials from blame over Anglo Leasing even before
investigations were completed. When it became increasingly apparent to a num-
ber of pundits that the war on corruption was merely window dressing, Githongo
argued that the new government needed a grace period of 24 months before judg-
ment could be passed on its commitment to the war on corruption. Clearly, his
resignation 26 months after his appointment is a stinging indictment of the
Kibaki government. As one of his associates put it, Githongo quit “owing to gov-
ernment’s lack of political will to fight graft”. Githongo’s resignation statement
read in part that he was “no longer able to continue serving the government of
Kenya in the capacity of Permanent Secretary Governance and Ethics” (Stan-
dard, February 7 and 8, 2005).
While such high-level corruption shows that the Kibaki regime is committed to
continuity rather than change in public resource management, we cannot over-
look the external link to corruption elsewhere. For instance, Sir Edward Clay’s
dossier on ‘dodgy security contracts’ raises pertinent questions concerning the
Kibaki regime’s governance performance, but also lays bare the hypocrisy of ex-
ternal forces ostensibly committed to fighting corruption. It is remarkable that
since Kenya’s independence in 1963 British firms have monopolised all lucrative
tenders in the security docket, as well as in the printing of Kenyan currency. All
these tenders have been awarded to British firms without subjecting them to in-
ternational tendering for competitive sourcing. This has had nothing to do with
the British offering the best bargains in price and quality of services and equip-
ment including naval ships, vehicles, and military equipment. In addition, the
United Kingdom has also dominated business in other sectors with, for instance,
a British bank (Barclays) making 27 per cent of its global net profit from Kenya
from artificially-driven high interest rates on treasury bills.20 This was the state of
affairs when Clay assumed his posting in Nairobi in 2001, close to two years be-
fore NARC came to power in January 2003, yet he never raised a voice against
“dodgy security contracts” under the Moi regime. In essence, they became dodgy
and Sir Edward saw corruption only after the new power barons redirected the
tenders elsewhere. Arguably therefore, if British firms had continued to monopo-
lise the contracts, Sir Clay would have remained as quiet as his predecessors, pre-
ferring behind-the-scenes diplomacy to public confrontation on the excesses of
the incumbent regime.
Conclusion
Our objective in this paper was to probe and explain the rapid and dramatic loss
of popularity of the Kibaki regime in Kenya after the high expectations the re-
gime generated on its coming to power. We have explained this development in
terms of the apparent continuities between the Moi and Kibaki regimes. The
study has reviewed the sources of this continuity, locating it in the nature of the
institutions that undergirded Moi’s kleptocratic and authoritarian rule, in the po-
litical socialisation of Kibaki and his inner circle of advisers, in the class linkages
that straddle the new regime and the Moi and Kenyatta regimes, in the role of the
regime’s principal allies within the realm of civil society, and in the self-interest
of the new political elite. The case of the Kibaki regime reveals an overall tension
exhibited by most pro-democracy activists between the consistent fight for a radi-
cal transformation of the state and the expedient use of this fight to assume con-
trol of the very distorted and dictatorial state structures. The re-emergence and
re-assertion of kleptocracy, grand corruption and political tribalism, and the re-
jection of a new era of coalition politics and consensus building, we have argued,
represents a triumph of individual self-interest over the commitment to shifting
the governance paradigm in Kenya. As in Chiluba’s Zambia, the transition from
Moi to Kibaki in Kenya demonstrates the pitfalls of relying on regime change as
the first step toward greater democratisation.
Overall, the implications of the NARC politics of continuity are threefold. First,
as we have argued, this reality demonstrates that the NARC regime appears bent
on self-destruction. A crucial pointer is the fact that the Kibaki cabinet is at war
with itself and the president is unable or unwilling to provide leadership. The
more conscientious ministers such as Musikari Kombo, Anyang’ Nyong’o,
Mukhisa Kituyi, Raila Odinga, Najib Balala, and Kalonzo Musyoka have dis-
tanced themselves from the corruption associated with their Mount Kenya coun-
terparts and gone so far as demanding that the president sack their tainted
colleagues. The acrimony within the cabinet is exacerbated by differences over
the constitutional review debate and has seen the suspension of weekly cabinet
meetings. Second, given the blatant manner in which the new political elite have
reneged on their pre-election pledges to complete the constitutional review pro-
cess, fight corruption, and alleviate poverty, will they allow themselves to lose
power come 2007? The political situation in the country may portend a return to
the old repressive ways. Indeed, the arrest and arraignment of the journalists Da-
vid Makali, Kwamchetsi Makokha, and Kamau Ngotho for penning stories that
riled the regime suggests a re-emergence of intolerance of a free press amongst
some key members of the ruling elite. Finally there is the implication of the poli-
tics of continuity for the reform movement in Kenya. As James Orengo argues,
every nation experiences a critical moment of change. “We had those moments in
1992, 1997 and 2002. We compromised and sacrificed them on the altar of expe-
diency. What happened in 2002 was neither a regime change nor a change of
guard. The Moi state remained intact”.21 Having hijacked the movement for polit-
ical change, the propertied class now dominant in Kenya is reluctant to restruc-
ture the state to serve the wider interests of society. Material conditions are
unlikely to change and so the masses have lost out – hence the pervasive sense of
disillusion among the mass of Kenyan people.
Notes
1. See interview at http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/africa/july-dec02/kenya_12-30.html.
2. Equally deceptive is the argument that Kibaki’s tenure as Finance Minister witnessed strong
economic progress. The historical evidence available shows two things: the record of eco-
nomic growth was mixed, and his tenure also saw problems of corruption that had a negative
impact on the economy. For instance, by 1976 it was obvious that government over-expendi-
ture was a major problem contributing to the slow growth rate. While the Minister for Finance,
Mwai Kibaki, exuded confidence the Central Bank of Kenya released statistics that questioned
the performance of the economy. See a series of articles in the 1976 issue of Weekly Review,
April 5:22–26; April 26:6 and May 3:19; and Maxon and Ndege (1995) on the economic trend
in Kenya at the time.
3. As Ajulu (2000) demonstrates, this model was neither the best nor did it have wide support in
the country.
4. Karume, identified as one of Kenya’s most successful entrepreneurs, joined parliament in
1979 after defeating Mbiyu Koinange in the race for the Kiambaa parliamentary seat in
Kiambu. He was for a long time the chief interlocutor between Moi and the Kiambu elite in
the 1980s before he became the main financier of Kibaki’s party, the DP. In the heat of the
2002 general elections he switched back to KANU. Muhoho, Michuki and Keriri made their
debut in parliament in the 1983 election to represent Juja, Kangema, and Kirinyaga constituen-
cies. They were “closely connected to the Kenyatta `family’ and had risen to the forefront of
the civil service and the business world during the Kenyatta years”. Their election into parlia-
ment seemed to signal their new role as guardians and defenders of “the economic position of
the Kikuyu community”. For the quotes, see Throup and Hornsby (1998:34,36,37).
5. These include former PC Zachary Ogongo, former policeman Jeremiah Matagaro, former
chief of the Teachers Service Commission, Benjamin Sogomo, and two former permanent sec-
retaries Erastus Mwongera and Karega Mutahi.
6. On Kenyatta’s tribalism see Muigai (2004), and on Moi’s tribalism see Ndegwa
(1997:599–616). For a more comprehensive analysis of the ethnic structure and governance
see Kanyinga (2004), Ajulu (2002:251–68) and Nellis (1974).
7. The next three paragraphs are based on “Big Money Games that Run Kenya’s Politics”, The
Standard Online, January 7, 2005.
8. John Macharia is the managing director of Triple-A-Capital and son of businessman and me-
dia tycoon S.K. Macharia of Citizen Media Group; George Thuo is the chief executive of the
City Hoppa bus company, while Francis Michuki is a director of the Windsor Golf and Coun-
try Club and son of the current National Security Minister John Michuki. Jimmy Wanjigi is a
son of former Cabinet Minister Maina Wanjigi and Victor Gitobu is a former top executive at
Commercial Bank of Africa.
9. See Daily Nation, July 1, 2004 for the list of the new cabinet.
10. Stephen Orvis argues that civil society’s civic education programme in Kisii and Central
Kenya “makes a positive difference in citizens’ awareness and knowledge”. However, his
analysis is full of caveats that minimise the general applicability of his conclusions. He writes
that “while clearly reaching thousands of citizens, they [civil society] are still quite limited”
and proceeds to state that the “paper’s conclusions cannot be taken to be definitive” (Orvis
2003:265).
11. Chairs of the parliamentary select committee on constitutional reform, Muite and Murungi led
a pro-establishment struggle to retain the powers of the presidency and manoeuvred the review
process back to parliament. This contradicted their previous call for a people-driven constitu-
tion. When faced with challenges on this role, Muite famously asserted that his new role was
to protect the government of President Kibaki. For Murungi, see his book In the Mud of Poli-
tics (2000).
12. During the Goldenberg Commission of Inquiry, Gibson Kamau Kuria, as an Assisting Counsel
to the Commission, was accused of corruption and nepotism. In one such instance, Kuria was
accused and admitted to canvassing “to have his brother-in-law, Hezekiah Gichohi, appointed
receiver-manager for the Grand Regency Hotel”. It should be mentioned that ownership of the
hotel was among matters into which the commission was inquiring. See Daily Nation, June 25,
2004.
13. Robert Fatton Jr. (1999) went further in stating that “the debate on state and civil society had
reached a point of utter saturation and sterility and that no further intellectual advance was
possible in the foreseeable future”. We argue, however, that as democratic consolidation takes
place and erstwhile opposition groups take over power, further lessons in how civil society
transforms itself in Africa are in the offing and one cannot but continue to keep a tab on this
theme.
14. Wamalwa, Ngilu, and Raila had all run for president in 1997, splintering the opposition vote
among themselves and Kibaki and thus facilitating Moi’s victory.
15. The assassination of Odhiambo Mbai in September 2003 ranks as the first politically insti-
gated murder under the Kibaki regime.
16. For instance, one such vicious commentary came from Abdullah who contended that the re-
view team required a new chairman. He dismissed the commission chairman, Professor Yash
Pal Ghai as “an eccentric and self-serving chairman” who had “outlived his usefulness”. Ac-
cording to this view, Professor Ghai “lacks the temperament, neutrality, sagacity and consen-
sus-building trait that is important to the process”. Most intriguing, however, is that the
attributes that Professor Ghai was accused of lacking were the very attributes that had led to
his acceptance as chairman in the first place. See Daily Nation, September 25, 2003.
17. See Sunday Nation, February 13, 2005.
18. Daily Nation, November 27, 2003. One of the anonymous reviewers of this article argued that
such acts of corruption are strategies of the DP wing “within NARC to build up funds” in case
elections are called following the breakup of the shaky coalition.The writer explained this to
be an offshoot of the “political struggles within NARC” and suggested that had we paid more
attention “to the fundamentals of coalition government (in Kenya as anywhere else)” we
would have grasped this reality. Our point, however, is not to “grasp the reality” of corruption
and explain it in terms of the fundamentals of coalition politics. Rather, we aim to illustrate
that the Kibaki regime has perpetuated the same old habits they condemned under Moi. The
reviewer’s explanation is a perfect illustration of our point.
19. An attempt by the government to spend more than Ksh100 million on celebrations to mark the
country’s 40 years of independence was scuttled by public pressure after Assistant Minister
Kivutha Kibwana announced that the money for the festivities would come from the nation’s
Contingency Fund, which is meant to meet the cost of managing disasters. See Daily Nation,
November 26, 2003.
20. See Sunday Nation, January 2, 2005; Sunday Nation Online, February 27, 2005.
21. See interview in Sunday Standard, March 6, 2005.
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Standard, Nairobi
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Sunday Standard, Nairobi
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Bent on self-destruction: The Kibaki regime in

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