The NGO Factor in Africa: The Case of Arrested Development in Kenya by Maurice Nyamanga Amutabi

Author:Maurice Nyamanga Amutabi [Amutabi, Maurice Nyamanga]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Political Science, World, General, NGOs (Non-Governmental Organizations)
ISBN: 9780415979955
Google: Em25AAAAIAAJ
Goodreads: 2034414
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2006-01-15T11:38:56+00:00

Source: East African Statistical Department and Census Reports, cited in Ghai and McAuslan, p.36. * The first census figures for Africans in Kenya Colony were in 1948.

Land resettlement programs began outside the ‘White’ Highlands on a low key under the post-war African Land Development Program (ALDP). However, the most contentious factor of African entry to the ‘White’ Highlands was delayed until the policy was stipulated in the agreement that was reached at the 1960 Lancaster House conference. The conference resolved to Africanize the economy as a whole, paving the way for the implementation of the program of African resettlement in the White Highlands: the High Density and the Low Density programs. The resettlement program ended the hegemony of the longstanding settler bourgeoisie.

Reform of the political and economic institutions directly affected social institutions as well. Africanization ended racial discrimination in appointments to the apparatus of the state. An African majority in the LegCo from 1959 onwards helped to enact legislation and pass policies that ended discriminatory practices in ordinary social life: schools, hospitals, sports facilities, hotels and restaurants, residences, etc. The underlying feature of the colonial social institutions had been racial discrimination against the African and the destruction of the African traditional institutions. Moreover, the size of the European community diminished drastically due to massive emigration following independence. However, ethnicity intensified especially in relation to competition over state resources, including the control of the apparatus of the state. The latter was depicted right from the eve of independence in three main instances: the formation of African political parties, the drawing of regional boundaries, and appointments to positions in the public service. Ethnicity rather than racism became the basis for social hierarchy and discrimination. From the 1960s, those who had come from Harvard, Stanford, Princeton, Syracuse, Ohio, Oxford, Cambridge, Leeds, Manchester, London School of Economics, School of Oriental and African Studies will then dominate public events in Kenya. Majority of them were Ford and Rockefeller Foundation fellowship alumni, such as Josephat Karanja.

By the time of independence in December 1963, drastic reforms had been effected and imbued in the independence constitution: where the primary economic (distributive) goal was to provide equal opportunities to be achieved through the welfare state system, the right to private property (both individually and collectively), non-discrimination on any basis, especially religion, race, and ethnicity. The basic social institution was human dignity, defined in terms of social equity, freedoms, non-discrimination, and a good standard of living. Thus, the post-war reforms, particularly the independence constitution, had in essence transformed the basis of the social structure from accumulation and control to constitutional legitimacy. In other words, the demands of constitutional legitimacy and the actions of the state and the citizen (both individually or as organized groups) were to express the binary oppositional structures of—colonial state and post-colonial state.

The new structure was, however, stillborn and the transition from the colonial structure of control and accumulation to the post-independence structure of constitutional legitimacy was essentially a castle in the sky, as NGOs continued to influence and guide development, away from social welfare to capitalism.

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