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Politics in Kenya: The Development of Peasant Society

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2009

Colin Leys
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Extract

The central question which this article attempts to raise is how we should understand the social structure that is emerging from the neo-colonial pattern of change in Africa, and what implications it has for politics. In its simplest form, the question is how far a stratification system is developing which is likely to make for class formation, class consciousness, and a politics of class struggle; or how far stratification can be contained within a predominantly peasant society, expressed politically in patron-client relationships.

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Articles
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British Journal of Political Science , Volume 1 , Issue 3 , July 1971 , pp. 307 - 337
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1971

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References

1 On the ‘development of underdevelopment’ see especially Frank, Andre Gunder, Capitalism and Underdevelopment in Latin America (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1967), pp. 3–20.Google Scholar

2 Arrighi, Giovanni and Saul, John, ‘Socialism and Economic Development in Tropical Africa’, Journal of Modern African Studies, VI (07 1968), pp. 141–69CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and ‘Nationalism and Revolution in Sub-Saharan Africa’ in Miliband, R. and Saville, J., eds., The Socialist Register (London, 1969), pp. 137–88.Google Scholar

3 Mitrany, David, Marx Against the Peasant (New York: Collier Books, 1961)Google Scholar, and Moore, Barrington JrSocial Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy (Boston: Beacon Press, 1966).Google Scholar

4 Mitrany, , Marx Against the Peasant, p. 135.Google Scholar

5 Mitrany, , Marx Against the Peasant, p. 119.Google Scholar

6 Moore, , Social Origins, pp. 482–3.Google Scholar

7 The general theory involved here was made familiar by Baran, Paul A. in The Political Economy of Growth (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1957).Google Scholar

8 Statistical Abstract, 1969, Statistics Division, Ministry of Economic Planning and Development, Nairobi, 1969.

9 Republic of Kenya Development Plan 1970–4, para 2.82.

10 Development Plan 1970–4, Table 5.1.

11 This argument is ably summarized in Arrighi and Saul, ‘Socialism and Economic Development’.

12 Arrighi, and Saul, , ‘Nationalism and Revolution’, pp. 176–7.Google Scholar

13 Source: Development Plan 1970–4, Table 4.1. Total population in 1968 was estimated as 9.9 million.

14 Statistical Abstract, 1969, Table 67(b).

15 Out of a list of 50 directors with the most directorships of companies quoted on the Nairobi Stock Exchange in 1968, apart from officials representing government interests in various companies only two Kenyans of African origin (as the expression is) appeared. A study of the boards of individual expatriate-owned companies showed that it was fairly common for one or two Africans to have been invited to join; the two men in question were directors of 20 and 16 companies respectively. See Who Controls Industry in Kenya?; Report of a Working Party of th National Christian Council of Kenya, (Nairobi: East African Publishing House, 1968).Google Scholar

16 See Statistical Abstract, 1969, Table 67 (a).

17 Marris, P. and , H. C. A. Somerset in their study, African Businessmen: A study of Entrepreneurship and Development in Kenya (London: Routledge, and Nairobi: East African Publishing House, forthcoming)Google Scholar, found that just under three quarters of the 623 market businesses in rural areas for which they were able to estimate the rate of profit were earning profits of under shs. 300/- per month.

18 See also the data in Marris and Somerset on multiple ownership; 23 per cent of the market businessmen interviewed owned at least two businesses and 37 per cent of the more substantial

18 See also the data in Marris and Somerset on multiple ownership; 23 per cent of the market businessmen interviewed owned at least two businesses and 37 per cent of the more substantial businessmen who had received government credit from the Industrial and Commercial Development Corporation were owners or substantial partners in at least one other business besides the one in relation to which they were interviewed. Four per cent were owners or substantial partners in four or more businesses altogether. A third of the market businesses were owned by more than one person, and over a half of the businesses in receipt of government credit. Fifty-five men from one location (an area with a population of about 15,000 people) had interests in a total of 133 businesses altogether.

19 This is common knowledge but once again Marris and Somerset have put valuable figures on it. Only 14 per cent of ICDC-supported businessmen said they owned no land, and a third had large farms (i.e. farms over 20 acres).

20 Thirty-one per cent of Marris and Somerset's sample of market businessmen had no land, or only a minor shareholding in a farming company or cooperative. For the 25 per cent whose profits were over shs. 300/- per month, the proportion without land fell to 21 per cent.

21 The estimate is from the Economic Survey, 1970, Statistics Division, Ministry of Economic Planning and Development, Nairobi 1970, Table 9.1.

22 See the survey of 14 districts by Heyer, J., Ireri, D. and Moris, J., ‘Rural Development in Kenya’, Social Science Division, Institute for Development Studies, Nairobi 1969 (draft mimeo) p. 167;Google Scholar ‘the rate of remuneration most often given was between 1/50 and shs. 2/- per day. But many farmers also quoted between 50 cts. and shs. 1/50.’

23 Even in the most advanced districts the ratio of workers paid in cash to those paid in food, beer or exchange labour was not more than 1: 1; and for the 14 districts covered by the survey the ratio was 1:2.3; see Heyer, et al. , ‘Rural Development’, Table 7.16, p. 172.Google Scholar

24 Based on the 1969 figure of 178,700 for private sector employment for agriculture and forestry in Economic Survey 1970, Table 9.2.

25 Agricultural Censuses, 1965–67, Large Farm Areas, Statistics Division, Ministry of Economic Planning and Development, Nairobi, n.d., Table 31(b). The figure of 84,000 families is for families ‘resident on farm where one member is employed on farm’. The relationship between this statistic and the probable number of farm labourers in 1967 is not easy to establish. Down to 1966 large farmers had been asked to declare the number of resident labourers and for that year the return gave a total of 42,300, exactly half the number of the families having a member employed the following year! No doubt the patent unreliability of the resident labour return led to its being dropped in 1967. The question remains what proportion of large farm labourers do not have families with them working their plots. A study of labourers on large farms in Trans-Nzoia (R. Posner, ‘Preliminary Results of a Survey of the Labor Force on Mixed Farms in Trans-Nzoia’, Institute for Development Studies, University College, Nairobi, Discussion Paper No. 57, mimeo, 1967) implied that all workers had plots and themselves worked an average of 6.5 hours a week on them.

26 The respondents in Posner's survey also answered questions about whether they would be willing to increase their labour time on their shambas (personal plots) if the price of cash crops rose 20 per cent. Forty per cent said they would, compared with 30 per cent who would be willing to work extra hours on their employer's farm for a 50 per cent increase in the marginal rate of pay; and 68 per cent said they had no plans for the future, compared with 28 per cent who hoped to accumulate enough money to buy land or go into business. All this suggests that for most of them the shamba was at least as important as the employment offered them by the large farm, and that the way of life it represented was not dissimilar from that of people with very small plots in the African small farming areas who supplied labour to their neighbours. For an earlier account of life as a farm labourer on a European farm as an extension of the life of the labourer's home location, see Michael G. Whisson, ‘The Journeys of the Joramogi’, East African Institute of Social Research Conference Papers, Kampala, July 1961. See also K. K. Sillitoe, ‘Local Organisation in Nyeri’, EAISR Conference Papers, July 1962, who reported that his informants said that ‘the chief attraction of the Rift (sc. getting a job on a European farm) is not the salary but getting a plot’.

27 See Whisson, ‘Journeys’, and Sillitoe, ‘Local Organisation’, also Ominde, S. H., Land and Population Movements in Kenya (London: Heinemann, 1969), Chapter 7.Google Scholar

28 See Ross, Marc H., ‘Politics and Urbanisation: Two Communities in Nairobi’, unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Northwestern University, 1968, p. 70, Table 3.1.Google Scholar

29 Weisner, Thomas S., ‘One Family, Two Households: A Rural-Urban Network Model of Urbanism’, University Social Science Council Conference Papers, Nairobi, 12 1969.Google Scholar

30 Ross, , ‘Politics and Urbanisation’, pp. 45 and 68.Google Scholar

31 Ross, , ‘Politics and Urbanisation’, pp. 73–4Google Scholar; see also Laing, Brian, ‘Some Aspects of Urbanisation in Machakos Township’, Discussion Paper, Cultural Division, Institute for Development Studies, University College, Nairobi, 04 1970.Google Scholar

32 Ross, , ‘Politics and Urbanisation’, pp. 221–3.Google Scholar

33 For illustrations of this, see Sillitoe, K. K., ‘Land and the Community in Nyeri’, EAISR Conference Papers, January 1963.Google Scholar

34 Laing, , ‘Some Aspects of Urbanisation’, p. 7Google Scholar, says: ‘In the township are families who expect to live there for the rest of their days for the express reason that there was not enough land for them. The land is still uppermost in the minds of urban workers of lower occupational categories and very, very few would conceive of abandoning it voluntarily for an exclusively urban life…. As a man's salary increases, he is less dependent on income from his shamba to supplement what he earns in town. (In fact, the less qualified the worker the lower his wages and the more likely he is to consider his urban income, a supplement to shamba income) … Ironically, those urban workers least dependent on their shamba incomes are those most able to improve their shambas, buy more land and employ agricultural labourers. Urban workers with even professional qualifications retain interest in their rural holdings and in maximizing production.’

35 Marris and Somerset provide an interesting discussion of the reasons for Kikuyu predominance in commerce and industry in chapter 3 of The African Businessman.

36 Heyer, et al. , ‘Rural Development’, pp. 39–42.Google Scholar

37 E.g., Seidman, Ann, ‘The Dual Economies of East Africa’, East Africa Journal, VII (05 1970). P. 18Google Scholar, and Arrighi and Saul, ‘Nationalism and Revolution’, note 109.

38 Kenya African Agricultural Sample Census, 1960–1966, Economics and Statistics Division, Nairobi, 1962, p. 19, Text Table 14.

39 Fliedner, H., ‘Some Legal Aspects of Land Reform in Kenya’, EAISR Conference Papers, June 1963, p. 4.Google Scholar

40 Sorrenson, M. P. K., Land Reform in the Kikuyu Country (Nairobi: Oxford University Press, 1967), p. 217.Google Scholar Initially a subsistence holding was defined as three acres in Fort Hall and Nyeri and four in Kiambu, but later the authorities ‘took the easy way out of agreeing to all applications.’

41 Sorrenson, , Land Reform, pp. 216 and 225.Google Scholar The law also provided that the person inheriting a plot which traditionally would have jointly inherited with others should pay them compensation. As few plots could generate enough income to pay this, and as the registration of a new owner on succession also involved a fresh registration fee, fewer and fewer people bothered to register changes, ‘not notifying the death of landowners and unofficially subdividing the land between all heirs who wish(ed) to cultivate it’. Recent work in Kisii by Rodney Wilson has also shown that less than 1.0 per cent of successions have been registered there.

42 Sorrenson, , Land Reform, p. 233.Google Scholar

43 Sorrenson, , Land Reform, p. 218;Google Scholar the case studies of individual families provided by Sillitoe in ‘Land and the Community in Nyeri’ and by Stanley, M., ‘Heritage of Change’, EAISR Conference Papers, 06 1961, bring this out very forcibly.Google Scholar

44 Marris and Somerset, The African Businessman, chapter 5.

45 Sorrenson, , Land Reform, p p. 218–36.Google Scholar By 1970 the District Land Boards would not normally sanction any sale of an entire plot of land unless the owner could prove that he also held the freehold title to some other plot: this was certainly not a policy sanctioned by the Land Control Act!

46 Cf. Moore, , Social Origins, p. 8.Google Scholar The major qualification to the proposition that there is little room for the expansion of capitalist farming in the consolidated areas of Central Province is the so-called bracken zone, the land close to the forest, at about 8,000 feet, which is too wet and acid for satisfactory food crops and too high for coffee. Here businessmen and professional workers have been buying out subsistence farmers, who are usually found plots on settlement schemes elsewhere, and replanting the land to tea and good quality grass for grade dairy cattle. The area involved is rather restricted and in one location the process appeared to have been virtually completed by 1970, but it could be the basis for a significant ‘ring’ of small capitalist farming along the high ground round the edges of the former Reserves. I am indebted for this point to Dr. H. C. A. Somerset, and for much other invaluable information and insight into the social and economic structure of this area.

47 Heyer, et al. , ‘Rural Development’, p. 38Google Scholar, Table 3.4. It also seems to me probable that the extent of multiple plot ownership in Kikuyuland has been underestimated by some writers in the past. The Kikuyu clans were extremely dispersed as a result of the social upheavals which the people had experienced and many people have told me that during the consolidation operation relatives did their best to stake out a claim for each other in the areas where they were living, both from a sense of obligation and to try to ensure the future cohesion of the lineage. The result was that many individuals held titles to more than one plot in different locations.

48 Ruthenberg, H., African Agricultural Production Development Policy in Kenya 1952–1965, IFO-Institut fur Wirtschaftsforschung, Munchen, Africa-Studien; (Berlin: Springer-Verlag, 1967), p. 88.Google Scholar

49 Economic Survey 1970, p. 73, Table 4.12.

50 Development Plan 1970–4, p. 207.

51 Development Plan 1970–4, p. 200. The state farms are on the ol Kalou Salient in Nyandarua District. Like so many other schemes of this nature in other countries, it has run at a substantial loss (Plan, p. 208). The settlers have 1½–2½ acre plots of their own.

52 Ruthenberg, , African Agricultural… Policy, p. 69, Table 16.Google Scholar

53 Ruthenberg, , African Agricultural… Policy, p. 66.Google Scholar

54 Ruthenberg, , African Agricultural… Policy, p. 64.Google Scholar

55 Heyer, et al. , ‘Rural Development’, p. 13.Google Scholar

56 Calculated from Department of Settlement Five- Year Review and Annual Report, 1967–1968, Nairobi 1969, Appendix L, p. 47.

57 The first official recognition of this seems to be given in the Development Plan, 1970–4, p. 201, which describes them as ‘relatively large farms, the average farm size being about 12 hectares’. This is by way of preface to the discussion of the Squatter Settlement Programme, with farm sizes averaging 4.5 hectares, and represents a very big change in the official image of the million-acre scheme; suggesting that the agricultural aspect of settlement has at last been decisively replaced in the official mind by the social aspect.

58 Sorrenson, M. P. K., Origins of European Settlement in Kenya (Nairobi: Oxford University Press, 1969), p. 72.Google Scholar

59 Ruthenberg, African Agricultural … Policy, p. 88. It is true, of course, that the settlement scheme land was encumbered with repayments for the purchase and for a development loan to develop it, but as indicated below, many farmers regarded these debts as unfair and repayments lagged so far behind that a good deal of the debt was rescheduled and seemed likely ultimately to be written off.

60 Laing, , ‘Some Aspects of Urbanisation’, p. 6Google Scholar, mentions two such cases in his Machakos labour-force sample.

61 Ruthenberg, , African Agricultural …Policy, p. 73.Google Scholar A survey of settlement schemes from 1964–5 to 1966–7 showed that the average low-density scheme farm had a lower level of net profit per farm than the smaller high-density scheme farms (shs. 1,075 P.a. compared with shs. 1,726), but over four times as much non-farm income (shs. 2,608 p.a. compared with shs. 625), which is consistent with the view that low-density plots tended to go to people with jobs or close relatives of such people. See Economic Survey of Settlement Schemes: Preliminary Results, Statistics Division, Ministry of Economic Planning and Development, 1970.

62 W. Nguyo, ‘Some Socio-Economic Aspects of Land Settlement in Kenya’, University Social Science Council Conference Papers, December 1966, Kampala; a report of a survey of families on the Mweiga high-density scheme in Nyeri, carried out in May–June 1965. Average plot sizes in Mweiga are 16 acres.

63 The proportion of farm work done by hired labour appeared to be higher in the farms in Nguyo's sample than on farms in the former Reserves, which might be due to a number of the settlers being in reality sort of managers for farmers or businessmen resident elsewhere, but the comparison (with data from the Economic Survey of Central Province, Statistics Division, Ministry of Economic Planning and Development, 1968, p. 15, Tables 18 and 19) is not very conclusive.

64 For instance there is a keen desire among residents in the Reserves to expand secondary school facilities so that settlers who have left to live on settlement schemes, and who are mainly on the same schemes together, can send their children ‘home’ to be educated.

65 Lindsell, M., ‘Legal Aspects of African Large Farms’, unpublished MS. cited by Ruthenberg, African Agricultural … Policy, p. 91.Google Scholar

66 Some Data From a Farm management survey covering 82 African operated Large-scale Farms in the Trans-Nzoia District, 1967/8; Statistics Division, Ministry of Economic Planning and Development, February 1970.

67 Ruthenberg, , African Agricultural … Policy, pp. 93–4.Google Scholar

68 See Njenga, J. P., ‘Some Aspects of Agricultural Development in Nakuru District’ in Economic Review of Agriculture (Nairobi: Ministry of Agriculture, 1969), p. 42.Google Scholar

69 Redfield, Robert, Peasant Society and Culture (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960). p. 77.Google Scholar

70 See Mitrany, , Marx Against the Peasant, p. 120.Google Scholar

71 Moore, , Social Origins, p. 190.Google Scholar

72 Moore, , Social Origins, pp. 27–8.Google Scholar

73 Rado, Emil, ‘Employment, Incomes Policy: Kenya's New Development Plan’, East Africa Journal, VII (03 1970), p. 13.Google Scholar

74 Rado, , ‘Employment’, p. 15.Google Scholar

75 See especially Saul, John S. and Woods, Roger, ‘African Peasantries’, USSC Conference papers, 12 1969, p. 3.Google Scholar

76 Redfield, , Peasant Society, p. 20 and chapter 2Google Scholar, and Wolfe, Eric R., Peasants (New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1966), pp. 9–17.Google Scholar

77 Lenin, V. I., The Development of Capitalism in Russia (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1967) pp. 542–6:Google Scholar ‘We are consequently faced with an already crystallized class of workers, possessing no homes of their own and virtually no property, a class bound by no ties and living from hand to mouth. And its origin does not date from yesterday.’

78 Sandberg's, Audun study of entrepreneurs in Meru suggested that there was already a ‘group-monopoly of the whole business sector. Those who are not already in will remain outside, and those who have no land, no job, will have now nowhere to start, unless some of the “big-men” offer them a job in their fluctuating businesses.’ (‘Generation conflict and Entrepreneurship in Meru’, Staff Paper, Institute for Development Studies, Nairobi, December 1969, p. 16.)Google Scholar

79 Redfield, , Peasant Society, p. 39.Google Scholar

80 For a remarkable example of this see the interview with the HonKariuki, J. M., MP entitled ‘My Journey Down the Avenue to Success’, in the Sunday Nation, 22 06 1969Google Scholar, in which among other things he explained how the ownership of a private airplane enabled him better to serve the public in the rural areas.

81 Nguyo, , ‘Some Socio-Economic Aspects’, p. 31, Table 30.Google Scholar

82 Moreover the average size of holding was greatly reduced by the peri-urban development outside Nairobi City boundaries in Kiambu district.

83 Economic Survey of Central Province, p. 69.

84 Economic Survey of Central Province, p. 61, Table 72.

85 Cf. an interesting interview in the Sunday Nation, 31 May 1970, with Mr. Murgor (who retired at the age of 45 as a Provincial Commissioner to become an MP and to run his large farm in Uasin Gishu District) in which he discusses ‘the squatter problem’: ‘… even if it [the Government] had money to purchase all the land available [for resettling squatters], the problem could never be solved completely, as the number of squatters is increasing daily’. The District Commissioner, Uasin Gishu, was reported two weeks earlier as ‘appealing’ to squatters on the settlement schemes ‘to vacate the farms and give the farmers time and space to develop their farms.’ (Daily Nation, 14 May 1970.)

86 This emerges very strikingly from the case studies already cited in note 43, above.

87 Cf. Moore's point that the caste system in India provided a recognized social niche even for the untouchable, whereas in China as many as 50 per cent of the inhabitants of many villages had been reduced in the 1920s not only to poverty but also to a position of ‘social marginality’; Social Origins, p p. 333–41, and 219–20.

88 Redfield's discussion of the debate on whether a ‘love of the soil’ is characteristic of peasant culture is relevant here; a sense of the inevitability of peasant life may reinforce the tendency to ascribe value to it, even for those who would like to escape from it. See below, note 98.

89 There may also be a growth of a distinctive peasant culture, for instance a series of publications in Kikuyu by the Gokaara Press in Karatina, dealing with things like how to run a business and Kikuyu traditions, and including at least one Kikuyu novel.

90 Output per acre on holdings under 4 acres in Central Province was almost twice that on holdings of 8 or more acres in 1963–1964. (Economic Survey of Central Province, p. 25, Table 35.)

91 The parallel with the position described by Mitrany in Europe, Eastern after 1917 (Marx Against the Peasant, pp. 116–17)Google Scholar is very strong indeed: ‘The real change was not from large scale to small scale, from organized capitalistic to simple peasant farming, but rather from farming for the market to farming for subsistence… (The peasant) took to market only the surplus, or perhaps something more if he were in need of cash. A freer use of their crops or even a larger yield meant first of all a higher consumption among the peasants themselves, who formerly had gone short of food or had been living on poor food.’

92 Lamb, G. B., ‘Politics and Rural Development in Murang'a District, Kenya’, D.Phil. dissertation, University of Sussex, 1970.Google Scholar

93 This took place in June 1970. It very likely reflected chiefly the interests of the new group of small gentlemen farmers keeping grade cattle in the bracken zone (see note 46 above).

94 Cf. Leys, Colin, ‘Kenya's Second Development Plan: Political and Administrative Aspects’, East Africa Journal, VII (03 1970), 6–12, pp. 7–8.Google Scholar

95 For the composition of the urban worker's budget in 1957–8 see Statistical Abstract, p. 176, Table 197. The income transfer from consumers to large scale food producers, however, was on a massive scale. Lawrence Smith estimated that over £650,000 would be transferred by domestic wheat consumers in 1969 to growers of wheat, 60 per cent of which was produced by 400 large farmers, in the form of a consumer price fixed well above the import parity price. Similar large transfers occurred with maize and sugar (‘Resource Allocation, Income Redistribution and Agricultural Pricing Policies in Kenya’, USSC Conference papers, December 1969, p. 2).

96 The Harambee school movement is itself a prime example of what Holmquist has called ‘pre-emptive development’, in which by starting a project with local contributions the peasants exert pressure on government to ‘take it over’ and thus bring resources in the area. See Holmquist, F., ‘Policy Implementation at the Grass Roots Level’, in Hyden, G. and Jackson, R., eds., Development Administration in Kenya, (Nairobi: Oxford University Press, 1970).Google Scholar

97 Redfield, , Peasant Society, pp. 65–6.Google Scholar

98 Anderson, John E., ‘Primary School Leavers in Kenya’, Discussion Paper, Institute for Development Studies, Nairobi, December 1966, pp. 7 and 23.Google Scholar

99 Redfield, , Peasant Society, p. 77.Google Scholar

100 Returns of 20–25 per cent per annum on capital invested are expected by most companies; see Who Controls Industry in Kenya?, p. 155.

101 Ghai, Dharam P., in ‘Incomes Policy in Kenya: Need, Criteria and Machinery’ (Institute for Development Studies, Nairobi, Discussion Paper, June 1968)Google Scholar, estimated average urban unskilled workers wages at twice that of the average peasant household, even if the fact that the peasant figure represents the work of the whole family is disregarded (see pp. 2–3).

102 The Murang'a study by G. B. Lamb (note 92 above) brings out the ways in which ‘personal discounts’ to committee members of co-operative societies on overpriced society purchases have also operated as an unofficial, not to say illegal, cess for the benefit of the local rich peasants who get onto the committees. See also Saul, John S., ‘Marketing Co-operatives in a Developing Country: The Tanzanian Case’, USSC Conference papers, December 1969Google Scholar, which describes a situation very similar to that in Kenya.

103 Development Plan 1966–70, p. 133.

104 East African Standard, 10 February 1970, and 28 September 1970.

105 Department of Settlement Five Year Review, p. 36, Appendix F; the point was taken up by the Kenya Peoples Union in the ‘Wananchi (People's) Declaration’ in 1969: ‘It is one thing to borrow and repay for productive assets, it is quite another to borrow huge sums to buy your own land back, and sums which promptly leave the country.’

106 The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, Marx, and Engels, , Selected Works (Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1962), p. 335.Google Scholar

107 Frank, Andre Gunder, Capitalism and Underdevelopment, pp. 16–17Google Scholar. On party politics based on dyadic ties see Lande, Carl, Leaders, Factions and Parties: The Structure of Phillippine Politics, (New Haven: Yale South-East Asian Studies Program, 1965)Google Scholar, and on clientelism generally see Powell, John Duncan, ‘Peasant Society and Clientelist Polities’, American Political Science Review, LXIV (06 1970), pp. 411–25.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

108 Officially sanctioned in the sense that the President, for example, asked the then KANU backbench leader Bildad Kaggia in a speech in 1965 what he had done for himself, and cited other leaders of the nationalist movement who had acquired farms and businesses as examples to be emulated.

109 See, e.g., his speech on Madaraka Day reported in the East African Standard, 2 June 1970.

110 Moore, , Social Origins, p. 206.Google Scholar

111 Most of the KPU leaders detained in 1969 had been released by the end of 1970 and Luo spokesmen had pledged that the remaining detainees would be loyal to KANU if they were released.

112 Sessional Paper No. 10 of 1965 on African Socialism and its Application to Planning in Kenya referred to the possibility of a ceiling on land holdings and the 1970–1974 Development plan stated that a limit would be imposed but made no further mention of it. Backbench MPs elected in December 1969, frequently called for such a ceiling and it was a major recommendation of the Report of the Select Committee on Unemployment (National Assembly, Nairobi, 3 December 1970), p. 11.

113 Moore, Social Origins; Alavi, H., ‘Peasants and Revolution’, Socialist Register, 1965, pp. 241–75Google Scholar; Wolfe, E. R., ‘On Peasant Rebellions’, International Social Science Journal, XXI (1969), 286–93.Google Scholar