The development projects that have been initiated in northern Kenya over the past decade are indicative of the promise of a new democratic ethos in the country. The various “flagship” projects — roads, an airport, infrastructure… — formally break the link with northern Kenya’s heritage of a past of deliberate marginalization.

These changes are attributed to the revival of a robust human rights programming, advocacy and implementation at regional and national level; the 2010 constitution, transitional justice mechanisms (the national cohesion and re-integration process and the Truth Justice and Reconciliation Commission processes); Sessional Paper No. 10 of 2012; Vision 2030; a changing understanding of the value of land and other forms of productivity; and the strong advocacy work of northern Kenya’s civil society and allied pro-democracy reformers of the last two decades.

In northern Kenya the space for democratic engagement and respect for human rights was constricted from the word go.

New narratives are emerging in which socio-economic and governance prospects for northern Kenya are clothed in positive practical experiences. Northern Kenya is not only poised to rightfully partake in its democratic share but also to impact Kenya’s democratic profile in a substantive manner. But will these new trends endure?

The colonial Northern Frontier District

The future of northern Kenya was inauspicious from the start: Kenya became a British protectorate in 1890 and a crown colony in 1920. In the intervening period, the British struggled to create a buffer territory between the Italians and Ethiopians on the one side and the settled southern territory on the other. The move was prompted by rivalries between Italian Somaliland, the Abyssinian Empire and the British East Africa Protectorate. The rivalry was caused, in particular, by Abyssinia’s worrisome expansion southwards that started in 1895. The Northern Frontier District (NFD) ended up being the buffer zone. The NFD comprised that swath of territory comprising of upper eastern region, north-eastern region and the northern Rift Valley.

The NFD was declared a “closed district” to Kenyans from the south, who required special permits to visit. This resulted in the perception by the locals that they were not part of the “Building Kenya “project.

Between 1941 and 1950, with the exception of French Somaliland, all Somali territories were administered by the British. With the fall of Italian forces in 1941, the British could now expand their economic and political policies across all Somali territories and the Bevin Plan to unify all Somali territories under Britain was adopted. This inspired Somalis to seriously begin to consider the idea of a Pan-Somali nation.

Having been determined by the British to be a “wasteland” from which “no resources” could be extracted, it followed that, in the view of the colonialists, the territory warranted little investment being nothing but a financial drain. In the 1920s, the most the colonial authorities could get out of the drylands of northern Kenya was the livestock (30 cattle and 50 sheep) that the communities paid every year as tribute. However, it soon emerged that the Somali community was defaulting, putting a strain between the locals and the authorities.

The NFD was declared a “closed district” to Kenyans from the south, who required special permits to visit.

Social services were essentially non-existent. There were no hospitals built in the early years of colonial rule. Education lagged behind as there was no school in the province until 1946 when the first one was opened in Isiolo. In any case, to Muslim communities, schools were deemed to be the proselytizing agents of Christianity. Even the Christian missions were not permitted in the NFD since the British feared they would generate aspirations in the locals that that they would not be able to fulfil. Quranic schools could be found in every home where a Maalim taught the Quran and the hadiths (Prophet Mohammed’s teachings). There was only one provincial hospital which was located in Isiolo whose one doctor would make visits to the districts. A few trunk roads had started being built in the 20s that linked major towns like Wajir and Garissa.

The reality was obviously different in the south of the colony. On reaching Isiolo, a community member travelling south would declare that “they had reached Kenya. This was a matter of them being conscious of the fact of their difference and understanding that their loyalty would be questioned by what they called the “down Kenya” authorities on account of their irredentist aspirations.

By the 1920s northern Kenya had already been relegated to a future full of arbitrary pre- and post-independence policy-making, and unaccountable bureaucracies with their attendant misuse of power. The link between governance and civil society participation was a mirage. Apart from having to contend with unjust legal systems, the residents of northern Kenya did not participate in decision-making. NFD was essentially characterized by almost nothing else other than gross socio-economic, cultural and political marginalisation. It was clear to all that the region was not to be a welcome and integral part of the new Kenyan “nation-building project”. As long as NFD residents paid their taxes and conflict among them did not arise, they were left to their own devices.

State of emergency

The British held a referendum in 1962 with the objective of seeking to find out if northern Kenya residents preferred territorial unity with the young Somali nation to the north or with the future republic of Kenya. Residents overwhelmingly voted to secede and join Somalia. Jomo Kenyatta’s response was unequivocal: “Not an inch of Kenya” would be taken way. A four-year guerrilla war ensued involving sections of northern Kenya residents. It is reported that by the time the Shifta (Amharic for bandit) war technically ended in November 1967, nearly 2,000 people had been killed.

On reaching Isiolo, a community member travelling south would declare that “they had reached Kenya.

The Kenyan government declared a state of emergency on 28 December 1963, barely a fortnight after Kenya became independent. This marked a turning point in the relationship between the Kenyan government and north-eastern Kenya. The declaration of the state of emergency had been prompted by the formation of an alliance between the Gabra, Borana, Rendille and Somali pastoralist communities that was expressed in the form of a political party called the Northern Kenya Progressive Peoples Party (NPPP) which, since 1960 had become the vanguard for agitating for the secession of the region from Kenya. Perceived to have been the main agitators for secession, suspicion regarding the political views and citizenship of Kenyan Somalis has endured.

Social exclusion and marginalization

In northern Kenya the space for democratic engagement and respect for human rights was constricted from the word go. The colonial authorities had little time to foster inter-community harmony, instead forcing these communities to submit to the status quo. Statehood as an idea was in this case bereft of intercommunity coherence. The colonial authorities proceeded to allocate development resources to what were perceived as “high potential” areas that would provide good returns on investment because they had adequate water and fertile soils. This essentially consigned the so-called “arid lands” to social, economic and political marginalization and infrastructure development and other basic services were to be denied to the perceived “non-productive regions” for many decades to come. This is how northern Kenya — from Turkana and Pokot in the north-west to Mandera and Wajir — came to represent the perfect case of historically marginalized societies in Kenya.

Since the region was primarily governed from a security point of view, conversations around basic needs were barely allowed. It is for this reason that Hannah Whitaker argues that while scholarship predominantly and conveniently cites Somali nationalism and the influence of the external Somali state as the main driving factor for the Somali movement to secede, little is said of the internal socio-economic grievances that the northern Kenya residents then held. These long-standing grievances remain pertinent to this day.  As Dominic Burbidge equally notes, the concerns of the communities in the north “include land access for cattle grazing, availability of water points and access to markets”. He adds that cattle rustling in the north during the colonial period was caused by poorly regulated borders with Somalia.

What is surprising is that successive post-independent governments have adopted the colonizer’s attitudes and approaches towards the region, including the divide-and-rule strategies that were frequently employed by the colonial authorities. This has come at great expense to Kenya’s nation-building project and to the livelihoods, freedoms and democratic rights of the residents of northern Kenya.

The multidimensional nature of the marginalization of the north has been documented in its social, political and economic aspects. Being both the cause and effect of marginalization, poverty cuts across such factors as gender, geography, and ethnic groups, among others. A case study of social exclusion and marginalization, the region has suffered exclusion from development projects and basic services that would ordinarily be availed to other regions or ethnic groups. Economic and social marginalization has prevented the residents of this region from accessing basic services, and has denied them income opportunities and even access to jobs. The extent to which various other Kenyan regions have been resourced and developed over the years can be gleaned from the glaring disparities reflected in GPD records. For instance, for decades before the democratic transition that brought Mwai Kibaki to power, nearly 45 per cent of the nation’s employment was based in only 15 towns. This exacerbated the ethno-regional profiles of political and economic discrimination.

It was the practice since colonial times for Kenyans from the south to be appointed to head the provincial administration and the security forces up in north. Local leaders with a better appreciation of the local dynamics were left out of key decision-making processes.  Those with a little education could be appointed chiefs and sub-chiefs but were more often named to even less prominent positions. The state preferred to consult its external allies for assistance whenever it was confronted with an issue. Notable appointments of northern Kenyans emerged after the failed 1982 coup. The coup prompted the then president Daniel arap Moi to begin to systematically build alliances with marginalized communities such as the Maasai and Somali. Hussein Maalim Mohamed was appointed Minister of State in 1983. His brother Mahmoud Mohamed was named Chief of General staff in 1985.

Old narratives and alternative narratives 

A critical impediment to realizing a democratic and equitable governance and development system in northern Kenya has had to do with lingering misconceptions by the policy makers, media and other development actors about pastoralists, their culture and livelihoods. These misunderstandings often dovetailed with neo-classical economics that linked exclusion and social inequality to perceived individual or group character flaws, or strengths, or culture. Certain groups, for instance, would be socially excluded based on what the dominant interests felt were their own faults.

It was the practice since colonial times for Kenyans from the south to be appointed to head the provincial administration and the security forces up in north.

The centuries-old practices and way of life of pastoralists contribute to food security stabilization in the drylands ecology and provide them with adaptive skills to confront a variable climate. Yet policy makers do not see this. Instead, they hold that it is a “backward, wasteful and irrational livelihood” that occurs in “fragile, degraded and unproductive ecosystems that simply generates trouble to non-pastoralists”. Edward Oyugi explains that the 2010 constitution provided for devolution as a policy instrument, broadly and vaguely intended to reign in runaway marginalization and the social exclusion of different actors of the Kenya society on the basis of such factors as ethnicity, region, gender, negation, urban versus rural and class and other identity forms. This was specially to assist us move away from the neoclassical thinking where we blamed or celebrated others based on non-functional attributes. Thus the need to stop thinking about the industrious-crafty Kikuyu, the happy-go-lucky coastal, the pleasure-loving Luo, the culturally backward Maasai, the obedient Kamba, etc.

Pastoralists have always been portrayed as permanently embroiled in conflicts when they are not victims of droughts. Depicted as largely lacking agency, their own adaptive capacity is rarely acknowledged.

Agitation for democratic reforms and social inclusion

During the constitutional reform processes, Kenyans agitated for the removal of the centralized political system, strongly rooting for a decentralised system to take its place. Kenyans fervently called for the equitable representation of all regions in national government. Pastoralists from the north joined other communities that had missed out on any significant and representative appointments to national government offices. An example of the inequitable allocation of national government positions can be gleaned from Jomo Kenyatta’s presidency during which 28.5 per cent of cabinet ministers were Kikuyu. During the presidency of Daniel Arap Moi the percentage of Kikuyus in the cabinet dropped to just about 4 per cent while that of the Kalenjin rose sharply to 22 per cent. In addition, in the 70s, 37.5 per cent of permanent secretaries were from the Kikuyu community while 8.3 per cent were from the Kalenjin community. In 2001 the percentage of permanent secretaries from the Kikuyu community dropped to 8.7 per cent while that of the Kalenjin rose to 34.8 percent. This was again reversed when Mwai Kibaki, a Kikuyu, ascended to the presidency in 2001.

Changes in policy, law, rights programming and practice

Essentially, the democratizing project in Kenya and elsewhere was hugely aided by the strongly revived human rights programming, advocacy and activism that was experienced in Africa from 1990’s onwards. It was from this human rights language that a raft of regional and national legislations and policy frameworks were promulgated from the year 2001 onwards. This set the pace for the categorical recognition of the economic, social and cultural rights of pastoralists and other minorities. Significantly, most of these legal and policy instruments which came to benefit pastoralists and other minorities were as a result of this robust human rights re-awakening across Africa. This human rights revival was largely driven by the newly formed continental structures such as New African Partnership for Development (NEPAD — which came to represent a new vision for Africa’s development). During this period, all states within the African continent had become parties to international human rights conventions. In the years after 2001, states were obligated to respect the principles and objectives of NEPAD. Critical to some of these principles were the primacy of international human rights law which essentially provides that that legal obligations deriving from international human rights law have primacy over any other obligation. States were therefore under obligation to ensure that all their commitments — economic, financial, and commercial programmes — were aligned with international human rights law. Moreover, NEPAD established accessible, transparent and effective mechanisms to assess the exercise of responsibility, be it at the national level or at the level of the institution. These commitments were to be assessed through the procedures of the African Peer Review Mechanisms.

Understanding the existing human rights normative frameworks and their legal obligations by states for the purposes of advocating for government compliance became a requirement for the marginalized groups in northern Kenya and other parts of the country. This came in handy whenever they needed to engage in strategic litigation at various junctures in their efforts to seek redress for the violation of their economic, social, cultural and development rights. A number of communities that lodged complaints with the regional human rights mechanisms received precedent-setting decisions.

Pastoralists have always been portrayed as permanently embroiled in conflicts when they are not victims of droughts.

In the Endorois case against the Government of Kenya, the African Commission on Human and Peoples Rights elaborated the scope of the right to development. Article 22 of the African Charter states that all peoples have the economic, social and cultural right to development. The 2010 constitution seeks to strengthen national unity through building diversity as a crucial object of devolution. By recognizing the rights of collective identities, it vindicates the significance of self-governance and improved participation in decision-making as rights of communities. To this extent, it categorically identifies pastoralists as a collective identity whether nomadic or a “settled community that because of its relative geographical location has experienced only marginal participation in the integrated social, and economic life of Kenya as a whole”.  The constitution further extends opportunities for redress for the marginalization and social exclusion that pastoralists and any other minority groups may have experienced when it makes provisions for affirmative action programmes in matters relating to representation in governance and in other areas related to education, access to health, employment, infrastructure and water.

Fortunes of Kenya’s first democratic transition

The 2002 democratic transition in Kenya under President Mwai Kibaki, and the attendant transitional mechanisms following the 2007 post-election violence had transformative policy ramifications for the future of northern Kenya. The transition provided hope and impetus for pastoralists and other minorities to advocate for their rights. In effect, policies directed at combating the social exclusion of certain groups began to be designed and implemented. These policies were couched in a language that saw social exclusion and inequality as not being merely a function of the operation of ideological choices, systems or structural conditions but as unjustifiable human rights violations under many human rights conventions. In the main, they emphasized recognition of the principle of non-discrimination and equality as fundamental elements of international human rights law which meant that states could not engage in the mischief of justifying less development for some groups or regions for whatever reason as has been the case previously. The principle of indivisibility of all human rights reinforced this position, clarifying the universality, indivisibility, and interdependent nature of rights. The preamble of the African Charter on Human and Peoples Rights, notes:

“Civil and political rights cannot be dissociated from economic, social and cultural rights in their conception as well as universality and the satisfaction of economic social and cultural rights is a guarantee for the enjoyment of civil and political rights”.

The African Union Policy Framework on Pastoralism (2010) set the stage not only for the recognition of pastoralism but also for the inclusion in the constitutional and legal texts of states. The enactment and implementation of the National Policy for the Sustainable Development of Northern Kenya and Other Arid Lands (Sessional Paper No 12), as endorsed by the cabinet in 2012, followed suit and reversed the provisions of Sessional Paper No.10 of 1965 that had entrenched discrimination in resource allocation based on perceived “high potential”, those associated with crop agriculture, to the detriment of the drylands where pastoralists reside. It is this 2012 Sessional Paper that comprehensively laid the ground for a series of flagship projects that were to be implemented in northern Kenya as part of the Vision 2030 development strategy.

Infrastructure galore

When a team of 50 men and women embarked on a 510-kilometre walk to campaign for the tarmacking of the Isiolo-Moyale Road on 7th November 2004, few thought that one day their dream would be realized. Northern Kenya is not only poised to rightfully partake in its democratic share but also to impact Kenya’s democratic profile in a substantive manner. But will these new trends endure? Only Kenyan citizens on the one hand — and not just the people of northern Kenya — and the state institutions, on the other, can guarantee that.

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This publication was funded/co-funded by the European Union. Its contents are the sole responsibility of The Elephant and do not necessarily reflect the views of the European Union.

We are all familiar with the idea that we, as people, plan, but those plans can be quickly altered by the animate and ever-moving process of life. On October 5th, I had a pretty straightforward plan for the day, and having an accident that could have taken my life was certainly not part of it. I was jogging along my regular route when, ahead of me, I saw a car turning into a wide driveway at great speed. I instinctively slowed down to allow the car to turn, only to be hit from behind by a motorcycle that had veered off the road.

Thrown into a ditch but fully conscious, I touched my head and felt it to be completely drenched. Before I looked at my hand, I readied myself for the eventuality that it was blood I was feeling, and that this could be my last day alive. To my relief, it was just mud. I slowly moved each part of my body, to find that I had no severe injuries. I picked up my glasses, stood up, and processed that I was, indeed, alive. A crowd quickly grew around me, with people asking me who to call, or whether I wanted go to hospital immediately. Through tears, full of adrenaline and in a state of shock, I insisted that I wanted to go home; I hadn’t jogged far. I got onto one of the many boda bodas that had gathered at the scene, and home I went.

Some 20 minutes later, as I was getting into a car with a family friend to be taken to the hospital, still in a state of shock and disarray, a boda boda rider approached me. He is a rider in the local area, so we were familiar with each other. He happened to have seen me leave for my jog before the accident, and was at the same place as I was being brought back, covered in mud and crying, some ten minutes later. He explained that he had been told what had happened, that he knew who had hit me and that he was willing to participate in a justice process. I won’t go into what I went through both physically and emotional here except to say that I had avoided a neck fracture and wore a brace for a few days to allow a slight injury at the back of my neck to heal. The shock took a few days to wear off, and I remain very aware of the fact that October 5th could have gone very differently.

However, what I learned from this experience is that there is an organized structure within the boda boda community that has the capacity to administer justice at the grassroots level, which the local boda boda rider wanted deployed. The episode highlighted the social, political and economic consequences of the way in which this working-class community is perceived by the wider society, and how Kenyan society could change for the better if these broad-brush and often negative societal perspectives were abandoned.

Several months before the incident, a group of boda boda riders had been recorded violently physically and sexually assaulting a woman whose car had hit one of them along Forest Road. The ensuing aggressive and outraged discourse across social media targeted the boda boda community and its collective culture. Given the nature of the injustice faced by that woman—an incident that I can only imagine would leave a person emotionally impacted long after the assault itself—the uproar, indignation, and anger of Kenyans was not misplaced.

What I learned from this experience is that there is an organized structure within the boda boda community that has the capacity to administer justice at the grassroots level

However, even with my limited experience of the country, I felt uneasy about the state’s knee-jerk reaction which was to take all boda bodas off the road in response to the incident. Firstly, I think that the culture of women being subjected to sexual violence as a result of men, or society in general, experiencing emotions like anger towards who they are and what they do has less to do with who boda boda riders are as people, and more to do with what patriarchy has normalized regarding how women should suffer the consequences when men get emotional.

Secondly, the dogmatic nature of the car drivers vs boda boda riders conversation on Twitter felt unfair. Months before the Forest Road incident, I had been part of a small group of people that had spent hours trying to help a boda boda rider that had been hit and badly injured by a car that had then fled the scene. Bystanders at the scene supported the boda boda riders pursuing the car in question, even though they were aware that he might be subjected to violence if caught.

Thirdly, I just couldn’t see where the post-Forest Road social media discourse was going and I was nervous to wade in with what, in the face of the national outrage, felt like a fickle personal opinion of a guest in the country naively suggesting “not all boda boda riders are…” I kept quietly to myself the thought that this just wasn’t who I had experienced the boda boda community to be. Not being a Swahili speaker, one of the ways in which I navigate new parts of Nairobi, and the country generally, is by locating the nearest boda boda stage if I need to ask for directions or for any other help. I have come to know boda boda riders in a way that the capitalist culture doesn’t allow you to get to know the service providers you engage with on a daily basis. But it would have seemed tone-deaf to contribute this experiences to the discourse at the time, although I was reminded of them again following of the October 5th accident.

Bystanders at the scene supported the boda boda riders pursuing the car in question, even though they were aware that he might be subjected to violence if caught.

Victor* the boda boda rider that approached me on my way to the hospital, is the security officer of the local boda boda riders committee. This is why, when he saw that I had been injured and learned that it was as a result of being hit by a boda boda rider, he made it his personal responsibility to advocate for me in a dialogue involving the police, the owner of the bike, the local boda boda community and the person who had hit me. This process lasted a week before I decided to stop pursuing the case because of the intimidation that Victor was facing from boda boda riders in the area. As the week unfolded, I was not only struck by Victor’s commitment to ensure that I obtained justice, but I was struck by his belief in the system that he was a part of and within which he was a leader, a system that I think many Kenyans don’t know exists, or if they do, aren’t sure of its purpose or its effectiveness. Even though in my case the effectiveness of this system was compromised because of the power relations between the owner of the bike and others in the local area, it has inspired me, time and time again, to see Victor organize and mobilize a grassroots system that he has played a role in creating, for the cause of community-based justice.

A few days after we stopped pursuing the case, Victor and I sat down for an interview. Victor, who is 26 years old, has been a rider in the area for just over two years. Prior to that, Victor had been working in personal and housing security. In his words, it’s because of that experience that he was encouraged to take on the role of security officer and was elected by an overwhelming majority. “First of all, you have to understand, when you see a boda boda rider, you need to know that he is not only standing there for the money. We are keeping an eye on our surroundings in order to keep it secure,” was how Victor began his response to my question about the specifics of his role as a security officer. He went on to explain that “When anything happens regarding boda bodas, a security officer is the first person that is asked, ‘What happened?’ It doesn’t matter if it is 1 am or 3 am in the morning; if there is an incident, I have to wake up and attend to the situation, to understand what happened, who was involved, and what process is required moving forward. If you consider my area, it is part of my job to know every corner of it and be aware of every person operating in my constituency.” Victor explains that each boda boda committee that exists per constituency has a chairperson, security officer, treasurer, and secretary. “As committees, we are known by the NTSA [National Transport and Safety Authority], local police, and local community elders,” he says. People can serve in these positions until they move on, there is no term limit, and, he adds, one does not earn more for taking a leadership position. Sometimes, a person who has received help from a boda boda rider or from the committee will offer compensation in the form of materials such as boots or jackets, or cash. “We also support people financially. If a driver needs to repair his bike because of a hit, or if he needs to pay for damages caused and can’t afford it, we can organize amongst ourselves to support the person affected and be repaid slowly,” Victor explains.

It has inspired me, time and time again, to see Victor organize and mobilize a grassroots system that he has played a role in creating, for the cause of community-based justice.

I asked Victor whether the level of organization that he was describing was present before the Forest Road incident. “After [that incident], measures got much stricter when it comes to registering with the NTSA. It used to be easy. You could talk to someone at any stage and you can start driving. Now it’s much more organized. There was the president’s order that this is the case, but even us, it is something that we took very seriously. You know, it causes you shame when someone from your community harms others.” When I asked Victor why he does this work, and why he pursued my case so vigorously, he shared the following moving reflections: “I didn’t study security or go past Form 2, but this comes from inside of me. I feel very good when I know that everybody in my surroundings is safe and secure. The only reason that I do this is because I care about justice and fairness.” Interestingly, towards the end of our discussion, Victor also described a brief encounter he had had with the recently elected Governor of Nairobi, Johnson Sakaja. “I told him that we need to know each other; he needs to know us guys and we need to know them.”

As an Oromo who is actively engaged in the liberation struggle going on in Ethiopia today, I cannot help but feel a connection between the way Oromo grassroots cultural and political processes and institutions interested in the administration of justice have been misrepresented by the political and economic elites (of all ethnicities), and the way the reality of the boda boda community’s collective life has been similarly unjustly misinterpreted. If local and national institutions could move beyond perpetuating harmful narratives about boda boda riders in order to keep them at the margins of society and use them as political scapegoats when convenient, they could play a productive role in empowering and resourcing this community’s capacity to organise for grassroots justice and projection.

“The only reason that I do this is because I care about justice and fairness.”

Speaking off the record (but giving permission to use this information on the record), Victor told me about a domestic violence dispute that he was able to safely intervene in because of the work he does as a security officer. The victim in question was over 30kms away from Victor’s station, but because he could identify her as a member of his local community whose safety he feels personally responsible for, he took effective action to protect the woman. Even if—like in any institution where power and people are involved—the security institution within the boda boda community is not perfect, it is one of the many ways through which grassroots processes of protection and justice can have a transformative impact where more formalized institutional processes fall short. There is great scope for the latter to be empowered by the former in order to achieve that which I think we all want: to live safely and freely.

*Name has been changed to protect the rider

Indisputably, the Kenyan intellectual tradition is rich, varied and influential. Furthermore, much more is known about its modern intellectual practices than its ancient discursive traditions. Perhaps this is due to the widespread popularity of its contemporary literary artists and public intellectuals. Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Kenya’s foremost novelist and public intellectual exerts an arresting presence over most issues deemed distinctly Kenyan. And this is understandably so, given his remarkable productivity, range and resilience as an author. Ultimately, perhaps much less can be said of his late compatriot, Binyavanga Wainaina, who was an equally influential essayist, unconventional journalist and famed memoirist. Wainaina’s lauded memoir, One day I will write about this place is a lambent, often lushly written but also arguably frustrating personal account of modern-day Kenya. Wainaina was concerned with the transitional or even fragmented phases of the contemporary moment and his confessional role as a self-appointed spokesman on the larger national canvas. He wrote enticingly about the Kenyan urban lingo intriguingly called Sheng but failed to explore momentous historical events such as the anti-colonial Mau Mau rebellion or paradigmatic precolonial life worlds suppressed by the colonial intrusion.

Wainaina also implicitly advanced the view that the contemporary moment was all that counts, that all we needed to know about an undoubtedly complex nation such as Kenya was enshrined in the present. But of course, Kenya has far more to offer intellectually and culturally and this is why accounts such as Kai Kresse’s Swahili Muslim Publics and the Postcolonial Experience (2019) paint a deeper and more nuanced picture of the Kenyan intellectual tradition. Kresse, a German, ZMO Berlin-based anthropologist specializing in East African intellectual and philosophical traditions employs self-reflexive discursive strategies to complicate his positionality and the overall project of anthropology as a discipline. This makes his writings unusually refreshing and intellectually stimulating.

Kresse’s research into Kenyan intellectual formations spans three decades beginning with a work on sage philosophy published in 1997 and continuing to a monograph on philosophizing in Mombasa. In addition, his training as an anthropologist grants him perspectives and insights an ordinary philosopher would not only miss but perhaps would also not fully appreciate.

Kresse’s book is not just a close and intimate examination of the dynamics of Islamic subjectivity in postcolonial Kenya but also speaks to the myriad issues relating to the hybridized nature of postcoloniality itself in Africa.

The Kenyan coastals, marginalized by centuries of external rule either by the Portuguese, the British or by Kenyan upcountry domination, classify their current status as “double periphery”. The coastals claim they are marginalized within the broader Kenyan nation space and also within the specific Muslim configuration of their geographic location.

As such, they are forced to endure a form of silence. This silence and the accompanying encroaching sense of marginality speak volumes when compared, for instance, with the political dominance of the northern Islamic elites in Nigeria, or in the cases of Senegal and Somalia.

In Nigeria, the Hausa/Fulani oligarchy has dominated the country since independence and its overbearing presence is often considered an inevitability or a fait accompli. Minorities such as the Ogoni, Ijaw, Tiv, Nupe and so many other ethnic groups in both southern and northern Nigeria have had to contend with Hausa/Fulani hegemony. From a Nigerian and Senegalese point of view, it is difficult to imagine an Islamic minority in an African context agitating for its own political expression or survival when Islam is considered to be the religious faith of political and military elites. Unfortunately, in Kenya, Muslims constitute a minority and once again, such sociopolitical complexities attest to the hybridized dynamics of postcoloniality in contemporary Africa.

In Kenya, works advocating self-determination such as Regionalism: True Freedom to Save the Coastal People, penned and self-published by an anonymous former education officer, bring to mind the plight of the Ogoni under the inspiring leadership of Ken Saro-Wiwa or the Igbo under Chukwuemeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu during the Biafran/Nigerian crisis between 1967 and 1970.  The sometimes violent contestations between ethnic minorities and majorities to gain political freedom or control are also inflected by a religious coloration. The shifts and eruptions caused by political power are never exactly definitive but move instead like swings of a pendulum according to the imperatives of circumstance and history.

Kresse argues that Swahili Muslim intellectual culture in Kenya is rather well developed. Exclusively Muslim and Swahili communities often overlap, cross-fertilizing intellectual and cultural patterns and crisscrossing one another in a mutually reinforcing way.

The concept and broad understanding of humanness are key to fostering relations of mutuality, therefore affirming the essence and significance of the human. The human, just as in the Southern African concept of ubuntu, is realized in continual social acts of mutual recognition and acceptance. Rather than being an isolated being, or even more radically, a frank social fact, the human, in fact, is a being-in-social process, reinforced and re-enacted in a continuum of social acts and affirmations that lead to mutual recognition, validation and reinforcement. Thus the ultimate goal of the human in existence and by extension, within the community, is to seek the good within oneself, re-living it in everyday life and tangibly creating sociality through a continual implementation of its values.

Kresse eloquently explores the philosophical basis of Swahili Muslim understanding of the human and then delves into the specificities of the intellectual culture  it produced which turns out to be intricate, well-developed and ultimately, profoundly humanizing. It is a pity that continentally or globally, very little is known about this astounding intellectual culture. This culture also bears elements of political subversion, social discontent and self-determination which are expressed in narratives and counter-narratives of poetry (utendi) and radical political commentary.

The human, just as in the Southern African concept of ubuntu, is realized in continual social acts of mutual recognition and acceptance.

Kresse’s latest book, Rethinking Sage Philosophy: Interdisciplinary perspectives on and beyond H. Odera Oruka, co-edited with Oriare Nyarwath (2022), continues his focused exploration of Kenyan historic intellectual formations, this time, the discourse of sage philosophy, a form of re-configured folk philosophy popularized by the late pivotal modern-day Kenyan philosopher,  Henry Odera Oruka. Under the philosophical school known as sage philosophy, a presumably western trained philosopher identifies the invariably illiterate elders of a rural, ethnic community and attempts to collate the folk wisdom and critical reflections of that community regarding life, knowledge and metaphysics, which are then translated and rendered in a metropolitan medium. Perhaps what needs to be tracked are the conceptual and linguistic transitions inherent in these renditions and how they might be contributing to the (un)making of a new philosophical language. Gathering an impressive pool of Kenyan and international scholars, the Kresse co-edited book places sage philosophy at the centre of postcolonial philosophical thought while seeking to eschew the essentializing and frequently polarizing overtones of coloniality.

Once again, a tripartite epistemological structure becomes evident. Ali Mazrui had argued that Africa, and Kenya in particular, is defined by a triple heritage comprising an indigenous African tradition, a Muslim/Mediterranean influence and a Christian/western inheritance. In Kresse’s work, so far, another kind of tripartite discursive formation reveals itself; one marked by an Islamic intellectual history, an indigenous/endogenous philosophical system known as sage philosophy and then a western philosophical idiom and canon through which a folk system of thought is articulated and elaborated. Either consciously or unwittingly, Kresse’s project traces the contours of Kenyan social thought as they unfold within the often overlapping matrixes of Islam, indigeneity and westernity with evident conceptual continuity and singularity.

Exclusively Muslim and Swahili communities often overlap, cross-fertilizing intellectual and cultural patterns and crisscrossing one another in a mutually reinforcing way.

The current trajectory of Kresse’s work tends to shadow contemporary European thinkers such as the late German philosopher, Heinz Kimmerle and Dutch anthropologist/philosopher, Wim van Binsbergen who interrogate questions of interculturality, otherness and marginality—often from a multiplicity of positionalities and perspectives—while also seeking to unbundle the inheritances of their North Atlantic intellectual pedigree.

Kresse’s interest in the philosophical and intellectual traditions of Muslims in Kenya, has succeeded in unearthing systems of thought, social activism and instances of political resistance that complicate Kenya’s supposedly unitary Christian construct of itself.  And then his earlier work on sage philosophy, a largely Kenyan-spawned modern—perhaps Christian-based—philosophy tradition further complicates an already multi-layered national intellectual history and identity.

At the political level, there are also real existential entanglements to consider. Kenya, like any other colonial creation, ought to be viewed as a political and geographical aberration formed on the basis of a largely irrational colonial diktat. But like other postcolonial territorial anomalies-turned-miracles in Africa, it has managed to finesse its numerous irreconcilable differences into the improbable semblance of a nation.

The universe presented in Swahili Muslim Publics and the Postcolonial Experience invariably yields a philosophical and intellectual tradition that has been virtually ignored in current African philosophical discourse. And then, in investigating the ramifications of sage philosophy, Kresse’s work further highlights the significance and impact of a dominant Kenyan philosophical formation. Arguably, Kresse’s attempt to bridge a fundamental epistemological schism by amalgamating a minority Muslim discourse (Swahili intellectual practices) with sage philosophy is certainly a kind of epistemic project a Kenyan would ordinarily find impossible to execute. This is due to the ingrained and perhaps often insurmountable separations caused by fractious internal politics and differences. There is also an implicit epistemic holism in this project of intellectual reconstruction. But how much it serves Kenyans from a practical point of view is another matter entirely.