CULTURAL DUALITY AND POLITICAL STABILITY IN INDEPENDENT KENYA 1963-1965

Abstract

The political stability of Kenya during the first two years after the grafting of internal self-rule owed a substantial debt to both the indigenous and alien influences which formed the national culture. The resolution of the issues and problems which confronted the government of President Kenyatta depended on the choice of policy alter natives conditioned by sensitivity to the traditional tribal culture and the cultural orientations, introduced from the outside during the colonial period. This study delineates the nature of each society and describes how each culture was important in providing a resource for policy making in the post-independence period. To describe the national culture, a single standard of reference was desired. The framework chosen was one which broke the broad concept of culture down into constituent parts of skills, goals, and sentiments. This framework was used in the configuration analysis of both the African and European cultures. The growth of African political consciousness game indication of how the norms of traditional African society were changed as increasing numbers of Africans accepted new behavioral cues from the Europeans until the Africans became politically competitive with their rulers. The learning of new skills, sentiments and goals, however, did not dissipate the importance of indigenous orientations. The utility of both sets of norms is seen in the examination of policy choices of the Kenyatta government as it dealt with a series of economic development issues, constitutional questions and security problems. The methods employed for collecting data to substantiate the thesis included an ethnographic survey of the tribes in Kenya, a historical survey of colonial rule and the European community, a reading of the complete parliamentary record for 1963-1965 the use of the subject file of the East African Standard offices in Nairobi, and a series of field interviews with members of the Kenya House of Representatives