conflict analysis

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Table of contents
Page
INTRODUCTION .......................................................................................................................................1
PRE COLONIAL PERIOD.............................................................................................................................1
COLONIAL PERIOD.....................................................................................................................................1
SINGLE PARTY DOMINANCEIN KENYA .......................................................................................................2
THE RISEOF PARTY STATE IN AFRICA.........................................................................................................2
PARTY-GOVERNMENT RELATIONS IN POST-INDEPENDENCE KENYA.............................................................4
CONCLUSION ............................................................................................................................................6
REFERENCES..............................................................................................................................................7

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INTRODUCTION
Pre Colonial Period
To understandthe unityof different parties in Kenya and in Africa as well, it is also
important to look at the historical evolution of existence of human kind in this
region.
Some of our earliesthumanancestors(Homo erectus and Homo habilis) walked on
East African ground more than 2 million years ago. Several skulls and fragments
have been found in Kenya and neighbouring countries. The Khoisan-speakers are
the firstmodernpeople knowntoinhabitEastAfrica. They are followed by Cushitic
people (from north), Bantu speaking groups (from Central Africa), Nilotes (from
Sudan) as well as Oromos and Somalis (from Ethiopia). This had effects on the way
people aligned themselves in various groups in the country.
The other alignment in Kenya’s history came in the 15th
century with the visits by
the Arabian and the Persian traders to East Africa. The African groups at the coast
graduallystarted interacting with these Arabs and formed the Swahili culture. The
Arabs brought in the Muslim influence to this culture as well.
Later in these areas the Portuguese move in with arms seeking to control the
business along the East African coast. Since 1498 when the Portuguese explorer
VascoDa Gama reachedeastAfrica,the following close to 200 years were followed
by fights between Arabs and the Portuguese for control of the region. The main
losers in this long struggle were the Africans, seeing their kins being slaughtered,
sold as slaves and their town destroyed.
Colonial period
In the 19th
Century, the European countries started to race for land grabbing in
Africa. In East Africa, it was mainly Germany and England that were competing in
making colonies and protectorates. At this time, the political pressure began
influencingBritainto try and stop slave trade which had been started by Arabs and
Portuguese.

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The re-alignmentof the groupingsineastAfricawasfurtherseenwhenthe Sultanof
Omansentan armyto East Africato claimcontrol of Swahili dynasties, but this was
resisted by the local Swahili clans who sought for help from Britain. This was
probably the first indication of falling out of the Arabs and the Africans and
formation of new re-alignment with the British when Mombasa was declared an
area of British protectorate.
Single Party Dominance in Kenya
The single-partysystemsof sub-Saharan Africa have displayed significant variation
since independence.A dominantpartycan tolerate a wide arrayof political opinions
and can exercise influenceoverpolicyformationandsupplydecision-making elites,
or it can yieldthose rolestoa civil service. It can play a central role in enforcement
of presidential decisions, or it can survive completely removed from that process.
(Winder, 1992)
Accordingto winder in her book The Rise of a Party State in Kenya, she argues that
the changes that took place in Kenyas political and party alignment under Daniel
Arap Moi between 1980 and 1991 are especially interesting because they seem to
fit a pattern that is observed elsewhere on the continent and is still poorly
understood.
In some countries,single partieshave changedfromloose and relatively powerless
amalgams to vehicles through which heads of state are able to exercise social and
political control. It is useful to characterize this pattern as a shift from a form of
single-partydominanceinwhichthe partyis a loosely organized "debating society"
to a "party-state" in which the party is an adjunct of the executive or office of the
president. Thesemodificationsinthe role of the party also altered the relationship
between individual citizens and governments.
The Rise of Party State In Africa
Scholars have come up with five main schools of thought that seek to explain the
tendency of single-party systems to become "party-states."

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Absence of Agreement on Rules of the Game
One view,the oldestof the five,focusesonthe absence of institutionalized"rulesof
the game" that foster civility and compromise. It suggests that several common
characteristicsof Africansocial, economic, and political contexts provide incentive
for leaders to make exceptional, "unlimited" or nonnegotiable demands in their
dealings with one another and to seek political monopoly. The "party-state"
represents an attempt by those in power to prevent "all-or-nothing" demands by
opposition groups (Robert 1982).
Weak States, Strong Societies
A second school of thought locates the rise of the "party-state" principally in the
structure of African societies—that is, in the organizational character of the main
economic interest groups or "civil society." Limited reliance of populations on a
formal market economy means that governments are not able to use market
incentives to secure compliance with policies. States are thus "weak," while
"societies," or social structures, are "strong" in their ability to resist policy
implementation.Underthese conditions,governmentsresort to exhortation and to
use of the party as a means of obtaining support for policy implementation.
Organizationsoriginallydesigned to represent interests become extensions of the
state's police power.
The "Underdevelopment" Perspective
A third perspective argues that movement away from a multi-party Westminster-
style parliamentary system varies with the degree to which political elites are
beholden to external economic interests. Politicians seek to protect their own
lucrative ties with foreign-owned enterprises, and to this end they restrict
competition. Continued provision of loans by international commercial banks and
bilateral or multilateral donors enables leaders to purchase support while
simultaneously restricting the political space available for contesting government
policies.

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Concentration of Power and Political "De-participation"
A fourth, less fully elaborated, view maintains that where state-led development
that leaveslittle scope for private initiative takes place in an economy, and where
economic power becomes concentrated in the office of the head of state,
entrepreneurial groups attempt to defend their established points of access to
bureaucraticfavor and state resources against the electoral alternation of political
personnel byseekingtoproscribe opposition. Political "departicipation," including
the conversionof partysystemsintovehiclesforexercising"topdown" control over
populations, results from the efforts of entrepreneurs to render more secure the
positions of public officials on whose resources they depend, when the loss of
access potentially means near-total loss of livelihood. In short, the "commercial
bourgeoisie"thatcarriedliberal democraticideas in Europe is absent in the African
cases. The African "bourgeoisie" has typically taken the form of an "organizational
bourgeoisie" or "politico-commercial class" that is heavily dependent on
government contracts and permits for survival. Its bargaining power, including its
capacity to preserve political space, is in consequence sharply limited. There is no
Magna Carta in the offing.
Bureaucratic Authoritarianism
The fifth approach suggests that the creation of what Wallerstein has called a "no-
party state," and what this study calls a "party-state," is the outgrowth of a
particularstage of the processof import-substitution industrialization. This has not
been very common in the elusiveness of our parties in Kenya
Party-Government Relations in Post-Independence Kenya
Party-government relations in post-independence Kenya were marked by three
distinctive features.
Unlike leadersof other African countries, Kenyatta perceived that the best way to
maintain political order in a society where ethnic or community boundaries. He
used, Harambee, and a loosely defined political party to focus the attention of

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politicians on local issues and on the formation of alliances across communities,
while limiting their power to force agendas on one another.
Second, although there was factional division in KANU, first the existence of an
opposition party, KADU, then the rise of the KPU, and, finally, the open primary
systemhelpedsupportthe formationof coherent blocs within the ruling party that
couldsustaindebate aboutissues,includingthe restrictionof political space. During
thisperiod,people spoke of two KANUs, a KANU A, or conservative bloc, including
boththe "GatunduCourtiers" and a group led by Mboya, and KANU B, the "radical"
bloc.Whensome membersof KANU B split away, some of the others remained, by
and large as backbenchers. The open primary system came into being partly
because of the pressure generated by this group.
Third, as the creation of a new state opened up resources, the new elites of the
nationalist coalition sought to assure their own financial prospects and to defend
theirachievementsagainstarestlessclassof "dispossessed"people by expanding a
system of patronage networks.
The deathof PresidentJomo KenyattainAugust 1978 created a further opportunity
to renegotiate the distribution of access. During the ninety-day period after
Kenyatta's death, the country prepared for elections. In the interim, Moi was
designatedactingpresidentbythe cabinet.Although the Moi coalition had learned
much about the management of ad hoc alliances in the interim, the difficulties of
creatinga solidelectoral base were apparent—and would have been even more so
in the absence of support to acquire loyalty.

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CONCLUSION
In Kenya where ethnic, regional, and economic divisions have coincided since pre
colonial period,justastheydo andhave done in most of sub-Saharan Africa, a shift
fromone party or coalitiondominance andrulingtoanotherislikelyunlesselectoral
rules like the new constitution or informal, extra parliamentary institutions force
elites to bargain across boundaries in their efforts to secure winning coalitions
hence the existence of the parties remains elusive.
This elusiveness has the origins from the pre colonial period to date where most
people come together for their political or individual gains across the country.
The variousstyleswhichhave beenusedbyleadersinKenyatoresolve conflictsand
to bring party unity has contributed much to the current state of parties in Kenya.
With Kenya having a new constitution now, it is expected that alignments and
parties will be more cohesive unlike the way it has been in the past

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REFERENCES
1. Berman, Bruce. Control and Crisis in Colonial Kenya: The Dialectic of
Domination. Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press, 1990
2. Kimani Njogu, Garnette Oluoch-Olunya (2007. Cultural production and social
change in Kenya: building bridges Taweza, Nairobi. Kenya
3. Robert Jackson and Carl Rosberg, Personal Rule in Black Africa (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1982), pp. 19 and 23.
4. Widner, Jennifer A. The Rise of a Party-State in Kenya: From "Harambee!" to
"Nyayo!". Berkeley: University of California, 1992.
http://ark.cdlib.org/ark:/13030/ft9h4nb6fv/