Abstract
Ethnic factors in Kenya have influenced elections and thereby undermined democratic practice. This chapter looks at ethnicity in Kenya using elections as the prism. The electoral cycle is used to describe the negative ethnic tensions in the country. The chapter examines elections in Kenya during Kenyatta’s presidency from 1963 to 1978, paying attention to the role played by major political actors in shaping the political landscape (Apollos, 2001). In this regard, the chapter examines the role played by Jomo Kenyatta, Jaramogi Oginga Odinga, Ronald Ngala, and Daniel Moi, among others, as representatives of their respective ethnic group interests. The second section examines ethnicity in elections held under the Moi presidency from 1978 to the beginning of multipartyism in 1992. This section pays attention to President Moi’s ethnic balancing in a reward system that largely promoted ethnicity (Khapoya, 1988). The third section looks at various election cycles beginning with 1992, 1997, 2002, 2007, 2013, and 2017. The election cycles reveal the escalation of violence during election periods when negative ethnicity is at its highest in Kenya. The chapter utilizes secondary and primary documents to demonstrate that ethnicity is alive and well in Kenya, with devastating consequences.
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Hamasi, L., Amutabi, M.N. (2023). Ethnicity and Political Violence in Kenya. In: Nasong'o, W.S., Amutabi, M.N., Falola, T. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Contemporary Kenya. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-15854-4_16
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