The First Birthday, and the First President
AARON SEGAL writes from Nairobi :
Kenya celebrated this week its first birthday as an independent State together with the inauguration of Jomo Kenyatta as its President under the new unitary constitution. The country is undergoing one of the most profound political, social and economic revolutions in Africa. It was launched in 1960 when an elected African majority first took office. The displacement of sixty years of European settler influence initiated a period of acute tribalism with the smaller and less advanced minority tribes relying upon a rigid regional constitution and their own party, KADU, to protect their land and other interests.
The outstanding achievement of Mr. Kenyatta's government so far has been to foster a new and creative sense of national unity as shown by the peaceful approval for the new constitution. The semi-federal regional constitution proved a major administrative obstacle to economic development and the minority tribes were quick to realise that, by obliging them to rely on their own meagre resources, it perpetuated their own backwardness.
All the tribal groups in Kenya, with the excep- tion of the secessionists among the Somali, have now accepted that their only security and hope of development depends upon an effective share in the exercise of power by the national govern- ment. Mr. Kenyatta's judicious use of cheques for new secondary schools and health centres for districts whose MPs crossed the floor to support the government made this acceptance easier, though his Cabinet reshuffle last week introduced few members of the former opposition.
So Kenya now moves into a new stage in which national politics and issues transcend tribal differences although tribal sentiment remains a potent while declining force. The coastal tribes will continue to feel that their interests are neg- lected in distant Nairobi. and there will be inevit- able resentment at the high proportion of Kikuyu and Luo in senior civil service posts, in reality more a result of the educational head start these tribes enjoyed than of any favouritism.
However, these tribal matters are dwarfed by the political consquences of the government's commitment to the incompatible goals of rapid economic growth and Africanisation of the economy. A 3 per cent annual increase in popu- lation combines with rising expectations, the growing shortage of land, and the impact of 400,000 new young job-seekers in the next six years on an economy already in the throes of severe unemployment, to make economic develop- ment and industrialisation the political impera- tive. This can be achieved only through increased participation of non-African (Asian and Euro- pean) capital and skills in a country in which-the
gap between African political predominance and non-African economic power is already painful.
The demise of KADU has paved the way for the emergence of a new and far more dangerous national opposition within the party and the government. This opposition, led by a hard core of militant back-benchers, insists upon immediate racial redistribution of incomes and economic activity, as took place in Algeria, at the price of economic growth. The strength of their appeal depends upon the quantity of other pluckable fruits of independence; and time is the critical factor. Mr. Kenyatta, remarkably fit at seventy- four, is relying upon one generation to produce an African educated and entrepreneurial class capable of managing the economy as well as the government. Meanwhile, private investment, lodal and foreign, is being encouraged and national- isation rejected.
The land settlement programme to replace large European mixed farms with African small- holders is intended partly to keep the racial mili- tants at bay. It needs a fresh infusion of capital from the British if it is to proceed further in the direction of producing a cash-cropping African rural middle-class engaged in progressive farm- ing and exercising freehold land tenure. Unless such aid is forthcoming, the government will be hard put to avoid the confiscation without com- pensation of non-African farms which occurred recently in Tanzania. A commercial equivalent of the land settlement programme may alsb be useful to enable Asian shopkeepers in the rural areas to be replaced with African counterparts.
The new constitution provides for the President to be elected by the members of the national assembly who must pledge themselves to support a particular candidate in the general election. In a one-party State where there is only one candi- date, this probably means that the party will nominate the President. The struggle over economic and political policies will be increas- ingly waged within the party through factions hoping to control the choice of Mr. Kenyatta's successor. The West is gambling upon non- racialism and Mr. Mboya to triumph.
Intelligently directed western aid on a generous scale will be needed to stimulate economic growth while the transition to an African-controlled economy is under way. Without such aid the government might be compelled to opt for Africanisation of the economy at the expense of economic development, thus adding Kenya to the list' of Africa's moral disasters.
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