Book Reviews 107
Reviewed by Mrs Violet Matimba, Lecturer, School of Social Work, Harare,
Zimbabwe
Markets, Civil Society and Democracy in Kenya, Peter Gibbon (ed), Nordiska
Afrikainstitutet, The Scandinavian Institute of African Studies, Uppsala, 1995,
283pp, ISBN: 91-7106-371-4. (p/b) Price: SEK140, £12,95 (p/b).
The struggle for democracy in Kenya has created a very polarised society in the
wake of demands for political and economic reform from both the donors and
Kenyan peoples. Pressures for demanding change are motivated by a variety of
reasons and at times conflicting interests. But the reality covered by contributions
in this book, generally capture the fact that major struggles have been seen around
the issues of economic and political reform, in a context of generally deteriorating
economic performance, heightened ethnic tension and often poor relations between
government and donors.
As noted by Peter Gibbon in his summary of the book, the studies deal with
central dimensions of grassroots development and change in Kenya over the last
decade and a half. The first concern covered by Gerrishon Ikiara, Mohamud Juma
and Justus Amadi concerns continuity and transformations in the cereals marketing
chain, the centrepiece of the World Bank, European Community and USAID
efforts during the 1980s and early 1990s to liberalise Kenyan economic institutions
on the basis of aid conditionality.
The second contribution by Karuti Kanyinge, examines development institutions,
before and after the re-emergence of multi-party politics in 1991-92. The
third, by Mutahi Ngunyi, examines the political developments and religious
organisations characterised elsewhere as the most important institutions in contemporary
Kenyan civil society.
In the development discourse, Kenya is now often seen as a problem child rather
than a success story, and from these accounts, ample evidence is provided which
allow us to reflect on the convincibility of the donor diagnosis of central policies
and practices which preceded economic liberalisation. Ironically, Kenya had been
eulogised for most of the 1980s by 'donor friendly' western academics who saw
it as one of the Africa's few economic and political ornaments, a country to be held
up, admired and analysed mainly in order to detect what might be transferable in
its "exceptional" performance.
In the chapter on "The Cereals Chain in Kenya: Actors, Reforms and Politics'
the reader is made to understand the politics surrounding cereals production and the
marketing chain. The chain as noted by the contributors, is extremely important to
the Kenya government since it is the main conduit for the country's food supplies
and also an activity which became central to the national political patronage system
developed since the death of President Kenyatta.
108 Book Reviews
For donors, in their preoccupation with the development of a market economy,
it became also a source of anxiety because they viewed it as the last remaining
significant distortion in an otherwise well-functioning market economy. For the
contributors, the main problem arising out of this chain is not only the way
patronage has been grafted, but to distinguish "national economic" as opposed to
"class-promotional" objectives in an environment where public resources are habitually
put to private uses, while the private sector is simultaneously smothered
and nurtured in the public sector's interstices. The complications that have been
triggered off by liberalisation created distortions which in the eyes of the contributors
confirm that there is no straight path to a free market, and possibly no path to
a really free one at all.
Kanyinga's study lays bare the dynamics of Kenyan politics and demonstrates
that it is not the presence, or even the extent, of social pluralism which determines
whether democracy can emerge - but rather the type of this pluralism. For example,
in Kenya's countryside - self-help groups, harambee project groups, cooperatives,
NGOs, etc - share a common corporate form, whose governing principle is the
cultivation of highly restricted and parochial economic interests. Consequently,
the articulation of these interests not only leaves intact divisions between localities,
but those between decision-makers and decision-takers, between patrons and their
subjects, and between the "big" decisions and little ones. In conclusion, the former
remain beyond popular control and the population remains obstructed from
organising around or in relation to these.
It has become too commonplace a cliche to refer to civil society as the way
forward for African society beleaguered by repressive regimes on one hand, and
a weak opposition on the other. In Ngunyi's contribution the question of democracy
is placed on the agenda as decision makers are grappling with conditionalities
from donors. Ngunyi focuses mainly on the role of religious institutions in the
process of Kenya's liberalisation, but highlights differentiation resulting from
ethno-regional and social class basis of those institutions. He further argues that
analysts should shift from positing civil society as intrinsically always opposed to
the state and raise issues arising from the organic relation between civil society and
the division of labour in the social formations in which they are founded on the one
hand, and the continuous fundamental pattern of interaction between civil society
and the state, on the other. He concludes on a very important note that Kenyan civil
society is characterised more appropriately as structurally differentiated rather
than as simply pluralistic, and that it has systematically been subject to state
initiatives of a disorganising nature - although these have generally no more than
reinforced or rationalised its existing polarisations.
Book Reviews 109
This book is well written and offers a very sound analysis of Kenya's problems
and reactions of donors. From a political discourse point of view, the book notes
a very important point, notably that most donors and western-based scholarship
used to believe that Africa's main problem was its flirtation with "socialism" in
different forms. In this current conjuncture, the case of Kenya as discussed in this
book presents donors as mainly positing that there are certain deeply rooted
"organic" features of African social and political organisation which are responsible
for its economic and political difficulties. Hence, the shift of donor agendas
to include political democratisation as well as economic liberalisation.
Reviewed by Thomas Deve, Assistant Editor, Sapes Trust, Harare, Zimbabwe.