Power and the Presidency in Kenya
The Jomo Kenyatta Years

The first study to use Jomo Kenyatta's political biography and presidency as a basis for examining the colonial and postcolonial history of Kenya.

Anaïs Angelo (Author)

9781108713832, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 12 November 2020

323 pages
22.2 x 15 x 1.7 cm, 0.46 kg

'This impressive work will have a reach beyond Africanists. It demonstrates how scholars can respond to methodological challenges with creativity.' Kara Moskowitz, The Journal of Interdisciplinary History

In December 1963, Kenya formally declared its independence yet it would take a year of intense negotiations for it to transform into a presidential republic, with Jomo Kenyatta as its first president. Archival records of the independence negotiations, however, reveal that neither the British colonial authorities nor the Kenyan political elite foresaw the formation of a presidential regime that granted one man almost limitless executive powers. Even fewer expected Jomo Kenyatta to remain president until his death in 1978. Power and the Presidency in Kenya reconstructs Kenyatta's political biography, exploring the links between his ability to emerge as an uncontested leader and the deeper colonial and postcolonial history of the country. In describing Kenyatta's presidential style as discreet and distant, Angelo shows how the burning issues of land decolonisation, the increasing centralisation of executive powers and the repression of political oppositions shaped Kenyatta's politics. Telling the story of state building through political biography, Angelo reveals how historical contingency and structural developments shaped both a man and an institution - the president and the presidency.

Introduction
1. Kenyatta's stateless political imagination
2. From prison to party leader, an ambiguous ascension (1958–1961)
3. Kenyatta, land and decolonisation (1961–1963)
4. Independence and the making of a president (1963–1964)
5. Kenyatta, Meru politics and the last Mau Mau (1961/3–1965)
6. Taming oppositions: Kenyatta's 'secluded' politics (1964–1966)
7. Ruling over a divided political family (1965–1969)
8. 'Kenyatta simply will not contemplate his own death' (1970–1978)
Conclusion
Sources
Bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: Central government policies [JPQB], Political structures: democracy [JPHV], Politics & government [JP], National liberation & independence, post-colonialism [HBTR], African history [HBJH]