Kenya

In Amin's footsteps

Jack Bannon

A Ugandan black who works in Kenya returns to Kampala to visit his family. On his way home he stops to buy a case of beer, and the porter who brings it to his car demands a two-shilling tip, ten times more than customary. As they quarrel, policemen intervene and warn the porter off. Then a group of soldiers appears, drives the police away, and orders the Ugandan to give the porter ten shillings. "You owe it to him," they say. "You are an intellectual." The man's family convinces him that he should leave Uganda the same night.

Not so much the two-year-old Uganda military government itself, but rather its present disintegration, augurs badly for continued stability in Kenya. The educated African elite is the tipping point of Jomo Kenyatta's invented pyramid.

As in Uganda before Amin's coup, power in Kenya rests on a narrow circle of educated Africans, and on a smaller group of white expatriates and ex-colonials. It is founded on a stark separation between the incomes of the very rich and the very poor which, according to the available statistics, has intensified since independence.

Ten years of ' Africanisation ' may only be termed a success if one refers to the application of black-face make-up at Nairobi office buildings. As a whole, the programme has produced little more than a 10 per cent changeover between Africans and whites (as of 1971). Like the political commissars attached to former Czarist officers in the old Red Army, white administrators control key government departments, despite their euphemistically discreet titles.

Two striking examples are the English deputy commissioner of Kenya police, Oswald; and an English ex-colonial on Kenyatta's personal staff, who according to informed sources acts as his chief of security.

In turn, the beneficiaries of Africanisation supplement their incomes by drawing on a slush fund of terrific proportions. Anything, from drivers' licences to building permits, may be purchased in Nairobi. If, as the staid International Labour Office suggests, corruption is limited to a minority of civil servants, it is concentrated at the top.

Informed opinion in Nairobi traces the rise of Kenyatta's eldest daughter as a real estate magnate to the manipulation of Nairobi zoning requirements. Similarly, a gift of 500 prize cattle from the Swedish foreign aid programme, intended for distribution to small beef raisers, found its way instead to public auction; half the cattle were sold to farms owned by members of Kenyatta's family.

.Perhaps the favourite gripe of British expatriates is the reputed drain of British foreign aid into this slush fund. This is the 'local version of Lyndon Johnson's 'War on Poverty' which did not ease the immiseration of American ghetto residents; it did, however, create a ghetto pacification machine. It did this by buying up the most promising black militants at $12,000 per annum, and employing them to good effect during the ghetto rebellions.

For the moderate cost of nurturing this elite, Britain retains a captive market (her trade balance with Kenya is in the range of two to one), and a first lien on the nation's resources, in the form of state debt.

There is but one flaw in this arrangement, the local saying goes, and that is 'tribalism.' Specifically, only one tribe, the Kikuyu, has systematically garnered the fruits of Africanisation; their combativeness during the 1958 Emergency and their predisposition to Westernisation made them Britain's inevitable choice.

Other tribes, most prominently the numerous and well-educated Luo, aspire to a greater share in the proceeds. Western commentators focused attention on them two years ago, when Tom Mboyo, the leading Luo politician, was killed by unidentified gunmen on a Nairobi street.

But tribalism, despite its historical trappings, 'is merely an expression of the ambitions of educated Africans — as moulded by Britain during the "prepara tion for independence." In fact, in the absence of such rivalry there would have existed the danger of some form of unified national opposition. In short, the key to Britain's remote control of Kenya is the reduction of all political life to a spoils system conducted along tribal lines.

That this control mechanism has an inherent self-destruct device became clear two years ago in Uganda. Britain's formula for Ugandan ' independence ' left the most powerful tribe, the Baganda, out of power; • the consequence was a coup by which Amin's Moslem clique replaced Joseph Mbote's Christian clique.

The greatest irony in the Uganda developments is that Britain did, apparent ly, favour the military coup. She signified this approval by dispatching 600 soldiers to Kenya just after the takeover, a move which informed sources in Nairobi interpret as an encouragement for Amin. In Britain's estimation, the Asians were certainly expendable. They were put in business via British licensing policies two generations ago, and could be expelled when it was no longer convenient to have them. (Whether Mr Heath and his associates relished the prospect of British workers demonstrating against immigration rather than wage controls is a matter for speculation.) But Amin has become the political captive of his own storm troopers, and his rule has disintegrated into a free-for-all against the elite which Britain trained to manage its affairs in East Africa. Rather than satisfying the Uganda army, the expropriation of Asian shops whetted the appetites of the former underdogs. There ensued attacks on European life and property; but the most extreme cruelty has been reserved for successful Africans. Of the 83,000 people estimated to have perished in Uganda, the overwhelming majority is black.

Ominously, Amin's victimisation of Asian shopkeepers produced sympathetic vibrations in Kenya. Until the most recent breach in relations, the Nairobi press wrote of Amin in a disquietingly muted tone. Last November, the government discontinued the licences of 300 Asian shops, removing all doubt in Asian minds that "our days here are numbered."

The expulsion of the Asians — or, if no one will take them, a pogrom — is in the cards. In the event of an impasse in Kenya politics, there is no way for the Kikuyu establishment to answer the claims of the very deprived, except by sacrificing the Asians.

Unlike Mbote, Kenyatta's tribal base is very strong; there is no question of another tribe replacing the Kikuyu. At a point of crisis Britain will look to her own by supporting a consolidation of the present elite, a strategy which should enable her to avoid the dislocations she suffered in Uganda.

It appears that the only coherent group in Kenya capable of carrying out such a strategy is the army. A crisis could emerge in more than one way. First of all, the eighty-year-old President may die or become unable to function; the importance of this contingency is not to be underestimated.

A second scenario for upheavals in Kenya is occasioned by the mounting economic disturbances in the West. As of the last dollar/pound evaluation, Kenya found between 5 and 10 per cent of her 'foreign exchange reserves wiped off the books. A contraction of her European export markets, including the new opportunities for beef raising, would be a disastrous blow. Most threatening of all in the short term, a drop in tourism would push a legion of service personnel into the streets; and these are educated people, who are more susceptible to political organisation than the dispersed rural population.

If either of the above transpires, the existing set-up will certainly falter. And the army — as elsewhere in Africa — is the only organisation able to replace it. Awareness of this potential in military circles was indicated last year, when the government arrested a handful of officers in a coup attempt.

Last year's failure to the contrary, two factors point to a future military success. One is the likelihood of British support; the other is the availability of left-wing cover. The would-be army insurgents were alleged to have approached Tanzanian president Nyerere and requested his support. He demurred, on the grounds that the attempt was ill-timed and unlikely to succeed. What is significant is that the officers chose to sound out Nyerere's proChinese regime, and that he objected on tactical not principled grounds.

Moreover, a layer of disgruntled intellectuals is 'likely to endorse a radicaltalking military junta. They are, at least, indifferent to the eventuality of a pogrom against Kenya's 180,000 Asians. A civil servant I spoke with, educated in Eastern Europe, told me, "Of course any government that comes in after Kenyatta will kick out the Asians. So would I if I were in power."

Britain already has the influence to lend support to an appropriate officers' group. Apart from the aforementioned penetration of the police and presidential security forces, the army itself is stocked with British advisers. And the 600 troops who landed two years ago are still in Kenya, ostensibly building roads.

Whether a contingency plan for backing a military junta in Kenya is on file somewhere in London is an interesting, but not essential question. As in the analysis of military intelligence data, the best method is to consider the enemy's long-term capabilities and interests rather than its immediate intentions.