https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2579-2019
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Abstract
Some 30 years after their dangerous human rights activism in Kenya that challenged an authoritarian regime and won multiparty democracy, more than half the leading survivors were still politically active. Three were governors, one was the Supreme Court Chief Justice, five were human rights activists; others were attorneys or otherwise politically engaged. This study provides fresh insights on the theory of cycles of social movements and offers global implications for movements in other countries. The decline of social movements “remains relatively understudied from an empirical standpoint.” The study builds on the cycle theories of Tarrow, considered the “leading theoretician of protest cycles.” It finds that (1) long after a protest movement has ended, some activists may continue individual activism in line with the goals of the movement or a subset of goals; (2) partial victories or regime concessions tend to weaken cohesiveness of a movement and make subsequent victories harder; (3) regime change, although more dangerous, in some ways is easier than regime reform. The findings are based on interviews conducted by the author, mostly in Nairobi, with the leading veteran activists and others between 2019 and 2021, plus archival reviews.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1 Gitobu Imanyara, in an interview with the author, October 8, 2019, Nairobi, Kenya.
2 Kenyatta once said he wanted his fight against corruption to be the hallmark of his administration. Yet, according to the Pandora papers, “Kenyatta, along with his mother, sisters and brother, have for decades shielded wealth from public scrutiny through foundations and companies in tax havens, including Panama, with assets worth more than $30 million, according to records obtained by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists” (Fitzgibbon, 2021).
3 Missing Voices, a consortium of Kenyan and international human rights organizations, has documented that, since 2007, there have been 834 killings and 227 police-enforced disappearances in Kenya by police, including suspected terrorists in the conflict with Somalia.
4 See . Raila Odinga continued his maneuvering to become president, having lost an election widely thought to have been rigged.
5 Two died during my 2019–2020 portion of the research in Kenya: businessman and former mayor of Nairobi Charles Rubia, who, with the late Kenneth Matiba, boldly planned a promultiparty rally in 1990; and former Catholic Bishop Ndingi Mwana ‘a Nzeki. Former Kenyan President Daniel arap Moi also died (February 4, 2020).
6 Imanyara interview. Imanyara was #2 on the top 30 list of Kenyan activists. He and others challenged the one-party rule of the late President Daniel arap Moi in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Imanyara published Nairobi Law Monthly, for which he was detained several times by the Moi regime. The alternative media played an important role in opposing President Moi, including Society, Finance, and others.
7 Almeida (2019: 7) wrote, “Social movements are collective and sustained over a period of time.” That time, he suggested, is at least a year. The Kenya activism this scholar has focused on came in two identifiable phases: One featured individual activism (1987–1991) and one primarily organizational (1991–2002). Almeida emphasized their exclusion of social groups from political and economic power motivates some to join a social movement. This was clearly part of the motive of the Kenyan activists, many of whom joined opposition political parties and moved into government, both in the 1990s and beyond.
8 Although some may question whether it was a movement or a “network of groups and actors brought together in a strategic alliance against Moi’s dictatorship, the author argues for a broader definition of a social movement, one that includes individual activism only loosely-connected and planned with other activists.”
9 For the purposes of this study, a social movement is defined as a process of resistance, in this case to authoritarian rule, involving at various times individuals, organizations, and portions of the general public (Press, 2006). The variations this can take beyond that basic definition are many.
10 The current study follows up earlier interviews in 2002 I conducted with activists. At that time, as previously noted, I constructed a list of the top 30 activists in the order in which other activists mentioned them as a key human rights activist at the time. These interviews formed the core of two books (Press, 2006, 2015) and helped secure appointments and to quickly reestablish credibility.
11 These included members of a new generation of activists, focusing primarily on their risky activism in the informal settlements to help expose and denounce continuing extrajudicial killings by police. This will be the subject of a subsequent article.
12 Attorney Paul Muite, #1 of the top 30 activists, declined to be reinterviewed, saying he was taking a “sabbatical” from interviews. But other activists and archival materials provided an update on activities of he and the six others from the top 30 list who could not be reached.
13 I was a correspondent based in Nairobi for the Boston-based newspaper The Christian Science Monitor from 1987 to 1995.
14 Evacuation from Kenya in April 2020 due to the pandemic meant that a few interviews were conducted later on Skype from the United States. (I resumed research in Kenya in the summer of 2021.) The protocol for this study was approved by the Institutional Review Board of the University of Southern Mississippi (19-254), which allowed for signed or verbal informed consent of participants (none under the age of 18) and publication of their identities. The activists were already known to the public as such.
15 Tarrow’s focus on cycles is only a part of his wider examination over the years of social movements.
16 Jacobsson and Sörbom went on to quote Koopmans (2007: 22). who noted, “the reasons for that contraction of contention has commended little attention in the literature so far.”
17 Mueller (2018) detected a similar pattern of elite-led/popularly supported protest movements across much of Africa in recent decades.
18 Moi won the election in 1992 due to “internal in-fighting” by the divided opposition; his party was better-organized in key provinces, and the government “rigged” the election (Throup & Hornsby, 1998: 454).
19 Kenyan historian Macharia Munene argued that some members of Parliament, regardless of their “revolutionary” credentials, “agreed with Moi on the need to stop those outside from taking power from the bottom up. They wanted to stop a “revolution” (Munene email October 24, 2021).
20 Munene argued that Kibaki “simply disagreed on the type and extent of reform. The 2010 Constitution would not have passed without him.”
21 Maina Kiai, in a telephone interview, September 2003 (Press, 2006: 174).
22 Gibson Kamau Kuria, #4 on the top 30 list of former activists, in an interview, October 7, 2019, Nairobi, Kenya.
23 John Khaminwa, in an interview, October 9, 2019, in Nairobi, Kenya.
24 As noted, active, although not always united, resistance continued until the Moi era ended with the opposition victory in 2002, and to some extent was revived for the push for a new constitution, adopted in 2010.
25 As noted, the top 30 ranking originated from my 2002 interviews based on the number of times earlier activists had identified key fellow human rights activists. Kuria, #4 on that list, identified 16 of the 30 as still politically active. Pheroze Nowrojee (#10 on the list), a retired human rights lawyer, identified 14 as still active, with a few different choices. But Nowrojee was not familiar with the contemporary activities of two of the 21 survivors.
26 Social movement theories generally focus on noninstitutional protest but Santoro and McGuire (1997), Pettinicchio (2012), and the current study have argued there are institutional activists. For example, in the 1990s, some key human rights activists elected to Parliament continued to pursue adoption of basic political freedoms.
27 George Kigoro, in a telephone interview, April 2, 2020, in Nairobi, Kenya.
28 John Githongo, in a Skype interview, April 28, 2020.
29 Muite, who, like Kuria (both leading activists against Moi), later added some government clients to his law practice after Moi was out of power.
30 Kenyan historian Munene argued of the former activists, “Few were real reformers, many just wanted accommodation.”
31 Wafula Buke, (#26 on the top 30 list), in a Skype interview, May 15, 2020 from Kenya.
32 “The first liberation was the independence war against colonial rule. The second liberation was the struggle for human rights and a new constitution” (Nderitu, 2020).
33 Willy Mutunga, in an interview, January 23, 2020, in Nairobi, Kenya.
34 Mutunga interview.
35 As a foreign correspondent based in Nairobi for The Christian Science Monitor, I was standing amid the mothers when police attacked their supporters with clubs and then threw a tear gas cannister toward the mothers, hitting me in the head. The police later denied gassing the mothers.
36 Njeri Kababere, in an interview, October 22, 2019, in Nairobi, Kenya. Kababere was #21 of the former top 30 activists.
37 Timothy Njoya, #6 of the former top 30, in an interview, October 1, 2019, Nairobi, Kenya.
38 Maina Kia, an attorney and #25 of the former top 30, in an interview, August 6, 2019 in Nairobi, Kenya.
39 Mutuma Ruteere, in an email, January 5, 2021.
40 Two were deceased and one was unavailable.
41 Kababere interview.
42 John Khaminwa, #14 of the former top 30 activists, in an interview, October 9, 2020, in Nairobi, Kenya.
43 Mutunga interview.
44 Mutunga interview.
45 Kababere interview.
46 Mueller (2018: chap. 1, np, digital edition) noted, “the first wave led to decolonialization in the 1960s and the second wave having ushered in democratic transitions in the 1960s.”
47 The 10 countries in the study are Egypt, Turkey, Armenia, Ukraine, Romania, Zimbabwe, Ethiopia, Thailand, Taiwan, and Brazil.
48 I was unable to confirm whether Kĩnyattĩ was deceased as of 2021.