'Power to Uhuru': youth identity and generational politics in Kenya's 2002 elections
OUTPUT TYPE: Journal Article
PUBLICATION YEAR: 2006
TITLE AUTHOR(S): P.M.Kagwanja
KEYWORDS: ELECTIONS, IDENTITY, KENYA, YOUTH
DEPARTMENT: Democracy, Governance and Service Delivery (DGSD)
Print: HSRC Library: shelf number 4236
If you would like to obtain a copy of this Research Output, please contact Hanlie Baudin at researchoutputs@hsrc.ac.za.
Abstract
Faced with the challenge of a new, multi-ethnic political coalition, President Daniel arap Moi shifted the axis of the 2002 electoral contest from ethnicity to the politics of generational conflict. The strategy backfired, ripping his party wide open and resulting in its humiliating defeat in the December 2002 general elections. Nevertheless, the discourse of a generational change of guard as a blueprint for a more accountable system of governance won the support of some youth movements like Mungiki. This article examines how the movement's leadership exploited the generational discourse in an effort to capture power. Examining the manipulation of generational and ethnic identities in patrimonial politics, the article argues that the instrumentalization of ethnicity in African politics has its corollary in the concomitant instrumentalization of other identities: race, class, gender, clan, age and religion.-
Related Research Outputs:
- Youth (in)security: lessons from Kenya
- Social insecurity, youth and development issues in Kenya
- Book review: Marks, M. (2001) Young warriors: youth politics, identity and violence in South Africa. Johannesburg: Witwatersrand University Press. 171 p. ISBN 1868143708
- South African youth and civic engagement
- Youth (in)security, governance and the public space in Kenya
- Ikasi style and the quiet violence of dreams: a critique of youth belonging in post-apartheid South Africa
- Punching below their weight: young South Africans' recent voting patterns
- Talking about beauty: situating desire in shifting youth identifications in South Africa
- Safely queer on the urban peripheries of Cape Town: a summary
- Youth citizenship and the politics of belonging
- Ikasi style and the quiet violence of dreams: a critique of youth belonging in post-apartheid South Africa
- Introduction: youth citizenship and the politics of belonging: introducing contexts, voices, imaginaries
- Intersecting identities: race, sexual politics, and place in the discourses of young, gender non-confirming 'coloured' persons on Cape Town's urban peripheries
- Unmapping local and global boundaries of belonging: African diaspora youth imagination and possibilities of "home"
- Coming to self-awareness: in search of an education for non-violence
- Suicidal ideation and associated factors among students aged 13-15 years in Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) member states, 2007-2013
- Popular attitudes towards the South African electoral system: report to the electoral task team.
- An unlikely success: South Africa and Lesotho's election of 2002
- HIV/AIDS and land: case studies from Kenya, Lesotho and South Africa
- Kwazulu-Natal programme for survivors of violence