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Language
English (en)
Date of Award
5-1-2017
Author's Department
International and Area Studies
Degree Name
Bachelor of Arts (A.B.)
Restricted/Unrestricted
Restricted
Abstract
Barely half a year after Kenya had achieved formal independence from the British, on the 25" of June 1964, Ramogi Achieng Oneko stood on the floor of the Kenya National Assembly to propose that the Kenyan Government nationalize a major corporation for the first time in its brief history. Oneko was Kenya’s first African Minister of Information and Broadcasting (and, for now, also Tourism), and the institution that he sought to bring under state control was the independent Kenya Broadcasting Corporation (KBC). His proposal would shape Kenya for decades to come, bringing as it did the whole country’s broadcasting media under state control. By 1968, the Ministry would have the power to reach an audience of up to 3.5 million — as much as half of the country’s population. The Ministry — and hence the Kenyan state — gained dominance in the battle to define the young country: what it stood for, where it was headed, and to whom it belonged.But alongside the historical significance of the KBC’s nationalization, there were ironies at work here too. Oneko — who leaned socialist — likely did not know that though this would be the Government’s first act of nationalization, it would also be its last; he certainly did not know that though he had been the one to wrest control of the KBC, that control would soon enough be stolen by opponents that would turn it against him. The tantalizing power that the Ministry offered was the source of extensive conflict around independence, and despite his leading part in the drama surrounding the KBC, ultimately his role would end with him vanquished, not triumphant. Yet these ironies would wait to reveal themselves to Oneko, who opened his motion with a rebaptism, saying: “Mr. Speaker, Sir, [...] I hope hon. Members will take a decision to change the name [of the Kenya Broadcasting CorporationI] to a reasonable one; one which the Members will probably have already read about, that is, the Voice of Kenya.” Oneko’s rechristening of the KBC underscored a key question surrounding a fundamental continuity between the pre- and post-independence Kenyan state: how was it that the struggle around Kenya’s information services came to be a struggle of who was to be the Voice of Kenya? In other words, how had it come to be that the idea of “Kenya” retained sufficient currency after independence that a unitary state could claim to speak for all of the country, divided by issues of class and ethnicity as it was? The “victory” of nationstatism at the point of independence was neither predestined nor masterminded — so how did nationstatism become Kenya’s ultimate form?
DOI
https://doi.org/10.7936/aevv-d592
Mentor
Timothy Parsons
Recommended Citation
Ee, Shaun, "The Voice of Kenya: Competing Visions of Nationhood in a Post-Colonial State" (2017). Senior Honors Papers / Undergraduate Theses. 184.
The definitive version is available at https://doi.org/10.7936/aevv-d592
Comments
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