Political Instability in Kenya and European Colonialism in Africa

Political Instability in Kenya as a Consequence of European Colonialism in Africa
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From an anthropological perspective, this political instability in Kenya is symptomatic of the long-term consequences wrought throughout the continent of Africa by European colonialism in the past, and the way the end of European colonialism was carried out in the more recent past.
Introduction
For the most part, African countries have been marred with a lot of issues whose roots can be traced to the colonial era. Numerous experts have come out and tried to trace the onset of the problems happening in Africa to the exploits of the Europeans as well as how the end of the European colonialism was carried out. Kenya, for example, has always been relatively peaceful but every time the country gets closer to its election period, tensions are typically at an all-time high. People lose their lives while others end up displaced from the homes and all this happens in the hope of finding leaders who are then taken through the process of rebuilding and bridging gaps that exist in the communities. In a 2017 article from one of the dailies, the Daily Nation, the 2007/2008 post-election violence left more than 1,100 people dead while more than 600,000 were displaced from their homes. Having had relatively peaceful 2002 elections, the country was expected to have peaceful elections in 2007 as well. However, this was not to be and tensions were again high in both the 2013 and 2017 elections. In the 2017 elections, police brutality was at the center of numerous debates as children were carelessly killed in the spirit of thwarting any efforts by the opposition to stage mass protests. But are these problems that the Kenyans created or are did they start way before the current regime ever got into power? Can these problems and those in other African countries symptomatic of the long-term consequences of European colonialism and its abrupt end? Well, this paper seeks to delve deeper and address the above questions from an anthropological point of view.
Environment
Before the colonialists made their way to Kenya, the communities depended solely on the guidance that was provided by the elders and leaders. The conditions that these communities grappled with include issues to do with rainfall and cattle. As Wamicha and Mwanje (2000) note, something like “resource management in the interior of Kenya depended very much on whether a group was agrarian or pastoral.” These two groups were dictated by their inclination to either tilling the land or keeping cattle. The pastoralists, apparently, “believed that all livestock was given to them by God” and this statement helps to reveal a lot about the people that lived in Kenya before the colonial era. Land was used for two purposes only: for agriculture or grazing cattle. Communities owned this land, and any encroachment would lead to a fight. There was no order and no law which dictated behavior or helped solve cases or issues in the land. Additionally, there was no central source of power as each community looked inside for leadership.
The Pre-Colonial Era
In the pre-colonial era, the people in Kenya were organized in their communities. Brennan (2017:2) notes that “ritual chieftaincies and regional aristocracies coexisted with village-level matrilineal clans and other “stateless” societies.” Chiefs did have power over their subjects but as Brennan notes, “they did not enjoy a monopoly over political authority.” Apparently, on the political front, other leaders existed, and they include elders, healers, iron smelters, and diviners whose position in the communities was also respected. When it comes to occupying land, it was mainly on first-come-first-served basis. This means that whoever got to a particular territory first had control over that place. As already indicated above, there was no central figure of authority whose orders were supreme, but all of this was about to change.
The Colonial Era
In the colonial era, things changed as the Britons decided to exercise their will over the people of Kenya. The Briton’s arrival was never welcomed and, in some regions, they met ritual leaders and chiefs who organized attacks against them. Brennan (2017:6-7) notes that among the Nandi (presently the Kalenjin-speaking community in Kenya), a ritual leader known as Orkoiyot led his “people’s confrontations against encroaching British authority in Kenya’s Western Highlan...