Wanjala S. Nasong’o. Kenya and the Politics of a Postcolony. New York: Anthem Press, 2024. 246 pp. $110.00 Hardback. ISBN: 9781839980275.
Year: 2025
Type: book-review
Abstract: Nasong'o's book is written with such enviable clarity and intellectual depth that as a reader I found it not just easy to read but also easy to understand.I appreciated its nuanced approach to the complicated history of Kenya and its postcolonial politics.Nasong'o's book can be thought of as a story of three colonial periods, the first being the entrance of British colonialists and the havoc they caused; this was quickly followed by American imperialism under the guise of fighting communism and the final period spearheaded by China.These three epochs capture Nasong'o's problematization and unfurling of the notion of "post" when speaking about the postcolony.Consequently, Nasong'o captures the atrophying of "the sense of unity and collective purpose."The result of this is a nation that is less of a nation today than it was six decades ago.The first era of imperialism, Nasong'o shows, was an era of almosts and paths not taken.It was a period where Kenya could have become a multiracial democracy, but it also could have become an apartheid state in the mold of South Africa.Nasong'o reminds us that owning colonies was a "symbol of great power status … source of national pride," which explains why "relatively weak and backward countries such as Belgium and Portugal" were keen players in the acquisition of colonies (8).To understand what would happen after colonization with regard to state-society relations, Nasong'o argues that the "coercive and exploitative" nature of colonization would rear its head in the postcolonial period (11).He goes on to add that socioeconomically, colonization led to "perverse development of infrastructure" and a "strengthening of gender bias in national development [through] Victorian rules that … marginalized women in the broader scheme of social and economic matters" among other impacts.He argues that colonialism's psychological impact was one of "deep-seated ambivalence, characterized by many contradictory feelings and attitude" between colonizer and colonized (13).All of this was present in the way in which postcolonial politics unfolded in these early years where suspicion, deception, and paths not taken in attempts to appease departing colonists and incoming imperialists can be understood as functions of not just the ambivalence wrought by colonization, but a state that understood its place as one meant to coerce citizens and display its power in ways echoing the departing settlers.As Nasong'o is keen to remind us, Kenyatta would come to be referred to as "the black settler" and Kenyatta would come to refer to members of the Kenya Land and Freedom Army (Mau Mau) as a "disease" that had been "eradicated" and needed to be
Source: African Studies Review
Author: j. Siguru Wahutu
Institution: Yale University
Language: English
Subfield: Anthropology
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W4413764419