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ABSTRACT
In the 2017 race for Kiambu County's governor seat, debates concerning the morality of incumbent governor William Kabogo played a distinctive role in his defeat at the hands of populist challenger Ferdinand Waititu. Shortly before the April nominations for Jubilee Party gubernatorial candidate, rumours circulated that Kabogo had publicly insulted the women of Kiambu at a campaign meeting. Kabogo ultimately gained a reputation for arrogant conduct at public meetings and an apparent belief that giving large cash hand-outs could buy his re-election. Drawing on 19 months of ethnographic fieldwork in Kiambu County, this paper probes the debate surrounding Kabogo's conduct. The article argues that Kabogo's defeat reveals moral premises according to which politicians in central Kenya are assessed, notions that stem from household-based understandings about proper masculine public conduct that Kabogo had allegedly transgressed. I underscore the limitations of patronage – both in Kabogo's actual practice and as an analytical trope. Instead, I emphasise the moral concerns of women voters who rejected the notion that money alone could buy their votes and – in ‘bringing down’ Kabogo – insisted that relations between themselves and politicians could not be divorced from moral qualities of respect.
Acknowledgements
This paper would not have been possible without the hospitality and patience of my host family and friends in Kiambu. In anonymising their names (I follow the Association for Social Anthropologists of the UK and Commonwealth's 2011 ethical guidelines), I realise that my greatest debt is to the publicly unnamed. I would also like to thank the British Institute in Eastern Africa for hosting me during my research in Kenya between 2016 and 2018. Everyone who I engaged with through my affiliation at the Institute, in seminars and at conferences, has had some input in this work (and my doctoral research more broadly), but in particular I am grateful to Tom Cunningham, Neo Musangi, Joost Fontein, as well as all the staff whose assistance and friendship will forever be appreciated. I'd also like to thank staff at l’Institut Français de recherche en Afrique (IFRA) for their support in the latter stages of fieldwork. Finally, I thank the special issue editors for their useful comments on an earlier draft of this work, as well as Jason Mosley, the JEAS editorial board and both anonymous reviewers.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1 Kenya Citizen TV, “Jeff Koinange Live interview with William Kabogo.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dLpzMyzQHDc [accessed 28 February 2018]
2 Pending the completion of their as yet unfinished stone house.
3 During an appearance on the Kameme radio station Waititu had mispronounced the word ‘paragraph’, leading to widespread mockery of him by educated Kiambu voters.
4 All interlocutors’ names have been anonymised.
5 NTV Kenya, “Kiambu Governor William Kabogo concedes defeat.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tR-HsxaJN58 [accessed 28 February 2018]
6 The Star, “Waititu wins Kiambu seat with 353,604 votes against Kabogo's 69,916,” 26 April 2017. https://www.the-star.co.ke/news/2017/04/26/waititu-wins-kiambu-seat-with-353604-votes-against-kabogos-69916_c1550534 [accessed 27 September 2018]
7 This was possibly a reference to Deputy President William Ruto. One reviewer suggested that Kabogo's remarks in 2016 that cast doubt on “Mount Kenya’s” support for Ruto's prospective presidential bid in 2022 might have landed him in trouble with the Jubilee Party machine – and Uhuru Kenyatta at the top. Although friends of mine in Kiambu speculated that Ruto had purposefully “removed” Kabogo (as a potential future opponent) in order to cement a bid for power in 2022 at the expense of the Kikuyu (an ethno-nationalist argument), this paper sees the causes of Kabogo's loss as originating much closer to home in Kiambu itself. See: KTN News Kenya, “Kabogo's statement against Ruto's 2022 presidential bid lands him in problems.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HjgSeyOH8Fc [accessed 26 September 2018]
8 Throughout the paper I translate terms used by my interlocutors from both Kiswahili and Gikuyu into English. Gikuyu can be identified by the distinctive presence of the extra vowels ĩ and ũ. The presence of both Kiswahili and Gikuyu reflects the code-switching practices common amongst my interlocutors as well as my own tendency to speak in Kiswahili rather than Gikuyu, particularly in the early stages of fieldwork. Interlocutors were generally competent in both, though this article makes a concerted effort to explore political debate taking place in Gikuyu given its dominance in Chungwa, and Kiambu County more broadly, as the language of preference. See also note 30.
9 I use ‘mũtũrĩku’, the adjective for ‘arrogant person’ (mũndũ mũtũrĩku), since this was how Kabogo was described by interlocutors (along with ‘proud’ [mwitiĩ, lit.: a proud person]) even though ‘ũtũrĩka’ better fits the abstract notion of ‘arrogance’ or ‘arrogant conduct’.
10 In the Machakos gubernatorial race, for example, Wavinya Ndeti portrayed herself on campaign posters as a simba, a lion, whilst marking out her opponent Alfred Mutua as fisi, a Sheng term for pervert. Kenyans.co.ke, “Wavinya Ndeti’s supporters embarrass Machakos Governor Alfred Mutua in poster,” 19 July 2017. https://www.kenyans.co.ke/news/20995-wavinya-ndetis-supporters-embarrass-machakos-governor-alfred-mutua-poster [accessed March 28 2018]
11 Mueller, “The Political Economy of Kenya's Crisis,” 200–202; D'Arcy and Cornell, “Devolution and corruption in Kenya,” 248.
12 Thompson, “The Moral Economy of the English Crowd,” 78–9.
13 Mwaura. Fieldnotes, 22 March 2017.
14 Fieldnotes, Kiambu County, 21 April 2017.
15 Haugerud, “Land tenure and agrarian change in Kenya,” 70.
16 Neumark, “A good neighbour is not one that gives,” 3.
17 For more on ‘vote banks’ see Bjorkman, “You can't buy a vote,” 619.
18 Fieldnotes, Kiambu County, 23 July 2017.
19 Fieldnotes, Nairobi, 11 May 2017.
20 Fieldnotes, Nairobi, 11 May 2017.
21 Fieldnotes, Kiambu County, 16 May 2017.
22 Fieldnotes, Kiambu County, 4 August 2017.
23 Bonhomme, The Sex Thieves, 118–119.
24 Ibid.
25 Ibid., 123.
26 Cheeseman, Democracy in Africa, 15.
27 Berman, “Ethnicity, Patronage and the African State”.
28 Ibid., 324.
29 D'Arcy and Cornell, “Devolution and corruption in Kenya,” 261.
30 Whilst parts of Kiambu, such as the enormous residential areas that have emerged alongside the Thika Road, have essentially been absorbed by Nairobi and are home to ethnically mixed populations, fieldwork has revealed that towns surprisingly close to northern Nairobi such as Chungwa retain a predominantly Gikuyu character – both ethnically and linguistically. This article concerns such areas of a ‘Gikuyu’ Kiambu rather than the newer Nairobi-like Kiambu. As noted, this article speaks less to the inter-ethnic rivalries of ‘political tribalism’ described by Lonsdale than ‘moral ethnicity’ - the debates about inequality and wealth that play out within ethno-nationalism.
31 Ibid., 251.
32 I follow Bjorkman, “You can't buy a vote.”
33 Chome, “Devolution is only for development?”
34 Bjorkman, “You can't buy a vote,” 618; Kramon “Vote-Buying and Political Behavior.”
35 Fieldnotes, Kiambu County, 25 March 2017.
36 A similar argument about the ways in which politicians use cash hand-outs to project information to voters about their largesse has been put forward recently by Kramon, Money for Votes, 3–4. This article can be read as an ethnographic attempt to draw attention to the embedded norms and values that orient and limit what he calls “electoral clientelism”.
37 D'Arcy and Cornell, “Devolution and corruption in Kenya,” 262–3.
38 Fieldnotes, Kiambu County, 19 April 2017.
39 Piliavsky, Patronage as Politics in South Asia, 28.
40 Ferguson, “Declarations of dependence”; Feierman, Peasant Intellectuals; Guyer “Wealth in People.”
41 Lonsdale, “Authority, Gender & Violence,” 65.
42 Lonsdale, “The Moral Economy of the Mau Mau,” 336.
43 Lonsdale, “Authority, Gender & Violence,” 65.
44 Ibid., 49.
45 See Cheeseman et al., “Decentralisation in Kenya.”
46 See Comaroff and Comaroff, Of Revelation and Revolution Volume 1 for an example of such a historical study.
47 Peterson, “Wordy Women,” 472–8.
48 Lonsdale, “The Moral Economy of the Mau Mau,” 357, 359.
49 Heyer, The Man dala of a market, 87; Dutto, Nyeri Townsmen, 98–100.
50 Lonsdale, “Authority, Gender & Violence”, 67; Peterson, Creative Writing, 12–13.
51 Kinoti, African Ethics, 70.
52 Fieldnotes, Nairobi, 3 August 2017.
53 Fieldnotes, Nairobi, 13 March 2018.
54 Lonsdale, “Authority, Gender & Violence,” 65–70.
55 Ibid.
56 Ibid.
57 Fieldnotes, Nairobi, 3 August 2017.
58 Radio shows such as Kiambu Women Representative Gathoni wa Muchomba's Muigwithania regularly articulate a voice for women and their moral concerns in their portrayal of family conflicts and the possibilities for reconciliation.