The Ghost of a Word
Few words in Kenya’s political lexicon carry as much weight — or as much blood — as majimbo. Born in the 1960s as a promise of federalism, it was betrayed in the first years of independence, then revived as a slogan of eviction and death in the 1990s. It resurfaced again in 2007, this time painted as salvation by some and destruction by others. Today, the county system created by the 2010 constitution is, in essence, majimbo in new clothes. But the word itself remains cursed, whispered with suspicion, echoing with violence.
To understand majimbo is to understand Kenya’s political fears. It began as a dream of protection — the shield of minorities against the tyranny of majorities. But betrayal turned it into a ghost, one that haunts every election, every land dispute, and every attempt to redraw the Kenyan state.
Fear of Being Swallowed
As independence approached in the early 1960s, the arithmetic of democracy was clear. The Kikuyu and Luo communities together made up nearly half the population. In a unitary state built on Westminster rules, they would dominate government and resources. Smaller groups — the Kalenjin, Mijikenda, Maasai, and others — would be condemned to permanent minority status.
For Daniel arap Moi of the Kalenjin and Ronald Ngala of the Coast, independence threatened to replace one coloniser with another. Freedom would mean domination by fellow Africans. Their answer was majimbo: federalism, Kiswahili-style. Kenya would be divided into regions, each with its own assembly, police, and control over land, leaving the centre in Nairobi only defense, currency, and foreign affairs.
To KADU, the party of Moi, Ngala, and Masinde Muliro, majimbo was a shield. To KANU, dominated by Kikuyu and Luo elites, it was sabotage. Tom Mboya dismissed it as “balkanization,” a British trick to keep Kenya weak. But KADU held firm. At the Lancaster House conferences (1960–62), backed by settlers and the British, they won the day. Kenya’s independence constitution of 1963 was federal: seven regions with autonomy, a compromise to allay minority fears.
The Betrayal
Majimbo died young. Once Jomo Kenyatta took office as prime minister, he moved quickly to consolidate power. By 1964, constitutional amendments had stripped the regions of authority. Kenya was declared a republic with a strong presidency. KADU itself dissolved, its leaders crossing the floor to join KANU.
Okoth-Ogendo later called Kenya a land of “constitutions without constitutionalism” — paper guarantees of rights and federalism erased by political expedience. For Ngala and Moi, the betrayal of majimbo confirmed their deepest fears. They had signed up for independence under the promise of autonomy, only to watch Nairobi swallow everything.
The federal dream was gone, but its suspicions lived on. Among the Kalenjin and Coast peoples, the sense of vulnerability festered. Majimbo became less about assemblies and more about land — who owned it, who controlled it, who had the right to live where.
The Return: Majimbo and the Rift Valley Clashes
By the 1990s, Kenya’s one-party state was collapsing under pressure. Civil society, churches, and opposition leaders demanded multiparty politics. President Moi, now the embodiment of the fears he once voiced, faced a new danger: if multiparty elections came, Kikuyu- and Luo-led opposition could defeat him.
Suddenly, majimbo returned. But it was no longer the language of constitutional theory. It was the language of blood.
At rallies in the Rift Valley in 1991–92, Moi’s allies revived majimbo as a call for “indigenous rights.” They told Kalenjin, Maasai, and Samburu audiences that multiparty politics would mean eviction by Kikuyu settlers. The solution, they claimed, was majimbo: regional autonomy where locals controlled land.
The message quickly turned violent. In places like Miteitei, Burnt Forest, and Molo, Kikuyu homes were marked with graffiti — weka majimbo yako hapa (“put your majimbo here”). Militias armed with pangas and bows launched night raids, torching homes and driving out non-Kalenjin communities: Kikuyu, Luo, Luhya, Kisii, and Kamba.
The Akiwumi Commission of 1999 investigated the clashes. It found they were not spontaneous tribal riots. They were coordinated. Raiders smeared their faces with clay, moved in groups, and sometimes marched under police escort. Chiefs and provincial administrators, overwhelmingly Kalenjin under Moi, looked away or encouraged the attacks. The report named senior KANU politicians — Nicholas Biwott, Ezekiel Barngetuny, Reuben Chesire — as organisers and financiers.
The numbers were staggering: more than 1,500 people killed, over 250,000 displaced. Families who had lived on Rift Valley farms since the 1960s now found themselves in IDP camps. Majimbo had become a machete at the door.
The Manipulation of Language
As scholar Bernard Mang’eni shows, the majimbo debate of the 1990s was as much about rhetoric as reality. Political advertisements, songs, and speeches reframed majimbo as either salvation or doom. For KANU, majimbo was the rallying cry of “locals” fighting back. For the opposition, it was a coded call for ethnic cleansing.
This manipulation was deliberate. Leaders invoked historical flashbacks — the 1982 coup, land redistribution after independence — to stir fear. The word majimbo became so poisoned that by the late 1990s, civil society warned that even discussing federalism was dangerous. The term itself had become shorthand for violence.
The Ghost in 2007
In the 2007 elections, majimbo returned again, this time under a new name: ugatuzi, devolution. Raila Odinga’s ODM campaigned on devolution as the cure for Nairobi’s centralised theft. Kibaki’s PNU countered by warning that devolution was majimbo by another name — chaos, division, blood.
When the election collapsed into violence, the script echoed the 1990s. In Rift Valley towns, Kikuyu families were again expelled. Once more, majimbo was scrawled on doors and shouted in mobs. Land, ethnicity, and federalism converged in fire.
Devolution: The New Majimbo
The 2010 constitution finally tried to bury the ghost. It created 47 counties with governors, assemblies, and budgets — devolution by design. This was majimbo’s rebirth, stripped of the machete. The idea was to give local communities power without breaking the state.
But suspicion remains. For some, counties are empowerment, proof that majimbo’s dream was not in vain. For others, they are tribal fiefdoms, controlled by local strongmen. The ghost of majimbo still lurks. In every debate about revenue sharing, in every whisper about secession, the word threatens to return.
Kenya’s Lost Federalism
Majimbo began as a shield for minorities, a dream of federalism that would protect smaller groups from being swallowed. Moi and Ngala did not imagine eviction camps or blood-soaked slogans. They imagined assemblies, local police, and dignity.
But betrayal twisted that dream. Kenyatta’s centralisation in the 1960s turned majimbo into grievance. Moi’s manipulation in the 1990s turned it into violence. By 2007, the word itself was poison.
Kenya today lives with counties, the sanitized offspring of majimbo. They have not healed all wounds, but they are proof that the question of federalism could not be buried. The dream persists, haunted by its betrayals.
Majimbo is not just history. It is a mirror of Kenya’s fears: of domination, of landlessness, of betrayal by the state. It remains the word that will not die.
Read Next
- The Shifta War: Kenya’s Forgotten Border Conflict (1963–1968) — How Nairobi’s fragile new state fought to hold its northern frontier, and why repression became the template for future conflicts.
- The Birth and Evolution of Kenya’s Multiparty Democracy — From one-party dominance to street protests and ballot-box battles, the long and bloody road back to plural politics.
- The Kisumu Massacre of 1969: Independence Betrayed — When Kenyatta’s bullets met Luo grief, and the promise of independence curdled into suspicion and blood.