Land, Power, and Political Violence in Kenya: Colonial Legacies and the Institutionalisation of Conflict

Abstract

This article aims to look at how these injustices that were perpetuated during colonial times and in the postcolonial era have been structurally instrumental in the political violence in Kenya. This study uses historical-institutionalist and political-economy perspectives as a theoretical lens to identify continuities between colonial, postcolonial, and contemporary times, drawing on archival sources, government reports, and secondary literature. Findings show patterns of exclusion which persisted over time, as postcolonial elites perpetuated and negotiated an alienation of land through selective land redistribution and through patronage-based governance. In the 1990s and the Post Election Violence (PEV) that occurred in 2007/08, land grievances were the key instigators of violence. Finally, the article suggests that to achieve sustainable peace in Kenya, rather than simply achieving technical land reform, there needs to be a structural separation between land and political power. It contributes to the wider discussion of postcolonial state formation, land politics, and violence in Africa and proposes institutional, legal, and governance reforms to halt cycles of land-related violence. Further research could be conducted on the same framework in other contexts in postcolonial Africa with similar histories of land tenure; the effect of devolved governance structures on the dynamics of land conflicts since 2010; and the gendered aspects of land dispossession and political violence, which have not been explored in the literature.