3 - Strategic Submission as Resistance? Nabongo Mumia in the Struggle for Post-Colonial Kenya’s Histories
Corresponding Author(s) : Godwin Siundu
Afrika Zamani,
No. 17 (2009): Afrika Zamani: An Annual Journal of African History: Special Issue on Re-reading the History and Historiography of Domination and Resistance in Africa
Abstract
This article pursues the debate on the role that various regional leaders in late pre- to colonial Kenya played in their people’s responses to colonialism and its agents, and the contests for moral historical spaces that have continued to be played out in intellectual and public discourse. Focusing on Nabongo Mumia, the political and cultural figure of the Wanga people in western Kenya, the article examines the fluidity between collaboration and resistance as processes that have been presented mistakenly as dialectical oppositions. Situating my argument within the counter-revisionist trajectory, I demonstrate that the earlier presentation of Nabongo Mumia – and indeed a few other leaders – as a ‘collaborator’ largely simplifies the dilemmas that many a leader were confronted with in the wake of colonial violence, and is used in the current political setup to rationalise deliberate forms of exclusion from central political structures in the country. I further show that for regional leaders in colonial Kenya, strategic submission guided by a variety of legitimate considerations, was often misread as ‘collaboration’, a line that was picked up by earlier Africanist inclined scholars whose nationalistic impulses dr ve them to a search for ‘heroes’, often guided by the matrices of ‘resistance’.
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- Atieno-Odhiambo, Elisha S., 2002, ‘Hegemonic Enterprises and Instrumentalities of Survival: Ethnicity and Democracy in Kenya’, African Studies, 61, 2. pp. 223-249.
- Berman, Bruce, 1990, Control & Crisis in Colonial Kenya: The Dialectic of Domination, East African Educational Publishers, Nairobi.
- Binsumet, Ahmed J., 2006, ‘Penetration of Islam in Eastern Africa’, at http://www.swahilionline.com/features/articles/islam/binsumet1.htm, 7/23/2006 [Accessed Friday 4th July, 2008].
- Cooper, Frederick, 2002, Africa Since 1940, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
- Elkins, Caroline, 2005, Britain’s Gulag: The Brutal End of Empire in Kenya, Jonathan Cape, London.
- Fanon, Frantz, 1965, Trans. Constance Farrington, The Wretched of the Earth, Penguin Books, Harmondsworth.
- Gay, Peter, 1974, Style in History, McGraw Hill, New York.
- Kenyanchui, Simon, 1992, Nabongo Mumia, Heinemann Kenya Limited, Nairobi.
- Kenyatta, Jomo, 1938, Facing Mount Kenya, Kenway Publications, Nairobi.
- Mbembe, Achille, 2001, On the Postcolony, University of California Press, Berkeley.
- Murunga, Godwin, 2000, ‘Civil Society and the Democratic Experience in Kenya: A Review of Constitution-Making from the Middle: Civil Society and Transition Politics in Kenya, 1992-1997’, by Willy Mutunga, Sereat & Mwengo, Nairobi, 1999, African Sociological Review, 4, (1), pp. 97-118.
- Ngugi Wa Thiong’o, 1967, A Grain of Wheat, Heinemann Educational Books, Nairobi.
- Ngugi Wa Thiong’o, 1964, Weep Not, Child, Heinemann Educational Books, Nairobi.
- Pratt, Mary Louise, 1993, Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation, Routledge, London & New York.
- Vansina, Jan, 1985 [1988], Oral Tradition as History, James Currey, London.
- Were, Gideon, 1967, A History of the Abaluyia of Western Kenya c. 1500 - 1930, East African Publishing House, Nairobi.
- White, Hayden, 1978, ‘The Historical Text as a Literary Artifact’, in The Writing of History: Literary Form and Historical Understanding, Robert Canory & Henry Kozicki, eds., The University of Wisconsin Press, Madison. pp. 41-62.
References
Atieno-Odhiambo, Elisha S., 2002, ‘Hegemonic Enterprises and Instrumentalities of Survival: Ethnicity and Democracy in Kenya’, African Studies, 61, 2. pp. 223-249.
Berman, Bruce, 1990, Control & Crisis in Colonial Kenya: The Dialectic of Domination, East African Educational Publishers, Nairobi.
Binsumet, Ahmed J., 2006, ‘Penetration of Islam in Eastern Africa’, at http://www.swahilionline.com/features/articles/islam/binsumet1.htm, 7/23/2006 [Accessed Friday 4th July, 2008].
Cooper, Frederick, 2002, Africa Since 1940, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Elkins, Caroline, 2005, Britain’s Gulag: The Brutal End of Empire in Kenya, Jonathan Cape, London.
Fanon, Frantz, 1965, Trans. Constance Farrington, The Wretched of the Earth, Penguin Books, Harmondsworth.
Gay, Peter, 1974, Style in History, McGraw Hill, New York.
Kenyanchui, Simon, 1992, Nabongo Mumia, Heinemann Kenya Limited, Nairobi.
Kenyatta, Jomo, 1938, Facing Mount Kenya, Kenway Publications, Nairobi.
Mbembe, Achille, 2001, On the Postcolony, University of California Press, Berkeley.
Murunga, Godwin, 2000, ‘Civil Society and the Democratic Experience in Kenya: A Review of Constitution-Making from the Middle: Civil Society and Transition Politics in Kenya, 1992-1997’, by Willy Mutunga, Sereat & Mwengo, Nairobi, 1999, African Sociological Review, 4, (1), pp. 97-118.
Ngugi Wa Thiong’o, 1967, A Grain of Wheat, Heinemann Educational Books, Nairobi.
Ngugi Wa Thiong’o, 1964, Weep Not, Child, Heinemann Educational Books, Nairobi.
Pratt, Mary Louise, 1993, Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation, Routledge, London & New York.
Vansina, Jan, 1985 [1988], Oral Tradition as History, James Currey, London.
Were, Gideon, 1967, A History of the Abaluyia of Western Kenya c. 1500 - 1930, East African Publishing House, Nairobi.
White, Hayden, 1978, ‘The Historical Text as a Literary Artifact’, in The Writing of History: Literary Form and Historical Understanding, Robert Canory & Henry Kozicki, eds., The University of Wisconsin Press, Madison. pp. 41-62.