• Military Menu                       

• Introduction
• Systems
• Facilities
• Agencies
• Industry
• Operations
• Countries
• Hot Documents
• News
• Reports
• Policy
• Budget
• Congress
• Links

• WMD
• Intelligence
• Homeland Security
• Space

Daniel arap Moi

Jomo Kenyatta, the country’s first president, ruled the country until his death in 1978. He was succeeded by Daniel Arap Moi, who remained in office for twenty-four years. Although Moi began his tenure as the authoritarian leader of a single-party state, he was in power during Kenya’s transformation to a multiparty, pluralistic, and far more democratic country.

The transfer of leadership to Moi upon Kenyatta's death in 1978, effected according to constitutional form, was a major accomplishment of the Kenyan political order. Kenyatta had been a symbol of nationhood, a rallying point for all Kenyans, and at the same time leader of the prominent and aggressive Kikuyu ethnic group. Although an experienced and close collaborator of Kenyatta since independence and vice president since 1966, Moi had not built up a national following.

During the first months of Moi's leadership, scarcely any resistance could be found to his conciliatory policies, reflected by the slogan "peace, love, and unity." The new president launched a highly popular program of economic relief and an easing of constraints in public life. However, concerned that relatively isolated acts of dissent could broaden and unleash serious demonstrations of discontent at a time when Kenya was facing unprecedented economic adversity, Moi gradually reversed course.

Upon the initiative of Moi, the disbandment of ethnic associations was ordered in 1980. These included the Luo Association (East Africa), the New Akamba Union, and the unions of the Kalenjin and Luhya peoples. Most of these groups were concerned with promoting the business interests and welfare of their members. Moi's real target was the more politically oriented Gikuyu [Kikuyu]-Embu-Meru Association (GEMA). Leading politicians of the anti-Moi faction among the Kiambu Kikuyu constituted GEMA's top officials. (The chairman of GEMA was a Kiambu business tycoon, James Njenga Karume. Elected to the legislature in 1974, Karume was serving in Moi's government in 1983 in the relatively modest post of assistant minister of energy.)

Formed in 1971, later than the other associations, GEMA and its economic arm, GEMA Holdings, quickly became a powerful force of 2 to 3 million members, rivaling KANU itself. In addition to acting against these associations (although GEMA's business interests continued to be operated by a successor organization), Moi decreed an end to the practice of ethnic combinations forming caucuses within the National Assembly. The president's efforts, together with the emergence of pressing economic and social issues transcending ethnic rivalries, contributed to a diminution of the ethnic factor in politics.

By 1981, however, the underlying stresses of Kenyan political and social life had reemerged, and the government drifted increasingly toward more authoritarian measures to repress criticism. The relatively few "radicals" in the National Assembly and among university professors, students, and intellectuals were not a cohesive group, nor did they embrace a particular ideology, although many were socialist or Marxist in outlook. The government displayed considerable sensitivity because their charges of exploitation, favoritism, and misuse of political power struck a resonant chord among the public.

Kenya was officially declared a one party state by the National Assembly on 09 June 1982. Human rights abuses increased and political activity was suppressed.The air force coup attempt of August 1982, although quickly suppressed, revealed evidence of widespread social tension. The accepted scope of political debate was further narrowed as Moi sought to reinforce his authority over the governmental establishment. Amid allegations of plots and disloyalty in his own cabinet, Moi unexpectedly called an early election for September 1983. President Moi won the election in September 1983, and a third in February 1988.

President Moi appeared intent upon systematically dismantling or silencing all independent civilian institutions in Kenya, including the church, the bar association, and the press. An early casualty was the judiciary, which in 1988 was weakened by a constitutional amendment removing security of tenure from judges, as well as from members of the Public Service Commission responsible for the appointment and discipline of civil servants. Another amendment rushed through at the same time increased from 24 hours to 14 days the period in which people detained for certain offenses might be held incommunicado, without access to a lawyer, a doctor, or family members. This provision greatly enhanced the likelihood of torture during detention--already a serious problem in Kenya, where police have been known to torture prisoners to death.

In mid-1990 President Daniel arap Moi attempted to systematically silence political opposition in his country by harassing and jailing prominent human rights lawyers, political figures, and other advocates of multiparty democracy in Kenya. The crackdown is part of a larger pattern of abuses apparently designed to eliminate criticism of President Moi's increasingly repressive one-party regime.

In the 16 July 1990 issue of Legal Times, Holly Burkhalter, Washington director of Human Rights Watch, describes the Moi government's continuing mistreatment of lawyers, politicians, church leaders, the media, and others. In response to these gross violations of human rights, Ms. Burkhalter calls for a thorough reassessment of United States aid to Kenya.

Kenya had been a de facto one-party state since 1969. In December 1991, President Daniel arap Moi reluctantly agreed to move to multi-party politics, eight years after his government amended the constitution to legalize one-party rule. Although it was under one-party rule until 1992, Kenya enjoyed a relatively open political system. For the first two decades after independence, Kenya also had one of the most impressive economic growth rates in Africa. The move came after a two-year anti-government campaign by opposition groups and persistent pressure by donor countries, including the United States.

Kenya moved from a one-party state to a multi-party democracy in 1992. Kenyans voted in record numbers in the country's first multiparty election in almost 26 years. President Daniel arap Moi defeated opposition candidates by a small margin. In 1997, Kenya held its second multi-party elections, at the height of tensions between the opposition and the ruling party. President Moi was re-elected with 40% of the votes cast, while his nearest rival, Mwai Kibaki, won 31%.

The Daniel arap Moi dictatorship undertook the systematic destruction of what used to be Africa’s economic showcase from the 1960s through the 1970s. Through craven policies and unprecedented levels of theft of public funds, public land, forests, recreational parks, school playgrounds, and buildings. The authoritative British newsletter Africa Confidential, put Moi’s external bank holdings at US$3billion in 2000. He denied it publicly but insisted that he could not vouch for his siblings who, together with Moi’s supreme confidante Nicholas Biwott had been often linked to major corrupt deals in Kenya.

In the so-called Goldenberg scandal the Moi regime bolted with an estimated $1billion from its own Central Bank (12percent of the nation’s GDP at the time) setting off a spiral of inflation, economic stagnation, unemployment, and rampant crime, a ruined agricultural sector, and decaying public services.

Struggles over the Moi succession contributed significantly to the erosion of the ruling party’s internal cohesion, and hence, its eventual electoral clout. The merger between the National Development Party (NDP), led by Raila Odinga, the leader of the Luo community, and KANU in March 2002 played a critical role in this disintegration, as it effectively marginalised several of Moi’s most loyal lieutenants. Apart from replacing the party’s long-serving Secretary-General, Joseph Kamotho, with Odinga, the merger created multiple vice-chair positions, bringing in four prominent cabinet ministers to fill the posts, but excluding the lone incumbent, Vice-President George Saitoti. In retrospect, these changes can be seen as part of Moi’s private plan to control the party’s presidential nomination process.

In the event, however, they set the stage for the unintended destabilization of the ruling party from within. Moi’s surprise announcement in July, that the youthful Kenyatta, son of the country’s first president, was his personal choice to succeed him, effectively splintered the ruling party. On December 27, 2002 Kenyan voters elected the country’s third president, Mwai Kibaki, ending the political monopoly held by the Kenya African National Union (KANU) since independence.

Moi’s incumbency, which particularly during its last 10 years was driven by the country’s return to multiparty competition, was characterised by what has been described as a marked “decline in the governance realm.” This was manifested in escalating corruption (establishing, according to some, a rampaging “lootocracy”), state-sponsored (or at least tolerated) ethnic violence associated especially with elections, as well as increasing crime and insecurity, capricious mal-administration of justice, widespread economic decline, and a marked deterioration in infrastructure.