In a previous life before he was the father of a very successful actress, Nyong’o was a v good political theorist. His take is probably the academic read of the history closest to your view:
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And yet even he thinks there *was* a strong coalition here.
aug 31, 2025, 6:53 pm • 1 0 • view
Thanks for the reference. Isn't Prof. Nyong'o saying the 'nationalist coalition' was in reality the instrument of a small elite, and its later split a mere 'intrabourgeois conflict'? The point is that the 'base' never matters for any faction except as a mass to be manipulated.
aug 31, 2025, 7:27 pm • 0 0 • view
No. He thinks that both parties included and represented ordinary people who badly needed land; that the handling of land was a cause of the breakup of the nationalist coalition; and that the mass expectation of a clear plan for independence was a *cause* of the coalition crackup.
aug 31, 2025, 7:33 pm • 1 0 • view
His reasoning seems to be that the popular pressure for a plan once independence was won made intra-coalition ideological differences very difficult to hide. And once they were out in the open, and couldn’t be deferred because independence had actually been secured, the nationalist coalition was in
aug 31, 2025, 7:36 pm • 0 0 • view
deep trouble.
aug 31, 2025, 7:36 pm • 0 0 • view
Whatever you think of that view, it has the consequence that the nationalist coalition wasn’t simply an elite arrangement: it was responsive to popular demand for land, representation, and a national programme; and its responsiveness to that demand for a national programme was a cause of its fall.
aug 31, 2025, 7:38 pm • 0 0 • view
I'd say his view (and mine) is much more cynical than you put it. To quote: "But while these ideological differences existed in rhetoric ... they served more as 'mobilizing agents' for the opposed factions rather than explanatory variables for any real ideological differences"
aug 31, 2025, 8:25 pm • 0 0 • view
Earlier, he gives two examples of two consequential ideological differences: land (what to do with it? How to distribute it?) and the point of the state (where should accumulation happen?)
aug 31, 2025, 9:00 pm • 1 0 • view
He then points to Mboya’s ideological line (the social democrat who disdained “socialist adventurists”). Since Mboya was the right’s main weapon against the KANU left, and since he was ideologically motivated by Nyong’o’s own admission, and on two of the central issues that split the nationalist
aug 31, 2025, 9:03 pm • 0 0 • view
coalition, I think there’s enough evidence of ideological conflict to justify us in turning down your interpretation of that sentence.
aug 31, 2025, 9:05 pm • 0 0 • view
He views it as a story of struggles for personal ambition with the masses' discontent providing dialectical constraints, forcing the erection of a dictatorship by the nationalist elite. Arguably something similar happened with Napoleon and the French revolution: the man affected whatever political
aug 31, 2025, 8:34 pm • 0 0 • view
or religious belief would lead him to power, and his rise and rule had little to do with any sincerely-held ideology on his part.
aug 31, 2025, 8:36 pm • 0 0 • view