Students in the Struggle for Kenyan Democracy

For newly independent African countries, the two principal agencies of transformation and modernization were the competence and responsibilities assembled and directed under the aegis of two institutions—government and the university. Universities would be an instrument to give strength, content, and direction to national life.

By the late 1970s, the University of Nairobi and its constituent Kenyatta University College had become key hubs of national dissent within Kenya. Between 1969 and 1990 there were over 20 university closures at the University of Nairobi alone. Many of the debates that students initiated on campus would later be rearticulated on the national political stage as former students went on to prominent public positions, set up their own political parties or joined governing or opposition parties. Many of those who graduated in the 1970s and 1980s have been active in Kenyan politics ever since.

However, reports by the popular press and some academics have tended to only focus on the incidents during this time that involved physical violence and suggest students merely disrupted the university. Many reports failed to highlight the democratic nature of the students’ concerns and the oppressive, authoritarian structures that they faced.

Set against the context of authoritarian leadership, institutional decay and management crises, student activism in Kenya is a form of protest and resistance against oppression. At its very heart, it is also a demonstration of leadership and the capacity for mass mobilization. University students played a key role in Kenya’s struggle for democratization.