Crimes of Capitalism in Kenya

This is the first number in the Research and Documentation (R&D) series from Vita Books and Ukombozi Library. It covers a shameful period of Kenya’s past under the government of President Daniel arap Moi (1978-2002) who ruled Kenya with an iron fist and conducted his reign of terror on those opposed to his dictatorship. He stifled violently people’s desire for change, equality and justice. He sought to drown the call of the independence movement for land and freedom in blood, torture and loot of national resources.

The wounds inflicted on people cannot even begin to be healed unless the full extent of the problem is first brought out in the public domain. But the same comprador regime that instigated these horrors then went on to suppress information about its terrorist rule over unarmed workers, peasants, students, professionals and other progressive people and their underground movements such as the December Twelve Movement and Mwakenya. It is no surprise that young Kenyans today are unaware of the full extent of Moi’s Reign of Terror.

Crimes of Capitalism provides a glimpse of this period through contemporary press cuttings. It also highlights the fact that the crimes of Kenya’s first two Presidents should be understood not only as evil actions of the individuals concerned. The ruling class and their party, KANU, that they nurtured became the agents of imperialism which sought to impose capitalism on the country and to suppress the growing calls for socialism.

The material from which these cuttings are taken are available in Nairobi’s Ukombozi Library, ‘Kenya’s First Socialist Library’ as Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung describes it. Vita Books and the Ukombozi Library will continue to use such documents to highlight other hidden aspects of Kenya’s history in future issues of the Research and Documentation Series.