Mwakenya

About the book

Mwakenya: The Unfinished Revolution is divided into six parts after the Preface and Introduction. Part One covers the birth of the Kenyan anti-imperialist underground in the mid-1970s, around the time of the murder of the populist parliamentarian J. M. Kariuki, by assassins widely believed to be working at the behest of President Jomo Kenyatta.

Drawing its inspiration from the Mau Mau struggle of the 1950s, the December Twelve Movement took its name from the date of flag independence, which it saw as the day the freedom aspirations of Kenyans were betrayed and neocolonialism began. The movement was itself the child of the clandestine Workers' Party of Kenya, and took an anti-imperialist, pro-socialist stance anchored in Marxist-Leninist and Maoist thought.

The rest of the book is a detailed narrative, and a frank critique, of the later history of the movement, when in Maina's words it was taken over by "opportunist, sectarians and ultra-leftists" who transformed it into Mwakenya, at first with disastrous consequences. He chronicles the inner-party debate, struggle, and rectification that led to the expulsion of the "liquidationist Dar clique".

Part One is worth reading and re-reading, as it departs from Maina's earlier public views on Mwakenya, especially in his History of Resistance in Kenya, 1890-2002, where many observers felt he endorsed some of Mwakenya's errors through silence.