Kenya – Revolutionary Papers https://revolutionarypapers.org Just another WordPress site Fri, 25 Oct 2024 09:16:18 +0000 en-GB hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.9.1 Pambana https://revolutionarypapers.org/journal/pambana/ Sun, 20 Oct 2024 08:56:06 +0000 https://revolutionarypapers.org/?post_type=journal&p=3248 Pambana and Cheche were pamphlets and newspapers of the party organ of the December Twelve Movement (DTM) launched in May 1982. DTM emerged from an underground Marxist-Leninist worker’s political party established after the first conference of the Kenyan Marxists-Leninists in Nairobi on December 22-23 in 1974. Later in May 1982 the DTM launched the Pambana pamphlet which when translated from Kiswahili means ‘struggle’. Pambana was an unapologetically leftist people’s newspaper to counter the dominant foreign owned colonial settler newspapers Daily Nation and East African Standard (now named Standard) which represented and continue to represent liberal interests. The five members initially charged with the production of the Pambana in 1981 were five academics including Willy Mutunga, Maina wa Kinyatti, Sultan Somjee, Al Amin Mazrui and Edward Oyugi.

Though short lived, Pambana had a wide circulation and it made an impact by providing a local alternative newspaper to the foreign owned dominant print media in post-independence Kenya. The first issue was published in May 1982 under the theme Cheche, in Kiswahili meaning a spark, inspired by the quote by Lenin: ‘A Spark Can Light a Prairie Fire’. Pambana was to provide a cheche (spark) to light and represent the truth to the masses of dispossessed Kenyans by Daniel Moi, the dictator who ruled Kenya from 1978-2002. Pambana was deliberate in its use of Kiswahili language, the language of Kenya’s working people and peasants who were the main audience for the publication. It also took a strong anti-imperialist position and focused on analysis of neo-colonialism on Kenya’s economy and among the working people. Pambana was inspired by Dedan Kimathi, the Mau Mau leader who fought against repression and occupation by the British and it sought to unite the poor and working people against the Kenyan ruling class and their foreign masters… read more

]]> Mwanguzi / Cheche / MWAKENYA Manifesto https://revolutionarypapers.org/journal/mwanguzi-cheche-mwakenya-manifesto/ Mon, 11 Apr 2022 11:38:34 +0000 https://revolutionarypapers.org/?post_type=journal&p=1036 The Kenya Land and Freedom Army (KLFA) or Mau Mau as it is more widely known as across the world was the cornerstone of the anti-colonial movement in Kenya and presented perhaps the most revolutionary fight against imperialism in the country. After Kenya’s independence from the British in 1963, there were hardly any substantial changes to the inherited colonial structure, specifically on land questions, and the Mau Mau movement itself as well as its leaders were ostracized.
The MWAKENYA – December Twelve was a Marxist-Leninist (Maoist) underground movement formed in 1974 to counter the reactionary Kenyan comprador bourgeoisie and its global imperialist alliance and importantly, to fulfil the revolutionary goals of the Mau Mau. In 1975 under the banner of the Workers Party of Kenya (WPK) the movement established an underground proletarian press in their own words “…to educate the masses and expose the regime’s puppetry to the global imperialists…”. The party secretly printed and distributed monthly newsletters, leaflets and pamphlets such as Mwanguzi, Cheche and the MWAKENYA Manifesto among others – which were distributed nationally to the Kenya’s working class, peasantry, university students and other militants. Internationally they were distributed by exiled militants, Left-leaning supporters and comrades and some were even reprinted by Zed Press, London.
The struggles over land, were central to the MWAKENYA-D12 movement and the intersections of these fights (squatters, labor struggles in foreign owned plantations, imposed industrial agriculture over subsistence farming, the peasantry and the impact of structural adjustment programs) were a core concern for them and they featured prominently in most of their publications.
This presentation is an attempt to critically engage the politics and articulation of Kenya’s land questions by the MWAKENYA – D12 underground movement – through its official publications produced in the period between 1974-2002. What does it mean to claim the legacy of a revolutionary anti-colonial peasant movement in a post*-colonial world? What does it mean to be a bridge, to offer continuities and discontinuities between the past and present? Importantly, what revolutionary futures were being willed into existence in the space (from political education, to printing and distribution) created by these radical texts? What meanings did these texts hold for the militants of the MWAKENYA-D12 underground movement and the oppressed Kenyan masses who came into contact with them?

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