When Kenya could not marshal numbers to win confidently elections in 1992, it engineered political violence at the coast, informal settlements in Nairobi and the Rift Valley to elbow out the opposition juggernaut that was clearly favoured to outs from power in a fair contest.

Since January 2023, 40 assassinations have recorded, with the governing African National Congress being accused of complicity. The latest four assassinations took place two months to this week’s general election, which multiple opinion polls predict reduce the governing party’s numbers in parliament.

According to The Washington Post, “As South Africans head into national elections on Wednesday, the country’s politics have been rocked by an epidemic of assassinations, including 40 recorded since the start of last year. While they have largely targeted local officials, politicians and activists, the killings appear set to impact the outcome of the national vote.”

The international newspaper goes on, “The killings have fostered a climate of lawlessness and government paralysis that has fuelled voter anger and the failure of the ruling African National Congress to stem the violence has been eroding the party’s popularity. National polls now show that the ANC, led by President Cyril Ramaphosa, is unlikely to gain a majority in the parliamentary elections for the first time since it came to power in 1994 after the end of apartheid, raising the prospect that the party will have to form a coalition government.”

After the repeal of political pluralism in 1965 when discontent began to build up against founding President Jomo Kenyatta, Kanu unleashed a wave to terror on its critics that is remembered for the assassination of Pio Gama Pinto, a political gadfly with the capacity to unsettle the governing clique as does Julius Malema and the late Chris Hani in South Africa.

The expulsion of Malema from ANC in 2012 brings back memories of the reign of terror during the one-party era when the phrase “disgruntled elements” was akin to a death sentence. The assassinations of Tom Mboya, JM Kariuki and John Robert Ouko were preceded by unqualified allegations of “disgruntled elements,” according to Salat. The phrases sent many others into political oblivion – although some (lucky to be detained) managed to resurrect their political careers after Kenyatta and Moi exited power.

The paranoia, adds Salat, was triggered by fears of unfulfilled promises made in Sessional Paper No.10, regarded as a consequential document that carried the hopes of Kenya as a newly independent nation.

“That was a time in history when strongmen were accepted as leaders…and poverty was not felt as unique. Somehow Moi ruled with empathy, but Ruto is ruthless. Then there has been all this American influence: marketing a product called democracy, which they cannot control themselves,” says former Kanu Nominated Member of Parliament, Prof Ruth Oniang’o, of the ideological crises Kenya and South Africa plunged following the betrayal of impendence promises.

Sessional Paper No.10 envisaged economic take-off with industrialisation, education and social protection as the drivers.

“It should be recognised that if the nation’s limited domestic capital is used to buy existing land, livestock, buildings and equipment, the nation has no more productive assets than before – only their ownership has changed. What may be lost are the new resources that could have been purchased instead – the new schools, hospitals, roads, water supplies, irrigation schemes, rolling stock, land surveys, housing, lodges, airports and harbour development – and the employment opportunities and added output that these new developments would create,” according to the 1965 Sessional Paper No.10, billed as Kenya’s blueprint for economic take-off.

Land, inter-ethnic coexistence and business ownership remain prickly issues that independence parties have to grapple with. The same applies to ANC in Sout Africa.

According former Secretary-General Nick Salat, “Kanu (and now ANC) is an ideal case study for political parties across the continent of how not to do thing things… Independence parties should never die. Those who are in Kanu now should decide when or to continue doing the same old things and getting the old results. Or they should smell the coffee and realise that politics of yesteryears and today is totally two different things. Let other countries learn that the more you retain the old way of doing things, other entities will come in and pass you by.  At the end of the day the end-game of a political party is power and if you ignore citizens, you lose it.”

Political demagoguery, explain Prof Oniang’o and Salat, is the source of disenchantment with ANC and Kanu, leading to splits. Similar situations obtain in Zimbabwe, where independence parties Zapu-PF and Zanu-PF are sliding into insignificance. They are accused of the same mistakes Kanu made in Kenya, and which are currently being replayed in South Africa as the country holds its seventh general election.

Kenya and South Africa waged the longest and bloodiest wars of liberation in Africa, with ANC – Africa’s oldest political party – ascending to power in 1994 when Kanu’s star in Kenya was dimming. ANC’s missteps have elicited comparisons with Kanu’s trajectory before its 40-year reign ended sensationally ended 2002, an election outcome that shook Africa and necessitated a resetting in some countries that were accustomed to one-party rule. That Kanu has become something of a case study in African political democracy is not surprising, insists Salat.

“Kanu was dominated by demagogues who were impatient with political reforms in keeping with the times. ANC has slipped into similar demagoguery at a time groups that split from the independence party are building momentum,” he observes.

The emergence of Umkhonto  Wesizwe and Economic Freedom Party, both formed by estranged stalwarts of ANC rekindles memories of the peeling away from Kanu by Jaramogi Oginga Odinga in 1965 to form Kenya People’s Union.

• A Tell report