World on Fire - Brownstein, Michael [83]
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Crony Capitalism in Kenya
Backlashes against democracy, friendly to a market-dominant minority, can also be found in East Africa. Many Kenyans, for example, would argue that their country is being milked by such an alliance today. Kenya’s tiny Indian minority has always been keenly aware of its political vulnerability. In the years leading up to independence, a number of influential Indians overtly sided with the colonial authorities, opposing black majority rule. Once black African leadership became a certainty, however, Kenyan Indians changed strategies. In the country’s first democratic elections in 1963, Indian business interests were the largest domestic campaign contributors to Jomo Kenyatta, who became the country’s first president.
In 1967, then–vice president (now president) Daniel Arap Moi warned Africans at a political rally to “beware of bad Asians.” He advised African businessmen to protect themselves from their “unscrupulous” Asian counterparts, who either had to reform or “otherwise they can pack up their bags and go.” But once president, Moi found that he too needed Indian capital and entrepreneurialism—especially if he were to go after Kikuyu big business in the interests of his own Kalenjin constituency. Starting around 1978, in a complete (but predictable) about-turn, Moi entered into a symbiotic alliance with a handful of wealthy Indian businessmen. Moi protected the Indian minority politically, granting them relative economic freedom while affirmatively directing lucrative opportunities to a select few of them. In exchange, his Indian “business partners” generated vast amounts of wealth, compensating Moi and his cronies royally and allowing Moi to pursue his pro-Kalenjin agenda.
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Today, Moi and his cohorts jointly own extensive businesses with major Kenyan Indian families. At the same time, Kenya has retreated a long way from democracy, with Moi, like so many other African leaders, suppressing the media and political opposition, engaging in outright theft, and perpetuating himself as the country’s indefinite one-man ruler. Unfortunately for Kenya’s tiny Indian community—the majority of whom are middle- and upper-middle-class entrepreneurs who have received no favors from Moi other than economic freedom—the willingness of a handful of Indian tycoons to act as front men for Moi has generated tremendous, barely suppressed anti-Indian hostility. This hostility periodically explodes in the form of vicious ethnic riots, such as the one in 1982 in which mass anti-Indian looting and violence swept through not just Nairobi but other major urban centers. Today, because of Moi’s flagrant cronyism, anti-Indian hatred is as or more virulent than it was in 1982.
Beyond Crony Capitalism:
Political Rule by Market-Dominant Minorities
Crony capitalism typically involves a corrupt arrangement between an indigenous autocrat and a market-dominant minority. But there are more extreme versions of the antidemocratic backlash. In some cases, a market-dominant minority itself seizes power.
A classic case is apartheid South Africa, where for generations a small white minority, backed by a police state, ruled the country and enriched itself on the backs of a disenfranchised, exploited black majority. Similar dynamics obtained in Namibia and Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). Other examples are Rwanda and Burundi under Tutsi military rule. In all these cases an ethnic minority used military force and often truculent state repression to ensure its own economic and political dominance over subordinate majorities.
A variation on this theme existed throughout Latin America during the colonial period, and a muted version of it arguably