Anglican primates are engaged in a very public spat. The Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, and the Archbishop of Uganda, Stephen Kaziimba Mugalu, differ on the position of the Anglican Communion on same-sex relations. The primates’ tracasserie, has been public, tense, and is straining the bonds holding the Communion together.

In a public statement on 29th May 2023, Archbishop Mugalu declared his and the Church of Uganda’s (CoU) gratitude and unqualified support for Uganda’s Anti-Homosexuality Act 2023. The Act prohibits people from having same-sex sexual relations. It imposes sanctions on the promotion or recognition of same-sex relations and related matters, which, according to Archbishop Mugalu, are prohibited both in the scriptures and in Ugandan culture. But a dismayed Archbishop Welby, in a press release, urged Archbishop Mugalu to withdraw his public support of laws that criminalize LGBTI people. He wrote, “There is no justification for any Province of the Anglican Communion to support such laws: not in our resolutions, not in our teachings, and not in the gospel we share.”

Was Archbishop Welby returning a compliment? In February, Archbishop Mugalu rebuked Archbishop Welby after the Church of England’s (CoE) General Synod approved the blessing of couples in same-sex unions. He condemned Welby’s approval of a change in the Church’s marriage doctrine that allowed clergy to preside over blessings of same-sex unions of couples considered “married” by the British government. Further, the CoE synod approved supplementary prayers and liturgies for such occasions.

Archbishop Welby made a curious admission on the contentious issues of human sexuality: “None of us get this right and I am only too conscious of the failing of the Church of England…” For this reason, he invited his fellow disciples across the Anglican Communion to a dialogue and urged them to desist from homophobia, racism and all other “othering” of our brothers and sisters in Christ.

I see this primates’ tiff as an acute case of culture clash, given the global texture of the Anglican Communion. The primates differed in their interpretation of the CoE Synodal Resolutions and the Ugandan Anti-homosexuality Act. Despite both having cultural advisers, the contradictions were bound to erupt, because they became mutually puzzled by each other’s behaviour which was not according to expectations. William Blake captures this contradiction best in The Everlasting Gospel:  “Both read the Bible, day, and night. But thou read’st black where I read white.”

Each primate speaks to a different audience, both at home and abroad.

The Church of England’s resolutions of February 2023

During the 2023 General Synod, the CoE passed several resolutions to enable her clergy to perform blessings for same-sex civil partnerships and marriages. The resolutions removed legal impediments to the “solemnisation of same-sex marriage in the Church of England”. They achieved this without abandoning the traditional view of marriage as legitimate and honourable. In making these accommodations in practice, the CoE welcomed the LGBTI people and repented for the harm caused.

Archbishop Welby and the CoE received these changes as a fitting response to their social milieu where justice and fairness for LGBTI peoples is enshrined in the anti-discrimination laws. Same-sex civil partnerships and marriages are now permissible. Archbishop Mugalu, on the other hand, saw the changes as a contradiction. He wondered how the CoE could maintain traditional marriage as a lifelong union between one man and one woman and at the same time permit clergy to bless couples in same-sex relationships.

Archbishop Welby claimed the CoE laboured long on the need for change before arriving at the present position. It reached the conclusion having sought the mind of scripture while seeking to “not reject Christ and His authority”. So, to question these changes, argued Archbishop Welby, makes the CoE and Anglican Church abroad “a victim of derision, contempt, and even attack for being part of the perceived ‘homophobic church’.”

But Archbishop Mugalu and the CoU were worried. Rejecting the inherited teaching on marriage and the sin of homosexual practices would damage her witness. There was a reluctance to change, for any such shift might cause the CoU and other Anglican churches to be perceived as being part of what is called the “gay church”.

Thus, while Archbishop Welby rejected Archbishop Mugalu’s statements and the tag of a “homophobic church”, Archbishop Mugalu refused the association with Archbishop Welby’s position for fear of being labelled a “gay church”.

The Church of Uganda’support for the Anti-Homosexuality Act

Uganda’s Anti-Homosexuality Act 2023 prohibits any form of sexual relations between persons of the same sex. It also prohibits the promotion or recognition of same-sex relations and related matters. It imposes a long prison sentence for homosexual offences and life imprisonment for aggravated homosexual offences against the underage or the disabled. It also prohibits those convicted under the Act from working directly with children to aid the CoU’s mission to protect children.

Archbishop Mugalu supported the Act because, in his view, Ugandans consider sexual relations between persons of the same sex to be an aberration. The archbishop argued that the previous legislation, drawn from the colonial era, criminalized same-sex relations under the Penal Code Act of 1950. He was in favour of the Act’s strong anti-grooming measures and restrictions on promoting the homosexual lifestyle.

Rejecting the inherited teaching on marriage and the sin of homosexual practices would damage her witness.

But the Archbishop of Canterbury differed. Both he and the CoE believe that homosexual attraction is natural, not a matter of choice. It is, therefore, wrong for Uganda to criminalize people for being who they are. So, if the Church were to support laws forbidding partnerships between LGBTI people, its action would be unjust. And since the CoE believes this to be a clear injustice, its position should be reflected in the rest of its beliefs; it should become a moral and ethical force in the 21st century. Welby therefore called on the CoU to reject such “criminal sanctions against same sex attracted people”, instead affirming them as humans, because God’s love is the same for every human being, irrespective of their sexuality.

The CoU refused to be tagged as condoning injustice and claimed that it was advancing laws that protect human rights. The CoU said it had forced the government to replace the death sentence in the penal code and in earlier bills with life imprisonment. In addition, it was pointed out that the prohibitions against homosexuality in Uganda were mild compared to the laws in the Arabian Peninsula and in the Middle East.

The CoE noted a profound dislocation between the Church and the society we are called to serve. A dislocation not about their position concerning partnership or sexual expression, but a fundamental disagreement about justice and fairness. The society views the CoE as inhabiting a different moral universe.

The CoU refused to be tagged as condoning injustice and claimed that it was advancing laws that protect human rights.

But Archbishop Mugalu would never affirm LGBTI people, nor allow the CoU to normalize homosexuality. The defining mark of the CoU is the sacrificial blood of the Uganda Martyrs. Although their confession and baptism defined their faith, the young martyrs’ refusal to yield to the homosexual advances of their king and dying for it is legendary. Now faced with a similar challenge, how can the CoU betray them, or abandon the Lord Jesus Christ?

Why the primates’ clash?

There are two explanations for the archbishops’ clash: ethnocentrism as advanced by anthropologists like Paul Hiebert, and the psychological dynamics of culture clash as advanced by Glenn Adams and Hazel Rose Markus.

Whenever we find differences in culture, Paul G. Hiebert concludes, ethnocentrism occurs, “the tendency to judge other cultures by our own values and assumptions of our culture”. So, it becomes the norm to view one’s own cultural position as the most suitable. And this is mutual. For just as we judge others’ customs as crude, they feel the same about ours.

The divergence of the archbishops’ vision of human sexuality is unyielding. The tension stretches into their interpretation of the 1998 Lambeth Conference Resolution 1.10, the most cited Anglican authority on human sexuality that holds “homosexual practice as incompatible with scripture” and, therefore, the church “cannot advise the legitimising or blessing of same-sex unions nor ordaining those involved in same gender unions.” Archbishop Justin emphasizes the resolution’s stand that “all baptised, believing and faithful persons, regardless of sexual orientation, are full members of the Body of Christ”. He “calls on all our people to minister pastorally and sensitively to all irrespective of sexual orientation and to condemn irrational fear of homosexuals”.

On the other hand, Archbishop Mugalu’s reading of the resolution supports the Uganda Anti-homosexuality Act, to the dismay of Archbishop Welby, who judges the Ugandan action as inhuman from the UK point of view. Archbishop Welby’s reading of the resolution is consistent with the CoE’s position, which embraces and welcomes LGBTI people, while Archbishop Mugalu judges it from his cultural point of view as compromising and contradictory.

For Archbishop Welby, to offer loving pastoral services to individuals made in the image of God is to affirm their value and identity. Supporting Archbishop Welby, the Archbishop of York laments existing laws that target people perceived to be different. According to the Archbishop of York, unloving laws that cause prejudice, violence, discrimination, and oppression are not rooted in the Gospel’s call to love our neighbours as Christ has loved us. Homosexual orientation is now viewed as being as normal as being left-handed in Western culture. It is nature. So, to discriminate on the grounds of sexuality is unlawful and deeply wrong. The CoE refuses to inhabit a different moral universe. A further reason to re-examine our scriptures and the tradition is to see if we can find a better way.

At the heart of the divide in the Anglican Communion’s approach to pastoral care for LGBTI people is a mutual pervasive process of devaluing the non-dominant group in contact with the more dominant group. These differences are cast as the result of negative shared tendencies rather than as a matter of divergent life experiences.

The Archbishop of Uganda holds a different logic of loving pastoral care for LGBTI people. Such services, argues Archbishop Mugalu, must be understood as guiding sinners back to God’s love through repentance. The CoU holds that God condemns all sexual sin: fornication, adultery, polygamy, bestial acts, paedophilia, and homosexuality. Repentant sinners can receive God’s love by confessing the wrong done and changing their lives. The CoU’s model of care and love is found in the example of Jesus’ treatment of the woman caught in adultery. Jesus said to her “Go, and sin no more.” Since God cannot bless what he calls sin, God wants to free from bondage those caught in sexual sin. The CoU has therefore developed pastoral healing ministries and recovery centres, where LGBTI people can find healing, forgiveness, freedom, and hope.

For Archbishop Welby, to offer loving pastoral services to individuals made in the image of God is to affirm their value and identity.

Culture reveals the psychological dynamics underlying the divide. When change comes, we are asked to examine cultural practices and institutions to foster a more inclusive, equal, and just multi-cultural society. The culture cycle offers insight into the primates’ clash.

Adams and Markus observe that culture comprises explicit and implicit patterns of historically derived and selected ideas and their embodiment in institutions, practices, and artifacts. Hence, the culture cycle is conceived as a multilayered, interacting, and dynamic system of ideas, institutions, interactions and individuals.

Conceptually, the culture cycle represents the dynamic process through which the cultural and the psychological interact and mutually make up one another.

Hazel Markus and Alana Conner show culture as a system of four dynamically interacting and interdependent layers. Here, culture is composed of the ideas, institutions, and interactions that guide and reflect individuals’ thoughts, feelings, and actions. The culture cycle can either start from the left hand or the right hand. The two archbishops seem to start the culture cycle from opposite ends.

Starting the culture cycle from the left, one begins with ideas, then the institutions and interactions that influence the individual. Consequently, cultures shape the self. For a person thinks, feels, and acts in ways that reflect and perpetuate these cultures. This appears to have been Archbishop Mugalu’s and the CoU’s starting point. Since Ugandan culture frowns on homosexuality, this norm determines how individuals in that culture respond to the demands of LGBTI people. So, according to Anita Among’, Speaker of the Ugandan Parliament, the Anti-Homosexuality Act “captures the norms and aspirations of Ugandans, for the House legislates for the citizens”. How, query’s Archbishop Mugalu, can the CoU embrace and normalize same-sex relations against their will, culture, and religious beliefs?

Joining the culture cycle from the right is reflected by individuals participating in and creating (i.e., reinforcing, resisting, and/or changing) cultures adopted by other people, in the present and the future. This is the point from which Archbishop Welby and the CoE seem to have started from in the cycle. The CoE adopted an embracing posture, following the individual experience of the young generation that has grown up in a UK society where homosexual orientation is normal. These individuals were previously rejected by the Church. So, for most of their lives, members of this generation have endured deep hurt and distress emanating from a sense of rejection and unworthiness at the hands of their own church, while finding acceptance and affirmation in the wider society. The CoE perceives this dislocation as a fundamental disagreement over justice and fairness, and thus transcending sexual expression and partnerships.

How, query’s Archbishop Mugalu, can the CoU embrace and normalize same-sex relations against their will, culture, and religious beliefs?

Taking a position against homosexuality in the Ugandan society makes the CoU, and therefore Archbishop Mugalu, a moral voice. But taking a similar position would place the CoE in dissonance with the society it aims to serve.

If this divide is to be bridged, then the Anglican Church must examine the interconnected and shifting dynamics that make up the culture cycle and afford certain ways of being while constraining others. We need to recognize that to foster more inclusive, equal, and effective institutions and practices, the deeper work will involve changing how cultures construct the meaning and nature of social group differences themselves.

We can exploit the power individuals have to shape their cultures through their actions, as we focus on how cultures shape people.

We disagree, but are not divided

 What is God saying to us Anglicans now?

The Anglican Communion may not be divided for now, but it will wither on the vine and die unless these fierce disagreements are attended to. It is possible, in the words of E. Nader, that the Anglican Communion is approaching the moment of its collapse, trailing in the dust of a British Empire whose robes are now tattered and thrown into the heap of history. Our generation is called to act to maintain the communion for the sake of the “wider church” and the world.

Since the dissonance in human sexuality ruptured, the Anglican Communion has presented two divergent visions, one based on doctrinal unity defined by the traditional teaching of the faith received, the other on progressive reforms anchored in Anglican unity and God’s providence, expressed in the Nicene Creed, the one holy, catholic, and apostolic church.

Archbishop Stephen Mugalu, together with his brother primates from what they have termed the Orthodox Provinces, is persuaded that only doctrinal purity and safeguarding the traditional faith will unite the Anglican Communion. Their commitment to sever the relationship with the Archbishop of Canterbury at the April 2023 Global Anglican Future Conference (GAFCON) IV meeting in Kigali, Rwanda, should be understood as the shifting dynamics of the Church’s “serial” development observed by professor Andrew Walls.

Walls noted that as the Church moved away from its Mediterranean centre, she experienced multiple and major demographic and character shifts that brought her to its present form. With every demographic shift, the dynamic centres moved alongside the energy and the informing cultural orientations.

Together with other archbishops from the Global South, Archbishop Mugalu claims to represent 85 per cent of the Anglican Communion, which projects the demographic shift Walls mentioned. They are now asserting dynamism as they seek to shape the Communion by infusing new energy with their cultural orientation.

The Anglican Communion may not be divided for now, but it will wither on the vine and die unless these fierce disagreements are attended to.

The 2023 GAFCON IV commitment is a departure from their 2008 commitment not to leave the Anglican Communion. Then, they demanded repentance from Archbishop Rowan Williams for not sanctioning the Episcopal Church of the United States of America (ECUSA), which had violated the guidance of Lambeth Resolution 1.10. by consecrating an openly gay bishop in 2003. The inaction of Archbishop Williams led to the Archbishops from the Orthodox Provinces boycotting Lambeth 2008, and to the formation of GAFCON.

The Archbishops of the Orthodox Provinces see the CoE’s decision to bless couples in same sex unions as a betrayal of the historic faith and cannot in good conscience follow a leader whose fidelity to the faith they question. As a result, they have resolved not to recognise this Archbishop of Canterbury as their Primus inter Pares. If this threat is carried through, the primates would have dismembered one of the key instruments of the Communion. Archbishop Mugalu and the team will remain in the Communion only if the CoE repents for advancing false teachings. But they have offered to pray for the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Church of England to repent, in line with Revelation 2:5b: “If you do not repent, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place.” But the CoE is not willing to repent and is open to progress to advance their witness.

Anglicans, including the Archbishop of Canterbury, who see unity as God’s providence, see God’s movement as one singular act. This is where God gathers the Church and all creation to himself. This vision is embodied in the Anglican Communion Covenant, part of which states: “In the providence of God, which holds sway even over our divisions caused by sin, various families of churches have grown up within the universal Church in history. Among these families is the Anglican Communion, which provides a particular charism and identity among the many followers and servants of Jesus.” We can call the Church “one, holy and apostolic” only where the Church shows these realities as pertaining to God, describing how God works and moves to his unifying ends.

How well this common vision of the Anglican Communion matches God’s actual identity — the “it is finished” identity of Jesus Christ by which God orders the history of creation, is subject to our interpretation. “We are not divided, but we disagree, and that is very painful,” Archbishop Welby conceded to the CoE’s General Synod.

The recent death of Field Marshall Mukami Kimathi re-ignited the long-drawn-out debate about finding the site where her husband, Field Marshall Dedan Kimathi, was buried so that his remains can be exhumed and reburied.

The re-emergence of the debate was partly triggered by her family stating that Mukami had asked to not be buried until her husband’s remains were recovered so that they could be buried together next to each other. In the end, the government seems to have persuaded the family to proceed with the funeral.

Since Mukami was a public figure—mainly on account of being the widow of Dedan Kimathi—it was expected that senior political figures would flock to her funeral. President William Ruto and his deputy Rigathi Gachagua were present as was their main competitor in the 2022 presidential election, Raila Odinga, who was accompanied by several notable figures including Maina Njenga, the former leader of Mungiki.

During Mukami’s burial, the president and his deputy made a commitment to fulfilling her wish of finding Kimathi’s bones and reburying them next to her. It is unlikely that many of the people who heard this promise believed it. This is not just to do with the trust deficit that the current regime is suffering from, but also because this commitment has been made by previous governments. In fact, some analysts have argued, Kimathi’s remains are unlikely to ever be found. I am inclined to agree and, presumably by this point, our national leaders understand this as well. This begs the question why they keep making this promise, or rather, what makes it difficult for them to acknowledge that they may never find Kimathi’s remains and bring the matter to a close.

In my view, as I argue here, successive governments have found it difficult to close the debate because of the central place that Kimathi has come to occupy in anti-establishment politics as the Kenyan political elite has continued to run the country in extractive and oppressive ways. As a brave freedom fighter who stood up to the oppression of the colonial government, and who died before Kenya gained independence thus remaining untainted by the corruption and oppression that have characterized post-colonial regimes, Kimathi presents the image of citizenship that is at odds with what the Kenyan government demands of Kenyans, while at the same time, he is seen as the kind of leader whose values differ from those of the Kenya’s post-colonial leaders.  For this reason, untamed, Kimathi’s memory is a problem for the state for the same reason that he is a hero to those who fight against oppression: he stands as a challenge to the model of obedient, respectful, and compliant citizenship that the Kenyan state demands of its citizens in the face of oppression and neglect. People leading the anti-establishment struggle have therefore taken Kimathi as their hero and thereby immortalised him. Thus, the discourse about Kimathi’s bones is illustrative of a country that is at war with itself—a war that will produce neither easy victories nor victors.

The long search for Kimathi’s bones

Dedan Kimathi Waciuri was born in Nyeri in 1920. He joined the King’s African Rifles (KAR) in 1940 where he is said to have learned how to handle guns. In 1947, he joined the Kenya African Union (KAU), a political organisation formed in 1944 to agitate for independence. Kimathi rose through the KAU ranks to become one of its most prominent leaders. In 1952, following the Mau-Mau uprising, the British colonial government declared a state of emergency, forcing many Mau-Mau, including Kimathi, into hiding. This turned the uprising into a guerrilla war. Kimathi was captured in 1956 and taken to Kamiti prison where he was hanged the following year.  The exact location of his burial has been a matter of contestation. Over the years, several people have claimed to know where he was buried and some have even claimed to have been witnesses to his execution and burial, but they have offered contradicting accounts which have not yielded much.

The debate about retrieving Kimathi’s bones for reburial has been going on since Kenya gained independence in 1963. In the early years of Mzee Jomo Kenyatta’s regime (1963-1978), the government recognised Kimathi as a hero. A major street in downtown Nairobi was renamed after him as well as several health and educational institutions in Nyeri and elsewhere in central Kenya. The most notable of these was the Kimathi Technical Institute, which later became Dedan Kimathi University. However, the Kenyatta presidency was marked by demands from Mau Mau veterans, who claimed that they had been neglected by the government, and denied recognition and compensation. Land formed a big part of their demands and, indeed, land was allocated to some of them, including Kimathi’s family.

He stands as a challenge to the model of obedient, respectful, and compliant citizenship that the Kenyan state demands of its citizens in the face of oppression and neglect.

Still, this did not fully address the Mau Mau question. Their calls were echoed by some politicians, including JM Kariuki who would later be assassinated, giving the discourse of betrayal more prominence. There are myths about the Mau Mau, Kimathi and Kenyatta that I shall not go into here. However, an important one to note is the claim that Kenyatta was behind Kimathi’s capture and execution because he wanted an easier path to the leadership of the country following independence. The veracity of such claims is often hard to establish, and the truth might be more complicated, as is often the case. Be that as it may, these myths serve important political purposes. Because both Kenyatta and Kimathi were leading Kikuyu figures, Kenyatta’s leadership tended to be compared with Kimathi’s legacy. In light of the evolving post-colonial crisis that was blamed on poor leadership, it is not surprising that people might want to imagine what things would have been like under Kimathi’s leadership. Mau Mau politics were a crucial factor here.

Importantly, when Jaramogi Oginga Odinga, Kenya’s first vice president, fell out with Kenyatta and broke away from the Kenya African National Union (KANU) to form the Kenya Peoples’ Union (KPU) together with other politicians in 1966, they decided to take up the Mau Mau cause as part of their wider agenda demanding a fairer distribution of wealth in the country. And since Dedan Kimathi was widely known and acknowledged to be the leader of the Mau Mau, his place in the fight against inequality and in support of redistributive policies in post-colonial Kenya had begun to take shape.

There followed a public debate about retrieving Kimathi’s bones so that he could be accorded a respectful burial as a national hero. For instance, in 1968, GG Kariuki, then member of parliament for Laikipia West, raised the question of exhumation of Kimathi’s body in parliament and also asked for a monument to be erected in his honour. At the time, the government signalled a willingness to embark on that pursuit. If it were to succeed, that would have been the best time as there would have been more people who might have been able to provide information. In response to GG Kariuki’s question, the then Minister of State Mbiyu Koinange said that the government would proceed as proposed by GG Kariuki, relying on Mau Mau elders to locate the grave so that Kimathi’s remains could be re-buried in the Nairobi City Centre. Koinange also announced that a monument in Kimathi’s honour would be erected at the junction of Kenyatta Avenue and Kimathi Street.

Because both Kenyatta and Kimathi were leading Kikuyu figures, Kenyatta’s leadership tended to be compared with Kimathi’s legacy.

The government’s attitude seems to have changed soon thereafter, in the wake of Tom Mboya’s assassination in 1969. Melissa Wanjiru-Mwita’s analysis of the debate on the politics of the renaming of a street in Nairobi after Tom Mboya gives us a sense of a state that was quickly coming to terms with the politics of memory. Little wonder then that, soon after Tom Mboya’s assassination, the government backtracked on its pledge to build monuments in memory of national heroes in the country. Speaking specifically of Kimathi, Kamwithi Munyi, who had previously been very vocal on Mau Mau issues before his appointment as Assistant Minister, said “Singling out one freedom fighter for a ceremonial reburial would not be consistent with the spirit of building a united nation… It would be a waste of public funds and time to locate graves and exhume their remains.” Evidently, the Kenyatta government wanted to draw the matter of Kimathi’s legacy to a close. It did not succeed.

In fact, during Daniel arap Moi’s presidency, the campaign for the retrieval of Kimathi’s bones for reburial gained even more steam. This needs to be understood in the context of the governance crisis that marked the country’s politics at the time, especially the brutality meted against those who opposed Moi’s rule. This is already well documented. Still, many groups emerged that challenged Moi’s rule, amongst them the Mwakenya group. Some of these groups identified Kimathi as their hero in their struggle against oppression. In The Dedan Kimathi Papers, Maina wa Kinyatti, a former political prisoner and member of Mwakenya, writes, “Kimathi lives on in the continuing struggle of our people for democracy and social justice.”

It is therefore hardly surprising that the Moi government was opposed to any efforts to retrieve Kimathi’s remains and offer him a state funeral. In July 1993, the question of locating Kimathi’s grave was again raised in parliament by Kiraitu Murungi, then an opposition member of parliament, triggering intense debate. The then Minister for Home Affairs Francis Lotodo said that the government could not locate Kimathi’s grave as, in his words, “The colonialists buried the late Dedan Kimathi in a mass grave along with others who then faced similar fate.” Raila Odinga, then member of parliament for Lang’ata, rejected this claim, insisting that there were people who knew where Kimathi had been buried. Lotodo insisted that attempting to find Kimathi’s remains would be futile because they would only “end up getting skulls and you will not know which one belongs to Kimathi”.

As opposition leaders—including Raila Odinga and Kiraitu Murungi who had challenged Moi’s government on the Kimathi question—came into the government when Mwai Kibaki won the presidency in 2002 buoyed by the wave of a united opposition, it was now their turn to attempt to solve the puzzle. Even though this is unlikely to have been a priority for Kibaki himself, addressing past injustices was an important part of the agenda of the government as many of the people in his government had suffered abuse under the Moi regime. Moreover, as some analysts have argued, Kibaki—himself a Kikuyu from Nyeri—could not be seen to be doing nothing about it. Importantly, Kiraitu Murungi was now the Minister for Justice and Constitutional Affairs, and the task of resolving this matter lay squarely in his docket.

“Kimathi lives on in the continuing struggle of our people for democracy and social justice.”

In the very first year of Kibaki’s presidency, several important things happened, both hits and misses. A major win was when Dr Chris Murungaru, then Minister for Internal Security, lifted the ban on Mau Mau that had been in place for over 40 years. This move effectively re-designated Mau Mau as freedom fighters rather than terrorists as they had been termed by the colonialists. Even though the minister said that lifting the ban would not be accompanied by compensation for the Mau Mau fighters, calls for the Mau Mau veterans to be honoured gained steam. A major flop, and a source of great embarrassment for the government, was when they brought an Ethiopian peasant farmer, Ato Lemma Ayanu, into Kenya as the “long lost” Mau Mau hero General Stanley Mathenge. Later, a taskforce that Kiraitu Murungi had appointed reported that they had not been able to find Kimathi’s grave, and the prison authorities were not sure that he was buried in the prison compound. What an anti-climax. The following year, on 15 January 2004, Kimathi’s family was given access to Kamiti Prison in the company of eight individuals who had claimed to know where the body was buried but again the search proved futile. The Kibaki government then shifted their attention to erecting a statue of Kimathi in Nairobi, which they did.

Claiming the spirit of Kimathi 

Curiously, the failure to trace Kimathi’s remains did not stop politicians from making claims that the government would retrieve Kimathi’s bones. At the national level, some of these statements have been in response to calls for the government to address the matter or to criticism for not doing enough to celebrate our national heroes. Of course, we cannot disregard the opportunism of politicians who want to claim the Kimathi legacy and be seen to be on the side of the country’s majority poor. That being said, it is by looking a bit more closely at Kimathi’s memory within the context of Kikuyu politics that we might be able to better understand why claiming the spirit of Kimathi matters so much. This question has been explored by other analysts in the historical context and therefore it may not be necessary to go into it here. Instead, it is perhaps more productive to consider the present moment. For this, we need to go back to Mukami’s funeral and zoom in on two men: Rigathi Gachagua and Maina Njenga.

Rigathi Gachagua, then first-term member of parliament for Mathira Constituency in Nyeri, was picked by President Ruto (then Deputy President) as his running mate in the run-up to the 2022 election. The pair ran on an anti-establishment ticket, promising the poor people (“hustlers”) that they would institute a bottom-up economic model and root out the so-called dynasties that had captured the state. During that contest, and thereafter, Rigathi frequently claimed to be a descendant of Mau Mau. However, the veracity of these claims—among others that he has made—has been called into question.  Their main competitor in that election was Raila Odinga who, with a long history of anti-establishment politics, was now on the same side as Uhuru Kenyatta who had previously been his bitter rival. Raila was also joined by a coterie of other politicians with mixed histories, ranging from the former fiery Justice Minister Martha Karua to Maina Njenga, the former leader of Mungiki. The Ruto-Gachagua ticket won the election.

As Uhuru Kenyatta seemingly exited the scene, the question turned to who the new Mt Kenya kingpin would be. While Rigathi was seen as a potential front-runner by virtue of holding the second-highest political office in Kenya, his ascendancy to that position was not guaranteed; there is a history of politicians who have occupied high office without being able to ascend to the position of kingpin. Even though it seemed likely—and it still does—that allegiances in the Mt Kenya region would be split, this did not put a stop to the discussions. Some insisted that Uhuru would remain the kingpin, and this became more pronounced as he returned to the domestic political scene to reclaim control of the Jubilee Party. Others said that Rigathi would be able to grasp the position while yet others suggested, more quietly, that it would be Maina Njenga. Then, in mid-April, about two weeks before Mukami died, a video emerged that sent  shockwaves in central Kenya.

We cannot disregard the opportunism of politicians who want to claim Kimathi’s legacy and be seen to be on the side of the country’s majority poor.

Apparently first aired on TikTok, the popular social media platform, the video showed Maina leading a sizeable group of young men in song and prayer. As the video spread though WhatsApp groups, the question on many people’s minds was: Is Mungiki back? I watched the video several times, trying to figure out what it was about it that not only caught and sustained my attention, but also elicited strong emotions within me. There was so much about the video that was familiar and yet everything felt strange. As I discussed it with some friends about a week later, I was able to put my finger on what it was that made the video so compelling. Here was a group of young men, seemingly hundreds of them, standing in orderly fashion, listening attentively as Maina spoke, responding enthusiastically to his calls, and when he led them in song, every single one of them seemed to know the song well and sung it in almost the same fashion in which we sing the national anthem. The kind of cohesion and coordination that the video displayed cannot emerge by chance. And whatever this grouping was, whatever the event was, it was clear that Maina was firmly in charge. Whether he intended it or not, the video signalled that Maina had effectively fired his first shot, claiming a stake in the battle for supremacy in central Kenya. A shot which, I might add, excited some in as strong measure as it filled many others with trepidation.

Significantly, the song that Maina led the group in singing was a Mau Mau song whose core message is that wendani (which translates to a communal love that we can also describe as unity and solidarity), is of a higher value than wealth. The song narrates the story of Mau Mau uprising, including detention of Kikuyu people by the colonialists, and how wendani was crucial to the survival of the community. Kariuki wa Kiarutara has done a rendition of the song, Kung’u Maitu, which is the reason why the song may feel familiar to many Kikuyu people even if they do not know the original Mau Mau song. Given the context of the unfolding supremacy battle between unequally matched opponents, we can read the singing, led by Maina, as an invitation to Rigathi to display his Mau Mau credentials. The stage was Mukami’s funeral. Rigathi required the support of Kwame Rigii to sing a Mau Mau song, Mwene Nyaga. On that front, Maina won.

In the video, Maina, who now describes himself as a bishop, then seems to open a second battle front. While Mungiki, the grouping that Maina led, was seen as a traditionalist movement, Maina mixes both Kikuyu spiritual rhetoric with Christian rhetoric. Since the Kenya Kwanza government has taken a heavily evangelical tone, Maina seems to take advantage of the Easter season to signal his Christian credentials. In the short speech he makes, he says that the purpose of the event is to celebrate unity and “to remember the death and resurrection of our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ.” Talking of the rising Christ, he says, in a rather vague fashion but one which elicits excitement in the crowd, “We’re rising with him.” He then asks the group to turn around and face Mt Kenya so that they can pray. His prayer blends both the Kikuyu prayer (Thaai) and the Christian prayer. Given the significance of Christianity in central Kenya, especially the evangelical movement, Maina would not be able to claim a victory here so easily. And since Rigathi’s wife is a pastor, he has credibility among evangelical church leaders. He is able to move around churches in a way that Maina may never be able to do.

Whether he intended it or not, the video signalled that Maina had effectively fired his first shot, claiming a stake in the battle for supremacy in central Kenya.

Of course, Maina’s challenge was not going to go unanswered. Soon, Maina was being pursued by the police. His homes were raided. Police said that they found a gun in one of his houses. He was summoned to the DCI where he showed up in a day that was full of drama. Many of his supporters showed up and spent the time singing Kikuyu traditional songs. Similar scenes unfolded when he was arraigned in court in Nakuru. Maina said that the government was pursuing him to stop him from attending Mukami’s funeral. In the end, he was able to attend the funeral. And even though he did not speak, his presence was noted. The effect that this has had however, is to reintroduce talk of dealing ruthlessly with Mungiki into the public discourse. Led by Rigathi, senior government officials have warned that the government will not allow a return of Mungiki. This has led to justified fears that the government may carry out executions of young Kikuyu men in a manner similar to what happened during Kibaki’s presidency, drawing the condemnation of many including the UN Special rapporteur on extra-judicial executions.

Strategically, however, and simply by virtue of wielding state power, the one arena on which Rigathi could easily upstage Maina and claim the Mau Mau legacy without turning him into a martyr, is to deliver on the promise to retrieve Kimathi’s bones. Succeeding in doing so would mean that Rigathi would have achieved what other senior Kikuyu leaders have been unwilling or unable to do. It is therefore unsurprising that he would make the promise, yet again, that the government will attempt to recover Kimathi’s bones. Whether it will make any meaningful efforts that go beyond what has been attempted in the past remains to be seen. I am not holding my breath.

Beyond these political contestations, however, we must also ask ourselves if it matters whether Kimathi’s bones are retrieved or not. To my mind, whether they retrieve the bones or not, Kimathi’s legacy has been firmly cemented by the decades during which he has come to anchor the struggle for freedom and liberation in Kenya.

May his spirit continue to inspire generations of Kenyans to action against our oppressors.

Recent years have witnessed an abundance of critical political economy research on rent, rentiers and rentiership. This scholarly interest reflects a recognition that global capitalism is increasingly dominated by accumulation through the control of scarce rent-generating assets rather than productive activities. This shift has been enabled by processes of ‘assetisation’ through which an ever-expanding range of things, from natural resources to intellectual property, are transformed into financial assets from which rental income can be extracted.

These tendencies are captured by the concept of ‘rentier capitalism’, popularised by geographer Brett Christophers in his recent book of the same name. To date, rentier capitalism has primarily been associated with highly financialised post-industrial contexts in the OECD. For example, Christophers argues that the entire UK economy has undergone a process of ‘rentierisation’ as a result of neoliberal reforms since the 1970s, and that rents are now the primary basis of growth in the world’s sixth largest economy.

Writing in ROAPE’s Capitalism in Africa series, anthropologists Thomas Bierschenk and Jose-Maria Munoz argue that the concept of rentier capitalism is also useful for understanding African political economy. In particular, they highlight how this concept can inform ethnographic understandings of the practices of African businesspeople and their reliance on access to political elites as a key source of rents. In contrast to alternative concepts for understanding these political-economic relationships, such as ‘crony’ or ‘patrimonial’ capitalism, Bierschenk and Munoz observe that rentier capitalism is less normative and is not premised on the assumption that capitalism in the global North and South are somehow fundamentally different.

Bierschenk and Munoz’ argument resonates with recent innovations in urban studies that seek to bring capitalist development processes in the global North and South into comparative dialogue. As urban geographers, we draw on our own research on infrastructure megaprojects in Ghana and Kenya to demonstrate that the concept of rentier capitalism can generate insights into the dynamics of urbanisation in Africa. In particular, we contend that these projects have hastened urbanisation processes in historically rural areas. This is a direct result of infrastructure initiatives creating opportunities for the assetisation of land and the appropriation of rents by various actors. Building on Bierschenk and Munoz’ anthropological focus on the agency of African businesspeople, we show that urban rentiers include actors situated at a range of scales, from global real estate developers to local land speculators. In addition to broadening the scope of actors engaged in rentier activities, our analysis explains how rentierism is incentivised by development regimes whose stated purpose is to augment industry.

The class politics of urban land rent has been a central concern of Marxist urban geography for nearly half a century. Neil Smith’s theory of the ‘rent gap’, first proposed in 1979 to understand gentrification in US cities, has become widely used to understand uneven development at the urban scale in diverse contexts globally. In his 1982 masterpiece The Limits to Capital, David Harvey observed the capitalistic tendency for land to be treated as a ‘pure financial asset which is bought and sold according to the rent it yields’, anticipating subsequent debates around the financialisation of urban development.

The early 21^st century saw calls from postcolonial scholars to shift the geographical focus of urban theory production away from the North Atlantic cities in which Harvey and Smith formed their concepts. In the context of this Southern shift in urban theory, there is now a growing body of research that employs and extends land rent theory to examine how practices of rentiership are shaping urbanisation dynamics in Asia. For example, geographers Helga Leitner and Eric Sheppard draw on Antonio Gramsci and Stuart Hall to develop a multi-scalar ‘conjunctural’ approach to comparing urban land transformations in Jakarta and Bangalore. Arguing that these transformations are shaped by the dialectical relationship between the general and the particular, they propose the concept of ‘inter-scalar chains of rentiership’ to analyse ‘how the assetisation and financialisation of land emerges from a diverse set of actors and instututions, operating at scales ranging from the global to the local, each seeking to appropriate land rent’. In sum, studying the rentier practices of actors operating at various scales can inform a conjunctural analysis of urban change under conditions of global capitalism.

In our recent ROAPE paper on infrastructure megaprojects in Ghana and Kenya, we demonstrate that inter-scalar chains of rentiership is a useful concept to understand the relationship between rentier capitalism and urban geography in Africa. In particular, this concept reveals how grand initiatives to enhance infrastructural connectivity and foster structural transformation have ultimately created opportunities for land rent appropriation by actors operating at global, national and local scales. This has resulted in what urban scholars refer to as “extended urbanisation,” which is best characterised as the urban transformation of historically rural and isolated places (rather than the growth of cities). While cities remain centers of gravity in urban networks, an emergent geography is taking shape that includes urbanisation on resource frontiers and along transportation corridors. In contrast to the geographical expansion of cities, extended urban landscapes commonly cohere into transnational urban agglomerations.

In the case of Ghana, the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) is coordinating the ongoing Abidjan-Lagos Corridor (ALC) initiative to upgrade the coastal road network that connects the country to Cote D’Ivoire, Togo, Benin and Nigeria into a 1000km six-lane highway. Funded by the African Development Bank (AfDB), the Corridor is primarily intended to enhance regional integration and trade and enable the growth of labour-intensive industry. For example, the project is intended to complement Ghana’s national strategy to achieve structural transformation through ‘industrialization especially manufacturing, based on modernized agriculture and sustainable exploitation of [the country’s] natural resources’. However, manufacturing value added as a proportion of GDP has remained stagnant since the ALC was launched in 2014.

Although the ALC initiative has had scant impact on Ghanaian industry to date, it is clear that the planned highway is already creating opportunities for rentiership by actors operating at multiple scales. The resulting construction boom is contributing to the emergence of a transnational ‘mega-city region’ of 30 million inhabitants along the West African coast. For example, a master-planned new city is currently being constructed on the route of the highway in the rural district of Ningo-Prampram 50km east of central Accra. This public-private partnership has created opportunities for rent extraction by Brazilian real estate capital through the construction of ‘affordable’ housing units. National political actors have also been accused of engaging in illegal land grabbing and leasing in the project vicinity. In addition, local traditional land custodians have taken advantage of rising land values to enrich themselves, leading to resentment and resistance from dispossessed indigenous youths.

In the case of Kenya, the launch of the Vision 2030 national development strategy in 2008 has seen the government embrace investment in large-scale connective infrastructure as a central pillar of achieving social and economic modernisation. Vision 2030 flagship projects include the Lamu Port, South Sudan, Ethiopia Transport Corridor (LAPSSET) that seeks to enhance both domestic and international connectivity through an extensive network of ports, highways, railways, pipelines and industrial zones. In addition, the government has invested in a series of major road building projects to transform Nairobi into a ‘world class African Metropolis’ by 2030. As with the case of Ghana, there is little evidence to date of structural transformation. The Kenyan government’s ambition was for infrastructural upgrading to foster flagship projects in agro-processing, textiles, leather, construction services and materials, oil and gas, mining services and IT related sectors. According to UNIDO, however, manufacturing value added as a proportion of GDP decreased from 10.4% in 2011 to 8.5% in 2020.

Although infrastructure projects have not catalyzed structural transformation in Kenya to date, they did precipitate a real estate boom. For example, international developer Rendeavour is building a 5,000-acre private new city close to the Chinese-financed and constructed Superhighway that connects Nairobi to the town of Thika in Kiambu County. Rendeavour lease plots to commercial developers and individual homebuilders within a master-planned enclave that boasts secure land title, reliable infrastructure and services, and special economic zone status. Road building has also benefited national political elites, and the decision to expand Nairobi’s Eastern Bypass was allegedly influenced by former president Uhuru Kenyatta’s plans to build another new city on 11,800 hectares of land owned by his family. At a smaller scale, wealthy Kenyans are participating in the assetisation of land  by building highly profitable tenement housing in areas serviced by Nairobi’s new roads, such as the Mathare Valley informal settlement. In addition, local speculators have taken advantage of peri-urban road building to acquire large parcels of agricultural land and subdivide them into plots of highly valuable real estate.

These examples demonstrate that the concepts of ‘rentier capitalism’ and ‘inter-scalar chains of rentiership’ are useful tools for analysing the emergence of new urban geographies in Africa. Infrastructure-led development is primarily justified in terms of catalysing economic development and structural transformation by addressing Africa’s ‘infrastructure gap’. The infastructure megaprojects discussed above remain a work in progress, and our research does not rule out the possibility that such initiatives will contribute to industrialisation in Africa in the future. However, Tom Goodfellow observes that many African countries are characterised by political-economic incentives, such as weak property taxation and poorly enforced planning regulations, that encourage speculative investment in real estate rather than productive activities.

The cases of Ghana and Kenya suggest that unless this incentive structure is addressed, large-scale infrastructure projects are likely to encourage rentiership, and contribute to further urbanisation without industrialisation. Indeed, in many instances the announcement that a large-scale infrastructure project is planned is enough to precipitate a flurry of land speculation as investors big and small flock to secure assets in anticipation of future rents. Thus, rentiers appear on cue in proximity to large-scale infrastructure projects, while investment in capital goods and manufacturing is rarely so forthcoming. Instead, industrial transformation remains a long-term objective that is perpetually postponed.

If capital that could be used to boost industrial capacity is used for speculation in land, then it stands to reason that urbanisation is taking place at the expense of industrialisation. The implication is that policy makers should discourage rentierism, and instead incentivise productive investment. Here we follow Franklin Obeng-Odoom who argues that constraining the power of the rentier by socialising and redistributing land rents is necessary to addressing inequalities and achieving inclusive urban development in Africa. For example, Ambreena Manji and Jill Cottrell Ghai advocate land value taxation as a progressive tool to fund affordable housing construction in Kenya. However, previous studies have found that powerful landowning elites, such as those discussed in the examples above, are an obstacle to effective land value capture policies. If policy initiatives to socialise and redistribute land rents are to be successful, therefore, they must be accompanied by political movements to challenge the vested interests that benefit from rentier capitalism in Africa.

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This article was first published by ROAPE.