Kenya in the early years of independence provided a fascinating example of a movement to and from one-partyism with the same regime in power. In 1964 the Kenya African Democratic Union, the original opposition party, liquidated itself and merged with the ruling party, the Kenya African National Union. The country moved with one momentous decision from a two-party to a one-party system.

Within the major party new tensions began to arise, and a faction to the left of the top leadership gradually began to be discernable as a source of challenge. By 1966 the leftist faction broke loose from the ruling party and formed the Kenya People's Union. Whereas the original opposition had been from the right, the new opposition was from the left.

The vigour of Kenya's politics entered a new phase that lasted until October 1969, when the disastrous events in Kisumu led the regime to ban the Kenya People's Union and detain its top men. Kenya was back to a state of one-partyism. The country seemed to have a systemic pendulum, as the clock of political evolution introduced alternating structural phases of public life. If the one-party system is inevitable in Kenya, the trend toward it is not unilinear.

Kenya's two-party system in both the first phase, KANU versus KADU which lasted until 1964, and the second phase, KANU versus KPU which lasted from 1966 to 1969 - belonged to the multi-party model of ethnic exclusiveness, and as such did not greatly contribute to national unity. Ethnic groups en bloc tended to choose one party or the other. There were very few examples of the criss-crossing that took place in Acholi in Uganda in the early 1960s when many Acholi voted for the Democratic Party and many voted for the Uganda People's Congress. KANU has remained to the end the most national party in Kenya's experience, but this was originally in terms of the number of ethnic groups that KANU has won over en-bloc.

Of course, KANU has also constantly proclaimed the need for national unity and has attempted in a variety of ways to centralize the quest for nationhood. There have been aspects of KANU's policy, however, that have betrayed ethnicist tendencies. In any case, the main point to grasp here is that the unit of party affiliation was originally the ethnic group rather than the individual. Whole communities attached themselves to one party or the other.

There is an element of gross exaggeration in this way of describing Kenya's party system. A number of exceptions, some of them outstanding, can be cited against this formulation. Tom Mboya was Luo but remained a towering figure in KANU in spite of the emergence of the Luo-backed KPU. Bildad Kaggia was a Kikuyu' but for a while chose to be second-in-command of KPU. On the whole, however, the unit of political affiliation in Kenya's early post-independence history has tended to be the ethnic group rather than the individual party member.

This pattern of affiliation was often an outcome of sociological conditions rather than a matter of deliberate ideological choice- In the catty part of 1969, KPU was ideologically opposed to ethnicism and highly critical of KANU for certain tendencies toward ethnic preferences, yet KPU seemed to be more clearly a party with a single ethnic group for its base than was the rival KANU. In other words, KPU, forced to rely on Nyanza Province for its ultimate survival, was more ethnic in general political behaviour. The structure of KANU was less ethnic in that a multiplicity of groups helped to give the party its national support, and the leaders - though disproportionately Kikuyu - included large numbers from other communities. But the political behaviour of KANU, on issues ranging from the choke of headmasters for Kenya schools to land rights extended to new settlements, very often betrayed the persistence of ethnic nepotism. Ethnicism was apparent, not necessarily in matters of policy choice but in the way in which policy was implemented. Ethnic factors intruded into areas which policy-makers at the top might not have intended to affect in such a way.

Because Kenya's multi-party system tended to be ethnically exclusive, it was basically a less healthy system-than the ethnically inclusive one-party system that replaced it. Moreover, the elections which took place in December 1969 would seem to indicate that Kenya affords greater freedom under a one-party system than it did under a two-party system of ethnic exclusiveness. Had the Kenya People's Union not been banned in October 1969, and had, the elections been more clearly between KANU and KPU. it is feasible that the electorate of Kenya would have had less real choice. The regime would have been afraid of giving advantage to the opposition and risking its own survival, and would therefore have been tempted to pursue a more interventionist policy in the elections.

African regimes tend to be intolerant of situations which threaten their survival. However, while the electorate is denied the possibility of replacing the regime, it is allowed to change the regime partially, either in terms of personnel or in terms of policy. Kenya permitted the 1969 elections to be substantially free, and over 80 members of parliament, more than half of the total membership, were rejected and replaced by new members.

The turnover was impressive by any standards. Parliament, therefore, became a meaningful instrument of political recruitment, bringing in new personalities from the ranks to serve as legislators. From these new recruits in parliament, new recruits in the executive were drawn. The personnel of the government changed to some extent as a result of the elections, and the composition of parliament changed even more dramatically. The same pattern was repeated in the 1974 and 1979 elections.

The Kenya Parliament is "not a rubber-stamp assembly. There is vigorous debate within it, with accusations against The government, ranging from minor administrative complaints to major grievances. In many ways the Kenya Parliament is, by a considerable margin, the most lively of the three national assemblies in East Africa, There is more genuine challenge and debate in the legislature in Nairobi than has been heard in Kampala for several years and more than is heard in Dar-es-Salaam.