Party Politics in Kenya and South Africa: the Conundrum of Ethnic and Race Relations
Open Access Library Journal 2020, Volume 7, e6383 ISSN Online: 2333-9721 ISSN Print: 2333-9705 Party Politics in Kenya and South Africa: The Conundrum of Ethnic and Race Relations John Rabuogi Ahere Peace Studies, School of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences, University of New England, Armidale, Australia How to cite this paper: Ahere, J.R. (2020) Abstract Party Politics in Kenya and South Africa: The Conundrum of Ethnic and Race Relations. Since the colonial period, group identity has affected politics in Kenya and Open Access Library Journal, 7: e6383. South Africa. Ethnicity and race are used to explain many issues in both https://doi.org/10.4236/oalib.1106383 countries including party politics. This article examines the linkages between Received: April 30, 2020 ethnic and race relations in the activities of political parties in both countries. Accepted: May 19, 2020 The article finds that ethnicity and race are endemic to the nature and opera- Published: May 22, 2020 tions of political parties in Kenya and South Africa. As a result, most political Copyright © 2020 by author(s) and Open parties formulate policies and allocate public goods and national resources Access Library Inc. along ethnic and racial lines in a bid to satisfy their support bases so as to This work is licensed under the Creative achieve and maintain political power. Commons Attribution International License (CC BY 4.0). Subject Areas http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Open Access Conflict Management, Conflict Prevention, Peace Studies Keywords Ethnicity, Race, Political Parties, Kenya, South Africa 1. Introduction With the advent of decolonisation, the greatest challenge for African leaders was in transferring their people’s tribal loyalties to the state, which would hencefor- ward serve as a multi-ethnic unifying factor (Keller 2014, p.
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