National Unity

• Kenya has scores of youth gangs known for their violence and links to the politically powerful.
• None is more infamous than the Mungiki movement, with a past membership estimated to be at least a million.

What gave rise to Mungiki?

• The early 1990s witnessed the first bout of politically instigated inter-ethnic conflict intended to diminish Kikuyu influence in local politics.
• Mungiki emerged as a Kikuyu youth movement, defending the dispossessed: women, migrants and landless youth.
• At this time the grouping also opposed the autocratic and corrupt government of Daniel arap Moi, a Kalenjin.
• In the 1997, 2002 and 2007 parliamentary and presidential elections, leading politicians mobilised violent youth militia in support of their campaigns.
• In Nairobi’s shantytowns, Mungiki activists and militia competed with other militias like Kamjesh, and the Taliban in Mathare Valley.

What are the group’s practices and beliefs?

• Mungiki operates primarily in urban neighbourhoods where it combines vigilante, welfare, cultural and criminal activities.
• It reaches back into Kenya’s pre-colonial and colonial history for the origins of its beliefs and practices.
• The values underlying these practices continued during Kenya’s anti-colonial struggle in the 1940s and 1950s, in the liberation movement known as Mau Mau, which was predominantly Kikuyu.
• These values, although modified and expanded, still form the core of Mungiki’s practices and beliefs.

Why was it banned?

• Throughout its existence, the organisation has resorted to violence to recruit and keep members.
• At the political level, national and local leaders may see the popularity and persistence of the movement as a threat to stability and their own hold on power.

Though banned, it hasn’t really gone away, has it?

• He made public his conversion to Christianity in 2006, and on his release in 2009 he declared the movement finished.
• It has a moral appeal to young men and women for stressing “clean living”, without loose sex and alcohol.
• Kenyan politics are still violent, the domain of elderly, entitled men, and ridden with mistrust and corruption.

Bodil Folke Frederiksen does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

• AM Best has revised the outlooks to positive from stable and affirmed the Financial Strength Rating of B+ (Good) and the Long-Term Issuer Credit Rating of “bbb-” (Good) of National Unity Insurance Company (National Unity) (San Antonio, TX).
• The Credit Ratings (ratings) reflect National Unity’s balance sheet strength, which AM Best assesses as adequate, as well as its adequate operating performance, limited business profile and appropriate enterprise risk management.
• The positive outlooks reflect National Unity’s trend of improved operating results resulting from underwriting initiatives that have stabilized results over the past four years.
• AM Best is a global credit rating agency, news publisher and data analytics provider specializing in the insurance industry.

• This isn’t surprising in Kenya where political elites switch parties and coalitions with every election.
• Gilbert Khadiagala, a political scientist who has researched the fluidity of Kenya’s political coalitions, explains the impact of this.

What is the background of Kenya’s fluid political landscape?

• The onset of the multiparty era in the early 1990s brought a new phase of complex political coalitions and alliances.
• They were competing against the previously dominant political party, the Kenya African National Union (KANU).
• In 30 years of competitive politics, coalitions were expected to gradually stabilise into coherent political parties with national reach and resonance.
• Germany’s coalition governments are largely based on well-established political parties, not conglomerations concocted before elections as in Kenya.
• The winner-takes-all political systems of countries like Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria and Sierra Leone face a related problem: they have very small independent private sectors.

What are the main weaknesses of fluid political coalitions?

• The National Rainbow Alliance (NARC), led by Mwai Kibaki, was a grouping of the leading ethnic groups ranged against Moi’s chosen successor, Kenyatta.
• But it ended in civil conflict in 2007-2008 after Kibaki marginalised key allies largely on ethnic and regional lines.
• Subsequent political alliances have reproduced the conditions for anxiety and chaos after every election.
• Despite the 2010 constitution giving more power to Kenya’s 47 counties, political elites remain fixated on winning presidential elections to gain power at the centre.

What are the strengths of these loose coalitions?

• The loose coalitions enable leaders who neither share policies nor vision to temporarily accommodate each other.
• The fluid coalitions are, therefore, essential in such political landscapes until national cohesion and coherence are achieved.
• When the search for presidential power ceases to be politically relevant and salient, Kenya’s politics will be normalised.

What adjustments should be made?

• When those interests are highlighted – instead of ethnic and regional affiliations – political parties with national outreach could emerge.
• The puzzle for Kenya is how to transform ethnic diversities and identities into the foundations for predictable and organised politics.

• BEIJING, Aug. 19, 2022 /PRNewswire/ --The regional brand identity of the Hinggan League was officially released atthe press conference co-launched by the CPC Hinggan League Committee, the CivilAdministration of the Hinggan League, and the Communication University of Chinaon August 15, 2022 in Beijing.
• The press conference released the Hinggan League's regional brand identity andits main logotype (Hinggan League in the Hinggan Mountains), the regionalpublic logo for farm and pasture products (Taste Life in Hinggan League,Natural and Fertile), the regional public slogan (Safety Products from Hinggan League), and the slogan for cultural tourism products (Embrace Mountains,Rivers, and the Hinggan League), according to the Publicity Department of theCPC Hinggan League Committee.
• A follow-up 3-year regional brand identity campaign of the Hinggan League wasalso announced to embark on the Hinggan League's brand building andcommunication.
• This requires us to shape adistinctive regional brand identity and to present the nice and ambitiouscharacters of the League so that more people will get to know and visit theLeague and contribute to its quality development," Zhang Xiaobing, secretary ofthe CPC Hinggan League Committee, noted.