Ethnicity and Bureaucracy: Some African Encounters

MY first awareness of the relationship between ethnicity and bureaucracy in Africa came while I was a graduate student working at the Institute of Development Studies at the University of Nairobi more than thirty years ago. Preparing for a trip to Tanzania, I was told that I required a re-entry permit for my Kenyan visa. I duly presented myself at the passport and visa department equipped with a letter from the university stating that I would be returning to resume my post at the institute. It was signed by the registrar, Mr Karanja, a common Kikuyu name from central Kenya. I handed my passport and other papers to a clerk at the visa office whose name plate told me he was Mr Ochieng, an equally common Luo name from western Kenya. Glancing at the signature at the bottom of the registrar's letter, he looked up in some annoyance and said ‘Karanja, Karanja, Karanja, everybody at that university's a Karanja’. ‘Please’, I said, ‘I don't know Mr Karanja, I was just told I needed his signature on this letter, and I have no idea how many Karanjas work at the university.’ Fortunately, he processed my re-entry permit without further comment. A few months later, while working in the national archives, one of the other students with whom I shared the reading room noted that all of the clerks and stack assistants we dealt with were Luhya from western Kenya, just like the chief archivist, Mr Fedha. Moreover, while I am not sure whether the staff were actually kinsmen of his, they were all certainly from the same Maragoli sub-group of the Luhya.

When I reflected at the time on the significance of these links between ethnic groups and public institutions, they illustrated for me the sharp awareness of ethnic identity that marked Kenyan society. That particular sections of public service appeared to be dominated by particular ethnic groups struck me as redolent of the complex ethnic arithmetic of politics in the New York City in which I had grown up in the 1940s and '50s, and not terribly surprising in a society of such ethnic diversity.