Kenya Twendapi?: Re-reading Abdilatif Abdalla’s pamphlet 50 years after independence

Kai Kresse

ABSTRACT

The pamphlet Kenya: Twendapi? (Kenya: Where are we heading?) is a text often referred to but rarely read or analysed. Abdilatif Abdalla wrote it as a twenty-two-year-old political activist of the KPU opposition as a critique of the dictatorial tendencies of Jomo Kenyatta and his KANU government in 1968, and consequently suffered three years of isolation in prison. Many (at least on the East African political and literary scene) know about Kenya: Twendapi? but few seem to have read it – indeed, it seems almost unavailable to read.