Origins and Kenyatta

The Kenya African Union was a political organization formed in 1944 to articulate Kenyan grievances against the British colonial administration. The KAU attempted to be more inclusive than the Kikuyu Central Association by recruiting membership across the colony of Kenya.

From October 1952 to December 1959, Kenya was under a state of emergency arising from the armed Mau Mau rebellion against British colonial rule. KAU, the national political movement for Africans was banned in 1952 and its leaders including Jomo Kenyatta imprisoned in 1953.^[3] Kikuyu, Embu and Meru political involvement was restricted heavily in this period in response to the insurrection. During this period however, African participation in the political process increased rapidly throughout the colony of Kenya. Starting in 1954 the colonial government started to actively promote regional tribal based political parties led by leaders friendly to the colonial government.^[1] The colonial government governor then appointed these leaders of the tribal parties to the Legislative Council in 1956. Ronald Ngala was appointed to represent the Coast region, Daniel Moi was appointed to represent Rift Valley, Masinde Muliro was appointed to represent Western while Argwings Kodhek was appointed to represent Nairobi while Oginga Odinga became the Nyanza LegCo member. Jeremiah James Nyaga was appointed to represent Central Kenya. A ban on nationalist political parties however remained in force in Kenya until 1960.^[4]

The first direct elections for Africans to the Legislative Council took place in 1957. The majority of the 'moderate' and friendly leaders appointed to the Council by the colonial government were re-elected to the Council in 1957. The only exception was Tom Mboya, who ran as an independent and defeated Argwings Kodhek, who had been appointed by the colonial government to represent Nairobi in 1956.^[5]

The ban for national political movements was lifted in 1960. On 14 May 1960, KAU (having been resurrected by James Gichuru) merged with Tom Mboya's Kenya Independence Movement and the Nairobi People's Convention Party to form the Kenya African National Union (KANU) with Tom Mboya as its first secretary general and James Gichuru as KANU chairman. Oginga Odinga was the KANU first vice chairman.

The Kenya African Democratic Union (KADU) was founded in 1960, to challenge KANU. KADU's aim was to defend the interests of the tribes so-called KAMATUSA (an acronym for Kalenjin, Maasai, Turkana and Samburu) as well as the European settler community, against the dominance of the larger Luo and Kĩkũyũ tribes that comprised the majority of KANU's membership (Kenyatta himself being a Kikuyu). KANU was in favour of immediate total independence, a new independence constitution and universal suffrage while KADU was supporting the continuation of the colonial political system established by the Lyttelton Constitution of 1954 with federalism (Majimbo) as KADU's key tenets.^[4] Despite the numerical advantage lying with the numerically stronger KANU, a form of Federalism involving Kenya's 8 provinces was adopted in Kenya's independence as a result of British colonial government supporting KADU's plan.^[6] After independence KANU nonetheless decided to remove all provisions of a federal nature from the constitution.^[7]

Kenyatta was released in 1961, and the KANU contested the 1961 Kenyan general election (winning a plurality of the seats and 67.50% of the popular vote). Following the implementation of a new colonial constitution (the key feature of which were a bicameral legislature consisting of a 117-member House of Representatives and a 41-member Senate, and the elimination of reserved seats for ethnic minorities), the KANU contested and won a majority of the votes and seats in the 1963 Kenyan general election. Kenya became independent on December 12, 1963. Jomo Kenyatta, head of the KANU, became Kenya's first prime minister.

Independence

KADU dissolved itself voluntarily in 1964 and joined KANU after a strong lobbying by Tom Mboya. In this year, Kenya became a republic within the Commonwealth, with Kenyatta as its first president.

A small but significant leftist opposition party, the Kenya People's Union (KPU), was formed in 1966, led by Jaramogi Oginga Odinga, a former vice president and Luo elder. The KPU was banned and its leader detained after political unrest related to Kenyatta's visit to Nyanza Province that resulted in the Kisumu massacre.^[8] No new opposition parties were formed after 1969, and KANU became the sole political party. At Kenyatta's death in August 1978, Vice President Daniel arap Moi, a former KADU member became interim President. On October 14, Moi became president formally after he was elected head of KANU and designated its sole nominee.

One-party state and return to democracy

In June 1982, the National Assembly amended the constitution, making Kenya officially a one-party state.^[9] Parliamentary elections were held in September 1983. The 1988 elections reinforced the one-party system. However, in December 1991, parliament repealed the one-party section of the constitution. By early 1992, several new parties had formed, and multiparty elections were held in December 1992.

President Moi was reelected for another 5-year term. Opposition parties won about 45% of the parliamentary seats, but President Moi's KANU Party obtained the majority of seats. Parliamentary reforms in November 1997 enlarged the democratic space in Kenya, including the expansion of political parties from 11 to 26. President Moi won re-election as president in the December 1997 elections, and his KANU Party narrowly retained its parliamentary majority, with 109 out of 212 seats.

2002 elections

At the 2002 legislative national elections, the party won an overall 29.0% of the popular vote and 64 out of 212 elected seats. In the presidential elections^[10] of the same day, the party's candidate Uhuru Kenyatta won 31.3% of the vote, and was thereby defeated by Mwai Kibaki from the National Rainbow Coalition (NARC) party with 62.2%. On December 29, 2002, the Kenyan electoral commission confirmed that the former opposition NARC party had achieved a landslide victory over the ruling KANU party, thus bringing to an end 40 years of single party rule and 24 years of rule by Daniel arap Moi.

Post-2002

The political parties ODM-Kenya and Orange Democratic Movement both came into existence out of this movement. The smaller faction, headed by Nicholas Biwott and supported by Daniel arap Moi was opposed to the direction Kenyatta was taking the party. The two factions briefly patched up their differences under the mediation of former party leader Daniel Moi; the result being KANU did not field a presidential candidate in Kenya's disputed general election of 2007, backing instead the incumbent Mwai Kibaki.

Uhuru Kenyatta and Moi in 2007

In September 2007, Kenyatta announced that he would not run for the presidency and would support Kibaki's re-election,^[11] sinking any hopes that KANU would back the Orange Democratic Movement. William Ruto however remained in ODM applying for the presidential candidacy. Of particular interest is that Uhuru's statement came soon after Moi's declaration that he would back current president Kibaki's re-election bid. KANU is part of the Party of National Unity (PNU), a coalition party behind Kibaki. However, unlike other PNU member parties, only KANU had clearance to field its own parliamentary and civic candidates.^[12] Since the coming into force of the Political Parties act of 2011, differences have once again emerged over the future of the party with a faction led by Gideon Moi accusing Uhuru Kenyatta of neglecting the party.^[13][14] Kenyatta, and his supporters, eventually quit the party altogether and in December 2012, KANU entered a four party coalition, including the National Vision Party, United Democratic Movement and New Ford Kenya, to field a single presidential candidate at the 2013 general elections.^[15]

Presidential elections

Election	Party candidate	Votes	%	Result
1969	Jomo Kenyatta	ran unopposed		Elected Y
1974		ran unopposed		Elected Y
1978	Daniel Arap Moi	ran unopposed		Elected Y
1979		ran unopposed		Elected Y
1983		ran unopposed		Elected Y
1988		ran unopposed		Elected Y
1992		1,927,645	36.6%	Elected Y
1997		2,500,865	40.40%	Elected Y
2002	Uhuru Kenyatta	1,835,890	30.2%	Lost N

National Assembly elections

Election	Party leader	Votes		%	Seats	+/–	Position
1961	Jomo Kenyatta	590,661		67.5%	19 / 65	19	1st
1963		988,311		53.60%	83 / 129	64	1st
1969		1,687,734		100%	158 / 170	75	1st
1974		2,627,308		100%	158 / 170		1st
1979	Daniel Arap Moi	3,733,537		100%	158 / 170		1st
1983		3,331,047		100%	158 / 170		1st
1988		2,231,229		100%	188 / 200	30	1st
1992		1,327,691		24.5%	100 / 188	88	1st
1997					107 / 210	7	1st
2002		1,361,828		29.0%	64 / 210	43	2nd
2007	Uhuru Kenyatta	613,864		6.36%	15 / 210	49	4th
2013	Gideon Moi	Constituency	286,393	2.35%	6 / 349	9	7th
		County	140,635	1.16%
2017		Constituency	366,808	2.45%	10 / 348	4	6th
		County	357,146	2.36%
2022					5 / 348	5	9th

Senate elections

Election	Party leader	Votes	%	Seats	+/–	Position
1963	Jomo Kenyatta	1,028,906	59.18%	18 / 38	18	1st
Abolished in 1966 re-established in 2010
2013	Gideon Moi	441,645	3.64%	3 / 67	3	7th
2017				3 / 67		5th