La pensée politique kikuyu et les idéologies du mouvement mau-mau

Résumé En

J. M. Lonsdale — Kikuyu Political Thought and the Ideologies of Mau Mau. This article questions the conventional social-science dichotomy between the categories 'class' and 'ethnicity', by reference to the political history of the Kikuyu people in colonial Kenya. It is argued that Kikuyu ethnicity was created by a form of nationalism comparable with those of nineteenth-century Europe. The idea of the Kikuyu nation was conceived and articulated by a new clerical and commercial elite; their nationalism legitimized their consolidation into a middle class which was opposed not only to alien rule but also to many of the practices of the old society. Mau Mau was conceived by a younger generation who feared lest their incipient proletarianization might deprive them of their ethnicity, which alone could guarantee them local rights of land usage. They could have acted as a working class, but did not; to do so would have required first that they have some conception of the State. Instead, they tried, by initiation into Mau Mau, to reactivate in their own interests some of the basic concepts of Kikuyu citizenship.