The late 1980s had seen the concentration of power in the hands of the
executive, especially the Provincial Administration, controlled from the
Office of the President, and in the ruling party's revitalised central,
disciplinary institutions. Jennifer Widner has suggested that this amounted
to the creation of a 'party-state'. ¹ Although this probably goes too far,
KANU undoubtedly became increasingly authoritarian, overriding public
opinion, rigging elections, silencing the independent media, and harassing
autonomous institutions, such as the Churches and the Law Society. This
creeping authoritarianism provoked a backlash beginning in 1989,
especially amongst the once all-powerful Kikuyu élite, who increasingly
became a focus of opposition to the Moi regime. The changing inter-
national environment, highlighted by the collapse of Communist rule in
Eastern Europe in the last months of 1989, which coincided with the
release of Nelson Mandela in South Africa and the mysterious death of
Foreign Minister Ouko (both in February 1990), encouraged a number of
prominent Kenyans to criticise single-party rule and to campaign for the
introduction of multi-party politics.

The opposition emerged from a confluence of crises. Some fuses, such
as the growing abuses of state power, the 1988 election rigging and the
Ouko murder, were slow-burning. Others, such as the 1990 rebellion of
Kenneth Matiba and Charles Rubia, Oginga Odinga's continuing deter-
mination to press for the legalisation of an opposition party, the Saitoti
Commission, Western protests and the cancellation of aid by the Paris
Group, were specific events -- the products of personalities or political
decisions which might easily have taken a different form. Church leaders,
especially Bishops Okullu and Muge of the CPK and Reverend Dr
Timothy Njoya of the PCEA, led the way, closely followed by radical
lawyers Paul Muite and Gibson Kamau Kuria. The main Christian

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