FOUNDATIONS OF GOVERNMENT IN KENYA

Published date01 July 1954
DOIhttp://doi.org/10.1002/j.1099-162X.1954.tb00061.x
Date01 July 1954
FOUNDATIONS OF GOVERNMENT IN KENYA 137
and Its legislative measures, of which the commune is required to submit
copies.
Formal disallowance of communal by-laws is made by resolution of the district
people's committee. This, however, is comparatively unusual; communes whose
legislation is at fault, as it not uncommonly is, are invited to amend or withdraw
it, and generally comply. Republican officials and the republican legislature,
through its committee on people's committees, exercise the same functions in
respect of the district or city.
The
objects of the supervision and the observa-
tions made in the resulting reports and correspondence are very like those of a
Gold Coast Government Agent in his oversight of the local authorities; it does
not appear that the advice given on minutes is taken to heart any more readily
in Yugoslavia, and lack of staff renders the checking certainly less efficient,
at least at district level, and probably more difficult to follow up by personal
visitation.
The
British system of local government introduced into the Gold Coast is
already, and will remain, something other than the system of Great Britain; if the
system independently evolved by Yugoslavia shows similarities to the result of
this development, it is because of a certain similarity of conditions.
The
British
system of local government, with its relatively frequent meeting of the full elected
bodies and its use of committees, is a good school of collective thought and
action, and as such is valuable to a community new to self-government,
but
it is
slow to yield practical results from the abundance of discussion.
The
new Yugo-
slav system has much the same qualities and much the same limitations.
The
leading elements in Yugoslavia, however, even more than those in the Gold
Coast, are by their training and their situation in the world inclined to look for
quick results, to ask too much of institutions and of the people who work them,
and by their Marxist principles they are disposed to impatience if these results
do not tend in a predetermined direction.
The
most ambitious devices in Yugoslavia have so far been the least successful:
the large-scale development of the committee system (in the English sense) and
the reliance on voters'
meetings-both
useful in themselves
but
disappointing if
too much is expected of
them-and
the chamber of producers, which as an
instrument of a supposed class war is irrelevant to local government, and as a
piece of political machinery is too complicated for popular understanding.
Whether it is possible for them to continue to show, in times of less urgent stress,
the constructive opportunism which has of late greatly eased the lot of the
Yugoslav people remains to be seen. In the administration of a developing
country too clear a vision of the distant prospect can be distracting.
FOUNDATIONS OF GOVERNMENT IN KENYA
by E.
J.
F. Knowles
AT the far end of the hall, sitting at a long table raised on a platform, was
the district commissioner, the only white man in the room. On his right was the
secretary of the council, on his left a Bible. In front of him, facing the platform,
several rows of desks were arranged in semi-circles. One by one each member
left his desk, went up to the table, and repeated the solemn words of the oath:
"I,
Sylvester Anniseti, chosen councillor of the
---
District Council, do
hearby swear before Almighty God that I will serve our Queen, Elizabeth II,
with all my strength and shall further the progress of this district without
fear. I also swear to exert myself to serve my people with all the strength
Which
in me is."
The
long pleasantly proportioned hall has well curtained windows looking

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