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SPEED GOVERNORS: ROAD SAFETY AND INFRASTRUCTURAL OVERLOAD IN POST-COLONIAL KENYA, c. 1963–2013

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 August 2013

Mark Lamont
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Abstract

In this article, I focus on the place of road safety in Kenyan legislative history since independence in 1963 as a way of illustrating the analytic value of speed for the anthropology of the state. Road safety, a highly visible public concern in Kenya since the 1960s, offers us a way to rethink the temporal dangers and uncertainties of automotive travel under global capitalism, but also to go further in seeking out historical continuities in Kenya's post-colonial aspirations for safer and more efficient roads. This focus on road safety takes us from Africanization, in the 1960s and 1970s, to the regulatory reforms of the 1990s and 2000s in the guise of neo-liberalism. From the vociferous complaints and debates of Kenyan politicians about imported Peugeots being dangerous to drive on Kenya's rough and sparsely tarmacked roads in 1964, to the much publicized traffic crackdown of 2003, the so-called ‘Michuki Rules’, road safety is a field of study ideally suited to the analysis of infrastructural power and its transformations and continuities over a four-decade period. What is of analytic interest here is the new value of speed in an East African region that has aggressively embraced automobility as a vehicle for enhancing state sovereignty in a globalized economy.

Résumé

Dans cet article, l'auteur s'intéresse à la place de la sécurité routière dans l'histoire législative du Kenya depuis l'indépendance du pays en 1963 pour illustrer la valeur analytique de la vitesse pour l'anthropologie de l’État. Enjeu public de premier plan au Kenya depuis les années 1960, la sécurité routière offre un moyen de repenser les incertitudes et les dangers temporels des déplacements automobiles en période de capitalisme mondial, mais également d'aller plus loin dans l'identification de continuités historiques dans les aspirations postcoloniales à des routes plus sûres et plus efficaces au Kenya. À travers le prisme de la sécurité routière, l'article nous transporte de l'africanisation des années 1960 et 1970 aux réformes réglementaires des années 1990 et 2000 sous les traits du néolibéralisme. De la virulence des plaintes et des débats des politiciens kenyans à propos de la mauvaise tenue de route des véhicules importés Peugeot sur les routes cahoteuses et peu goudronnées du Kenya en 1964, à la très médiatisée répression sur les infractions de la circulation de 2003 (appelée « Michuki Rules »), la sécurité routière est un champ d’étude qui se prête parfaitement à l'analyse du pouvoir infrastructurel et de ses transformations et continuités sur quatre décennies. D'un point de vue analytique, il est intéressant de voir ici la nouvelle valeur de la vitesse dans une région d'Afrique orientale qui a ardemment adopté l'automobilité comme véhicule de renforcement de la souveraineté d’État dans une économie globalisée.

Type
Research Article
Information
Africa , Volume 83 , Issue 3 , August 2013 , pp. 367 - 384
Copyright
Copyright © International African Institute 2013 

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