Precarious Citizenship in Kenya: Yusuf Dawood’s One Life Too Many (1991)

Abstract

Love narratives where protagonists transgress societal regimes provide meaningful prisms through which we can read histories of diverse societies. For instance, Kenya’s independence from British colonialism dawned with the Africanisation policy — a radical social transformation policy which prioritised placement of Black people in influential positions in the civil service, private sector, business, and farming in an attempt to redress historical racial socio-economic injustices perpetuated through half-a-century long colonialism. The affirmative action policy became unpopular with racial groups accustomed to colonial privileges. Through a love narrative, One Life Too Many, Yusuf Dawood offers an apprehensive engagement with the policy. But this article problematises the embedded narrated histories in the novel through a critical reading of the circulation of the emotion of fear, where the fear of Africa and the fear of Black people’s governance of the newly independent African nations feature as grounds for contesting the racial affirmative action policy.