The development of the law of sale of goods in Kenya (a historical, socio-economic critique)

This dissertation which is on “The development of the law of sale of goods in Kenya” being a historical, socio-economic critique, comprises four chapter in all. In chapter one, entitled “Customary Laws and Commodity Production and Exchange in Pre-colonial Kenya”, we trace the early history of the evolution of the pre-colonial classical communalistic societies with a view to throwing lights on the mode of production and socio-economic relations and their correspondence to the existence of law relating to sale of goods at the time. In this regard we come out with the conclusion that no commercial law existed in a developed form because commodity production and circulation was only in its embryonic stage of evolution at the time a fact which precluded the existence of the material basis for the existence of such laws for that matter. In chapter two which is devoted to the colonial period, the author as a prelude, makes a review of socio-economic factors in Europe up to the last half of the nineteenth century with a view to identifying the obtaining motive socio-economic factors that finally led to the colonization of Kenya. Again, in this this chapter, we make a brief review of the historical development of the Law Merchant with emphasis on Britain in order to expose the socio-economic background ahgainst which the laws which later had to be adopted in Kenya developed. In chapter three, we examine the methods and process by which English laws relating to sale of goods were implanted into Kenya by the British Imperial government and its colonial administration. Furthermore, in this chapter, after reviewing briefly the method by which the independent Kenya government adopted English laws relating to sale of goods in order to make them applicable locally, we observe, and as a matter of principle that the nature or content of Laws id determined by a given socio-economic system, and that since the socio-economic system in Kenya is neo-colonial, controlled by foreign monopolies, it follows therefore that the laws relating to sale of goods are also imperialistic in essence, aimed primarily at the service of monopoly capital and the properties of monopoly firms. In order to prove this contention, we make a critical review of the exploitative nature of the colonial economy and how it determined the nature and essence of colonial laws, concluding that such laws had only a single objective viz: to service and aid finance monopoly exploitation of Kenya in its extractive industrial ventures and commercial interests in general, and o the circulation of monopoly commodity capital (goods). In further bid to prove this contention that is the socio-economic system that determines the content of law, we analyse the nature or essence of Kenya’s current laws relating to sale of goods against the background of the country’s present socio-economic content and rationale of such laws by examining it in the light of the economically dominant or ruling class. In doing this we by way of generalized commentary on the sale of goods Act ( Cap. 32) 1931 and the Hire-Purchase Act (Cap. 507) 1968, try to synthesize the implications of the Acts and the English legal doctrines which guide their applicability against the background of the present socio-economic system. Proceeding from the premise that Kenya’s economic pattern is neo-colonial, entangled with in the world imperialist system, we conclude with regard to the socio-economic rationale of its laws related to sale of goods, that they are by their very nature primarily in the service of foreign transitional monopolies which control the economic life of the country. In doing this besides exposing the bourgeois essence of leading legal doctrines that govern the applicability of the laws relating to sales of goods with in Kenya’s legal system, we also cite as an authority both the Constitution of Kenya and the foreign investment protection act 1964 as guaranteeing the security of foreign monopoly investment in the country. Chapter four, however, contains the authors concluding remarks.