There is familiarity in veminization of marginalised people in cities, in places like Kibra in colonial Kenya and the first Chinatowns in North America that existed around the turn of the 20th century that continue to endure to date.
What if this ratchet music is a pushback against the bleak logics of a society that defiles in so many other ways, a society that ruthlessly forecloses on opportunities for the young and poor in particular? What if the ratchet offers an insurgent possibility of life after social death, of life beyond nihilism?
The songs don’t have the best beats out there, the artists don’t have makeup or extensive wardrobes nor do the video vixens necessarily appeal to the beauty ideal. They’re just normal people, who are easily relatable. Plus, the meme is the message, as researchers ODIPODEV explore.
Wife inheritance has been treated as one of the legacies of past backward African culture but as ADIPO SIDANG' argues, are we throwing the baby with the bathwater?
It can be argued that the whole football tournament, footballers, their emotions, their characteristic traits, actions on the pitch and activities of spectators are transformed into a war scenario through the commentary, indeed, as CAREY BARAKA argues, football remains as an arena for political expression for a long time to come.
The literary world has lost yet another icon. Another healer of wounds is no longer with us. But Morrison’s language and words will always comfort us, especially in these trying times when extremism, hate and paranoia are fragmenting societies and spreading fear.
Uhuru Park is more than a public green space in Nairobi. It is a space with a glorious history of contestation, a symbolic national shrine and an embodiment of the essence of freedom.
Ken Okoth was a visionary and inspirational leader whose death has left a nation in mourning and reflection.
Museums are the curators of consciousness, interpreting history, our worldview and our place in it. On one hand, they can be great cultural and educational institutions and on the other centres of propaganda and cultural appropriation.
Mboya’s ghost is that of a repressed collective identity submerged into the nation’s unconsciousness. The repression shields the country from confronting its problems of marginalization of minorities, ethnic domination by a few, and state capture by powerful economic interests.
What can one do with the anguish of these truths? With the knowledge that one cannot escape one’s body, no matter how hard one tries? That the past will always find you, in fact it is never past – the present is, in fact, the past in present-time? With the knowledge that if you are caught on the underside of power, your body will become a site of the accumulation of various strikes, until the last chapter of any successful genocide, where the oppressor can remove their hands and say, “My god – what are these people doing to themselves?...
Okot p’Bitek’s Song of Lawino and Song of Ochol faced numerous rejections from publishers before the collection was eventually published in 1966. The collection of ‘songs’ was a resounding artistic and commercial success. Yet, over 50 years since Okot’s encounter, poetry still appears at the bottom of the publishers' priority list.
