Seven years after an independent oversight body was formed to monitor and investigate police misconduct and abuse, Kenyans are still suffering under the hands of an incompetent and uncaring police force that gets away with excesses with impunity. Has IPOA lived up to its promise?
IBRAHIM MAGARA argues that instead of exploring opportunities to heal wounds, and mending ties in pursuit of the national interest, specifically national security, the Kenyan state has adopted counterterrorism approaches and strategies that are deeply divisive and historically and contextually insensitive.
As Kenya’s forgotten mothers get worn out by the load of a nation’s collective misdeeds in pursuit of political power, a day shall come when the Mama Victors will no longer be in a position to continue doing national duty as national trauma-bearers.
A podcast of Bulimu Chole's article "Red Earth: The Killing of Carilton David Maina" published on The Elephant
Something happened on December 31st, 2011, and seemingly overnight, Kenyans began to religiously comply with the expanding security protocols. I was no exception. I credit a young woman named Rebecca Kerubo, a security guard for this transformation. A podcast of Sitawa Namwalie's article "No African Women Allowed: Equality in the Age of Terrorism" published on The Elephant
The “War on Terror” is a disruption, that makes normal, absurd reality, a privation of humanity, a shape-shifting enemy that yearns for innocent lives and souls; the menacing colonial state with new fangs.
The sound of the gun was so loud that we thought he had shot at us from inside the building, perhaps from the ground floor through the staircase. And because of the terror, I remember freezing on my way up for a few seconds before I regained my senses. A podcast of Silas Apollo's article published on The Elephant.
I have been thinking about the old man who spoke to me on my way to work. Why me? Why did he follow and ‘perform’ for me? Who asked him to? For what purpose? When I told my friend about it, he didn’t hesitate: “That’s a spy. That’s his job. He was paid a hundred or two hundred shillings to follow you to your destination.”
There has arisen a new security architecture mostly in the city that commodifies our fears, and develops surveillance products to monetise it. They promote an ever-expanding range of options for intrusive security measures pegged on lucrative public tenders. But it isn’t built to guarantee our safety. It preys on scared city folks who are not its clientele, partners, allies, or staff.
After the Garissa massacre, universities became like military installations. Private security firms were deployed to man the gates and the buildings within universities. Non-students must produce national IDs and explain what they are going to do at the university.
I. Some years ago, I forgot my national ID in a jeans pocket before a wash and it’s been steadily losing glue ever since. Now at least three corners of this sad rectangle have curled up to expose government paper with my zeros and ones. The card’s many adventures inside the small purse that lives […]
Rather than destroying the colonial system, what Kenyan leaders desired at independence was to replace the coloniser. So they saw no need to reform the police force, the very system that propped up the colonialist. Since then, Kenya’s police and security forces have been used as weapons of terror against the “natives” by the country’s administrators.