9 min read. Perhaps the timing was wrong. Or just right. Soon after the Miguna Miguna arrest-and-deportation circus began, I opened an autobiography I had just been gifted. The book, Walking in Kenyatta’s Struggles, by Duncan Ndegwa, came highly recommended. Little did I know what I was in for. Duncan Ndegwa was Kenya’s first Head of Civil Service […]
8 min read. In January 2018, at the annual Makerere University Tumusiime-Mutebile Centre of Excellence (TMCE) Business Dialogue, the Ugandan Minister of Internal Affairs, Ruhakana Rugunda, stated that Uganda was now in a position to finance 70% of its budget. However, despite the rosy declaration by the National Resistance Movement stalwart, all indications point to an economy in […]
9 min read. *This reflection is dedicated to my spiritual son, Jesse Masai, and several others like him who constantly wrestle with the question of their responsibility to the Republic in this season. An old proverb says, “We have not inherited this land from our forebears, we have borrowed it from our children.” Here, we are debtors and […]
5 min read. My friend Kalekye (not her real name) is a teacher at one of Nairobi’s government schools. She is married to a principal of a different government school and is a mother of two boys. She earns less than her husband. His monies pay for rent and to build a home in shags that they are […]
10 min read. Early last year, some members of Kenya’s Asian community visited a Nairobi branch of the Jubilee Party and demanded that Kenyan Asians – the vast majority of whom are of Indian descent – be officially recognised as a Kenyan tribe. Led by a human rights activist called Farah Mannzoor, the group stated that Kenyan Asians […]
11 min read. David Ndii’s recent decision to publicly renounce Kikuyu ethnicity and adopt a “Jaluo” one may spark a long overdue debate about the nature of ethnicity in Kenya and in Africa. For many people, both on the continent and outside it, the idea of tribe – with its connotations of strong, primitive, primordial ethnicity and ancient […]
15 min read. The Inspector General (IG) Joseph Boinnet’s recent pronouncement that the police had formed a special squad to deal with the Jubilee government’s critics confirmed what many believe to be a plot by the government to clamp down on opposition politics and what it considers to be individual “dissidents” and provocateurs. The police’s daring move of […]
12 min read. In February 2015, residents of Gilgil, a small town halfway between Naivasha and Nakuru in Kenya’s scenic Rift Valley – which was once known for its “Happy Valley” set – were stunned to learn that Simon Harris, a respected middle-aged British charity worker who had been living in the town since the 1990s, had been […]
9 min read. Kennedy “JJ” Chindi is a popular man. In the three days I spend shadowing him during his rounds as a community organiser for the Mathare Social Justice Centre (MSJC), none of our conversations are uninterrupted. While we are walking through the informal settlement, people of all ages and backgrounds come up to him just to […]
10 min read. January 30th 2018 enters Kenya’s history books alongside September 1st 2017, the day when, for the first time, an election in the country was nullified. Many dismissed the opposition coalition NASA’s threat to swear in the principals Raila Odinga and his deputy Kalonzo Musyoka as a PR gimmick. Yet, as the new year rolled in, […]
