7 min read. African traditions and cultures have always held an awareness of the life cycle, from birth to death and the afterlife. The life cycle made us aware of the transitions from birth, through initiations, to child-bearing and rearing, to old age, to death, and thereafter to the journeys to the spiritual worlds of the ancestors and […]
15 min read. On 13 November 2017, the people of Somaliland went to the polls to choose their fifth president since breaking away from Somalia in May 1991. Despite a delay of 28 months, international and local observers described the election as credible and peaceful. The fact that the election finally took place, and did so in a […]
10 min read. On 8 March 2018, the Arab League’s Council of Ministers rejected South Sudan’s application for membership in the League. South Sudan’s curious application for membership in the Arab body raises eyebrows as the country is neither predominantly Muslim nor Arab. Besides, only eight out of the League’s twenty-two members are African countries; of these, seven […]
14 min read. Kenya experienced a protracted electoral period after the unprecedented nullification of the August 8 presidential election last year. After the Supreme Court gave its detailed ruling on September 20, the opposition leader Raila Odinga stated that if there were no reforms in the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC), the repeat election ordered by the […]
8 min read. Here in this zinc coffin lies a dead person or his legs and his head or even less of him or nothing, for he was a trouble-maker. He was recognised as the root of all evil. Dig him in. It will be best if his wife goes alone to the knacker’s yard with him because […]
15 min read. Forgive me, comrades If I say something apolitical And shamefully emotional But in the dark of night It is as if my heart is clutched By a giant iron hand: “Treachery, treachery” I cry out Thinking of you, comrades And how you have betrayed The things we suffered for – Dennis Brutus During a 1998 visit […]
13 min read. On March 9, 2018, at around 1.00 pm, Kenya’s tepid political weather experienced a sudden and powerful jolt when President Uhuru Kenyatta, the country’s elected president, and his political opponent, Raila Odinga, the so-called “People’s President”, were shown walking together and shaking hands on the stairs of Harambee House. The fiercest protagonists of the recent […]
13 min read. I define socio-political duplicity as the attitudes, behaviours and psychological syndromes that emerge from severe conditions of power asymmetry, which play out in political chicanery, backtracking on promises, political exclusion, economic marginalisation and social discrimination based on race, ethnicity, religion, language or gender, as well as in inferiority and superiority complexes. The socio-political duplicity of […]
20 min read. Mea maxima culpa. I have not engaged with the idea of the post-colonial before. Not overtly. I didn’t notice it, you see. And that is the politest way of putting it. But I have heard about it in dribs and drabs, as one hears about people from a distant and fascinating culture that point at […]
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 […]
