In this long-read, Liam Taylor explores the politics and class dynamics of Kampala, Uganda. Taylor unpicks the enigma of Yoweri Museveni’s background – a former student militant who was taught by Walter Rodney, and argued for the necessity of revolutionary violence, socialism and radical transformations. Yet he soon became the apostle of neoliberal change, always promising that real change was forthcoming.
By all accounts, this is amongst the most – if not the most – important constitutional case under Kenya’s new Constitution, and the High Court’s judgment was a massive setback for both President Uhuru Kenyatta, and the Hon. Raila Odinga.
We should make the 25th of February Kenya’s National Day of Shame, the day in 1992 when Kenyan mothers were forced to undress in front of armed young men of the age of their detained sons.
In celebrating this 40th birthday of the African Charter, it is worthwhile to adequately appreciate the context and the historical background of the African Charter.
They say Uhuru lied to them. They say Raila has been played. Disillusioned, dispossessed, disaffected, the youth, Kenya’s largest voting constituency, are wary of the handshake.
As the rest of us figure out how to cope with the long-term changes now overtaking the biosphere, the world’s most resilient survivors will play an influential role in the collective response.
In the course of re-imagining Pan-Africanism we should reconstruct it as an ideology of the working people, as an ideology of social emancipation and, therefore, inextricably embedded in the struggles of the working people. This is the task that is before the organic intellectuals of the African working people.
The language of colonialism has remained a determined and fixed feature of mainstream accounts of Africa. The racist imagery of Africa remains unchanged and essentially monstrous.
Hopefully, the Magufuli phenomenon would have taught progressive African intellectuals to distinguish between rhetorical anti-imperialism and systemic understanding of the global capitalist-imperialist system
The massive disruptions wrought by COVID-19 present an opportunity for a fundamental transformation of Africa’s higher education.
An alternative herder-driven approach is more adapted since most conservancies in northern Kenya cannot be self-sustaining without the donor funding they currently receive.
Commissioning parents who venture into the legal minefield of surrogacy in Kenya also risk losing their money, children, or both - either to the state who might intervene by taking the child away, or to surrogates who later backtrack and decide they want to keep the child. Allegations of human trafficking are also a real concern.
