The uthamaki code, the sense of Kikuyu elite entitlement, has defined Kenya’s politics for 55 years, a history of assassinations, blood oaths and cloak-and-dagger games. Since 1967, the Kalenjin elite have been the other protagonist in this power arrangement, offering land in exchange for a seat at the high table, and taking hostage the Kikuyu diaspora in the Rift Valley in this matrix of fear. How to break the cycle and liberate Kenya? By DAVID NDII
The Deputy President is today considered Kenya’s most frightening political figure. If he is indeed the motivation behind ‘the handshake’, that dynastic rapprochement between the Kenyattas and the Odingas, thwarting William Ruto’s presidential ambitions to protect the merchants of a half-century of impunity may well be the cure that is worse than the disease. By JOHN GITHONGO
Six decades since the wind of change blew across Africa ushering independence for a cast of new states across the continent, Pan Africanism remains more relevant an idea than ever before in today’s globalised era with its multiple challenges and opportunities for the continent argues L. MUTHONI WANYEKI
A stuck story is like a baby who does not want to be born; keeping you in a long painful state of labour. Now I understand what Maya Angelou meant when she said, ‘There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.’ This is all I have. My words, my stories. I […]
Millennials have been blamed for pretty much everything that is going on wrong in the world today. Marriage is failing, thanks to hook-up culture and Tinder’s “I’ll get with anything I swiped right on.” The real estate market is falling because millennials would rather spend all their money on avocado toast than take up mortgages […]
Ismael Kulubi is a 66-years-old radio production guru with a scintillating voice that is still in great demand even after retirement. Advertising executives in need of an experienced voice hire him to do radio promos. By all measurable standards, Ismail has had a fulfilling career – he is a widely travelled man who has enjoyed […]
In early 2005, I went to see Geoffrey Griffin, the director of Starehe Boys Centre, just before he died in June of that same year. We discussed many things, among them the 8-4-4 education system. “The fact of the matter is that there is intrinsically nothing wrong with the 8-4-4 system,” Griffin told me then. […]
The Elephant in conversation with Dr. Wandia Njoya, a blogger and lecturer.
Allow me the joy of teaching you a new word today. The word is ‘duru’. Most of my millennial peers, where I come from, have an extensive grasp of what it means. It is simply the art of approaching a stranger, after careful analysis, wearing a sunken face then stretching your hand to them the […]
“We must begin to tell our young There’s a world waiting for you This is a quest that’s just begun” ~ Nina Simone, Young, Gifted and Black By the age of nineteen, I had worked three jobs: the first, as a “fetch boy” in a cramped room at CMC Motors in Kisumu where all I […]