Tortoise and Rabbit: Truth at The Speed of Night

Martha is now an ordinary politician.

Martha was telling porkies: Eric Ng'eno makes the case, and predicts dire reputational consequences.

A plea for partisans

Partisans of the right kind are necessary for robust and principled debate. Kenya badly needs robust and principled debate. Therefore Kenya needs partisans. Stephen Wanyama fleshes out the argument.

Unsung Peace Heroes of the PEV

Violent demonstrations and clashes between various ethnic groups broke out across the city. Images of policemen firing at protestors dominated both the local and international media for weeks but stories like Esther's went mostly untold.

Dipesh attempts to change that.

Professor Alston reports

In my final report I will explain in detail the shortcomings of the two key component parts of the criminal justice system apart from the police. They are the Office of the Attorney-General and the judiciary. While I was unable to meet with the Attorney-General I did meet with the Director of Public Prosecutions. The exchange, reproduced in full in the Waki Commission report, between Justice Waki and Attorney-General Amos Wako, provides a vivid illustration of the latter's role as the chief obstacle to prosecuting anyone in authority for extrajudicial executions. He has presided for a great many years over a system that is clearly bankrupt in relation to dealing with police killings and has done nothing to ensure that the system is reformed. Public statements lamenting the system's shortcomings have been utterly unsupported by any real action. In brief, Mr Wako is the embodiment in Kenya of the phenomenon of impunity.

Professor Alston really doesn't like Amos Wako very much.

Beating Back at Miller

We cannot elevate men of questionable character to high office, and then express outrage when they break the law or otherwise flout some expected standard of behavior. Our acclamation of them, our contribution to their political efforts is a tacit endorsement of their conduct.

Angela on Millie vs. Miller.

From Citizens to Strangers

They do not know us. They do not recognize us. The law does not obligate them to respond to us within the Assembly. In effect, in electing them to be our voices, we lose ours.

Keguro on citizens and strangers.

Practical Feminism

feminism wins by default.

But I give some positive reasons for it anyway.

Hentai versus and Misogyny

Hentai is a strange phenomenon, with an almost exclusively-Japanese audience. As a fringe interest, the fixation on cartoon versions of youthful women being ravished by tentacles, lava or snakes may have appeared fairly harmless. With the recent publicity given to Rapelay however, it becomes apparent that there is a strong undercurrent of misogyny and a desire to subjugate women within the hentai genre.

Stephanie Migot encounters some deeply freaky hentai.

Miller versus Muli

There is more that goes into leadership than paper qualification.

Eric Ng'eno reviews Miller v Muli.

Kenya's Rihannas

This Valentine's weekend is probably one R&B star Rihanna would prefer to forget.

Stephanie Migot spares a thought for Kenya's Rihannas.

On Femmes

Rachel Gichinga is exasperated by the predictability of the Q&A at The Kenya We Want conference.

Institutionalism and its Limits

Daniel Waweru argues that institutions alone will not save us.

Uwezo

In Kenya, there is no room for the innocent.

Muthoni Garland discovers why.

The Revolution in Middle Age

Will there be a revolution? While the scars of tribalism and the post-election violence persist, it is doubtful that there could ever be a collective repudiation of the current state of affairs.

Stephanie mulls over the Iranian revolution, and draws some lessons for Kenya.

When I was a child, I spake as a child

Our own Eric Ng'eno, very much against the current, argues that Mr. Khalwale's charges remain unproven.

The Minister will not bell the cat

Ms. Karua draws an organisation chart. Capt. Wanderi is unconvinced.

Nakumatt, Molo and even Triton

Daniel Waweru is annoyed by people running together responsibility for recent tragedies.

Dear Lucy

Use your charm, your wit, your sensuality, like Ruth did in the Bible, to overcome Kings!

Simiyu Barasa writes Lucy a rather saucy letter.

Did we learn anything from post-poll violence?

Did we learn nothing from the violence? Mukoma Ngugi argues that the solutions imposed actually make violence more likely to recur.

The Pain of Success: Vetting Your Email and Facebook

A few weeks ago the New York Times wrote a new chapter in its personnel handbook. It warned its reporters against putting personal information on their myspace or facebook profiles. It asked its reporters not to display their political affiliation, afterall journalists are supposed to be unbiased. Are they?

Well, we know that we all have our biases. And sometimes it is hard to draw a distinction between what you write and what you believe in.

More. 

First Lady named in Parliament

The Kenyan First Lady seems set to remain on the national headlines for a while yet. 

After her searing criticism of Internal Security boss George Saitoti, and the statement from State House the next day expressing confidence in Saitoti, the First Lady is reported by SukumaKenya to have been mentioned in parliament over maize allocations.

Check.

Ethnicity abounds: Kenya’s identity crisis

But race is an issue I believe this nation cannot afford to ignore right now…’ Barack Obama, speech titled ‘A More Perfect Union’, 18 March 2008

When Barack Obama addressed America on the issue of race in March 2008, he could very well have been talking to Kenyans on the issue of ethnicity. For as he issued his penetrative analysis of the race question in the USA, the land of his father was awash with blood as a contested election result led to national conflict, ultimately costing close to 1,200 lives, displacing close to 350,000 others, and wrecking the lives and livelihoods of millions. The ethnic hue of the conflict was so strong that it led some to mistakenly suggest that what was happening in the country was either genocide or ethnic cleansing.

In sync with Obama’s ‘racial stalemate’ in the USA, Kenya has long been prisoner to an ethnic stalemate. A vast majority of analysts agree that had he run for the presidency in Kenya, Obama would have lost on account of being Luo, the ethnicity of his father. Some, however, have even observed that he is not Luo enough, indicating he may not even have garnered a local ethnic constituency; a current, sorry, prerequisite to engaging in presidential politics in Kenya.

Read more.

Mama Sarah's Tears

I was making supper for my three children when a friend came to my house and told me a tanker had just rolled down in Sachangwan near Molo town and everybody was celebrating the free petrol.

Because of the hard life in our county we rushed for two jericans each. Off we took off as I left my elder daughter Sarah to continue cooking the meal.

Nairobi Loving

Check as Syzygy Mandaea takes a few strolls about town here, and here. Hilarious stuff. 

Watching Neema star in The Agency

If you are in Nairobi or anywhere in Africa, Neema Mawiyoo, Culture Editor here, and star of Ngwatilo - to hold on to- is on MNET at 2000 East African Time, or 1900 Central African Time.

She plays a young account executive in a Nairobi advertising firm. 

Click here for links. 

 

Straight to the point

Ideally, we should be halfway towards redemption. Raila was largely seen, even by his enemies, as a reform-committed, energetic, straight-shooting, sincere politician. As a result, most people decided that he was what he said he was - the bridge between our nasty past and a just and prosperous Kenya. So we took him at face value and mounted him, posthaste, upon a high pedestal.

But our elevation was cut short, so he got halfway up the pedestal, there to hang inelegantly in the spirit of 'nusu mkate'. And he seems vertiginious all the time, as though our expectations of him are extremely and unreasonably onerous. He is falling back more and more on the 'nusu mkate' argument than he is on his avowed commitment to ' transformation' and so forth.

Read more. 

The Grassroots Mobile Revolution in Africa

It didn't take us long to find it. After all, mobile phone masts aren't that easy to hide, and Masindi is a tightly-knit, flat little west Ugandan town. After a few short minutes, driving past countless mobile phone dealerships, internet cafes and village phone operators, there it was.

I was last in Masindi in 1998, not that long ago in the grand scheme of things, but a lifetime in the short history of the mobile phone. Back then this mast wasn't there, and neither were any of the mobile phone shops, internet cafes and village phone operators. The only phone line out of town - if and when it was working - was courtesy of the local post office. Every couple of weeks we would drive here to collect our post from the Ugandan Wildlife Authority, post our letters, have a cold beer, buy a few ‘luxuries' and occasionally attempt to phone home. No text messaging in those days.

Read more here.

Impunity, Take Two

Kenyans like to get off. Repeatedly. Impunity is a habit, a practice, a fetish, and, seemingly, a requirement for national belonging. Indeed, it lies at the heart of our civil and political engagements, and is one of our main impediments to realizing a truly progressive, liberated State. The aftermath of the post-election violence offers a particularly vivid case study on the important role of impunity in present-day Kenya.

More from Keguro Macharia here. 

Tragedy strikes again, in Molo

Even as Kenya is reeling from the continuing tragedy of the Nakumatt Downtown store fire, another tragedy has befallen its people. More than 90 of them killed last night, hundreds in critical condition.

A fuel tanker is reported to have overturned lat night near the farming town of Molo in Kenya's Rift Valley. A fire broke out when hundreds of locals looking to collect the spilled oil rushed in.  Authorities are still unsure what the source of the spark was, although there are allegations that it was a deliberate action by latecomers who were stopped from joining in the collection by a locally-stationed GSU unit, an allegation reported by both the BBC and the Nation. The GSU, some media houses allege, were looking to participate vicariously in the extraction by extorting money from the oil-collecting public. 

More from the editors at kI.

On getting Down With The Teachers

I'm mad. Livid. Angry beyond words. I will have to be secreted to a facility to prevent serious embarrassment to myself and those around me; I'm on the warpath, armed with the jaw of an ass, bent on Samsonite accomplishment. Let me tell you why. 

First, we now have irrefutable proof that the Government of the African Republic of Kenya is composed chiefly of idiots, psychopaths, failed brains, megalomaniacs and the most hideous liars. 

Secondly, that said government is set, inexorably, on the path to self destruction. Which is shocking: everyone, however severe their intellectual limitations, is endowed with a strong sense of self preservation and even perpetuation. The government, so far as I can see, is the sum of parts, each of which is bereft of that vital sense. Let me calm down a bit and give this thing a little more coherence.        

More from Eric Ng'eno here.