Kibaki must now answer back

President Kibaki is a mysterious, inscrutable old man. That in a nutshell is why the opposition for all its boasts about its political prowess has found it impossible to beat him; resorting instead to smashing the chessboard and the pieces. It is difficult to beat an old man whose core strategy is to ignore you.

For Kenya at large, much accustomed as it is to an over-bearing head of state and government, Mwai Kibaki's presidency -for all the calls for a reduction in presidential powers- has proved to be a most introverted one. Apart from a brief series of outings in the campaign period, gone was the constancy of the powerful, omniscient, hectoring, itinerant patriarch. Instead, all that filtered down from the presidency are genially broadcasted progress reports on the growth of the economy, achievements in healthcare and in governance -much of them relayed by the Government Spokesman or the Presidential Press Service.

Read more from Wanjiru Kamau here.

Why do we condone ethnic cleansing?

Tomes have been written against the violence in Kenya, poems have been composed and most of us have lamented the fact that our countrymen are taking up arms against each other. What we have neglected to condemn, is the idea that specific parts of Kenya belong to specific tribes.

Read more from Patrick Gathara here.

Ignes fatui: but we are Kenyan

One interesting trait prevalent among Kenyans is their passion for conjuring tales of vivid imagination and then insisting on them so ardently that they end up being turned into truisms, never mind their lack of basis in fact.

The traditional method, is to take on a sprinkling of facts, throw them into a massive sufuria boiling with sliced and diced-facts, spiced up with fantasies for good measure, with a large pinch of salt for flavour and an unhindered splash of such outrageous fictions as would embarrass most, except we are Kenyan.

Read more from Kamale T here.

The Insane Ones

I am accused of unconsidered optimism from time to time. Today, I am relieved about the possibility of peace across the country. With a huge side order of disgust, I allow myself some relief in this handshake that two old friends could have made weeks ago and saved a thousand lives; but which they found inconvenient; until now.

Who are You? Who am I?
This threadbare security blanket has been exposed.
We live on the knife-edge of denial.

Read more from JC Mureithi here.

What happened to the exit polls?

Speaking yesterday before a Congressional Hearing in the US, the head of Kenya's statutory human rights body asked the US congress to exhort the International Republican Institute to release the results of an exit poll taken after Kenya's December 27th General Election. Exit polls are by practice one of the fall-back options when an election is found to be difficult to call on account of the irregularities in its process. This is especially so where the pollster is an independent organisation whose credibility will stand up to scrutiny, and whose findings will be respected by both sides. So it is that Maina Kiai's statement bears looking into, even as he joins the great list of Kenyans discredited in the public eye this last month. He, for sure, is not one of the independent institutions.

Read more from Stephen Wanyama here.

I said the pledge today

I said the pledge. Two days a week I said the pledge, and later, in a different time and place, I taught the pledge. Right hand on my breast, my heart, face lifted in a pose of perfect patriotism and inside, intensely glowing with the demonstration of national pride, I said the pledge.

Read more from L. Akitelek Papakemus here.

Opening doors

It is clear that the time has come for us to stop taking Kenya for granted, that instead we must make a passionate and compelling case for it.

We now have to argue ourselves and our compatriots into the idea of Kenya; to persuade ourselves of, and to think about, more deeply and with more clarity than we have ever had to summon before, the merits of this nebulous entity that we call home.

We now have to fight for it; the honeymoon, such as it was, is over. Before we do that, we had better know what we are talking about. It is important to remember that no identity is fixed, no way of being oneself immortalised in stone. Every morning, when we wake up, each one of us has to remember who we are, and act accordingly, gathering our recollection of self from memories, and dreams, from half-forgotten quarrels and recollections of things overheard, from our yearnings and loves and dislikes. We piece these little shards of reflected, refracted and remembered things together again every morning, to become ourselves.

Let us talk about what really ails our country

Last week, I treaded where angels dread. I talked about what I believe has plunged our beloved country into chaos.

I received overwhelming response. Readers concurred that we have swept the ugly truth under the carpet for too long. That is why we are consumed by passions we cannot control. I also stirred the hornet's nest, so the barbs came fast and furious.

Read more from Nancy Mburu here.

Mediation and the three Kenyas

I was working late in the library yesterday when I got an email from an aquaintance I hadn't seen in almost 7 months. He was concerned about my welfare, wondering if my family was OK following the coup in Kenya.

I was stunned; had there been a coup in Kenya in the one week that I had decided to focus on my school work? Thankfully, his concern was misguided – French newspapers had mistakenly reported that the political instability was some kind of political coup. He felt that I was in denial: what else short of a coup would drag so many notables into this previously quiet, at least in the international scene, country? Surely the level of political upheaval in the country matches the scale of the intervention?

Read more from Nanjala here.

Kenyans will still not lose their country

Last week, I suggested that Kenyans would not lose their country to thugs and criminals. I nearly changed my mind this last weekend and with good reason. But even after all this, I still think we shall and must save our country.

Last Friday when having a drink with some friends at a local pub in Nairobi West, I was aghast at the discussion taking place. And this was going on among some Kikuyu friends. They were tired of the mayhem and murder of Kikuyus by gangs of marauding Kalenjin warriors.

Read more from Kamale T here.

Mis-Leading Kenya

A few weeks ago as the country fell apart around us, and in a moment of untempered and cursing anger I wrote an article, which I then proceeded to submit for publishing on these pages.

A few days went by, and still I did not see it published. So I wrote one of the editors and asked about my submission."Your article was very well written, it was brilliant in fact. Unfortunately, with the current situation in Kenya we have decided not to publish it.", was the reply I received.

Read more here.

Flawed election is the spark, not the cause

I was to Kenya twice last year. The first visit was in June - I hadn't been there for a while and was returning with the intention of registering as a voter. One of the first things I noticed, returning to the country of my birth was that the country was more polarised along ethnic lines than ever before.

It must be said that both sides were going at it, the one side blaming the other for the hogging of public wealth and resources, and the other alleging subversion, sloth and a hate campaign inspired by the other. Since I've had some experience of (and written against) anti-black racism, I had absolutely no desire to even remotely cooperate with either side. I decided not to vote, and so didn't register.

Read more Daniel Waweru here.

Kenya: spaces of hope

The way Kenyan citizens are living out and working through their country's crisis offers insight into how boundaries of ethnicity, clan and class can be overcome, writes the anthropologist Angelique Haugerud.

Read more here.

Kenyans will not lose their country!

Last evening, I was informed that my colleagues for the firm I work with that our UK office had dressed down last Friday for Charity, and that the benefitting charity was the Kenya Red Cross Society.

This is a regular custom at their office every Friday, althought most of the beneficiary charities are UK-based. On the odd occasion, I have managed to get donations for African calamities such as the suffering in Sierra Leone or the famine in Mali some time back. The rule for the dress-down is simple, you donate £2 and get as a result to wear jeans and sneakers to work. They raised a sum of £200 which I topped up with my small donation of £50. The cheque will be handed to the Kenya Red Cross tomorrow.

Read more from Kamale T here.

Promoting hatred and violence, even now

The ODM leader Raila Odinga is a famous man for his many talents. Foremost among these are his organising and rousing skills. It is true that few politicians in the history of Kenya have had as much ability to provoke their followers to action as has the ODM's captain. So it is that many Kenyans hoped in earnest that he would be able to quell the violent passion in his supporters, that he would be able to save Kenyan lives by asking that his people restrain themselves, take to the courts and settle disputes particularly those over land in a civilised and non-violent manner. He has pointedly refused to do that, famously insisting to the foreign media that he would not anaesthetize the Kenyan people as they were being raped, and then also shocking the international media by crudely comparing the post-election tragedy with mere post-match skirmishes between the supporters of rival football clubs.

Read more from Peter Ndiangui here.

Listen

The time has come, in my view, for Kenyans to stop and take stock. Many of us are angry at some of the accusations and counter-accusations that are flowing back and forth in our country, in our media, and in many other fora. But the time has come for us to stop and take stock.

An analogy comes to mind. Imagine two men charged with carrying a precious glass case containing a valuable crown across a large valley. They have no cars, no bicycles; the only way they can get from point A to point B is to hoist the rather heavy glass case, mounted on two sticks, onto their shoulders. About half way there, the two men enter into an argument and the first man shoots his compatriot in the knee. The man at the back is equally angry and somehow manages to shoot his friend in the knee as well. Both of them are lying on the floor, writhing in pain but still strong enough to trade accusations and counter accusations. They fail to notice one thing. The case is broken and the crown is lost.

Read more from Nanjala Nyabola here.

John Githongo on the BBC, partisanship in Kenya's civil society

Former anti-corruption czar John Githongo just appeared on a BBC HardTalk special with Stephen Sackur. In the programme, Githongo looked to take a neutral stance on the election imbroglio but came off, perhaps predictably looking more than a little biased. Sackur seemed much more informed and neutral than the exiled Kenyan anti-graft crusader, asking Githongo pointedly whether as has been severally reported -and affirmed by the likes of Jendayi Frazer and Muthoni Wanyeki- there were massive irregularities on both sides. Even as his interlocutor asked Githongo about the violence across the country, Githongo seemed still to pretend that this was about election anger, and that both sides were equally culpable.

Read more from John Victor Ogot here.

Political tribalism, moral ethnicity

Unlike, apparently, rather a lot of the people I like and respect, I think that the boycotts strategy announced by the ODM is a disastrous move, one that can only lead to greater pain. Let me explain. John Lonsdale somewhere distinguishes between political tribalism and moral ethnicity. (Never mind that I've always thought it a slightly tenuous distinction - everybody thinks the same of most distinctions they didn't first think of themselves.) Political tribalism is the constitution of an ethnicity by competition for state power and largesse against other, similarly constituted, ethnicities. Moral ethnicity on the other hand is a set of assumptions about public virtue for people like us. Political tribalism is inevitably adversarial; moral ethnicity inward-looking.

Read more from Daniel Waweru here.

Kenya: To Hype, or Not To Hype

A Montreal professor arrived in Nairobi recently. He came here two weeks after the well-publicized chaos began, and it was interesting to hear him relate the impression outsiders have of Kenya as a country where burning buildings, mass riots, and dead bodies have become the norm.
Once you’re on the ground, he said, the picture that emerges is a calmer one, “where a number of local disasters are embedded in a matrix of peace.”

Read more from Arno Kopecky here.

The Delusional Omnipotent

Opposition leader Raila Odinga is a man who likes many things. He likes big cars, and flashy clothes. He likes to talk politics, he loves fame. He loves propaganda and more than anything he loves cameras. That I suppose is alright, to each his own.
But the ODM leader also loves anarchy and has an exaggerated passion for destruction, if he cannot have it, no one else will.

Read more from Victor Mwangu here.