African Affairs

I don't want to vote in the upcoming Kenya general elections. And I'm angry because I think that it's hardly a coincidence that I don't want to vote.

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With the statement of the Catholic bishops affirming Uhuru and Ruto's right to contest the presidency with ICC trials hanging over the two politicians' heads, which comes right on the heels of NCCK's support for tribalist political groups (whom Karanja erroneously calls tribes or communities), I have one question for the men (they are never women) of God: whose side are you on?

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Rev Canon Peter Karanja Mwangi

General Secretary,

National Council of Churches of Kenya

Dear Rev Karanja

The Bible records different occasions when the Lord used the least expected members of society to express the Lord's displeasure with those who were publicly recognized as the Lord's servants.

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I've always wondered why Kenyans cling onto narratives even when you present the evidence that contradicts that narrative.

One of these narratives is that everything women do that is not evidence of subjugation under colonialist patriarchy, and everything men do that is dysfunctional, must be the result of women being empowered, abandoning tradition and taking over men's roles.

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On March 22 this year, Captain Amadou Sanogo overthrew Malian president Amadou Toumani Toure (also referred to as ATT), accusing him of incompetence in handling the rebellion in the north by the mainly Toureg community. The rebels, who had revived their struggle in January this year, promptly took advantage of the instability and declared the independence of the state of Azawad. Meanwhile, ECOWAS reigned in on the military junta by imposing sanctions. The mounting pressure has now forced the military to support an interim leader as the country heads to elections.  read more »

If the National Cohesion and Integration is looking for manifestations of ethnic polarization, Kenyan responses to the inauguration of the Lamu port and the discovery of oil in Northern Kenya are a very rich source of data.

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No comedian could conjure up such a political circus. It could only be scripted by an utterly bankrupt government, by an irredeemably shameless, crass, corrupt, and vile cabal desperate to cling to power at all costs, damn the constitution, damn the country. And so they refuse to announce the death of a president, a much-despised and hated dictator, even as the entire world’s media announce his death. On the streets and in the blogosphere few in the country and the diaspora mourn his death.  read more »

Lewis Ricardo Gordon, a professor of philosophy at Temple University, gives an interesting story about his time as professor at a university whose environment was hostile to black faculty. The faculty would park their cars next to the buildings where they taught, and then disappear once their classes were done. However, Gordon decided to be walking across campus to class.  read more »

As the presidential elections appear around the corner, Kenyans are getting anxious about how they are going to manage an election in a toxic political environment poisoned by ethnic animosity.

In such troubling times, the role of intellectuals is crucial: to help Kenyans clarify the issues, and to help them imagine a different scenario that would help us vote peacefully and with our conscience and intellect - as opposed to violently and according to our primal instincts.

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I guess it is in the character of my friend, Sharif Khalill, CEO of Aga Khan Foundation Canada, to put one on a podium before a distinguished assemblage of guests comprising members of the diplomatic community, Members of Parliament, Directors in the Canadian Foreign Affairs Ministry, staff of international development agencies, CEOs from corporate Canada, senior academics, and ask one to get the discussion rolling with a ten-minute ope  read more »

Now that Kenyan media have made it their mission to attack women's empowerment campaigns in the name of concern about the boy child, I have decided, as a Kenyan woman, to now fight for the boy child. My first target: traditional initiation rights.

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Once again, I am pained to read and respond to yet another anti-human article published by the Nation newspaper which blames women for everyone's problems. I am compelled to repeat what I said in a previous post.

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How have the African media and commentators covered the Occupy Wall Street Movement in the United States and elsewhere in the global North? The following reports give a glimpse on African perspectives on the movement, what they see as its causes, resonances with age-old African social and political struggles, and the implications for the continent, Euroamerica, and global capitalism. PTZeleza, Editor, The Zeleza Post.

UGANDA: Anti-capitalism Rebellion in Progress in US By Dani Wadada Nabudere  read more »

The African World and Pan-Africanism itself have undergone dramatic changes over the last 40 years. On the African continent, for instance, the last remaining colony is the Western Sahara, and their coloniser is another African nation (Morocco). The apartheid system, as we knew it in Southern Africa, is gone. In the diaspora legalised racial segregation is largely a thing of the past.  read more »

At the same moment when the Libyan adventure backfired with the US Africa Command (AFRICOM) retreating from taking credit for the end of the Gaddafi regime, the US government announced the deployment of 100 troops to Uganda to assist the government of Yoweri Museveni to track down the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA). Later the same month in October 2011, there was news that the Kenyan army had been deployed into Somalia in pursuit of armed Somalians known as Al-Shabaab (‘The Youth') that Kenya blames for a series of kidnappings on its soil.  read more »

Minnesota, November 15, 2011

Open Letter To Katrina Lantos Swett,

President, The Lantos Foundation for Human Rights and Justice

Dear Ms. Lantos Swett,

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Katrina Lantos Swett issued a rude response to the protests against the award of her human rights prize to Paul Rusesabagina, the hero created by a Hollywood movie.

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On November 16, Paul Rusesabagina, on whom the Hollywood film Hotel Rwanda is based, will receive a human rights prize from the Lantos Foundation, named after former congressman Tom Lantos. The reward has been contested by survivors of the genocide against Tutsis, describing Rusesabagina in their petition as an "imposter without equal."

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(Keynote lecture delivered at the annual conference of the Stanford Forum for African Studies, Palo Alto, California. Saturday, October 29, 2011)  read more »

A very welcome challenge from Comrade Pius Adesanmi via facebook  has given me the gap through which to introduce the tribe into my conversations on Kenyan politics.

My comrade in the quest for intellectual revolution wondered if infrastructure minus a political ideology is not a good problem to have.

I think the Kibaki government has proved that that is not a good problem at all.

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