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Kenya Imagine

• April 30, 2008
• 22:46

  Can the ECK be entrusted with future polls?

   » ‎ Kenya Imagine
  With by-elections coming up in early June, controversy is brewing in Kenya over whether the Samuel Kivuitu led Electoral Commission of Kenya will be able to run the elections and furnish results acceptable to both sides. Especially important because parliament is split straight down the middle (evident at the Speaker's election), the by-elections are set for the 11th of June. In the contest, the representatives for Ainamoi and Embakasi constituencies will be chosen, to take on the roles of the late David Too and Mugabe Were. In Emuhaya constituency a replacement is sought for Kenneth Marende MP who was elected parliament's speaker while in Kilgoris and Wajir East, inconclusive contests at the General Election will finally be settled.
  
  Discuss here.

  

  
• 22:45

  On Post-Election Rebellion, Economic Growth and National Sovereignty

   » ‎ Kenya Imagine

  The other day, two colleagues on a listserv I subscribe to submitted posts that had troubling assumptions on growth and sovereignty in Kenya. One assumed that the 6 per cent economic growth achieved in the first Kibaki term had so significantly leveraged Kenya that it was making donors jittery - Kenya was no longer begging. She also made the assumption that, because Kenya was funding most of its budget from local sources at 93 per cent, the country had gained a new level of autonomy from its donors.

  Read more from Godwin R. Murunga here.

  

  
• April 23, 2008
• 7:51

  IDPs: A Modest Proposal

   » ‎ Kenya Imagine

  Tags:  IDPs  

  You would not know it to listen to the Kenyan media, but many of your countrymen are unable to return to their homes. Not even now, after the crisis has abated and a political settlement been entrenched. There was a time, not too long ago, when the aggressing political leadership decided it would not interfere in the violence. The ODM leader was reported telling a crowd in Kisumu that they should not attack the Gusii residents of the city - who had been cleansed along with the Gikuyu and Akamba. They voted for me, he explained, except that the Kibaki people stole our votes. There was no call for similar abstention from violence towards the Gikuyu. You sensed in those days, from the media narrative, from ODM-leaning civil society, and from the international understanding of the situation that the victims - mostly Gikuyu - somehow deserved the attacks on them.
  
  Read and discuss here.

  

  
• April 22, 2008
• 8:12

  Re: Understanding Food Prices

   » ‎ Kenya Imagine

  Tags:  Global Food crisis  

  The consensus around the world is that there is a food crisis upon us, and that the world simply cannot produce enough food to feed the growing population.

  The New York Times contributes as it continues to substitute hyperbole for information in its reporting on rising food prices:

  Hunger bashed in the front gate of Haiti's presidential palace. Hunger poured onto the streets, burning tires and taking on soldiers and the police. Hunger sent the country's prime minister packing.

  Haiti's hunger, that burn in the belly that so many here feel, has become fiercer than ever in recent days as global food prices spiral out of reach, spiking as much as 45 percent since the end of 2006 and turning Haitian staples like beans, corn and rice into closely guarded treasures.
  

  Read more from Chris Blattman here.

  

  
• 8:12

  Mungiki: A Perspective

   » ‎ Kenya Imagine

  Tags:  mungiki  

  Some time in 2003, the City Council of Nairobi constructed access roads into the Soweto slums of Embakasi. The slum, as is the norm in informal settlements across the country, had its vigilantes- a neighbourhood watch of some kind- who took care of anything and everything from security to conflict resolution.

  The access roads were quickly blocked off by hawkers and traders, who laid their wares on each side of the road so that vehicles could no longer access the slum.

  

  
• 8:11

  The Kenya National Youth Alliance: An Apology

   » ‎ Kenya Imagine

  Tags:  mungiki  

  The history of nations is written with the bloody point of a sword; the road to nationhood is paved with the corpses of heroes; the rivers of sovereignty, emancipation, social justice and equity burst their banks with the blood of believers. Our ancestors were martyred that we might possess this land. The war they fought, the deeds they signed, the alliances they made, all these brought us to that morning of December 12^th 1963. Uhuru! And on December 12^th 1964, the Republic of Kenya was realised. Independent, free, sovereign.

  

  
• April 19, 2008
• 11:28

  ‘Don’t be stupid,’ Kibaki, Raila tell Kenyans

   » ‎ Kenya Imagine

  Tags:  coalition cabinet  

  Barely a day after the swearing in of the Grand Coalition Cabinet, President Mwai Kibaki and Prime Minister Raila Odinga told Kenyans to “stop the stupidity and shut up” if they wanted the two leaders to loosen the firm grip they have on the country. The president accused Kenyans of hypocrisy for criticizing him and Raila for forming a bloated Cabinet.

  “Kenyans asked Raila and I to stop killing poor people and we did,” the president said, obviously agitated. “They told us to form a Grand Coalition Government and we have. So where is all this stupidity coming from?”
  

  Read more from Ombuya E. Okong'o here.

  

  
• 11:25

  Kinda Blah

   » ‎ Kenya Imagine

  Tags:  Global Food crisis  

  Kenya has been so dunked in political drama, transport frustration and security chaos in the last few months that it feels really strange when I wake up to no news. Still, there is always something going on.
  
  Bus fares have gone up. I have taken to eating left-over ugali in the morning with bad tasting tea made from tea dust that I buy from a roving vendor because it’s a lot cheaper than what I would get from a regular store. I cannot miss breakfast because the label on my box of medicines says "2 after meals twice a day'. Lunch does not exist in my lifestyle. Dinner is on my mother, if it wasn't for her I would be in a spot of trouble.
  
  Read more from Juliet Mararu here.

  

  
• 11:24

  Here and now; the global food crisis

   » ‎ Kenya Imagine

  Tags:  Global Economy  

  My mind has of late been engrossed in such matters as the Safaricom IPO, the Kenyan cabinet fiasco, and the elitism of Senator Obama. The world, meanwhile, is on the brink of a food disaster, such a major one that the very definition of hunger will soon be changed forever.
  

  Images of malnourished children will no longer be the face of starvation. We will instead see food labelled with extraordinarily exorbitant prices, shortages that force even the wealthy into long queues for food and total anarchy as countries in different parts of the world spiral out of control as the hungry demand that they be sated.

  Read more from Brian Mogaka here.
  

  

  
• April 13, 2008
• 14:01

  Making Friends of our Enemies

   » ‎ Kenya Imagine

  Tags:  Tutu  

  Nobel Laureate Desmond Tutu, Archbishop of Cape Town made a call to arms yesterday, that we embrace each other as part of the greater human family, a call needed in Kenya now, as much as ever.
  
  Read more from Noel Opoti here.

  

  
• 13:58

  Cabinet Announced-- Full List

   » ‎ Kenya Imagine

  Tags:  coalition cabinet  

  Find provisional cabinet list here.

  

  
• 13:57

  Analyse this, the New Cabinet

   » ‎ Kenya Imagine
  The President has just announced a new 42 Member Cabinet comprising the lead organ of the Grand Coalition government that follows from the February 28th National Accord.

  Most of those expected to be on the list as full Ministers were present, and there seems to have been a sincere effort to take into the tent as many of Kenya's ethnicities (regrettable that we still break it down like that), and something of an improvement in the prospects of three other constituencies, Kenyans from the arid and semi-arid districts, Kenyan Muslims and Kenyan women.
  

  Discuss here.
  

  
  

  
  

  
  

  
  

  
  

  

  
• April 09, 2008
• 12:43

  Post-Election Amnesia

   » ‎ Kenya Imagine

  Tags:  cartoon  

  Kenya's relative stability over the last two months lies in the hands of Kenya's political class.

  Yesterday's Cabinet gridlock resulted in riots and civil unrest in parts of the country. Until the National Accord and Reconciliation Act is fully implemented Kenya is once again destined for uncertain times.
  

  Patrick Gathara o

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• 12:34

  Freshly-baked folly

   » ‎ Kenya Imagine
  Rank foolishness and misunderstanding. Yet another example.
  

  Sijui, in a comment at Ory's, says:

  One thing I particularly like about the aftermath of the Kenyan election is that the average low income mwananchi fought back, and in my opinion they fought less for their civic freedoms......I think that is obvious by the nature of the blood letting.........but more for their naked self interest, as blatantly parochial and regressive as that might be. I now have far more respect for people acting on their suspicions and resentments than the cowardly, complacent and self absorbed ‘middle class'. And I don't want to make the mistake of painting the ENTIRE Kenyan middle class with the same brush, that would be dishonest and clearly there are many who fought the good fight however my point is, things would not have changed HAD THE VAST MAJORITY of the working class and low income not brandished their pangas.
  
  [...]
  

  Read more from Godfrey Munira here.

  

  
• 12:31

  Voting patterns and ethnicity in Kenya

   » ‎ Kenya Imagine

  Tags:  ethnic identity  

  A new report brings intriguing data about voting patterns in Kenya. To no one's surprise, elections in God's own country are mostly an exercise in ethnic head-counting. But not always.
  
  There are other factors that pull at the electorate, and at least in the minds of the respondents, evidence of an aspiration towards elections as a referendum on the performance of the incumbent rather than a mindless affirmation of ethnic affiliation. The importance of ethnicity it seems is dependent on the voter's self-ascribed identity, with "ethnics" more often employing feelings of group identity and "non-ethnics" more often making rational calculations of self and group interest.
  
  Read and Discuss here.

  

  
• April 08, 2008
• 12:26

  My Zimbabwe Diary III

   » ‎ Kenya Imagine

  Tags:  Zimbabwe  

  What choices does Mugabe have now? Stepping down is definately not an option... so, for now, he is just waiting.

  
  

  Hello. So, now what is happening? He is waiting. I mentioned, perhaps not in this forum, that in four days the mood would be lost. Four days have gone (maybe I got the time wrong) but he is waiting for attention to leave Zimbabwe, then he will steal the election. Again. And the opposition (led by the MDC, or not led as the case may be) will sit around and do nothing. Lots of talks, going to the courts, and all that excuse for inactivity, but they will do nothing.
  
  Read more from Michael Laban here.

  

  
• 12:23

  A world without AIDS: Bangladesh to Zimbabwe

   » ‎ Kenya Imagine

  Tags:  HIV AIDS  

  The spread of HIV has meant personal and national health crises in many countries. The disease has strained many poorer countries’ health care budgets and has challenged scientists, medical professionals and those in social services affected by it. But despite the devastation it leaves in its wake, some activists confronting HIV also appreciate the opportunities it provides to rethink, reimagine and revision a host of social, political, and medical engagements.
  
  Read more from Amanda Atwood here.

  

  
• April 07, 2008
• 23:09

  UPDATE: Cabinet negotiations

   » ‎ Kenya Imagine

  Tags:  cabinet 2008  

  Reports indicate that the ongoing Cabinet negotiations are stalled.
  
  Read more here.

  

  
• 8:32

  In the Court of Public Opinion: Ruto & Mugabe, Guilty

   » ‎ Kenya Imagine
  Robert Mugabe, not guilty. William Ruto, not guilty.
  
  One of the basic tenets that just and democratic governments are founded on is the rule of law.
  
  Justice we hold to be, amongst other things, the right of the individual to a fair trial. The presumption must always remain that prior to and all through the trial, the individual is innocent until, due process followed to its logical conclusion, proven guilty. When the trial is done, the verdict returned, justice, we hold, must be done and seen to have been done.
  
  Read more from Njoroge Matathia here.

  

  
• 8:29

  Portfolio balance; 21 questions

   » ‎ Kenya Imagine

  Tags:  coalition cabinet  

  Many Kenyans did not watch the football this weekend, they were at home waiting on the announcement of the Cabinet results, looking for relief after three months of almost fictional horror. But it was real enough, and as elements of the political class keep reminding us, a sequel is on the cards should their angry spirits not be mollified. The major reason for their grief, are captured in words that have now come into the shrine of our political lexicon for all time, Portfolio Balance. The trouble is, what seems important to some, seems less important to others.
  Which ministries do you think are crucial to the running of the state and under whose control do they fall? Is the very idea of a Grand Coalition under such circumstances not anathema to national progress, after all the vigorous arguments betray a desire in the politicians not to serve all Kenyans but to serve specific narrow passions of their own.
  
  Discuss here.

  

  
• April 06, 2008
• 23:13

  Identity and Violence (with apologies to Amartya Sen)

   » ‎ Kenya Imagine
  In Kenya, violence abounds, as do analyses of its causes and consequences. An efficient way of dividing opinion on the matter is to ask four questions: Was the violence planned? Was it 'ethnic'? Was there ethnic cleansing? Was it 'political'?
  
  We aren't short of people who will answer no to all save the last for boring political reasons; we needn't worry about them. But others, for presumably non-political reasons, will do likewise. 'Unless names are invidiously named', as Timothy Williamson once said, 'sermons like this... tend to cause less offence than they should, because everyone imagines that they are aimed at other people'. Maina Kiai, Tavia Nyong'o, here's looking at you.
  
  Read more from Daniel Waweru here.

  

  
• 23:10

  Casting the first stone

   » ‎ Kenya Imagine

  Tags:  10th parliament  

  Kenya has been at a political crossroads for far too long, and yet a new front has been set up by MPs from central Kenya allied to the PNU. They are suggesting that their Eldoret North colleague, Mr William Ruto, an ODM Pentagon member, be not part of the coalition government.
  
  Knowing well that Mr Ruto has to be in the new Cabinet, the MPs want to throw a spanner into the works by imposing conditions on ODM that they know only too well will not be met. The main allegation against Mr Ruto are that he facilitated and/or planned post-election violence in Rift Valley Province. But can this accusation bar him from being a minister?
  
  Read more from Donald Kipkorir here.

  

  
• 23:08

  Home Alone

   » ‎ Kenya Imagine
  It's saturday evening, quater past eight and i'm about to start dying slow deaths. Yes, you read right.. slow deaths.
  
  You see it's the German version of pop idol... they call it Deutchland sucht den Superstar which roughly translates to „Germany is searching for the superstar“... well I did say roughly translated. Forgive my grammar tonight for I have had an indecent amount of red wine already... and all that on an empty stomach... ahem... empty except for a packet of potato crisps and a tin of cashew nuts.
  
  Read more from Joyce Köster here.

  

  
• April 04, 2008
• 12:21

  Can peace be instilled?

   » ‎ Kenya Imagine

  Tags:  peace  

  an one shape norms and institutions to build peace and development? I take a skeptical view of training programs that purport to reduce violence and 'peacebuild'. After a visit to a rural training center in Liberia, however, I may stand corrected.
  
  Liberia's national demobilization and reintegration program came with a 'weapons test'--if you had a weapon, you got demobilized, including a package of household items, cash, and a voucher for a vocational training program.
  
  Read more from Chris Blattman here.

  

  
• 12:20

  Rage and Reconciliation

   » ‎ Kenya Imagine

  Tags:  Reconciliation  

  Is Njoroge a fool or a hero? I was reading a Kumekucha thread the other day, as you do, and he chipped in with a story about the murder of his father and brother.
  
  Why do people share these sorts of stories? One reason, it occurred to me, was that by telling them, one brings home to one's opponents the consequences of their position. One might also hope for sympathy, charity or understanding from them. But all these require that one's opponents share the thought that one is equal to them: the lives of Njoroge's relatives matter just as much as those of the guys wielding the panga (or those supporting the guy wielding the panga). If sympathy is feeling with Njoroge, then it demands seeing that the lives of his loved ones are just as valuable as mine; charity and understanding likewise; and it is impossible to understand the magnitude of his tragedy without seeing it as something that could happen to one.
  
  Discuss here.

  

  
• April 03, 2008
• 22:25

  Standing on the tracks

   » ‎ Kenya Imagine
  The announcement has gone out by now, the President and ODM head Raila Odinga have agreed on something at last. Forty ministers for all your troubles. Still, there is the little matter of who those will be. Around the country, the public are in the dark, holding on and hoping that whatever decision is made, the country can move on from the crisis and begin to rebuild itself, maybe even to address the stark issues that confront our present and paint a sorry tomorrow. A sigh of relief on the last day of February, but still immobilised, we are waiting to exhale.
  
  Patrick Gathara's cartoon here.

  

  
• 11:22

  Credit Crunch: Your Take

   » ‎ Kenya Imagine

  Tags:  Economy  

  Billionaire financier George Soros claims that the economic downturn in the US is the worst since the Great Depression. Now, most experts believe that this is a global phenomenon and that the economic slow down will get worse and could be with us through to late 2009.
  
  What impact, though, will all this will have down at the personal level. April, the start of a new tax year here in the UK, finds many consumers with little disposable income. Water bills, TV licences, Council Tax and Vehicle tax all go up this month. The cost of basic grocery items has been rising steadily with ever increasing fuel costs. It should come as no surprise then that the country has gone into a borrowing frenzy.
  
  Read more from here.

  

  
• 11:18

  Cabinet woes in Kenya

   » ‎ Kenya Imagine

  Tags:  coalition cabinet  

  Kenyans wait expectantly for the announcement of the coalition cabinet by President Kibaki. This follows the enactment by parliament of fresh legislation that paved the way for the Grand Coalition government and ‘legalised' the positions of Prime Minister and two deputies.
  
  In a previous article, I explored the pact that brought forward the coalition deal, and the legislation that followed. I criticised the legislation as flawed and permissive. It was filled with such ambiguities that made certain that mischievous translation and misunderstanding as we had sought to avoid would surely follow. In reactions by readers on this site, those of us who were skeptical of the details in the agreement were accused of a lack of goodwill, and it was alleged that such criticism constituted part of a plot by the PNU to cheat the ODM out of what belonged to it by right of the signed document. That was not the intention then, and neither is it now. However, I remain persuaded that the weaknesses in the agreement means it will have a very short life span and we should be thankful if it lasts us to the end of this year.
  
  Read more from Kamale T here.

  

  
• April 02, 2008
• 19:33

  Cartoon: IPO of my eye

   » ‎ Kenya Imagine

  Tags:  Mobitela  

  The long awaited Safaricom offer-for-sale, IPO by us, is finally here, and many, most Kenyans are very excited for it. Ready to take a bite? What though to make of this Mobitelea business?
  
  Click here for Patrick Gathara's cartoon.

  

  
• 0:51

  Identity and Violence (with apologies to Amartya Sen)

   » ‎ Kenya Imagine

  Tags:  tribal identity  

  In Kenya, violence abounds, as do analyses of its causes and consequences. An efficient way of dividing opinion on the matter is to ask four questions: Was the violence planned? Was it 'ethnic'? Was there ethnic cleansing? Was it 'political'?
  
  We aren't short of people who will answer no to all save the last for boring political reasons; we needn't worry about them. But others, for presumably non-political reasons, will do likewise. 'Unless names are invidiously named', as Timothy Williamson once said, 'sermons like this... tend to cause less offence than they should, because everyone imagines that they are aimed at other people'. Maina Kiai, Tavia Nyong'o, here's looking at you.
  
  Read more from Daniel Waweru here.

  

  
• 0:49

  Corruption kills a dream: A tribute to Joshua Orina

   » ‎ Kenya Imagine

  Tags:  corruption  

  Throughout my life in the United States, news of a death of a family member or a friend has never ceased. In the last 13 years I have lost a father, two grandparents, an aunt, four uncles, and five cousins.
  
  Then there is the countless number of friends I grew up with who are no longer alive. One committed suicide because an accident had left him blind, another killed himself because his parents could not approve a girl he was courting, and the third one hanged himself for undisclosed reasons. On two different occasions, two of my friends were killed by speeding cars. A childhood buddy drank himself to death, while several others have fallen victim to that villain whose name my kinfolk are still too ashamed to utter, AIDS.
  
  Read more from Ombuya E. Okong'o here.

  

  
• April 01, 2008
• 21:20

  Tibet, China, and the west: empires of the mind

   » ‎ Kenya Imagine

  Tags:  Tibet  

  The sudden escalation of protest by Tibetans in Lhasa and elsewhere in March 2008 has been accompanied by vigorous rhetoric from the Chinese state reaffirming its sovereignty over Tibet and strong counter-arguments from Tibetans claiming the right to self-determination.
  
  Read more from Dibyesh Anand here.

  

  
• 21:19

  Plot 10

   » ‎ Kenya Imagine

  Tags:  diary  

  I lived in a two-roomed 'flat' that my mother had secured from a friend who was leaving the country for a while. The two rooms were connected by a single door and were part of a row of rooms collectively called a Plot as the whole building is built on a piece of land 1/8 of an acre.
  
  Read more from Juliet Maruru here.