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.

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.

I am not yet willing to give up on the concept of tribe. I am unwilling to grant that colonizers were right in their claims that tribe was a limited concept that had no place in the modern world. I am unwilling to accept their definitions that my history and heritage are small and uninteresting, lacking in depth and complexity, beauty and joy.

Read more from Keguro Macharia here.

"No other (ethnic)nation in Kenya is washing its dirty linen in public, why are all of you emerging young Kikuyu writers doing it?" the email correspondence began. I offered to respond in a well argued essay in public. My correspondent would have none of it. "...I hope you see why that would be similar to the whole 2005-2007 ‘outing of Kikuyu culture and issues'.

Read more from Njoroge Matathia here.