Although the just-ended 16 days of activism against gender violence are an important part of Kenya’s human rights calendar, it is important for the media to go beyond highlighting cases of violence to set agenda on how we can mainstream gender issues to be in line with our Constitution. As we prepare for 2025, the media can adopt, as one of its agendas, the need to mainstream gender inclusion in all spheres of national life and put in place mechanisms to measure the impact that this will have on the overall well-being of society, not just in the political arena.…
Author: Mbugua Ng’ang’a
Something was bound to give. It eventually did on Thursday, January 18, when the Supreme Court bench declared that henceforth, Senior Counsel Ahmednasir Abdullahi shall have no audience before it. Since no timeline was indicated, the communication meant that Mr Abdullahi — nicknamed ‘Subreme Goat’ by Kenyans on social media — is barred from representing himself or his clients indefinitely. “It is the decision of this court,” the seven judges said in a letter signed by Supreme Court Registrar L.M. Wachira, “that henceforth and from the date of this communication, you shall have no audience before the Court, either by…
Unlike other Kenyans who are possessed by the evil spirit of opposing everything that the Government has been doing — or rather, has been pledging to do — I am driven largely by the fervour of patriotism, which has guided me to propose just one thing that the Sports CS Kipchumba Murkomen should do. Just early this week, the Confederation of African Football (CAF) gave Kenya 25 days within which to complete work on the stadiums expected to host the African Nations Championship (CHAN). CAF is the body that governs football in Africa and CHAN is the continental football showpiece…
It appears that Kenya’s Members of Parliament are collectively suffering from what mental health experts call “Amygdala hijack”. This is a serious mental condition that is characterised by intense and disproportionate emotional responses to situations. Every time this happens, the parts of the brain responsible for rational thinking and competent decision-making becomes crippled. An Amygdala hijack can impair the judgement of one person, but it can also afflict a group, such as Members of Parliament. In June, when mobs were descending on the National Assembly to protest the impending passage of the Finance Bill, 2024, MPs insisted on voting in…
The indignation demonstrated by some politicians, Cabinet Secretaries and busy bodies in the Kenya Kwanza administration about the admonition they received from Catholic bishops this week sadly demonstrates growing intolerance to alternative views. Governance, they have forgotten, is not about acknowledging only cheerleaders and ‘Yes’ men who do not have the guts to tell the political elite what it needs to hear; it is about cultivating the grace to receive, accept and act on feedback, even when it is delivered in unflattering terms. That is why it is important to remind those in positions of authority, who are now bristling…
Celebrated lawyer and judge Lee Gacuiga Muthoga has become the latest legal practitioner to release his memoir, Audacity And Sacrifice: My Life & Career. Published by Writers Guild Kenya in November, the book traces his life from his humble beginnings as a child growing up in a rural setting to becoming one of the judges in the United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (UN-ICTE) and later the United Nations Residual Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals (UN-MICT). “In this book, Lee enables us to see the embryonic days of his life and the twists and turns, beginning from under a…
Yesterday was a big day for the US, with more than 161.4 million voters casting their ballots in what promised to be a watershed moment for democracy globally. America represents a classic case of what French anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss described as “the raw and the cooked.” Through this theory, he sought to demonstrate how humanity struggles to strike a balance between its dualities: the good and the bad, the just and the unjust, the true and the fake, the elected and the appointed, the real and the contrived, and other such dichotomies that characterize human societies. America found itself at…
Kamala Harris, the Democratic Party candidate, and Donald Trump of the Republican party remained neck and neck as the clock ticked towards the November 5 election date, with analysts predicting that the election will come down to razor-thin margins in a few key swing states. According to FiveThirtyEight’s daily election poll tracker, Harris, 59, held a narrow lead in the national polls, with a 1.4 percentage point advantage with about a week to the polls. This was a slight dip from the previous week when she was ahead by 1.7 percentage points. Seven key swing states were tipped to decide…
Just this week, traders in Eastleigh closed their businesses — a very rare occurrence — to protest the killing of a mother, her daughter and a niece. To understand what the protest means for the economy, Eastleigh contributes 60 per cent of all M-Pesa revenues in Nairobi and five per cent of the platform’s transactions nationally. For context, 59 per cent of Kenya’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) flows through M-Pesa, so one can calculate how big a role Eastleigh contributes to wealth creation. So, when businesses in that neighbourhood are shuttered for their owners to take part in peaceful protests,…
In recent weeks, the citizens of Kenya have been treated to a new trend of conducting government business in the middle of the night, which is one of the political aberrations that the 2010 Constitution sought cure but which has now been normalised by the National Assembly and the Senate. It started with the Speaker of the National Assembly, Mr Moses Wetang’ula, who on the night that the National Assembly impeached Deputy President Rigathi Gachagua published a Kenya Gazette past midnight to announce the outcome of the controversial vote. That notice later became part of the documents that the Senate…