The decision by High Court judges Roseline Aburili, John Chigiti and Bahati Mwamuye, which has paved the way for President William to Gazette the appointment of electoral commissioners and their chairman is one of the most important to have come from the corridors of justice this year. Since the exit of former chairman Wafula Chebukati in January 2023, the resignation of three others and firing of one in 2022 and the retirement of two others in 2023, the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) has been in a dangerous limbo. For one, there are several byelections that need to be…
Author: Mbugua Ng’ang’a
During the Covid-19 pandemic, the face mask was a symbol of protection and safety. Indeed, it was part of a range of life-saving paraphernalia known as Personal Protective Equipment (PPE). In recent months, however, the mask has been weaponised by rogue police officers and goons alike to conceal their identities when committing crimes against public interest, especially during protests. The result is that a simple invention, whose original aim was to save lives, has become a weapon to hide against the long arm of the law. If anything, it has been refashioned into an unwitting accomplice in the commission of…
Kenya is blessed with a large — and growing — youthful population, with data indicating that close to 14 million people are aged between 18 and 35 years. That is about one if every three Kenyans. However, as is with all blessings, the flip side of the demographic dividend is that it also carries within it the risk of being a curse if not well harnessed. Many of these youths feel disenfranchised largely because they do not have opportunities for sustainable livelihoods although the government has been shipping them out to the Middle East by the plane loads. However, the…
According to French anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss, the world operates on the basis of a duality of opposites — the good and the bad, the fresh and the stale — or what he called in his book, the raw and the cooked. Politicians and police honchos appeared to be applying this duality last week when they mobilised goons and motorcycle taxi operators to counter the protests organised by Gen Z over the killing of teacher and blogger Albert Ojwang. It was, to say the least, the height of contradiction, to see the goons and law enforcement officers “policing” the streets of Nairobi like…
Strange as it may sound, it is confounding that the pea-sized Israel has been firing missiles over a distance of more 1,700 kilometres to hit targets in the giant-sized Iran, which is three borders away. The cause of the conflict sounds complex, but its effects will be felt across the globe. In Kenya, many citizens work in both countries, and their fortunes will be hit hard by the conflict, which had claimed over 80 lives by Monday. The problem with war is that it has no formula and once it starts, there is no telling when it will end and…
The two widows of spy chief James Kanyotu and other beneficiaries of his estate — estimated at over Sh20 billion — have sacked their lawyers and closed ranks to end their long-running dispute over how to share his vast wealth. In a statement read by the elder of his two widows, Mrs Mary Kanyotu, the family accused the lawyers of dragging the succession case in court for over 17 years, frustrating attempts by the beneficiaries to amicably resolve the row over how to share out his wealth. “We as a family have come together to amicably settle this matter and…
Japan has built a long tradition through which an outstanding artiste and cultural icon, such as Ngugi wa Thiong’o was, can be declared a “Ningen Kokuho” or “living national treasure”. Such an artiste is then funded by the government for life, assured of a pension and facilitated to mentor disciples and apprentices who can preserve that art form or take it forward. Had Ngugi wa Thiong’o been Japanese, he would most probably have been honoured as a living national treasure. He was not Japanese, unfortunately, and Kenya, his motherland, failed to honour him when he was alive. This failing notwithstanding,…
Although police spokesman Muchiri Nyaga has argued that police officers did not target journalists who were injured on Madaraka Day, it is worrying that the police — and by extension the Kenya Kwanza administration — appear to be reversing the freedom of press gains that Kenya had made. The result is that the country’s ranking on the global press freedom scale has been on a downward spiral. According to Mr Nyaga, the journalists were injured as police tried to prevent a group of rowdy youth from accessing the Raila Odinga Stadium, where the President was scheduled to be the chief…
The relationship between “committed” authors and State actors has never been rosy; not in Russia during the days of Maxim Gorky, not in South Africa during the apartheid era that produced Alex La Guma, and certainly not in post-independence Kenya, which produced the radical Ngugi wa Thiong’o. “Committed” authors are by definition creatives who use the power of their pens to defend or assert an ethical, ideological, political, social and sometimes religious worldview. They put their pens, not primarily to the service of art, but to a cause, such as justice. For Ngugi, that cause was fighting imperialism in its…
The detention and subsequent deportation of both People’s Liberation Party (PLP) leader Martha Karua and Chief Justice Emeritus Willy Mutunga by the Tanzanian government will surely go down as one of the lowest moments in the recent history of the East African Community. The two, besides being senior counsel of repute, have built their credentials over time as human rights defenders. It is in these two capacities that they had travelled to Dar-es-Salaam as observers in the trial of opposition presidential candidate Tundu Lisu of Chadema party. No matter how one looks at the deportations — and the trial of…