December 11, 2009
Music Video -Wahu and Chege with Running Low
May 22, 2009
Bio Wahu Mathenge
Wahu Mathenge (Rosemary Wahu Kagwi )
While she was a student at Precious Blood Secondary School, in Riruta, she wrote her first song called ‘Showers of Blessings’ (with a friend) as a tribute to God for the national academic success that the school enjoyed. The song is still part of the schools hymnal collection.She worked in the entertainment industry and used the money to pursue her university education at the University of Nairobi, studying for a Bachelors degree in Mathematics.Her first song ‘Niangalie’ drew the attention of renowned CBN presenter Victor Oladokhun, who aired it on his ‘Turning Point’ program. Her second song ‘Esha’ was a fusion of English Swahili and Kikuyu based on a traditional Kikuyu folk song, and inspired by the late Brenda Fassie. She also came out with ‘Liar’, ‘Kibowow’ and ‘Sitishiki’. She launched an album, Liar, in 2004.In 2004, she married longtime boyfriend David Mathenge (popularly known as Nameless) who was also on the Ogopa DJ’s label. They have one child, a daughter who was born in 2006. Wahu also acted in a leading role in the popular television show, Tazama on KTN.
In 2007 She released some singles including Mambo bado, Running low, The little things you do, and Sweet love.
*Sweet Love has been Wahu’s biggest song. It has received two nominations — the British Music of Black Origin Awards and Kora Awards.
April 11, 2009
Henry Muoria-Self & Community.(1914-1997)
Henry Muoria (1914-1997).
Muoria was an active journalist, a friend and press secretary of Kenya’s future president Jomo Kenyatta and, from 1945 to 1952, the editor of a nationalist newspaper Mumenyereri, written in Gikuyu, one of Kenya’s major languages. In October 1952, when the British declared the Emergency in Kenya in order to quell the Mau Mau rebellion, Muoria was visiting London. He stayed there for the rest of his life, but continued pursuing his writing career. He finished more than ten full-length autobiographical, philosophical and political manuscripts, but not one was published. East African Educational Publishers in Nairobi brought out his I, the Gikuyu and the White Fury in 1994. This book and his unpublished autobiography from 1982, The British and My Kikuyu Tribe, are used in discussing Muoria’s debt to his ethnic community, the Gikuyu, his successful attempts to contribute to the creation of a nationalist public sphere in colonial Kenya, and his authorship in exile. The declaration of the Emergency put a stop to Muoria’s hopes for the recognition of his work, based as it was on a desired continuum between self, community and nation.
For several years during Britain’s late colonialism, from 1946 onwards, administrators in Kenya were in a panic over how to control the African press of the colony. African and Asian businessmen, politicians, editors and journalists had managed to create a public realm in which members of the various colonised communities debated pressing problems of everyday life, as well as the larger political questions of colonialism, racism, self-determination and independence. Colonial information officers asked advice from their colleagues in other British territories in East and West Africa on what measures might be taken to regulate and suppress the local press, and urged on the Colonial Office in London the need for sharper instruments than those already available. Samples of ‘near-seditious’ newspaper pieces, translated into English from the various Kenyan languages, were sent to London. 
This activity was an acceleration of ongoing endeavours within Kenya. The non-European press had been under surveillance for as long as it had existed. Officials had kept a worried eye on Muigwithania, the organ of the Kikuyu Central Association (KCA) from its inception in 1926. It was edited for a period by Kenya’s future president, Jomo Kenyatta. In a letter, the Governor, Sir Edward Grigg, warned the Secretary of State for the Colonies in London that the political tone of the newspaper gave grounds for worry. In particular laments over the injustices the Kenyan people had suffered under colonialism, couched in Old Testament idiom, might have serious consequences: “There is a danger that this emotional and semi-religious propaganda may spread very rapidly among excitable and ignorant natives, and it is clearly desirable that means should be devised to protect the natives themselves … from such an insidious menace” (Grigg 1926).
The authorities closed down Muigwithania in 1940, along with the KCA. Four years later the self-taught journalist and intellectual Henry Muoria launched its successor, Mumenyereri (The Guardian). He addressed it to the same community that had constituted Muigwithania’s readership–a community that was being created by access to reading matter in their own language, among other influences (Lonsdale 1996). The first issue of the paper was in Gikuyu and English, but those following were restricted to Gikuyu in order to use all the available space for the enlightenment of the Gikuyu community who did not have a great deal of writing available in their own language (Muoria 1982:17).
Henry Muoria was born in 1914 in Kiambu in Kenya’s Central Province (Berman & Lonsdale 1992:414-416, Pugliese 2003, Frederiksen 2006). His parents were land-owning peasants and did not know how to read and write. The young Henry managed to get himself into an infant and primary school run by the Church Mission Society. His formal schooling lasted for seven years altogether. He taught himself enough English to be able to enter the Railway Training School of East African Railways, and became employed as a railway guard and later an assistant stationmaster. As a trainee he experienced the discrimination and brakes put on the development of business and enterprise for the African population that was characteristic of the policies of the colonial regime. Being African, he was paid less than his European and Asian colleagues both as a trainee and later as an employee. This experience contributed to his disgust with colonialism and racism and prompted him to join the existing African political organisations. As a young man he was a member of Kikuyu Central Association–an oppositional nationalist organisation based on the community that was most affected by British colonialism, the Gikuyu. The organisation was banned in 1940.
In his life and works Henry Muoria brought together many worlds–sometimes in ways that were paradoxical. He was born into a Kikuyu traditionalist family and made use of Christianity. He grew up in the countryside, but chose the city as his place of work. He invested in both urban and rural property and cultivated a large plot of land in his home area with the assistance of his wives. He was a wealthy man who came to know poverty in London. He loved his country, detested racism and was cosmopolitan in his outlook and knowledge of the world but was sometimes accused of being a Gikuyu chauvinist. He fought for independence, but independence did not need him after it had been consolidated.
The declaration of the Emergency in 1952 by the British constituted the caesura in Muoria’s personal life and in the social and political fortunes of Gikuyus and Africans in Kenya. The event disrupted the continuity between self, community and nation that Muoria devoted his working life to uphold. After October 1952, the colonial government sought to isolate the Gikuyu from the rest of African nationalist opposition by undermining the credibility of their leaders and spokesmen, and cancelling their access to public debate. Large numbers found themselves in protected villages and detention camps. All his life Muoria fought for a democratic space to be kept open to all communities in Kenya. He insisted by his example that Africans in Kenya should be partners in debate on self-determination and the end of colonialism. For a while he was successful.
In exile he kept writing. When he tried to keep up his claim and his efforts to educate a new public by the combined moves of turning inwards and documenting his own life, and turning outwards and documenting the shifting political debates and events in Kenya, he was not heard. He had great hopes following the publication in 1994 of his autobiography and a selection of his political essays from the 1940s and 1950s in I, the Gikuyu and the White Fury. The volume attracted some attention in Kenya where Muoria was by now recognised as an important figure in the nation’s history, but little internationally. His writings deserve to be better known.
by Bodil Folke Frederiksen published in Current Wrting, October 2006, Vol. 18 no 2.
Happy Easter
January 12, 2009
ANC = ASSOCIATION OF NATIONAL CRIMINALS (ZUMA)
South Africa will soon be just another African country,They want to elect criminals thinking they are different(A special breed of Africans) . ANC ,I am sorry is not special neither is South Africa .In kenya we had KANU that was unshakeable.Zimbabwe had ZANU. But look at Kenya and Zimbawe today ! You are 10 years away from where we are today .History repeating itself.
SOUTH Africa’s Supreme Court of Appeal last night reversed a decision to dismiss the corruption charges against Jacob Zuma, leader of the ruling African National Congress, clouding his prospects for this year’s presidential election.The ruling clears the way for Mr Zuma to once again face prosecution, but the ANC said he remained the party’s presidential candidate in the poll, expected as early as April.
The decision – taken just two days after Mr Zuma launched the ANC’s election manifesto – complicates the party’s campaign as it faces a new political challenge from a breakaway party created in the fallout of the Zuma case, which has roiled South African politics for years.Judge Louis Harms, the court’s deputy president, handed down a scathing verdict, overturning a lower court ruling that had tossed out the charges against Mr Zuma.The earlier ruling had implied that former president Thabo Mbeki meddled in the case.”Political meddling was not an issue that had to be determined,” Justice Harms said as he read out the verdict at a nationally televised hearing.”Nevertheless, a substantial part of his judgment dealt with this question, and in the course of this discussion it changed the rules of the game. It took his eyes off the ball.”
The earlier ruling by judge Chris Nicholson failed “to distinguish between allegation, fact and suspicion”, Justice Harms said, saying the lower court had made “gratuitous findings”.Judge Nicholson had thrown out the charges on a technicality, saying that the prosecutors had a constitutional obligation to speak to Mr Zuma before proceeding with the case.However, Justice Harms said the prosecutors had not violated Mr Zuma’s rights in taking the case forward.
“Mr Zuma relies on self-created expectations based on his own perceptions of the law and the facts, which have always been in dispute,” the judge said.The National Prosecuting Authority said it would seek a date for Mr Zuma to stand trial.Spokesman Tlali Tlali said the existing charges would stand — corruption, fraud, money laundering and racketeering relating to a multi-billion-rand government arms deal in the late 1990s.
“Mr Zuma is regarded as a charged person,” Mr Tlali said.
The ANC had used Judge Nicholson’s findings to sack Mr Mbeki, sparking a split within the former liberation movement that successfully spearheaded the struggle against apartheid.Senior ANC members frustrated by Mr Mbeki’s sacking have launched their own party, called the Congress of the People, which is gearing up to challenge in the elections.Political analyst Dirk Kotze said the latest judgment would loom over the election campaign, especially if prosecutors decided to move quickly with the case against Mr Zuma.”There are definitely going to be political considerations, and a decision to prosecute will have big political ramifications,” Dr Kotze said.
Mr Zuma had faced charges ranging from money laundering to racketeering in a long-running corruption investigation dating back to 2001, during which the accusations were dropped and then revived.The main allegation was that Mr Zuma took bribes for protecting French arms giant Thales inan investigation into a controversial multi-million-dollar weapons deal.The arms deal has caused controversy since the decision to purchase the expensive military equipment, and several high-ranking South African politicians have been accused of using the deal to enrich themselves.
January 1, 2009
Dry Bones -Day 1 Happy New Year
Ezekiel 37:1-9
The hand of the LORD was upon me, and he brought me out by the Spirit of the LORD and set me in the middle of a valley; it was full of bones. He led me back and forth among them, and I saw a great many bones on the floor of the valley, bones that were very dry. He asked me, “Son of man, can these bones live?”
I said, “O Sovereign LORD, you alone know.”
Then he said to me, “Prophesy to these bones and say to them, ‘Dry bones, hear the word of the LORD! This is what the Sovereign LORD says to these bones: I will make breath enter you, and you will come to life. I will attach tendons to you and make flesh come upon you and cover you with skin; I will put breath in you, and you will come to life. Then you will know that I am the LORD.’ “
So I prophesied as I was commanded. And as I was prophesying, there was a noise, a rattling sound, and the bones came together, bone to bone.
I looked, and tendons and flesh appeared on them and skin covered them, but there was no breath in them.
Then he said to me, “Prophesy to the breath; prophesy, son of man, and say to it, ‘This is what the Sovereign LORD says: Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe into these slain, that they may live.’ “ So I prophesied as he commanded me, and breath entered them; they came to life and stood up on their feet—a vast army.
December 31, 2008
One Year On & the $130 Insult for IDPs
Mary Macharia will never go home again, even though a year has passed since ethnic tensions flared into violence after Kenya’s deeply flawed presidential election.Macharia’s 3-year-old daughter, Joyce Njoki, was among dozens of people she saw “burned to ashes” when a mob set fire to a church where hundreds were taking refuge in one of the crisis’ most horrific acts of violence. Macharia herself suffered burns over most of her body.
“Our leaders are the ones who instigated this whole thing and now they are pretending everything is back to normal,” Macharia, 40, told The Associated Press from a displacement camp where she lives outside the Kenyan capital.”I cannot live next to my enemies,” said Macharia, who spent eight months in the hospital receiving skin grafts and can no longer farm because her injuries are so debilitating.The tensions that were laid bare during one of the darkest moments in Kenya’s history are still festering, a year after its election on Dec. 27, 2007 unleashed weeks of ethnic violence that killed more than 1,000 people.
The evidence is everywhere: in the displacement camps where tens of thousands of people still live; in the divided towns where ethnic groups had lived side-by-side since independence from Britain in 1963; and in growing disillusionment with a coalition government accused of ignoring the roots of the crisis.”The lives of most Kenyans are no better today than they were a year ago,” said Ben Rawlence, a researcher at Human Rights Watch. “This is not the new chapter that Kenyans hoped for.”
The coalition government between President Mwai Kibaki and Raila Odinga, who became prime minister under the deal, has held together, but observers say it has not done enough to address the causes of the violence or to root out corruption.The fighting erupted after ballot counting showing the challenger Odinga in the lead swung dramatically in Kibaki’s favor amid allegations of election fraud.Long embittered by the political and economic dominance of Kibaki’s Kikuyu tribe, voters from among Kenya’s 41 other tribes — including Odinga’s Luo — staged protests and riots that quickly escalated into horrific violence.After much wrangling, Kibaki and Odinga agreed to put politicians believed to have organized and funded the fighting to go before a special tribunal — keeping the cases from being sent to the International Criminal Court in the Hague.
But not everybody has hopes for justice.
In past years, government commissions set up to look at ethnic clashes have taken years to complete reports that then gathered dust. And observers say the time it took for the two leaders to agree on a trial points to deep antagonism that makes it difficult for them to govern together.
Still, many diplomats praised the men for at least trying to move the country forward, despite their differences.The American ambassador to Kenya, Michael Ranneberger, said the tribunal was just one sign that the coalition government could make changes.”An enormous amount has happened,” he told The Associated Press. “The structure for change is being put in place.”"Grand coalitions are never love affairs,” said the German ambassador to Kenya, Walter Lindner, at a recent news conference in Nairobi.
There are indeed some bright spots.
Tourists are returning to Kenya’s safari parks and Indian Ocean beaches. The coalition government is holding despite the obvious strains. And national pride exploded over the election of Barack Obama — whose father was Kenyan — as U.S. president.
But Kenya faces a long road to recovery.
The rioting and ethnic clashes exposed deep divisions over land and economic inequality that have been ignored or exploited for political gain for decades. While the power-sharing deal ended much of the killing, Kenya lost up to $1 billion because of the turmoil.The Kenyan Red Cross says nearly 60,000 out of 350,000 displaced remain in camps. Less than half have gone home; nearly 130,000 are simply unaccounted for — either living with friends or family or moving from town to town.In many areas, especially in western Kenya, the violence brought a bloody end to decades of coexistence among Kenya’s ethnic groups, transforming the ethnic makeup villages, cities and towns. Some worry the change may be permanent, boding ill for democracy in this once-stable African country.
James Mugwiri, 56, lived for 19 years with his family outside Eldoret — the site of the church blaze that killed Macharia’s daughter. But Mugwiri, a Kikuyu, fled his 12 acres when the killings began, and lived for months at a sprawling fairground in Eldoret where guards kept watch for marauding gangs.He finally felt safe enough to return to town, but he has given up on reclaiming his land. He feels betrayed by the coalition government — which he had great hope for — saying the two men are happy now they have solidified their power.
Instead of going back to his farm, Mugwiri rents a home for $100 a month so he can flee again with no strings attached.
idps
“What happened to us has forced us to live like birds on trees, ready to fly away in case anything happens,” he said.The government has given many of the displaced 10,000 Kenya shillings — about $130 — to resettle, an amount government spokesman Alfred Mutua acknowledges is a token sum.”The government is not in a position to compensate people, what people are being given is a token to help them maintain their daily needs,” he told the AP. “People always want more money,” he added. “It’s a token of appreciation. But it is also costing us. Ten-thousand shillings given to all these families is a lot of money.”
He did not detail how much money the government has given out, saying it was still being calculated. He did not return further calls for comment.Rose Wanjiru Karanja, 32, who lived for nearly a year in a camp in Naivasha, said the money was an insult.
“We are being ferried like goats,” she said from the back of a pickup truck, where some 70 women and children were traveling to a parcel of land they bought by pooling their government money.”We are going to build a slum. We owned farms and now we are going to build houses that are 10 feet by 10 feet. Even prisoners get better treatment — they eat well, they are driven in buses,” she said.
As for politics and the power of the vote, Karanja has no hope.”Now they are looking for our votes and they are living well, but they should not be forgiven,” she said of Kenya’s politicians. “They should be taken to the Hague.”
