Sunday, December 25, 2011

DR Congo polls chaos invokes a country with a violent history

Supporters of Joseph Kabila on streets.
As tension is brewing in the Democratic Republic of Congo following elections results announced this month, there is fear that the country may slide back to civil war even as a defiant Jospeh Kabila took the oath of office, this invokes a country marred by a history of violence since the 30th June 1960  independence.


The results had been delayed with Joseph Kabila, 40 trouncing ten contestants to garner forty-nine percent of 18 million votes against his closest rival Etienne Tshisekedi, 78, who got thirty-two percent in polls with had a fifty-nine voters turnout.

“I consider this declaration an outright provocation to our people and I reject it in full. As a result I consider myself from this day on as the elected president of DR Congo” Tshisekedi said in a statement insisting that he garnered fifty-four percent of the votes against Kabila’s twenty-six percent.

Four other contestants have already rejected the results which the international observers say the voting was flawed but it wasn’t fraudulent enough to skew the results.

As tension escalates dozens of citizens have died while others including international expatriates have fled the capital Kinshasa where the government have deployed over 20,000 forces to try and restore calm.

“I call on the international community, which has relentlessly encouraged me to guarantee a peaceful process, to not only find a solution to this problem but take all possible measures so that the blood of the Congolese people is not spilled again” Tshisekedi is quoted by AFP correspondent before he sow himself with a bible in his house.

Analysts have ruled out the Supreme Court which will arbiter on the results before announcing the winner on 17 this month not to be able to quell the tension. Earlier during the campaign Kabila expanded the apex court from seven to twenty seven sitting judges believed to be his supporters.  Earlier this year the clause that required a seconded runoff in case of no definite winner with a 50% win was scrapped off stoking the legality of the court ruling.

“We saw what happened in Kenya . We saw what happened in Zimbabwe and we saw what happened recently in Ivory Coast . Things have got worse because we have not anticipated this” Vital Kamerhe, third placed contestant said.

As sporadic armed conflict starts, memories of conflict as started with the birth of the nation is rekindled. While other African countries stared as colonies, DR Congo started as a personal estate of King Leopold II of Belgian to make him the richest men in Europe with ivory, copper, timber and rubber from the country.

Leopold’s ambition and greed which spurred the scramble and partition of the continent saw him hire Welsh born journalist-explorer Henry Morton Stanley in 1878 to cut treaties with over 400 chiefs to form the current DR Congo.

Stanley was nicknamed by locals as Bula Matari- ‘Breaker of Rocks’ from dynamite, for his ability to hand out severe punishments to dissents. By independence several millions, estimated to be a half of the population had lost their lives to what Joseph Conrad in his famous book on Leopold’s Congo Heart of Darkness call “the vilest scramble for loot to ever disfigure the history of human conscience”

As reality of independence dawned and faced with the wind of change engulfing the continent Belgium tried to rig the first election in country against first Prime Minister who had irked the colonialist with his pan-Africanist ideology he got from the 1958 All African conference in Ghana .


“Who can forget the volleys of gunfire in which so many of our brothers perished, the cells where the authorities threw those who would not submit to a rule where justice meant oppression and exploitation” Lumumba said told Belgium delegates during independence “We are no longer your monkeys”

This caused the first loose coalition government headed by Lumumba as election winner and other 12 parties forming to shaky like an extension ladder and lasted only a few days of peace in the country. Chaos was sparked when the army controlled by 1,100 Belgian corps mutinied for salary increase.

Hell bend to outset Lumumba Belgium flew in more troops, liaised with the mining companies on 11th July and reinstate Moise Tshombe to declare Katanga , rich in mineral an independent state.

The bloodshed that followed saw assassination of Lumumba on January 1961 for siding with Russia and Czech Republic to aid in military expedition to rein Katanga and control an uprising in Kasai . USA cold war interests and Belgium mining welfare aided in propping Tshombe and Joseph Desire Mobutu to power fast on 14th September 1960 and later in 1965 as the absolute president. As the western ‘friendly tyrant’ Mobutu lead a kleptomaniac regime enjoying a $9Billion aid, US contribute $860Million of this. 

“The Congo paid heavily for the chaos surrounding the advent of independence. For years to come it became the battleground for warring factions, marauding soldiers, foreign troops, mercenaries forces, revolutionary enthusiasts and legions of diplomats and advisers.” Martin Meredith writes in his book The State of Africa .
Most serious and detailed conflict detailed in The UN backed report on Illegal Exploration of Natural Resources and other forms of Wealth from the DRC published from 2001-2003which unearth the extent of the great lakes war fought in the country.

It is from the start on 1988 that DRC was engulfed in humanitarian crisis in four stages according to the report; 1993-1996; July 1996-July 1998; August 1998-January 2000 and the final transition of January 2001- June 2003.


From 1988 to 2003 conflict drew a score of African countries; Angola , Zimbabwe , Rwanda , Burundi , Uganda , Namibia , Chad and all the way to the bloody diamond fields of Sierra Leone . The main allure being DRC’s vast mineral resources with the uncanny ability to bring to her doorstep hounds picking on he carcass amid plundering, war inhumanities and smuggling. 


In 1988 DRC was rotting under corruption, weak central government and huge debt. Mobutu was ‘dinosaur’ against the second democratic wind of change which turned the world against him. The fall of the Berlin wall and the extent at which aid was misused was enough cocktail to bring the world against Mobutu.

Joseph Kabila
To shore his failing image, Mobutu took a populist angle by being a regional powerbroker to meddle in Rwanda and Burundi’s genocide conflict despite DRC hosting over 1.5 million Rwandan refugees like Interahamwe, Mayi Mayi and Banyamulenge escaping the prolong tribal conflicts in the region.





Rwanda and Uganda resentful at cross border raid in Kivu and Eastern Congo chose to support Laurent-Desire Kabila rebellion against Mobutu. Angola too joined the fray by supporting Katanga rebels to hit back on CIA and Mobutu’s support to Jonas Savimbi and Unita by spying on her and the support offered by Cuba and Russia . 



When Angolan backed rebels tried to overthrow Mobutu in 1977 & 78 the west swiftly came to his aid, this was hit back time for Angola .

The second stage saw Kabila becoming the president of DRC on 17th May 1997 while Mobutu died four months later in Morocco . Uganda ’s Yoweri Museveni is quoted by Times journalist Martin Meredith in State of Africa to capture the all incident thus:

“The big mistake of Mobutu was to involve himself in Rwanda . So it’s really Mobutu who initiated the programme of his own removal. Had he not involved himself in Rwanda, I think he could have stayed, just like that, as he had been doing for the last 32 years – just doing nothing to develop Zaire, but stay in what they call power, by controlling the radio station, and so on”








The third stage (August 1998-January 2000) flared when Laurent Kabila dismissed Rwandan who aided his rise to power. His advisers couldn’t understand why a country ‘so small to be found in the map’ could control their government.




After propping him to power, Burundi , Rwanda and Uganda financed rebels because Kabila could not control the cross border raids by rebels from DR Congo to their country. On the other hand, Zimbabwe and Angola aided Kabila with help from Namibia and Chad .
Although the initial aims was to control their borders, the president’s otiose ambition of being regional kingmakers and unbridled greed for diamond, petroleum, gold, timber, Colton and other minerals the  DRC was a proxy war for looters. Generals from these foreign countries unleashed terror on citizens on mines to loot minerals. 
The acme of this stage was in 2000 when Rwanda and Uganda turned against each other in three occasions to control Kisangani the diamond hub. The illegal exploitation become an open secret.
Etienne Tshisekedi who sow himself as president
“Outraged by their ill-concealed looting enterprises and the damage inflicted on Kisangani, The UN Security Council demanded that Rwanda and Uganda withdraw from Congo with both Museveni and Kagame cited as ‘accomplishes’ by the UN panel” Meredith writes.


The last stage (January 2001-June 2003) saw the withdrawal of foreign armies after the July 2002 peace treaty by Joseph Kabila after his father was shot at a close range by his bodyguard on 16th January 2001. 
The just concluded election rekindles a history of bloodshed in DR Congo as the world waits with abated breath the outcome of Supreme Court ruling as Tshisekedi , US and France already call for calm in the country.

Thursday, December 22, 2011

Statement by Kenya Union of Journalists on deteriorating media conditions in Kenya

The Kenya Union of Journalists is alarmed by the dangerous increase in acts of intimidation and threats against the lives of journalists in this country by state security agents.

At a time when the media should be enjoying its new protections enshrined in the constitution, it appears that the state security apparatus has become the most serious threat to press freedom and the practice of journalism in Kenya.
We are particularly concerned that little is being done to protect Standard Group investigative journalists Dennis Onsarigo, Mohammed Ali and Robert Wanyonyi from people believed to be in the security system who have been threatening their lives when they have only been doing their work.
It is noteworthy that Mr Onsarigo and Mr Ali aired investigative stories touching on corruption and extra-judicial killings in the police force. It is also interesting that Mr Wanyonyi had incriminating footage of another arm of the security apparatus – the provincial administration.
Hardly two years since Weekly Citizen journalist Francis Nyaruri was killed over an investigative story he had been pursuing and in which the police were adversely mentioned, his killers are yet to be brought to book.
It is very clear that the force is dragging its investigations due to its own fears of implicating itself. We are therefore calling for an independent investigation into the increasing violations of press freedom, the freedom of media and freedom of information in this country. The still unreformed police cannot possibly investigate a matter in which they are complicit.
The Kenya Union of Journalists is also deeply concerned by the slow pace of implementing access to information and freedom of information provisions of the Constitution. These laws are direly needed to protect the media especially as the country moves towards the 2012 general elections.
As experience of the recent days shows, the gains in the new Constitution could very easily be watered down by the enemies of press freedom and those determined to control the media. But they must know that Kenyans will not easily allow their hard-won freedoms to be watered down so casually by people living in the past.
These incidents make it imperative that all media stakeholders work together to safeguard journalistic rights which are vital for the development of a truly independent media.
Jared Obuya
Secretary-General
Kenya Union of Journalists

Monday, December 19, 2011

DR Congo: From Che Guevara, dearth of sovereignty fuelling chaos

1965: Algerian born revolutionary Che Guevara of Cuba posing with Laurent Kabila's rebel in Zaire.
An absence of sovereignty is the hallmark of a failed state. The just hotly contested elections in the DR Congo, the third since independence on 30th June 1960 independence, attests to the country as a failed state since the UN mission, Monusco played a major logistical role in the elections.

The previous 2006 election was also brokered and run by UN to be the first free polls in 40 years.

DR Congo is ranked the last at 187 by UN Human Development Report as the most unequal country with a wide gap between the rich and the poor. The influential Foreign Policy magazine ranked the DRC fourth behind Sudan, Chad and Somalia in its 2011 failed state index

“Whatever accountability there is in DRC is directed towards international backers, not Congolese people” Theodore Trefon a Congolese analyst writes in BBC Online.

This lack of accountability to her citizens has seen the political elites turning the country to battle ground for direct and proxy wars by international interests both in the continent and globally at detriment of populace.

The most popular figure being the Argentinean born Cuba revolutionary Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara who led 120 Cuban fighters in DR Congo after consulting with Algerian Ben Bella, China’s Zhou En-Lai and Egypt’s Abdel Nasser for advice.

Che secretly entered the country on 24th April 1965 from Tanganyika with blessing from Julius Nyerere. The mission became a failure causing the mission to be cancelled by the end of the year. While in Cuban Tanganyika embassy Guevara wrote The African Dreams: The Diaries of the Revolutionary War dismissing the 26 years Laurent-Kabila as a joke.

“(The army) it was a parasite army; it didn’t work, did not train, did not fight, and demanded provisions and labour from the population, sometimes with extreme harshness” he wrote.

On Kabila, Guevara had hash words: “He let the days pass without concerning himself with anything other than political squabbles, and all signs are that he is too addicted to drink and women”

It’s this status that saw the country enjoying only few days of peace after 30th June 1960 independence with Belgium, former colonizer, propping Moise Tshombe in the succession of Katanga on 11th July.

US followed suit with supporting Mobutu Sese Seko’s 32 years rule while as a CIA spy pay roll and the president. This caused the assassination of Patrice Lumumba on 17th January 2011 for seeking USSR and Czech personnel to help stop rebellion started by Belgium and supported by America. Angola which leaned towards the East in cold war had CIA spying on her from Congo which caused a brief war 1977 & 78.

During the fall of dictator Mobutu Sese Seko and the rise to power of Laurent Kabila on 17th May 1997 a score of countries in the region were involved which brought the infamous ‘Great Lakes” which involved Zimbabwe, Angola, Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi amongst others in proxy battle to loot minerals in the country.

It’s this dearth of sovereignty that sees candidates in the last election to travel to Europe and US extensively to gain support.

Ever since UN was called in the country since 1960s to bring peace it has acted a glue offering administrative work. The last general elections of 2006 which was the fairest in 40 years and the just concluded have succeeded  because of logistical support offered by the UN.

“DR Congo is a country under international trusteeship. Important decisions are taken by World Bank technocrats, UN Officials and increasingly by international NGOs. When the electoral campaigns stared last month, candidates traveled to Europe and US to garner support.” Theodore Trefon a Congolese analyst writes for BBC showing the lack of sovereignty which makes DR Congo to be a failed state.

Folklore Poem: When dad was shaving me (Translated from dholuo)

When dad was shaving me,
I bowed my head down-down,
I saw something dangling,
Something like a cut worm,
It’s sweet at dawn when it grinds,
The thing plaits matuta,
The thing is red like ombulo’s seed.

Original version:
Kane baba liela,
Akulo wiya piny-piny,
Aneno gi maliero,
Machalo mana ofunyu,
Mit ko gwen ko rego
Gino suko matuta
Gino kwar ko ombulu

*matuta- cornrow hair style
Ombulu- a red hot African seed from wild legume  

© 2011 Manuel Odeny



Folklore Poem: My Husband, My Cunt (Translated from dholuo)

let me buy myself meat,
the meat I will eat with my husband,
my husband who fucks my cunt,
my cunt which gives birth to my kid,
my kid who suckles my breast,
my breasts which are ‘bra-ed’ by bra!

Original dholuo version:
anyiewna ring’o,
mondo acham gi chuora,
chuora machuona ng’onya,
ng’onya manyuolo go nyathi,
nyathi madhodhona thunda
thunda majuko go ojuku!

(We sung the song repeatedly as children and not even once did we think kids come from supermarket J)

©2011 Manuel Odeny

Tuesday, December 6, 2011

Poem: Me and My Beggar by Otiato Guguyu

The Poet: Otiato Guguyu
it was in my ears -
the tingling coin
in his empty bowl
every empty dawn.

It was in his routine -
the timely nod
in grotesque gratitude
every begging morning

Today,
it was that same clanking coin
but there was no nod
my heart pride cherished gratitude
"but why"
"sir in the budget read yesterday
prices have inflated
but you still give me the same coin
I would be pleased if you raised your charity.

I walked away
tomorrow there would be no clanking

It would be a note!

©2008 Otiato Guguyu

The poet, Otiato Guguyu is a Communication and Media Technolgy with IT student at Maseno University Kenya, The Managing Editor of Equator Weekly and a Blogger at http://otiatoguguyu.blogspot.com

Poem: Bedroom Technology by Otiato Guguyu

The Poet: Otiato Guguyu
Man why are you still basking in past glory
why are you still in celebratory robes
of the reign over the down trodden
can you rival the sperm bank
in production of likable features
single parenthood single conception
can you even dream of vibrating
like a chinese toy in the electronic shop
self reliance self satisfaction
and you still had the audacity
to let past your power fed eyes
same sex marriage
now the daughters of eve come together as one
will you allow to be pushed to
homosexuality and bestiality?
or will you with nostalgia
discover the joys of your palms
let us fight bedroom technology
lest we be rendered redundant
and allow the race of amazons
in the second millennium

©2008 Otiato Guguyu

The poet, Otiato Guguyu is a Communication and Media Technolgy with IT student at Maseno University Kenya, The Managing Editor of Equator Weekly and a Blogger at http://otiatoguguyu.blogspot.com 

Monday, November 28, 2011

How to use media for advocacy, activism

Since activism is a means of changing and shaping public and government agenda, mass media with a massive reach is pivotal in passing their messages across. This vital relationship makes media to be, perhaps, the most influential tool to be mastered in making advocacy and activism a success.
Learning the use of media makes it important for advocacy.
Earlier on July this year workers at Ministry of Education in Jogoo House B, Nairobi reported to work to find their offices chained by activist protesting loss of free primary education fund. The activists jamming the corridors demanded to immediate sucking of Prof Sam Ongeri and Ole Kiyapi as the minister and PS respectively.
Lead by activist Okiya Okoiti Omtata, they managed the first use of media called creating news. Within a short time all national and international news outlets were at scene to cover the dramatic event. What thrilled the journalist was how the activists managed to bypass the security personnel at the ministry to pass the locked offices.
Equally tied to this is an activist using pegging of news through the use of famous events and international days to raise awareness of their cause. This will call for use of special editions and pullouts in the media. Caution though should be taken not to compete with other powerful news sources ands organizations.
Secondly, by having adverts on media channels without overt persuasive tone characterized in commercial ones should be initiated. The advert should raise controversy and appeal to human interests as the activists has the power to shape the message to their interest.
The only flipside of this method is that adverts are expensive and seen as biased by the audience as compared to creating news.
On the other hand press conferences, campaigns and talk shows enable activists to meet the press directly and highlight their agenda in detail and offer clarity. On meeting the press the activist should be available in person.
 Writing OpEds on newspapers is a sure way of directly reaching an audience. The OpEds should be of high quality, written in editorial guidelines of the media house and sent on time. The same article can be syndicated to all media houses at the same time (to avoid sending stale already published pieces) to increase chances of getting published.
Starting with letters to the editor an activistis can end up with a column like John Githongo (The EastAfrican), Maina Kiai (The Star) and Okiya Omtata (Nation) amongst others.
Later after a rapport has been struck with the media house, an activits can seat a the editorial board with more power to shape an agenda.
Lastly, is embracing of new media which can evade government censorship, media monopoly and reach a wider audience at a reduced cost. arab revolution this year is a good example of the power of this new channle.
Running an active website, Youtube, Facebook and Twitter accounts for sharing information and ralling support is an effective way of passing an agenda across which starts with online community before spilling to public and government agenda. a perfetc is #OccupyWallStreet tag on twiiter whicg did spread across the globe.
To wind up using sites like http://www.causes.com/ is also helpful to an activists. 

Thursday, November 24, 2011

Guest Blogger: Carbide used to ripen bananas causing cancer scare by Aquinas Nyakundi

Photo: Courtesy
I received an email earlier about the use of carbide in ripening banana away from the natural cycle so as to attract more customers and reap maximum profit i  would wish to share.

Have you ever wondered where some vendors selling sweet bananas like the ones using wheelbarrows on Nairobi's Airport North-Ring road roundabouts source them in such huge supply and uniform ripeness!

Some readers who love bananas and eat a lot of them needed to realize that the bananas available in the market are 'forced ripe' by dipping in water mixed with Carbide. 
The consumption of these bananas is 100% sure to cause Cancer or some other infection in the stomach. Therefore, such type of bananas is to be avoided.

But, how does one recognize the bananas ripened with the help of Carbide?
Bananas which are ripened naturally are dark yellow and there are small black spots here and there on the bananas and the stalks are black. While those which are forced ripe with Carbide are lemon yellow and their stalks are green and moreover they are clear yellow without any black spots.

Now, what is Carbide and how is it harmful?

Carbide is a chemical which if mixed with water, emits heat and the heat emitted by a Close tank mixed with Carbide is even more than that emitted by a LPG Cylinder, so much so it can be used for Gas Cutting (which means the calorific value is so high that it can replace LPG gas).

In the same way, when the bunch of bananas is dipped in the water mixed with Carbide, the gas gets absorbed into the bananas and they get ripe.

However, the banana vendors are not that literate and so they do not know the exact proportion of Carbide to be used for a dozen of bananas.

As a result they end up using excess quantity of Carbide which gets absorbed into the bananas and ultimately enters our stomach. Due to this excess use of Carbide, tumors can be formed in our digestive system.
Aquinas Nyakundi is a graduate of Communication and Media Tech from Maseno University in Kenya. He is a journalist based in Kisii running an agriculture based blog: Small-Scale Farming Commercialize

Wednesday, November 23, 2011

Government, NGO clash over new Public Benefit Bill


The government has urged over 7,000 Non Governmental Organisations, NGOs in the country to demand services from their council elected earlier this year to realize the full potential of the sector which contributed over 130 billion in the economy.

Wanainchi should also be vocal in auditing the NGO whose budget should be 80% help to the community and 2o% on their budget.

“Both stake holders including citizens should report rogue ‘flash disk’ NGOs fleecing donors and communities to the NGO co-ordination board” Amb. Peter Ole Nkuraiya, the executive director of the board told over 100 NGOs in south Nyanza during a workshop in a hotel in Migori town.

Amb. Nkuraiya said the board which was established in 1990 is providing check and balance on credibility of best practices to build confidence and aid impact of the sector in positively helping humanity.

“The government is currently reviewing the Public Benefit Act consisting of three bills in zero draft that would go ahead to seal loopholes in the sector and offer more transparency” the ambassador said.

“The new bill yet to be tabled in the parliament will merger community and  faith based organizations with NGOs under one regulator” he added.

The act seeks to set a tribunal of stake holders which will by pass the minister of national Heritage and culture in charge of the industry as the last arbiter in conflicts. The seek to ease stringent control set by KANU government that feared NGOs were used by Western states in multiparty clamor of 19900s warranting their control.

“As the last resort the minister who is often busy will give the tribunal power to self regulate as an industry” he said adding that it was high time the current NGO Act to be reviewed.

But in a twist of events, National Council of NGOs says it wasn’t consulted in the drafting of the bill which won’t augur well in forging the sector forward.

“Although the NGO Act should be reviewed, the new law seeks to disband us by merging us with Community and Faith Based Organisations. This content is bad and we will lobby MPs to shoot it down if not changed” Kevinnah Loyatum, CEO of NGO National Council said.

Ms. Loyatum says the content of Public Benefit Bill is bad while they are not aware of the other two bills in the new law.

“We don’t know of the other bills which are purported to regulate our industry” Ms Loyatum said insisting that negotiations should go on before tabling the law in parliament.

The workshop also advised NGOs to form county secretariats in overseeing their issues since the new constitution has done away with district level.

“The new constitution may lock out organizations not complaint with it making it mandatory for NGOs to register with the board through new counties: George Obondo, the Nyanza representative for national councils of NGO said.

Friday, October 28, 2011

Book Review: John Grisham- The Litigators (New Title)


Book: The Litigators
Authro: John Grisham
Publisher: DoubleDay
Review: John Grisham Newsletter
Available: Excerpt and online Random House on this link

The partners at Finley & Figg-all two of them-often refer to themselves as "a boutique law firm." Boutique, as in chic, selective, and prosperous. They are, of course, none of these things. What they are is a two-bit operation always in search of their big break, ambulance chasers who?ve been in the trenches much too long making way too little. Their specialties, so to speak, are quickie divorces and DUIs, with the occasional jackpot of an actual car wreck thrown in.

After twenty plus years together, Oscar Finley and Wally Figg bicker like an old married couple but somehow continue to scratch out a half-decent living from their seedy bungalow offices in southwest Chicago.

And then change comes their way. More accurately, it stumbles in. David Zinc, a young but already burned-out attorney, walks away from his fast-track career at a fancy downtown firm, goes on a serious bender, and finds himself literally at the doorstep of our boutique firm. Once David sobers up and comes to grips with the fact that he?s suddenly unemployed, any job-even one with Finley & Figg-looks okay to him.

With their new associate on board, F&F is ready to tackle a really big case, a case that could make the partners rich without requiring them to actually practice much law. With any luck, they won?t even have to enter a courtroom! It almost seems too good to be true.

And it is.

The Litigators is a tremendously entertaining romp, filled with the kind of courtroom strategies, theatrics, and suspense that have made John Grisham America's favorite storyteller.

Monday, October 24, 2011

IEBC: For fair elections Kenya, Africa still has a long way to go

Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki votes in a general election
The quest to establish Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) which saw the interviewing of 44 and 8 commissioners and chair from 427 and 15 applicants respectively. The process was led by Dr Ekuro Aukot.

The commission will afterwards send for approval the commissioners to parliament and three recommended for the position of chair to President Kibaki and Prime Minister Raila who will later forward a name to legislature for further approval.

The major task of IEBC will be to run the first national and county elections in Kenya in a simple, secure and transparent manner to avoid a repeat of bloodshed and rigging which engulfed the country in 2007/08 violence.

Sadly although the process is laudable, Kenya and Africa still have a long way to go for fair elections that can promote democracy even after a century since the first country in the continent gained independence. During the process, the same cocktail of events that saw the now defunct Electoral Commission of Kenya (ECK) led by Samuel Kivuitu putting the country bin chaos is at play again.

Foremost in young democracies like Kenya electoral bodies are weak institutions backed by weak laws and judiciary which makes them prone to interference from politicians. The manner at which election tallying and counting was carried out at KICC and the aftermath avalanche of petitions showed this flaw.

This can be the case if legislations like Political Parties Act still not enacted prior to 2012 which will tie IEBC’s hand in regulating how parties elect candidates and how to settle elections disputes and petitions arising from results.

Equally, vested interests by politicians will risk causing havoc even before the new body is formed. Eldoret North MP William Ruto is leading a section of politicians who vow to vote against the team in parliament. On the other hand the debate of the exact date for next year general election is bound to raise political temperatures further.

Reading danger from these squabbles Koffi Annan, former UN Secretary General, and a member of Eminent Persons that bore the coalition government from 2007/08 violence has warned politicians from interfering with the process.

Lastly tribalism is a thorn to democracy with debate from some quarters observing that even though the gender equality was observed, 50% of some candidates were from one ‘region’ which doesn’t reflect ‘the face’ of Kenya.

These disputes coupled with impunity where violence suspects walk away with prosecution are some of the challenges facing democracy and electoral bodies like IEBC not only in Kenya but also in Africa.

Thursday, September 22, 2011

Guest Blogger: Kenya will do Africa a favour by voting in Kingwa Kamencu by Mankind Oyewumi

Kingwa Kamencu
"She walks in beauty like the night Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that's best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes:
Thus mellow'd to that tender light
Which heaven to gaudy day denies." George Gordon Byron.

"And he gave it for his opinion,that whoever could make two ears of corn or two blades of
grass to grow upon a spot of ground where only one grew before, would deserve better
of mankind,and do more essential service to his country than the whole race of politicians." Jonathan Swift.

The recent announcement by a 27 year old Oxford University student, Kingwa Kamencu to stand as the President of the republic of Kenya in next year’s election has attracted my attention.

As a Nigerian Samaformistic I am not only interested with events in my country but also globally, with a bias to the beautiful continent Africa. As a scholar these events attract my intrepid comments when they go wrong, challenge my brave interventions before they are made wrong.

It’s with this reason that i draw the collective attention of Kenyans to do Africa a favor by shunning sex, age, tribal, religious and ideological biases to elect this young, intelligent, ebullient, clue-filled,plan-fraught, passion-driven lady as their president in the 2012 elections in Kenya.

Let's consider her profile which has made her accomplish a lot:

"I am a poet, novelist, philosopher, on and off journalist and perpetual student. I love ideas and the magic of words and I try to use them as a thread to sew and re-piece humanity back together. Words create images which then create reality."

Her dream for Africa speaks for itself:

"I am a young emerging African leader and a part of the movement that is working to make Africa great and ensure all its people have dignity and good standards of living. I am looking forward to a united Africa in my life time, an Africa that can make more grand contributions to the world. I feel the dream of Marcus Garvey, Kwame Nkrumah and Julius Nyerere among others. I believe this dream will come true"

This profile is courtesy of WorldPulse, a global,online communication network connecting and empowering women for all-round relevance as enviable force for sustainable change in modern societies.

To add Kingwa Kamencu is a published writer whose first novel, To Grasp at a Star, won 2nd prize in the 2006 Wahome Mutahi Literary Award and the National Book Development Council Award (2003). She is a published writer and poet working on her second novel.Currently she is a journalist, a budding scholar and a social and political critic.

At her age with the passion for emergence of Africa as a world power and the complete emancipation of women from political, social and economic setbacks makes her as a young ideal leader to push the continent in this century. This passion to make the continent a better place may see her shape the continent's politics the way Margret Thatcher shaped Britain and world's politics.

Prior to study in Oxford University she got a first class honors from University of Nairobi win in Literature and History which shows her leadership qualifications.

But she is a Kenyan, known more by Kenyans than by anyone else as a daughter and friend, student and above all, citizen. My view is that being untainted she deserves a chance to serve as president which will put the youths in a spotlight. The country should see what she did in a short period not to judge her as passing cloud.

Her leadership at students SONU, different levels of her development participation coupled with her global membership in groups to server humanity she needs support logistical, financially, morally and spiritually to be the leader of new Kenya.

The old guard has not tackled corruption, poor infrastructure, illiteracy-rate, poor healthcare and mortality rate often being recycled among the same elites at the elm since independence, can Kenya embrace rest and change by voting her?

Winds of change that brought Barrack Obama to White House,started the Arab revolution and torments the 'apartheid' of Israel over Gaza may spill to sub-Sahara Africa by youthful president in the offing. Kingwa is a symbol to reckon with.

That is why in this post i wish to challenge Kenyans to vote for Kingwa Kamencu next year and do Africa a favor the way an unemployed youth in Tunis set himself ablaze with a snowballing effect of Arab revolution. 

(The Guest Blogger, Mankind Olawale Oyewumi, is a Nigerian philosopher, teacher (of language and literature), journalist and former student of University of Lagos. He is the author of Songs of the Law (poetry), Immortal Instructions, A gift to Nigeria at Fifty (Ed) He is the father of SAMAFORMISM and the founder of Humanity Day.)

Thursday, September 15, 2011

Poem: Heart-less love by Manuel Odeny

You nag:
“lover, honey
my heart I gave thee
how dare you break it?
then I cringe
can a piece of meat break?
and imagine, again
holding a thumping, spluttering
lifeless cadaver
blooding my hands, suit
or
worst still
how I loved (all this time)
a genie
an heartless
dead
woman!

Manuel Odeny © 2011

Guest Blogger: The African Reformer By Mankind Olawale Oyewumi

“What is man born for but to be a reformer, a re-maker of what man has made; a renouncer of lies; a restorer of truth and good, imitating that great nature which embosoms us all, and which sleeps no moment on an old past, but every hour repairs herself, yielding us every morning a new day, and with every pulsation a new life?”
—–Ralph Waldo Emerson

In the long list of trite and tragic words some true saints, scholars and sages maybe tired and ashamed of, reformation, change and freedom dominate and reign. Having remorselessly and frequently fulfilled their semantic and syntactic emptiness in dismal socio-economic and political literature of collective ignorance, war, hunger, diseases, death, and yet, renewed pledges of tacit but sure directionlessness in the continence haunted continent of Africa, the eminent fraud, nay jazziness of these practically hackneyed words cater to scholars’ loss accruable from the august guts of their undisguisable disgust towards them.

But man is the maker of words; man is the appointer and alerter of meanings to suit his ambition, actions and organizations, slightly involving or absolutely excluding the stipulations of natural justice. Do you see how parochial intellectuals, criminal nationalists, confused Africanists, satanic African leaders, and the so-called omnisciently free nations assisting Africa narrow the holds of our better Europe by thinking they betray just words and not drag their dignity in unclean-sable moral mud and their souls in irredeemable filth when they dedicate their golden silence and commercialized multiloquence to the dearth of our race, speak no universal good, offer dwarfish heights as sacrifices, impose and increase hindrances as policies, pursue sectional agenda and act the polar opposites of their documented intentions to the detriment of millions?

Reformation brings about change, and change cannot boast any essential existence without first passing through the needle-eye of proper reformation. Change is the instinct, reformation the action, change is the only reliable ideological parameter mortals historically use in judging claimed reforms, in gauging the air published to have been stored up in the banal tube of any reformation. In eras when the conscience of man was potent, and his humanism truly humane, publishing agencies were hardly required to convince those concerned, the beneficiaries of created public benefits, that some change has occurred in commerce, art, politics, etc., because one man, or a venally venerable host of his fine species had spoken, acted and achieved nothing to the disadvantage of their collective goals.

Away in ancient Sparta through Rome dwell annals’ approval of this claim. The Americans and the English, the French and the Germans, the Norwegians and the Spanish, all are doubtless proofs of moral oaf well spurred to construct the roofs of popular good. Their reformers in these countries, whether they be scholars or soldiers, pontiffs or monarchs, never ejaculated in vain selfishness, did not fall on mere veins in days of historically decisive actions.

Except for causes created by, and kiosked in personal principles as pointing or required necessities towards specified greater ends, feeding, housing and good health, care-facilities and kind activities were not tabooed; men’s external accoutrements glorified their inner worth; and none, except poverty itself suffered any variety of poverty. Whatever changes our days fosters the coming days. If this day prepares no way as great grace for our grazing wants tomorrow, it is not change. Let the reformer be an African who teaches philosophy to the grand children of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle in Greece, African reform is knowing and altruistically working to quarantine barriers from the survival – reach of Africans! Let the critic be our son or daughter legislating conceits that guide language, literature, politics, religion and economy at colleges and Universities built by happier shores and more, reformation is struggling to serve the needs our critiques so stylistically paint for politics, education, justice and dignity for our people.

With change, our aches must ape after our health, in all sections of possible health. Change is eternal jailing of our biased jaundices, either within any conglomerate produced by an irreversibility sealed by fear, ignorance and irresponsibility, or by the regulation of souls whose refulgence of flowing sanity expedients cannot controls.

Man militates in soulless but forceful awe to place perfection upon the senseless maxim that “…the end justifies the means”, mooting criminally in favor of social sins, and booting dishonorably for the spreadsheet of spiritual eccentricities. When it favors his truncated soul, man acquiesces to the nobility of general good, and frowns, with unbelieveable switch and dangerous resolves, at this good when it is no longer in the well-being of his dwarfish interest to treat man as man. In the soul of man dwells the wholesome whole, whereby himself, digs for himself, some unholy holes. With unintended but ineluctable holes, the Initial Energy and Sustainable Ray of the intended holds scatter in concerted ruins, and the salvaging of its pieces affect his peace, with violent ease.

Man becomes conscious of change when he is sincerely vexed by the wrecks of old, unprofitable order which orders his destiny for thriftless misuse and reckless abuse, and is ready to say and to do all that may be necessary to snatch himself away from the perilous reach of attendant crises caused by the former era. Whereas, change is conscious of man when in the name of withdrawing society from the woes of lies, fraud and theft, man plunges his existence in more quagmire and mire, and every frequent remorse displayed as sobriety constitutes an empowerment for the development of man’s disappointment. In this immorally spiritual complexity lies the knurly imbroglios of reformation: man’s consciousness of, and willingness for holy change is often ignobly changed by his unconsciousness of, and unwillingness for holy courage and genuine will that are central to the possibility of sought reformation.

The maximum abuse of man by man is man most constant courtesy to the world which noble sentiments had enthusiastically but irregularly protested in every generation. When man perceives correctly, the spate of social ruins in his society and puts up some formidable tools to mop and later squish the evidence of his painstaking observation-squalor into the vast sea-bed of purposeful revolution, he achieves a temporary target and loses the permanent victory to the ignorance he bequeaths posterity on the essence of existence.

Change, beware, may not necessarily guarantee freedom for man. Worse evil may succeed bad one in the clumsy course of any transformation. Yet, no freeing freedom ever arrived the society of man without change. The role of all men is to guide conscientiously along the deadly path to the succor that its fine effects may paint our world. Change is the health of reformation. When change is sick, reformation is the physiological uplift of its entire cells. The fact that another salutary dawn is, or can be, is a sign of the truth that the reformation of man truly has the facilities to reform. This new dawn being the change of former change which was once assisting, may have lost its touch, not necessarily with man, but with those inevitable aids and laws which nature hands down to man, and without which man cannot be rationally capable without some question against his reason and dent atop his manhood.

The nature of reform and change thus meticulously mastered, I go a step higher to humbly introduce them to any mortal, African or non-African, who dare to take and work, live and die for this maximally defiled and heartlessly exploited region of the world-Africa. We cease to yield to any pyramid of filths veiling as conditions that the African reformer must satisfy; our projections this day, now out do some ancient folly, or uncanny fraud to set in motion the inner vehicle that pursues the African future with vision, courage, wisdom, perseverance and kindness. The African self assertion and development is historically desecrated by the four hundred years of anti-freedom exercise symbolized by slavery, defiled by another hundred years of unjust and forceful foreign socio-economic, cultural and political domination (colonialism), and further marred by the increasing commitment of African leaders to lies, sabotage, visionless-ness and fraud which divert the natural rights of Africa from peace, prosperity and happiness. Through colonialism, vibrant African hopes, human and non-human, were forced aboard the ships to various harbors, banishing parents and societies to tears, incapacitating the endowed capacity of the black to greatness by truncating their germinating order and acrimoniously castigating their future with the sick sophistry that they are incapable of true civilization.

The colonial devils and thieves thrived in the destruction and stealing of all that was dear to Africans, enriching their empty empires (or what but an empty empire exploit and cheat other for fullness and fulfillment?) with the sweat of our fathers and increasing their hope on the preposterous promise of our own kidnapped hope.

Can any of their generically chaotic claims which explain Africa’s exaggerated incapacity for sanity and others be less than fallacious? Africans of the past, like their counterparts in Europe, America and Australia, were not just organized, they were a focused, progressive and prosperous region of planet earth. They had ambition, which they never sought to fulfill misanthropically against the development of others. They had expectations, but only within the confines of convictions which constituted their cultures. And if certain portion of these cultural convictions and practices were morally erroneous, errors were not the intentions of the upholders; with utmost faith in the superiority of what they held sacrosanct all African empires and regions had tackled the challenges of existence.

When one or a group of Africans saw fault in any given norm or tradition, he or they inspired required change through peace, through war, just like a Lincoln and Kennedy, or an England or France of the West would do. Africa loved the world more than any region of the world, going by the deep spirit of neighborliness and kindness they showed, even to their mortal adversaries. Except when strangers disregarded the demands of their ways of life, Africans hardly struck. In art, science, and politics, Africa can never be less gifted by God if not richer than any region of the world. All that today constitutes impossibility of doing domestic or industrial chores, of conquering deadly diseases, and of invoking the buried spirits of life in virtually dead or dying sectors of human endeavors the African practices, deeds and sayings stored the wonders of achieving.

Africa is a bustling barn of human and material resources. And like any other continent, her development was supposed to be from wild conjectures and errors to reality and perfection, which foreign vermin and home rust had discarded, vandalized and engulfed with flood-bringing rain. All writers and preachers who ever composed a sentence, or even formed a sermon against the realities of Africa for obscurantist or racist reasons must have their names wreathed in ungolden gold, in the museum of ignoble deeds in the world.

In “Wind of Change”, the speech Prime Minister Harold Macmillan of Great Britain delivered to the South African Parliament in 1960, it was recorded that, how fantastic Africa and Africans are, and all American Bill Clintons know too, that this earth is a piece of favor to our general world. Today, it seems slavery was merely changed to colonialism and colonialism operated in the garb-guise of imperialism. Whatever the fraud-label, the West seem to know how best to rubbish, cheat and exploit Africa!

Causes which wreck the rise of Africa are both internal and external, and the ruler, intellectual or activist who only talks about one without taking cognizance of the effects of the other is either myopic or fraudulent, or even both. The roles played by African leaders in the shipwreck of African hope is not less inhuman than the inhumanity exhibited as the ideal symbol of humanity towards Africa. Ranging from kerekou of Benin Republic who, besides foolishly accepting that his nation serve as dumping ground for toxic wastes from foreign companies for financial reason, freely looted the people’s treasury, Doe and Taylor of Liberia, Lansana Conte of Guinea, Mousa Traore of Mali, Gnassingbe Eyadema of Togo, Ousmane of Niger, Mobute of Zaire, Amin of Uganda, Santos of Angola, to Buhari, Babangida, Abacha, Obasanjo and Yaradua of Nigeria alone, more than one trillion dollars was stashed off the benefits of Africans in their different regimes and countries, between 1960 and 2007! Why not? What is wrong in caging Africans in the zoo of wild and irredeemable pauperism to satisfy African leaders’ beastliness, greed and shame? The loss above comes from their dishonest and uniform criminal instinct alone, in thousand folds would the theft and damage be, if calculated by the indices of their foolishness and arid plans! Or is it not the truth that there is no limit to the fortune sacrificially pursued vision of collective survival can bring? Who then thinks that what Africa might have forfeited in a voyage with her numerous captain Kids from time immemorial can be anything short of nine hundred trillion dollars if not more {definitely more!}?

More satanic feats can be recorded of African leaders in the areas of unjust jailing of truth’s advocates, Human Rights Activists, and government oppositions. They have maimed for hate and multiplied the rate of murder for greed. Who can adequately compute the figure lost in Nigeria from this variety if killings. And if, for refusing to exaggerate, history should record eight hundred thousand for Uganda, one million for Rwanda, one million for Liberia, six hundred thousand for Sierra-Leone, two hundred thousand for Ghana and two hundred thousand for South Africa! Whoever considers these figures overstated, let him or her give consideration to indirect death directly directed by governments’ dumb speeches and inadequate actions in the areas of food production and supply, health facilities and Africans’ education!

Oh my God(!), Africa has suffered more than suffering, for the punishment inflicted on brothers by brothers is the worst of all wickedness we know!

Some kitchen African scholars always institutionalize bias through fake foundations and extinction-bound books, announcing a one-sided revival for Africa by denigrating a party and patting the other with inferentially deliberate indifference which must be corrected if baked by limited thinking, and ridiculed if engendered by fraud. “Africa is poor because she is not free”, says George Ayittey of Ghana. But reason insists that “Africa is enthralled in viscious vassage because her influential scholars are gangsters, because her reformers are betrayers!” How can any seasoned scholar call just the African leaders the chemistry of African imbroglios while the daily impacts of foreign actions and inactions maim this region? Is it reasonable in any way, to also insist, for any reason, that external evils alone constitute the malaise generations of Africans had historically bewailed? Did the Africans of yesterday, just like the heroic Mao Mao of Kenya, not have the right to valiantly kick against any invasion with their blood and remained in history, like Ethiopia or Greece, a marvel and beauty to billions? Do the African leaders of today possess, or do they not have the right to commit all of their ambition and association to the development of Africa?

An ignoble merger of moral bareness and mental emptiness in native and foreign men-monsters and leaders who always parade themselves as African fore-runners and leaders is the assurance of Africa’s collective backward-speeding stagnancy and impotency; the perfidy and foolishness we know we host but which our perverse beast-sense spare in all of our spheres to form some poison-filled social spears that speedily pierce and harass our focus off the route of victory and hope.

Who is any fraudster and fool to dupe and drag the world backwardly down with the untrue belief that African leaders alone are Africa’s problems? In Africa and outside Africa lived the evil spirit of African perdition. Our focus then must take care of these sources. Let it seen in our action, let the world read it in our stories. In the weighty words of James Baldwin, “For while the tale of how we suffer, and how we are delighted and how we may triumph is never new, it always must be heard. There is not any other tale to tell, it’s the only light we’ve got in all this darkness.” So let the musicians sing, let writers mount an irresistible attack and on bastards and quislings through our drawings, prose, poetry, of how natives and non-natives had vandalized the African hope. To attack a region of African enemies is not evil if the attacker does not hope to benefit from such blunder. To offer a sparsely shaft as criticism even if it frowns against all quarters, is to paste on our race, the stickers that auction her achievable revival. Mistakes may be made, but let not evil be disguised as blunders from those who advance the African cause as crusaders of African salvation. This ought not to, as well exclude how sincere Africans and non-Africans had labored for man to alter the squalid African plight to hope, to real bliss, and to endless laughter.

If the fifty-four independent political units of Africa were a dessert continent fraught with the fruits of fatal pains, and prominent with permanent incontinence in all the cheap bliss that life offers to un-resourceful and resources-scarce zones in earth’s geography, utterly penurious and practically loyal to the criminal communion applied by the dominion of winterish woes, still may be deadly, but ought not to seem so impossible as it now seems, to diagnose and know her existential ailments, and tow her out of her current structural and systemic abnormalities.

Let the African reformer extol the truth and bring to book in his analyses and in his actions the untruthful books and actions stated as modern models for African happiness. No matter who they are, these engineers of tears and clerks of politically juggernauted ambitions of shame, who are always optimistic of African death, the African reformer must double-cross and surpass, and endure all penalties to destroy and then, lure the wrong thinking masses to the clear coast of African hope!

Only one thing is sought as the virtue of the African reformer: a functional soul. With his working soul, the African reformer can know and hope for African good without any unjust injury to persons he must hurt and powers he must question, despise or attack. He may be a farmer, he may be a lawyer, the man with good soul alone, boasts the best wisdom and fortitude to advance the world to happier season through Africa. Is he a man whom Africa has reduced to shred and ghost, with no home and hope? He is the African Reformer if he has a working soul! Does he shuttle between pain and poverty despite his vast volume of paper-qualification as a literate or an instructed elite? For him the African woes have been reserved to combat. Let any man or woman with passion for African revival and renewal stand tall among others in kindness, morals, knowledge and courage; let him not enjoy any unjust patronage or pleasure, but let him never deny their beautiful benefits when they come to him through moral means, in the course of living like a man who he truly is. The sacrosanct conscience, which his positive principles represents, is the first and the final ritual of African reform.

The African reformer shall understand the African nature, master her structure and study her literature in absolute devotion and humility. Nothing about the African history, philosophy, culture and psychology is hidden to the versatile and fertile mind of this fantastic person. He does not guess whatever he is yet to learn about Africa. He must plunge his soul into the African soul to know the objectives of African hope and weigh these agenda with the normative standards for the universe, by the laws of nature, by the Soul of all souls.

The mortal who cannot afford to abandon the African native in poverty is the African reformer. At any degree, he must inspire greatness in all Africans he daily meets. At any rate, he must assist moral projects not necessarily emanating from him, but also, because he is infinitely good, belonging to his own heart. The African reformer is the angel whose actions liberate Africa from subjectivity and passivity. As a teacher he creates and sustains hope for the African children and youths; as a social worker, he is the hope of widows, orphans and the old. The African reformer may speak, may be silent, his purpose is louder than the means he uses, and whatever his calling is, he is who he is because Africa can be better in that field of existence which adores his mind and maintains his life.

His writing may be in English or French, German or Latin, but his focus is Africa. In his dreams, he sees and plans Africa. For Africa he can morally dishonor rulers and boldly call organizations to question. He may be wealthy, he may be poor, all of these he can use to avert the collective quietus of the black race. His love for Africa is borne out of his obsession for humanity, so he cannot profane other continents and peoples for Africa. For him, they are his family in other lands of God. He loves the truth and will not be fulfilled without bathing in its fine fluid. He cannot be a racist, the African reformer is a global moralist who seeks to redeem his African planet for the safety of every man’s humanity. For him, negritude, Africanism or pan-Africanism is a customized humanism for Africans whose sense of kindness towards the world finds application in native African situation. Against Africa’s happiness he can hate and love, only when nobility is trampled under the foot of any human devil or devilish group; for Africa’s greed he cannot lead, for his sane soul rings beyond the beauty any fraud can give. For him, every inhuman tradition is wickedness; every immoral culture an abomination constitutes to the true African reformer!

Africans and non Africans who cannot be moral, who cannot love fellow mortals, are his good enemies and the foes he vows to fight with his achievements and justice. The UN, the AU, ECOWAS, NEPAD, he may write, speak and act against if they falter, but the interest of the truth these humanely alloyed aims and commitments represent.

The African remormer is not the leader who liaises with foreigners to dupe Africa (A foreigner in this context is any person, group, company or nation, whose agenda imply disaster for Africa!). He is the father and believer of any theory or principle framed in appreciation of African humanity. The African reformers is not the popular scholar who forms several fora and foundations through which his partial approach and betrayal – portrayal of Africa glues reward, he is the conscientious radical who do not mind dying in hunger in the duty of preaching and preserving the truth about the African story. The African reformer is not the man who sufficiently displeased people’s plan for justice in honor of expedients, he is an ally of discontented global class who feel for, and boundlessly invest in the survival Africans.

The African reformer is the man excluded from the list of basic survival. She is the woman whose wealth is elusive hope; while the fake reformer is the foolish politician or criminal, or thieving expatriate thieving expatriate who wrap dishonesty in sincerity and act backwardness in the crucial cause of people’s happiness. The African reformer is the reformed man or woman whose inner beauty is transferred to the outer African premises. He or she cannot be distinguished or celebrated for nothing; his or her success he or she makes into an asset for all of African children; his or her inheritance in material context, is the invisible value of former children his elastic generosity has grown into manhood in every aspect of manhood. As a social scientist, his expertise in Political Science, Economics or Sociology he squanders on those with similar African ambition. As a guru in the humanities, he has not learnt language, literature, philosophy and others without theoretically and practically making it possible for others to do the same with full satisfaction in African aspiration.

As a scientist of whatever endeavor, he is worthy of his all because the purpose for which science is learnt and taught, the well-being of many he excels at fulfilling. All of his awards and honor, he spends on the rearing of greater geniuses. He cannot deserve any merit for himself; awards must be won, and not only dedicated with mere words of mouth accompanied by uproarious applause and clumsy songs, they must be seen at the work of uplifting goals the artist may have written or drawn or performed to lament their dearth or death. The African reformer writes, sings and draws, because these are the expression of the function of his immortal consciousness in original African reform. If he sweeps or tills the soil, or he cooks or mends our shoes, this same impulse makes his state wonderful and his status enviable if he exists for others. He must also act, and action is very fundamental, more needed and easily estimated than other means, and ought not to antagonize his secondary means.

The reformer whose life-ledger reflects some irreconcilable items to the general purpose he feigns or parades to the world must be solitude of good soul and heart. For his kind, millions had died in African history, buried in the bellies of vultures! For his kind, millions languish in the lonely cells of wretchedness, with no hope of survival! For his kind, brains had been squandered, who were doubly capable of helping the world from Africa. For his kind, statans had won elections and still nominated and rigged in favor of their allies to deepen our communal follies! For his kind, African schools, ideas, convictions and image cut the picture of inferiority and worse in the imagination of every vastly immoral non-Africans!

When the African reformer goes into an institution, his Samaformist perspectives rule over all biases and expedients; he acts to reform, not that which necessarily affects him or others, but that which is unjust and evil, regardless of the names and number of those it favors, irrespective of the investments and sacrifices of change. Reform is not carried out, only when the need for it kills and maims the people, it is easy when the reformer speaks and acts against anticipated obstructions that may style itself as evil capable of feeding on the comfort of man.

The African reformer may or may not plant people and places in the loamy soil of his agenda, but eternity is his destination {and is man not more favored in the agenda of a reformer who all bows for eternity?}. Even after the cycle, which produces and takes him back to nature has ceased, his essence, also the essence of those who once committed the self to earth’s, lingers and prospers more without interruption. Whatever his parents may have named him, or whatever he may have decided to bear, becomes the better half of that universal identity which breathes life into those mighty concepts and circumstances all exceptionally heard destroyables had initiated. Those he shall not, and can never see, but whose judgment of his life and living they have the freedom to pass, he unknowingly acts to favor. But the favor he hands down in preparation of the life’s stage for these troupe of coming actors, is not done in anticipation of reward; for every good is self-rewarding, and every evil possesses the worst agents acting against the most seducing forgiveness – application from any erring man.

He may be patronized, he may be persecuted for believing in the survival of one billion or more people, the Africans, but let him not patronize any filth even if stealthily; he may be invited for collaborations by other men, he should not give the clean bill of ethics to the filthy deeds of any Brutus or IBB, or OBJ because he is well-placed in his society, or because he appears noble in his relationship with Africa. The African reformer must be very wary: only towards him does the fattest generosity flow, and this generosity stems from the ambition of the misanthropists to buy him up, to enrich his soul with moral poverty which poisons his passion and truncates the work of African reconstruction. Does he wish to travel out of his country and the means escapes his reach? Let him not rely on the evil mercy of any Aso Rocker! Is he interested in furthering his education abroad and funds delay his plan? Let him not dupe any foreign institution with fake credit cards, let him always reject offers from all questionably Ayitteyish philanthropists. Is any immoral man the key to the level he must ascend? Let him shun the man and hope to ascend still with the key he gets from his love for the truth! How can the African reformer suffer because of what he cannot achieve through evil when what he can achieve through good shall humiliate every so-made achievement? Let the reformer aspire on our behalf, but let not his ambition bring us some bane.

The African reformer is a weakling if, due to fraud, he defers the foundation of the glory he may lay for Africa today. The African reformer is a thief, if born and bread in Africa, or in African natural cloth, thinks the vaunting of his elitist picture in the world is the peak of action that must be taken in redeeming Africa from her smiling foes. The African reformer is a bastard if any of the biases he once barked, whether or not he had a return for it, whether or not it harms any African, remains a yardstick fool-foreigners now use in measuring the African social outlook with. Is the man still the African reformer who can afford to help, but neglects the African person in evident need? Is the woman still an African reformer, who shamelessly sleeps with unscrupulous politicians to prove her self -perpetuating points? How can the man with no belief in all of mankind ethically live and adequately reform the stinking effects of African decay?

The African reformer is that constant human figure whose ideas and views of life are nobler than the region which gave him life. He considers the whole world his family. He scolds and corrects, not because it is expedient, but because it is right to do so. He cannot malevolently put other peoples and nations to the service of Africa, but other peoples and nations he cannot spare when these dupe eternal reason by excluding Africa, overtly or covertly, from the list of humans worthy of others’ respect and love, and qualified for survival and hope on earth. The African reformer is not moral because he is legitimate; he is legitimate because he is moral. He is an eternal moralist whom no pretty face subdues, the only prophet other prophets may inspire but cannot limit or control.

Poverty and pains shall be common in the experience of the African reformer, but these he must bear on behalf of man that the African humanity too could be happy and fulfilled. To cry or wail is the destiny of a man hindering the success of collective ruin; but this tears remains the noble fluid that flows to cleanse the people in the altar of utter wrecks. Honor he shall have, which he usually does not bargain for; wealth may be his, which accumulates from no dirty source, but his action is more honorable than any honor, let all men and institutions of his days traduce and underrate his stand and deeds!

The African reformer, when he speaks, criticizes or acts, guides himself with the moral weapon from eternal consciousness and currency which emboldens him to fault traditions and disregard norms erected on, and generously permeated with absurdities and abnormalities. The number of years these had spent, and the generation of men they had nurtured matter not to the African reformer who is armed with the convincing truth that something is wrong with the ways some things are being done in his Africa.

Is it just to honor some irrelevant chiefs and officials with the peasants’ sweat? Are human beings still being squandered before some inanimate spectacles the mis-directed instincts and creativity of man elevates to the status of deity? Do Christians and Moslems still insist only their ways lead man to the truth, neglecting other equally fine ways, shunning other beautiful truths God Himself inspired and sustained as considerations for eternity? What are the roles of gods in the salvation – story of Africa? Where were these gods when foreigners captivated their worshippers as slaves? Do some group of Africans, after spending centuries with others in a given geographical enclave still being viewed as strangers and second class citizens whose all increase that area’s wealth and happiness? Are Africans still being slaughtered like animals as tradition to accompany a king or a chief to the grave? Are men still being flogged at a ridiculous contest organized by culture to test their manliness as husbands before marriage when other variously sensible and humane ways exist to achieve similar objective? Do elders still consider themselves perfect and must not be kicked against even when they are morally wrong? Do African youths mistake literacy for indecency and happily disrespect elders and others? Is material wealth still held more valuable than values which give the African humanity and other mortals their value and worth in some African quarters? Do some other parameters, other than morality and magnanimity determine the beliefs and actions of Africans? These the soul of the African reformer must morally decide and boldly obey for the progress of Africa.

The fish offers itself for the fulfillment of its fellows, man maims his men to maneuver earth’s fortunes to his side. I do not like Mr. Angola, but I can combine the best in him as marginal energy required in getting to the human best. I once disagreed with Mr. And Mrs. Ivory Coast, but their great qualities refused to pay homage to bereavement. If I neglect the best man because of their ‘best’ weaknesses, the best dream will die and will be buried in the worst caskets and graves provided by the ‘best’ evil doers! Let us therefore, deal with one another based on what we can offer, not on what we wretchedly lack, upon our group strengths alone, not our scattered weaknesses can the promise of a great Africa be realized. And note that no individual, no organization, no single nation of Africa can boast, although may lead, the absolute possession of African vision. All who constitute Africa is as African as any African! The evil we can destroy must not main us, the tragedy we can prevent must not terminate the realization of an era for which the angels and the Creator had labored and lived! The African reformer must intelligently and vigilantly work with others in the strict business of African revival!

The final freedom of Africa requires the unflinching commitment the dutiful generations of daring Africans can give. Every region of this God’s world shall peak in glory, and together with others, decorate the earth’s stage for eternal agenda. We are not as hopeless as we think, only if we are as hopeful as we should be. Hope is the only unlimited, illimitable boundary in all of our miserable history. Reconstruction, which our past inactions and negligible actions enthrones, requires consistently informed action for realization. Whether or not our counsel is wise, let humanism and sincerity spell our ways. We must prove to posterity that we are dedicated fosterers of African humanity. The development of Africa without dishing disaster for others’ consumption, is the essence of African reform; and this the African reformer must study hard and sacrifice incalculably to ensure. Let the African reformer never love out of hate, but let him never hate to love all that reform morally and humanely warrants on African planet and beyond.

Remember, pressing necessity inspires change, just impetuosity and moral tenacity attain it. This impetuosity being the inner justice and the outer moral balance of the reformer whose consistency is the sustenance of true reform, the hope of man when the tides of time sweeps off the essence of current change. It involves poverty and pains to remain in the calling of reform, but the man to be used as reformer bears all traumas to fulfill his goal against global dilemma. Good soul, the African reformer must know, is the foundation of all moral principles, freeing freedom is its fruit. If you are not good, you cannot be free; if you are not completely free, you cannot inspire and lead the world to lasting reform.

(From the Authors book Immortal Instructions)