On 18 November, the insecurities of the past welled up in a bloody bout of peacetime carnage in Kampala – a massacre ignited by fear of a musician who has stolen the nation’s heart.
The patterns of state violence in Uganda are sadly repetitive as the ruling party obstructs burgeoning criticism to President Yoweri Museveni’s decades-long grip on power.
It is not an accident that much of the narrative war is being fought on social media. Social media is fertile ground for having one sided debate. For the elites, it is a place where captured attention can be exchanged for dollars and because of it, careful analysis, and nuance—arguably the most important characteristics of intellectuals—are disincentivised.
The incoming Biden administration will find monumental setbacks that are almost insurmountable in the age of COVID-19. Everyday, whether the stock market or unemployment figures reflect it or not, the economic reality for tens of thousands of Americans grows harsher.
The BBI report is not a document for building durable peace in Kenya because it ignores the causes and consequences of past political violence. Instead, the report invents “ethnic antagonism and competition” and “divisive elections” as challenges, and hastily jumps to the expansion of the Executive as the solution.
Given the allegations of COVID-related graft in Kenya, it is not surprising that many Kenyans have little trust in their government’s management of the coronavirus pandemic and that some believe that the government is paying for good PR about patient recovery to demonstrate to donors a continued need for COVID funds.
Deputy President William Ruto’s political campaign is not a class struggle; it is a struggle for power – for himself. He is organising and mobilising his political base the same way the political sons of the late Daniel arap Moi organised their politics – through transactional methods that exploited human need, greed and ambitions for power.
Dramatic geopolitical shifts taking place in the Horn of Africa suggest that Kenya might be staring at a white elephant project in Lamu. The much-hyped LAPSSET project no longer interests landlocked Ethiopia and South Sudan, which are now looking for sea trade routes in Eritrea, Somaliland and Djibouti.
Thirty years after Eritrea gained independence from Ethiopia, there has hardly been any meaningful development in this small nation in the Horn of Africa. On the contrary, the government’s authoritarian policies have undermined democracy and forced young people to flee the country.
The emotional energy invested in controlling the recruitment of the next Chief Justice could turn out to be a source of great frustration when administrative fiat and bench-fixing do not deliver the anticipated results.
