Vol 51 No 14 | KENYA Mungiki’s new man 9th July 2010 Maina Njenga’s evolution from gang leader to born-again Christian to aspiring candidate highlights the breakdown of Kenyan politics The once unthinkable has happened: Maina Njenga, the much-feared leader of Kenya’s Mungiki militia, is carving out a new career as a mainstream politician. After his release from...
Vol 51 No 14 | KENYA Criminal business is big business 9th July 2010 Mungiki started as a Kikuyu quasi-revivalist religious cult in the Rift Valley’s Laikipia District in the late 1980s. Many Mungiki members lost their land in the 1990s when...
Vol 51 No 13 | KENYA The battle for the basic law 25th June 2010 Campaigning for next month’s constitutional referendum is a mixture of ideology, religion and personal ambition – and now the thugs have moved in The main open disagreements in the lead up to Kenya’s constitutional referendum on 4 August are about abortion, Muslim kadhi courts and land. The battle between the green...
Vol 51 No 13 | KENYA Yes, No and in between 25th June 2010 A few weeks ago, Prime Minister Raila Odinga declared that securing a new constitution was a government project, which therefore deserved state funding while the campaign against the...
Vol 51 No 13 | KENYA Bombing the campaign 25th June 2010 Police and politicians are struggling to work out who hoped to gain from the grenade attack which killed six people at an evangelical Christian rally in Uhuru Park...
Vol 51 No 12 | KENYA The rise of the watermelons 11th June 2010 The constitutional referendum is splitting parties, creating bizarre alliances and foreshadowing the 2012 elections
Vol 51 No 10 | KENYA Witnesses under threat 14th May 2010 The 8-13 May visit of International Criminal Court Prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo to Kenya allowed President Mwai Kibaki’s government to maintain the pretence that it is cooperating with...
Vol 51 No 9 | KENYA Worrying the witnesses 30th April 2010 The people behind the post-election political violence are threatening witnesses and trying to derail the international investigation Claims that a senior official in the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights (KNCHR) has been handing over information to politicians about witnesses to the 2007 post-election violence...
Vol 51 No 9 | KENYA Bye bye Betty 30th April 2010 Betty Murungi’s resignation from the Truth, Justice and Reconciliation Commission on 19 April may trigger its disbanding. Two weeks earlier, Murungi had withdrawn from her post as TJRC...
Vol 51 No 8 | KENYAGERMANY German exile 16th April 2010 News that Oku Kaunya, a former deputy Commandant in the Administration Police, has gone into exile in Germany will concentrate the minds of the investigators from the International...