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Why are elections in Kenya associated with death and tragedy? At what point in our history as nation, did bloodletting become part and parcel of the Presidential and General elections?

In Kenya today, elections are synonymous with shootings, death, sorrow and destructions in some parts of the country. Kisumu and the counties of Homa Bay, Siaya and Migori, where the Luo ethnic group is dominant have become associated with police shootings and killings during and after elections. A look into the history of elections in Kenya can help us understand the triggers of these conflicts. Karl Marx said, “History repeats itself, first as tragedy and second as farce”.

From 1960 to 1963 in the years leading to independence, the battleground was a contest between the two nationalist political parties, the Kenya African National Union (KANU) and the Kenya African Democratic Union (KADU), competing for the Senate, Parliamentary or Regional assembly seats. The competing political ideologies were for a Centralist Government as espoused by KANU and Majimbo (Federalism) as propounded by KADU. There were other parties too, Paul Ngei’s African Peoples Party (APP) and Sir Michael Blundell’s New Kenya Party but the real supremacy battle was between KANU and KADU.

In 1963, KANU consisted of the Agikuyu and Luo led by Jomo Kenyatta, Jaramogi Oginga Odinga and Tom Mboya among others. KADU was led by Ronald Ngala, Daniel arap Moi, Masinde Muliro and Martin Shikuku and was composed of the Coastal peoples, the Kalenjin of the Rift Valley and parts of Western Province with the Bukusu and a smattering of other Luhya sub-tribes. The small communities fearful of domination by the two largest communities at the time –the Agikuyu and the Luo –had come together in KADU and wanted Kenya organized into a US style federal state with six autonomous regions. KADU actually got their way at Lancaster House.

The fiery William Murgor of KADU famously announced at the January 1962 Lancaster House Conference in London, ‘If Kikuyus are settled in the Rift Valley, we will blow the whistle and have them ejected. That was a signal for his people to come out with spears and defend their territory. ‘They belong to Central Province and should vacate Rift Valley as soon as possible.’ President Jomo Kenyatta had proposed to settle the former Mau Mau and landless members of the Kikuyu tribe in the Rift Valley to occupy the lands vacated by departing white settlers and Murgor bitterly contested this settlement arrangement.

While tension was high between Kikuyu and Kalenjin land interests in the period leading up to independence, the alliance between the Kikuyu and Luo leadership was strong as all the leading Luo political leaders, Jaramogi Oginga Odinga, Tom Mboya, Ramogi Achieng’ Oneko, CMG Argwings-Kodhek and Samuel Onyango Ayodo were all in KANU.

Jaramogi served as Vice-President of Kenya and KANU while Tom Mboya was Party Secretary-General and Minister for Economic Planning and Development. Ramogi Achieng’ Oneko held the Information and Broadcasting portfolio while Onyango Ayodo served as Tourism Minister and Kodhek later joined the Cabinet as Foreign Minister. This lasted until 1966 when Jaramogi resigned as Vice –President of Kenya and formed the opposition party, Kenya Peoples Union (KPU).

Parliament subsequently passed a law which forced all MPs and Senators who had defected to the new party to lose their seats. It is worth noting, that when KADU and African Peoples Party leadership voluntarily crossed to KANU in November 1964, by elections were not held.

In May 1966 what is called the ‘Little General’ elections was held to fill the seats of the KPU defectors. This occasioned the first major multi-party elections held in Kenya and Luo-Nyanza. Six of the by elections were held in Central Nyanza District (today Kisumu and Siaya).’Tom Mboya led the KANU and Government campaign addressing 12 rallies in three days’ as narrated in Cherry Gertzel’s the Politics of Independent Kenya.

Initially they were fears of attacks on Mboya and the Government delegation but no attacks happened, as the contest was limited to a war of words. KPU portrayed Mboya as ‘a younger man who was responsible for the older mans problems, through use of imagery and idioms.’ KPU won all the seats, Bondo, Ugenya, Alego, Nyando, Kisumu Rural, and Ondiek Chillo Miguda recaptured the Central Nyanza Senate seat.

In the House of Representatives, out of 28 contested seats, Kanu garnered 21 while KPU got 7 seats. There was no violence and campaigns and voting were conducted peacefully. However, the KPU candidates were subjected to considerable official harassment. They were not, on the whole, granted licenses’ for campaign rallies and their passports were impounded. The Voice of Kenya also imposed a news blackout on the KPU activities.

KANU and KPU were expected to lock horns during the 1968 local Government elections. This did not happen when the returning officers refused to accept nomination papers from all KPU candidates. As a result all KANU candidates were elected unopposed. The country was supposed to have had General elections in 1968, but with the merger of the Upper House (Senate) and Lower House (Parliament) in late 1966, the unicameral legislature voted to extend its 5 year tenure to 6 with elections now scheduled for late 1969.

Fast forward to July 5 1969 and the country’s peace and quiet was shattered when Nahashon Isaac Njenga Njoroge shot dead Tom Mboya in a Nairobi street. Kisumu and Homa Bay bore the brunt of the protests and demonstrations with police shootings and killings. Earlier, in January 1969 Foreign Minister Clement George Michael (CMG) Argwings-Kodhek died in a mysterious road accident in Nairobi.

Kodhek was one of three Luo ministers, alongside Mboya and Ayodo who had remained in KANU and Government when KPU was formed and was MP for Gem until his death. He was succeeded by Wasonga Sijeyo of KPU who overcame Rading Omolo of KANU in the May 1969 by election, despite Mboya and KANUs aggressive campaigns.

In 1969, the Country was preparing for Presidential and General elections where Kanu was to be pitted against the KPU and President Jomo Kenyatta was to face off with Jaramogi Oginga Odinga later that year. That election happened without Jaramogi and KPU after the clash at the official opening of the New Nyanza Provincial Hospital (also known as Russia Hospital) in Kisumu between Kenyatta and Odinga on October 25 and ended up with 11 people shot dead. The deaths of Kodhek and Mboya set the tone for the clash at the hospital especially in reaction to President Kenyatta’s vitriol directed at Jaramogi Odinga and his KPU party.

KPU was banned and her Members of Parliament and the entire constellation detained without trial. Only one KPU member Grace Onyango was re-admitted to KANU and won the Kisumu Town parliamentary seat becoming the first woman elected to the August House in the entire Republic. The 1969 elections set a firm precedent regarding the exclusion of former KPU politicians from the electoral process. The election was peaceful and this was replicated in 1974.

The death of Jomo Kenyatta in 1978, seemed to usher in a short period of political rapprochement and reconciliation when new President Daniel arap Moi released political detainees, sought reconciliation and visited Nyanza province. After the Russia incident in 1969, Kenyatta did not return to Nyanza. However, KANU in line with Moi’s “Fuata Nyayo” (Follow the footsteps) stance, continued the tradition of denying the ex-KPU group an opportunity to stand in the 1979 election.

Moi established a firm grip, consolidating power under a single party and ruling the country with an iron fist particularly in response to the failed coup attempt in 1982 fronted by junior Airforce officers. The failed coup gave birth to a draconian regime that brutally dealt with dissenters. In the intervening electoral periods, 1983 and 1988, Luo Nyanza remained politically marginalized and subdued up until another prominent death shook its core in 1990.

Foreign Minister and Kisumu Town Member of Parliament, Dr Robert Ouko’s macabre murder in February 1990 set off a wave of protests, demonstrations and confrontation between police and locals in Nairobi and Kisumu and to some extent other parts of Migori and Homa Bay.

When Ouko’s remains arrived in Kisumu Stadium for last rites, the security situation deteriorated and he had to be airlifted to Nyahera, the hills above Kisumu to his parents’ home. This was after a deadly confrontation between Police, the GSU and protesters. Robert Ouko’s death and the aftermath left more than 200 people dead according to the Weekly Review.

Ouko’s murder broke any pretense at good relations between Government and the Luo community. ’If a Government Minister who has round the clock security can be kidnapped and murdered and the culprits have never been apprehended then what options do we have? ‘Queried a resident of Kisumu at the Commission of Inquiry constituted to look at Ouko’s death between October 1990 and November 1991. The Inquiry that sat at the Kisumu Municipal Council played a merry havoc with public confidence- in terms of corruption and alleged kick-backs by Ministers.

An array of issues that included the removal of the security of tenure of Judges of the High Court, the queue voting system introduced ahead of the 1988 General elections, the human rights violations in the Nyayo torture chambers and the politically instigated ethnic clashes in 1991 and 1992 led to the exodus of the Luo community from KANU to Oginga Odinga’s newly formed political party Ford in late 1991. William Murgor’s people had finally blown the whistle and they targeted opposition supporters particularly the Luo and Kikuyu. From 1992 with political pluralism back in the statutes, the opposition became vocal but Moi did not tolerate dissent. Police dealt with protests and demonstrations ruthlessly as Luo Nyanza found itself back in the line of fire.

In March 1992, police chased down multi-party demonstrators into Kisumu Boys High School and shot them down despite the fact that the school was in session. A former student who was at the institution, collecting his O-level results was one of the casualties. The State instigated ethnic cleansing continued unabated in the Rift Valley and at the borders of Nyanza and Nandi as well as the Kericho-Sondu areas. At the General election on 29 December Luo-Nyanza voted to a man and woman for Ford-Kenya and Oginga Odinga in the first multi party elections since 1966. Ford Kenya came in fourth after, Mwai Kibaki’s DP, Kenneth Matiba’s Ford Asili and Moi’s KANU that won amidst widespread claims of ballot stuffing and irregularities.

There was some respite during the cooperation between KANU and Ford-Kenya and Moi and Oginga Odinga for some time in 1993 and this lasted until Jaramogi’s death in January 1994. Tension increased again as political leaders started agitating for reforms ahead of the 1997 General elections. Government outlawed the rallies and met them with brute force, not only in Kisumu but also in the Nairobi.

With elections approaching, ethnic cleansing resumed in the Rift Valley. Kisumu was again targeted with KANU thugs given state protection. This time Alego-Usonga Constituency was the Government target in the contest between Peter Oloo Aringo of the National Development Party and the KANU candidate, Edwin Yinda. The number of those who died in that clash have never been known.

2002 was a calm year as the opposition sought to succeed Moi who was scheduled to retire after the term limits was introduced in the Constitution in 1992. The Kikuyu and the Luo joined forces to defeat KANU but the marriage did not last. Cracks emerged in the NARC Government of President Kibaki in 2003 because of the controversial Memorandum of Understanding, which promised Raila Odinga of LDP the Prime-Ministers position.

Those cracks finally came to the fore at the Constitutional referendum in November 2005. Roads Minister Raila Odinga and Cabinet colleagues Prof Anyang’ Nyong’o, Ochillo Ayacko, Najib Balala, William Ole Ntimama, Kalonzo Musyoka and Assistant Ministers, Peter Odoyo and Orwa Ojode among others led the NO team symbolized by the Orange while President Kibaki led the YES team represented by the Banana.

The November 2005 constitutional referendum between the Orange and Banana teams left death and destruction in Kisumu. One of those killed was a 13-year-old pupil at Josana Academy, shot dead by police as he came from School. The Kisumu Polytechnic gate was brought down by a GSU Landover acting as a battering ram. Students were beaten black and blue before being arrested and arraigned in Court.

Eventually all the charges were dropped because unknown to the State one student had recorded the entire episode on video. The 2007 General elections and its aftermath was the worst in living memory. During peaceful demonstrations, following the disputed result, a police officer gunned down a citizen taunting and making faces at the police, in the full glare of television cameras.

Despite the fact that this killing was recorded, the policeman was acquitted. Starting on 30 December 2007 up until the peace-accord in February 2008, police shot and killed citizens who protested the outcome of the election. Victor Odhiambo who played rugby for Kisumu RFC was one of those gunned down in Nyalenda area.

During the 2010 Constitutional referendum, Kisumu had a chance to catch its breath as President Kibaki and Prime-Minister Raila Odinga were on the same side. The peace only lasted until March 2013 with the face-off between Raila Odinga and Uhuru Kenyatta. Following the announcement of the results, those protesting clashed with the police, again resulting in shootings and death.

In the year 2015, during peaceful demonstrations against the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission, police again shot dead citizens in Siaya, Migori, Homa Bay and Kisumu.

History does repeat itself and 2017 has lived up to the painful consequence of death for protestors in Kisumu and other parts of Nyanza. Since the first election held on August 8, it is actually not possible to put a finger on the number of those killed and maimed. A 6-month-old Baby Samantha Pendo’s skull was crushed by a policeman’s boot following the protests against claims of a rigged election. A few weeks later, 2-year-old Chantal Amondi was a victim of a police bullet. She was shot on the shoulder, while playing with her neighbours.

On 26th October during the repeat elections, 26 people suffered gunshot wounds and three died, according to a record of those admitted to the New Nyanza Provincial Hospital (aka) Jaramogi Oginga Odinga Teaching and Referral Hospital. Figures released by the Kenya National Human Rights Body, IMLU and police gave conflicting numbers. Other casualties were admitted to sub-county hospitals and private institutions.

Given this history of state brutality, the trends of ethnic profiling remain self-evident. Policing in areas populated by communities aligned to the ruling regime is restrained and moderated. In recent times, a look at how the police have dealt with demonstrations in Gusii, Kitale, Bungoma, Vihiga, Mombasa and even Nairobi contrast sharply with the sort of excesses that have been normalized in Luo-Nyanza. Rarely will you find citizens shot and killed over an election contest.

The only thing new elections have taught us in Kenya, is that we have learned nothing from the old. Why are elections in Kenya associated with death and tragedy? The simple answer is the lack of electoral integrity and credibility that is an essential ingredient in reconciling political conflicts peacefully. Until, Kenya holds free and fair elections that adhere to the rule of law, Kenyans who rise up against injustice will continue to bleed. As the black American singer and actor turned Civil Rights activist Paul Robeson said, “The answer to injustice is not to silence the critic but to end injustice”.


Paul Okong’o is a political scientist based in Kisumu.

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One Zambia, Many Nations



One Zambia, Many Nations

Within 30 minutes of meeting two different groups of people, Zambian rapper Pilato’s satire of Donald Glover’s This is America, becomes a topic. Pilato, to those who don’t know him, is to Zambia what Bobi Wine is to Uganda. A musician and an activist. Except that Pilato, real name Fumba Chama, failed to get a seat in Zambia’s August house in the last elections. But he, like Bobi Wine, has been arrested for protesting against and criticizing the current administration. To one of my well-heeled friends, Pilato’s This is Zambia is a poorly executed, poor reflection of the nation because ‘there is so much more to Zambia than the Chinese doing business here.’ He should decide, my friend says, on whether he wants to be a musician or a politician because, at the moment, he is not doing either of the two well. To our cab driver Mich and his friend, it’s an honest reflection of the country. ‘Pilato talks the truth in that song,’ Mich says. ‘We shall soon be asking the Chinese for permission to live in our country because they own so much of us. And, we are also so desperate that we want quick solutions through these alleged prophets.’ Mich knows what he is talking about regarding the latter. When he hears that our next stop is Zimbabwe, he laughs and tells us how he did a spiritual journey to Prophet Magaya in the neighbouring country. ‘It was a waste of money. I sowed a seed from my savings and years later, nothing has come of it.’

The evening Mich picks us up from the Inter-City Bus Stop on Dedan Kimathi Rd is our first night in Zambia since 2016. Back then, the current President Edgar Lungu was preparing to be elected for the first time after having taken over the reins of power on the late President Michael Sata’s unexpected demise. This time, the only election that was on the cards was for the Mayor of Lusaka. Mich, a University of Zambia graduate who has been relegated to driving his mother’s car as a cab to earn an income and a strong supporter of the opposition, had already pronounced that whatever he wished, the candidate for the governing PF would win. ‘He is getting an endorsement from the President but even if he wasn’t winning, they would find a way for him to win.’ On this occasion, we are in Zambia for one night only. I shall return two weeks later for a writing workshop. The next time around, I will be in Zambia’s second largest city, Kitwe, in the Copperbelt Province. For now though as we depart for Harare, everyone in our party notices that the roads from Lusaka towards the border with Zimbabwe seem to be much better than those we have had to deal with from the Nakonde border with Tanzania. The reason is simple. Zambia and Zimbabwe do a lot of trade with each other and their capitals are a mere eight hours away from each other.

We take a little longer than we should at the border because Zimbabwe Customs want us to take all our luggage out and pay for any goods beyond a speculated number. The luggage goes through the X-Ray scanner after which we still have to stand by our luggage while a specially trained sniffer dog passes by each of our luggage. This is how my 13-year-old son ends up with four pieces of hair braids in his baggage. A woman who was seated next to us asked us whether we could please carry her braid pieces as she had eight and the maximum one can carry are four. It seemed a tad ridiculous, to say the least. The only other border where there is such curious attention to detail on what one brings in is at Beit Bridge border post as one enters or exits South Africa. When I return, I will notice that our bus just drives right through into Zambia after passports are stamped. It’s a great feeling.

I spend the night of my return in Lusaka with a Zambian writer friend before flying out. There seem to be many literary groupings in Zambia but so few books coming out which are competitive worldwide or even continentally. When I ask her why that is, she speculates that it’s because writing doesn’t pay but having the writer title is considered prestigious. So when people can have a little money on the side, they will write manuscripts and self-publish then have an author among their title while they continue with the daily grind of selling tomatoes or going to the office. I become apprehensive. What will I encounter at the writing workshop I am about to have over the weekend in Kitwe?

There are no flights from Lusaka to Kitwe so I fly to Ndola, hometown to Edgar Lungu and an hour away from Kitwe. I am on a small plane where we are not more than ten passengers. Flight time is a mere 45 minutes and this new airline manages to offer a snack and a drink on this short flight. On arrival, our flight attendant announces, ‘Welcome to Ndola Airport. We kindly ask passengers that they remain seated until Honourable blah blah has disembarked.’ Yet again I can’t help thinking how I absolutely abhor what I call a Mheshimiwa Complex that seems to be all over this continent. As I am leaving I ask the flight attendant, ‘Tell me. Why did you want us to wait for the Minister to disembark? Is he not a public servant and therefore should be waiting for the public first?’ The flight attendant is taken aback. He laughs. ‘You are not from here, are you?’ I answer that as a matter of fact I am. Baggage claim, in these sort of encounters, is the great equalizer. And so I take small delight in taking my bag before he does. However, as I am getting into a cab, I notice that the driver who came to pick up Mhesh from the airport is carrying his briefcase and his bag. Sigh. I arrive at my lodging in Kitwe an hour later.

In the morning, I shall meet the participants for the two day writing workshop. There are six writers in the workshop. I am particularly impressed by one young writer whose imagination, if he continues to write, would be perfect for the Arthur C. Clarke international science fiction award. The other writers are pretty impressive too and I understand why they may have been selected for the workshop. Only one writer worries me, although I say nothing about how I feel loudly. As I am giving them some different writing prompts, his pieces almost always conclude with a rebirth in Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. It’s fascinating to watch the interaction between he and the sci-fi writer, a young man who could be his son and who is taking a gap year before starting university next year. I do not know whether the young man is too much for him, but he does not return on the final day.

In conversation with the writers who all seem to be from families that are not rich but fairly comfortable, there is a sense of uncertainty about their futures. As I listen to them during our breaks, I can’t help but notice that I have seen these youngsters in many countries on the continent. I have seen them in Kenya, in Zimbabwe, in Botswana, in Ghana and in Nigeria. Those who are employed, are doing some contractual work for some NGOs and they hope they can be there for a long time, donor funding permitting. A couple do not work but are university graduates still staying at home praying for something, anything, to come up. The gap year young man is the only one who seems to still have some hope that through sheer hard work, he can make it. For his sake, I hope Zambia sorts itself out before he graduates. Unfortunately, the manager of our establishment makes me lose a bit of that hope. On a drive into town, she tells me of the debt that the country now owes our friends in the East. In Kitwe, as in Ndola, I spot a large Bank of China. ‘Is this a big thing here, I have seen it in Ndola too.’ She tells me that Bank of China is not for the locals but for the Chinese investors. ‘If any of us are using it, it’s because we are in partnership with Chinese companies.’

When I return to Lusaka, I shall be with my well-heeled friends. It’s a day before a public holiday so people are ordering beers in pitchers at Keg and Lion, a pub in Eastpark, one of Lusaka’s malls. Perhaps there is uncertainty here but it’s not as visible as it was among the writers in Kitwe or in conversation with Mich and his friends. The patrons are well-dressed and talk casually of whether the best parties are in Lagos, New York or Joburg. They talk of international airlines they will no longer fly because of profiling and have a relative or two in London who they have bought groceries for while visiting. When they get ill, my well-heeled friends in Keg & Lion will be stabilized then fly out of the country to mend, just like the two Presidents of Zambia who died in office. It’s a different face of Zambia, a face with so few of the country’s population but unfortunately for Pilato and his fans, this too is Zambia. The connected Zambia that matters and is worth paying attention to -according to those who govern the land – except just before elections. In this way, Zambia duplicates many other African nations.

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ZIMBABWE: The more things change, the more they stay the same?



Photo: Flickr/Commonwealth Secretariat

On the morning of Sunday the 26th of August as I walk along Addis Ababa Rd in the Lusaka suburb of Rhodespark, I hear sirens and see about eight motorcycles and the blue lights that shout Political Leadership Traveling. There are police all along the street. I greet one and she replies in a friendly voice. ‘So, is there a state guest this early in the morning or is the President going to church?’ I ask the last bit cheekily. She smiles. ‘No. The President is going to Zimbabwe for the inauguration.’ I, Zambian-born to a Zimbabwean mother and a South African father, have found myself following these particular Zimbabwean elections on the ground in the two countries. My fellow travelers and I leave Zambia for Zimbabwe on the 27th of July. We want to be on time for the final pre-election rallies in Zimbabwe.

Like the Kenyan elections in 2017, there are more than 20 candidates running in the Zimbabwean elections. Only two candidates seem to matter though according to most voters I talk to. Seventy five year old Emmerson Dambudzo Mnangagwa, the incumbent, for ZANU (PF) and 40 year old Nelson Chamisa of the MDC Alliance. ZANU supporters popularly chant, tweet or finish their facebook or Whatsapp posts with #EDPfee, meaning ED is in. Chamisa supporters, more vitriolic on social media push the Chamisa Chete Chete narrative (#CCC ) which translates to Chamisa Only. The incumbent shows financial muscle with ZANU branded four wheel drives all over the place, ZANU branded clothes for free give away and billboards all over the city stating what he promises to bring with his ‘new’ government. Chamisa supporters have to purchase caps, t-shirts and hoodies to fundraise for their candidate and on the evening before the final rally the candidate himself tweets asking for $5 donations to pay poll agents on election day.

On the day of the final rally, we kick off our day by attending Zimbabwean writer Panashe Chigumadzi’s launch of her book These Bones Will Rise. It’s a fitting book launch to attend during this time as it traces the history of Zimbabwe from precolonial days with a particular focus on the popular spirit medium, Nehanda Nyakasikana and how she has been co-opted since the colonial era into the narrative of the sole governing party since independence, ZANU (PF). I spot many literary types at this event at Theatre in the Park. Surprisingly full for an event on a Saturday morning.

My cousin B who is a strong supporter of the governing party promises to come and meet up with me to attend the ZANU (PF) rally at the National Sports Stadium. Hours later she has not turned up. I end up attending only the opposition rally at Freedom Square near Harare Sheraton and ironically ZANU (PF) headquarters. We arrive at Freedom Square around 2 in the afternoon. Initially the rally was supposed to be at the National Sports Stadium but somehow they were denied the space and the governing party held their rally there instead. The energy was electric and the field was all red. Images coming from the National Sports Stadium, on the other hand, showed a stadium that was near empty with the gates closed when people tried to depart. A popular tweet going around read I want a wife who celebrates whenever I come home like Chamisa’s supporters. This was replied by another, doubtless also a Chamisa supporter, Not one who’s like an ED supporter who walks out when I start speaking. I couldn’t help thinking though that perhaps Harare was not the best place for the final opposition rally. The major cities of Zimbabwe are without a doubt, largely opposition strongholds. It may therefore have made more of an impact if the final rally was in Uzumba Maramba Pfungwe (Zimbabwe’s electoral equivalent of Tharaka Nithi for unaccounted numbers of ZANU voters in contested elections). On that final rally, Chamisa disturbingly states that he has no issues with Mugabe and will work with his break away party who are now part of his alliance.

The day before election, former President Mugabe calls a media conference where he whines about having been given a pension of $467 thousand dollars only in a country where people spend hours in queues to access $30 of their money a day. He famously also complains that the roof at his house needs repairs and the current leadership of ZANU is ignoring him. He, he tells all those who are watching, needs to bring in artisans from China to fix. Because, clearly, there are no people in Zimbabwe who can fix a roof. Finally when asked who he will vote for, he states that he cannot vote for the people who overthrew him. He too joins the Harare urban chant, ‘Chamisa chete chete.’ That same Sunday ED responds to the press conference via social media telling all and sundry how Chamisa equals Mugabe. Chamisa too calls a press conference and cockily declares that he has already won and any Presidential loss will be yet again rigging by ZANU (PF). Both leading candidates are reported for violating Zimbabwean electoral laws for campaigning after the last date permitted. The Chair of the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) Judge Priscilla Chigumba announces to the country that two candidates are being investigated for electoral breaches. Up until today, inauguration day, we never hear what happened to the charges. Certainly no-one got disqualified.

Election Day dawns with much excitement for me. I shadow my cousin, a journalist, through some polling stations in Harare and the surrounds. In most places I visit, the lines for men seem longer than those for women. I am unsure whether the women voted earlier in the morning or whether they have just decided none of the candidates work for them. The 40 year old candidate of ‘change’ has said some seriously misogynistic statements including ‘jokingly’ offering his sister to the incumbent should he win the elections. The incumbent, on the other hand, has failed to deliver any of the promises post the coup-that-wasn’t such as prosecuting corrupt politicians. Later, I go to a friend’s bar with some friends. Election Day for 2018 in Zimbabwe coincides with my birthday. Banter between the Chamisa and ED supporters is lighthearted with each group believing their candidate will win. The ED supporters generally seem to be more financially well-off than the Chamisa supporters though.

Two days later, I am in Harare CBD buying bus tickets to return to Zambia for a writing workshop. I walk down First Street from Samora Machel Avenue. I look left on Nelson Mandela Avenue and see a sea of red-clad MDC supporters near MDC headquarters now dubbed Morgan Tsvangirayi House. With them, I see a truck with riot police. Both the police and the MDC supporters appear in high spirits but nothing appears untoward. On my return from Road Port from buying ticket, I get into Greenwood Pharmacy on First Street where my great aunt is filling out a prescription. Things soon change. We have to be closed inside the pharmacy. Chamisa supporters are now marching asking for shops to be closed until election results are released. My 70-something old great aunt decides they are not threatening and asks that we be let out of the pharmacy. We walk down with the demonstrators and the march seems good-natured. When someone attempts to take a video, a young man points at her, ‘madam, you are not an election observer. This is your country too. Join us.’ Everyone laughs. I part with my great aunt when she gets on a kombi to her home. I am going the opposite direction for a kombi to where I am staying. As I cross the road to get to the rank, a man driving warns a policewoman beside me, ‘Amai. Go and buy some civilian clothing quickly. These guys will attack you.’ An MDC supporter who is part of a group walking in the same direction replies, ‘Don’t worry amai. Nothing will happen to you. You are a member of the Zimbabwe Republic Police not the ZANU Republic Police.’ More good-natured laughter. I get to the rank. The protestors have told the drivers that they can’t load. ‘We are shutting down the city until they give us the results. The longer they keep them, the greater the chances of rigging.’ ZEC has five days to announce the results. But Chamisa’s supporters are restless. The kombi drivers leave the rank. I have to walk up to get the kombi elsewhere far away from the protestors.

A WhatsApp text from a Kenyan friend comes in as soon as the kombi starts leaving.

Hello Zooks. Are you guys safe?

Of course I’m safe. Why would you ask that? I reply.

Twitter says there is shooting happening in Harare CBD. He replies.

Rubbish. Some alarmists obviously. I was just there. There are protests but everything I have seen is peaceful.


When I get home I put on ENCA to see how the vote-counting is going. It is then I realize my Kenyan friend was right.

ENCA journalist Thulasizwe Simelane is interviewing some injured people. There are claims of three dead. The shooters? The Zimbabwean army.

Later, we will learn that six people died. Among them, a friend’s aunt shot in the back while walking to her car after shutting up shop.

Later too, ZANU supporters will talk of how rowdy MDC supporters were. They will talk of how sad it is that there have been loss of lives but Chamisa is responsible for the loss of lives of these people. He shouldn’t have told his supporters to protest. I shed a tear for the deceased. Almost a year ago, I heard similar statements in another country. In different guises, ZANU and KANU seem destined to govern forever whatever lives are lost. An old Chimurenga 2 song states Zimbabwe ndeyeropa. The song still rings true in 2018. Blood has been shed. The incumbent who, until he became an electoral candidate, was Commander-in-Chief says he doesn’t know who deployed the military. There shall be investigations.

I get on the bus to return to Zambia the next day.

Members of Zimbabwe National Army ask for a ride from the driver. They are let in. Uniformed services generally are permitted free rides on public transport as a rule in Zimbabwe. On the bus, the air is hostile. When they disembark, voices are raised. ‘These killers,’ someone says. A conversation ensues. There is a ZANU supporter behind me. Voices are raised. How can any reasonable person suffering like everyone support ZANU, someone asks. When the ZANU supporter states that he is from Uzumba, everyone laughs and the tension is reduced.

That night, results are announced.

ED is a winner with over 10 percent more voters for Presidential elections than there were for council and Parliament.

MDC says they were rigged. They are on their way to court. The court accepts the papers.

The inauguration is cancelled.

Reports are that there is a raid at MDC Harare East Parliamentarian Tendai Biti’s home. He decides that he is in danger and attempts to escape into Zambia. Zambia deports him. A friend suggests that he is getting payback for his support for Zambian opposition leader Hakainde. No-one knows. What everyone knows though is the tweet that Zimbabwean incumbent tweets. He has given an order for Biti to be released. So the judiciary is captured? Is the question many throw around on social media.

MDC goes to court.

For the first time in Zimbabwean history, it’s televised.

I am back in Zimbabwe at the time of the court presentations.

My pro-ZANU lawyer cousin is convinced that MDC’s case was weak. They won’t win.

My pro-MDC lawyer cousin is convinced the MDC case was strong. The election will be annulled or at the least, there will be a rerun.

I am no lawyer but I am impressed by the ZEC and MDC lawyers.

I have just got into Lusaka, Zambia on Friday afternoon when the court ruling comes in.

MDC’s case has been dismissed with costs.

Chamisa dismisses the dismissal.

The inauguration is not delayed.

Today, Sunday morning, Edgar Lungu of Zambia wakes up the residents of Rhodespark in Lusaka with sirens as he makes his way to the inauguration.

No-one has still been held responsible for the death of the six people on August 1. There is no feedback on the investigation on who deployed the soldiers.

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The Schools of Fire and Blood




The Schools of Fire and Blood

I was once suspended for inciting a strike. Or at least that is what the letter said. It was the March of my second year in high school; in my first, we had gone on strike twice. The first was a peaceful act of protest that begun at the assembly ground on a cold Monday morning, moved to a kamukunji in the sports field, and ended with us walking seven kilometers to the highway.

The second was a brutal affair. To this day, I am not sure exactly why we went on strike. Days before the national exam begun, we woke up in a war zone. People breaking window panes, banging on doors, and fighting. What we woke up to, in the rooms nearest the toilets, which were nicknamed Soweto, was a hooded boy whipping one of my roommates with a hockey stick. The combined chaos was traumatic, and explains why I still hyperventilate whenever I hear a metal door banging.

The reasons for both were varied; the first involved a long list of asks, including a new TV. The reasons for the second were less defined, and did not matter much as we ran through the trees and climbed over the gate at midnight. What did was saving our lives, and helping the injured away from the mess.

After the chaos of my first year, we got a new deputy principal, a disciplinarian tyrant who came with the energy of a man on a mission. With no rules beyond those he decreed. Those rules were madness, and his favored way of implementing them was slaps, punches, suspensions and expulsions.

While I sat on the floor in his office that Wednesday morning in March, he said “I didn’t even know you, so huwezi sema ninakukuonea.” He said other things, but that is the sentence that lingers to this day. On that cold floor with my friend and classmate Jackson, who had returned from a previous suspension just two days before, our attempt at explaining what the grievance was dug us deeper into the hole. It was a simple demand, to restore the labor system we had found, which made first years the “wheelbarrows” of the school, with duties reducing as one moved through the four years. We had paid our dues, we felt, but the man sitting across from us did not want to hear. “You were planning a strike”, he repeatedly said, and our attempt at protest was indiscipline. We returned two weeks later, to sit outside the principal’s office as the adults in the room discussed how we should be punished. I was called in, for a short five minutes. I stood at the end of a long table, in a room full of men (including my father), and answered three questions. None was about what the issue had been, or what I had hoped to achieve. At the end of it, my tormentor pushed a ‘contract’ that stated that if I was caught in any act of indiscipline again, I would be expelled. Then I went back outside and sat. An hour or so later, my father, a retired high school teacher at that point, walked out right past me.

I spent the next three nights digging a pit, my act of penance. In my file, the contract sat at the very top, a reminder that this one misunderstanding would be part of my school record forever. Jackson did not survive. He survived our suspension, but he was on a third one within a week for a frivolous charge. Then he was expelled.

The result of this tyranny, which included a spy network (which is how they had learnt of our plan to approach the man), was not a better learning environment where discipline thrived to everyone’s benefit. It was the reverse. We became a police state in many ways, engaging in guerrilla acts of protest and subterfuge that extended beyond the school fence. Once, someone poked holes into the deputy principal’s tyres while his car was parked outside a hotel in a nearby town. Then, someone punched his young son in the face in the middle of a sports day. The culprit was never caught, even though the incident took place in the middle of the day on a field with hundreds of people.

Burned spies were hunted down and, in the middle of night, beaten to a pulp by groups of people with anything they could get their hands on. They lost their mattresses and blankets, and had to sit watching their laundry dry because it would disappear if they blinked too slowly. They became social pariahs, often only saved by being appointed to the prefect body, if they were not already members of it. Still, the resistance was broken by the brutality of the consequences.

The only time we came close to striking again was once when the deputy principal horsewhipped someone so badly he tore his back in multiple places. But there were many foiled attempts, sometimes only known to us when people were expelled. The relationship between the administration and the student body was irreparably broken, and it felt as if we were hostages as opposed to teenagers seeking an education. There was no recourse for injustice because even the parent body felt such measures were necessary to keep the peace. But it was not peace, it was just the absence of war.

Once, in my third year I think, we came back from the holidays to new rules. Only school uniform would be allowed within the school walls., Anything else we had with us was left in a pile, stashed in sacks, and hidden in the stores. Our t-shirts, jumpers, and pyjamas stayed there for more than six months. In the meantime, in the freezing days of Kijabe, we suffered recurrent bouts of flu and chest infections. Any attempts at getting our clothes back, so we could keep warm, resulted in the same consequences as organizing a strike or burning a dorm. So we stayed submissive, until we eventually could not. Three friends and I cornered the deputy principal one Saturday afternoon as he was walking up to his office. We told him, as politely and as vaguely as we could, that we were barely surviving the cold nights. He had this odd smile on his face, perhaps because of the distance we kept from him while we relayed the plea. Not be within arm’s reach of the man was a survival tactic, because he was ambidextrous with his slaps. He listened, and said repeatedly that whatever was not part of the school uniform was contraband. We told him about the chest infections, and the flu, but he was adamant. So we thanked him for his time and bid him a good day. It was only three months later that we got our clothes back, mouldy and damp. We could now wear them as long as they were under the school uniform. It was a small win, but a win nonetheless.

The man himself became my unwilling mentor (the lack of will was on my part) as I became the school pen. He pushed me to write more, and would publicly embarrass me if I had nothing for my five-minute news bulletin time slot during the school assembly. My reports were a mix of journalism, satire and sometimes pure gossip, a break in an otherwise boring school tradition. My personal relationship with him evolved from that Wednesday morning in March to somewhat of a distant friendship. He was still a brutal, angry man, but for some odd reason he thawed around me.  To the point of once reminding him of a time he slapped me so hard I farted as I fell on my back in his office. He laughed about it, we both did. But his idea of our inclination towards mischief remained, as did his spy network and his own creepy appearance in the school at odd hours, hunting for new culprits.

Our school grades remained unchanged, but for the next three years, there were no successful strikes. Any problems we had that we couldn’t solve ourselves, we swept under the rug and moved on. Any knowledge we had of who was sneaking out to meet girls or buy food or go drinking we kept to ourselves. Unless it somehow found itself in the wrong circles, then all we saw was people carrying their metal boxes and threadbare mattresses out of the gate. Or coming back with a roll of wire mesh as punishment, before being expelled.


Since the first school strike in Kenya, at Maseno School in 1908, students have gone on strike for almost any reason you can think of. At Maseno, the problem was that no learning was happening. The students were instead manual laborers, until they got tired of it.

Once, Alliance High School went on strike because there had been a fight, about foreskin politics, during a football match. Then some strikes, and I would say quite a sizeable number, have been spontaneous, because as Margaret Gatimu found out in this study, of “established cultural norms which dictated fights for power and status.”

Then of course there have been more legitimate causes for protest. Trying to get the attention of the administrators and sometimes even parents to a real or perceived injustice. Or even, as we’ve seen lately, real criminal activity by and against students. In other places it has been teachers driving strikes, to make the institutions ungovernable and get rid of administrators they don’t like.

There were schools like Njoro Boys in Nakuru County and Githiga High School in Kiambu county which were legends in the strike business. I think I once heard they were gazetted at some point as problem schools, got two deputy principals, and gave one an open ticket to instil discipline.

In other schools, there were cases of rapes and deaths and fires. There was Bombolulu, St. Kizito and Kyanguli. There were claims of devil worship and homosexuality. The system doubled down on punishment to find some order, built on the colonial thinking that power is always right. And that children are always wrong, and any stubbornness on their part was an act of defiance. It was a system built to subdue; a boot camp designed to break young men and women and teach them their distance from power. To silence their ability to express themselves, their needs, and their problems. To teach them that to survive, they had to keep their heads down, their mouths shut, and their sexuality suppressed. Granted, the same thing was happening in the larger, adult world outside as well. So they expected their kids to submit too.

For the first seven years after independence, acts of protest in high schools were often peaceful. Then something snapped in the 1970s and they became more violent, more coordinated, and more destructive. A new authoritarian trend was trickling down the Kenyan social structure again, and the subjects in that system were reacting. It made high school and university students experts in guerrilla warfare not just against their teachers, but also against the state and its security forces. It brought fire, for example, the fore as a tool of choice because it is fast, vicious, and requires less cooperation on the arsonist’s part. It made administrators and teachers enemies of the majority, and anyone working with them equally so. It made betrayal punishable by beatings and recently, even poisoning. This is the stuff of war, not education.

Between 1986 and 1991, according to BA Ogot in his memoirs My Footprints on the Sands of Time, there were 567 school strikes (305 mixed schools, 206 boy schools and 56 girl schools). That was a rate of a school strike every two days of the school calendar. Despite this, President Moi only appointed a commission of inquiry after The Rape of St. Kizito where 71 girls were raped by the male students and 19 died trying to escape from their attackers.

That dark night was the worst yet, and it had begun as a protest against fees. The girls refused to participate in a planned strike, and on the night of July 13th 1991, all hell broke loose. The 271 teenage schoolgirls fled and hid in their biggest dormitory, locking all points of entry. At 1:00 a.m, after an initial attempt to break the doors had failed, the boys came back with bigger stones and smashed the doors down. The result was a massacre that shocked a nation, and the immediate consequence was the arrests of more than ten suspected rapists and three watchmen.

But the reaction, or rather the response of the school’s administration was the most telling of the problems emblematic of our school system. The principal said the school was haunted, and then added that rape was, in fact, a common occurrence there. He seemed to be saying that the only difference of the night of July 13th was that 19 girls had died, four of them from suffocation. The boys, as his deputy infamously and tellingly told the president “…just wanted to rape.”

It was appalling, but the response was not to try and make schools safer by listening and responding to student grievances, it was to double down on disciplinary measures. The Rape of St. Kizito was not the only time that year that boys in a mixed school broke down doors and dragged girls outside where they repeatedly gang-raped them. In another major incident of the year in another school, students protesting the bad state of their food drowned the school cook in a vat of porridge. The only reason St. Kizito made news, as someone noted at the time, was because 19 girls died. This remained the case when, 7 years later, 25 girls died in Bombolulu in a school fire.

And three years after that when 68 young boys were turned into smouldering piles of ash at Kyanguli. It was one of those days when everything that could go wrong, goes wrong. Arsonists begun a fire in a dormitory, then it got out of hand because someone had lost the key to one door and no one bothered to change the lock. Half the boys in bed that night couldn’t make it to the other side of the fire, and in the mix of panic, stampede and survival instinct, died. The same sequence of events happened at Bombolulu, except for the part where the girls were actually locked in their dorms at night. Sources differ on whether it was arson or the result of an electrical fault.

Then, in 1999, a group of arsonists locked four of their prefects in their cubicle at Nyeri High School, and doused it with petrol before setting it on fire.

In all these cases of extreme violence, there was always an underlying reason. At Kyanguli it was the cancellation of the results of the previous years national exams for 100 students, and the discussion, or lack of, on whether they should pay school fees to resit the exam. The pattern was the same. The administration had refused to listen to the students, and had responded only when it was too late. In their own macabre way, these extreme cases forced not just the administration, but the entire educational system to listen. But it was only as an immediate reaction to the tragedies, after which the system slid back into its old ways. And each generation of teenagers found that the only way to get the system to respond was to protest, burn a dorm, beat teachers and refuse to stay in school. Because of the overwhelmingly male nature of such violence, many of the strikes were in boy schools. Girls had to, and still have to, contend with the added gendered risks if they wanted to burn their school and escape in the middle of the night.

Each wave of school strikes is explained away with rampant indiscipline and the lack of corporal punishment in the school system. Despite the fact that research shows that violence among teenagers can spread like a contagion, as it often does in Kenya schools every few years, the glaring risk factor of one-way communication remains unchallenged. Children are meant to be seen and not heard and even teenagers, who are just years or months away from adulthood, are still considered treated as kids. Because often their priorities are different and immediate, like better food or less bullying, they are postponed until they cannot- be. Now, kids caught up in the only recourse they feel they have, are to be condemned with a criminal record for the rest of their lives.

The same approach to strikes in universities that has cowed student bodies and made those education institutions prison-like entities will be escalated at the high school level on minors. If you think about it, the school system and the prison system have many things in common… The authoritarian structures, the set dress code, the emphasis on silence and order, the negative reinforcement, the loss of individual autonomy and the collective punishment. Like a prison, students walk in lines and have set times, enforced with severe punishment, for eating, recreation, and sleep…and recently, just like in the prison system, we are trying to set the same uniform for all schools in the country.

The state is doubling down on punishment despite the fact that our laws, despite their many flaws, are insistent on the protection and privacy of minors, even when they exhibit criminal behavior. But none of this will help, at least not in the way they think it will. If the issues that trigger strikes remain, and the adults in the room insist on speaking above the kids they have been tasked to educate, then nothing will change.



A few years after I left, I was in my alma mater for an event when I bumped into my former tormentor and mentor, and we took a short walk together. There were many things to talk about, including how someone had burnt a dorm the previous term. The forlorn look on the man’s face, of failure on his part, was matched with his pursing lips, like a quiet determination not to let it happen again. I did not pry and got the details from someone else. After years of foiled strikes over different issues, both flimsy and salient, someone had finally succeeded. His choice of weapon, fire, was combined with another trait that tends to emerge in war zones; he was a lone ranger. He torched one of the biggest dorms in school, not at night, but in the morning while everyone was gathered for the school assembly. All the teachers saw was the smoke billowing towards the sky. There was no way to know who the lone arsonist was because the student body went on a stampede, expectedly.

A few years ago, the man who represented law and order at my alma mater tragically lost his son. The boy who had been punched in the school field, now a young man, drowned in a swimming pool. From the reactions in the many alumni Whatsapp and Facebook groups, what stood out was the lack of sympathy for his father. More than a decade after some of us left the school, which he had also left by then, he was still considered a vile human being who deserved any misfortune that came his way. This being said by people who were young parents, and who in a few years, would be driving their kids to begin their new high school life.

High school students might still be minors, but they are not the mindless creatures the school system is designed to treat them as. And they keep reminding the adults in power about this, generation after generation, often fruitlessly. The adults imagine schools to be utopias. They are not.

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