Commentary

Misango Arts’ Painful Miss: Kisumu’s Lost Stage in Ghana

Misango Arts’ Painful Miss: Kisumu’s Lost Stage in Ghana

The failure of Misango Arts Ensemble to attend the 6th World of Black and African Festival of Arts and Culture (Festac) in Accra, Ghana, is more than a logistical mishap—it is a profound indictment of misplaced priorities and poor cultural planning in Kisumu. At a time when the city had the rare chance to project its artistic excellence on a continental stage, bureaucratic inertia and the inexplicable withdrawal of minimal financial support ensured that Kisumu’s voice was silenced. This absence not only undermined the artists who trained relentlessly for half a year but also stripped the county of a critical…
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Sakaja’s Narrow Escape: Power, Patronage, and Why Impeachment Stalled

Sakaja’s Narrow Escape: Power, Patronage, and Why Impeachment Stalled

Nairobi’s Governor Johnson Sakaja is caught in the cross-winds of finance, politics, and public anger. On paper, the numbers look fatal: overwhelming assembly signatures, long lists of alleged malfeasance, and service-delivery failures across the city. In practice, however, he survives—because impeachment in Nairobi is decided less by facts than by the political marketplace. Patronage, coalition bargains, and elite self-interest have combined to suspend a seemingly inevitable ouster. What follows is an anatomy of his predicament—and of the political logic that makes removal improbable for now. The Case Against Him: Overwhelming Signatures, Deep Service Failures By early September, 87 MCAs—about 71%…
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Rigathi Gachagua’s Citizen TV Interview: The False Saint Attempting to Whitewash His Past

Rigathi Gachagua’s Citizen TV Interview: The False Saint Attempting to Whitewash His Past

Rigathi Gachagua’s appearance on Citizen TV after returning from his chaotic tour of the United States was nothing short of political theatre—an exercise in self-exoneration staged by a man who knows his time at the helm of Kenya’s ruling bloc is slipping away. Speaking with rehearsed indignation, Gachagua portrayed himself as a victim of President William Ruto’s “high-handedness,” claiming assassination plots, bribery in Parliament, and systematic exclusion from the state apparatus. Yet, beneath the veneer of a repentant statesman lies the same political operator who, when in government, openly declared Kenya to be a company of “shareholders,” reducing the nation…
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Ruto’s Accusations Against MPs: A Manufactured Crisis or Prelude to a Political Realignment?

Ruto’s Accusations Against MPs: A Manufactured Crisis or Prelude to a Political Realignment?

President William Ruto’s accusations that Members of Parliament and Senators are taking bribes to pass bills have detonated a political earthquake in Kenya. The spectacle has paralyzed parliamentary committees, triggered unprecedented demands for the President to testify before the legislature, and deepened mistrust between the executive and legislative arms of government. At first glance, it seems like a bold anti-corruption crusade. Yet, if examined more carefully, it looks like something more sinister: a deliberate provocation to manufacture crisis, reset political alignments, and prepare the ground for 2027. The allegations—MPs allegedly receiving Ksh 10 million to pass the Anti-Money Laundering Bill,…
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2027 Is Already Decided: How the Ruling Elite Stage-Manages Kenya’s Democracy

2027 Is Already Decided: How the Ruling Elite Stage-Manages Kenya’s Democracy

Mediocrity as National Policy It is finally sinking in—albeit too slowly—that Kenya’s politics is not a contest of ideas but a circus of mediocrity carefully normalized to dull the collective mind. The oppressed masses, forever clutching at the illusion of salvation, are fixated on 2027 as if the ballot box will somehow deliver a breakthrough from oppression. Yet the political menu on offer—Kalonzo Musyoka, Rigathi Gachagua, Martha Karua, David Maraga, Fred Matiang’i—offers no departure from the script. These are not alternatives but recycled custodians of the same predatory order. What awaits Kenya after 2027 is not the dawn of transformation…
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House of Cards: A Marxist Dissection of Kenya’s Bursary Scandal

House of Cards: A Marxist Dissection of Kenya’s Bursary Scandal

Corruption as the Logic of Capitalist Rule The revelation that Members of Parliament in Kenya cannot account for Sh 4.1 billion in bursary funds is not an isolated scandal, nor a mere case of mismanagement. From a Marxist perspective, it is the naked expression of the capitalist state in a dependent, neo-colonial economy. In capitalism, the state is never neutral—it is an instrument of the ruling class, a machine for managing the affairs of the bourgeoisie. The bursary funds, ostensibly created to serve the poor and ensure that children from working-class families access education, have become yet another trough from…
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Rigathi Gachagua: The Bourgeois Charlatan Kenya Must Reject

Rigathi Gachagua: The Bourgeois Charlatan Kenya Must Reject

Rigathi Gachagua embodies the most corrosive traits of Kenya’s post-independence political elite—a bourgeois charlatan whose ascent has been fuelled not by visionary leadership or commitment to the public good, but by tribal dog-whistling, opportunistic alliances, and a long trail of corruption scandals. Draped in the language of ethnic entitlement and false populism, he projects himself as a defender of “his people” while serving the narrow interests of a rent-seeking class that thrives on state capture and resource plunder. His politics is not a project of national unity or social transformation, but a calculated performance of division and patronage, designed to…
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Was James Orengo Poisoned? Dissecting the Rumours, the Politics, and the Truth

Was James Orengo Poisoned? Dissecting the Rumours, the Politics, and the Truth

The Silence and the Speculation: How the Rumour Took Off This week, credible reports from Nation Africa and The Standard confirmed that Siaya Governor James Orengo had been flown to India for specialized medical treatment. These reports, however, offered no detail on the nature of his illness. Since then, a troubling silence has persisted from both his family and the ODM party. The absence of official updates has created a vacuum now filled by swirling social media speculation. Unverified claims about his possible transfer to China or his quiet return to Kenya have proliferated across Twitter, Facebook, and closed WhatsApp…
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August 1st: 43 Years After the Coup, Kenya Is Still Stuck in a Capitalist Dead End

August 1st: 43 Years After the Coup, Kenya Is Still Stuck in a Capitalist Dead End

Celebrating a Coup That Shook a Dictatorship, Yet Failed to Dismantle It On August 1st, 1982, a group of Kenya Air Force servicemen led by Senior Private Hezekiah Ochuka and Sergeant Pancras Oteyo Okumu attempted to overthrow the regime of Daniel arap Moi, a man who had entrenched a brutal one-party dictatorship under the Kenya African National Union (KANU). Through the self-declared People’s Redemption Council, the coup leaders sought to end a regime defined by corruption, tribalism, dictatorship, human rights violations, unemployment, and political marginalisation—all hallmarks of the Kenyan capitalist state. The coup ultimately failed, but its motivations remain strikingly…
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