Brutal Mau Mau Camps In Kenya Were An Extension Of Britain’s Colonial Prison System – Historian Traces Their Roots

Soldiers round up suspected Mau Mau rebels in Kenya. Getty Images

BY IAN CAISTOR-PARKER

PH.D STUDENT,

UNIVERSITY OF WARWICK

During the Mau Mau uprising between 1952 and 1960, the British colonial government confined an estimated 150,000 Kenyans in a sprawling network of “emergency” detention camps.

None of those held in the camps had been found guilty in a court of law. Instead, they were detained on suspicion of supporting the uprising.

British control over Kenya was effectively declared in 1895. A distinctive feature of colonial rule was the decision to encourage white settlement. These settlers were granted vast tracts of Kenya’s most fertile land and pushed policy in an increasingly harsh and unequal direction.

By the early 1950s, many African Kenyans were facing severe land shortages in the countryside and desperate living conditions in urban areas.

In 1952, this situation erupted into the Mau Mau uprising, a broadly anti-colonial rebellion.

The British government responded with overwhelming force. It declared a state of emergency and suppressed the uprising militarily.

Revelations about the extreme violence employed in some emergency detention camps made the continuation of British rule untenable. Particularly key was the Hola massacre of 1959. Guards beat 11 detainees to death and the colonial government attempted to cover up the crime.

Outrage at these events shattered Britain’s grip on the colony, and Kenya achieved independence in 1963 under the leadership of Jomo Kenyatta.

A great deal is known about these detention camps. They were sites of neglect and brutal violence. Detainees were forced to go through a so-called rehabilitation system designed to make them renounce their support for Mau Mau.

In practice, they were subjected to brutal compulsory labour, were at risk of assault and lived in unhygienic conditions. Some of those who refused to cooperate ultimately faced systematic, state-sanctioned torture.

I am a historian researching punishment in Kenya, and I have been investigating the deeper history of detention camps. My research shows that this emergency detention system was shaped by an earlier network of “ordinary” detention camps. These were established in 1926 and processed more than 400,000 people before the uprising.

These camps, intended as a milder alternative to prison, evolved into a poorly regulated system characterised by exploitation, overcrowding and weak accountability.

These findings challenge the idea that the detention system of the 1950s was exceptional. Instead, it was rooted in long-standing colonial practices, shaped by economic incentives, administrative gaps and coercive labour systems.

Understanding this deeper history matters because it changes how we view the Mau Mau emergency. It proves that the brutal 1950s detention system didn’t just emerge from nowhere – it was built on a foundation of state violence and disorder that had been normalised for decades.

The roots

Influenced by a draconian-minded European settler minority, the Kenyan colonial government adopted a harsh approach to punishing the local population. Judges frequently imprisoned Africans for “technical” offences lacking criminal intent. These included failing to pay tax and minor violations of coercive labour laws.

By the 1920s, Kenya’s prisons were overcrowded and “technical” offenders inevitably mixed with hardened criminals.

In response, the colonial government introduced detention in 1926 as a supposedly milder alternative for technical offenders who had simply broken administrative rules. In theory, prisons were to be reserved for those who had committed crimes involving moral violation. In practice, however, these distinctions didn’t (or couldn’t) hold.

To visibly separate detention from imprisonment, the colonial government gave day-to-day control of detention camps to district commissioners (the powerful heads of local governments), not the prison department.

However, this separation was incomplete. Detainees were legally classified as prisoners (though they were not informed of this). The prison department retained ultimate authority over the camps.

This overlapping authority produced a gap in accountability, which ultimately proved disastrous.

In 1930, seeking to divert more people from formal prisons, government officials removed almost all sentencing restrictions on detention. Subsequently, the only limitations were that sentences had to be under six months and that those with more than one prior prison conviction were ineligible.

Numbers surged immediately, with more convicted offenders sent to detention than formal prisons almost every year until 1952.

Judges increasingly used detention for serious offences, including manslaughter. A limited criminal records system meant that individuals with prior convictions – sometimes as many as 16 – ended up in detention.

Conversely, the amendment did not stop harsh magistrates from continuing to send significant numbers of minor offenders to prisons.

This blurring of populations, combined with a lack of structural and legal separation, meant detention camps mutated into a parallel prison system, serving a different colonial master, district commissioners, but lacking fundamental distinction.

Detention camp living conditions were atrocious. Most district commissioners delegated almost all duties to Kenyan African “overseers”. Overseers were under-trained. Yet they were expected to be on duty constantly and often had to guard more than 60 detainees, making meaningful supervision impossible.

Camps were generally collections of temporary wattle-and-daub huts. Over time, these decayed but were not replaced, resulting in squalid conditions.

Furthermore, overcrowding was endemic. Food rations were poor and basic facilities were often absent. Sickness rates were significant. Detainees responded by escaping at a rate of more than one a day.

Failed reform

In 1937, a high-level committee condemned the system as dangerous and inefficient. Calls for reform from London also grew.

But nothing changed.

Why?

The primary reason was economic. Detainees were a vital reservoir of free labour for cash-strapped district commissioners. When camps were introduced, local governments’ labour budgets were cut. This made detainee labour crucial for maintaining government stations.

In the late 1930s, penal officials sought to reintroduce stricter eligibility criteria for detention. However, they abandoned this idea as it would add to overcrowding in the prison system.

Trapped by bureaucratic gridlock, underfunding and economic dependency, Kenya’s detention system limped into the 1952 emergency – unreformed.

Ultimately, “ordinary” detention camps persisted until the 1980s, far outliving their emergency counterparts.

The consequences

This history exposes stark continuities between the pre-emergency and Mau Mau penal systems. Furthermore, as they were under the control of district officials and lacked standard prison regulations, existing detention camps could, and did, easily become dumping grounds for Mau Mau suspects in the early months of the emergency. Ordinary detention was both a model and enabling mechanism for emergency detention.

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Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o Obituary

Ngugi wa Thiong'o shakes hands with a young fan on June 13, 2015 during a book signing to celebrate the golden jubilee of his first book 'Weep Not Child' in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi. Image: Tony Karumba/AFP

BY LYN INNES

Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, who has died aged 87, was long regarded as east Africa’s most eminent writer and, along with Chinua Achebe and Wole Soyinka, a founding father of African literature in English.

Like Achebe, his novels showed the social, psychological and economic impact of the colonial encounter in Africa, as well as the disillusion that followed independence. In later years Ngũgĩ championed writing in African languages and published fiction, drama and poetry in Gikuyu, his mother tongue.

His first novel, Weep Not Child (1964), told the story of brothers who respond in different ways to the struggle in the 1950s for independence from British rule by the Land and Freedom Army (also known as the Mau Mau) in his native Kenya, and depicted the brutality of the British in their attempts to quell the rebellion.

After Ngũgĩ showed the manuscript to Achebe at an African writers’ conference in Makere, Uganda, in 1962, Achebe secured its publication (under the name James Ngũgĩ) in the Heinemann African Writers series. It was awarded Unesco’s first prize at the World Festival of Black Arts in Senegal in 1966.

Thereafter, many more of Ngũgĩ’s novels and short stories were published in that series. A Grain of Wheat (1967), considered by some critics his best work of fiction, is set during celebrations for Kenya’s independence day and deals with issues of single-minded heroism and betrayal, as well as the sufferings of detainees and women during the struggle for freedom.

An earlier novel, The River Between (1965), featured an unhappy romance and divisions between Christians and non-Christians. It was written while Ngũgĩ was studying for a master’s degree in the UK, at the University of Leeds.

Ngũgĩ also wrote plays, including The Black Hermit (1962), which dramatises a conflict between the desire to stay with the traditional world of a rural village and the wish to benefit from modern improvements and wealth, and The Trial of Dedan Kimathi, written in 1976 with Micere Githae Mugo, focusing on the deeds and aims of a leader of the Mau Mau.

Appointed professor of English literature and fellow of creative writing at the University of Nairobi in 1967, Ngũgĩ argued successfully for the re-formation of the department to place African literatures, including oral literatures and writing in African languages, at its centre. At this time he changed his name from James Thiong’o Ngũgĩ to Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o. He also published a series of influential essays gathered later in Homecoming: Essays on African and Caribbean Literature, Culture, and Politics (1972).

Increasingly alienated by the corruption and authoritarian policies that characterised Kenya’s government under Jomo Kenyatta and his successor, Daniel Arap Moi, Ngũgĩ was influenced in his later writing by Frantz Fanon and Marxist ideology. Petals of Blood (1977), the last of his novels composed in English, was completed while he stayed in Yalta in Crimea, as a guest of the Soviet Union. Its central character, Wanja, a barmaid and prostitute, becomes a symbol of Kenya and the capitalist exploitation of labour, raped and damaged by corrupt businessmen and politicians.

In the same year that Petals of Blood was published, Ngũgĩ became involved in creating community theatre along the lines advocated by Fanon. Together with the Kenyan playwright Ngũgĩ wa Mirii he composed a play in Gikuyu, Ngaahika Ndeenda (I Will Marry When I Want), which included members of village audiences as actors and vocal responders.

Its success, allied to its outspoken criticism of the Kenyan establishment, led to Ngũgĩ’s arrest in 1977. He was detained in Kamiti maximum security prison in Nairobi for almost a year, until released partly through the intervention of Amnesty International. Finding that he had been stripped of his professorship and facing threats to his family, he left Kenya for Britain in 1982.

While in prison Ngũgĩ had used sheets of toilet paper to write Caitaani Mutharaba-ini (The Devil on the Cross), his first novel in Gikuyu. Drawing on styles and forms reminiscent of traditional ballad singers, the novel mingles fantasy and realism to satirise wealthy Kenyans who exploit the poor.

In Britain between 1982 and 1985 he worked with the Committee for the Release of Political Prisoners in Kenya and was writer-in-residence for the London borough of Islington. He was also in demand as a speaker at conferences promoting the reading and study of African and other Commonwealth literatures, often explaining his conviction that African and other indigenous writers should cease writing fiction in English, “the language of the oppressor”.

His arguments were later published in several collections of essays, including Barrel of a Pen (1982) and Decolonising the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature (1986).

Born in the village of Kamiriithu, near Limuru in Kenya, Ngũgĩ was the son of Ngũgĩ wa Ndūcū, a landowner, and his third wife, Wanjiku, in a family consisting of four wives and 28 children. After primary education in the village school he was sent as a boarder to the Alliance high school near Nairobi. There students were made to speak in English only, and beaten if caught speaking Gikuyu or other indigenous languages.

On his return home after his first term, he found that his village had been razed by British forces opposing the Mau Mau insurrection. His family were divided in their attitudes to the Mau Mau; some members opposed it, and one became an informer to the British government, while a half-brother joined the movement, another was detained, and a third, who was deaf, was shot in the back when he failed to stop in response to a command he did not hear. His mother had been detained and also abused.

Ngũgĩ went on to complete a degree in English at Makerere University College in Uganda in 1963, and in 1964 won a scholarship to Leeds. That same year he married his first wife, Nyambura, a teacher, farmer and small trader. He taught English and African literatures at the University of Nairobi from 1967 to 1977, while also serving as a fellow in creative writing at Makerere University.

Following his release from detention in December 1978 and subsequent move to the UK, he remained an exile from Kenya. His one attempt to return, in 2004, resulted in a brutal robbery and a sexual assault on his second wife, Njeeri, an incident that Ngũgĩ strongly suspected was encouraged by people close to the government.

While teaching in the UK and the US, Ngũgĩ wrote several memoirs, including Detained: a Writer’s Prison Diary (1982, updated as Wrestling With the Devil, 2018), Dreams in a Time of War: a Childhood Memoir (2010), and Birth of a Dream Weaver: A Memoir of a Writer’s Awakening (2016). He also continued to write fiction in Gikuyu. His verse epic retelling the Gikuyu myth of origin, Kenda Mũiyũru: Rũgano rwa Gĩkũyũ na Mũmbi (2019), translated by Ngũgĩ as The Perfect Nine, was the first work written in an indigenous African language to be longlisted for the International Booker prize.

He was the recipient of numerous awards and honorary degrees across the world, and was often seen as a leading candidate for the Nobel prize for literature; so much so that in 2010 many reporters gathered outside his home on the day of its announcement. When it became clear that the award had gone to Mario Vargas Llosa, Ngũgĩ seemed much less disappointed than the reporters, whom he had to console.

Having separated from Nyambura, who did not accompany him into exile, Ngũgĩ married Njeeri, a counsellor and therapist at the University of California, in 1992; they separated in 2023. He is survived by 10 children and seven grandchildren.

Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o (James Thiong’o Ngũgĩ), writer and activist, born 5 January 1938; died 28 May 2025

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Kenya Doomsday Cult Leader, 30 Others Face Charges Of Murdering 191 Children; More Charges To Follow

Pastor Paul Mackenzie, who was arrested on suspicion of telling his followers to fast to death in order to meet Jesus, accompanied by some of his followers, appears at a court in Malindi, Kenya on Wednesday, April 17, 2023. High Court judge Mugure Thande ordered that the accused undergo a mental assessment and return to court on Feb 6. (AP Photo/Gideon Maundu)

BY TOM ODULA

NAIROBI, KENYA (AP) — Doomsday cult leader Paul Mackenzie and 30 of his followers were presented in a Kenyan court in the coastal town of Malindi on Wednesday to face charges of murdering 191 children.

Mackenzie and the other suspects did not enter pleas because High Court Judge Mugure Thande granted a request from prosecutors that they undergo mental assessments and return to court on Feb. 6.

The remains of 180 of the 191 dead children have not been identified, according to the prosecution’s charge sheet.

Mackenzie and some of his followers have been blamed for the deaths of 429 members of his Good News International Church, many of whom are believed to have starved themselves in the belief that by doing so they would meet Jesus Christ before the world ends.

The bodies were discovered in dozens of shallow graves on an 800-acre (320-hectare) ranch in a remote area known as Shakahola Forest in the coastal county of Kilifi. The graves were found after police rescued 15 emaciated church members who told investigators that Mackenzie had instructed them to fast to death before the world ends. Four of the 15 died after they were taken to a hospital.

Autopsies on some of the bodies found in the graves showed they died from starvation, strangulation or suffocation.

Kenya’s top prosecutor said on Monday that 95 people will be charged with murder, cruelty, child torture and other crimes.

For months since the arrest of the defendants last April, prosecutors have asked a court in Kilifi for permission to keep holding them while the investigation continues. But last week, Principal Magistrate Yousuf Shikanda declined their latest request to hold the suspects for an additional 60 days, saying the prosecutors had been given enough time to complete the investigation.

Mackenzie is serving a separate one-year prison sentence after being found guilty of operating a film studio and producing movies for his preaching without a valid license.

Mackenzie allegedly encouraged church members to move to Shakahola Forest to prepare for the end of the world.

A Senate committee report said Mackenzie chose the area due to its remoteness.

“Once inside the villages established by Mackenzie, followers were not allowed to leave the area, nor interact within themselves,” the report said.

“The followers were required to destroy vital documents, among them national identity cards, birth certificates, certificates of title to property, academic certificates and marriage certificates,” creating problems in identifying the dead, the report said.

Kenya Marks 60 Years Of Independence, And The President Defends Painful Economic Measures

People jump and wave Kenyan flags during the 60th Jamhuri Day Celebrations (Independence Day) at Uhuru Gardens Stadium in Nairabi, December 12, 2023. (AP Photo/Brian Inganga)

BY EMMANUEL IGUNZA AND BRIAN INGANGA

NAIROBI, KENYA (AP) — Kenya’s president on Tuesday defended the high taxes the government recently imposed, calling them a “necessary sacrifice “in helping the country deal with ballooning foreign debt which now stands at $70 billion.

Speaking at celebrations marking 60 years since Kenya’s independence from Britain, President William Ruto said East Africa’s largest economy was no longer at risk of defaulting on bond payments following economic reforms his government had undertaken since taking power last September.

“Though painful, the sacrifices we have made will not only make our freedom fighters proud,” Ruto told tens of thousands of people in the capital, Nairobi. He added: “I can now confirm without fear of any contradiction that Kenya is safely out of the danger of debt distress, and that our economy is on a stable footing.”

The economy has taken center stage in politics and daily life in Kenya as the government tackles mounting debts. A $2 billion Eurobond is due in June.

Last month, the government reached a lending agreement with the International Monetary Fund amounting to $938 million, a boost for the country struggling with dwindling foreign exchange reserves.





Recent attempts at reforms include a mandatory housing levy which courts struck down last month for being “discriminatory, irrational, arbitrary and against the constitution.”

The president also removed subsidies on fuel and maize flour — a staple in Kenya.

Ruto vowed that “all taxes collected by the government shall be put to their intended use and that no single shilling — not one shilling — shall be lost through embezzlement, theft or corruption.” Kenyans have long complained of widespread official graft.

The president in his speech did not mention another pressing threat in Kenya, the deadly rains fueled by the El Niño phenomenon.

Ahead of the national holiday, the government announced that Kenyans would be allowed free entry to all national parks and museums.

But John Ndirangu, a shopkeeper from Muranga county, said he was not planning on attending the celebrations or taking up the free park entry.

“Where do you get the money in this bad economy to travel to see wild animals when you are hungry?” he asked.

Veteran politician and political analyst Njeru Kathangu, who helped to fight for multi-party democracy in Kenya in the 1980s, said the country needs a reset to attain its potential.

“Two generations have now passed since the birth of Kenya as a nation, but there’s nothing to show for it,” he said. “If Kenya cannot change at the beginning of this third generation, then we will not be a state at all.”

Africa Climate Summit Links ‘Unfair’ Debt Burden With Calls To Make Continent’s Green Assets Pay Off

Kenya's President William Ruto speaks at Kenyatta International Conference in Nairobi, Kenya, Tuesday, Sept. 5, 2023, during the African Climate Summit. (AP Photo/Brian Inganga)

BY CARA ANNA AND EVELYNE MUSAMBI

NAIROBI, KENYA (AP) — Climate change is “relentlessly eating away” at Africa’s economic progress and it’s time to have a global conversation about a carbon tax on polluters, Kenya’s president declared Tuesday as

the first Africa Climate Summit got underway.

“Those who produce the garbage refuse to pay their bills,” President William Ruto, a host of the summit, said to an audience that included senior officials from China, the United States and the European Union — some of the world’s largest emitters of greenhouse gases.

The rapidly growing African continent of more than 1.3 billion people is losing 5% to 15% of its gross domestic product growth every year to the widespread impacts of climate change, according to Ruto. It’s a source of deep frustration in the resource-rich region that contributes by far the least to global warming.

He and other leaders urged reforms to the global financial structures that have left African nations paying about five times more to borrow money than others, worsening the debt crisis for many. Africa has more than 30 of the world’s most indebted countries, Kenya’s Cabinet secretary for the environment, Soipan Tuya, said.

The U.S. government’s climate envoy, John Kerry, acknowledged the “acute, unfair debt.” He also said 17 of the world’s 20 countries most impacted by climate change are in Africa — while the world’s 20 richest nations, including his own, produce 80% of the world’s carbon emissions that are driving climate change.



Asked about the Kenyan president’s call for a carbon tax discussion, Kerry said President Joe Biden has “not yet embraced any particular carbon pricing mechanism.”

Ruto said Africa’s 54 countries “must go green fast before industrializing and not vice versa, unlike (richer nations) had the luxury to do.” Transforming Africa’s economy on a green trajectory “is the most feasible, just and efficient way to attain a net-zero world by 2050,” he said.

Climate finance is key, speakers said. A pledge by richer nations of $100 billion a year to help developing nations achieve their climate goals remains unfulfilled, and Ruto said the summit declaration will “firmly encourage” everyone to keep their promises.

The United Arab Emirates, which is hosting the next United Nations climate meeting later this year, announced it plans to invest $4.5 billion in Africa’s “clean energy potential.”

The African continent has 60% of the world’s renewable energy assets and more than 30% of the minerals key to renewable and low-carbon technologies. One goal of the summit is to transform the narrative around the continent from victim to assertive, wealthy partner.

“It’s becoming increasingly difficult to explain to our people, particularly to our youth, the contradiction: resource-rich continent and poor people,” Ethiopian President Sahle-Work Zewde said.

Africa’s GDP should be revalued for its assets, which include the world’s second-largest rainforest and biodiversity, African Development Bank President Akinwumi Adesina said.

“Africa cannot be nature-rich and cash-poor,” he said.

But divisions are evident around the issue that was little mentioned in the opening speeches and yet is at the heart of the tough conversations ahead: fossil fuels.

Africa must use its natural gas resources — a growing interest of Europe — along with renewable energy sources, Adesina said. “Give us space to grow,” he said.

Ruto, however, has criticized the “addiction” to fossil fuels. His country now gets more than 90% of its energy from renewables.

“We don’t have to do what the developed countries did to power their industries. It will be harder to use renewable energy exclusively, but it can be done,” said one local summit attendee, Martha Lusweti.

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told the summit attendees that it’s time for the world to “break our addiction to fossil fuels.” Worldwide spending on fossil fuel subsidies reached $7 trillion in 2022, according to the International Monetary Fund.

European Commission President Ursula Von der Leyen said African nations could produce enough clean energy to power the continent and export abroad, “but for this, Africa needs massive investment.”

Some of Africa’s biggest economies rely on fossil fuels. South Africa’s coal-fired plants are struggling. Parts of Nigeria’s Niger Delta are slick from oil extraction. Some of Africa’s cities have the world’s worst air pollution. A TotalEnergies pipeline project in Uganda and Tanzania is being challenged.

Missing from the summit were the leaders of a number of Africa’s largest economies including South Africa, Nigeria and Egypt, as well as forest-rich Congo.

Also missing from the leading speakers was China, the world’s largest emitter of heat-trapping gases, Africa’s largest trading partner and one of its biggest creditors.

Some African leaders gave passionate descriptions of climate change’s toll.

“The seas that once serenaded us with lullabies now warn of rising tides,” Sierra Leone’s president, Julius Maada Bio, said. “It is an African story, and I daresay it’s a global story, too.”
___

Follow AP’s coverage of the climate at https://apnews.com/climate-and-environment and of Africa at https://apnews.com/hub/africa

UN Official Praises Kenya’s Refugee Integration Program, Says $200 Million Pledged, More Needed

United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi, center, speaks during a press conference accompanied by Governor of Garissa County Nathif Jama Adam, left, and Principal Secretary for Immigration and Citizens Services Julius Bitok, right, in Nairobi, Kenya on the occasion of World Refugee Day Tuesday, June 20, 2023. Grandi visited the east African country and met with President William Ruto to show his appreciation for the country's planned integration programs allowing refugees to become self-sufficient. (AP

BY EVELYNE MUSAMBI

NAIROBI, KENYA (AP) — The top U.N. official for refugees praised Kenya’s plans Tuesday for an integration program that would aim to make refugees self-sufficient, as he met with the Kenyan president on World Refugee Day.

Kenya hosts more than 600,000 refugees, hailing from 23 countries, including neighboring Somalia, South Sudan and Ethiopia. The majority live in Dadaab and Kakuma camps, north of the country. The camps are overcrowded and basic services are overstretched.

The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi, who met with Kenya’s President William Ruto on Tuesday, told The Associated Press that Kenya’s planned integration program was a more sustainable approach as opposed to the current camp system that heavily relies on aid. He said that $200 million was pledged to the program and more was needed. However, no clear timeline for its kick-off.

Grandi added that a model of the integration program was set up in Turkana County a few years ago and that the refugee community is already reaping the benefits.

He praised the Kenyan government, which he said was able with U.N. support to help refugees move from “temporary places where people live on assistance, on aid” to a “self-sustaining settlement, well-integrated in the local community.”

Kenya’s Prime Cabinet Secretary Musalia Mudavadi, who attended the event, said that through promoting “the socio-economic inclusion of refugees, we are collectively preparing them” for voluntary return to their countries.

At the event, Grandi expressed optimism that despite the refugee numbers from the Sudan crisis hitting more than 500,000, pledges made in Monday’s U.N. conference would help those in need of assistance.

Some $1.5bn was pledged to help provide humanitarian support to those affected by the Sudan crisis, according to the UNHCR.

Death Toll From Kenya Cult Tied To Pastor Surpasses 300, With More Exhumations Planned

FILE - Police and local residents load the exhumed bodies of victims of a religious cult into the back of a truck in the village of Shakahola, near the coastal city of Malindi, in southern Kenya on April 23, 2023. The number of people who died after a Kenyan pastor ordered his followers to starve to death in order to meet Jesus is at more than 300, authorities said Tuesday June 13, 2023, and the death toll is expected to rise as more exhumations are planned. (AP Photo, File)

NAIROBI, KENYA (AP) — The number of people who died after a Kenyan pastor ordered his followers to starve to death in order to meet Jesus has surpassed 300, authorities said Tuesday, and the death toll is expected to rise as more exhumations are planned.

The death toll increased to 303 after 19 more bodies were recovered from mass graves in the vast forested land in Kilifi County of coastal Kenya, where pastor Paul Mackenzie and his followers lived.

Coastal regional commissioner Rhoda Onyancha told local journalists that 613 people tied to the area are missing.

On Monday, 65 of the 95 parishioners whom authorities said they rescued from the property were charged with attempting suicide after they staged a hunger strike to protest being held at a shelter. They were moved to a jail.

Police went to MacKenzie’s property in April after investigators received a tip that dozens of people were starving to death after their pastor told them it was a way to meet Jesus. The emaciated followers were treated at a Malindi hospital before they were taken to the shelter.


Mackenzie is expected back in court this week after police were granted more time to hold him pending investigations.

Before his arrest in April, the pastor had been charged in connection with the disappearance of children but was released on bond. Kenyan President William Ruto has likened Mackenzie to a terrorist.

Interior Minister Kindiki Kithure said more mass graves were earmarked for exhumation. He suggested the pastor might be charged terrorism or genocide-related offenses.

Kenyan Cult Deaths At 73, President Likens Them To Terrorism

Police and local residents load the exhumed bodies of victims of a religious cult into the back of a truck in the village of Shakahola, near the coastal city of Malindi, in southeastern Kenya Sunday, April 23, 2023. Dozens of bodies have been discovered so far in shallow graves in a forest near land owned by a pastor Paul Makenzi in coastal Kenya who was arrested for telling his followers to fast to death. (AP Photo)

BY EVELYNE MUSAM BI

NAIROBI, KENYA (AP) — Kenyan President William Ruto on Monday compared the dozens of starvation deaths among the followers of a pastor in the south of the country with the results of terrorist acts, as the new death toll rose to 73.

He maintained that the pastor, Paul Makenzi, who is in police custody, should be in prison.

“What we are seeing ... is akin to terrorism,” Ruto said. “Mr. Makenzi ... pretends and postures as a pastor when in fact he is a terrible criminal.”

Makenzi was arrested on suspicion of telling his followers to fast to death in order to meet Jesus. A group of emaciated people were rescued alive, but some of them later died. Authorities then turned their attention to dozens of shallow graves marked with crosses on Makenzi’s 800-acre ranch.

The total death toll now stands at 73, with 26 new bodies exhumed on Monday, Malindi sub-county police chief John Kemboi told the Associated Press.

Ruto, who was elected in 2022, was hyped as the country’s first evangelical Christian president and has not been shy about his faith, openly praying and weeping in churches before his election.

He has nominated several pastors into parliament and government agencies like the anticorruption commission.

Makenzi remains in custody and a court allowed investigators to hold him for two weeks as a probe into the deaths continues.

The pastor had been arrested twice before — in 2019 and in March of this year — in relation to the deaths of children. Each time, he was released on bond, and both cases are still proceeding through the court.

Local politicians have urged the court not to release him this time, decrying the spread of cults in the Malindi area.

Cults are common in Kenya, which has a largely religious society.

Arrests As Kenya Opposition Leads Anti-Government Protests

A protester jumps in the air as he throws a rock towards police next to a burning barricade in the Kibera slum of Nairobi, Kenya, Monday, March 20, 2023. Hundreds of opposition supporters have taken to the streets of the Kenyan capital over the result of the last election and the rising cost of living, in protests organized by the opposition demanding that the president resigns from office. (AP Photo/Ben Curtis)

BY EVELYNE MUSAMBI

NAIROBI, KENYA (AP) — At least three Kenyan legislators and several protesters have been arrested in protests in Kenya’s capital, Nairobi, organized by the opposition demanding the resignation of President William Ruto.

Opposition leader Raila Odinga joined thousands of demonstrators and announced weekly demonstrations until the president resigns or the cost of living goes down.

Odinga’s convoy of dozens of cars drove around the city after being blocked from accessing the central business district.

He made public addresses on several stops and his motorcade was teargassed several times by police. In response his supporters pelted stones at the police.

The opposition called for protests against Ruto who they say was not validly elected in the August 2022 elections. They are also blaming Ruto’s administration for the rising cost of living.

Nairobi police boss Adamson Bungei said those arrested in the protests would be released after paying cash bail.

Bungei had over the weekend said police had denied the opposition permission to hold their protests and that any congregation would be illegal.


Opposition leader Raila Odinga on Sunday insisted that protests would proceed as planned and demonstrators would march to State House, the official residence of the president.

Odinga said Kenyan citizens have a constitutional right to demonstrate and the role of the police is to protect them after they issue a notification in advance.

Police have been heavily deployed to State House with motorists and pedestrians being stopped from accessing the road there.

Most shops in Nairobi’s central business district closed on Monday as business owners feared looting.

Kenya’s deputy president Rigathi Gachagua said the country has lost about 2 billion Kenya shillings ($15 million) due to Monday’s protests. Gachagua urged Odinga to call off the protests and think about the losses to the economy.

The leaders who have been arrested include the senate minority leader Stewart Madzayo and members of parliament Opiyo Wandayi and Amina Mnyazi.

Other legislators who had turned up at the designated meeting point in the city were dispersed by the police with teargas. They retreated to parliament buildings where they announced that protests would continue through the afternoon.

Kenya’s opposition has in the past held violent demonstrations in which people have died.

Tanzania’s 1st Female President Praises Political Tolerance

FILE - Tanzania's President Samia Suluhu Hassan meets with Vice President Kamala Harris in Harris' ceremonial office in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building on the White House campus on April 15, 2022, in Washington. Hassan says that as the East African country’s first female leader, she has brought a new level of political tolerance to the nation. Hassan spoke at a rally for International Women’s Day on Wednesday, March 8, 2023 which had been organized by an opposition party. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky, File)

BY EVELYNE MUSAMBI

NAIROBI, KENYA (AP) — Tanzania’s President Samia Suluhu Hassan has said that as the East African country’s first female leader, she has brought a new level of political tolerance to the nation.

Hassan spoke at a rally for International Women’s Day which had been organized by an opposition party. More than 3,000 women were at the event including leaders from 19 opposition parties.

“The opposition is lucky that it is a woman president in charge because if a misunderstanding occurs, I will stand for peace and make the men settle their egos,” she said amid cheers, singing and dancing.

She said there was a “new culture of unity” between the opposition and her government and although some critics are not happy with it, “they will get used to it.”

Hassan shared the platform with the chairman of the main opposition party Chadema, Freeman Mbowe. He said Hassan’s agreement to attend the opposition event elicited mixed reactions because the country experienced “fear, hate and mistrust” under Tanzania’s previous leader.


Mbowe was repeatedly arrested during former President John Magufuli’s administration and was only released after Hassan came to power. Hassan was vice president under Magufuli and succeeded him when he died in 2021. She has been accused of continuing her predecessor’s anti-democratic policies but she lifted a six-year-old ban on opposition rallies in January.

Another opposition leader, Godbless Lema, who was in exile for two years and returned to the country last week, also attended the Women’s Day event and Hassan welcomed him back home.

The opposition party Women Charter, which organized the event, told Hasan she needed to address health as a priority as it is the biggest challenge for Tanzania’s women, including relatively high rates of infant and maternal deaths.

Women make up more than half of Tanzania’s population of 63 million people, according to the 2022 census.

With stained pants, Kenyan senator fights menstruation taboo

Kenyan senator Gloria Orwoba speaks to the Associated Press at her office in Nairobi, Kenya, Monday, Feb. 27, 2023. Orwoba has said that she attended parliament last month while wearing a white pantsuit stained by her menstruation in order to combat the stigma surrounding women's monthly periods. (AP Photo/Brian Inganga)

BY EVELYNE MUSAMBI

NAIROBI, KENYA (AP) — The sight of a red bloodstain on Kenyan Senator Gloria Orwoba’s white pantsuit was so startling that a female security guard rushed over to hide it.

It was an accident, Orwoba said. Just before walking into parliament, she looked down to discover that she had been caught unprepared by her monthly period.

For a moment, she considered retreat. But then she thought about how the stigma around menstruation affects Kenyan women and girls and strode into the building. To those who noticed the stain, she explained she was making a statement.

It didn’t last long. Within minutes, colleagues in the senate became so uncomfortable that another female lawmaker petitioned the speaker to ask Orwoba to leave and change her clothes. Male colleagues agreed, calling the issue “taboo and private,” and Orwoba walked out.

Women make up less than a third of Kenya’s senators: 21 of 67.

A male colleague accused her of faking her accident in parliament, to which she replied in a local media interview that “everyone would rather think it’s a prank, because if it is a prank then it’s acting and that way it doesn’t exist in the real world. Yet our girls are suffering.”


Whether or not Orwoba’s menstrual stain was an accident or a stunt, the controversy it has elicited shows the considerable stigma that surrounds women’s periods in Kenya and in many African countries.

Orwoba hasn’t been silenced. The incident last month has inspired considerable debate in Kenya about “period shaming” of women and the problem of the lack of access to sanitary pads for schoolgirls and others in many African countries.

Inspired, some of Orwoba’s friends have even paid for a billboard in the capital, Nairobi, that shows her in a white T-shirt with the words “I can do bleeding” — a spirited message against menstrual stigma in the largely conservative country.

In an interview with The Associated Press, the bubbly first-time senator acknowledged that the incident has prompted her to concentrate on drafting a bill calling on the Kenyan government to provide an annual supply of sanitary pads to all schoolgirls and incarcerated women.

“For legislators to feel the urgency of legislating things into law, they must be subjected to the advocacy and the noise,” she said of her public campaign.

The 36-year-old said she has never understood why menstruation is spoken of like a secret. She recalled being excited as a teenager to finally have her first period after being the last among her peers to get the “mark of womanhood.”

“My attitude toward menstruation since then has been open,” said Orwoba, who has warned her teenage son to never shame a girl for having her period.

Studies have shown that menstruation causes widespread absences from school in many African countries by girls who stay home for fear of staining their uniforms.

In 2019, one schoolgirl in Kenya killed herself after a teacher called her dirty and kicked her out of class.

One in 10 African schoolgirls misses school during menstruation, according to a U.N. survey, and many, after lagging behind, eventually drop out.

Official efforts and promises to provide sanitary pads have fallen short. In Kenya, the government increased budget funds to distribute pads to schoolgirls in 2018 but the amount was halved the next year.

Neighboring Tanzania removed taxes on sanitary pads to make them more affordable, but many still find them too expensive because of high production and import costs.

Now Orwoba receives calls from organizations that want to make menstruation products accessible to the poor, including a British firm that wants to put up sanitary pad dispensers in public toilets. Such dispensers for condoms have long been common in public toilets across Kenya as part of national campaigns against HIV.

In recent years, Kenya has seen the introduction of reusable menstruation products like washable pads and silicon cups. But the lack of access to water to clean them in some rural communities has prevented some users from embracing them.

Virginia Mwongeli, 24, sells menstruation cups in Nairobi and thinks Orwoba’s bold move will help end period shaming.

“We need to normalize periods,” she said.

The senator’s decision to walk into parliament with stained pants was “totally acceptable as people need to openly discuss menstruation,” said Lorna Mweu, popularly known as Mamake Bobo, who founded Period Party, an organization that holds an annual event in Kenya to help end stigma.

Orwoba said she longs for the day when accidental period stains will be seen as normal, not shameful. Women and girls are using up valuable sanitary pads by wearing them as a precaution out of anxiety, she said: “That’s a whole pack that you’ve wasted because of the fear of staining your clothes.”

Jill Biden Voices Kinship With Africans’ Fight For Democracy

First Lady of the United States Jill Biden, arrives in Nairobi, Kenya, Friday, Feb.24, 2023 for a three-day visit to the country (AP Photo/Brian Inganga).

BY DARLENE SUPERVILLE

NAIROBI, KENYA (AP) — U.S. first lady Jill Biden said Friday that she feels a kinship with Africans during her sixth visit to the continent, telling The Associated Press in an exclusive interview that she wants to support nations fighting for democracy — “just like I feel we’re doing in the United States.”

“We cannot take things for granted, because it’s such a precious system of government,” she said. “We can’t be complacent. We have to keep fighting for it.”

The first lady opened her trip earlier this week in Namibia, a young democracy, where on Friday she delivered a rousing speech to more than 1,000 students. She told them the democracy their parents and grandparents fought for is now theirs to defend and protect.

In the interview, Biden said that when first lady Monica Geingos invited her to visit, “I thought there’s no better place to go than to go to Namibia” to “encourage the youth to get involved, stay involved, fight for their democracy, just like I feel we’re doing in the United States.”

Africa’s 54 countries are a mix of sometimes fragile democracies in places like Nigeria, which has an election this weekend; and more troubled nations like Burkina Faso, Guinea, Mali, Chad and Sudan that have seen coups in recent years; or Uganda, Gabon, the Republic of Congo, Equatorial Guinea and Cameroon, where presidents have been clinging to power for decades. Namibia gained its independence from South Africa in 1990.

American democracy was severely tested after President Joe Biden’s election in 2020 when the incumbent, Donald Trump, repeatedly told lies about the election being stolen from him. Hundreds of his supporters who believed his conspiracy theories rioted at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, in a violent attempt to block Congress from certifying Biden as the new president in an unprecedented effort to thwart the customary peaceful transfer of power.

In her speech, Biden said women’s and girls voices need to be more prominent in the debate about democracy.

“As the first generation to be born into a free Namibia, the legacy that your parents and grandparents created is now yours — yours to defend and protect,” Biden told a largely student audience at Namibia University of Science and Technology.

“Yours to grow. And as we look forward, we must remember that the fight for democracy has no end.”

Biden later Friday moved on to Kenya, the second and final stop on her trip.

She highlighted the plight of women and girls on her earlier stops in Namibia. In Kenya, she plans to use her stature to draw attention to a devastating drought across the Horn of Africa that is leaving people hungry and jeopardizing millions of lives. She had visited in 2011 during a severe famine.

“I’m hoping that, you know, that people do pay attention,” Biden said in the AP interview. “To see the drought and what I saw before with, just, children who have no food and they can’t have livestock, they can’t grow crops and to be starving, and so I’m trying to really create awareness and, and just see how far things have come in the 10 years, really, that I’ve been gone.”

The first lady, who has spent time in more than a half dozen of Africa’s countries, said she feels “really comfortable” on the continent.

“One thing I’ve learned is that each country is so different — the people are different, the culture is different, the religion is different, the language,” she said. “But, you know, we all share so many of the same values.

“And I think that’s important, that we’re looking for stability, a stable government. We’re looking for, you know, representation of the people. We’re looking for leaders who have character and integrity, and that’s what I think we want to foster. And they do, too.”

She said the Biden administration is not “isolationist like we were becoming in the last administration,” a reference to Trump and his America-first posture.

“We are reaching out and saying, ’Hey, we’re a global society. Take our hands. Let’s do this together,” she said of the current administration

Biden has worked with young people throughout a 30-year-long teaching career and said in her address to the students that they must exercise their rights to disagree and to dissent, to speak up when they see injustice and support leaders who listen to their concerns.

She noted that, in the United States, “we are still defending and strengthening our democracy, almost 250 years after our founding.”

“It’s not easy. Democracy isn’t easy. It takes work,” she said during the rousing, rally-style speech. “But it’s worth it, because democracy delivers.”

Afterward, she worked her way around the courtyard in a way that she rarely do to shake hands and pose for selfies with scores of excited students. They cheered at one point when she danced briefly to a drum-heavy African beat.

Kenya’s President Dismisses Suggestions Of Unlimited Terms

BY EVELYN MUSAMBI

NAIROBI, KENYA (AP) — Kenyan President William Ruto urged lawmakers not to remove presidential terms limits from the country’s constitution, dismissing comments by a legislator that there should be no such limits on a capable leader.

Kenya’s constitution says a president can only serve for two terms, and many Kenyans have been eager to hear Ruto’s position since talk of removing term limits started last week.

Ruto succeeded former president Uhuru Kenyatta after winning hotly contested elections. He was inaugurated in September.

Ruto’s party, the United Democratic Alliance, on Wednesday held a meeting of its lawmakers during which the president urged them to focus on laws that could improve the lives of ordinary Kenyans.

He asked them to stop “pushing for selfish and self-serving legislation like changing the Constitution to remove term limits,” according to local media outlets.

The ruling party’s chairperson, Johnstone Muthama, denied there was a plan to amend the constitution in favor of Ruto after heavy criticism from the opposition parties.

Kenya’s democracy has evolved over the years since the former British colony became independent in 1963. For several years it was a de-facto one-party state and then was officially a one-party state from 1982 until 1992, when multiparty democracy was adopted.

Term limits on the presidency are widely considered sacrosanct, contributing to the view of Kenya as a beacon of stability in the East African region. Many countries in the region and other parts of Africa have abolished presidential term limits, allowing leaders to stay in power for long periods.

How KenKen Became Binyavanga Wainaina, Author Of The Satirical Essay ‘How To Write About Africa’

Binyavanga Wainaina

BY ACHAL PRABHALA

One day in September 2006, three visitors to London walked up to the door of The Village, a gay bar in Soho. Two of the three were men, one of whom had just flown in from India, the other from Kenya. Earlier that evening, they had both endured dinner with a pompous American law professor who would, years later, mount a forgettable run for President. After dinner, they walked along the river to the Tate Modern Museum to pick up the third of their trio, an Indian woman who had just staged a performance involving a Palestinian mime artist and Bombay electronica. They proceeded to join a mutual friend’s birthday party, which is how they ended up at The Village.

Now it just so happened that each one of them was dressed in non-Western clothes. The Indian man wore a cotton kurta that went below his knees, the Indian woman was dressed in a silk saree, fresh flowers in her hair, and the Kenyan man wore a full-length kaftan with dramatic bell sleeves that he had got made in Dakar. (He insisted on calling this a boubou.) At the door of The Village, they were met by a kindly bouncer, who drew them aside and gave them the chance to admit they were hopelessly lost. This is a gay bar, he said. At that very moment, behind a window to their side, a go-go dancer vigorously bounced against the glass, his groin only a few inches away from their faces. Yes, thanks, they replied. Look, the bouncer pleaded, shaking his head. It’s a gay bar. It’s five pounds entry. Are you sure you want to go in? Yes, they said again, and here is fifteen pounds for the three of us. It went on like this for a bit, until the bouncer threw his hands up in the air and let them through.

In the basement of The Village, the party was in full swing. The Kenyan leant back against the bar, under a thundering cloud of disco and smoke, like a grand Sufi mystic. Naturally, all eyes turned to him. A stranger walked up and said, Are you that … and the Kenyan smiled. You must sign my copy, he continued. It’s right here, in my bag. But, of course, it was not. Whereupon the stranger unbuttoned his shirt and dramatically declared, Write anything! The Kenyan motioned for a pen and wrote his name down on the stranger’s chest. He inscribed the letters carefully so as not to hurt: BINYAVANGA. Then, he looked around, delighted, as if it had just dawned on him how much he enjoyed generating this peculiar mix of bewilderment and adoration. It’s true. I know, because I was there – I was the Indian chap with him that night.

Binyavanga Wainaina was born in 1971 in Nakuru, the agricultural capital of Kenya. At this time, the country of his birth was only eight years older, having just wrested itself free of the British Empire. His mother, Rosemary, who trained in secretarial studies, ran several businesses, including a hair salon, and his father, Job, headed a government-owned company that produced pyrethrum, a natural insecticide harvested from chrysanthemum flowers. He was their second child, and, in his mother’s eyes, her favorite – the shy one. To her, he was KenKen; to the rest of his family, Ken; to his siblings, sometimes, also SweSwe.

He went to primary school in Nakuru. When he turned twelve, he went to an all-boys boarding school, as one did. His first attempt at high school was disastrous: an ill-fated one-year stint at a school called Njoro Boys, where he was savagely abused. His sister Ciru remembers him coming home depressed, anxious, and also missing two full thumbnails as a result of bullying by fellow students. Binyavanga’s horrified parents pulled him out at once. They enrolled him at Mang’u, a better-regarded school that provided him with an altogether happier experience, and, finally, at Lenana, among the most prestigious schools in the country.

Ciru’s most consistent memory of her slightly older brother is that his kindness attracted other students to him like a magnet. At Lenana, he made a lifelong friend in Martin, who he roped into the high-school production of a play he wrote. Binyavanga himself played the lead character, a femme fatale named either Désirée or Jacqui – on this point, recollections differ – dressed in a Tina Turner wig, a shimmering ballgown that belonged to his mother and stilettos “borrowed” from his sister Ciru.

Martin remembers his friend as someone who clearly understood the power of words. In their late teens, they once went to a Wimpy (a fast-food restaurant) and got into a fight with a waiter over the food and service. They demanded to see the manager, who came and promptly asked them to leave. Binyavanga protested in the poshest voice he could summon. “Do you know who I am?” he said. “I am the editor of the student magazine. I can break your restaurant with one story.” The manager threw them out anyway.

Chiqy, his youngest sister, remembers one trauma they had in common. They were both naturally left-handed infants who were forced by their teachers to become right-handed in nursery school.

She remembers all the younger siblings growing up in the shadow of the eldest one, Jimmy, who was perfect. He was the all-rounder and star basketball player whom every girl adored. In fact, Chiqy built a whole economy around Jimmy, providing advice to girls who were interested in him in exchange for snacks and treats. Binyavanga, the sensitive lover of the arts, was of no such practical value. Regardless, he remained his mother’s favorite child. Chiqy remembers her mother handing her the very worst job in the kitchen – to slaughter chickens, dunk them in boiling water and pluck them clean – while giving Binyavanga money to go into town and swap books, in lieu of housework. “He’s a reader,” her mother would explain, much to Chiqy’s chagrin. “Let him read.” She took her revenge by hiding raw chicken feet under Binyavanga’s bed sheets before he went to sleep, and listening with satisfaction as he screamed the house down upon discovering them.

Jimmy’s earliest memories of his younger brother are of a gentle, loving child, lost inside his head. Except perhaps for that one time when Binyavanga was seven, and Ciru, who was a year younger and something of a child prodigy, was upgraded to the same class as him, leading to a serious case of status anxiety: he was outraged beyond belief that she had become his equal.

Jimmy’s physical resemblance to Binyavanga is uncanny; they even speak almost identically, with the same cadence, the same rhythm and in the same precise accent that is exclusively their own.

In 1991 Binyavanga moved with his sister Ciru to a small town called Mthatha in South Africa, to study for a Bachelor’s degree in accounting. They enrolled at the University of Transkei, which has ceased to exist, as has the eponymous region. Ciru sailed through her courses, but her brother found that accounting – or, indeed, getting out of his dormitory room, going to class, passing exams or extending his visa – was not for him. After a few tortured years of trying and failing, he fled to Cape Town, South Africa’s second-largest city, a bona fide metropolis, to reinvent himself, in a city and a country that were doing much the same.

It was the late 1990s. South Africa had liberated itself from 350 years of settler colonialism, and it was a time of new beginnings and opportunities. At first, with the help of the son of a family friend, he took over the café at the Pan-African Market. A few years later they ran a restaurant called Waka Mundo. When both ventures failed, they set up a catering service specialising in African food. He closed his catering operation in frustration after one of his clients, a housewife in Constantia – the wealthy Cape Town suburb that was home to such eminences as Margaret Thatcher’s son and Princess Diana’s brother – asked if he might come dressed in nothing but a loincloth to inject a dash of authenticity into her weekly ladies’ lunch.

Through this time, Binyavanga had been writing too, and soon he found editors willing to publish him. Some of his earliest essays were published by the country’s leading newspapers – the Sunday Times, Cape Times and Cape Argus. Often, these essays were about food, but just as often he appeared in these papers as an authority on food.

“If you’ve been visiting the same-old-favorite restaurants and eating the same-old-food and getting the same-old-vibe, and you’re dying for a change, give Ken the Kenyan a call,” a columnist wrote in the Cape Times, in September 1998. Speaking to a reporter for the same newspaper later that year about his catering outfit, the cheerily named Ubusuku Be Africa, or African Nights, Binyavanga declared he was tired of hearing that traditional African cuisine didn’t exist. “Of course it does,” he said, “but no one ever asks for it, especially in Cape Town.”

In due course, Binyavanga met Graeme, a DJ and designer, who in turn introduced him to his friend Rhoda, a music producer. The three of them became instantly inseparable and moved into a house together. Rhoda remembers that time, in that house, in the vibrant, student-dominated, bookshop-filled area called Observatory, as the happiest household she has ever lived in.

They were young and free. There was music, there was dancing, and there were people dropping in every hour of the day to stay late into the night. And Binyavanga, writing furiously in a room that was a chaotic mess of cigarettes and clothes and papers, from which he emerged once in a while to cook something wonderful, especially when he was dissatisfied with the words he had written.

At the end of that decade, as the world gave itself over to a new century and a new millennium, Binyavanga received devastating news: his mother’s life had ended too. He fought the tears and scrambled to leave. Graeme made him a mixtape as an expression of love, to bring him comfort on the journey home. He labeled it “For Rosemary’s Baby”.

Nearly two decades later, Binyavanga wrote a love letter back to the country in Business Day, a South African newspaper. “I thank you and love you deeply for looking out for a lonely young man, confused, lost and depressed,” he wrote. “I am writing to you to thank you for loving me when I lived in your country for ten years. Illegally. I thank you for taking care of me, for growing my mind. For stretching my heart. For building an African.”

He couldn’t resist throwing in a postscript from his life circa 2015: “I wanted to be a hardworking, middle-class boy from Africa and earn R16,000 a month as a chartered accountant, buy a sixteen-valve car, pretend to fall in love with a yellow-skinned girl who looked like she lived in an R&B video and pose cool. I had an S-curl and Xhosa girls told me I looked like Luther Vandross. That made me very happy.”

Binyavanga returned to Kenya a writer. With new eyes to survey the country of his growing up, he wasted no time. He was an irresistible gravitational force, pulling a whole generation into his orbit. “We could taste it, the freedom to come. We wanted to be the new, unshackled Kenyans – our whole selves and not the staid old Kenyan selves epitomised by the then literary space whose walls he was determined to bring down,” the political scientist Muthoni Wanyeki wrote in The Elephant, of Binyavanga’s role in the new wave. “He moved into my flat. As did, for a while, all the people he was gathering around him. There was food – he loved to cook, messily, things full of butter and cream and everything as artery-clogging as it could be. There was drink, a lot of it, fuelling all the passionate conversations about writing and life.”

Two years into his return, he had gathered enough momentum to take a shot at the Caine Prize for African writing. There were the online writing communities he had enthusiastically signed up to, the newspapers in Kenya and South Africa that wanted to publish him, and there was his new friend Rod Amis, the editor of an Internet-only literary magazine called G21. He wrote an essay, called it Discovering Home, published it in G21 and sent it to the Caine Prize. They declined to accept it, explaining that they were a serious prize and could therefore accept only serious writing in serious journals. “Now, in the last twelve months, if not a single collection of writing or short stories has been published in Africa, where do you think you’re going to get submissions from?” he protested. They relented. He won the prize. And used the money – and the tornado-level energy surrounding him by this point – to start the literary magazine he wanted to read.

He called it Kwani?, which means “So what?”

The very next year, Yvonne Owuor won the Caine Prize for her short story The Weight of Whispers, which was published in this defiant upstart of a magazine.

Then came that essay. It started out as an angry email driven either by low blood sugar or by a passionate hatred of the Polish journalist Ryszard Kapuscinski, or by both. It ended up with Binyavanga being courted by at least two European heads of state and Bono. (And that was just the beginning.) The publication of How to Write about Africa in 2005 was a turning point. For one thing, it was because of the astonishing velocity of the essay, which remains, to this day, Granta’s most-circulated article ever. For another, it was because of that voice: that singular, hilarious, worldly, biting, flippant, and meaningful voice that set fire to a whole millennium’s worth of assumptions about what a writer in Binyavanga’s position was supposed to do.

Mainly, however, I think the essay was a turning point because it made Binyavanga possible. I met him for the first time only a few months after the essay was published, exactly at the time it was circling the planet. To be sure, I grew up thousands of miles away from him, in another country on another continent. But I recognised his predicament because it was mine too: the impossible and almost civilisational chasm that separated expectation and circumstance. The ambition to prove here is just as significant as there without enough power to; the desire to engage the world without anywhere near the means to.

At the time of Binyavanga’s early wins, all of which happened in quick succession – the Caine Prize, the launch of Kwani? and the Granta essay – it seemed like he could do just about anything. I certainly thought so when we first met. He had an assured air about him that suggested he was in no hurry. At the same time, he left no doubt that he wanted to remake the world in a hurry. And why not? The world waited, with arms outstretched.

Finally, everything was possible. Finally, he was possible. I can’t fully convey what a heady feeling it was to be around him then. It was his time. He knew it – and loved it. KenKen had made the jump to Binyavanga Wainaina. He had found the world he had been waiting for, the sky was the limit, and the future was wide, wide open.

Achal Prabhala is a writer, filmmaker and public health activist who lives in Bangalore, India.

READ ARTICLE HERE AND ORIGINAL HERE

Uganda’s President Fires Military Son After Offensive Tweets

FILE - Then Lt. Gen. Muhoozi Kainerugaba, son of Uganda's President Yoweri Museveni, attends a "thanksgiving" ceremony in Entebbe, Uganda on May 7, 2022. Uganda's President Yoweri Museveni fired his son Muhoozi Kainerugaba as commander of the nation's infantry forces Tuesday, Oct. 4, 2022 after the son tweeted an unprovoked threat to capture the capital of neighboring Kenya, drawing widespread concern in East Africa. (AP Photo/Hajarah Nalwadda, File)

BY RODNEY MUHUMUZA

KAMPALA, UGANDA (AP) — Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni fired his son as commander of the nation’s infantry forces Tuesday after the son tweeted an unprovoked threat to capture the capital of neighboring Kenya, drawing widespread concern in East Africa.

Lt. Gen. Muhoozi Kainerugaba, dubbed ‘the tweeting general’ of Uganda, in recent months had sparked anger among some Ugandans who see his frequent posts on Twitter as provocative and sometimes even dangerous.

He has tweeted in support of the Tigray rebels fighting Ethiopian federal troops. He’s voiced support for violent rebels fighting in eastern Congo. He said all Africans support Russia in its war in Ukraine. Bizarrely, he recently said he was offering 100 long-horned cattle — apparently as bride price — for Italy’s incoming female prime minister.

Some of Kainerugaba’s supporters say his tweets are attempts at humor and shouldn’t be taken seriously. But many others see a bigger problem. As an army officer, he is constitutionally barred from engaging in partisan politics and some Ugandans point out that any other soldier tweeting like Kainerugaba would be court-martialed.

“It wouldn’t take us, my army and me, 2 weeks to capture Nairobi,” he tweeted Monday.

That threat to seize the capital of Kenya went too far for his father, an authoritarian leader who has held power since 1986.

Kenyan President William Ruto, who took power last month, is friendly with Museveni, whom he described as the region’s “father” during his inauguration.

Kainerugaba’s tweets exasperated many Kenyans, and the foreign minister tweeted Tuesday that he had a meeting with the Ugandan ambassador. Uganda’s foreign ministry dismissed Kainerugaba’s tweets in a statement that spoke of a “harmonious relationship that we value.”

Kainerugaba, the pillar of his father’s personal security apparatus, has been the de facto head of Uganda’s military, with his allies strategically deployed in command positions across the security services, according to observers. Although he was sacked from his post as head of Uganda’s infantry forces, Kainerugaba still was promoted to a four-star general and will remain a military adviser to his father, according to a statement issued by the military Tuesday. He was replaced as infantry commander by Lt. Gen. Kayanja Muhanga.

Many Ugandans believe Kainerugaba is being groomed to replace Museveni as president, allegations the president has long denied.

Kainerugaba’s associates describe him as a dedicated military officer who often eschews ostentatious displays of power and wealth. He attended military schools in the U.S. and Britain before taking charge of a presidential guard unit that has since been expanded into an elite group of special forces.

This story has been corrected to show that Muhoozi Kainerugaba was promoted to a four-star general, not a five-star general.

Kenyan Lawyer In ICC Case Linked To New President Found Dead

Kenyan lawyer Paul Gicheru listens to charges against him of bribing and threatening prosecution witnesses in the case against Kenya's recently elected President William Ruto, which was ultimately dropped amid allegations of witness interference, at the opening hearing at the International Criminal Court in The Hague, Netherlands Tuesday, Feb. 15, 2022. Kenyan police say that Gicheru was found dead at his home late Monday, Sept. 26, 2022 though it was not immediately clear how he died. (International Criminal Court via AP)

NAIROBI, KENYA (ASSOCIATED PRESS) — Police say a Kenyan lawyer facing charges at the International Criminal Court of bribing and threatening prosecution witnesses in a past ICC case against Kenya’s recently elected president has been found dead.

Paul Gicheru had pleaded not guilty earlier this year to all eight counts of interfering with witnesses in the case against William Ruto, who had been charged with involvement in violence after Kenya’s 2007 election that left more than 1,000 people dead.

A police report seen by The Associated Press said the family of the 50-year-old Gicheru found him unconscious at his home Monday night. “The body was found lying on the back, clean, casually dressed and no saliva or blood on any body opening,” the report says, noting that “the deceased is a known diabetic and high blood pressure patient.”

The police report noted that Gicheru’s 20-year-old son, who told his mother that Gicheru “had taken something,” was later found with “froth” coming from his mouth and difficulty breathing. He was in stable condition at a local hospital, the report said. It was not clear what happened.

In comments to reporters, family lawyer John Khaminwa said the family had described Gicheru as stressed in the hours before his death. “He was not himself,” Khaminwa said. The family intends to bring in pathologists to “look at his internal organs and other things,” he said.

The Kenya Human Rights Commission said it was “concerned with the shocking news of the untimely death” and urged a swift and conclusive investigation.

The charges against Ruto and others, including previous President Uhuru Kenyatta, were dropped in 2016 when the case fell apart amid allegations of witness interference. Ruto denied the allegations against him. The court’s decision to drop the case specified that it did “not preclude new prosecution in the future.”

Ruto was chairing his first Cabinet meeting on Tuesday after being sworn in on Sept. 13 following a narrow election win.

ICC spokesman Fadi El Abdallah said he could not comment on Gicheru’s case but only on the procedure to be followed: “If there is information about the death of an accused, a confirmation of this information should be submitted to the (trial) chamber and then the chamber issues a decision ending the case.”

Judges are currently considering their verdicts in the case. No date had been set for a hearing to deliver the judgment.

Associated Press writer Mike Corder in The Hague, Netherlands, contributed.

1st Ukraine Grain Ship For Horn Of Africa Reaches Djibouti

A member of the World Food Programme (WFP) stands on the dock next to the Brave Commander bulk carrier ship after it arrived in the port of Djibouti city, Djibouti Tuesday, Aug. 30, 2022. The first ship carrying grain from Ukraine for people in the hungriest parts of the world has docked at the Horn of Africa port of Djibouti as areas of East Africa are badly affected by deadly drought and conflict. (Hugh Rutherford/WFP via AP)

BY CARA ANNA

NAIROBI, KENYA (AP) — The first ship carrying grain from Ukraine for people in the hungriest parts of the world has docked at the Horn of Africa port of Djibouti as areas of East Africa are badly affected by deadly drought and conflict.

Food security experts call it a drop in the bucket for the vast needs in the worst-hit Horn countries of Somalia, Kenya and Ethiopia, the nation where this first shipment is going. But the flow of grain from Ukraine for other hungry parts of the world is expected to continue, with another ship departing Tuesday for Yemen. The U.N. World Food Program has said it is working on multiple ships.

WFP says this first shipment of grain will be shipped overland to northern Ethiopia, where millions of people have been affected by the country’s Tigray conflict, which has now flared up again.

How any of the grain will reach Tigray is now in question as humanitarian deliveries by road and air have been suspended amid the fighting that sparked again last week between Tigray forces and Ethiopian ones. But Ethiopia’s neighboring Amhara and Afar regions also are expected to benefit.

WFP has said the 23,000 metric tons of grain on the first ship are enough to feed 1.5 million people on full rations for a month. But the U.N. has said 2.4 million in Tigray alone are severely food insecure and that 20 million people across Ethiopia face hunger.

Millions of other people in the Horn of Africa region are going hungry because of drought, and thousands have died. Somalia has been especially hard hit because it sourced at least 90% of its grain from Ukraine and Russia before Russia invaded Ukraine in February.

Millions of tons of food are needed for the Horn of Africa, WFP said. “In Ethiopia alone, three-quarters of everything that we used to distribute originated from Ukraine and Russia,” regional director Michael Dunford said.

Food security experts have said it will take weeks for people in African countries to see grain from Ukraine arrive and even longer to see it bring down high food prices that have been a source of despair and protests in multiple nations.

Far more ships carrying grain from Ukraine’s reopened ports have been going to richer places like Europe as existing business contracts are fulfilled. As of Sunday, 114 ships carrying more than 1.2 million metric tons of food commodities had left Ukraine, WFP said, but “export volumes remain far below pre-conflict averages.”

UN: US Buying Big Ukraine Grain Shipment For Hungry Regions

Villagers gather during a visit by World Food Program chief David Beasley, in the village of Wagalla in northern Kenya Friday, Aug. 19, 2022. The United States is stepping up to buy about 150,000 metric tons of grain from Ukraine in the next few weeks for an upcoming shipment of food aid from ports no longer blockaded by war, the World Food Program chief has told The Associated Press. (AP Photo/Brian Inganga)

BY CARA ANNA

BULLA HAGAR, KENYA (AP) — The United States is stepping up to buy about 150,000 metric tons of grain from Ukraine in the next few weeks for an upcoming shipment of food aid from ports no longer blockaded by war, the World Food Program chief has told The Associated Press.

The final destinations for the grain are not confirmed and discussions continue, David Beasley said. But the planned shipment, one of several the U.N. agency that fights hunger is pursuing, is more than six times the amount of grain that the first WFP-arranged ship from Ukraine is now carrying toward people in the Horn of Africa at risk of starvation.

Beasley spoke Friday from northern Kenya, which is deep in a drought that is withering the Horn of Africa region. He sat under a thorn tree among local women who told the AP that the last time it rained was in 2019.

Their bone-dry communities face yet another failed rainy season within weeks that could tip parts of the region, especially neighboring Somalia, into famine. Already, thousands of people have died. The World Food Program says 22 million people are hungry.

“I think there’s a high probability we’ll have a declaration of famine” in the coming weeks, Beasley said.

He called the situation facing the Horn of Africa a “perfect storm on top of a perfect storm, a tsunami on top of a tsunami” as the drought-prone region struggles to cope amid high food and fuel prices driven partly by the war in Ukraine.

The keenly awaited first aid ship from Ukraine is carrying 23,000 metric tons of grain, enough to feed 1.5 million people on full rations for a month, Beasley said. It is expected to dock in Djibouti on Aug. 26 or 27, and the wheat is supposed to be shipped overland to northern Ethiopia, where millions of people in the Tigray, Afar and Amhara regions have faced not only drought but deadly conflict.

Ukraine was the source of half the grain that WFP bought last year to feed 130 million hungry people. Russia and Ukraine signed agreements with the U.N. and the Turkish government last month to enable exports of Ukrainian grain for the first time since Russia’s invasion in February.

But the slow reopening of Ukraine’s ports and the cautious movement of cargo ships across the mined Black Sea won’t solve the global food security crisis, Beasley said. He warned that richer countries must do much more to keep grain and other assistance flowing to the hungriest parts of the world, and he named names.

“With oil profits being so high right now — record-breaking profits, billions of dollars every week — ... the Gulf states need to help, need to step up and do it now,” Beasley said. “It’s inexcusable not to. Particularly since these are their neighbors, these are their brothers, their family.”

He asserted the World Food Program could save “millions of lives” with just one day of Gulf countries’ oil profits.

China needs to help as well, Beasley said.

“China’s the second-largest economy in the world, and we get diddly-squat from China,” or very little, he added.

Despite grain leaving Ukraine and hopes rising of global markets beginning to stabilize, the world’s most vulnerable people face a long, difficult recovery, the WFP chief said.

“Even if this drought ends, we’re talking about a global food crisis at least for another 12 months,” Beasley said. “But in terms of the poorest of the poor, it’s gonna take several years to come out of this.”

Some of the world’s poorest people without enough food are in northern Kenya, where animal carcasses are slowly stripped to the bone beneath an ungenerous sky. Millions of livestock, the source of families’ wealth and nutrition, have died in the drought. Many water pumps have gone dry. More and more thousands of children are malnourished.

“Don’t forget us,” resident Hasan Mohamud told Beasley. “Even the camels have disappeared. Even the donkeys have succumbed.”

With so many in need, aid that does arrive can disappear like a raindrop in the sand. Local women who qualified for WFP cash handouts described taking the 6,500 shillings (about $54) and sharing it among their neighbors — in one case, 10 households.

“The most interesting thing we hear is people saying, ‘We’re not the only ones,’” WFP program officer Felix Okech told the AP. “‘We’re the ones who have been selected (for handouts), but there are many more like us.’ So that is very humbling to hear.”

In a small crowd that had gathered to listen to stories of children too weak to stand and milk gone dry, one woman at the edge of the woven plastic mat spoke up. Sahara Abdilleh, 50, said she makes perhaps 1,000 shillings ($8.30) a week from gathering firewood, scouring a landscape that gives less and less back every day. Like Beasley, she was thinking globally.

“Is there any country, like Afghanistan or Ukraine, that is worse off than us?” she asked.

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Follow all AP stories about drought at
https://apnews.com/hub/climate-and-environment.



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Follow all AP stories about the war in Ukraine at






https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine.