Pilloried as a 'conchie' after serving in Kenya, I now feel vindicated

The Guardian

I doubt if all the secrets of the Kikuyu uprising will ever be known. Young soldiers were brainwashed into believing they were fighting in Kenya for our glorious empire. Sixty years ago I was there as a 19-year-old national service officer. I am delighted that the government has given some token compensation for Kenyans who suffered torture (Britain's brutal past exposed, 6 June). I still suffer from memories of the British apartheid system there and numerous instances of arbitrary killing and brutality by British forces, Kenya police and Kenyan African Rifles. In reality we protected land-grabbing British farmers and enriched UK companies.

The sun is at last setting on Britain's imperial myth

by Pankaj Mishra, The Guardian

Scuttling away from India in 1947, after plunging the jewel in the crown into a catastrophic partition, "the British", the novelist Paul Scott famously wrote, "came to the end of themselves as they were". The legacy of British rule, and the manner of their departures – civil wars and impoverished nation states locked expensively into antagonism, whether in the Middle East, Africa or the Malay Peninsula – was clearer by the time Scott completed his Raj Quartet in the early 1970s. No more, he believed, could the British allow themselves any soothing illusions about the basis and consequences of their power.

“Setting the agenda for our leaders from under a tree”: The People’s Parliament in Nairobi

by Wangui Kimari & Jacob Rasmussen, Nokoko

In a park in the heart of Nairobi, members of Bunge la Mwananchi, which means “the people’s parliament” in Swahili, meet every day. Four benches placed in the cool shade of bougainvillea trees form the physical base of the parliament, or Bunge, as it is more colloquially known. Each day, heated debates about topical issues concerning Kenyan politics and the occasional scandal take place. The daily gatherings are public debating forums, open to all ethnic groups, genders, occupations, and party affiliations. By virtue of this inclusivity, Bunge la Mwananchi transgresses many of the boundaries that routinely frame Kenyan politics.

Ngugi wa Thiong'o: Dreams in a Time of War

A Review by Maya Jaggi, The Guardian  

The early novels of Ngugi wa Thiong'o were revolutionary in depicting the terror of the 1950s state of emergency in colonial Kenya through the eyes of Kenyan civilians. A Grain of Wheat (1967) offered a subtler portrayal of Mau Mau than as mere exponents of senseless violence. This absorbing memoir recounts how Ngugi's boyhood was affected by mass expulsions, indiscriminate reprisals and internment camps, during what he has described elsewhere as Britain's "genocidal war". Yet, infused with a child's curiosity and wonder, this book is also deeply touching in its revelation of a whole community's stake in nurturing a writer.

Wanting Wambui Otieno back

by Pumla Dineo Gqola, Loudrastress

The news of Wambui Otieno came at the end of August 2011, as South Africans wrapped up Women’s Month, and a particularly horrid women’s month it had been too, with backlash and misogyny in public spaces like we had not seen in a long time.

I have loved Wambui Otieno, Mau Mau, feminist, unbowed woman ever since I have known about her. Although I never met her personally, I followed her life – backwards and forwards – first, as the African feminist universe buzzed when she lost the legal battle to bury her husband where she wanted, then reading a borrowed copy of her memoir, and afterwards “stalking” her online.

Wizard of the Crow

by Ngugi wa Thiong'o

Extract from "Wizard of the Crow", Open Democracy

There were many theories about the strange illness of the second Ruler of the Free Republic of Aburiria, but the most frequent on people's lips were five.
The illness, so claimed the first, was born of anger that once welled up inside him; and he was so conscious of the danger it posed to his well-being that he tried all he could to rid himself of it by belching after every meal, sometimes counting from one to ten, and other times chanting ka ke ki ko ku aloud.

Development and its discontents Review of Rasna Warah’s ‘Missionaries, Mercenaries and Misfits’

Anna White, Pambazuka

Last year, former World Bank economist Dambisa Moyo made waves with the publication of her controversial book, ‘Dead Aid: Why Aid is Not Working and How There is Another Way for Africa’. Over the past 60 years, she laments, at least US$1 trillion of development-related aid has flowed into Africa, yet the number of people living on less than a dollar a day has nearly doubled. She is not the first observer to contrast the size of the multi-billion dollar development industry and the blatant lack of progress on its stated goals.