CHAMA CHA MWANANCHI, SOCIALIST

KENYA’S LEADING SOCIAL DEMOCRATS

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MOVIES TO WATCH

Posted by SG on March 29, 2008

Saturday, February 9, 2008

Kenya, our heads are bowed in shame

Kenya, our heads are bowed in shame
By Sec Gen Dick Kamau
In the movie Hotel Rwanda, the hotel manager who waited for the Belgian army to come save the Rwandans is devastated on realising that long-awaited soldiers came only to aid the evacuation of the Westerners.
Chama Cha Mwananchi- Social democracy – http://chamachamwananchi.wordpress.com

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Mboya’s widow speaks of killing, why now since 1969? Opening old wounds?

Posted by SG on February 15, 2008

POLITICS

Mboya’s widow speaks of killing

Story by ODHIAMBO ORLALE
Publication Date: 2/15/2008

The widow of former Economic Planning and Development minister, Tom Mboya, Thursday broke her silence about  his assassination 39 years ago.

Mrs Pamela Mboya wrote to the Kofi Annan mediation team and offered to shed more light to the unresolved case. She said she was willing to meet the former United Nations secretary general in private on the issue.

At the same time, Mrs Mboya supported  proposals to have a Truth and Reconciliation Commission formed to address the numerous historical political-social and economic injustices that have bedevilled the country since independence.

Big man

The late Mboya was gunned down in broad daylight on July 5, 1969 as he left a pharmacy to his car along Nairobi’s Moi Avenue.

Mr Nahashon Njenga who was later arrested and charged with the murder in mitigation asked: “Why have you not looked for the big man?”

Other unresolved political assassinations since then include former Nyandarua North MP, Mr J.M. Kariuki, in 1975, the late Foreign Affairs minister, Dr Robert Ouko, in 1990, and the two ODM MPs gunned down last month, Mr Melitus Mugabe Were (Embakasi) in Nairobi, and Mr David Kimutai Too (Ainamoi), in Eldoret.

Coincidentally, the man who was in charge of the intelligence arm of the Government for 27 years until 2002, when Mboya, Kariuki and Ouko were murdered, Mr James Kanyotu, died on Wednesday at a Nairobi hospital, with all the secrets.

Mrs Mboya’s one-page letter to the Annan team breaks the silence on the sensitive topic which had been taboo under the Kenyatta and Moi regimes.

Mystery and speculation

Said the widow: “The assassination of my husband on July 5, 1969, at the prime age of 39 years, like others after him, is a matter that has remained shrouded in mystery and speculation, and which has been avoided by successive regimes in this country. I am prepared to appear before your panel in person or thorough my advocate to expound on my aforesaid plea,” Mrs Mboya, who later served as head of the UN Habitat, added.

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ODM WELCOMES MUSEVENI TO MEDIATE

Posted by SG on January 21, 2008

Kenya: ODM Welcomes Museveni Mediation

The Monitor (Kampala)

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Frank Nyakairu and Agencies
Kampala

KENYA’S main opposition party, the Orange Democratic Movement has welcomed President Yoweri Museveni’s mediation aimed at stemming the violence that followed the December 27 re-election of President Mwai Kibaki.

Mr Museveni has in the recent past been strongly criticized for being the only African head of State to have congratulated Mr Kibaki on winning the disputed poll. And claims of Ugandan troop deployment in Kenya only served to fuel tensions.

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“President Museveni has telephoned Hon Raila Odinga informing him of intentions to travel to Kenya and mediate between us and the PNU in efforts to make sure that there is peace and democracy in Kenya. As the chairman of the East African Community he is welcome,” ODM spokesman Salim Lone told Daily Monitor in a telephone interview yesterday. More than 650 people have been killed in the post election violence triggered by the disputed December 27 re-election of Mr Kibaki.

The opposition and observers insist the election was flawed. The opposition has called for more demonstrations on Thursday despite the fact that police, under orders to crash rallies, have shot dead scores of their supporters. Atleast 20 civilians died in the troubled Rift Valley area yesterday according to media reports.

Foreign Minister Sam Kutesa said at the weekend that Mr Museveni would be mediating as “As chairman of the East African Community and the Commonwealth.” ODM’s Lone said; “We have several mediation mechanisms; we have the international community, former African Heads of States and our own East African Community must also play a role in mediating.”

On alleged deployment of Ugandan troops in Kenya, ODM said they had to take President Museveni’s word. “He (Museveni) assured us that there were no and will not be any Uganda troops in Kenya.” Mr Museveni is slated to travel to Kenya on Tuesday.

In Nairobi, clashes between rival tribes killed at least three people on Sunday in a fresh flare-up of ethnically-motivated, witnesses said.

All of the bodies bore scars of machete attacks.

“I saw three people dead, killed by pangas (machetes), slashed on the head, cuts on the back and a hand chopped off,” Mr Samuel Oduor, 22, a freelance cameraman, said. He had footage of one of the bodies but police had collected the others, he told journalists. Other witnesses confirmed the death toll in clashes between youths from Mr Kibaki’s Kikuyu ethnic group and the Luo tribe of opposition leader Raila Odinga.

They bring to at least 51 dead, the toll from days of violence since the opposition launched a three-day anti-government demonstration on Wednesday. Many were killed by police opening fire on protesters, others by ethnic gangs. Mr Harold Mukigi, a driver, said of one victim: “He was sliced with a panga (machete) over the head. There was fighting through the night.” The other killings were reprisals, witnesses said.

Police were not available for comment but a Reuters reporter saw one body and a severed hand where the clashes took place in Nairobi’s Huruma slum, whose name means “mercy” in Swahili. Police were heavily deployed on Sunday in an effort to contain further post-poll violence that has tarnished Kenya’s image as a stable country in a troubled region, hurt its democratic credentials and damaged investor confidence.

“It does not matter how long it takes. Ultimately, justice will triumph,” Mr Odinga told a few hundred supporters at a church service in Nairobi’s Kibera slum on Sunday, where just outside lay the ashen remains of days of flaming road blockades.

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More ethnic clashes are expected. “They are beating us. They want to chase us away. They are armed with bows and arrows and they are killing our children,” a visibly angry 75-year-old Wangeci Mwangi said of the gangs raiding her neighbourhood in Huruma. Other parts of the country appeared quiet following sporadic killings and lootings in flashpoints such as the western town of Eldoret and the southern town of Narok on Friday and Saturday.

EU aid commissioner Louis Michel, who met Mr Kibaki and Mr Odinga on Saturday, has urged both sides to meet and hold talks to resolve their standoff and end the killings. Human rights groups have been dismayed by what they say are heavy-handed police tactics to stop opposition gatherings last week, which included shooting some protestors as they tried to flee.

The police are investigating television footage which shows police shooting two demonstrators at close range. The opposition and government accuse each other of genocide. In the worst ethnic-based attack since the violence started, around 30 people were locked in a church near Eldoret, in the Rift Valley. A mob then torched it, burning them to death.

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