We must remain a secular State as envisaged in the Constitution or else these will be the first step of the rise of a fundamentalist, theocratic State. [iStockphoto]
I choose to write about the Church and the State at a time when most Christians globally have just celebrated Christmas, a celebration that is believed in Christendom to celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ.
Don’t get me wrong, I was born and brought up in a devoted Christian home (my old lady still is a serving member of the Deacons Board). I was educated in Christian-sponsored schools. I was attached to Christianity first by birth, then by choice, and finally by love. Religion and more particularly Christianity has shaped not only my morality but also the morality of many Kenyans both young and old.
However, we are staring danger in the face if we, the people of Kenya will not act with serious urgency now to forestall the snowballing crisis of increased coziness between church and State. There is a reason why the framers of the Constitution of Kenya, 2010 sought to establish that dichotomy between church and State in Article 8 of the Constitution.
It must be remembered that the idea of Kenya as a Nation was first conceived in or around 1897 when the Imperial British East Africa Company took over to administer British East Africa's sphere of influence as a Protectorate of the British. Then as the colonial enterprise was setting root, to pacify the local otherwise hostile population, the missionaries (essentially the church) came in handy in preaching the messianic mission of the colonial government and the superiority of Christianity over indigenous religion(s).
What we then witness from then on up to the time we attain independence, is massive brutalization of our people in the name of the crown (read State) and in the name of God (read church). As our people demanded civil and political rights, we had people like Archdeacon Walter E Owen of ACK Diocese Maseno helping form associations that were committed to social demands in isolation while not calling out the colonial government over its eccentricities.
First forward to post-independence, the church's leadership sat comfortably and intimately with the State. What then follows is that the church becomes a reflection of ethnic and political divisions in the country. A case in point is when African Inland Church (AIC) was openly identified as "A Kanu Kalenjin church", to the extent that its head Bishop Silas Yego, openly associated with the late Retired President Daniel Moi and attended some Kanu meetings.
When the giant body of Protestant churches the National Council of Churches Kenya (NCCK) criticised the late President Moi over his excesses, Yego would take it upon himself to defend him. Interestingly the NCCK under the eloquent Rev Cannon Peter Karanja would suffer a similar fate when the President was a Kikuyu and he was viewed as an apologist for the "Kikuyu State"
The saddest of all these is that we have in State House a leadership that has appropriated God to the exclusion of everyone else who so not share in their political philosophy. We witnessed with horror when we were told that the elections of 9th August 2022 were won by those who believe in God. How ridiculous! Didn't Christ teach us to love our enemies?
Didn't Christ teach us ecumenism rather than sectionalism? But even if all these were immaterial then what then happens to Agnostics, Atheists, and non-Christians? Are they less deserving citizens because they don't believe in what President William Ruto and the Kenya Kwanza brigade believe in? There is a very good reason why in the Preamble of our Constitution we reiterate our pride as a people in our ethnic, cultural, and religious diversity.
After the misses of the first 100 days, the President must remember we didn't put him in office to evangelise to us. If anything, we, the people at individual levels reserve the right to choose what to believe in. To choose what is God and choose how to perceive him. This is a right that we will not and will never cede to the State or any of its agents. We must remain a secular State as envisaged in the Constitution or else these will be the first step of the rise of a fundamentalist, theocratic State.
“We are going to forget religion. Put your religion at home, in the closet. Keep it between You and Your God- because if it has not done anything more for you than it has, you need to forget it anyway,” Malcom X Writer is a Governance and Policy Expert, By Kidi Mwaga, The Standard
There was a sombre mood at the City mortuary, Mulago National Referral hospital as families received the bodies of the victims of the Freedom City mall stampede.
Nine people, mostly juveniles died in the stampede that preceded the New Year's fireworks display. By Sunday, the death toll had risen to 10 after another person believed to be 17 years also died.
The revellers were attending a musical show organized by popular Uganda Music promoter, Abbey Musinguzi, alias Abtex. According to a doctor who spoke on condition of anonymity, the deceased whose identity has not yet been established, died at a private clinic near Freedom City mall, along Entebbe road where he was rushed.
In an earlier statement, police described the incident as a ‘rush and negligent' act. Police alleged that the master of ceremony of the night, encouraged the revellers to go outside the mall to watch a fireworks display. After the display ended, a stampede ensued, resulting in the instant deaths of five people while scores sustained injuries.
Part of the Freedom City mall has now been closed for further investigations. Another event that was supposed to be held at the mall was cancelled. - URN/The Observer
White men charged as video of attack on Black teens at pool goes viral
Three white men have been arrested over the alleged assault of two Black teens at a resort in South Africa.
The incident on Christmas Day in the city of Bloemfontein was captured in video by a bystander. According to the two teenagers, the attackers told them the pool at Maselspoort Resort and Conference Centre was for “white people only,” The New York Times reports.
In the video, the adult male can be seen strangling, slapping and putting one of the teens in a headlock and into the pool. The violence in the recording, which has since become viral, has prompted renewed demands for the nation’s leaders to address racism.
Johan Nel, 33, and Jan Stephanus van der Westhuizen, 47, have since been arrested and charged with assault. A third unidentified individual faces attempted murder charges.
Footage of the disturbing video, shared on Twitter by a woman who claims to be the sister of the victims, has been viewed more than 21 million times.
One of the teens who was assaulted is 18-year-old Kgokong Nakedi, his father Brian Nakedi told the Times.
According to Mr Nakedi, who was once an underground Apartheid fighter, his family made a reservation at the resort for three nights to celebrate a reunion post-Covid.
Mr Nakedi said his family had made the booking in a part of the resort that has chalets, but his son and a 13-year-old nephew opted for swimming in a pool in a wooded campground area.
The teens were reportedly told they could not be in the area by people who believed they were not guests in the resort.
Kgokong and the 13-year-old decided to go into the pool before alerting Mr Nakedi of the situation.
Mr Nakedi said he briefly explained to some white guests that his son and nephews were also guests at the resort, and left the pool area thinking the situation had been resolved.
But just moments later, men impeded Kgokong from going into the pool by closing a gate.
The teens still went into the pool, with several white guests simultaneously jumping outside before the violence then ensued.
Kgokong said that while one of the men held him underwater, he muttered: “You’re fighting for the water; now you’ll die.”
President Cyril Ramphosal issued a statement condemning the attacks.
“Under the rule of law, we must let investigations take their course ... but under the rule of law, we can and must also declare that racism has no place in our society and racists have no place to hide,” Mr Ramphosal said, per The Times.
The Apartheid in South Africa took place between 1948 and the early 1990s. Still, racism and discrimination remain an issue in the country’s culture.
A 2021 report by the BBC found that Black South Africans continue to face great disparities compared to their white counterparts post-Apartheid. By Andrea Blanco, The Independent
Moving away from previous many years, President Kagame Kagame used nearly his whole New Year speech to address relations with large neighbor DR Congo. Burundi, with which relations have been bad until recently, was given praises.
FULL SPEECH BELOW
As we conclude 2022, I would like to thank Rwandans for the resilience displayed throughout the past year.
We turned the corner on some difficult challenges, such as the Covid pandemic.
We launched the second phase of the Economic Recovery Fund to continue supporting Rwandan businesses, and our economy grew even stronger in the third quarter of the year.
With the participation of all Rwandans, we also hosted a successful CHOGM and other important events.
In 2023, we will be one year away from completing our seven-year Government Programme, the National Strategy for Transformation.
This was done while maintaining unwavering security and stability, which was contributed to by Rwandans.
Good progress has been made, but it will require discipline, consistency, and concerted effort, to reach our targets on time.
Our country is stronger, and that is due to the unity and hard work of Rwandans.
But, new challenges also arose, which require our attention, particularly in our neighbourhood, specifically in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
For 2023, above all, we are looking forward to a year of peace and security in our region, where we can consolidate our development gains, and make faster progress.
All of us in the region, and our international partners, need to work together to implement the lasting solutions which have been evading us for the last two and a half decades.
There are regional initiatives underway, led by the President of Angola – President Lourenço, the President of Burundi – President Ndayishimiye, and the former President of Kenya, Uhuru Kenyatta,
I thank these leaders, as well as the Heads of State of the East African Community, for the crucial work they are undertaking, which Rwanda fully supports.
We also commend them for agreeing to deploy a force to help stabilise eastern Congo.
However, these efforts will not bear fruit, unless the unhelpful approach of the international community changes significantly.
It is disappointing that the international community pays lip service to peace, and actually ends up complicating matters, which undermines the regional processes.
After spending tens of billions of dollars on peacekeeping over the past two decades, the security situation in eastern Congo is worse than ever.
To explain this failure, some in the international community blame Rwanda, even though they know very well that the true responsibility lies primarily with the government of the Democratic Republic of Congo, as well as with these external actors who refuse to address the root causes of the problem – nowhere else.
This is a very expensive lie, which makes no logical sense.
They speak the truth only in whispers, afraid to displease the Congolese government, and compromise their own interests, but in fact, they embolden leaders of the DRC to take more and more drastic steps to consolidate its populist base, in the process hurting their own people.
Even though the United Nations Group of Experts documents the collaboration between the Congolese army and the FDLR, and other militias, not to mention the alarming rise in hate speech, these items are virtually ignored as if they are of no consequence.
This attitude is shocking, but not surprising, given what Rwandans know and saw in our region in the 1990s.
We have had enough of this hypocrisy. It is high time that the unwarranted vilification of Rwanda stopped.
Of course, we are directly affected when the remnants of the militias that committed genocide in Rwanda become auxiliary forces of the DRC army and conduct attacks across our border.
No country can accept this.
Rwanda will never accept this as normal, and will always respond appropriately, because our security and stability, are paramount.
We could not have learned better from our history.
There are more than a hundred armed groups flourishing in eastern Congo, including Rwandan genocidaires militia like the FDLR.
These groups create constant insecurity for civilians in DRC, and in Rwanda.
The reason this situation prevails is because DRC is unwilling or unable to govern its territory.
Should Rwanda be the one to bear the dysfunction of this immense country?
The situation of the Congolese refugees, whose very right to nationality is denied by their home country, is a case in point.
It is not just a question of ‘hate speech’, but of active persecution, over decades.
Rwanda is among the countries in East Africa which have hosted hundreds of thousands of Congolese refugees, for decades.
We have more than 70,000 registered in Rwanda alone. And new refugees continue to arrive, even now.
Yet the international community effectively pretends that these people do not exist, or that they don’t know what causes them to be refugees in the first place.
The policy seems to be for them to remain in Rwanda indefinitely, which only serves to whitewash the lie that they are actually Rwandans who deserved to be expelled.
This is an international problem and it requires an international solution, because the unresolved political issues which cause these armed groups to keep coming up, and which underlie the hate speech we keep seeing, are the same.
Rwanda will not accept to bear the burden for the DRC’s responsibilities. We have enough burdens of our own to bear, and we shall do so as effectively as we can.
The conditions for Congolese refugees to return home in safety and dignity must be established.
In any case, Rwanda will not stop them from going home, in any way they choose.
We also have Burundian refugees in Rwanda. The Government of Burundi is making efforts to reassure these refugees, that it is safe to return to their country, including visiting the refugee camps. As a result, many have returned.
This is the right thing to do. It shows that this problem can be solved if the political will can be found.
I wanted to convey these points clearly so that we as Rwandans understand the current situation, and so our partners and friends around the world know where we stand.
At the same time, it’s important to expose the so-called Africa experts and policy-makers, wherever they come from, who have peddled lies, and created confusion about Rwanda and this region.
I want to assure Rwandans, that our country will continue to be safe and secure in 2023. There is no doubt about that.
And I believe that, with continued implementation of the decisions of the regional Luanda and Nairobi processes, we can address this issue, bearing in mind that Congo is our neighbour, and we will always live side by side.
And, in due course, I believe that our common future, for all of us in East Africa and the Great Lakes Region, will be a prosperous and secure one.
We will keep working towards that.
To all Rwandans, I want to thank you for your hard work and dedication to our nation.
Let’s keep this spirit in 2023, and beyond.
I wish you and your loved ones, a Successful and Happy New Year.
We also take the opportunity to wish our brothers and sisters in the region, a very Happy New Year!
God bless us all.
Moving away from previous many years, President Kagame Kagame used nearly his whole New Year speech to address relations with large neighbor DR Congo. Burundi, with which relations have been bad until recently, was given praises.
FULL SPEECH BELOW
As we conclude 2022, I would like to thank Rwandans for the resilience displayed throughout the past year.
We turned the corner on some difficult challenges, such as the Covid pandemic.
We launched the second phase of the Economic Recovery Fund to continue supporting Rwandan businesses, and our economy grew even stronger in the third quarter of the year.
With the participation of all Rwandans, we also hosted a successful CHOGM and other important events.
In 2023, we will be one year away from completing our seven-year Government Programme, the National Strategy for Transformation.
This was done while maintaining unwavering security and stability, which was contributed to by Rwandans.
Good progress has been made, but it will require discipline, consistency, and concerted effort, to reach our targets on time.
Our country is stronger, and that is due to the unity and hard work of Rwandans.
But, new challenges also arose, which require our attention, particularly in our neighbourhood, specifically in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
For 2023, above all, we are looking forward to a year of peace and security in our region, where we can consolidate our development gains, and make faster progress.
All of us in the region, and our international partners, need to work together to implement the lasting solutions which have been evading us for the last two and a half decades.
There are regional initiatives underway, led by the President of Angola – President Lourenço, the President of Burundi – President Ndayishimiye, and the former President of Kenya, Uhuru Kenyatta,
I thank these leaders, as well as the Heads of State of the East African Community, for the crucial work they are undertaking, which Rwanda fully supports.
We also commend them for agreeing to deploy a force to help stabilise eastern Congo.
However, these efforts will not bear fruit, unless the unhelpful approach of the international community changes significantly.
It is disappointing that the international community pays lip service to peace, and actually ends up complicating matters, which undermines the regional processes.
After spending tens of billions of dollars on peacekeeping over the past two decades, the security situation in eastern Congo is worse than ever.
To explain this failure, some in the international community blame Rwanda, even though they know very well that the true responsibility lies primarily with the government of the Democratic Republic of Congo, as well as with these external actors who refuse to address the root causes of the problem – nowhere else.
This is a very expensive lie, which makes no logical sense.
They speak the truth only in whispers, afraid to displease the Congolese government, and compromise their own interests, but in fact, they embolden leaders of the DRC to take more and more drastic steps to consolidate its populist base, in the process hurting their own people.
Even though the United Nations Group of Experts documents the collaboration between the Congolese army and the FDLR, and other militias, not to mention the alarming rise in hate speech, these items are virtually ignored as if they are of no consequence.
This attitude is shocking, but not surprising, given what Rwandans know and saw in our region in the 1990s.
We have had enough of this hypocrisy. It is high time that the unwarranted vilification of Rwanda stopped.
Of course, we are directly affected when the remnants of the militias that committed genocide in Rwanda become auxiliary forces of the DRC army and conduct attacks across our border.
No country can accept this.
Rwanda will never accept this as normal, and will always respond appropriately, because our security and stability, are paramount.
We could not have learned better from our history.
There are more than a hundred armed groups flourishing in eastern Congo, including Rwandan genocidaires militia like the FDLR.
These groups create constant insecurity for civilians in DRC, and in Rwanda.
The reason this situation prevails is because DRC is unwilling or unable to govern its territory.
Should Rwanda be the one to bear the dysfunction of this immense country?
The situation of the Congolese refugees, whose very right to nationality is denied by their home country, is a case in point.
It is not just a question of ‘hate speech’, but of active persecution, over decades.
Rwanda is among the countries in East Africa which have hosted hundreds of thousands of Congolese refugees, for decades.
We have more than 70,000 registered in Rwanda alone. And new refugees continue to arrive, even now.
Yet the international community effectively pretends that these people do not exist, or that they don’t know what causes them to be refugees in the first place.
The policy seems to be for them to remain in Rwanda indefinitely, which only serves to whitewash the lie that they are actually Rwandans who deserved to be expelled.
This is an international problem and it requires an international solution, because the unresolved political issues which cause these armed groups to keep coming up, and which underlie the hate speech we keep seeing, are the same.
Rwanda will not accept to bear the burden for the DRC’s responsibilities. We have enough burdens of our own to bear, and we shall do so as effectively as we can.
The conditions for Congolese refugees to return home in safety and dignity must be established.
In any case, Rwanda will not stop them from going home, in any way they choose.
We also have Burundian refugees in Rwanda. The Government of Burundi is making efforts to reassure these refugees, that it is safe to return to their country, including visiting the refugee camps. As a result, many have returned.
This is the right thing to do. It shows that this problem can be solved if the political will can be found.
I wanted to convey these points clearly so that we as Rwandans understand the current situation, and so our partners and friends around the world know where we stand.
At the same time, it’s important to expose the so-called Africa experts and policy-makers, wherever they come from, who have peddled lies, and created confusion about Rwanda and this region.
I want to assure Rwandans, that our country will continue to be safe and secure in 2023. There is no doubt about that.
And I believe that, with continued implementation of the decisions of the regional Luanda and Nairobi processes, we can address this issue, bearing in mind that Congo is our neighbour, and we will always live side by side.
And, in due course, I believe that our common future, for all of us in East Africa and the Great Lakes Region, will be a prosperous and secure one.
We will keep working towards that.
To all Rwandans, I want to thank you for your hard work and dedication to our nation.
Let’s keep this spirit in 2023, and beyond.
I wish you and your loved ones, a Successful and Happy New Year.
We also take the opportunity to wish our brothers and sisters in the region, a very Happy New Year!
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