Donation Amount. Min £2

East Africa

 

EACC boss Twalib Mbarak has been sued for failure to obey court orders requiring him to reinstate an employee as a senior education officer 1.

In the application, Henry Morara wants Mbarak to comply with orders issued by Justice Hellen Wasilwa of employment and labour relations court.

In her decision, Wasilwa ordered the Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission to reinstate Morara after finding his dismissal unfair and unlawful. 

The judge had given the commission 14 days to comply with the court’s orders, by reinstating him to the position he held in 2014, when the commission purported to terminate his employment.

The petitioner said the EACC has totally ignored the orders given in August 20, 2015 and the only avenue available, is to compel them or punish the top officials. 

"Since the delivery of the said judgement and service of decree upon the respondents, they have completely failed to abide by the orders," Morara states in his court papers.

He says he had been promoted to a senior education officer vide a letter dated May 15, 2014, by the former EACC boss Halakhe Waqo but he has never been reinstated to the position. 

Morara said he has suffered emotionally and financially as he is unable to meet his pressing financial needs and commitments.

Through lawyer Harun Ndubi, Morara is also seeking the court to declare that EACC through its employees has continued to treat him with actuated malice, unfairly and contrary to labour practices.

Ndubi says the EACC has also failed to pay all the financial loss incurred amounting to Sh10,192,089.

According to his court documents, EACC only made a partial payment of Sh3,423,700 in February 2020, leaving a balance of more than six million shillings. 

The lawyer now wants the court to issue an order compelling the anti-graft commission to pay his client in full, the arrears of Sh6,768,389 without further delay.

Morara has sued the EACC, its former chairman Mumo Matemu, former deputy commissioners Irene Keino and Jane Onsongo.

Also in the suit is Mbarak and Michael Mubea, the CEO operations at the Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission, Directorate of Criminal Investigations and the Attorney General. - CAROLYNE KUBWA, The Star (Edited by Bilha Makokha)

RC's President Felix Tshisekedi and Rwanda's President Paul Kagame. Flickr/Paul Kagame/Photo Courtesy

For the past few years, the relationship between the governments of Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) had been improving. Now Kigali and Kinshasa are ratcheting up tensions by accusing each other of supporting rebel groups in the eastern DRC.

In late May and early June, as the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) accused Rwanda of backing resurgent the M23 rebels, the latter counter-accused the former of working with the Forces Démocratiques de Libération du Rwanda (FDLR).

Among the leaders of the FDLR are people who participated in Rwanda’s 1994 genocide who have lived in eastern DRC for nearly three decades. FDLR members are from the Hutu ethnic group and M23 is largely made up of Tutsi of Congolese descent.

The DRC has played a crucial role in weakening the FDLR in recent years. In 2019, the armed Forces Armées de la République Démocratique du Congo (FARDC) – DRC national army — killed Sylvestre Mudacumura, the FDLR’s main leader. The FARDC killed many other FDLR leaders since 2019. By By Musinguzi Blanshe, The Africa Report

Literature scholar and author Ngugi wa Thiong’o.   File | Nation Media Group/Photo Courtesy 

As Kenya marked its 59th anniversary of internal self-rule on 1 June 2022, a controversial play by the nation’s foremost author, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, was staged in sold-out shows. It had been 45 years since it was banned and the author detained. The performance offers a useful filter to illuminate how the nation has fared in recent years. 

Democracy is gradually taking root, but corruption is still rife. This makes Kenya’s largely youthful population restive. Without a doubt, Ngaahika Ndeenda (I Will Marry When I Want) is the most consequential piece of writing by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o and his collaborator, the late Ngũgĩ wa Mirii. The drama tells the story of Kiguunda, a peasant whose tiny strip of earth is being targeted by Ahab Kioi, a local tycoon who represents international financial interests.

  • Ngugi wa Thiong’o: Why I returned to my mother’s tongue

  • PRIME Has Ngugi wa Thiong’o turned his back on Kiswahili?

Using multiple story threads, the play captures the tempestuous romance between Kiguunda’s daughter and Kioi’s son, which results in an unwanted pregnancy and a bleak future. Kiguunda’s delusion of a white wedding as social leverage leads to nothing but mockery and dispossession. 

Within months of its writing and subsequent staging, in late 1977, Ngũgĩ was detained without trial. Under Kenya’s old constitution, which was replaced by a more progressive one in 2010, it was lawful for the president to detain anyone without trial. Although the reason for Ngũgĩ’s detention has never been given, he told me recently its timing affirmed he had been targeted for writing in his indigenous language, Gikuyu:

I thought: Wait a minute, I have been writing in English over the years and nobody ever bothered with me. I write one play in Gikuyu and I’m detained, so I’m going to write in Gikuyu…

Ngũgĩ spent a year at the Kamiti Maximum Security Prison. His detention helped shine a light on Kenya’s human rights record. It also shaped his life in writing and political activism. 

Released in 1978, after the death of Kenya’s first president, Jomo Kenyatta, Ngũgĩ was denied the right to return to his old job at the University of Nairobi. He went into exile in 1982. Although the rest of his books were not banned, they were not taught in Kenyan schools for the next two decades.

In a sense, Ngaahika Ndeenda was both a point of departure and a point of return.

From activism to exile

In 1967, Ngũgĩ recorded in Decolonising the Mind how colonial power structures reproduce through education and the imposition of European languages and literature in Africa:

After I had written A Grain of Wheat I underwent a crisis. I knew whom I was writing about but whom was I writing for … In an interview in 1967 with Union News, a student newspaper in Leeds University, I said: ‘I have reached a point of crisis. I don’t know whether it is worth any longer writing in English.‘

In 1977, Ngũgĩ returned to his village in Limuru, just outside Nairobi, and mobilised the community to build a makeshift community theatre. This was to protest their denied access to the Kenya National Theatre.

He and Mirii scripted a play they thought reflected the realities that confronted ordinary villagers and factory workers in Limuru, subsisting on the verge of destitution. The actors, too, were ordinary workers and peasants from Limuru.

In a recent conversation, Ngũgĩ reflected on this:

I still believe in the power of ordinary peasants in narrating their experience.

The open-air theatre in Kamiriithu was razed by the government. Ngũgĩ was detained. His co-author, Mirii, fled to Zimbabwe, as did the play’s director, Kimani Gecau. 

In detention, Ngũgĩ produced the allegorical Caitani Mutharaba-ini (Devil on the Cross), which he wrote on toilet paper in Kamiti, alongside the prison memoir Detained. It was while promoting these two texts in London, in July 1982, that Ngũgĩ received a coded message warning him he’d receive “red carpet treatment” upon his return.

He returned to Kenya only in July 2004, after multiparty democracy had been restored. Although he was mobbed by hordes of ordinary Kenyans at the airport, his return had a tinge of tragedy. He was brutally attacked and his wife raped.

The return of Ngaahika Ndeenda to Kenyan theatres re-introduces the work to generations of Kenyans who were not yet born before the play’s initial release and subsequent exile of the author. It also marks the evolution of the nation’s artistic freedom arena.

“(Jomo) Kenyatta put me in a maximum security prison. Moi drove me into exile. Uhuru (Kenyatta) received me at the State House,” Ngugi says, recalling the 2014 visit when he was hosted by Kenya’s current president.

While Kenyatta’s hosting of a former dissident is a powerful visual of reform and expanding democratic space, the social ills that Ngũgĩ highlighted 45 years ago still fester.

Stranger than fiction

The core themes in Ngaahika Ndeenda – social inequities and justice – have universal appeal. Nairobi’s youthful population turned up to watch the new production, as did the urban expatriate community. But there were also enthusiasts bussed in from distant rural locations. They had no tickets, which had to be purchased in advance, online. 

Ngahiika Ndeenda is prescient in its vision of a land riven with class strife, greed and avarice.

Ngũgĩ is now polishing a Gikuyu version of his first novel, The River Between, now titled Rui Rwa Muoyo (or The River of Life). He calls the process “restoration”: returning to African languages narratives that have been domiciled in European-language granaries.

Young people need to know it is possible to write and perform in African languages. They need to be reminded of that possibility. Source: Daily Nation/By Conversation

Raila Odinga (left) is out of the country with Wiper leader Kalonzo Musyoka. [Dennis Kavisu, Standard]

Azimio la Umoja One Kenya coalition presidential candidate Raila Odinga is out of the country and his handlers did not say where he had gone.

Wiper leader Kalonzo Musyoka, Raila’s nominee for chief cabinet secretary, is also with the former prime minister. Kalonzo is Kenya’s Special Peace Envoy to South Sudan. 

Raila had spoken of the trip during the burial of Stella Memusi, wife of Kajiado Central MP Kanchory Memusi, on Tuesday.

While addressing mourners, the ODM leader thanked the lawmaker for rescheduling his wife’s burial. “The burial was meant for Thursday. I told him that I will be out of the country on Thursday as I would be jetting out tomorrow,” Raila said.

 

Yesterday, Dennis Onsarigo, the press secretary of Raila’s campaign secretariat, confirmed that the former prime minister was away. He, however, did not give details of where he would be and for how long.

Our efforts to contact Raila's and Kalonzo’s allies were unsuccessful.

We could not reach his campaign team's spokesperson Makau Mutua and Makueni MP Dan Maanzo on phone. 

His trip comes 60 days before the General Election, one billed to be a contest between him and Deputy President William Ruto.

Before his trip, Raila held rallies in Nairobi and Nakuru after the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) cleared him and his running mate Martha Karua as candidates in the August 9 elections.

President Uhuru Kenyatta also flew to Mogadishu yesterday for the inauguration of new Somalia President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud. By Brian Otieno, The Standard

  • Pst Jane Wairimu of AIC Maragwa during the Kenya Kwanza Women Charter at the Nyayo Stadium in Nairobi, on Friday, June 10, 2022.
    COURTESY 

A pastor who was praying for Deputy President William Ruto and his running mate, Mathira MP Rigathi Gachagua, mistakenly referred to the Kenya Kwanza coalition as Kenya Kwisha.

The pastor, Jane Wairimu of AIC Maragua, caught the crowd by surprise when she called Kenya Kwanza, Kenya Kwisha, with some of the leaders who were seated in the front being unable to hold back laughter.

Ruto and Gachagua were standing in front of the crowd when the pastor made the mistake. She hurriedly ended her prayers as various leaders giggled.

Pastor Jane Wairimu of AIC Maragwa during the Kenya Kwanza Women Charter at the Nyayo Stadium in Nairobi, on Friday, June 10, 2022.
Pastor Jane Wairimu of AIC Maragwa during the Kenya Kwanza Women Charter at the Nyayo Stadium in Nairobi, on Friday, June 10, 2022.
COURTESY
 

"We want to come into agreement with the Kenya Kwisha, I mean Kenyan Kwanza women that every handwriting has been erased," the pastor stated.

She went ahead to encourage the presidential duo and ended her prayers hurriedly although the audience was still giggling from her mistake. 

The DP was the chief guest at the UDA Women Charter signing event held at the Nyayo Stadium in Nairobi.

The event has been referred to as a move to neutralise the wave created by Azimio La Umoja One Kenya coalition presidential running mate, Martha Karua.

On Thursday, June 9, Kenya Kwanza Coalition urged media houses to send an all-woman crew to cover the event.

According to the coalition, the request to deploy all-female crews is part of celebrating the role women play in various industries in the country.

"We encourage your Media House/Online News Blogs to deploy a Women Crew as we seek to celebrate and highlight the important role played by women in all sectors," UDA Communications Director, Wanjohi Githae, said in a media invite.

Deputy President William Ruto (left) and his running mate Rigathi Gachagua being ushered to ACK St Paul's Mother Church in Kabete
Deputy President William Ruto (left) and his running mate Rigathi Gachagua being ushered to ACK St Paul's Mother Church in Kabete. FILE

During the launch of the UDA Women’s League, Ruto reiterated that UDA is relying on the support of women to win the August 9 polls. 

“UDA is a women’s party. It has the largest representation of women across the board. All opinion polls indicate UDA is the most popular party in Kenya and has a record majority of women,” Ruto stated. By Mumbi Mutuko, Kenyans.co.ke

About IEA Media Ltd

Informer East Africa is a UK based diaspora Newspaper. It is a unique platform connecting East Africans at home and abroad through news dissemination. It is a forum to learn together, grow together and get entertained at the same time.

To advertise events or products, get in touch by info [at] informereastafrica [dot] com or call +447957636854.
If you have an issue or a story, get in touch with the editor through editor[at] informereastafrica [dot] com or call +447886544135.

We also accept donations from our supporters. Please click on "donate". Your donations will go along way in supporting the newspaper.

Get in touch

Our Offices

London, UK
+44 7886 544135
editor (@) informereastafrica.com
Slough, UK
+44 7957 636854
info (@) informereastafrica.com

Latest News

Belgium reacts to Rwanda’s disproportionate decision to cut diplomatic ties and declare Belgian diplomats persona non grata in Kigali

Belgium reacts to Rw...

Today, Belgium was informed of Rwanda’s decision to sever diplomatic relations with Belgium and to d...

North West Regional College awards Asylum Seeker Scholarships in Derry By NWRC

North West Regional...

North West Regional (NWRC) has awarded three scholarships to asylum seekers living and studying in D...

EU Allocates €200,000 in Humanitarian Aid for Congolese Asylum Seekers in Burundi

EU Allocates €200,00...

In response to a rapidly escalating humanitarian crisis, the European Union has allocated €200,000...

Senator Eddy Oketch Hits Out at Standard Newspaper Over ‘Hot Air Language’ Amidst Row With Govt

Senator Eddy Oketch...

A photo collage of hard-hitting headlines by the Standard Newspaper targeted at President William R...

For Advertisement

Big Reach

Informer East Africa is one platform for all people. It is a platform where you find so many professionals under one umbrella serving the African communities together.

Very Flexible

We exist to inform you, hear from you and connect you with what is happening around you. We do this professionally and timely as we endeavour to capture all that you should never miss. Informer East Africa is simply news for right now and the future.

Quality News

We only bring to you news that is verified, checked and follows strict journalistic guidelines and standards. We believe in 1. Objective coverage, 2. Impartiality and 3. Fair play.

Banner & Video Ads

A banner & video advertisement from our sponsors will show up every once in a while. It keeps us and our writers coffee replenished.