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Opinion - My friend Dr Mukhisa Kituyi, former Secretary-General of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (Unctad), is a popular figure with pan-Africanist public intellectuals and civil society types.
In May, Burundi held a presidential election which was won by Evariste Ndayishimiye, candidate of the ruling National Council for the Defense of Democracy - Forces for the Defense of Democracy (CNDD-FDD) party.
Ndayishimiye was hurriedly sworn in after the untimely death of president Pierre Nkurunziza in June.
Rights violations continue
The Council encouraged donor countries which had suspended aid to Burundi to continue dialogue towards resumption of development assistance.
A report by a UN watchdog in September said human rights violations were still being committed in Burundi, including sexual violence and murder.
The country was plunged into a crisis in April 2015 when Ndayishimiye’s predecessor Pierre Nkurunziza decided to run for a controversial third term, which he ultimately won in July 2015.
His candidature, which was opposed by the opposition and civil society groups, resulted in a wave of protests, violence and even a failed coup in May 2015.
Hundreds of people were killed and over 300,000 fled to neighboring countries.
[Nation] Deputy President William Ruto is facing perhaps the toughest challenge of his political career regarding his choice of a strategic and strong running mate whom he has confirmed he will pick from Mt Kenya to bolster his presidential bid in 2022.
William Ruto revisits the fate of the beleaguered Building Bridges Initiative.
Wanda Sykes is an American actress, comedian, writer, and voice artist. She is best known for her recurring role as Barbara Baran on the CBS primetime show The New Adventures of Old Christine, and for her comedic roles in such films as Monster-in-Law and My Super Ex-Girlfriend.
Sykes is the daughter of Marion Louise, a retired banker, and Harry Ellsworth Sykes, a retired U.S. Army colonel. She was born in Portsmouth, Virginia on March 7, 1964, but raised in the Washington, D.C. area.
Sykes attended Arundel High School in Gambrills, Maryland, and later Hampton University, where she pledged Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority and graduated in 1986 with a bachelor’s degree in marketing. Upon graduation, she worked as a procurement officer for the National Security Agency (NSA) but soon realized she wanted to become an entertainer.
In 1987, at the age of 23, Sykes took to the stage for the first time in a talent show in Washington. While she did not win the contest, she honed her stand-up skills at various comedy clubs while retaining her position at NSA.
In 1992, Sykes relocated to New York to work the comedy circuit and soon got her first big break by being selected as the opening act for comedian Chris Rock at Caroline’s Comedy Club. In 1997, she joined The Chris Rock Show as a writer, made guest appearances, and won an Emmy Award for her writing in 1999.
Other television appearances followed. She hosted the 2002-2003 season of Comedy Centrals Premium Blend and had recurring roles on The Drew Carey Show and Curb Your Enthusiasm. She was a skit comedian on Inside the NFL, an HBO series for which she won Emmy Awards in 2002 and 2004.
Sykes made her film debut in a supporting role in Tomorrow Night in 1998 and starred in Pootie Tang and Down to Earth in 2001. She has been a voice artist in Over the Hedge, a 2006 film, and Ice Age: Continental Drift, a 3-D computer-animated comedy adventure film in 2012.
Sykes married record producer David Hall in 1992, but the couple divorced in 1998. In 2008, she announced to the
Analysis - The threat of violent extremism has seen disproportionate resources given to military and security actions.
Amollo, appearing for BBI Secretariat majorly questioned the role of a promoter in a popular initiative, one of the issues at the heart of the BBI hea
[Capital FM] Nairobi -- President Uhuru Kenyatta has encouraged the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions (ODPP) to focus more on the successful prosecution of high profile cases especially those involving misuse of public resources.
Chamber supports plan to open economy next week
Friday, May 29, 2020 0:01
By KEVIN ROTICH
KNCCI president Richard Ngatia.
PHOTO | SALATON NJAU
The Kenya National Chamber of Commerce and Industry (KNCCI) has backed plans by the President to reopen the economy, saying the move will ease members’ cash flow problems.
Lobby’s president Richard Ngatia said plans were underway to ensure employees are provided with protective gears such as face masks and hand sanitisers as economy reopens.
“KNCCI implores upon President Uhuru Kenyatta to gradually reopen the economy,” he said, adding the lobby would ensure hospitality industry employees were tested for Covid-19 before being allowed to resume work.
On Saturday, President Uhuru Kenyatta hinted at a possibility of relaxing measures to curb the virus.
Kenya has closed its borders with Somalia and Tanzania as the country strives to stem further spread of the coronavirus.
In a televised address to the nation on Saturday, President Uhuru Kenyatta said he was imposing more measures after it emerged that some of the cases had crossed the border from Tanzania and Somalia.
The President also announced that the number of Covid-19 cases in the country had risen to 830 after 49 more people tested positive.
\"As of yesterday [Friday], the cases across the border were distributed as follows, Wajir 14, Isebania 10, Namanga 16, Lungalunga 2 and Loitoktok 1,\" Kenyatta said, referring to border towns near Tanzania.
Tanzania later claimed the meeting was for the Northern Corridor, a reference to countries that mainly import goods through Kenya's Port of Mombasa.
Aluko , in full Timothy Mofolorunso Aluko (born June 14, 1918, Ilesha, Nigeria—died May 1, 2010, Lagos), Nigerian writer whose short stories and novels deal with social change and the clash of cultures in modern Africa.
Olive Schreiner , in full Olive Emilie Albertina Schreiner, pseudonym Ralph Iron (born March 24, 1855, Wittebergen, Cape Colony [now in South Africa]—died Dec. 11, 1920, Cape Town, S.Af.), writer who produced the first great South African novel, The Story of an African Farm (1883). She had a powerful intellect, militantly feminist and liberal views on politics and society, and great vitality that was somewhat impaired by asthma and severe depressions. Her brother William Philip Schreiner was prime minister of Cape Colony from 1899 to 1902.
Although Schreiner had no formal education, she read widely and was taught by her formidable mother. From early childhood she had an active fantasy life. From 1874 until 1881 (when she went to England, hoping to study medicine) she earned her living as a governess; during this time she wrote two semiautobiographical novels, Undine (published 1928) and The Story of an African Farm (1883), and began From Man to Man (1926), at which she worked intermittently for 40 years but never finished.
The Story of an African Farm was an immediate success in Europe and North America, bringing its author, though published pseudonymously, many distinguished admirers. It tells the story of a girl on an isolated farm in the veld who struggles for her independence in the face of rigid Boer social conventions. The book’s originality, assured handling of narrative and description, exotic background, and vigorous expression of feminist, anti-Christian views on religion and marriage gave it both notoriety and wide appeal.
Notable among Schreiner’s other works are an attack on the activities of Cecil Rhodes and his associates, Trooper Peter Halkett of Mashonaland (1897), and a widely acclaimed “bible” of the Women’s Movement, Woman and Labour (1911).
On November 30, 1912, in Fort Scott, Kansas, Sarah and Andrew Parks welcomed their fifteenth child, Gordon Roger Alexander Buchanan Parks, into their home. Though struggling against poverty and racism in Fort Scott, young Gordon was nurtured there. His mother was especially influential, and her early lessons sustained him throughout his remarkable life. Because of Parks’s vast intellectual and artistic accomplishments, he was described as a “Renaissance man.” He accomplished many firsts, including the distinction of being the first black photographer at Vogue, Glamour, and Life magazines. He worked at Life for nearly 25 years and completed over 300 assignments. He was a documentary and fashion photographer; a film director, writer, producer; a poet, novelist, essayist; and a composer. Among his notable films are Shaft and The Learning Tree.
Though largely self-taught, he received over fifty honorary doctorates. Parks’s life was a paradox: he was as comfortable modeling a Brooks Brothers suit in New York as he was wearing his western hat and cowboy boots on the Kansas prairie. He moved with the same ease in the modest Washington, D.C. home of Ella Watson, African American charwoman whose image became the famous American Gothic, as he did on the Italian island of Stromboli with actor Ingrid Bergman. Parks’s humanity was evident in his life’s work, as is epitomized in the amazing Flavio de Silva story.
On March 7, 2006, 93-year-old Parks died peacefully in his home in New York City. Thousands joined the Parks family to bid this noble gentleman farewell.
[Nation] Treasury has set aside Sh15 billion for the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC), signalling the possibility of a Building Bridges Initiative referendum in the new financial year.
The Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, described President Muhammadu Buhari's Democracy Day address as a huge and unpardonable slap on the face of the nation's democratic process.
This is as the party noted that President Buhari's silence on the values of democracy as well as the myriads of violations under his watch \"has further vindicated its stance and that of majority of Nigerians that the Buhari administration has no regard for democracy and is not prepared to uphold its tenets in our country.\"
\"President Buhari's failure to express any commitments to electoral reform in his 38-minute pre-recorded address shows that his administration has no plans to guarantee credible elections in our country.
\"Furthermore, President Buhari had no words of commitment on how to tackle the constitutional and human rights violations under his watch, including reported intimidation and brutalization of citizens, disobedience to court orders, arbitrary arrests, illegal detentions, extra-judicial killings as well as hounding of opposition and dissenting voices.
Executve Director, Civil Society Legislative and Advocacy Centre, CISLAC, Ibrahim Auwal Rafsanjani, like Ozekhome faulted the claims of Buhari, especially the President's stand on the fight against corruption and road projects completion statistics.
Opinion - The next general election should always be a referendum on the performance of the government, the governing party and the president over the past term or two terms.
Kenya and Tanzania on Friday agreed to reopen their borders after a tense week marked by a simmering trade dispute occasioned by the Covid-19 pandemic.
Government officials from both countries, who met in Namanga for the better part of Friday, resolved to facilitate a seamless cross-border movement of goods and end the standoff.
The bilateral deliberations came after President Uhuru Kenyatta and his Tanzania counterpart President Pombe Magufuli talked over the phone regarding heightened tensions that left traders from both countries staring at huge losses as truck drivers waited for days for results of Covid-19 tests, which are mandatory for them.
We have reached an agreement that Tanzanian and Kenyan drivers will be subjected to the WHO standard Covid-19 testing in their territories and issued with clearance certificates,” said Mr Macharia.
East African Business Council Executive Director Peter Mathuki said the diplomatic tiff had seen the weekly volume of goods crossing the Namanga border drop to 40 per cent.
He did not acknowledge that such an apology was recommended, two years earlier, by the national Truth, Justice and Reconciliation Commission (TJRC) in its final report.
But the statement Kenyatta made with opposition leader Raila Odinga did not mention the TJRC or its report either, even though they had addressed the issues raised in their statement.
As a candidate for the August 2017 presidential election, Odinga - and his lieutenants - had made the TJRC report a campaign issue, calling on the government to implement it as a way of addressing historical injustices in Kenya.
Prior to March 2018 Odinga and other opposition leaders said they would not recognise Kenyatta's government after successfully challenging the results of the August 2017 presidential election and boycotting the repeat October 2017 election.
The TJRC, whose mandate ended with the publication of the report, recommended the government form an implementation committee to oversee and coordinate the work needed to make the TJRC's wide-ranging recommendations a reality.
As Burundi holds elections, the UN's human rights body says the country fails to meet conditions for free and credible polls.
As elections were taking place, DW talked to Doudou Diene, president of the Commission of Inquiry on Burundi at OHCHR, the United Nations body mandated to promote and protect human rights.
The commission has been tasked to investigate human rights violations and abuses in Burundi since 2015.
Burundi has a history of the highest level of violence and the violations of human rights in the context of electoral process.
This is why we had to put it in our [Commission of Inquiry 2019] report to call upon the authorities of Burundi to prove to the internal community that there is change and that human rights will be respected and elections will be held in a credible and a free conditions.
Kiunjuri said his track record sets him apart from others angling to be Deputy President William Ruto's running mates in the 2022 General Elections.
