G-SPOT: Someone explain how KK runs the economy
It seems the government is more keen on ruining the economy
3mon agoMwangi GithahuSociety
A lot is going on in the world at the moment that I would like to comment on, but it is all moving at such a fast rate that by the time you read this, much of it will be stale, overtaken by some new outrage.
As we say in Kenya, wacha niseme initoke.
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In South Africa over the Valentine’s Day weekend, a good man was assassinated for helping to spread love.
Not many Kenyans may have known of Muhsin Hendricks. But Hendricks was the type of person that I believe many religions or faiths could do with more of.
He was a South African imam, Islamic scholar and LGBT activist who advocated greater acceptance of LGBT people within Islam. He was often described as the world's first openly gay imam, having come out of the closet in 1996.
He was undoubtedly controversial and many people, not just from the Islamic community, wished he would just shut up or disappear, but he kept going, spreading the gospel of love and acceptance.
A report in my former newspaper, the Cape Argus, said: “Hendricks was gunned down in the Eastern Cape on Saturday morning. He had been in Gqeberha to marry a lesbian couple in Bethelsdorp.”
By the time of writing, only one mosque in Cape Town had issued an unequivocal condemnation of the killing, perhaps because 55 years ago, another activist imam had been based there.
This was the Al-Jamia Mosque in Claremont, Cape Town, which 55 years ago was home to Imam Abdullah Haron, a prominent anti-apartheid activist and a symbol of the Muslim community's opposition to apartheid.
Haron was detained and killed by the apartheid state. While at the Argus, I reported on the inquest, 50 years after the killing. At the time of his death in September 1969, Haron was 45. He was the first cleric of any faith to die in police detention in the apartheid state.
In a statement after the killing, the mosque said: “At the heart of our faith is the absolute sanctity, reverence and sacredness of human life. Islam teaches that the unjust killing of a single soul is akin to killing of all humanity (Qur’an 5:32).”
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There has been a torrent of crocodile tears about former PM Raila Odinga’s failure to be elected chairperson of the AU Commission.
Frankly, if as Kenyans we were to be brutally frank with ourselves, we would admit that it was a forlorn hope at best that our candidate would win, given several facts.
For instance, let’s admit that the bid was set up and promoted mainly to sort out our dodgy internal politics.
Then there was the fact that a bid for that job by Raila seemed as though he was looking for a sinecure ahead of retirement from a marathon political career in which he reigned but never quite ruled.
By the time you read this, the fallout from the failure in Addis will have begun, and it will be interesting to see where the chips fall.
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Looking at the US, I empathise with friends in that part of the world who are looking on with horror at events since they elected Donald Trump as their President.
Some are even calling the moves Trump, aided and abetted in the main by Elon Musk, has made, including carrying out revenge sackings and defunding any groups and organisations that ever opposed him, including government departments, a coup.
Be that as it may, for decades if not centuries, the US has imposed its will against the will of citizens in other countries, without the majority of US citizens being particularly perturbed by it.
Look at Libya, Chile, Nicaragua, Vietnam, apartheid South Africa and elsewhere, including Kenya.
When citizens or governments in some of those countries tried to resist US domination, they found all sorts of hurdles and worse put in their way, and the great US public generally ignored them while backing Uncle Sam.
In the sense that Malcolm X meant it: The chickens have come home to roost.
