Kenya & east Africa: Can Kenya make its new deal work?
Dear Jaluo,
OPÄDO (mosesopado@ . . . ) has sent you an article from The Economist online
OPÄDO has also included the following message for you:
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It can be Done!It can be done!It can be done if good words of love affair with Kenya is applied-OPADO
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Kenya and east Africa
Can Kenya make its new deal work?
The prime minister, Raila Odinga (below), is optimistic that Kenya will bolster its position as the region’s hub. But first it must make its new constitution work
Oct 26th 2010
SINCE the bloody ructions that shattered Kenya in the wake of a disputed election at the end of 2007, the country has recovered its breath, endorsed a new political system, and is now poised to forge ahead as the region’s undisputed economic motor and diplomatic nerve-centre. Though its own politics remains fragile under a government of national unity, it has begun to find a balance, if not true stability, on the domestic political front, too. Kenya’s future could be bright if the next election, expected in August 2012, can pass off peacefully, perhaps with a clear-cut transition to a President Raila Odinga, who was almost certainly cheated out of the top job by last-minute electoral fiddles last time round.
See the full article
http://www.economist.com/realarticleid.cfm?redirect_id=17373983
Visit http://www.economist.com for more global news, views, and analysis from The Economist.
Shame on Kenyan Media. No Tanzanian Election Coverage
from Robert Alai
It is very shameful that we have EAC and we still cant even have our media recognise the region. Just tell them to incite hatred. It is very sickening
Robert Alai
Blogger
tech@techmtaa.com
TECH BLOG: www.techmtaa.com
East Africa: United for Posterity
From: odhiambo okecth
Friends,
I have been invited to a Symposium in Arusha starting on the 8th Nov 2010 and I want to use that occasion to rally the people of East Africa to join us in moving all of East Africa to the next level.
In Rwanda, they have a Nationwide Clean Up Campaign every last Saturday of the Month and in this campaign, none other than the President HE Paul Kagame leads from the front line. It has made Kigali the cleanest City in East Africa.
In Kenya, we have introduced a City wide Clean up Campaign scheduled for every 3rd Saturday of the month and we are still struggling with it. We are inviting as many Kenyans from all the Counties to join in and take charge of the concept at their various Counties.
You will also remember that on the 22nd October 2010, we organized a very successful walk against corruption in Nairobi. We want to invite the people of East Africa to join us in these efforts; clean up campaigns and in the fight against corruption.
Let us make these twin issues our personal issues and we will indeed move East Africa to the next level.
In the enclosed caption, I am with Mr. David Walala from Community Alliance for Change based in Kitale Kenya, and Mr. Thomas Nelson Munghono from Nelsk Uganda based in Kampala Uganda.
We are determined to make a difference not only in our various Countries, but in the whole of East Africa. Let us unite and be part of the East African Community as we all join in the unfolding social, economic and political dispensation.
Peace and blessings to all of us.
Odhiambo T Oketch,
CEO KCDN Nairobi,
PO Box 47890-00100,
Nairobi Kenya.
Tel; 0724 365 557
http://kcdnkomarockswatch.blogspot.com
friendsofkcdn@yahoogroups.com
Odhiambo T Oketch is the current Chairman to the City Council of Nairobi Stakeholders Evaluation Team on Performance Contracting and Rapid Results Management. He was also the Co-Chair and Coordinator of The Great Nairobi Walk against Corruption that was held in Nairobi on the 22nd October 2010.
TANZANIA GOVERNMENT UNFAIR TO THE MEDIA COVERING PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS.
By Agwanda Jowi -in Arusha Tanzania.
As the October 31 national elections draw near, Tanzania's media is in a frenzy trying to cover the close race between the two leading presidential candidates. But government threats and draconian media laws may be getting in the way of objective coverage.
All eyes are on the contest between incumbent President Jakaya Kikwete of the ruling Chama cha Mapinduzi (CCM), or "Party for Change," and a surprisingly successful challenger, Dr. Wilbroad Slaa from the Chama cha Demokrasia na Maendeleo (CHADEMA), or "Progressive Democratic Party."
Kikwete, who won the 2005 elections with a landslide 80 percent of the vote, has seen his popularity plunge this month to 38 percent, according to Tanzanian polls. "Slaa has emerged as an unexpected presidential candidate and his message of change is resonating with voters anxious for a new direction," political commentator Azaveli Lwaitama told Reuters. Whether the Tanzanian press feel at liberty to cover this tight race is another matter. Critical reporting on the government during this sensitive time appeared risky after Ministry of Information Permanent Secretary Sethi Kamuhanda toured print media offices earlier this month, threatening to shutter any media house that "put the government in a bad light," state television reported. More than 50 human rights and media organizations issued a joint statement last week, claiming the government has threatened the press in advance of the forthcoming elections. Since polling began, the Registrar of Newspapers, a government-run licensing agency, has been busy issuing letters to newspapers, warning against any negative coverage of the government, local journalists told CPJ. Three private weeklies, Mwanahalisi, Raia Mwena, and Tanzania Daima have all been warned by the Registrar to avoid coverage deemed "insightful" by the government or face suspension. "Such kinds of threats have been common from the Registrar of Newspapers, whom the minister [of information] uses as a means to enforce self-censorship," the chairman of the Tanzania Editors' Forum, Absalom Kibanda, told me. The country's leading Kiswahili daily, Mwananchi, received two letters from the Registrar recently threatening to suspend the paper for negative government coverage, Managing Editor Theophil Makunga told me. "For quite a long time now and during this election campaign period, in particular, your newspaper has been writing negative stories about the government," one of the Registrar's letters claimed. "Should you continue publishing the articles, the government will not hesitate to suspend or deregister your newspaper as per the laws of the land." The letter was signed by the Registrar's deputy director, Raphael Hokororo. Mwananchi is considered the most balanced and professional newspaper in the country and commands the highest readership, which makes this threat particularly troubling, the former Tanzania Editors' Forum chairperson, Sakina Datoo, told me. The Registrar's letters to Mwananchi alleged that the paper had denigrated the government but provided no examples of material the authorities deemed offensive, Makunga said. "The Registrar has no argument at all," he told me. "That's why they use sweeping, generalized statements in their allegations." Since the presidential campaigns started on August 20, Makunga said, his paper has not received a single complaint from any of the political parties participating in the race. Makunga fears the ruling party may shut down his paper using the vague allegations put forth in the Registrar's letter. "It's a sign of desperation on the side of the CCM. They believe if Mwananchi continues to report objectively, CCM candidates will lose votes," he said. The paper has filed a complaint with the independent press ombudsman, the Media Council of Tanzania. But Hokororo, the Registrar's deputy director, told me that the Mwananchi staff has exaggerated the issue. "The letter was supposed to be a private letter but they published it to get media attention. It was a warning, not a threat as they have portrayed it," he said. Recent warnings aside, the Tanzanian government has reams of anti-press legislation it can dangle above the media's heads to ensure self-censorship. The Newspaper Act of 1976, for instance, allows the information minister wide discretionary powers to ban newspapers. "It gives the minister powers to close down any newspaper for 'inciting'. Since the term is not defined, it's up to the minister to interpret it as he or she wants," Datoo said. Investigative reporting on any area the government considers classified is a punishable offense under the National Security Act. Later laws, such as the Civil Service Act and Public Leadership Code of Ethics Act, block access to information for journalists. The media laws in Tanzania "force all media to practice public relations and avoid investigative journalism," media analyst and Saut FM Producer Dotto Bulendu told me. Saut FM, a private station attached to St. Augustine's University, has faced its own challenges trying to cover the elections. Bulendu told me that he and Edwin Soko, a Saut FM reporter, received anonymous threats last month via text message accusing them of negative reporting on the ruling party. "The messages threatened to kill us if we continued to work at the station," he added. But the threats were somewhat misplaced; the Tanzanian Communications Regulatory Authority (TCRA) had already taken the station off the air in August. The Authority's public relations manager, Innocent Mungy, told me Saut FM had been closed on purely technical grounds because the radio signals interfered with aircraft communications. Bulendu is skeptical of the TCRA's findings. The station, he noted, has operated since 1997. "Why would we have signal interference problems now and not before?" he demanded. "Why just before the elections?" And he has little recourse: the 1993 Broadcasting Act empowers the TCRA to shut down any station at any time, he added. He hopes Saut FM will be back on the air this week, just days before the poll results. Over the years, press freedom monitors, including CPJ, have not identified many cases of Tanzanian authorities attacking the press, which makes the country appear to have a better media freedom record than many East African nations. But what happens in Tanzania is something more insidious: Thanks to the country's sweeping anti-press laws, the threat of closure by authorities is enough to curtail any wayward critics. For a ruling party facing a tight presidential race, that's a formidable advantage.
KENYA: MAGISTRATE DEMANDED MONEY, SAYS ANTI-CORRUPTION INVESTIGATOR.
By Agwanda Jowi.
AN anti corruption court in Kisumu yesterday heard that a former judicial officer demanded 150,000/- from a member of the public so that a favorable judgment could be delivered against his kin who had a pending matter.
A Kisumu Senior Principal Magistrate Mr K Muneeni heard that his former colleague in Kakamega Kathoka Ngomo and a clerk Caroline Nekoye demanded the cash last year.
An investigator with the Kenya Anti Corruption Commission sergeant John Musi told the court that they had complaints that Ngomo had received 120,000/- through the paralegal in order to deliver a favorable judgment.
Musi told the court that they later traced the Bank Account of Nekoye at the Barclays bank in kakamega where the money had been deposited upon receipt from the relative of a complainant in the case.
He said that the Ngomo received the money but never made the judgment at all.
Musi said that they later found out that Ngomo had moved to Embu.
They duo was charged that they on February 10 this year at Golf Hotel in Kakamega received 120,000/- from Vincent Ajuoga in order to give favorable judgment against Michael Ajuoga.
They were released on bonds of 300,000/- each and surety of like amount or an alternative of cash bail of 50,000/-.
Musi told the court that he and the complainant went to Embu and were informed that Ngomo had gone to Mwingi.
He said they later retraced Ngomo in Embu while in the company of the complainant.
Musi said he monitored Ngomo in Embu town up to where he collected the case file from a courier.
He told the court that the complainant was fitted with recorders and told to tape the accused.
Musi told the court that Ngomo was arrested in Embu in chambers together with the file and that he was yet to make the judgment.
The file was yesterday tabled in court as evidence.
Musi told the court that Ngomo refused to sign inventories after the file and his phone had been recovered in his chambers.
He also said he filed an affidavit in investigate the accounts of the paralegal showing the movements of the 120,000/-.
ENDS.
Kenya: RE: International Young Leaders Summit-IYLS 2010
from odhiambo okecth
Dear Friends
On behalf of the Global Peace Festival Foundation (GPFF), the Global Peace Youth Corps, UN HABITAT and the Government of Kenya, we would like to inform you of an important international gathering of next-generation political and civil society leaders under the theme “Young Leaders in the 21st Century: Prospects & Challenges,” to be convened in Nairobi, Kenya, November 18-19, 2010. International Young leaders Summit (IYLS) will be among the three International events in Nairobi that the Global Peace Festival Foundation will be holding in November, 2010. It will bring together above 600 peace-minded youth empowering them to become global citizens.
The President of Kenya H.E. Hon. Mwai Kibaki, who is the Convention patron, will officiate the opening ceremony in the morning, at the Kenyatta International Conference Centre (KICC) on the 18th November, 2010.
Thereafter, The Vice President of Kenya H.E. Hon. Dr. Stephen Kalonzo Musyoka will then address the Summit at the UN Headquarters in Gigiri in the afternoon in which respected world leaders, global entrepreneurs and an African parliamentary forum will examine the role of young leaders in promoting integrity, good governance in Africa, and addressing pressing issues of conflict and underdevelopment, prospects and challenges facing young leaders in the 21st century. Additionally, the program includes a session of service and environmental preservation through Tree planting, organized by UN HABITAT, as part of an on-going restoration of the Nairobi River and Nairobi Dam on the 19th November, 2010.
The Prime Minister of Kenya H.E. Rt. Hon Raila Odinga, who is the patron of the Global Peace Festival, will address The Global Peace Festival main event on the 20th November, 2010 at the Nyayo National Stadium.
The IYLS 2010 summit emphasizes a new paradigm for leadership guided by the principles of “living for the sake of others” and facilitates the collaboration of governments, inter-governmental and faith-based organizations, the private sector, and civil society, bringing together leaders who are committed to racial and religious reconciliation and cooperation. This is the 2nd time IYLS is being hosted in Kenya after the IYLS 2009 which was held under the theme “The Role of Young Leaders in Achieving UN MDGs and Peace Building in Africa”.
For more information, please do not hesitate to contact Ms. Viola Adede at the IYLS Secretariat on Tel: 254-(0)700-791543 or (020)8070818, E-mail:
info@youngleaderssummit.org. Visit www.gpyckenya.org or
www.youngleaderssummit.org for registration purposes, or visit our offices.
KENYA: TSE-TSE FLY POPULATIONS SUPPRESSED WITHIN LAKE VICTORIA BASIN.
By Agwanda Jowi
Pan African Tsetse and Trypanosomiasis Eradication Campaign (PATTEC) project has managed to suppress tsetse fly populations in the Lake Victoria Basin .
Permanent Secretary Ministry of Livestock Development Kenneth Lusaka says the campaign targeted local communities through community based organizations which constructed crush pens for spraying livestock.
Lusaka says the campaign uses a multi -faceted approach in the eradication of tsetse flies by killing the tsetse flies through livestock spraying, target installation and mass treatment of livestock using trypanocidal drugs.
He called upon the communities along the Lake Basin to put into profitable agricultural use freed areas.
He says this will not only safeguard against the problem of re infestation but will also empower the local communities economically.
In a speech read on his behalf in Kisumu by Margaret Nyadong an official from the Ministry during a workshop on livestock improvement, the PS says with the eradication of livestock diseases, meat production for export is expected to increase.
Lusaka urged farmers to work closely with the campaign project to maintain the gains already achieved through proper utilization of land available.
Ends.
Busted According to the Kenya Communications Amendment Bill 2008
fromWambui ndirangu
I was doing some assignment and came across this bill; According to the Kenya Communications Amendment Bill 2008
Broadcast services should promote the observance at all times, of public interest obligations in all broadcasting categories; protect the right to privacy of all persons it also says
Any person who contravenes this section commits an offence and shall, on conviction, be liable to a fine not exceeding one million shillings or to imprisonment for a term not exceeding three years or to both.
I wish Agnes knows about this and decides if she can sue Ciku or Classic. I know cheating is bad but hey we are all human and everybody sins as the bible says let he with no sin be the first to cast a sttone.
WAMBUI NDIRANGU
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On 10/23/10, David Musila wrote:
For those of you missed this!
I cant imagine this is real or just an imagination.
http://www.frankierants.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/Busted.wav
KENYA IS CHANGING BUT!
Kenya is truly changing. Since the promulgation of the new Constitution a lot of things have happened some of which give us hope for the future while some point to the nostalgic bondage of past ways of corruption. Our nation is a country of big unpredictable contrasts, where a minister publicly refuses to resign after court order, and then gets suspended, another one resigns after a thorough soul searching following a parliamentary committee report but a city mayor charged of corruption may remain in office because the new Constitution states he is not a public officer.
The new Constitution ushered in a new era of politics. It has given citizens of Kenya another chance to serve their country without fear or favour. But change is hard to accept. The people resisting change do not want to let go of their past darker days when a mere mention of a ‘name’ was enough to open and close doors. This was the time one could be jailed indefinitely without appearing before a magistrate and sight of a police officer was a sign of being in trouble.
In this new spirit, it is vital that all implicated leaders in positions of responsibility, adhere to the Constitution when they are found wanting. To some politicians, there is no difference between the judiciary and the state (politics) but that was in the past, now things are beginning to turn around. At a time when the judicial system is becoming independent and assertive and organs of the national assembly are aggressively following through with their investigations with a public not willing to condone acts of impunity in the name of tribe, this time round such politicians will be on their own and in big trouble.
It is the fear of the future and arrogance of the past, why in the same government one minister takes personal decision to resign pending outcome of the investigations while one defies the court, simply because some of these people do not know whether to follow the Constitution or not as this was the order of business in the yester years. You can understand it is still confusing for if you are not defined in the Constitution as a public officer, you can commit a crime and be charged in court but you need not to resign.
Even though the new Constitution protects our human rights, it is still difficult in the minds of many to come out and positively engage the public and policy makers for fear of being labelled anti-system. However, it is now time for our university scholars to come out and engage the public and policy makers as they used to in the late 1970s. These scholars must force their way into public life by providing robust critique of public policy without fear of being visited at night by police officers. Some of the scholars who were critical of public policies became compliant once their hands were forced into politics and begun singing like parrots. These learned friends must stick their necks out now that we have a new dispensation without fear of intimidation or arrest for they are an invaluable asset to the nation and politicians must not interfere with their free thinking. Politicians even in the West sometimes do not find work of independent research bodies or individuals challenging the government policy palatable but they engage them in some ferocious but informed policy debates. Such discourse is good for the development of our people and the nation. Politicians have often for too long had their way in managing university scholars or other professionals’ thinking but the nation needs impartial and independent opinionated people. What is your take?
Peace to Kenya
Dickson Aduonga
Kenya: Thank you Mr. Zain Abubakar of Uraia
from odhiambo okecth
Friends,
Following our appeal for Fee support for Joyce Kalavai, we have received a boost from Mr. Zain Abubakar of Uraia.
He is sending his support of Kshs 3,000.00 to me.
I will pass the same to Mr. Evans Machera who has kindly accepted to be the Acting Treasurer for the Joyce Kalavai School Fee Fund.
We appeal to any more willing Friends to be of help.
This is how we are;
Mr. Evans Machera- Kshs 500.00
Mr. Odhiambo T Oketch- Kshs 500.00
Mr. Zain Abubakar- Kshs 3,000.00
We are also appealing to any willing CEO who might want to place Joyce in their companies or Organizations employment. Your response in whatsoever level will be greatly appreciated. This will be our gift to God's creations.
Let us all join hands and be of help to Joyce.
Lastly, please view our visit to the Meru County yesterday at; http://kcdnkomarockswatch.blogspot.com
Peace and blessings,
Odhiambo T Oketch
CEO KCDN Nairobi.
Tel; 0724 365 557
http://kcdnkomarockswatch.blogspot.com
Kenya: The Drunken Priest
from Kuria-Mwangi
A new priest at his first mass was so nervous he could hardly speak. After mass he asked the monsignor how he had done. The monsignor replied, "When I am worried about getting nervous on the pulpit, I put a glass of vodka next to the water glass. If I start to get nervous, I take a sip."
So the next Sunday he took the monsignor's advice. At the beginning of the sermon, he got nervous and took a drink. He proceeded to talk up a storm. Upon return to his office after mass, he found the following note on his door:
1. Sip the Vodka, don't gulp.
2. There are 10 commandments, not 12.
3. There are 12 disciples, not 10.
4. Jesus was consecrated, not constipated.
5. Jacob wagered his donkey, he did not bet his ass.
6. We do not refer to Jesus Christ as the late J.C.
7. The Father, Son, and Holy Ghost are not referred to as Daddy, Junior, and the Spook.
8. David slew Goliath, he did not kick the shit out of him.
9. When David was hit by a rock and knocked off his donkey, don't say he was stoned off his ass.
10. We do not refer to the cross as the Big T!
11. When Jesus broke the bread at the Last Supper he said, "Take this and eat it, for it is my body", he did not say, "Eat me."
12. The Virgin Mary is not referred to as the, "Mary with the Cherry".
13. The recommended grace before a meal is not: "Rub-A-dub-dub, thanks for the grub, yeah God". and finally...
14. Next Sunday there will be a taffy-pulling contest at St.Peter's, not a peter-pulling contest at St. Taffy's.
--
http://www.kuria-mwangi.blogspot.com
http://www.facebook.com/kjmwangi
KENYA: MOSES ‘TERMINATOR’ WETANGULA “WILL BE BACK”
from samuel odhiambo
Arnold Scwarzenigger starring in the Terminator movie promised to 'be back' after the cop manning the reception desk was not helping very much with his equiry of the whereabouts of a certain lady (whom he actually wanted to kill..). He kept his promise only that he was back with all descriptions of big guns (blazing) and wiped the entire police station (starting with the defiant cop).....Somebody please pass me the bowl of popcorns coz I am waiting for replay of the same episode by Sonko Wetangula.
ARABS’ MORTAL HATRED AND ENSLAVEMENT OF THE BLACK RACE
By NAIWU OSAHON
Jerusalem was captured by the Arabs in 638 CE. Alexandria in Egypt fell to them in 643 CE. In 698 CE, they captured Carthage thus ensuring their political influence in all of northern Africa around the Mediterranean. Arabs did not move into the region until much later but tried to control it at the time with language and the Islamic religion. The Arabs began to invade Africa in large numbers from 749 CE when they settled in Alexandria, Egypt. They were mistakenly seen as African cousins and were welcomed as saviours from the oppressive rule of the Byzantium (Graeco-Roman domination.) The Arabs did not directly force their religion on the African Egyptians at first, that followed later, but unlike Christianity, Islam could not be translated into local languages.
With the Africans, looking for something to replace their banned traditional religion, and imposed Graeco-Roman Christianity, literacy in Arabic soon spread, and assisted by inter-marriages and Christian apostasy, (the reverse was punishable by death in Islam) to gain relief from taxation, Islam quickly became the religion of the land.
Although the Qur'an does not distinguish between races, there is a strong legacy of racism against Africans from early Islam because the language, traditions and customs of the Arabs supports the down grading of the African race. Dr. Azumah in his book: The Legacy of Arab-Islam in Africa provides several examples of Islam’s hatred of Blacks. There is the example in the hadith in which an Ethiopian woman laments her racial inferiority to Muhammad, who consoles her by saying, "In Paradise, the whiteness of the Ethiopian will be seen over the stretch of a thousand years."
Another hadith quotes Muhammad thus: "Do not bring black into your pedigree." In fact, the Arabic word for slave, “Abd,” became equated with Africans and Blacks with the advent of Islam. Osama Bin Laden, in a discussion with the Sudanese-American novelist, Kola Boof, in Morocco in 1996 said, “when next you meet an Arab, you should ask what is the Arabic word for slave, you’ll discover that the words are the same “abeed.” Which is why, when an Arab looks at a black African, what he sees is a slave.”
Muhammad owned and sold Black slaves. In fact, he ordered and built the pulpit of his mosque with African slave labour. The Qur'an encourages sex with female slaves in several places. Classical Islamic law allows a light-skinned Muslim man to marry a Black woman, but a Black Muslim man is restricted from marrying a light-skinned woman. As the literature of the time put it, "only a whore prefers blacks; the good woman will welcome death rather than being touched by a black man.”
So interwoven is slavery with Islam that Islam’s holiest city, Mecca (site of the Haj pilgrimage), was a slave trading capital. Quoting Azumah again, up until the 20th century, Mecca served as the gateway to the Muslim world for slaves brought out of Africa. "It became a custom for pilgrims to take slaves for sale in Mecca or buy one or two slaves while on Haj as souvenirs to be kept, sold or given as gifts."
Muslim Arab and Persian literature depicts Blacks as "stupid, untruthful, vicious, sexually unbridled, ugly and distorted, excessively merry and easily affected by music and drink.” Nasir al-Din Tusi, a famous Muslim scholar said of Blacks: "The ape is more capable of being trained than the Negro.” Ibn Khaldun, an early Muslim thinker, writes that Blacks are "only humans who are closer to dumb animals than to rational beings."
Ibn Sina (Avicenna 980–1037), Arab’s most famous and influential philosopher/scientist in Islam, described Blacks as “people who are by their very nature slaves.” He wrote: “All African women are prostitutes, and the whole race of African men are abeed (slave) stock.” He equated Black people with “rats plaguing the earth.” Ibn Khaldum, an Arab historian stated that “Blacks are characterized by levity and excitability and great emotionalism,” adding that “they are every where described as stupid.”
al-Dimashqi, an Arab pseudo scientist wrote, “the Equator is inhabited by communities of blacks who may be numbered among the savage beasts. Their complexion and hair are burnt and they are physically and morally abnormal. Their brains almost boil from the sun’s heat…..” Ibn al-Faqih al-Hamadhani painted this no less horrid picture of black people, “…..the zanj (the blacks) are overdone until they are burned, so that the child comes out between black, murky, malodorous, stinking, and crinkly-haired, with uneven limbs, deficient minds, and depraved passions…..”
Arabs’ attitude to Blacks derives from Genesis’ racist fiction of the three sons of Noah – Ham, Japheth and Shem. Arabs claim that “the accursed Ham was the progenitor of the black race; that Japheth begat the full-faced, small eyes Europeans, and that Shem fathered the handsome of face with beautiful hair Arabs,” of course.
After the Arabs had conquered Egypt and shortly after Muhammad’s death, they began demanding Nubian slaves from the south. This continued for 600 years. Dominated African kingdoms were forced to send on a regular basis, tributes of slaves to the Arab ruler in Cairo. From as early as the 6th century CE, they had developed slavery supply networks out of Africa, from the Sahara to the Red Sea and from Ethiopia, Somalia and East Africa, to feed demands for slaves all over the Islamic world and the Indian Ocean region. The African male slaves were castrated and used as domestic servants or to work the Sahara salt deposits or on farms all over the Islamic world.
The African female servants were continuously raped before being sold to households to be used as sex labour. Off-springs from the illicit encounters were largely destroyed as unworthy to live. Between 650 CE and 1905 CE, over 20, 000,000 African slaves had been delivered through the Tans-Sahara route alone to the Islamic world. Dr. John Alembellah Azumah in his book: The Legacy of Arab-Islam in Africa estimates that over 80 million more died en-route. A text from Dr. Azumah books, provides this quote from a Zanzibar observer about the travails of African slaves en-route to slave markets around the Arabic world.
“As they filed past, we noticed many chained together by the neck... The women, who were as numerous as the men, carried babies on their backs in addition to a tusk of ivory or other burden on their heads... It is difficult to adequately describe the filthy state of their bodies; in many instances not only scarred by [the whip], but feet and shoulders were a mass of open sores... half-starved ill-treated creatures who, weary and friendless, must have longed for death.”
A Muslim herdsman, in Dr. Azumah’s book described the fate of those who became too ill or too weak to continue the journey as follows: “We speared them at once! For, if we did not, others would pretend they are ill in order to avoid carrying their loads. No! We never leave them alive on the road; they all know this custom.”
When asked who carries the ivory when a mother gets too tired to carry both her baby and the ivory, the herdsman replied, "She does! We cannot leave valuable ivory on the road. We spear the child and make her burden lighter.”
Between 9th and 10th centuries, several millions of Zanjs (Black) slaves were imported from Zanzibar to Lower Iraq where they constituted more than half the total population and worked to clear saline lands for irrigation and to cultivate sugar. The African slaves were transported through Mombasa, Zanzibar and the Sudan. More millions of African slaves were involved in the Islamic experience on the East African route than in the West African/Sahara route. At first, they were used largely for military purposes then as domestic servants, concubines or eunuchs, in affluent Muslim households. In Northern Africa, many became galley slaves, and in the Persian Gulf, pearl divers, port labourers, sailors, or date farmhands. Some notable Africans from the Arab slavery experience included the Nubian eunuch, Abu I-Misk Kufur, who became regent of Egypt in the 10th century, and Sidi Badr, who briefly seized the throne of Bengal in the 1490s. There was also the 17th century great African Muslim general, Mails Ambar, who led the resistance of the Deccans against the Mughals. A distinctive African community has survived culturally in a place called Jiruft in Iran.
With the death of Askia Muhammad, the Emperor of Songhai, in 1528 CE, Songhai Empire started falling apart. This was the opportunity Ahmad al-Mansur, the Emperor of Morocco had been waiting for to conquer Western Sudan after his Spanish humiliation. He took his time to plan his invasion and when he felt ready in 1591 CE, he sent an army of some four thousand musketeers under the leadership of a Spanish mercenary officer called Judar Pasha. The army crossed the Sahara and was on the border of Songhai before serious attention was given to it. Songhai’s ruler, Askia Ishak II, called up a superior number of army but relying on traditional weapons. The two armies met on April 12, 1591, at a small town called Tondibi, about fifty miles from the capital city of Gao. Inspite of the brave stand of the Songhai army, the Moroccan soldiers overwhelmed them and moved into the country to wreck havoc.
Prof. Clarke informs us that: “The Moroccan invasion of Songhai and eventually, other nations of the Western Sudan was made all the more tragic because in most cases it was Muslim against Muslim. The invaders from North Africa and their European mercenary troops did not spare any one, not man, woman or child. They pitilessly slew the now demoralized citizens who cried out to them; we are Muslims, we are your brothers in religion. The war brought no honour to either side and in the years that followed, an appreciation of African intellectual and material contribution to Spain and the other nations of the Mediterranean sphere was lost from the respectful commentary of human history.”
The mid 18th century saw the growth of Islamic Tariqa, an aggressive form of religious worship intolerant of traditional or other religions, culture or customs. Tariqa had two divisions, Tijaniyya and Qudiriyya, and were usually led locally by charismatic, learned and well-travelled clerics, determined to purify and cleanse fellow Muslims and conquer non-believers through the jihad (holy war.)
Usman Dan Fodio of Sokoto (Northern Nigeria) and Umar Ibn Said Tall of Tukolor (Western Sudan) were two of such leaders who started out as reformers and ended as rulers of large tracks of land and people. Many African Muslim leaders have used the rhetoric of jihad to capture power for themselves. When the Yoruba leaders in western Nigeria were fighting each other for supremacy in the 1820s because of the breakdown of Oyo kingdom, jihad leaders invited from Northern Nigeria to intervene, grabbed the leadership of northern Yoruba land instead. Their advance southwards, “to dip the Koran into the sea,” as they called it, was only stopped after a hard fight at the edge of the forest into southern Yoruba land.
Samori Toure used jihad to take over control of a large portion of the Upper Niger region in the 1870s and 1880s. In 1881, Muhammad Ahmad, having conquered eastern Sudan, declared himself the Madhi only to be succeeded after his death by another Muslim leader, Khalifa Abdallahi. Rabih, after taking over leadership of Central Sudan (i.e., south-west of Darfur) in 1893, advanced westwards to take control of Bornu in Nigeria from another Muslim leader who had himself dethroned the ancient Saifawa Dynasty founded in the 8th century CE. By the end of the 19th century CE, nearly all of Sudan from the Nile to the Atlantic was under Muslim leaders.
The chaos and devastation that followed the invasions finally set up Africa for the intense Islamic and European slave trade that followed. As the Muslim conquest and religion spread throughout North Africa and across the Sahara into West Africa, so did Arab hunger to enslave the Africans increase.
This trade in African slaves, begun by the Arabs, went on uninterrupted from the 6th century CE, to the 19th century CE, softening Africa militarily, culturally, economically, socially and politically, for the joint European and Arab onslaught on African people and economy, from the 15th century CE.
Arabs were the principal raiders and middle men for the Atlantic slave trade that decimated populations in West African. In the late 18th century CE, with most of the slave trade along the West African coast dominated by Christians, the bulk of the Arab slave trade shifted to Zanzibar, conquered then by Omani Arabs. Omani Sultan-Seyyid Said, an Arab, as the new ruler of Zanzibar, expanded the business in slavery and the trade in Ivory considerably in 1840, by re-opening and developing old established routes into the interior, to the Great Lakes and the Congo. While retaining some slaves to staff their expanding clove plantations in Zanzibar and neighbouring Pemba, they as usual, exported the great majority of their African slaves. Omani Arabs, as the Sultan’s invaders were known, raided villages, killing and maiming thousands of people in the interior of the African continent, to capture and sell some 20,000 of them yearly at their notorious Zanzibar slave market. From there, slaves were sold and cargoed all over the Mediterranean, Europe, the Persian Gulf, and Asia. Those destined for Sindh in Pakistan, for instance, first arrived in the Omani port of Muscat from where they were shipped to Karachi. Some reached Sindh through owner-to-owner transactions, originating from points along the Makran coast of the present day Pakistani and Irani Baloshistans.
The African slaves involved, were mainly Swahili from areas now known as Kenya and mainland Tanzania. The Muslim African captives faired no better than their West African kith and kin enslaved by the West in the ‘New World.’ Arabs did not only start and sell African slaves from the 6th to the 19th century in the Islamic world; they were the principal raiders, merchants and middle men for the Atlantic slave trade. In fact, even now, hundreds of years later, millions of African settler slaves are still being discriminated against and treated as the scum of the earth (untouchables) in Pakistan, India, Iran, Iraq, and all the Muslim states of Asia, the Persian Gulf, and Northern Africa.
Expansion of Western influence all over Africa, especially after the European partition in 1884 CE, tended to restrict Islam to purely missionary activities. During the period of sharing influence with the West over the direction of African destiny, Islam did not suffer the disadvantage of Christianity’s link with the conqueror regimes and so was able to consolidate and expand. By the 19th century, for example, 65%- 90% of the Swahili Moslem population of Zanzibar was enslaved, close to 90% on the Kenyan coast and in Madagascar was enslaved and in Ghana, 30% of the African Muslims were enslaved. Since the dawn of flag independence in Africa from the 1960s, it has been business as usual with regular threats of Jihad. Several African youths are being recruited into guerrilla activities after training in Libya, or deceived with promises of better wages, and smuggled out of Africa to the Arab world, particularly to Lebanon and Afghanistan, to work as domestic servants, behind iron walls of seclusion, deprivation, abject misery, and poverty.
Arab enslavement of Black Africans continues to this day in the Muslim world, particularly in the Sudan, Niger, and Mauritania. To admit that it is a mistake would be to admit the fallibility of the Qur'an and bring its divine origin into question. Even today, Muslims act as if Islamic slavery was a favor done to the millions of unfortunate men, women and children who were forcibly uprooted from their native lands and sent to lives of sexual and mental servitude deep in the Islamic world.
Arab imperialism is worse than European imperialism, only that the latter is less subtle and more widespread. Europeans relatively, have some conscience, not much, but they are, at least, slightly more tolerant of dissent than the Arabs. Europeans did not completely destroy African cultures. Our history and religions yes, while our cultures and traditions were largely derided as primitive and banned, ignored or marginalized. In all areas conquered by Islam, the natives lost their ethnic names, religions, and peculiar way of life, to those of their Arab masters. The slaves or the religiously colonized Muslims are left bare, without a past or future of their own, a worse form of slavery and emasculation.
The Arabs stripped us totally of everything, our history, religions, cultures, names, languages and traditions. Their religion overwhelmed our cultures and traditions wherever they conquered us, to the extent that Africans in Arab governed states today, no longer bear their original African names, nor do they remember their history. They cannot even recall that they were Black, independent and thriving communities, before the Arabs colonized them. They cannot imagine that they were the original settlers and masters of the entire Arab world. All African natives in Arab governed countries, think that Allah ordained their inferior status to the Arabs.
Egypt is still so intimidated by its glorious Black African past that its Arab government would not allow thorough research into Egypt’s past. President Gamal Abdel Nasser falsified Egyptian history when he declared Egypt an Arab Republic. Anwar Sadat was forced to divorce his Black wife, denounce his Black children and marry a light-skin cousin before becoming Egypt’s President. Egyptian authorities refused to allow American film makers to make a film on the life of Anwar Sadat in Egypt on the ground that the actor chosen for Sadat’s role was Black.
When Morocco left the OAU in 1984, it aspired to become a member of the European Union. In Egypt, Tunisia, Morocco, Algeria, Libya, Sudan, Somalia, Eritrea, Mauritania and the rest of the Arab world, Africans are treated as the scum of the earth. They are second-class citizens at the very best in their own countries. Blacks in these countries cannot aspire to positions of respect or authority. There are hardly Africans in high government positions in Arab governed African countries. Like Brazil, which is just as racially cruel against their Black natives, there is no legislation favouring slavery (except in Mauritania.) It is simply a way of life that’s all. Blacks do not really exist or at best are not humans.
Mauritania left the Economic Community of West African States to join the union formed by the Arab North African States. A few years ago, Mauritania sacked all Black natives from their civil service positions. Black Mauritanians protest their plight to the African Union (AU) without receiving attention, because AU Black leaders fear offending their Arab colleagues in the AU. In Mauritania, they have had to declare an end to slavery six times in this century alone, and still nothing has changed for the captive majority African natives. African slavery is still in their statute books. African slavery in Mauritania is what the on going quarrel between Mauritania and Senegal is about. The quarrel forced Black African refugees to pour across the border from Mauritania into Senegal. In Algeria, Arabs throw stones at Black people, including diplomats, in markets and other public places.
To quote Prof. Clarke, “Arabs always act as though they are not in Africa. Once when I was visiting Egypt, I told my Egyptian Arab host to get a cab ready for the next morning that I was going to Kenya. So you are going to Africa to visit your people? We got no diseases here, why are you leaving us?” the host asked. Across the Red Sea, in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, Blacks are treated worse than animals after using their life’s savings to go there on pilgrimage. Hundreds of Blacks who have lived all their lives in Saudi Arabia are being repatriated daily after loosing an arm or a leg for some minor or trumped up offense and without regard for their comfort, welfare or rights. Racism towards Black Muslims in Saudi Arabia is so strong it makes one wonder if making pilgrimage to Mecca should be one of the five pillars of the Muslim faith, and why Blacks bother to be Muslim.
Col. Gadhafi saw vicious White racism in the tragic death in August 1997, of Princess Diana of Wales, the mother of a future king of England, and her Arab lover. What no one remembered to ask Gadhafi was whether he himself was disposed to allowing any daughter of his to marry even the richest Black man in the world let alone a Black Libyan. If one were to ask Gadhafi why Africans are not high up in his government, he might balk that all Libyans are Africans. In that case, one should go and find out the truth for oneself in the poor sections of town. One would be shocked by the plight of our African kith and kin that constitute the bulk of the population in oil rich Libya and other Northern African countries similarly afflicted with Arab racism. While pretending to champion pan-African interest, he is busy deporting Black immigrants.
On 9 May, 1997, in flagrant defiance of a UN embargo on flights in and out of Libya, Col. Gadhafi invaded Nigeria with his planes carrying 1,000 members of his rag-tag army, plus 500 journalists. They strategically occupied the Kano airport and his other reception facilities, with the connivance of the Nigerian Muslim dictator host. The purpose was to launch a jihad in supposedly religiously secular Nigeria, or at least precipitate a serious schism between the predominantly Moslem north of the country and the Christian and animist south. Right now the Moslem world is trying to use ‘Sharia’ to dismember Nigeria. Pakistan, Libya and Saudi Arabia, to name a few, have pumped substantial funds into Zamfara, the first of Nigeria’s Sharia states, to start the process of Islamizing, (or at least trigger mayhem and civil war) in Nigeria as in Sudan.
No nation in Africa has suffered more in the hands of the Arabs than Ethiopia. It has been going on since Arabs first invaded Africa in the 7th century CE. Recently, with Libya supporting the people of Eritrea, they destroyed the basic structure of Ethiopia, to cut her from the sea and weaken this section of Africa, and eventually all of Africa, for further Arabization. They did this mercilessly with religion.
In the last 38 years, Gadhafi at one time or the other, tried to force Libya’s unification with Egypt, Algeria etc., and has continued the effort since with Sudan. He forcibly annexed the Auzon Strip from Chad, and sponsored destabilization in Liberia, Sierra Leone, Uganda, Mali, Cote d’ Ivoire, Niger, etc in pursuance of his Arabization of Africa policy, laced with inordinate imperial personal ambition. In 1998, his strategy got a fillip with the founding of his community of Sahel-Savannah States (CEN – SAD) which he was hoping to use to control the envisaged African Union (AU.) The CEN – SAD, at the moment, ropes in 25 African states from West, East, and Central Africa, and includes Senegal, Cote d’Ivore, Chad, Sudan, Somalia, Comoro Islands etc. Most of these unsuspecting African countries were stable until they joined CEN – SAD.
Col. Muammar Gadhafi pushed desperately for a United States of Africa government to be approved, set up, and launched right there and then, at the 9th ordinary Session of the Assembly of the heads of states of the African Union (AU) held in July 2007, in Accra, Ghana. He has heightened his Arabization policy pursuit at the AU level since 2001, pretending to be promoting the Pan-African agenda of Kwame Nkrumah. Chinweizu, the renowned scholar, described Gadhafi’s Arab-Black Africa government plan at the time, “as unification of nigger monkey with python.” Arabs themselves divide Africa into North Africa and sub-Saharan Africa to instigate a division and as long as the invaders continue to occupy our land and treat us as slaves in North Africa, the two segments of the continent cannot cohabit.
In a paper presented at the meeting of the Arab league in Amman, Jordan, in 2001, Muammar Gadhafi spelt out the Arabization agenda against Africa in language reminiscent of Adolph Hitler’s Lebensraum, (Hitler’s sick obsession to secure a living space for political and economic expansion in Europe) for the Germans, (the superior race.) Gadhafi in his address during the Amman’s Arab conference, invited his Arab brothers outside of Africa to come to Africa in the following words. “The third of the Arab community living outside Africa should move in with the two-thirds (about 250 million) on the continent and join the African Union, which is the only space we have.”
Gadhafi’s unbridled urge in modern times to enlarge Arabia inside Africa, is a continuation of the Arab war against Africans and the Arabization of African lands that started in the 7th century CE. Arabs have since settled on one-third of Africa, pushing continuously southwards towards the Atlantic Ocean. Arabs’ racial war against Black Africa started with their occupation and colonization of Egypt between 637 and 642 CE, decimating the Coptic or Black population. Between 642 and 670 CE, more Arab invaders poured into Africa and occupied areas known today as Tunisa, Libya, Algeria and Morocco, where they physically eliminated most of the native (Berber) inhabitants. The Berbers that escaped death ran westwards and southwards towards the Sahara.
In the 11th century CE, fresh Arab migrants of nomadic origin, migrated into North Africa to displace and drive the remaining pastoral Berbers deeper into the Sahara desert. With Arab consolidation and backing in Northern Africa, new waves of Arab invaders and migrants pushed deeper into the Nile banks, inhabited then by the Nilotic Shiluk, and continued all the way down to where Dueim stands today, belonging then to the Dinka and Furnawi autochthons. The entire territory was known at the time as Bilad as-Sudan (the Arabic for land of the Blacks) and currently includes the Republic of Sudan.
Continuing with their Arabization of African land policy through elimination, displacement, separation, marginalization and suppression, the Arab invaders of Bilad as-Sudan, over the passage of time, decimated the population of (the Nilotic Shiluk, Dinka and Furnawi autochthons) owners of the land, and pushed to restrict the rest waiting for elimination to Darfur area and the South of the country, which the Arab invaders are now intent on taking from the native Black Africans. This is the genesis of the war in Sudan. It is a racial war. The Arabs want the Republic of Sudan, which by land mass is the largest country in Africa, to be an entirely Arab state, by exterminating the Black native population gradually to the last person.
The war in Sudan is our modern day Haiti war in terms of Black liberation, and our recent fight against apartheid. Arabs are carrying out ethnic cleansing right now in Southern Sudan, with the financial support of the Arab world, particularly Libya and Saudi Arabia. China is backing them against Africa. The Janjaweed, with Sudanese and Arab governments’ backing, are trying to wipe out the Black population so as to expropriate their lands, but Africans, including Nigerians, do not know where their interests should reside. The Arabs succeeded in doing the same thing in Northern Africa where the original Nubian African owners of the land have almost all been wiped out and the rest marginalized (enslaved) by their Arab invaders/settlers since 642 CE. Islamization is not the problem in Sudan because the majority Furnawi people of Darfur are Muslims. Arabs do not consider Black Muslims authentic or of consequence. At best, they concede to Blacks, the role of ordained slaves or animals, to be used as beasts of burden by the “superior Arab race.” The rule applies to all Blacks, whether Muslims or non-Muslims and whether of Nigerian (Hausa/Fulani or Yoruba extractions) Tanzanians, Ugandans, Malians or African-Americans.
A traveller in Sudan observed in 1930 that “In the eyes of the Arab rulers of Sudan, the Blackslaves were simply animals given by Allah to make life of Arabs comfortable.” In 1962, the Arab Sudanese General, Hassan Beshir Nasr, while flagging off his troops to the war front against Black Africans in South Sudan, declared: “We don’t want these Blackslaves…….what we want is their land.”
A coalition of 50 charities in Darfur, Sudan, published a study in mid December, 2008, confirming what the world already knew that the Janjaweed and the Sudanese army, with the backing of their government, during joint or individual attacks, raped, tortured and killed Sudanese Africans and razed their villages to repopulate them with Arab nomads. They rounded up and abducted escapees from hide-outs in the bush, and at other times raided refugee camps to kidnap Africans as sex and labour slaves, working them to the bones as domestic and farm labour. The army flew their captives in planes to Khartoum at night and shared them among soldiers, like you allocate bags of commodities, and used them as sex and domestic servants.
Kidnapped victims interviewed, said their captors told them that ‘they were not human beings and that they were there to serve them.’ In the five years between 2003 and 2008, over 300,000 Sudanese Africans were killed, 100,000 abducted and 2.7 million rendered homeless refugees, with their land appropriated by Arabs. The Khatoum government admitted 14,000 kidnaps. You can imagine what happened when the world turned a blind eye on Sudan, in the twenty years between 1983 when the conflict began, and 2003. You have to ask yourself what African leaders are doing in AU with Arabs. Arabs are Africans’ mortal foes.
Al Qaeda’s bombing of the American Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, left 260 Black civilians that included 12 Americans, dead. Over 4,000 Kenyans and Tanzanians were wounded. A remorseless top Arab journalist justified the attack by quoting Stalin: “You can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs.”
NAIWU OSAHON Hon. Khu Mkuu (Leader) World Pan-African Movement); Ameer Spiritual (Spiritual Prince) of the African race; MSc. (Salford); Dip.M.S; G.I.P.M; Dip.I.A (Liv.); D. Inst. M; G. Inst. M; G.I.W.M; A.M.N.I.M. Poet, Author of the magnum opus: ‘The end of knowledge’. One of the world’s leading authors of children’s books; Awarded; key to the city of Memphis, Tennessee, USA; Honourary Councilmanship, Memphis City Council; Honourary Citizenship, County of Shelby; Honourary Commissionership, County of Shelby, Tennessee; and a silver shield trophy by Morehouse College, USA, for activities to unite and uplift the African race.
Kenya Global Unity management committee seeks policy formers
from barack abonyo
www.kenyaslist.com
Dr. Barack Otieno Abonyo
Associate Professor of Pharmacology
College of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences
Florida A and M University
1415 Martin Luther King Dr.
Tallahassee Fl, 32304
Tel:850-561-2553
850-339-4806
Joseph Lister Nyaringo sent a message to the members of KENYA GLOBAL UNITY, via facebook.
Joseph Lister NyaringoOctober 27, 2010 at 8:08pm
Subject: Contact us if you're interested
Contact Kenya Global Unity management committee if you are interested to voluntarily play strategic roles related to any of the following programs: Politics and democratic governance, policy formulation and project implementation, funding and Proposal writing, legal and international affairs. Primarily, these departments are there to strengthen our administrative framework and enabling us to focus on a wide spectrum of issues and challenges that bedevil the Kenyan community abroad and also at the home front.
Send an email to: kenyaglobal42@gmail.com or call: 480-389-5314. To qualify, you must be a registered member which is currently going on in our website: http://www.facebook.com/l/f8eb5Yhm-HKLLmkAOIngNpKGQzw;WWW.kenyaglobalunity.org. Remember, becoming a member automatically qualifies you to exercise your rights in the organization especially on our program goals, proposing ideas and shaping the organization’s leadership.
Joseph Lister Nyaringo
Interim Secretary General (KGU)

