Sam Psenjen as Police Chief in Necessary Madness 2

Pauline Kyalo revives role of tough traffic cop in Necessary Madness2

'WHISPERING' TRUTH TO POWER

By Margaretta wa Gacheru (Posted 16 April 2019)

Watching a documentary film like ‘Whispering Truth to Power’ makes one wish Kenya had a ‘public protector’ like the one South Africa had in Thuli Madonsela up until quite recently. The film was screened last Tuesday at Alliance Francaise courtesy of DocuBox.

Thuli’s role was to defend the South African Constitution, a task that included waging war on corruption which exploded during the years when Jacob Zuma was in power.

Her office was established back in 1994 soon after her country gained Independence and the heinous system of Apartheid was theoretically dissolved. Yet one thing that has hardly changed since then is the huge disparity between rich and poor.

Nonetheless, Thuli who admits she was an avowed Marxist during the days of Apartheid, took seriously her job in fighting injustice and inequity, which wasn’t easy. But it got much harder when she took up the challenge of addressing the excesses of Zuma, including his so-called 65 million rand ‘splurge’ on building Nkanda, his private home using public funds.

Thuli had the guts to accuse the President of violating the Ethics Act, a charge he ignored despite her outspoken style of speaking gently, what the filmmaker Shameela Seedat named ‘whispering truth to power’.

Seedat documents the tumultuous days before Thuli finally resigns, including the time when she challenges the Gupta connection to Zuma in their jointly stealing millions from the public coffers. That is when she got hit with the first installments of ‘fake news’.

She had made enemies over the years, but when she took on the Gupta network, which was a Mafia equivalent, she discovered the real intransigence of evil. She had personal interviews with her former friend Zuma who she had worked with for years in ANC prior to 1994. They were to no avail. Nonetheless, the woman was unrelenting in her quest for justice and defense of the Constitution.

She even endured death threats and made them publicly known. But that didn’t stop her detractors from saying she was ‘protecting’ white monopoly capitalists and riling up raucous crowds to accuse her of the same.

There was real sadness when she announced she would resign. But it would not be before she conducted her last research into the looting connections between the Guptas, Zuma and the State agencies they looted.

Right before her resignation date was at hand, Thuli’s report was ready for released. Yet she strategically chose to see it released after she was gone.

In her absence, the report spoke for itself. It implicated Zuma in major ways that were so air-tight that it didn’t take long after that for him to be booted out of office. The Guptas had already fled the country, but the film didn’t suggest that the war on corruption is over or that the monumental gap between rich and poor in this country is about to bridged.

Nonetheless, one still wishes Kenya could boast of a public protector like Thuli Madonsela, who could fight and finally win the war on corruption.

AMREF launched Jua Kali Drummers, now in its 8th generation

King of Persia weds Esther in Esther the Musical

Joe Musyoki at Technical University of Kenya

PHOTO FANTASIES ILLUSTRATE AN AFRO-FUTURE

By Margaretta wa Gacheru (posted 15 April 2019)

Osborne Macharia and Kevo Abbra are surrealist storytellers currently showing off ‘7 Years of Afro-Futurism’ at Alliance Francaise.

They are also magical mixed media men. One’s a photographer, the other a fashion designer and together they create captivating images complete with caption-like stories that feel like they’re fresh out of somebody’s hallucinogenic dream.

                                                                         Nairobi's underground Fight Club

Presented as if the images are anthropological finds, the seven sets of photographs are described as if they are ‘discoveries’ made by the two as they traveled to obscure corners and enclaves of Nairobi.

These never-before-seen clubs, clans and ‘special units’ are all said to be “little known…till now.” That line, found at the bottom of all seven captions apparently translates to mean they all came out of the fertile imaginations of Osborne’s and Kevo’s minds.

The show is puzzling at first. But once you realize these two are ‘merry pranksters’ having fun being as plausibly outrageous as possible, you have to marvel at their genius.

They seem to take as their baseline of believability, Nairobi’s popular urban culture, including everything from Marvel comics and ‘Black Panther’ references to mitumba and Mau Mau generals including Mau Mau wives. They tune in to youth fetishes for fashion, fancy hairdos and ‘found objects’ transformed into junk art.

But then they take off into uncharted territories of consciousness. They make their ‘discoveries’ everywhere from Kawangware and Kipipiri forest to Kibera, Lake Magadi and unknown sites beneath Nairobi’s CBD.

Only two sets of the seven feature women but their women are glorious creatures who you’d love to meet in real life. The four Kipipiri women are said to be a ‘special unit’ of Mau Mau Generals’ wives who, like their spouses are ‘leaders’ in their own right. Whenever there’s a full moon, they emerge with super high-styled hair do’s.

But it’s the Lake Magadi mamas who are even more intriguing. They are “former female circumcisers” who abandoned FGM to now design elegant ethnic fashions and mentor young women in both making and modelling those same fashion designs. Trained to be self-sufficient and able to succeed both locally and globally, the Magadi girls have mainly been ‘rescued’ by the mamas from child marriages. So while the mamas may be antiques, they’re providing an important services nonetheless.

The men’s groups are mainly seers or defensive fighters. The ‘Kawangware Defense Force’ is made up of HIV/AIDS orphan boys who go to school by day and go on duty with KDF by night. Hooked up with discarded boda boda helmets and home-made electronic that can trace criminal prowlers, the KDF’s work is to detect and then relay ‘untraceable’ calls to alert the local police.

Another group of fighters were ‘found’ underground beneath the CBD. Osborne and Abbria only found five midgets who are members of the Nairobi Fight Club. Funded by local elites, they’re involved in intensive training. But the ‘researchers’ didn’t identify what they were being trained to fight for. Could that suggest there will be another installment of their Afro-Futurist ‘documentation’?

There are two groups of seers. One is the Ilgelunot, blind Maasai elders who were rescued by Wakanda’s King T’Chaka after which they became his trusted advisors with extraordinary powers acquired from exposure to the mysterious metal, Vibranium.

The other group belongs to a secret unit of Mau Mau fighter who also have special powers. Called ‘Macicio’, they are five opticians who create hand-crafted spectacles (similar to Cyrus Kabiru’s C-Stunners) that allow them to have night vision. Their specs enabled the Mau Mau to spot their enemies throughout the night.

Finally, ‘Remember the Rude Boy’ is meant to be a tribute to Kevo Abbra’s father who is said to have been a tailor based in the ‘ghetto’. His tailoring friends created an eclectic fashion collection made out of up-cycled mitumba (second-hand clothes). The collection was staged as a fashion show in tribute to the elder Abbra. The first show is said to have been in Kibera but it’s set to travel all over Nairobi and then ‘across Africa’.

There’s enough fantasy in this Afro-Futurist showcase to assume that all seven stories are pure fiction. Nonetheless, there are many relevant themes sprinkled throughout this remarkable exhibit to make one admire the blurred lines between fantasy and reality.

What’s more, a record-breaking film like ‘Black Panther’ proved that the whole world, not only Kenyans, have a thirst for flights of fantasy that are conceivably true. So why not go for an improbable flight with Osborne and Abbra and delight in their fabulous ‘discoveries’.