Statement of the Zimbabwe Fact Finding Mission of African Media Organisations: 13 June 2008. Harare, Zimbabwe

From June 8 to13 a Mission made up of the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ Africa Office based in Senegal), Southern Africa Editors’ Forum (SAEF), Southern Africa Journalists Association (SAJA), the Media Institute of Southern Africa (MISA) Regional Office and the Network of African Freedom of Expression Organisations (NAFEO) visited Zimbabwe on a fact finding mission to ascertain the conditions of media and freedom of expression in Zimbabwe in the light of the arrests of journalists, both local and foreign and the deteriorating freedom of expression environment. This mission also comes in the context of the forthcoming Presidential election run off slated for 27 June 2008. Read more

Kibera Noir - an excerpt, by Arno Kopecky

Kibera Noir, another of our election dispatches, tells the story of what happened in Kibera on the night of December 30, 2007, after Mwai Kibaki was sworn in at State House. The following excerpt takes up the story moments after the writer and his photographer companion, Chris Ojow, emerged from the flames.

Having stumbled our way out the back of Kibera, we finished the night in what felt like the last and best bar on the planet. Whispers Pub was a shabby and intimate place, buried somewhere in Langata; a neon green woman in a miniskirt was painted on the wall behind Ojow, who like me sat at the bar. The only table in the room had six people seated around it - the eight of us filled the place up.

“Do you have any cigarettes?” was the first question they asked when we poked our heads in.
“There are absolutely no cigarettes anywhere in Langata.” Read more

The Home Run - an excerpt, by Peter Chepkonga

Another excerpt from our series of dispatches on the election, The Home Run chronicles the parliamentary race in Eldoret.

Elijah Lagat ‘Mheshimiwa’ – Honourable, as they call him – began running simply to lose weight and not necessarily to compete at the highest level of the sport. As a young man, a physician told him that he ‘had a lot of fat around his heart’ and needed to lose weight. It was 1992, and he weighed 158 pounds. Lagat started jogging in 1993, then began competing in 1994 after realizing he was fast enough to make some money at it. By the time he won Boston Marathon his weight had decreased to 125 pounds. Read more

Kangemi’s Fly On The Wall - by Stanley Gazemba

This story is another installation in our series of electoral dispatches. More are forthcoming, both on kwani.org and in the print edition of Kwani 05, which will be launched at the Kwani Litfest in August.

Lodged in between Loresho to the north, Westlands to the east, Lavington across yonder to the south and Mountainview, Kangemi is like a wart on the ass of our affluent neighbours. And it is so ripe with putrefaction that a single stroke of the lance will see it spurting all over your face. It is for this reason that our neighbours are continually wary about our presence, breeding giant man-eating dogs and walling themselves in with twelve-foot walls that are topped with coils of razor wire, in between strands of electric wiring; as if we are some mutant man-eating rats that must be kept strictly in the cage. And yet, like a bad smell that lingers around for as long as it wishes, they discover that after all that effort they still cannot wish us off, because they rely on us to guard and clean their homes, baby-sit for them, and do their petty fix-jobs. Occasionally we will even marry one of them! Read more

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