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| Is another world possible for Kenya's forgotten heroes? |
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              SOMETIMES people struggle all their lives for justice but they cannot be sure that the world attaches meaning to their efforts until they are acknowledged. A small group of veteran freedom fighters for Kenya’s independence were given a standing ovation at the start of the World Social Forum as they relived the memories of their struggles against the British colonial government which stole their youth, livelihoods and families. Now grey and bent with age, Major Waturi Kiunga, Ruth Mukami Kiboi, Henry Huthu Wakigo and General Kamunde Agostino were teens and young adults when they became freedom fighters in the 1950s. Today they are active members of the Mau Mau Veterans’ Association.Huddled up next to her three comrades, Major Waturi Kiunga squints as she focuses her attention on the speakers at the session on Memory Of Struggles And Contemporary Resistance. The memories come flooding back as though they happened yesterday. Barely into her teens in 1952, Waturi found herself in the struggle for Kenya’s independence. The struggle took away her youth, her health and her livelihood. It did not spare her family either and after Kenya’s independence, with her parents long dead Waturi found out that she had no claim to the ancestral land she fought for. “I went to fight believing that another world was possible if we got back our land from the British colonialists,” she reminisces. “Today I am landless and a slum dweller in Mathare — an informal settlement in the vicinity of the WSF venue. Speaking in vernacular Gikuyu, Waturi observed that the WSF had done for her what three successive Kenya governments had failed to do. “I stood in front of the people of the world and they have heard my life story.” She would like nothing better than a restoration of her fortunes — a piece of farmland and a chance for her now adult children to find meaningful livelihoods. “There is a banana plant by my doorstep in Mathare, and I don’t even own the patch of soil on which it is growing but my children and neighbours remind me that this is what I fought for — our freedom.” General Kamunde Agostino, picks his cue from Waturi and shakes his head sadly: “Our struggles did not end with independence.” He adds: “We are still fighting poverty, HIV/AIDS in our communities and the violence visited on women and children.” Kamunde was only 15 years old when he left home to join freedom fighters in the forest: “We learned to manufacture arms, but they were no match against the colonial army’s arsenal,” he recalls. “But we must have done something correctly, because they left and Kenya became independent.” Like his comrades from the emergency era, he is landless and worries for his children and grandchildren. Colonial era land proclamations and policies dispossessed entire communities and upon independence, successive governments continued with discriminative policies that enhanced the pre-colonial conditions of poverty and underdevelopment. |
| Kenya Audio Visual Archives Conference |
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The African Woman and Child Feature Service, the Kenya Archival Study Group and the Ford Foundation office in Nairobi, Kenya will hold the Preservation, Conservation and Restoration of Audio Visual Media Conference. The conference will be held at the National Museums of Kenya in Nairobi, from December 3rd – 5th 2008. |
| AWC at the Highway Africa Awards |
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| 2008 Accra High Level Forum |
| 2007 CHOGM |
| 2007 GEM Land Reform |
| 2005 GEM Beijing |
| 2003 GEM ICASA |
| 2003 GEM Bangkok |
| 2003 GEM Action |
| 2002 GEM WSSD |
| 2002 GEM Know How |
