Dispatch from Mombasa

Phyllis Mwema KECOSCE Executive Director  Thursday 6 th November 2014 Mombasa Kenya: Mombasa based Civil Society Organizations have expressed their displeasure with the rising cases of insecurity in Mombasa that has seen close to twenty community leaders killed for their effort in containing radicalism and violent extremism. Led by the Executive Director of the Kenya Community Support Centre Ms Phyllis Mwema, the group noted that the murders have been committed using illegal firearms whose numbers seems to be on the increase. The group urged the Government to protect and facilitate community leaders who despite their loyalty and commitment have remained vulnerable to the attacks which are perpetrated by people who adhere to extremist ideologies. The latest killing is that of Sheikh Mwarangi of Bilal Mosque who was shot and killed after Tuesday's evening prayer. “Community leaders are soft targets because they are helpless, they have no weapon or any other protect...

Last week #KOT and Facebook exploded over claims by American tele-evangelist   Pat Robertson that one could contract Aids through the use of towels and especially here in Kenya. The popular presenter Pat Robertson even warned that water in Africa was the most unhygienic and therefore the most unsafe to drink. Although Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN) retracted the utterance from the octogenarian right wing preacher, I must admit that his view represents the views of many people in the North largely because of the influence of the western Media and the way we in Africa project ourselves. Ask any political leader or development advocate who went to the west for a mission. If they can be honest with you, they would tell you that they went to market Africa as the ultimate place of suffering. It’s a place where all children have protruding bellies because of suffering the ravages of a combination of kwashiorkor, marasmus and beri beri. They will carry with them photographs of ...

I do not hold any brief for the Hon. Abdulswamad Shariff Nassir Mvita MP and this assessment is based purely on the instincts of a communicator. As an old journalist, the last time I covered Nassir was in 2003 in an interview that was organized by Tobby Otum, the then Coast Province Basketball Executive. Otum who popularized basketball in the Coast the nineties is now a journalist and is popularly referred to as “Chairman” because he now advocates for the “interests” of journalists to news sources. Since then we have never crossed paths with Abdulswamad except when he gave dates to be given to people in my former workplace Baraka FM. However, I have closely followed his political path and I believe this is the new kid on the block and he is the man to watch as he rises to become the new coast political supremo. Like a chip off the old block, Nassir a scion of the late long serving cabinet minister Shariff Nassir Taib, the young Nassir seems to carrying the same bag of tricks that wa...

The quiet of a Sunday afternoon in Majengo Mombasa was shattered by the sound of gunfire and depending on where you looked at it from, the aggressors had done it again. For the police, they had come to keep peace by “ejecting” Muslim youth who were congregating in Masjid Musa to listen to a “ radical extremist” sermon. They knew this because they saw black flags that had gun drawings draped on the minarets of the mosque. Pix: Courtesy of  The Star Newspaper On the other hand, local youth, leaders both political and clerical saw it differently.  The youth were exercising their constitutionally guaranteed religious rights and the police should not have attacked them. In fact they claimed the police transgressed on the rights of the youth and according to area MP Abdulswamad Shariff Nassir on his Facebook page that was a “terror act”. As accusations and counter accusations flew, two people lay dead , either felled by the police or injured by the youth. Many others were i...