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The video footage shows an unnamed patient groaning in pain as he lay sprawled on a bare bed in the crowded Juba Hospital ward. His left leg and shoulder are swathed in white bandages through which blotches of fresh blood seeps from the underlying wounds.

Like all the other patients in this ward the injured man is a victim of the recent upsurge of tribal violence in the neighbouring state of Jonglei.

“They came at dawn and opened fire randomly on the fleeing people, killing women, children and the elderly then they burned the houses,” Yien Tap, another patient with less severe wounds explains. “Even those who fled were followed in the bush. We survived by hiding”.

The 25 year-old is lucky to be alive after a gang of Murle warriors descended on his village, killing more than fifty people and abducting many more as they drove away thousands of cattle.

The attack he is talking about is part of a series of raids that have defined the ongoing tribal conflict in Jonglei pitting the dominant Lou Nuer against the Murle. Reportedly fueled by quest for pasturelands, cattle rustling, overpriced dowry demands, local politics and ethnic animosity the clashes have already claimed thousands of lives according to some officials and left many more wallowing in internally displaced peoples’ camps.

The chaos came to a peak in January when more than 6000 armed Nuer tribesmen, called White Army, marched through Murleland in a scotched-earth operation that left in its wake a trail of blood, burned villages and thousands of homeless people. Vowing “to wipe out the entire Murle tribe from the face of the earth as the only solution to guarantee long-term security of Nuer’s cattle” according to a Juba-based blogger, the gun-wielding multitude climaxed its murderous march in the town of Pibor, where unconfirmed number of civilians were brutally butchered.

Pibor County Commissioner Joshua Konyi claimed that the invasion left more than 3000 people dead but UN and GoSS officials said the figures were unconfirmed and may be inflated. Aid agencies says more than 60,000 are in urgent need of help after being rendered homeless in a region where UN and government centers are far and wide between miles of bandit-infested barren wilderness.

The 800-strong combined force of UN and government soldiers holed up in the dusty town could nothing more than warning residents to flee their homes. Inaccessibility of this state which is the size of Bangladesh, late deployment of troops from Juba and reluctance to intervene in a historical tribal conflict have been cited as the reasons why authorities were unable to stop the advance of the deadly column.

The Nuer were revenging against a spate of attacks waged against their villages by their Murle rivals late last year where dozens of people, mostly women and children, were killed or abducted. Nuer Youth in Diaspora (NYD), a group claiming to represent members of the community abroad, endorsed the revenge attacks claiming it was a justified act of self-defense.

“It should be recalled that the right of self-defense, which includes preemptive attack strike, is a right that could also be exercised by communities in absence of a functional government that guarantees security,” the NYD said in a statement to the South Sudan News Agency (SSNA). “Unfortunately, a functional government does not exist in South Sudan and different tribes in the South live in Hobbesian anarchy in which men live without a common power to keep them safe”.

The Lou Nuer blames their woes on the government of President Salvar Kiir which conducted a disarmament operation against them in 2006, in which more than 300 are said to have died, and failing to do the same to the Murle who have since then have been taking the advantage to mount cattle raids and children abductions.

“The Nuer community in USA, Canada, Europe, New Zealand and Australia must raise funds for the White Army to defend properties and cattle of Nuer civilians,” the NYD resolved. “The money shall be used to purchase firearms and ammunition from Ethiopia…the Nuer and Dinka youth must raise a force of 50,000 White Army to fully protect their properties and villages”.

These sentiments were backed by the of Historical Society Association, a group that oversees the community’s religious heritage, whose chairman declared the Murle have committed a sacrilege by attacking the holy city of Wec Deang. The shrine is the birthplace of Prophet Ngundeng, a religious legend of the Lou Nuer people. Stories are told of how the holy man killed British soldiers with a swipe of his divine rod when they tried to attack the holy place in 1902.

“They first attacked Dengjok Payam and killed over 30 civilians and took over 20,00 heads of cattle …on January 14, 2012, the Murle fighters attacked Prophet Ngundeng’s Bieh (Pyramid) and killed innocent civilians,” complained the Society’s chairman and the prophet’s grandson Gai Ngundeng. “All Nuer officials, politicians, students, soldiers, youth, doctors, lawyers and White Army have to fight Murle youth and to bring them to justice for attacking the holy city of Wech Deang”.

Media and aid agencies reports indicates that the animosity between the two tribes is so fierce that even in Juba Hospital where most of the injured are nursing their wounds, the Nuer are housed in different wards from the Murle with police officers placed at the door to take care of any eventualities. According to United Nations Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS), the conflict has displaced more than 50,000 people, a situation aggravated further by the fact that recent fighting in the main Sudan’s Southern Kordofan and Blue Nile states has pushed 75,000 Sudanese refugees to cross over into South Sudan’s Unity and Upper Nile states.

With UN-backed peace talks having collapsed last December, there are no signs of lasting peace in the foreseeable future.

But the Nuer-Murle conflict is just one of the numerous internal feuds that are currently afflicting the infant state that declared independence barely six months ago. Throughout the history of the region, conflicts have been the norm rather than the odd. From wars pitting tribes fighting for pasturelands to Africans fighting against Arab domination, South Sudan is one of the continent’s oldest battlefields.
Although the formation of South Sudan Liberation Army (SPLA) in 1983 created a unified front through which a consisted war of independence from the north was waged, the movement also experienced breakups and revolts throughout the 22 year-old
civil war.

But the peculiarity of this conflict scenario is the fact that many rebel groups and armed militia have emerged and flourished after the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) in 2005 and the 2010 general elections, key milestones in the realization of freedom that have claimed millions of lives in the last 50 years.
The SPLM has pointed fingers at Khartoum but many observers tends to differ, accusing the movement of planting the seeds of discord through failure to deliver its pre-independence promises like provision of services, creation of employment and particularly the inability to address negative ethnicity.

“Minority tribes who joined the SPLA in their thousands found themselves left out in the movement’s leadership and participated only as cannon porters and nothing else,” complains an anonymous writer to the SSNA who goes on to claim the root cause of current tribal hostilities has been abated by the current regime. “It took Col. John Garang and his henchmen nearly three years to create fictitious titles like the one known as “Alternate Members” of Politico Military High Command to accommodate few non-Dinka like Galario Ornyang, James Wani Igga… and Dr. Riek Machar in the SPLA leadership’s hierarchy”.

With his name withheld by SSNA for “security reasons”, this author launches a scathing attack on the SPLM government which he blames for the high number of rebel movements that have been popping up in every corner of the new country in recent times.

“The Political Bureau (PB) which is the highest political organ of the ruling SPLM is actually a rubber stamp used by one ethnic group (Dinka) to dominate others by using their numbers to impose decisions on others,” he alleges. “There is no fairness in it… Even the so-called “deputies” used to wonder when decisions are passed and announced publicly. This is also applied to the Council of Ministers which is being chaired by H.E President Salvar Kiir himself”.

The discontent stirred by the apparent dissatisfaction with the Juba-based administration has led to the emergence of several rebel groups in recent times, the most prominent being South Sudan Democratic Army (SSDA) and South Sudan Liberation Army (SSLA), who are said to be in the process of forging a united fighting alliance. The two group’s newfound friendship is said to have bee triggered by the killing of SSDA leader Gen. George Athor Deng in December by the government forces along the Uganda-South Sudan border.

The 49 year-old Athor was a former member of the SPLA high command who revolted after losing the race for Jonglei governorship during the 2010 general elections.
“Another Athor will emerge tomorrow unless real progress is made in providing political and economic opportunities that feel marginalized in the process of independence,” explained John Prendergast, co-founder of the Enough Project that operates in South Sudan. “The South Sudan government, with international support, must address inter-communal divisions within the South”.

Achievement of development and service provision remains a tall order for the SPLM government partly because of the unresolved oil revenue sharing formula with Khartoum. The South Sudan government recently claimed that the north has stolen more than two million barrels of her oil worth $200 million.

Although the secession handed more than three quarters of the oil reserves to South Sudan, the country has no refinery or export infrastructure to exploit this important natural resource hence it relies heavily on the north to exploit this vital resource. This has been a source of numerous wrangles with Juba accusing Hassan al-Bashir government of hiding some of the oil revenue and President Salvar Kiir waening it might lead to a full-scale war.

Another big pebble in the SPLM shoe is Lam Akol, who led a breakup from the movement in 1991 in conjunction with Dr. Riek Machar, and his Shilluk tribe that hails from the Upper Nile state. Although after the early nineties rebellion Akol came back to the ruling party where he was appointed minister of foreign affairs after the signing of the CPA IN 2005, he reneged again to form the SPLM-Democratic Change through which he vied against Salvar Kiir in the last general elections.

However, violence erupted between the SPLM and the Shilluk when the ruling party refused to accept the victory of four SPLM-DC parliamentary candidates from the community in 2010 general elections. Under the command of a former prison warder called Captain Olonyi, the community has been conducting a series of raids and banditry incidents against government troops stationed in the Nile region.

Human rights groups have cited incidents of summary executions, rape, destruction of property and looting all of which have been denied by the national army. These incidences coupled with traditional Dinka-Shilluk land disputes make the Upper Nile regions one of the most volatile in South Sudan.

Other militia and rebel leaders that remains a huge thorn in the SPLM regime includes Gatluak Gai, Gabriel Tang Gatwich Chan who is reportedly under house arrest in Juba, Bapiny Monituel, Paulino Monitiep and Gordon Kong.

Nelson Mandela is renown across the world as a symbol of fight for justice, equality, democracy and human resilience in the face of adversity and suffering. But while his saint-like international reputation has been an inspiration to millions of people around the world, his popular name has been a target of publicity seekers and opportunistic businessmen.

From international events to the tiniest backyard garage everyone is trying to grab a chunk of the lucrative Mandela legacy. Even an official retirement from the limelight in 2004 at the age of 86 and a plea to be left alone could not hold back the thousands of fortune hunters, fame seekers and outright gold diggers who want to use the Mandela name to advance their cause.

“One of the things that made me long to be back in prison was that I had so little opportunity for reading, thinking and quiet reflection after my release,” Mandela once reminisced the quiet and reflective years he spent incarcerated at Robben Island.

This apparently improbable words are quiet appropriate given that during his public years there was an endless stream of prominent personalities flocking down south just to shake hands or hug the antiapartheid hero, with cameras rolling of course. But even after retirement Mr. Mandela would find the absolute piece that he was craving elusive since merchants of capitalism were busy peddling their wares through his hallowed name. Numerous paraphernalia ranging from caps, t-shirts and gold coins bearing the image or purported signature of this famous man were popping up everywhere.

In a bid to stop this unwarranted exploitation Mandela hired the services of experts to copyright and protect his legacy. Led by renowned copyright lawyer Don MacRobert and George Bizo, the advocate who represented Mandela during the Rivonia Treason Trial, the team oversaw the copyrighting of the names Nelson Mandela, Madiba, Rolihlahla and his well known prison number 46664.

“We don’t mind a Kennedy-ised Mandela,” MacRoberts told The Daily Telegraph back in 2004. “You see Kennedy museums and Kennedy streets all over America and that’s fine. What we are fighting against is the commercial, profit-making side. We don’t want a Disney-fied Mandela”.

Besides the smalltime entrepreneurs trying to make a fortune, organizations too have been blamed for subjecting the frail old man to unnecessary pressures. After Sepp Blatter and FIFA pulled Mandela out of the South African World Cup bidding committee for the reason that his presence would tip the scales in his homelands favour, the football high command was at it again in the final day of the actual event in July.
Despite the 92-year-old’s deep grief for the death of his great-granddaughter he lost just before the tournament, family objections, his failing health and a ban on public appearances Mandela surprisingly showed up for the final game. Although many hailed this as the most befitting end to the historic event a section of South African media claimed “FIFA literary commandeered Mandela to the pitch”.

However Yiull Damaso, a Johannesburg based artist took the unwarranted exploitation of the Mandela legacy to a whole new level when he depicted the elderly leader as a corpse on an autopsy table. The artwork by the controversial Damaso is a parody of the famous 17th- century masterpiece The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp by Dutch painter Rembrandt.

In what many critics called a desperate sensationalist move to attract unwarranted attention, the artist substituted the original characters with renowned personalities in the South African society. In the unfinished painting that was displayed in Johannesburg’s Hyde Park shopping centre Nkosi Johnson, an Aids activist who died aged 12, takes the place of the surgeon with a pair of scissors in the original painting. The dead Mandela substitutes the naked cadaver which historians agree was a convicted criminal since they were the only people allowed to be autopsied at the time the original was done.

While Rembrandt included doctors as spectators Damaso’s version boasts of famous onlookers like South African President Jacob Zuma, retired archbishop Desmond Tutu, past heads of state Thabo Mbeki and FW de Klerk and Hellen Zille, the Premier of the Western Cape.

When confronted by critics Damaso, who had previously landed in trouble for another depiction of Mandela in dreadlocks a decade ago, was categorically unapologetic.
“The eventual passing of Mr. Mandela is something that we will have to face, as individuals, as a nation,” he explained. “They told me that his image was copyrighted. But how can you copyright the image of a public figure.”

But the unconventional artist seems to have achieved his objective since the huge publicity the issue generated greatly raised his profile as an artist. However there was a huge fusillade of condemnation for both Damaso with the depiction of a dead Mandela being compared to witchcraft by the ruling party.

“In African society it is a foreign act of ubuthakathi (bewitch) to kill a living person and this so-called work of art…is also racist,” said ANC spokesman Jackson Mthembu. “It goes further by violating Tat’uMandela’s dignity by stripping him naked in the glare of curious onlookers, some of whom have seen their apartheid ideals die before them”.

Adding that Mandela was an international icon who should be cherished and respected Mthembu said the painting was in bad taste, disrespectful, an insult and an affront to values of “our society”. But the 41 year-old artist retaliated by saying that he was using the painting to convey a political argument and labeled his critics as people scared of the inevitable future.

“The idea just popped up in my mind,” Damaso told the Mail and Guardian. “We have Nelson Mandela, one of the great leaders of our time, and the politicians around him are trying to find what makes him a great man. Nkosi Johnson, the only one in the painting who’s no longer alive, is trying to show them that Mandela is just a man. So they should stop searching and get on with building the country”.

Even after members of the Mandela family, who were still grieving the loss of a loved one, complained of being distraught after seeing the image the artist was still unrelenting.

‘I knew the family would not be happy but I hope they will listen to my side of the story and my huge admiration for Nelson Mandela,” he explained. “The death of Nelson Mandela is something we’re going to have to face not only as a family but all of us as individuals and as a nation”.

Even the Mail and Guardian, the wide circulating Southern African newspaper that broke the story and reproduced the painting in their front page, and the ultramodern shopping mall that accommodated the artwork were not spared the bashing.

‘Why would a newspaper including the Mail and Guardian put to prominence this work of rubbish in their publication? Why would a respected public space ad business site, Hyde Park, be the home for the creation of such insulting work to our icon, our leaders and all of us?” asked a statement from the ruling African National Congress (ANC) headquarters.

But the Yuell Damaso issue is not the first time that the Mandela legacy has locked horns with the world of fine art. There was a huge legal storm back in 2005 when Mandela’s former lawyer and confidante Ismail Ayob and art promoter Ross Calder were sued for exploiting the old man’s name through an art scheme dubbed Touch of Mandela. The duo were said to have ripped millions of dollars through the sale of lithographs entitled “My Robben Island” with a purportedly original signature by Mandela.

“We will go after anyone who misuses Mr. Mandela’s name and image,” vowed MacRobert during the Ayob case. “There are many people out there using Mandela’s name, and it’s enough. It must stop”.

Lawyers had to contend with a numerous list of offenders before they could instill some form of sanity in the whole issue. From a man in Sydney said to have registered the internet domain name nelsonmandela.com and enlisting Interpol to clump down swindlers soliciting money through a nelsonmandelafoundation.com to a vehicle repair outfit trading by Nelson Mandela Panel Beaters, the battle to safeguard one of the most revered legacies in recent history has not been easy.

However the most sensational was a clothing line company that wanted to trade under Mandela’s popular prison number 46664 forcing MacRoberts to turn to script a poetic verse to back his legal argument. Asked to estimate how much the Mandela brand is worth experts explained that it was not possible to place a realistic commercial value according to the normal methodologies.

“Assuming he was a commercial entity,” MacRoberts told the BBC in 2005. “You could rank him alongside Coca Cola and Microsoft”.

According to Interbrand Corporation’s latest table of the world’s most valuable brands (Best Global Brands 2010) Coca Cola, the world’s number one brand is worth more than $70 million.

The Mandela touch is so magical that even the high and mighty cannot resist its alluring aroma in a bid to sanitize their image and boost their political fortunes. In his recent book Straight Speaking for Africa Congo-Brazzaville President Denis Sassou-Nguesso is said to have falsely claimed that Mandela wrote the forward which describes the Central African strongman who came to power after winning a bloody civil war “as one of our great African leaders”. When the Nelson Mandela Foundation revealed that a request for Madiba to pen the forward had actually been turned down, Brazzaville went ballistics.

“Mandela’s name does not belong to the foundation but to the entire continent,” one of the country’s presidential advisers told the BBC adding that it should not be “treated as a brand”.

The ANC, a party whose ideologies the antiapartheid icon spent an entire lifetime defending, has in several occasions been accused of evoking the Mandela magic to save its dwindling political fortunes. The old man was ferried in a golf cart to the last presidential campaign rally at the Coca Cola Park stadium in 2009 where he urged supporters to vote for Jacob Zuma, now president. The ruling party was facing a stiff challenge from the breakaway Congress of the People (COPE).

Some Mandela family members have also been sucked into this vortex of trying exploit the retired leader’s name for materialistic gains. While one grandson was accused of trying to evict a cousin from her home in order to turn it into a Mandela tourist centre there have been claims, which were vehemently denied, that another relative has signed a multimillion-rand deal with the South African Broadcasting Corporation for exclusive rights to Mandela’s funeral.

The Nelson Mandela Foundation (NMF), which is the official custodian of the Madiba legacy, is said to be bombarded by at least 4000 requests per month for the living legend’s signature, endorsements, interview, message of support or public appearance. Apart from NMF there are several other trusts that were established to raise funds for various charities whose efforts, according to some commentators, have had some unfortunate consequences.

“Even the most legitimate of organizations, with the laudable of motives, have financial goals to meet,” observed one analyst who requested anonymity. “And so the Mandela name has become a fundraising machine-a ‘Madiba Inc’-and this has sucked in opportunists and ‘chancers’”.

The long walk to freedom for the antiapartheid icon, it seems, is still far from over.

A long-dead Briton haunted the headlines a few weeks ago after it emerged that he might have fathered a thousand babies through donated sperms. And its not that Bertold Wiesner had a harem where he indulged in carnal pleasures with numerous females. He multiplied his seed through sperm donation.

The extraordinary tale of a thousand babies started at the end of World War II in a small reproductive clinic offering Artificial Insemination by Donor (AID) in the leafy suburbs of London pioneered by a Dr. Mary Barton, Bertold’s wife.
Most members of the “Berton’s Brood” are in their twilight years and several of them have embarked on a nostalgic quest connect with their hundreds of brothers and sisters scattered across the globe.

With Kenya boosting of several sperm banks in both private and public health institutions, the UK scenario is bound to trigger a lot of ethical, moral and medical questions not only among health practitioners but also ordinary citizens.
Although the chances of coincidental incest, called consanguinity, among the “Barton Brood” is next to none since they are scattered across six continents, the case would be the opposite if the same happened in a country the size of Kenya.

“Taking into consideration the parameters that we have put in place in our facility such an incidence borders on the impossible in Kenya or anywhere else in the world in this era,” explains Prof. Koigi Kamau, Chairman of the Obstetrics and Gynaecology Department in the University of Nairobi’s School of Medicine which together with Kenyatta National Hospital runs one of the oldest sperm banks in the country. “Besides careful profiling of donor samples to monitor usage the AID field is governed by social, cultural and religious principles”.

Prof. Kamau headed a task force setup by the government in 2004 to come with proposals on legislative policies to govern how the field was to operate, but the group of experts never completed its work due to what he calls “luck of support from relevant authorities”.

But besides the absence of a regulatory framework the moral and cultural issues surrounding sperm donor related conceptions remains a huge debate among many health practitioners not only in Kenya but also across the world.
According to Prof. Kamau, the Kenyatta National Hospital Sperm Bank exists principally for academic and medical reasons hence they only assist couples referred there by gynaecologists and other specialists. Unlike sperm banks in private clinics where AID is done for commercial purposes theirs is purely for research and treatment of couples struggling to have children.

“Although we don’t yet have a legal parameter to guide our operations we observe strict ethical and cultural and religious aspects since as an institution we exist to solve medical problems in a way that will make society stronger,” Prof. Kamau explains. “Assisting young single women with no medical problems is an act of encouraging and propagating the concept of single motherhood, which is against the traditional African definition of family which consists of father, mother and child”.

He says by helping married couples have babies the institutions is helping build stronger families since childlessness is one of the major causes of marital problems in the Kenyan society today.

“Although I fully believe children born of single ladies through natural should and must enjoy their rights just like any other citizens, single parenting is not an aspect that should be encouraged through science,” the scholar opines.
His sentiments are endorsed by Dr. John Ong’ech, Director of the Reproductive Health Services at the Kenyatta National Hospital, who says that he sometimes finds himself pushed in a professional quagmire when young and healthy women comes seeking AID.

“I have a moral issue when young women walks in and requests to have the service purely from emotional basis since they are frustrated by men and relationships,” he says. “I don’t encourage that hence I usually try to counsel them by explaining that AID is a treatment for medical and not social problems”.

But Dr. Solomon Wasike of Afya Royal Clinics and one of the founders of the sperm at Kenyatta Hospital differs sharply, insisting every Kenyan have a right to get a baby by whatever means.

“The most fundamental function of advanced medical science is to help humanity through situations and having a baby, whether single of married, is one of them,” he insists. “For single women to undergo the process of artificially induced conception they need to sign some legal papers formalizing their parenthood duties and responsibility to the baby and if it’s a couple the two parties have to do the same”.

Upon conception through a donated sperm or egg, the baby is legally bound to the recipient couple in terms of inheritance and all the other parenting privileges and responsibilities. Even if the identity of the donor was to be revealed to the child later in life, the latter has no legal claims to the former’s property.

The sperm bank at Kenyatta Hospital, the oldest in the country having been setup more than 25 years ago, gets a bulk of its donors from medical students from the university and other training institutions. However, anybody can be a donor as long as they are ready to undergo a series of rigorous medical tests including HIV\Aids besides revealing medical histories of their immediate histories.

Going by the popular myth that semen is commodity of high demand, one expects to find a line of young men lining up out the Kenyatta Hospital facility waiting to dispense their seed for fortune. But the reception is a very lonely place with only a few patients none of whom was ready to say what they were there for.

“We usually get an average of four samples a day and the most common method of extraction here is masturbation in a special testing room. We also do post-coital test (PCT) for those whose husbands don’t feel comfortable with their samples being brought to the lab,” explains George Munyao, the Kenyatta University Sperm Bank lab technician. “Before semen can be extracted from an individual, either as a donor or for fertility medical tests he has to avoid having sex for at least three days before the samples are taken”.

Laboratories in developed countries like the United States and the UK they have devised a variety sperm extraction methods that varies from onsite wanking in a special room called a “masturbatorium”, a specially made collecting condom used during intercourse at home or through electro-stimulation where the male organ is excited using electric signals.
Although this is not the case at Kenyatta, most of the specimen collection rooms in other countries contain pornographic videos and magazines to hasten production.

The frozen samples are labeled in such a way that the biometric details of the donating individual are listed for the purpose of identification. Tests are done before and three to six months after collection to cover for incubation of conditions like HIV.

“For storage the samples are frozen in liquid nitrogen at minus 196 degrees centigrade and kept in quarantine until the donors are declared safe after the series of tests,” explains Mr. Munyao who have worked as a “sperm washer” for the last two decades, making him one of the longest serving in the country. “To avoid rigours of testing new recruits every now and then many sperm banks prefer using a certain pool of donors for a period of time before recruiting a new team”.
Verified specimen ready for use is stored in vials or straws where one sample can be divided between one to twenty parts depending on the quantity of the specimen, called ejaculate, taken and whether the sperm cells are separated from the seminal fluid (washed) or not (unwashed).

Samples are labeled where the information provided includes tribe, race, weight, height, build, eye colour, hair type, hobbies and academic levels. To ensure a maximum degree of anonymity the donors are classified in numbers and letters and some clinics ensure that the collecting individual is different from the one dealing with recipients.

Men between the ages of 21 and 35 are the most preferred as donors and they are not paid any money besides a small token given to take care of out-of-pocket expenses like meals and transport. While a normal sperm count is where there is 20 to 150 million healthy cells per milliliter of fluid doctors say chances of conception using donated sperm samples are about 20-25 percent, almost the same with the natural methods.

“A man can be infertile due to low or abnormal sperm count, with the abnormal meaning the sperms might not have tails to help them swim through the birth canal or no heads to help penetrate the ovum,” Dr. Ong’ch says.
In such instances the couples are given the options of bringing along a donor of their choice or going to the bank to get sperm from an anonymous donor.

“The couples that I have assisted conceive this way more often than not come back to say thank while holding the baby,” the US-trained obstetrics and gynaecologist says. “But for obvious reasons all of them want to remain anonymous and as a doctor I am obliged to honour their wish”.

In discordant cases where the husband is HIV positive and the wife is negative the sperm extracted, washed of the virus-laden seminal fluids before artificially inseminating the wife with it.

“The semen, and not the sperm, is the carrier of the HIV virus hence what we do in the sanitization process we filter the sperm from the seminal fluid and put it in an artificial agent with the same qualities as the semen,” Dr. Ong’ech explains. “This way discordant couples are able to give birth without infecting each other or the unborn baby”.
If the wife is having blocked fallopian tubes the doctors recommend in-vitro fertilization (IVF) where the sperm from the husband or anonymous donor is used to fertilize the egg using a laboratory fluid medium and then transferred back to her uterus with the intent of establishing a successful pregnancy.

Dr. Joshua Noreh is one of the most celebrated IVF experts in East and Central Africa today having made history as the first doctor in Kenya to produce a “test tube baby” in 2007. After making improvements into the technology the success rate at his Nairobi IVF Clinic has improved to about 40 percent, among the best in the world.

Undergoing an IVF is not a cheap affair since a single procedure costs more than sh350 and one might have to undergo several before one lands a successful pregnancy.

The United State’s “ejaculatory industry” is the biggest in the world with country’s top four companies controlling 65 percent of the global market according to the current issue of TIME magazine. America is rumoured to generate a turnover in the excess of $100 million by exporting sperm to over 60 countries across the world, an aspect credited on liberal laws and intensive research.

The magazine goes to narrate the case of one sperm donor who was driven by curiosity to find out how his offspring looked like.

“But one day in 2005, Seisler grew curious about the results of his biological generosity,” the TIME story goes. “he plugged his donor number to the Donor Sibling Registry and was put in touch with….at least 20 families…he counts more than 70 offspring in the U.S and abroad”.
Sidebar

The year is 2035 and highly intelligent humanoid robots are swarming the streets, offices and homes slaving for their human masters in mundane chores like cooking, laundry and running petty errands freeing man to focus on weighty matters like science and arts.

Fitted and operated by a miniature central processing called a “positronic brain” and operated from a main server, these super-intelligent contraptions suddenly develops a conscious and rebels against their creators throwing the world into a bloody showdown between men and machine. It takes the heroic antics of a benign cop to stop the robotic revolution and put all of them to sleep by malfunctioning their electronic brains.

Of course this happened in the 2004 Hollywood sci-fi blockbuster i,Robot and the superhero was the renown African-American actor Will Smith. But futuristic computer scientists and enthusiasts have claimed that with the current trend where artificial intelligence (AI)- driven machines are rapidly spreading their optic tentacles to every facet of man hardware is bound to triumph over humanity in the not-too-distant future.

“Machines will rapidly overtake humans in their intellectual abilities and will soon be able to solve some of the most intractable problems of the 21st century,” Dr. Kurzweil said while addressing the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in 2008. “The paradigm shift rate is now doubling every decade, so the next half century will see 32 times more technical progress than the last half century”.

He notes that AI will advance so rapidly in the next decade that it will be at par with human intelligence by 2020s after which it’s abilities will surpass the human brain. Dr. Kurzweil, a pioneer in numerous fields of computing like optical character recognition that gave rise to the CD technology, says this is evidenced by the fact that the computer chip has been doubling in power after every two years in the last half-century leading to acceleration of miniaturization of all chip-based technologies.

Although the current generation of computers is based on two-dimensional chips made from silicon, from which the famous technology hub Silicon Valley in San Francisco derives its name, development of three dimensional chips made from biological molecules that can be miniaturized further and easily than metal-based computer chips is at an advanced stage.

Many computer ‘futurologists’ believes this will be the final blow to the monopoly of humanity as the only intelligent entity roaming the known universe.

“Three-dimensional, molecular computing will provide the hardware for human-level ‘strong artificial intelligence by 2020s,” Dr. Kurzweil, who is one of the 18 computer wizards chosen by AAAS to identify technological challenges facing humanity told The Independent. “The more important software insights will be gained in part from the reverse engineering of the human brain, a process well underway. Already, two dozen regions of the human brain have been modeled and simulated”.

Despite the fact that the human brain is no match to computers when it comes to the speed and capacity of storage and retrieval of information its ability to associate different strands of information, insight, planning ahead and undertaking imaginative and creative tasks is beyond the powers of any machine ever created.

“Once non-biological intelligence matches the range and subtlety of human intelligence, it will necessarily soar past it because of the continuing acceleration of information-based technologies as well as the ability of machines to instantly share their knowledge,” notes Dr. Kurzweil who authored the book The Age of Intelligent Machine.
But the key to turning these fantasies into reality, scientists says, lies in the ability to replicate some complex human cells called neurons that are responsible for transmitting information throughout the human body.

Blue Brain Project, a programme set up by Brain and Mind Institute of Switzerland in 2005 to study the brain’s architectural and functional principles, have claimed some progress on this end by simulating elements of a rat brain.

Although this was considered a major breakthrough since unlike other artificial simulations it involved the creation of a biologically realistic model of a neuron, the ultimate goal of the programme is to engineer a computer simulation of a fully functioning human brain from laboratory data.

“It is not impossible to build a human brain. We can do it in ten years,” Henry Makram, director of the Blue Brain Project, told a conference in Oxford in 2009. “If we build it correctly it should speak and have an intelligence and behave very much as a human does”.

Supporters of this school of thought points at a highly publicized event in May 1997 where an IBM-designed machine called Deep Blue made history by defeating the then reigning world chess champion Garry Kasparov. Having beaten an earlier version of the same machine in 1996, the Russian Grandmaster immediately demanded a rematch accusing IBM of cheating. The latter refused and dismantled the “Silicon Beast”.

A documentary film made in 2003 called Game Over: Kasparov and the Machine claimed that Deep Blue’s heavily publicized victory was a ploy by IBM to boost its stock value.

Although anti-Deep Blue analysts noted the fact that one of the machine’s designers was chess grandmaster Joel Benjamin who ingrained his vast knowledge in the central processing unit, futuristic computer geeks declared this as the first step towards the fall of man from the intelligence pedestal given that chess is one of the highest measures of human thinking.

“The fact that the machine outwitted one of the best chess players that have ever lived is an empirical proof that machines, if well programmed, can and will outwit human beings in many areas previously not thought possible,” explains Dr. Tony Omwansa, a lecturer at the University of Nairobi’s School of Computing and informatics. “This confirms the hugely debated fact that AI driven machines will play a very big role in the future of humanity”.
Dr. Omwansa goes on to point out other facets of human life that were previously never thought possible like flying across oceans in planes many tones heavier than air, sending money to people hundreds of miles away by the touch of a button and interacting with ATMs to withdraw or deposit money are now considered “normal”.

“Google is currently testing a driverless car that operates on a robotized software whose ability to predict and prevent accidents is far much higher than that of any human driver,” explains the university don who recently penned a book entitled Money Real Quick: The Story of Mpesa explaining the monetary transfer system birthed in Kenya a few years ago. “Since these unmanned vehicles were put to test they have logged approximately 140,000 miles with only a single accident which occurred when a manned car rammed into one of them”.

The Google’s fleet of AI-driven automobiles comprises of six Toyota Priuses and one Audi TT. Their creators says that if robots take charge things will be much better since the intelligent machines react faster and more accurately to situations than their human counterparts since they have a 360-degree vision and are devoid of any emotions.

Ambitious predictions say these robo-cars might be cruising through western roads as early as 2020.
“Research on emotionally conscious artificial intelligence is at an advanced stage hence robots of the future will be in a position of not only carrying out instructions but their decisions will be swayed by artificial emotions, giving them an important impetus towards equaling humans,” Dr. Omwansa observes. “The possibility of this is underlined by truth machines which are able to read the human emotions much better than a human interrogator”.
This argument is supported by this year’s winner of the Association of Computing Machinery A.M Turin Award and AI pioneer Judea Pearl who says that future robots will acquire freewill and be able to generate independent jokes and other creative concepts like art and music.

The prospect of a robot-dominated future has been depicted in numerous movies and books which have further accelerated the interest of AI among the general population.

“I think they tickle the creativity and interest of young people in AI research. It’s good for public interest, they serve a purpose,” Judea Pearl told US News, an American newspaper, of robotic sci-fi movies. “For me I don’t have time to watch them. I have so many equations to work on”.

Although Dr. Omwansa notes that at the moment the human mind betters artificial intelligence because the latter cannot respond to unstructured problems like holding a random conversation, intensive research has been dedicated to solving this problem and future robots will probably have this component.

“Artificial neural network where the machines are ingrained with silicon neurons similar to those in the human brain have led to the creation of revolutionary computing gadgets,” the University of Nairobi lecturer says. “Already there is a gadget developed in Japan where people from the opposite ends of the earth can kiss and express other forms of emotional feelings by the touch of a button”.

Informed by this rapid technological progress Dr. Omwansa says Kenya, a country often referred to as the Silicon Savanna due to its ability to embrace technology, will be a totally different place in around 100 years time.
“Although I have no factual data to back this, my prediction is that almost or more than 50 percent of the current daily human functions will be taken over by artificially intelligent machines by around the year 2100,” he says. “By then the technology will be so advanced that these gadgets will be operated by a mere thought process since the neurons in the human brain will be technologically linked to silicon neurons that operates the robotic circuits”.

Driven by the new found freedom granted them by the just promulgated constitution, Kenyan judges have been giving verdicts that are more often than not on the collision course with conventional opinion. While some of these rulings have been welcomed with a sigh of relief for the tensions they have diffused, others have evoked out right anger and condemnation from both political class and wananchi alike.

“This court that is telling us that elections could be done in December or March, what sort of court is that,” Prime Minister Raila Odinga was quoted by media outlets saying during a political rally in Kisii. “This is a Kangaroo court”.

This statement triggered a barrage of condemnation with the Chief Justice Dr. Willy Mutunga terming the PM’s utterances an act of impunity. But this incidence is just one of the many instances where the judiciary has rubbed members of the ruling class and the public the wrong way.

Both legal experts and laymen agree that this is a great paradigm shift from a system where the judiciary was seen as institution established to rubberstamp the orders of the executive. The new law is proving to be a real ass.

From declaring that Sudanese President Hassan Omar-al Bashir should be arrested if he dare step in Kenya to throwing the political game plans into disarray by laying a basis for a multiple of choices of election dates, the Kenyan courts are breathing bubbles of confidence never seen before.

“The bold decisions by the judges in recent times is an indicator that the independence of the judiciary is not only in written form but also practice,” explains former Justice and Constitutional Affairs Minister Mutula Kilonzo, who is now heading the education portfolio. “This shows that the judiciary is not only independent but also its there to serve the interest of the people regardless of their class or station in life”.

The minister, who is also a senior advocate, cites the Prime Minister’s apology to the Chief Justice as a historic case in Africa where the executive have swallowed its pride to apologize to the judiciary.

“Speaking as an advocate I am very impressed to see judges going against populist feelings to implement elements of the constitution like giving bond to suspects of murder,” Mr. Mutula observes. “This coupled with the decision on the election date is an indicator that the change that Kenyans have been fighting for over the decades is finally here with us”.

The Mbooni member of parliament explains that the reason why he recanted on his push for a December election is because the March date was decided by the High Court, which he has a lot of faith and respect for. While celebrating the fact that for the first the country is fixing the polls date under the direction of the judiciary, Mutula says that it’s hypocritical for politicians to condemn the IEBC decision yet when he tried to introduce the constitutional amendment bill in parliament they are the ones who advised him to wait for the court decision.

“When a judiciary is independent it means it is pronouncing its judgments as they are supposed to be in the law, a system which many Kenyans specially politicians from the old order, were not used to,” he observes. “For the first time the politician is realizing that the court will not do things to please him as it was in the past hence the spirited opposition to bold judicial decisions”.

The minister who is also a legal expert says that there are two philosophies that governs independent judiciaries across the world; positivism and activism. While in the former system the judges interpret the law as it is written, in the latter the interpretation is done in a manner that is pro-people. This means that while the letter of the law might say that the elections should be held in August, the judges factored in other aspects necessary to advance the cause of justice like, the principles agreement, life of parliament, national cohesion among other factors.

He also says that drafters of the new constitution steered the country towards judicial activism as stipulated in Article 159 (1) which states that “Judicial authority is derived from the people…” where judges base their decisions not only on the letters of the law but also the prevailing circumstances of interests to Kenyans. This explains why many judgments made by the courts under the new constitutional dispensation have been intriguing to the general public, most of whom are laymen in law.

One of the first of these rulings is when the High Court judge Justice Daniel Musinga directed that presidential appointments for the offices of the Chief Justice, Attorney General, Director of Public Prosecutions and the Controller of Budget be nullified since they were unconstitutional.

In making the ruling Justice Musinga took the activism route by observing that although there were some consultations between the two principles it was apparent that there was no consensus. Despite the fact that consensus or agreement between the two principals is not a constitutional requirement, Kenya Law Reports writes, “the values and principles stated under Article 10 of the Constitution and the spirit of the National Accord and Reconciliation Act ought to have been borne in mind in making the nominations”.

Activism, according to Mutula Kilonzo, is a progressive attitude that only evokes opposition among anti-reformists who would prefer not to see a New Kenya.

“Activism from a judicial sense refers to a judge who when presented with a case where a village chief went against the law to save a situation, he acknowledges the law was contravened but the chief is empowered to do so in such situations, a view adopted by the bench ruling on the election date,” the outspoken cabinet minister says. “But on the other hand a positivist judge will say the chief has broken the law hence he should be punished, without considering other factors”.

Another litmus test for the new found judicial “revolution” has been the case of the Deputy Chief Justice (DCJ) Nancy Makokha Baraza. After the DCJ was alleged to have threatened a security guard at the Village Market the calls for her resignation were deafening, prompting her boss Dr. Willy Mutunga to convene the Judicial Service Commission (JSC). The recommendations for her immediate suspension and the setting up of a tribunal to investigate her conduct were swiftly implemented by the head of state.

But determined to go down fighting, the Lugulu Girls High School alumnus moved to court to petition the legality of the tribunal, in which the High Court issued temporary orders restraining the tribunal from investigating her until the petition was determined. However, the same court has since determined that the former chair of Federation of Women Lawyers of Kenya (FIDA) must face the panel formed to investigate her.

“Having considered all the grounds raised by the petitioner and the response by the respondents, we think that the issue raised cannot entitle the petitioner to the orders sought,” the three-judge bench comprising of Justices Mohammed Warsame, Hellen Omondi and George Odunga said, adding that the JSC worked within its legal mandate in recommending the formation of the tribunal.
The tribunal is yet to begin its sittings.

Like Justice Nicholas Ombija who ordered that Sudan President Omar Bashir should be arrested if he dare set foot in Kenya after having sued a bank for a defaulting credit card, High Court judge Justice Isaac Lenaola have been in the centre of several rulings with far reaching political implications.

After heading the bench that ruled that elections will be held in March 2013 unless the two principals agree to dissolve the coalition in writing the judge, who is also a guest lecturer at the Kenya School of Law, issued an order barring any public discussion on the presidential candidature of Deputy Prime Minister Uhuru Kenyatta and Eldoret North MP William Ruto until a case before him was heard and determined.
The ban has since been lifted.

The High Court caused yet another upset when a petition lodged against the vetting of judges was granted liberty and the process halted awaiting ruling. The Constitutional and Human Rights division of the High Court have since dismissed the petition on the grounds that “the Vetting of Judges and Magistrates Act, 2011 was sanctioned by the new Constitution and its provisions did not violate the doctrines of separation of powers and the independence of the judiciary and that it did not threaten the constitutional rights of judges and magistrates”.

Other instances where the courts apparently went against the public tide includes the postponement of the Kamukuji by-elections in the eleventh hour after contestants have spent money in the campaigns and the attempt to declare the constitutional referendum in 2010 unconstitutional a few months before the material day.

Mwalimu Mati, the Mars Group Chief Executive Officer and a seasoned advocate, says that the fact that courts have become bold enough to make unpopular decisions is a good precedence since it shows the legal regime is gradually getting a life of its own.

“The same atmosphere was experienced in South Africa in 1994 when the new constitution came in force,” Mr. Mati says. “The courts were making decisions that the public was not used hence there were upsets where some decisions of the Supreme Court were deemed too radical, but as time went by the people became accustomed to the new dispensation”.

Mr. Mati says Kenyans should be patience since the judicial system is in the process of transition from the old order to the new where the courts make decisions devoid of interference from the other arms of government.

“While I agree that some decisions made by the courts are unpopular, it is better and safer that the constitutional implementation process be in the hands of the judiciary rather than in the courts of popular opinion,” he says. “After all what is popular today might be unpopular tomorrow and vice versa”.

However Mr. Mati opines that the success of the whole process will be hinged on the quality of judges, a fact that he says is being taken care of by the ongoing process of vetting judges and magistrates.

“Although I strongly support the recent spate of bold decisions by the courts I am disappointed by the judges’ inability to put their foot down in implementing their decisions,” he laments, quoting a warrant of arrest against the son of a former powerful politician has not been implement despite the judge making a ruling. “This should not be the case since a judgment without execution is of no consequence”.

LANDMARK CASES

Kenya has witnessed several landmark court decisions some of which had a bearing on the nation’s political, economic and social destiny. The following are a few examples.

• 1953: In one of the most dramatic political cases in Africa after the Rivonia Trial where South African leader Nelson Mandela were arraigned in court by the apartheid regim, colonial judge Ransley Thacker sentenced six freedom fighters, popularly known as the Kapenguria Six, including future founding father Jomo Kenyatta to seven years imprisonment and hard labour for conspiring to murder all whites in Kenya. The key witness, Rawson Macharia, later confessed that he had been given incentives to testify including a scholarship to study public administration at the Exeter University College in the UK.

• 1987: the High Court rules that lawyer S.M Otieno should be buried in Nyalgunga by his Umira Kager clan, thwarting the efforts of his firebrand widow Wambui Otieno to inter him at their Nyalgunga home.

• 1995: Nakuru Magistrate William Tuiyot sentences politician Koigi wa Wamwere and four others to four years and six lashes of the cane for robbery with violence. The former Subukia legislator maintains he was fabricated.

• 2000: Justice Alnashir Visram takes the awarding of libel damages to historical heights when ruled that authors of the book Dr Iain West’s Casebook, dealing with the death of Dr. Robert Ouko, should pay former cabinet minister sh30 million for damages on his character from the book’s content.

• 2002: Justice Joyce Aluoch proved yet again that the sword of justice is mightier than the pen by ordering The People Daily to pay Nicholas Biwott sh20 million in compensatory damages and a similar amount in exemplary damages for publishing an article implicating the politician in underhand dealings involving the construction of the Turkwell Gorge Hydro-Electric Power project.

• 2007-2012: The courts sets a historic record by nullifying the election of ten members of parliament in petition. Only three individuals managed to overcome the bruising contests of by-election campaigns to make it back to the August House.

In a sea of well-cut Savile Row suits and ladies in mourning black hats and dresses, the thickset, elegantly graying man cut an impressive figure in a black open-neck Africa shirt.

That was during the burial of Internal Security Minister Prof. George Saitoti. During the burial the former dictator-turned-democrat impressed mourners with his eloquence, especially when he regretted humanity’s inability to harvest the dead man’s brilliant brain and transfer it to a living one.

But unlike his friend Prof. Saitoti, whose manners he extolled Kenyans to “imbibe”, who was handpicked from a classroom by retired President Daniel arap Moi and handed high profile state jobs on a silver platter, Rawlings is a bare knuckled politician who learnt his tricks from the school of hard knocks.

As a junior air force officer he narrowly cheated death after being condemned by a court marshal for leading a mutiny while as president he is said to have survived numerous coup and assassination attempts.

Born Jeremiah Rawlings John in 1947, later renamed Jerry John Rawlings, to a Ghanaian mother and a Scottish father JJ, as his he is popularly known among his followers, is the most influential political figure in Ghana after the founding father Kwameh Nkrumah.

After joining the Ghanaian Air Force in 1968, where he distinguished himself by winning the coveted “Speed Bird Trophy” for excellence in aerobatics skills, the man who confesses to having an obsession for drawing gorgeous women during his youth burst into the limelight when he led a mutiny in 1979.

In a statement read in court on his behalf by his defense, Rawlings won hearts across the country he sensationally explained that his actions were prompted by the social injustices that were bedeviling the Ghana at that time.

Apparently inspired by Rawling’s courtroom oratory, a group of officers instigated a successful putsch in June 1979 and released him from prison. Through a ruling body named the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC), Rawlings and his ruling cronies executed two former military heads of state Gen. Ignatius Acheampong and Lieut. Gen. Fredrick Akuffo and five former generals, whom he accused of committing crimes against the people and the country.

Other prominent people killed under what Rawlings and his junta termed “house-cleansing exercise” included Supreme Court Justices Kwadjo Agyepong, Frederick Sarkodie and Cecilia Addo.

Some Ghanaian historians have exonerated the former dictator from these cold blood murders by claiming that the country was in a state of anarchy with both civilians and lower ranks members of the military baying for the blood of the deposed rulers.
AFRC yielded power to civilian leader Hilla Limann but came back to power through another coup in December 1981 to get rid of “weak civilian rule” which had led “the nation down to total economic ruin”. After imprisoning Limann and 200 other politicians, Rawlings established the People’s Defense Committees in neighbourhoods to monitor economic management in local factories.

“When the failure of these and other populist measures had become clear by 1983, Rawlings reversed course and adopted conservative economic policies, including dropping subsidies and price controls in order to reduce inflation, privatizing many state-owned companies, and devaluing the currency in order to stimulate exports,” Encyclopedia Britannica notes. “These free-market measures sharply revived Ghana’s economy, which by the early 1990s had one of the highest growth rates in Africa”.
Despite ruling the country with an iron fist for a decade before being democratically elected in 1992, economic experts have credited Rawlings regime for initiating radical policies like decentralization of government services from Accra to the rural regions which created the foundation on which the Ghanaian democracy and economy stands today.

After the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Cold War, Rawlings aligned himself with the West which saw IMF and the World Bank pumping more than $5 billion into the Ghanaian economy leading to a huge business growth and improved standards of living. This led to his being accused of “betraying the revolution” by his left-wing comrades.

To qualify as a candidate in the 1992 multiparty elections, “JJ” retired from the army and founded the National Democratic Congress (NDC) through which he successfully won the presidential race with a landslide majority of 58.3 percent. The figure remains the highest score in the country’s history and an endorsement of his radical economic policies that drastically curbed inflation.

Although foreign observers declared the poll to be free and fair the opposition led by Sammy Kuffuor, who later became president, claimed there was widespread irregularities and urged their supporters to boycott the subsequent parliamentary elections. This saw the NDC win 189 out of the 200 seats available in the national assembly, giving Rawlings a four-year term backed by a rubberstamp parliament.
By the time he was seeking another term in 1996 Rawlings had already made history as the first democratically elected Ghanaian president to complete his term.

His 19-year reign as both military dictator and elected leader were characterized by eccentricity and flamboyant displays that made him a household name not only in Ghana but also across the continent. Besides mobilizing his wife and ministers to join citizens in digging trenches, sinking boreholes and constructing roads Rawling’s presidential motorcade would often give lifts to people on the road.

Other times he would stop his entourage to borrow a cigarette from a man on the street, take a few puffs and put the rest behind his ear for later all in a quest “to be equal with everyone”, as he would later explain.

This outgoing mien was in display when he visited Kenya in May to update President Mwai Kibaki on the Somalia situation as the African Union Special Envoy. During his stay at the Tribe Hotel in Nairobi he easily mixed with ordinary people and took photos with the hotel staff and security guards.

“I knew that Ghana would not be brought out of the political abyss of 1981 without a visionary, but more importantly, the people were yearning for nothing less than a popular democracy,” Rawlings said during an interview with Rev. Jesse Jackson on CNN’s Both Sides with Jesse Jackson in 1999. “They were asking for nothing more than the power to be part of the decision-making process of their country…they wanted a voice in deciding their everyday life, as it is done in the West, and not for politicians to be dominant and who are all-knowing to be at the helm of affairs of everyday life in Ghana”.

When he reached his constitutional eight-year term in 2000, Rawlings endorsed his vice-president John Evans Atta-Mills who was defeated by John Agyekum Kufuor of New Patriotic Party (NPP) in a run-off. Atta-Mills is the incumbent head of state after winning the 2008 elections by a one percent margin in the run-off.

But the fact that his party National Democratic Congress (NDC) and former vice-president is in power has not gagged the outspoken Rawlings from criticizing and pointing out what he terms as weaknesses in the Ghanaian society today.

“I remember I used to warn ourselves that if we do not deal, restore the moral behaviour and ethical values of our society, we will sink deep,” he observed during a gala to honour a testimonial match for former Bayern Munich and Black Star player Sammy Kufuor. “All those big countries we see, they have not thrown their values overboard in spite of all the money they have. How could you adopt money to replace your values? I have said over and over and I will continue repeating it”.

Dubbed “Mr. Boom” by the media for his explosive statements whenever he speaks his mind, Rawlings is yet again in the fray of the Ghanaian politics where he has openly asked his fellow countrymen to give his wife Nana Agyeman-Rawlings “the chance to rescue the country from the current leadership crisis”.

Accusing “the current crop of NDC (the party he formed in 1992) members, especially those in leadership of leading the party far from the principle and values on which the party was founded”, Rawlings has been drumming up support for his wife in rallies across the country in what have been termed a ploy to rule again by proxy.

But after being rejected by NDC delegates as the party’s presidential candidate last July, she only got 90 votes against Atta Mills 2,771, many commentators termed the crashing defeat as a confirmation that JJ’s fading political influence in Ghana.
“This defeat was a clear sign that the NDC is fed up with Mr. Rawlings,” Mr. Jacob Manu, a governance expert, told the press. “Most Ghanaians have come to see Mr. Rawlings as someone who thinks he is the only wise man in Ghana. This cannot be the case and a time would come when the people would kick against you”.

Rawlings married Nana in 1977 and they have four children, three daughters and a son. The son, 24, is called Kimathi Rawlings after the famous Kenyan freedom fighter Dedan Kimathi whom the former Ghanaian leader greatly admires as he confessed during his recent visit to Kenya. Nana recently filed a lawsuit seeking to against NDC seeking to take back the party’s umbrella logo which she claims is her intellectual property.

Among the accusations that the vocal polo-loving leader has leveled against the current regime is an attempt to revive and strengthen Kwame Nkrumah’s Convention People’s Party (CPP).

President John Atta Mills have taken several key attempts to immortalize Nkrumah’s legacy. Besides the country spending a whole year celebrating the century anniversary of Nkrumah’s birth in 2010 there is now a public holiday to mark the founding father’s birthday on September 24 and an oilrig that has been named after him.

While implying that he would like to see his former vice-president defeated by the opposition NPP in the upcoming elections so that “we can take back our party” Rawlings, who has since been stripped of diplomatic courtesies in Ghana and the country’s missions abroad, minced no words in his verbal attack.

“So long as they hold on to power and with some of our supporters persistently refusing to see the truth and what should have been done, then it becomes difficult to take back our party,” he was quoted in Ghanaian media saying in May this year. “Some are justified in saying those in office are not genuinely minded, NDC spirited, NDC-hearted people and want to destroy the party in favour of something else”.

With his nickname JJ coined into Junior Jesus by fanatical supporters or Junior Judas by opponents at the height of his power during his two decade reign, many Ghanaians appear tired with his “big brother” attitude and apparent political hangovers of yesteryears, a fact confirmed by strong sentiments in the press and his wife’s humiliating defeat in the NDC primaries.

“I am not a bitter person and very much willing to forgive this ignorant political novice who has not matured beyond adolescence and still plaque by infantile tantrum when he does have his way,” wrote columnist Phillip Kobina Baidoo in The Chronicle, a Ghanaian newspaper. “His actions during his 19 year reign were eerily similar to the erroneous prescription of medieval parish priest who during those highly contagious fatal epidemics encouraged their congregants to gather in churches to pray for God’s intervention while inadvertently spreading the contagion”.

Despite sharp criticism at home, Rawlings remains relatively popular across the continent as evidenced by invitations to major gatherings and being accorded respect by sitting heads of state as was witnessed when he visited Kenya last week.

In October 2010, the 64 year-old was appointed the African Union (AU) Envoy to Somalia by the Union’s chief Jean Ping with the task of “mobilizing the continent and the rest of the international community to fully assume its responsibilities and contribute more actively to the quest for peace, security and reconciliation of Somalia”.

Besides being an AU Envoy to Somalia, Rawlings also gives lectures and talks around the world, the most famous being the lecture he gave at the prestigious Oxford University in the United Kingdom under the title “Security and Democracy in Africa”.
Asked about what he would like to be remembered for Jerry John Rawlings turns philosophical in what many believers would term blasphemous.

“My legacy to the people of Ghana and that I never let God do anything for me. I did it first”.

In the dawn of the twentieth century a boy was born in the sprawling hills of Mvezo, Eastern Cape Province, Republic of South Africa. Like Jesus Christ, few outside his family noticed his birth. And even among his kin and kith, no one conceptualized the monumental responsibility that providence and destiny has cast upon the infant shoulders in years to come.

He was to be known to the world as Nelson Mandela.

As the world celebrates the anti-apartheid icon’s 94th birthday today many will remember the decades he spent behind bars in the now famous Robben Island prison, forgiving his jailers upon release, the trademark smile, relinquishing power after only one term and his unrelenting campaign against Aids in his retirement.
To his virtuous life, the United Nations General Assembly declared July 18, his birthday, the International Mandela Day which is meant “to inspire individuals to take action to help change the world for the better and, in doing so, build a global movement for good”.

The South African government will mark the occasion with the launch of a project dubbed 94+ Schools Infrastructure Project which aims to make a difference to the lives of children served by at least 94 public schools in South Africa.
“The 94 Schools Project originates in the former President’s strong view on the importance of education, and his world-acclaimed efforts to build an equitable system of education in South Africa,” Basic Education Minister Angie Motshekga told the press.

A song composed by a group of 400 people and recorded at the Nelson Mandela Square in Johannesburg will also be released as part of his birthday celebrations.
Despite constant ill-health, frail and being away from the public limelight since 2002 the legendary South African leader have managed to remain humble and human, forever maintaining his trade mark smile whenever he appears in public.

In his own words, Mandela’s life has been a long and hard walk to freedom which has remained elusive despite being officially released from his long incarceration in 1990. From fighting unscrupulous merchants trying to use his popular name to sell their wares to warding off gangs of western journalists camping outside his home waiting to break the news of his death, Mandela has always been in a constant state of imprisonment.

“In a twist of irony, though, he has remained, in a sense a prisoner,” writes Verne Harris, one of his biographers. “Frequently over the years since his release he has teased visitors and guests with the comment that he is still not free”.
His desire to let the world understand that he is no saint is clearly evident in Conversations With Myself, a book that was compiled in 2010 by Nelson Mandela Centre of Memory and Dialogue from his prison diaries, dialogues with close confidants and letters to family and friends.

Writing in the book’s forward, US President Barack Obama notes that “by offering us his journals, letters, speeches, interviews, and other papers from across so many decades…we see him as a scholar and politician; as a family man and friend…Nelson Mandela reminds us that he has not been a perfect man”.

As the American leader observes, in Conversations with Myself the South African statesman sheds the cloak of an icon and the larger than life hero that the world knows to reveal a real mortal contending with daily life struggles.

“In real life we deal, not with gods, but with ordinary humans like ourselves: men and women who are full of contradictions, who are stable and fickle, strong and weak, famous and infamous, people in whose bloodstreams the muckworm battles daily with potent pesticides,” he notes.

This humility and honest self assessment coupled with a candid admissibility of his own shortcomings, a rare trait among African political leaders, made Madiba an efficient mediator and peacemaker long before he gained the prominence of an anti-apartheid icon.

From providing the middle ground in a racial spurt over tea cups in a law office where he worked as a young intern in his early twenties to negotiating a conflict between boxers and their trainer in a local gym in his Orlando neighbourhood in Alexandria, the South African first post-apartheid president was a natural peace maker.

As the first black lawyer to practice in Johannesburg, where he partnered with his long time friend and comrade Oliver Tambo, Mandela would always give his opinion to African couples coming to him to instigate a divorce.

“As a lawyer, when…a man or his wife comes to me to institute divorce action, I always say, “Have you done everything in your power to resolve this problem?”…I have saved marriages in that way”, he says in Conversation With Myself. “I have always tried to bring people together, you know…But I don’t always succeed”.

However, the legendary leader’s ability to diffuse tension and rally the people to a common goal was called upon when anti-apartheid activist Chris Hani was shot dead by a white supremacist in 1993. Although he was just three years out of prison, Mandela was requested by President Fredrick de Klerk to address the nation and calm down the millions of black masses that were baying for white blood.

“Tonight I am reaching out to every single South African, black and white, from the very depths of my being…our whole nation now teeters on the brink of disaster, “Mandela said in a speech that was televised by South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC). “Now is the time for all South Africans to stand together against those who, from any quarter, wish to destroy what Chris Hani gave his life for-the freedom of all us”.

Although his spirit of resistance was inspired by Oliver Tambo’s stand against a white magistrate in their college days and built over the years he spent working for the African National Congress (ANC), Mandela’s consolidated his reconciliatory leadership skills during his long prison spell.

Despite the warders in Robben Island being a gang of harsh brutes, Madiba’s regular complaints letters and his rapidly rising status across the world implored upon the prison authorities to grudgingly adjust his and fellow inmates’ living conditions. By the time he was released from Victor Verster Prison in 1990, Mandela occupied a spacious bungalow where he could see or communicate with whomever he liked.

“This is the true explanation for the bad treatment we receive in prison-pick and shovel work continuously for the last 5 years, a wretched diet, denial of essential cultural material and the isolation from the world outside jail,” he told the minister of justice in a 1969 letter. “These hardships have been at times been the result of official indifference to our problems, other times they were due to plain persecution. But things have somewhat eased…”

But the brutality of the apartheid regime had greatly dented Mandela’s reconciliatory nature in the early days of the struggle, turning him from a prince of peace to a revolutionary soldier trained in guerilla warfare in the Ethiopian highlands under the patronage of Emperor Haile Selassie.

In Conversations With Myself, Madiba confesses his love for revolutionary literature like Edgar Snow’s Red Star Over China, Menechem Begun’s The Revolt and Deneys Reitz’s Commando all of which informed the formation of ANC’s military wing Umhonto we Sizwe (MK).

“World history in general, and that of South Africa in particular, teaches that resort to violence may in certain cases be perfectly legitimate,” he wrote in a letter to the Minister of Justice in 1969. “To have folded arms would have been an act of surrender to a Government of minority rule and a betrayal of our cause”.
Mandela’s revolutionary tendencies were further polished by his love for Greek tragedy and western classics like War and Peace and Antigone in whose stage re-enactments he played key roles in high school and prison. Besides reading Madiba also developed a habit of writing notes and memoirs while in prison, part of which formed the backbone of his world famous autobiography Long Walk To Freedom.

“But a good pen can also remind us of the happiest moments in our lives, bring noble ideas into our dens, our blood and our souls,” he wrote in a letter to her daughter Zindzi in 1980. “It can turn tragedy into hope”.

King Solomon once said that a good name is worth more than tones of gold and silver or, in modern parameters, billions of dollars in the bank. In this regard Nelson Mandela’s lifelong commitment to the struggle against oppression and injustice has endeared him to millions across the world.

This has not been lost to publicity seekers and opportunistic merchants all of whom have tried, and will probably continue trying, to grab a chunk of the lucrative Madiba legacy for their selfish gains. In a bid to stop this tide of greed, Nelson Mandela Foundation hired a team of lawyers to copyright and protect his legacy which included the names “Nelson Mandela”, “Madiba”, “Rolihlahla” as well as his prisoner number 46664.

“We don’t mind a Kennedy-ised Mandela,” one of his lawyers Don MacRobert told The Daily Telegraph back in 2004. “You see Kennedy museums and Kennedy streets all over America, and that’s fine. What we are fighting against is the commercial, profit-making side. We don’t want a Disney-fied Mandela”.

Among all the profiteers, Johannesburg-based artist Yiull Damaso took the exploitation of the apartheid icon’s legacy to a whole new level when he depicted the elderly statesman as a corpse on an autopsy table. The piece was a parody of the famous 17th-century masterpiece The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp by Dutch painter Rembrandt.

In what many critics termed a desperate and sensationalist move to attract attention, the artist substituted the original characters with renowned personalities in South African society.

In the unfinished painting that was displayed in Johannesburg’s Hyde Park shopping centre in 2010 Nkosi Johnson, an Aids activist who died aged 12, takes the place of the surgeon with a pair of scissors in the original painting. The dead Mandela substitutes the naked cadaver, which historians agrees must have been a criminal since they were the only people allowed to be autopsied at the time the original was done.

While Rembrandt included doctors as spectators, Damaso’s version boasts of celebrity onlookers that includes South African President Jacob Zuma, retired archbishop Desmond Tutu, past heads of state Thabo Mbeki and FW de Klerk and Democratic Alliance party leader and Premier of the Western Cape Hellen Zille.

Damaso, who had landed in trouble a few years earlier for another depiction of Mandela in dreadlocks, was defiant and unapologetic.

“The eventual passing of Mr. Mandela is something that we will have to face…as individuals, as a nation,” he explained. “They told me that his image was copyrighted. But how can you copyright the image of a public figure?”
But artists have not been the only culprits in the quest to grab a piece of the Mandela legacy.

A visit to any library or bookshop reveals numerous books displaying either the face or name of the South African icon, almost all of which are not commissioned since his authorized biographer Anthony Sampson died in 2004.

The clamour to drag Mandela’s name in books, probably to attract sales, has not been a preserve of obscure fame seeking writers alone. In his book called Straight Speaking for Africa (Africa World Press, 2009), Congo-Brazzaville President Denis Sassou-Nguesso is said to have falsely claimed that Madiba wrote the foreword, which describes the Central African despot who came to power after winning a bloody civil war “as one of our great African leaders”.

Over the last 60 years that he has been in the public limelight the old man has created a powerful brand image. Although experts say it’s not possible to place a realistic commercial value, the iconic leaders brand equity is enormous.

“Assuming he (Madiba) was a commercial entity,” MacRoberts told the BBC in 2005, “you could rank him alongside Coca Cola and Microsoft”.

According to Interbrand Corporation’s 2011 table of the world’s most valuable brands Coca Cola, the world’s number one brand, was worth more than $71.9 million (Sh6.0billion).

South African politicians have also tried to exploit the Mandela legacy in a bid to boost their political fortunes. Besides being dragged by his grandson Mandla to ANC political rallies in the last general elections against the doctors’ advice, opposition Congress of the People (COPE) drew an outrage after claiming that Mandela had voted against his old party in the last national polls.

They show up in Mondo suits, Roberto Cavalli shoes, and zoom around in Ferraris, Maserattis, Rolls Royces and Bentleys; Louis Vuitton sunglasses sheltering them from ultra violet radiation and eye contact with ordinary mortals.

Naturally, they throw wild parties where Chivas Regal and Dom Perignon flow in equal measure. No Viceroy please. Only single-malt whiskeys.

They are the new class of young, if not youthful, monied black South Africans.
Favoured by the Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) program put in place by the African National Congress (ANC) in 1994 to address economic injustices propagated by the white minority rule, these new breed of black bourgeoisie butt no eyelid when it comes to flaunting their new found wealth.

Popularly known as the “buppies” or simply the “BEE men”, their spending sprees and sense of fun easily relegates what goes in the exclusive Nairobi party dens into kindergarten tea parties.

To the BEE men, most between the ages of 25 to 49 according to a study by the University of Cape Town, BMW is an acronym of “black man’s wishes” hence multimillion top-of-the-range sports utility vehicles are their new playthings.

But with all these hedonism thriving against a backdrop of crippling poverty among millions of ordinary black South Africans, some observers and commentators have been quick to compare the situation to George Orwell’s popular satirical novel Animal Farm.

“Literary-minded pessimists may cast the farm as South Africa,” the Guardian wrote. “The tyrannical Mr. Jones as the apartheid government, the noble revolutionary as Nelson Mandela, the deposed and erased snowball as Thabo Mbeki, the scheming ruler Napoleon as Jacob Zuma and the garrulous zealot squealer as Julius Malema”.

A study in November last year by the Unilever Institute of Strategic Marketing, an affiliate of the University of Cape Town, found that nearly 40 percent of the country’s richest 10 percent are BEE men. The survey also established that one of the recipes for hitting big money in the new South Africa includes being young, entrepreneurial and some post secondary education.

Kenny Kunene, the flamboyant investor and owner of ZAR chain of nightclubs with outlets in South Africa and Zimbabwe, is one of the perfect embodiments of these loaded Africans with tons of first generation wealth at their disposal.

Born and bred in Kutlwanong Township in the Orange Free State the bible-quoting “Sushi King”, as he is known because of his peculiar obsession with the Japanese delicacy, is a true rags-to-riches fairy tale character that many boys in the townships would die to emulate.

As a statement of his social status the glamour-loving Kunene is said to have thrown a party worth more than R700,000 ( Sh7 million) at one of his exclusive nightclubs in Sandton, the wealthiest suburb in Johannesburg, during his 40th birthday in 2010.

“The party was the definition of bling and debauchery and the guest list itself was a gold-digger’s dream,” the City Press, a local newspaper, reported. “According to the event organizer there were 66 bottles of Dom Perignon, 36 bottles of Cristal and 32 bottles of 18 year-old Chivas Regal. The alcohol alone cost around 500,000 rand (Sh5 million)”.

As a sign of his deep rooted connections in the political class, among the 300 invited guests was former ANC Youth League leader-turned rebel Julius Malema and Zizi Kodwe, President Jacob Zuma’s spokesman

The same publication went on to claim that the hedonistic tycoon who hosts a live bling bling show So What on ETV was served his favourite delicacy of rice and sushi on a young woman’s naked belly during the nocturnal merrymaking.

Kunene’s extravagance attracted the wrath of Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) leader Zwelinzima Vavi, a man perceived by many as the rapidly emerging voice of ANC’s disgruntled supporters.

“It is this spitting in the face of the poor and insulting their integrity that makes me sick,” Vavi said. “I am told at one party sushi was served from the bodies of half-naked ladies. It is the sight of these parties, where the elite display their wealth, often secured by questionable methods, that turns my stomach”.

But the combative Kunene, who served a six-year jail term from 1995 for being a partner in a fraudulent pyramid scheme, hit back at the trade unionist through a venomous open letter published in several South African newspapers.

“During the World Cup you were sitting in elite air-conditioned suites. What were you eating there? What were you drinking...we dint say you were spitting in the faces of the poor,” Kunene taunted. “I want to correct your misapprehension that my party cost R700, 000. It cost more…the next time people are invited to my party, you can go hang or go to hell”.

The irritated millionaire went on to question the morality of Vavi attending the R50 million (Sh500 million) wedding of another BEE billionaire Robert Gumede in Mpumalanga.

Jabulani Ngcobo is considered Durban’s youngest multimillionaire at 27 years old. Donning Roberto Cavalli shoes, Mondo jackets and Louis Vuitton sunglasses and cruising the streets of Durban with his BMW M3 Ngcobo is popularly called Cash Flow by local residents after the stock markets company Cash Flow Pro that he established in 2009.

“There are two kinds of education in this world,” he says. “There is academic education which is guaranteed that you will always work for someone else for the rest of your life, and there is financial education which guarantees you financial freedom”.

Ngcobo’s new money attracted the attention of the South African Police Commercial Crimes Unit who conducted an inquiry on the legality of his offshore investment companies last year.

Although the gap between the rich and the poor in the rainbow nation have grown immensely wide since the fall of apartheid in 1994, the composition of the top end tier has drastically acquired shades of black.

But ownership of big business is still largely in the hands of white with only 4 percent blacks accounting for chief executive officers in Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE)-listed companies.

South African Revenue Service says that almost a million people in the country earns more than R30, 000 (320,000) a month.

A Unilever Institute of Strategic Marketing survey classified the country’s wealthy people into three categories.

The “Drivers” that included people worth up to $130,000 (Sh10 million) 50 percent of whom were blacks under the age of 35, the “High Flyers” with a net worth of up to $650,000 (Sh52 million) which contained the majority of the country’s wealthy people and 33 being black and “Astronauts” who were the wealthiest group with members worth more than Sh100 million and 27 percent of them being black.

At the dawn of majority rule in 1994 there were hardly any blacks in the “Drivers” category, with the other two classes being exclusively white.

While most Afrikaner wealth is second generation dating back to 1948 when the Nationalist Party came to power and introduced apartheid, African wealth is first generation with a bulk of it in the hands of people who were born and bred in the squalor of the slums.

Take for instance Robert Gumede, a man born and bred in a humble family of seven children in Nelspruit, Mpumalanga where he once worked as a golf caddy and gardener at Nelspruit Golf Club.

The information technology (IT) mogul’s R50 million (Sh500 million) wedding in March, held in the same golf club where he once toiled as a caddy and gardener, left thousands of tongues wagging across the country and continent.
The glamorous three-day event that took a whole year to plan featured 2500 high profile guests from the country and abroad.

Gumede shot to prominence in 2005 when his IT company Gijima acquired controlling stake at the JSE-listed firm AST to form GijimaAST where he is now the executive chairman.

But like many other BEE millionaires and billionaires, the gardener-turned tycoon’s rapid rise to the economic pinnacle has been questioned, with many pointing a finger at his close connections to ANC Treasurer General Mathews Phosa.

Apart from a multimillion-rand tender Gijima won in 2002 to produce phone cards for Telkom South Africa, the company was also awarded a R2 billion (Sh20 billion) contract in 2007 by the Department of Home Affairs.

Besides having vast interests in IT sector Gumede also has substantial stakes at travel firm Tourvest, Canadian coal-power company CIC Energy and Gauteng Lions rugby club. He is also the chairman of the South African chapter of the South Africa-Russia Business Council.

But Kunene, Ngcobo and Gumede’s financial empires fades into non-entities compared to Patrice Motsepe’s, the tenth richest man in Africa worth $2.7 billion (Sh216 billion) according to the Forbes magazine March 2012 edition.

Born to a school teacher father in the sprawling Soweto Township 50 years ago, Motsepe graduated with a law degree from the University of Witwatersrand in 1994, the same year that ANC came to power and implemented the black empowerment programme.
After working briefly as a legal expert Motsepe established African Rainbow Minerals, since renamed ARMgold, of which he is the current executive chairman.

But while acknowledging him as one of the wealthiest people on the planet, Forbes magazine 2008 edition noted that his achievements were “not through entrepreneurial zeal” but rather because of his close connections to the ruling party.

“A handful of politically connected individuals have grown enormously wealthy…from laws that require substantial black ownership in certain industries, including mining,” the magazine noted. “One of Motsepe’s sisters, Bridgette Radebe, who’s married to transport minister Jeffrey Radebe (now Minister of Justice and Constitutional Development) heads a mining company and is said to be among the wealthiest black women in the country”.

The South African mining magnate also owns Mamelodi Sundowns football club besides being the chairman of Absa Group, Ubuntu-Botho Investments and Sanlam Ltd. He is also the current president of South Africa’s Chamber of Commerce and Industry.

Apart from the BEE “Young Turks”, there are other old guard billionaires who were in the heart of the fight against the white minority rule like Cyril Ramaphosa and Tokyo Sexwale.

Ramaphosa was apparently pushed to joining business in 2007 after losing the race to succeed Nelson Mandela to Thabo Mbeki. Worth around $227 million (Sh181.6 billion) according to Forbes in 2011, the former trade unionist is among the richest South Africans with vast interests in energy, mining, real estate and banking sectors.

Although the blatant display of materialism by wealthy blacks is said to be a big motivator for young people in the townships and ghettos to embrace hard work, the failure of the BEE program to create equality and bring progress to the poor majority have been partly blamed for the huge rates of crime and corruption in the rainbow nation.
According to the Johannesburg-based Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation, over 1900 serious crimes are reported in South Africa on a daily basis. Among these there 50 are murders, 88 rapes and 431 aggravated assaults.

Class has replaced apartheid making South Africa one of the most economically unequal countries in the world today. Some observers have even gone on to say that the country needs another Nelson Mandela to lead the struggle against the oppression of economic inequalities.

“We are already sitting on a ticking time bomb. The poor are tired of watching and reading about the elite blacks or whites parading wealth,” warned COSATU boss Zwelinzima Vavi during a press conference. “The more we delay intervening the more the risk that one day this poor majority will simply walk to the suburbs to demand the same living standards. No walls will be high enough and no electronic fences will be enough to stop the overwhelming majority”.

Throughout the history of mankind maps have been used as instruments of power and propaganda to justify occupations and invasions. These seemingly simple lines outlining the physical world on charts are powerful mental constructs that shape the way we think, frame our cultural horizons and define our social boundaries. All territorial misunderstanding and wars between nations are basically conflicts over maps, hence making them some of the most important documents ever designed by man. The over-publicized issue of the tiny Migingo Island in Lake Victoria pitting Kenya and Uganda boiled down to the British colonial map.

Guided by selfish interests and in a bid to avoid a war with each other over Africa, Europeans demarcated the vast continent in the nineteenth century by drawing lines on a blank map, in some cases across places that no white man had ever set foot on the ground. This not only disrupted ethnic groups and undermined indigenous cultural entities and migratory patterns, but also created a room for political exploitation by modern day African leaders. In Zambiapoliticians Kenneth Kaunda and Fredrick Chiluba used the map in the past to settle political scores by declaring each other non citizens, hence unfit to run for the high office. Driven by an ideology forged and fostered by colonialism, a group of Rwandese ethnic extremists tried to redraw the map of central Africa in 1994 through the blood of a million people.

During the era of European exploration of Africamapping new lands gave one the power to lay claim to that particular territory and possibly exclude others. Most apartheid era South African maps, drawn by white supremacists determined to lay more claim to the land, omit the presence of indigenous people and black townships whose populations are sometimes larger than those of adjacent towns. French philosopher Jacques Derrida once defined apartheid as “a system of mapped-out solitudes.” The universal map of the world designed by the sixteenth century cartographer Gerhard Mercator favours Europe and distorts the actual size of Africa.

This map, though now defunct, depicts the second largest landmass on earth as being the same size as Greenland, which in reality is four times smaller. The Gall-Peters projection which is currently used by many organizations across the globe is no better, hence its description by some geographers as “reminiscent of wet, ragged long winter underwear hung out to dry on the Arctic Circle.”

According to one scholar, all national boundaries are “artificial demarcations by man inspired by accidents of history, the vagaries of geography and the exigencies of economics.” This was even worse for Africa because her borders were hurriedly drawn in one of the biggest “accidents of history” guided by geopolitical, economic and administrative interests of the colonial powers. Groups of people that had no cultural or social similarities were crammed together while those who had long established administrative links were split by the stroke of the pen, mostly based on alien factors. During the division of Hausaland between today’s Nigerand Nigeria the British redrew the border in favour of the French, in exchange for France’s renunciation of fishing rights off the coast of Newfoundland. Subjective generosity by European map makers granted countries like Congo DR and Sudan extensive and uncontrollable territories, while others like Benin, Lesotho and

Gambia

were squeezed into tiny zones.

To make their mapping work easier colonialists employed the services of military engineers and geographers sent in expeditions to mark borders and territories in difficult and remote terrain. With little or no information on people living in these areas, the explorers used haphazard methodologies to determine frontiers, sometimes separating families, clans and communities in the process. This explains the cultural and linguistic homogeneity of communities living along both sides of national borders throughout Africa.

Appointed to draw the final Uganda-Sudan border in 1912 Captain Harry Kelly, just like his peers elsewhere in the continent, used trivial methods to determine borderlines between human landscapes. “It would be a pity for the Sudannot to get the progressive people of Farajok and Obbo who with their fondness for clothes and such marks of civilization as brass bands would be worth having, but I fail to see at present how we can cut them off from the remaining Acholi,” he writes in one of his diaries.

With imposed boundaries herding in societies with no social or cultural ties most African nations exist under a cloud of ethnic polarity, tensions and suspicions since communities pledge patriotism and loyalty more to a tribe or region than the state. The few times that semblance of patriotism exhibits is when it’s expressed through selfish xenophobic paranoia, often provoked by euphoric emotions fueled by sports and politics. Tribalism camouflaged in nationalism, later studies has established, was one of the principle forces behind the attacks on foreigners in South Africa in 2008.

Besides creating internally unstable nations the colonial blueprint has also instigated numerous border disputes across the continent, with the Horn being one of the places that have paid the heaviest price in blood. Every nation in this politically volatile region has been involved in a border related conflict either from within or without, drastically redrawing the region’s map in the process.

Eritrea has emerged as a free state while Somalia has been split into three autonomous regions, albeit with no international recognition. A referendum vote is scheduled for January 2011 in Sudanwhere Southerners are expected to decide whether to remain united with the Khartoum government or to have their own country. The General Election to be held in April is a critical milestone in the formation of the republic of Southern Sudan.

Despite being among the two African countries that were not colonized Ethiopiahas had her own share of border problems. After being entangled in a protracted thirty year war with Eritreain which the tiny red sea nation gained independence, the two neighbours clashed again in 2000 over the border town of Badme. Reports leaked by the media disclosed a “secret” deal between Addis Ababa and Sudanese government officials in 2008, where the former agreed to re-demarcate her border ceding huge tracts of land to Sudan. This caused a huge uproar from Ethiopian activists both within the country and in the Diaspora. The 1600 kilometer common border between the two nations, created through a series of Anglo-Ethiopian treaties and agreements, has historically been the center stage for conflicts between the two countries for more than a hundred years.

In places where then apparently permanent natural features like rivers were used to decide borders between nations effects of climatic changes is threatening to flare up new conflicts. A case in point is the Uganda-DR Congo border which is partly defined by river Semliki. Flowing from Lake Edward through SemlikiNational Park in Ugandato Lake Albert the river have greatly varied its volume and course through the years, randomly ceding huge chunks of territory between the two countries in a series of wild give and take. To avert a conflict the two neigbours have formed a committee of surveyors who are redrawing the boundary based on geographical coordinates.

Frequent bloody skirmishes and deep mistrust in Nigeria between the Christian south and the Muslim north has led some prominent Nigerians proposing the partition of the country into two autonomous states. According to supporters of this argument the two regions’ cultures, languages, religions and even their topographies and climates are starkly different. Pogroms against each other by members of the two dominant faiths have led to thousands of deaths in the last one decade. This year alone violence between Christians and Muslims in central Nigeria’s “middle belt”, a zone which lies along the country’s religious fault line, have claimed more than 500 lives. The latest bloodshed happened in February near the city of Joswhere more than 200 people were hacked to death by machete wielding mobs. The war of Biafra in the sixties was one of the earliest manifestations of the religious and ethnic polarity of this British-created West African entity called Nigeria.

While many countries were formed by tying together incompatible groups of people other regions suffered separation and division of a people that had existed as a community for ages. Many Southern and West African countries consist of peoples who share languages, cultures and most were governed by single kingdoms long before the coming of Europeans, hence most can harmoniously exist as one nation. The creation of the tiny kingdom of Lesothoinside South Africais geographically and culturally illogical. The BakassiPeninsula is a piece of marshy territory that has been a source of animosity and military aggressions between Nigeria and

Cameroon

for decades. Despite the fact a huge majority of its inhabitants are Nigerians the International Court of Justice, basing its judgment on past colonial demarcation landmarks and treaties, ceded the peninsula to

Cameroon

in 2003.

The haphazard manner in which the continent was divided and the numerous conflicts this have brought about have led to radical suggestions of reviewing the African map based on cultural, social and political factors. Scholars and leaders that support this idea say that African Union, instead of dwelling on the Utopian idea of a United States of Africa, should take up this mandate. But besides the AU struggling to sort out simpler matters in Somalia and Darfurits ability to undertake such an onerous task is ruled out by the many resolutions it has adopted pledging to respect and uphold postcolonial frontiers.

“Since the Berlin creations are not viable, their permanence should be repudiated. The criteria for the creation of new states should include historical factors, especially the demographic contours of Africa’s pre-colonial states and political formations, ethnic similarities and alliances based on cultural homogeneity and economic viability.” Explained Pro. Makau Mutua in an article he wrote in TheBostonGlobe in the nineties. The idea of redrawing the African map along African lines has also been supported by Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi.

The argument that a remedy for most African conflicts lies in redrawing the Berlin map, though it sounds farfetched and unpractical, is worth some consideration rather than instant dismissal. Eighty years after carving the continent into a labyrinth of artificial countries the colonialists left. These casually created entities were pitched onto the international stage as nation states, alongside national symbols like currencies, armies, airlines, government structures and names all handed over by the departing rulers.

These make African nations socially weak and culturally rootless which creates the environment for conflicts. However bloody civil wars in Rwanda and Somalia whose populations are based on single ethnicity and in Liberia and Ethiopia, countries that did not experience colonialism, pokes huge holes on the assumption that the major cause of Africa’s problems lie in the lines cutting across its map.

Two weeks ago, I became part of the statistics of those who have climbed Mt Kenya as I joined more than 16,000 hikers, both local and foreign, who attempt to get to the peak of the mountain every year.
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Although I have always wanted to climb this mountain, I never imagined I would do it in a group of seasoned climbers who were being drilled in order to choose the best among them to climb Mt Everest, the highest and toughest in the world.

“Together with the chosen candidate, I will attempt to reach the summit of Mt Everest in the spring of 2014 to raise Sh40 million for the construction of the Flying Kites Leadership Academy, a school and home for orphaned children in Njabini, in Kinangop” explained Toby Storie-Pugh, a professional climber and director of Everest Expedition.

“In addition to raising funds, we will also be setting an example to the children of Flying Kites that any goal is attainable if you dare to start and are determined to finish”.

The chosen candidate is also expected to spearhead a fundraising campaign for the next two years before making the attempt on Mt Everest in March 2014.

I was the “most amateur” in this group that comprised of Amanda Gicharu, a 26-year-old Google employee, Helen Kinuthia, a 25-year-old teacher at Hillcrest School, Steve Obbayi, a 38-year-old software engineer, Chris Mureithi, 51-year-old aeronautical engineer, and Mohamed Bharmal, a 31-year-old banker from Mombasa.

The expedition had no porters so everyone had to carry their tents and food rations besides their own luggage.

With our heavy backpacks, we started up the winding road from Sirimon Gate, our indulgence in the scenic mountainous abundance was only interrupted by a sudden shower that had everyone reaching for their rain gear.

I wasted precious minutes fumbling for my rain gear since I had kept it too deep in my bag, during which time I was soaked to the bone.

“Lesson number one in mountaineering is “always learn how to arrange your gear in the back pack,” advises Chris Mureithi, a veteran climber who has been to Point Batian 46 times.

Retaining heat is one of the principle survival skills in high attitude climbing hence getting wet in such cold conditions is the last thing that a mountaineer would want.

After three and a half hours of trekking, we eventually reached Old Moses Camp, the first stop for climbers using the Sirimon route to the peak. The camp is no more than an array of blue painted corrugated iron sheet structures forming a ‘U’ perched on a flat hilltop and swarming with porters and hikers.

Apart from the joy of freeing my shoulders from the heavy backpack, our kitchen team are at hand to serve us hot tea, the best meal to any soul at these freezing heights.

This was no ordinary mountain hike but a drill to separate the wheat from the chaff in the process of picking one tough Kenyan to fly the country’s flag up the Everest.
We not only had no porters but we were also supposed to pitch our own tents, which was no mean task especially for first timers like me. But with the help of Chris, with whom I would be sharing a tent for the next three nights, we pitched ours fast enough to lend a hand to some of our colleagues.

Even with several layers of warm clothing, thick gloves, socks and zipped inside a sleeping bag, I started feeling chilblains on my fingers and toes – like sharp blades of freezing blood penetrating through my body.

I tossed and turned the whole night in a futile attempt to keep warm. My tent-mate would, meanwhile, start snoring barely 10 minutes after zipping himself inside his sleeping bag.

After what seemed like an eternity, dawn finally crept in. The routine of a breakfast of oatmeal porridge, tea, bread and pancakes, dismantling tent, filling water bottles in readiness for the arduous trek ahead was religiously observed.

“The easiest way to ensure a successful climb is to take a step at a time, or baby steps if you like,” explained Chris. “To gauge whether you are at the right pace, you need to close your mouth and try breathing through the nose. If you can’t do that comfortably then you should slow down.”

Leader of the expedition, Toby Storie-Pugh, who has climbed Mt. Everest, was always ahead of the pack despite the fact that he had the heaviest backpack.

Although the second day was exhausting with two steep valleys to climb, the famous moorlands with acres of rare high attitude vegetation that only those who dare the dizzy heights have an opportunity to gaze at, simply took my breath away.

“The scenario produces leaves after 21 years which makes most of the ones you see scattered in these valleys not less than 40 years old,” explained Chris as we sat above Mackinder Valley, named after Hailford Mackinder, the first European to ascend Point Batian in 1899.”

As we dropped our backpacks to sit on the rocks for a midday bite, the guide explained that Shipton Camp, our stop for the night, was around two hours away.

After six hours and 16 kilometres of trekking, Shipton Camp finally bobbed up. Like Old Moses before it, this camp, named after British climber Eric Shipton, is an L-shaped row of blue iron sheet structures tucked deep in the Mackinder Valley and the foot of the two majestic peaks of Mt Kenya; Lenana and Batian.

Everyone was excited because we would be making a run for the peak the following day.

Ordinarily those who get to the peak of Mt Kenya wake up at 2am so as to be at Point Lenana at the crack of dawn.

But this being a drill, we broke camp at sunrise for a three and a half-hour trek to the top by eight o’clock.

Not even the weird dizziness uncoiling from the centre of my head could dull the urge to quench my visual thirst in the amazing beauty of nature at these heights.

Crawling on all fours over jugged rocks, I finally, in the company of Amanda, Helen, Chris and our guide Cyrus, climbed up the newly installed metal hooks to join Toby and Steve on the flat rock projection that is known the world over as Point Lenana.
The feeling of victory, accomplishment and history that hang over my head as I took in the breathtaking views of valleys of ice, glacier and rock plunging hundreds of feet below was simply overwhelming.

You can access the story at Business Daily on the following link:
http://www.businessdailyafrica.com/The+climb+of+a+lifetime+/-/1248928/1469434/-/40oarq/-/index.html

Living in close quarters for 90 days with complete strangers with 53 cameras monitoring every movement you make and 120 microphones listening to every word, hiss and sigh you make, the Big Brother Africa StarGame is the ultimate embodiment Reality Television in Africa.

And since this genre of television is based on issues that are central to the modern society like music, survival in a harsh and competitive environment and the ability to tolerate others, it is all the rage among African viewers; after the English Premier League.

As proved by the just concluded Tusker Project Fame (TPF) the genre has handed broadcasters a new card in the art of keeping viewers glued to their television screens.

The competitive appetite of candidates in TPF, Sakata, Big Brother and other real life shows is whetted by the promise of, at times, jaw-dropping prize money, instant stardom and multimillion shilling recording contracts.

“These shows have become popular among the youth because urbaniasation in Africa is rapidly overtaking industrialisation and morality, which means displaying what was previously viewed as taboo, like sex, is considered cool,” says Rev Timothy Njoya, a retired clergy.

“Since sex sells, the media and other players have been encouraging the growth of this consumerist shows to drive sales and increase viewership”.

And with Kenyan participants doing well this season, Ruth Matete won Sh5 million in cash and secured a Sh10 million recording with America’s Universal Group in the Tusker Project Fame and artiste Prezzo is among the six people vying for the Sh25 million prize in the Big Brother StarGame, popularity of reality shows in the country is bound to shoot through the roof.

Few viewers realize the fact that these programmes were hatched by marketing gurus in Europe and America as a way of connecting companies to their clientele through entertainment.
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Besides this, the alliance between the sponsors and telecommunications companies brings in huge sums of money from the text messaging system that viewers use to select the winners.

This mode of entertainment has achieved in a few years what politicians have failed to do in a very long time – a sense of Pan-Africanism.

This explains why very few take note when African leaders congregate at the African Union (AU) headquarters in Addis Ababa to proclaim declarations meant to foster the “United States of Africa” dream.

But when the likes of former Ghanaian Big Brother housemate Ras Wayoe shouted “Africa must unite”, millions of youths across the continent paid attention.

Through a stage-managed combination of glamour and drama, reality shows reinforce cross-national unity and integration, not only through the multinational coterie of contestants and real time viewing, but also by engaging the audience in a continental voting system.

“There is an integrating aspect to television,” says David Mafabi, a commentator on East African affairs, once noted. “Shows like these may be superficial, but they show Africa coming together in a way that’s often ahead of governments.”

The contestants, through their mass appeal and celebrity status, evoke patriotism and reinforce national unity in a manner that surpasses politics.

While voting for Ruth Matete in the just concluded TPF5, Kenyans put aside their political, ethnic and other differences to ensure one of their “own” was crowned champion.

During his homecoming after an eventful sojourn in the premier of Big Brother Africa in 2003, Ugandan Gaetano Kaggwa, crowned the ‘People’s Prince’ by adoring fans, was received at Entebbe Airport by a crowd so huge that the country’s political leadership fretted with President Yoweri Museveni wondering “where was Gaetano and Big Brother before South Africa was cleaned of the bad regime”.

A subtle sense of humour, constantly raised eyebrows and quizzical side-glances laced with naughtiness earned “Gae” millions of admirers not only in his native Uganda but also across the continent.
The downside of Big Brother, arguably the most watched reality show in Africa, is the fact that it is beamed through the exclusive pay TV, a luxury affordable to a select few.

Although millions of Africans watch television in communal settings, estimates claim that fewer than eight per cent own sets. But thanks to M-Net, which has over 1.6 million subscribers distributed unequally in more than 40 countries according to their financial report or the first quarter of 2012, the number of people with access to satellite television in the continent grows by around 10 per cent a year.

The few that are broadcast through free-to-air channels like TPF always prove to be a hit with the national or regional audiences, a fact proved by the huge amounts of money television stations cough up for broadcasting rights.

However, the money is recouped handsomely through brand equity and advertising.

Reality TV captivates its audience through constant conflict and romance (real or faked) in the common houses.

“I wish the housemates would talk about real issues. Given that Big Brother Africa is being watched by people all over Africa, they shouldn’t be arguing over eggs,” said a Malawian viewer of Big Brother Africa Two.

Although sometimes such wrangling leaves the crowd of multinational housemates deeply divided, the fact that it happens in millions of homes has created a strong cultural force.

Big Brother, both in Africa and beyond, has earned a reputation for tolerating sex, alcoholism and raunchy talk. More often than not, winners are contestants who thrive in these excesses.
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Critics say the contestants in reality shows are not a true reflection of the ordinary African youth since most are middle-class “spoilt brats” with alien accents.

“They are getting people (as contestants) who watch the show already, not someone from a shack in Kampala,” complained Doug Mitchell, a lecturer in television at South Africa’s Rhodes University.

This was observation was validated by an incident in the maiden show of Big Brother Africa when Zein Dudha, the Malawian housemate, was loudly condemned by his fellow countrymen as being unrepresentative of the country’s ordinary youth, after he failed to sing the national anthem in Chichewa, Malawi’s street lingo.

However, despite these kinds of misgivings reality shows, Pan-Africanists claim, that they could be the missing link in the quest for African unity and integration that the post-independence generation of political leaders spent millions of taxpayer’s shillings in conferences, committees and secretariats trying to achieve.

“The programme is serving to break down misconceptions and stereotyping. There’s a perception in the rest of Africa that Nigerians are less than honest, that South Africans are arrogant. I think our show challenges those views,” Carl Fischer, former Head of M-Net’s official productions, said in 2006.

Besides creating an ideal platform for entertainment, cultural integration and exposing talent, reality television shows have opened a new channel through which society can articulate issues and bring to the limelight the human side of the so-called celebrities.

Tender Mavundla, a contestant in one edition of M-NET Idols, rocked the showbiz world in 2007 when she disclosed her HIV-positive status before millions of viewers.

“I do have HIV, but that does not make me any different from someone with cancer or a diabetic. I feel normal and don’t want people’s pity. I’ve got a good voice and would like to use it to bring pleasure to others.”

Though the then 26-year-old shop attendant from Durban didn’t win the ultimate prize, her confession was a great boost towards the fight against stigma and discrimination, which is associated with the disease in Africa

Like Doreen Muchiri, who reached the TPF5 last four by seeking votes through her appeal as helpless “country girl” out to chase her dreams in the big stage, the winner of Big Brother Africa 1 Cherise Mukabale from Zambia won hearts by pleading with viewers to vote for her since she was an orphan who needed the money not for showbiz but to solve real life problems.
“Always the underdog on the international scene and in almost every field of human endeavour,” noted a South African newspaper after Cherise’s win, “Africans identify strongly and very personally with people perceived as helpless, hurting, and in need”.

Reality television has also greatly reinforced the rapid growth of celebrity culture since it is a perfect launching pad for young people interested in showbiz. Due to the huge limelight accorded to these Reality TV by the sponsors, media and the public, winning is no longer the objective for some of the contestants.

Just being a participant is enough to land one a lucrative contract in radio, television, adverting and marketing. Or politics.

Watching the lifestyle of contestants in the just concluded TPF5, one gets a glimpse of the reason why most youths die to be in the house in Ruaraka. Ferried around by chauffeur-driven Hummers and flanked by mean-looking musclemen in black suits, these wannabe superstars move around signing autographs, greeting fans and giving interviews on FM stations.

Throw in the Sh5 million prize money and the Sh10 million recording contract and you have the recipe to attract the best talent but also throngs of comical fame and fortune hunters at the auditions.

But to its credit Tusker Project Fame has, in just five years of existence, culturally connected and united the regional population in a way the East African Community hasn’t in the past three decades.

Notable personalities that have reality shows to thank for their rise to fame and careers in the media are radio personalities Sanaipei Tande, Karen Lucas, Max “Didge” Nyatome and Debarl Ainea from Kenya, Gaetano Kaggwa from Uganda, Blu3 music group from Uganda and Prave, Wutah and Dokolo all from West Africa.

Although some winners of these music talent shows go on to build successful careers, none has ever scaled the heights of the continent’s greats like Lucky Dube, Papa Wemba, Brenda Fassie or Fela Kuti.
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This and the fact that most of the ‘stars’ turn out to be one-hit wonders struggling to remain in the limelight a few years on, shows how fragile synthetic fame can be.

More than 20,000 people, mostly minors, are trafficked out or through Kenya annually to places like Asia, Europe and other African countries according to the International Organization and Migration (IOM). And although most reports says they are turned into forced labour and sex slaves chances are that some of them end up in the hands of illicit human organ trade cartels in the west.

According to a recent series of reports by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) conducted in eight months across 11 countries the business of harvesting bones, corneas, heart valves, skin and other body parts from cadavers to make medical products is thriving in the world.

The report vividly explains how “cadaver bone-harvested from the dead and replaced with PVC piping for burial-is sculpted like pieces of hardwood into screws and anchors for dozens of orthopedic and dental applications”.

In other instances the bone is ground and mixed with chemicals to produce strong surgical glues-used to attach organs and tissues after surgery- that is said to be better than artificial varieties while tendons are used to treat injured athletes. Other common uses of dead peoples’ body parts includes penis enlargement, breast reconstruction after cancer, smoothing wrinkled faces, cornea transplants, heart valve replacements, bladder slings for incontinence, bone grafts among others.

“In Kenya the most commonly harvested cadaver parts are corneas that are used in reconstructive eye surgery,” explains Dr. Eric Walong, a pathologist based at the University of Nairobi. “These donations happens with the dead person’s family consent and there is usually no monetary gains on either side of the deal”.

Dr. Walong says that one of the biggest impediments towards the growth of organ industry in Kenya is the fact that there is no top of the range emergency services to preserve the bodies and organs in good shape awaiting surgical removal.

While families are mourning and rue the loss of loved ones, the ICIJ report claims, somebody somewhere might be celebrating all the way to the bank.

For instance ordinary “hustlers” wheeler-dealing with morgues in the United States can make up to $10,000 per corpse and RTI Biologics, a tissue and organ selling multinational grossly mentioned in the investigative report, is said to have raked in $169 million in 2011. A fully processed disease-free body with all the organs recovered and applied to the various end uses can generate between $80,000 and $200,000 .

A case in point on how global organ trade have become a “blood gold” mine in the last few years is Phillip Joe Guyett, arguably America’s largest freelance organ harvester ever nabbed.

Bragging of how senior executives from multinational tissue companies treated him to $400 meals and five star hotel stays in order to clinch his services, Guyett writes in his peculiarly named memoirs Heads, Shoulder, Knees and Bones how he started seeing the dead “with dollar signs attached to their body parts”.

He was convicted of falsifying death records and sentenced to a prolonged jail term in 2006.

But while most European cadavers are from people who died in hospitals the report suggests that people trafficked from other part of the world like Africa might be killed to obtain vital organs and tissues since the demand is on the rise.

Weighing between three to four kilograms for an average adult human skin is one of the most sought after organ since it has a variety of uses.

“Human skin takes the colour of smoked salmon when it is professionally removed in rectangular shapes from a cadaver,” the ICIJ report says. “After being mashed up to remove moisture, some is destined to protect burn victims from life-threatening bacterial infections or, once refined, for breast reconstructions after cancer”.

Most of this multimillion dollar “blood gold” empire have been going on for years without the knowledge of the victims relatives, most of whom just pick the bodies of their loved one from the morgues straight to the cemetery without minding to check the cadaver’s conditions.

“On the way to the cemetery. When we were in the hearse, one of his feet-we noticed that one of the shoes slipped off his foot, which seemed to be hanging loose,” Lubov Frolova, a Ukranian mother of one of the deceased whose organs and tissues were harvested told ICIJ. “When my daughter-in-law touched it she said that his foot was empty”.

Police investigations revealed that two ribs, two Achilles tendons, two elbows, two eardrums and two teeth were among the organs that were missing in the body.

This was one of the incidences that led to the uncovering of a huge syndicate of illicit organ trade involving Ukrainian morgues and US human tissue multinationals was unearthed last months.

Besides violating the dead without the family consent the shadowy trade in human organs also exposes the recipients to the dangers of infections since most of the tissues are not subjected to proper medical test to establish the donor’s medical history.

While blood donations and intact organs like hearts and livers are bar-corded and strongly regulated it’s hard to verify the sterility of products made from skin and other tissues since there is no particular structures set in place to regulate the industry. Many countries leave the responsibility of identifying and confirming the identities of tissue donors to drug makers and tissue banks.

However this might change soon since the World Health Organization (WHO) plans to track human tissue traded for transplants in order to ensure safety of donors and prevent illegal collections. ICIJ says that a work group to look at the issue has already been set up and it will have its first sitting in France at the end of August.

“The working groups plans to introduce the system in five years, covering 193 countries,” the report claimed. “In addition to human tissue, the group intends to use codes for medical materials and other products derived from human tissues”.

Although the United States is the biggest trader of products from human tissue the authorities are unable to quantify the number of imported tissues, its country of origin or where the products subsequently goes. Many countries especially in the third world, including Kenya, don’t have don’t have regulations on the use of human tissues or if they are there they are week, ineffective or unimplemented.

Supplying about two-thirds of the global human tissue product market, the United States through its Food and Drug Administration (FDA) which have the inspection records of only seven percent of the 340 tissue banks registered with it.

“When the FDA registers you, all you have to do is fill out a form and wait for an inspection,” Dr. Duke Kasprisin, medical director for seven US tissue banks, told ICIJ. “For the first year or two you can function without having anyone look at you”.

With millions of hospitals in the world relying on FDA to ensure that they do not treat their patients with infected tissues, many practitioners have welcomed the WHO initiated.

Also high in demand in the western human organ industry is the foreskin for the production of skin treatment medication and products.

And apparently this is not in short supply with WHO estimates claiming that 30 percent of world males are circumcisied with millions undergoing the process annually.

Treated as a medical procedure in the west and a rite of passage in many third world countries the global demand for circumcision was triggered by a UNAIDS and Centre for Disease Control in 2007 indicating removing the foreskin reduces the risk of HIV/AIDS during penetrative sex.

The United States donated Sh960 million shillings towards the Ministry of Health’s five year nationwide free circumcision campaign aimed at curbing the spread of HIV/AIDS especially among communities that traditionally shunned the practice.

But while a lot of attention is paid towards circumcision very little is discussed about what happens to the foreskins of the millions of males that are circumcised around the world every year.

While in Africa the foreskin is either eaten by the initiate or circumciser, fed to animals or simply buried in the west, where practice is a hot debate with many arguing that its an unnecessary and painful process, the foreskin trade is a booming business.

Besides being an important ingredient for numerous skincare products and interferon drugs the prepuce is chiefly used in the production of fibroblasts, skin cells used in the regeneration of new skin. Due to their biological properties fibroblasts are used in all kinds of medical procedures from eyelid replacement, growing skin for burn victims and those with diabetic ulcers to making anti-wrinkle creams and other products in the cosmetic industry.

According to scientific research one foreskin, which contains millions of fibroblast cells, treated through a process called culturing can be used for decades to produce miles of new skin for burn victims and those undergoing plastic surgery.

A single foreskin contains enough genetic material to grow approximately 250,000 square feet of new smooth skin. With this lab-developed skin said to cost around $3,000 per square feet for burn patients one of this seemingly insignificant pieces of male genital flesh can generate thousands of dollars in revenues over a prolonged period of time.

According to Caltech Undergraduate Research Journal, an award-winning undergraduate research journal of California Institute of Technology, infant foreskins are preferred because they have more potential for cell division and less incidence of tissue rejection since they have not fully developed their individual identifying proteins.

The inner lining of the foreskin is usually fused with the glans at birth making infant circumcision a precarious process. Although modernity has tried to alleviate the pain through contraptions like clamps, opponents of the practice among newborns argue that besides exposing the baby to unbearable pain and possible permanent tissue damage its also a violation of the young ones human rights.

Intercytex, a tissue generation company based in Cambridge United Kingdom, raised the foreskin utility business several notches higher by developing an injection-based drug called Valveta a few years ago. Dubbed a “fountain of youth in baby foreskins” Valveta is a foreskin-derived treatment product that rejuvenates and smoothens skin withered by age, wrinkles or damaged by scarring from acne, burns and surgical incisions. One vial of this medication, enough to treat an area of skin the size of a postage stamp, consists of about 20 million live fibroblasts, cells that produce the skin-firming protein called collagen which becomes increasingly scarce with age.

The number of Valveta vials that a patient needs is determined by the surface area of skin destroyed. However the drug, which goes for about $1000 (Sh82,000) per vial, is not approved for use outside the United Kingdom where it was introduced in 2007.

Despite spirited resistance from activists across the world infant circumcision remains popular in several parts of the world, which ensures that baby foreskin remains in constant supply.

In Where is My Foreskin? The Case Against Circumcision Paul Fleiss, an American pediatrician and author known for his unconventional medical views, say “parents should be very wary of anyone who tries to cut their child’s foreskin since the marketing of purloined baby foreskins is a multimillion-dollar-a-year industry”.

And there might be a point to these allegations given that Dermagraft-TC, one of the many products grown from cells extracted from infant foreskins and used as a temporary wound covering for serious burn patients, sells for about $3,000 per square feet according to some American medical journals.

Scenes of camera wielding gangs of exotic foreigners in colourful attire strolling through filth-ridden slum alleyways, charting with locals and buying trinkets while cheerfully inhaling whiffs of rotting garbage and open sewers are becoming common in Nairobi, Cairo and other African cities. Seeing how the world’s downtrodden live is the new craze as tourists seek more adventure away from the typical fare of resorts and game parks.

“Some tourists want to get an integral view of the country they are visiting,” says one tour operator. “Because of globalization, it’s no longer possible to ignore how the biggest part of mankind lives in the so called third world. Tourists are not only interested in landscapes or wildlife or shopping. They want to see and understand social and political problems.”

Poverty tourism-sometimes called poorism-is a rapidly emerging sector in the leisure travel industry that provides guided tours into the slums of major cities in the developing world. A two sided argument has been raging on between proponents and opponents of this controversial phenomenon. While tour operators argue that the trips demystify poverty and improve lives of slum dwellers through the generated income, opponents of slum tourism have branded it unethical, voyeuristic and intrusive. Critics have gone on to say that it sacrifices the hallmarks of human dignity on the altar of entertainment and capitalism.

Although there are reports of tourists whose philanthropic soft-spirit was touched by what they saw and decided to sponsor a kid’s education or some other project, how the concept is being marketed tells more about slum tours’ motives than its promoters would readily admit. “Where can the wealthy world traveler go when she’s tired of the ski slopes, beaches, spas and wildlife watching? Where can you ride around in air-conditioned comfort, press your nose against the glass while sipping your bottled water and see how the financially destitute live? Did you know that the very worst slums of Africa are becoming a tourist destination for those who’ve done it all?” taunts one website in a manner meant to whip up the traveler’s appetite for adventure.

Goaded by such literature tourists these days are frequently finding a few hours off their routine itineraries to “slum it out” whenever they are in a major African city. This is an opportunity for the free spending rubberneckers to gawk at third world urban poverty first hand; families cramped in tiny shacks, naked babies clinging on desolate looking mothers, tiny alleys bleeding with dark green trenches of open sewers and huge garbage damps. Besides snapping enough shots to grace their travel albums, already laden with photos of migrating wildebeest and mating lions, the slum misery confirms the skewed picture of Africa reinforced in the visitors’ minds by the western media.

Apart from the enterprising tour operators the media and showbiz, either intentionally or otherwise, have been a major force behind the rapid growth of poverty travel. Movies like KiberaKid and CityofGod, both shot exclusively in Kenyan and Brazilian slums respectively, glamorizes shantytowns by portraying them as easy-go-lucky societies bubbling with drama, vices, despondency and cultural vibrancy all begging for exploration. The meteoric success of the 2009 Hollywood blockbuster SlumdogMillionaire lifted poverty tourism to unprecedented levels of popularity in the world. Tour operators in Mumbai’s Dharavi slums, where the award winning movie was shot using a section of local cast some of whom still wallow in poverty, recorded a phenomenal 25 percent increase in business after the film’s release.

Whenever poverty tourism is mentioned Kibera slums in Kenya immediately pops in mind. Harbouring an estimated 800,000 people crammed in shacks squeezed in a three kilometer long valley in the outskirts of Nairobi, Kibera holds the unenviable title of being the biggest slum in Africa.

Overcrowding stretches sanitation and other facilities to unimaginable limits. With each pit latrine said to cater for almost a hundred souls and few able to afford the community toilets that charges per usage, “flying toilets”-excrement-filled plastic bags usually hurled on rooftops or on the streets-is an option for many. Extensive media focus on such seemingly bizarre issues have turned this shanty neighbourhood into an icon of poverty and one of the most popular spots for slum travels in Africa.

Tour operating companies have popped up in recent years to cater for the rapidly growing number of clientele. Branding Kibera “the city of hope” and “the world’s friendliest slum” the companies’ web brochures are full of vivid praises for slum trips. One company is particularly sentimental, purporting to have ventured in what it calls “pro poor tourism” as “a means of creating awareness of the plight of the poor in Kenya with an intention of wiping out the slums in Africa and reducing poverty by engaging the poor to participate more effectively in tourism development in Kenya.”

Foreigners are charged a minimum of US$30 per individual for a four hour stroll along the tiny sewer drenched alleyways watching, among other “attractions”, the manual draining of pit latrines using buckets and visiting a few families in their hovels where they might donate freebies, while rapidly clicking on their state-of-the-art Kodaks. Although the tour operators claim they recoup back a significant percentage of their earnings to local schools, orphanages, individual households and other projects Kibera residents tells a different story.

“They see us like puppets, they want to come and take pictures, have a little walk, tell their friends they’ve been to the worst slum in Africa,” says car-wash worker David Kabala. “But nothing changes for us. If they really want to know how we think and feel, come and spend a night or walk around when it’s pouring with rain here and the paths are like rivers.”

But the tour operators are not the only enterprises that have been accused of sustaining their existence by marketing or glorifying poverty in the slum. The place swarms with a plethora of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) some of which residents claim are being used as fronts by individuals whose motives is to tap into donor money. “Our slums are the worst places to live but they have, probably the most expensive toilets in the world-not because they are the best toilets, but because on average each toilet built in Kibera is claimed by many NGOs and institutions. It’s possible to have as many as ten organizations all claiming to have built the same substandard toilet in Kibera, at a cost of millions of shillings,” complains a lobby group calling itself People’s Parliament.

Slum tourism is no longer a reserve of backpackers in khaki shorts and colourful rubber flip-flops if the number of high profile individuals that frequents Kibera is anything to go by. Under the disguise of official reasons like “touring projects”, almost every foreign dignitary visiting Kenya always finds the time and excuse to make a stopover in this world famous slum. From Ban Ki Moon, Barrack Obama, Magdalene Albright, Gordon Brown, Koffi Annan to Chris Rock the list reads like a roll call of world celebrities. The traffic of limos dropping VIPs in the slum-mostly to interrupt residents’ lives in exchange for a few group photos-was so high a while back that it was becoming a nuisance.

“What is this fascination with Kibera among people who do not know what real poverty means?” asked a DailyNationeditorial. “More to the point, how do Kenyans themselves feel about this back-handed compliment as the custodians of backwardness, filth, misery and absolute deprivation?”

Although a joint UN-Habitat and government funded upgrading project is going on with 100 families already moved into new units a few months ago, the drive to replace the entire slum with decent low cost housing remains a Herculean task due to the myriad of unseen forces at play. Besides the slum landlords, the Nubian community that claims communal rights over the land and other parties whose lifeline depends on the slum’s existence, Kibera is an important political province for one of the country’s most powerful politicians.

Eradicating slums in any society, either by upgrading or simply flattening the shacks, is usually a delicate and potentially explosive affair. This was witnessed in Zimbabwe a few years ago when the government embarked on an aggressive slum bulldozing campaign dubbed Operation Murambastvina (wipe out filth). The disastrous venture left many citizens homeless and pushed the politically volatile country into deeper crisis.

Townships are the South African version of slums or informal settlements which were established by the apartheid regime to house people of colour who could not be allowed to reside in the “white suburbs”. Located in the outskirts of major cities and housing huge populations, townships were hotbeds of resistance against the apartheid rule hence they have an important historical significance. With the majority of black urban South Africans still living in these ghettos sixteen years after the end of apartheid, townships have developed their own unique culture over and above the traditional African culture. There is a new influence on music, dance, dress and speech all portrayed in the numerous artist studios and festivities that take place here.

Unlike slum trips in Nairobi, Mumbai or Rio where tourists hurriedly walk through the shantytown and leave before dark fall in township tours the visitors mingle with the residents on a more personal level. Besides eating out and spending nights in special inns there are other moments that makes a township visit a uniquely emotional and sensory experience, like having drinks with locals in the Shebeens ( brewing houses) and seeking remedies from the sangomas (witchdoctors) who sells muti or cure for every ailment.

Just outside Johannesburg and housing more than 3.5 million people Soweto Township, a conglomerate of twelve informal settlements, is one of the most popular spots for tourists because of its antiapartheid landmarks and authentic township ambience. In this neighbourhood visitors can see Hector Pieterson Memorial that commemorates the 1976 students uprising where more than 500 people were killed and Nelson Mandela Family Museum where Madiba once lived. Other major “squatter camps” are Khayelitsha, Crossroads, Gugulethu and Alexandra.

Unlike Kibera and other slums in the world whose main attraction is poverty, South African townships have been hailed as cultural centers which tell the story of the struggle against the apartheid rule. However due to poverty and unemployment crime rates in the townships is astronomical hence visitors have to be escorted. Besides Soweto being classified as the most dangerous urban center in Africa outside war zones, it is in the townships that tens of foreigners were murdered and hundreds of thousands of others left homeless during the xenophobic attacks in 2008.

Although most poverty travels to Africa are inspired by the spirit of adventure and curiosity to confirm the content of Western media, scholars say that slum experience prompts demands for social justice, motivates philanthropic tendencies and helps eliminate stereotypes.

They take photos, record videos, send real-time messages, play games, keeping personal diaries, access radio and television channels and tap into the internet superhighway giving the user millions of possibilities. This combined with the fact that some perform their core function of calling with flair makes smart phones science’s best gift to mankind.

Owning one of these handheld mini robots, especially among the urbanite young and young at heart, is the new craze in town. Smart phones are the frontiers of mobile telephone technology which has advanced through the decades from crude and cumbersome contraptions to the modern day super gadgets.

Makers of these “intelligent” phones are capitalizing on this by launching new models after every few months, the latest being Apple’s iPhone 5 that will go in the market of September 21^st.

But this evolutionary communication technology, scientists warn, has come along with not only a high economic price tag but also a cultural and social one. The highly interactive nature of smart phones is creating habits and addictions among users that sometimes interfere with their daily lives.

Researchers have identified a tendency they call “checking” where smart phone owners frequently look and tap on their phone menu screens to check emails, news and update information on social platforms like Facebook and Twitter. The scientists from Helsinki Institute for Information and Technology (HIIT) also claim that users are constantly engaged in the “checking habits” throughout their waking hours.

“What concerns us here is that if your habitual response to, say, boredom, is that you pick up the phone to find interesting stimuli, you will be systematically distracted from the more important things happening around you,” explained Anti Oulasvirta, lead researcher during the HIIT study. “Habits are automatically triggered behaviours and compromise the more conscious control that some situations require”.

The checking is characterized by browsing while commuting in a Matatu to check the current trends in Twitter, or up date a status in Facebook or check the latest scores between Manchester United and Fulham before one reaches home or home pub to watch it live. Others are taking the habit too far by even going to bed with their phones, literary. Many consider these tendencies irritating rather than a form of addiction.

“Being “hooked up” to the smart phone emanates from the fact that they can perform so many actions from a single platform”, observes Michael Ochula, a communication expert and lecturer at University of Nairobi.“From sharing weather information, listening to favourite radio shows, charting to watching movies and YouTube videos smart phones are fast becoming the most preferred adult plaything both in Kenya and Africa, with the number of those accessing internet via mobile outnumbering those doing so via desktops”.

But he says that although smart phones have made communication a one stop shop where users can do tasks in one platform he says they are also breeding a class of lazy and poor citizens.

“This is because smart phone users mostly spend their time in social sites like Facebook rather than in places where one can get valuable knowledge,” he claims.

And with the smart phones rapidly changing and adding new complicated applications meant to appeal to users’ entertainment needs, scientists say we might end up having more smart phones in the hands of a dump population in the not-too-distant future.

The entry of cell phones in the Kenyan market a decade ago led to men priding themselves in statements like “mine is smaller than yours”, a rarity in this side of the world, since then smaller phones were considered cool and classy. But thanks to smart phones matters mobile are playing unto the hands of the age old male obsession with every thing large, from cars to physical attributes.

Unlike many ordinary phones, smart phones usually come in big frames because of the components and the technology that they are designed to support.

“The reason why these devices are bigger than ordinary phones is the fact that they support more components and actions, which is made necessary by the fact that people buy them principally because of the applications rather than calling,” explains Charles Ryoba, an information technology consultant. “They have faster processors and speedier network connections to make it easier for user watching videos, reading magazine articles, playing games or charting in real time”.

This and the fact that they need bigger batteries to support the numerous functions also add to their usually large size with most of the space dedicated to the screen, the most important feature of a smart phone.

While the Samsung Galaxy Note, a crossbreed between a smart phone and a tablet often referred to as “Phablet”, has the biggest screen at 5.3 inches smart phones have gradually increased in their size since their inception from 3.5 inches to 4.5 inches and beyond.

The Nokia Lumia 920 is 4.5 inches, Samsung Galaxy Nexus has a screen size of 4.65, Motorola Droid is 4.3 inch and the iPhone 5 is 4 inches.

Besides the screen sizes, smart phone users also take great pride in the width of the gadget which has pushed manufacturers to ensure each of their release is slimmer than its predecessor.

During the iPhone 5 launch in San Francisco its creators were quick to emphasize that the phone was “the thinnest smart phone in the world with a glass and aluminum body that is 18 percent thinner and 20 percent lighter than iPhone 4S”.

As a sign of how advanced smart phones have become they are now said to pack more computing power than the spacecraft that took the Apollo 11 astronauts that included Neil Armstrong to the moon in 1969.

To confirm their frontline position in the advancement of modern technology National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is said to be developing a spacecraft powered by commercial smart phones.

“The idea here is to integrate cheaper, off-the-shelf smart phone components into platforms for which NASA often builds its own technology from scratch,” explains an edit from the organization “This will allow NASA to take advantage of Silicon Valley’s rapid-refresh approach to technology development that pushes new devices and technologies into the market place at a torrid rate”.

One of the most sort after smart phones in the market right now is the Samsung Galaxy S3. Marketed through the popular tagline “inspired by nature, designed for humans”, this gadget is implanted with software that responds to look and voice in a robotic manner.

“With S Voice, you can tell Galaxy S3 to turn off the alarm for a few minutes so you can snooze a bit more,” the manufacturer’s website explains. “You can also answer or reject a call, turn the music volume up or down, even tell the camera when to shoot”.

Released on a fancy fanfare in London in June 2012, Samsung claims that its flagship product has sold more than 20 million units since its inception in the fiercely competitive global smart phone market. However, this is dwarfed by its competitor iPhone 4S which is said to have sold more than 30 million units in its first three months in the market.

The iPhone 5, released to the market last week, is Apple slimmest phone with an inbuilt ability to operate 4G internet networks. Many smart phone market observers are already speculating the features that they expect in Samsung Galaxy S4 expected to be released to counter the iPhone 5.

The competition between Apple and Samsung, who enjoys a smart phone market share of 50 percent between them according to market research companies, has been so furious and intense that their lawyers are perpetually working round the clock.

The recent spark was triggered by Apple who accused Samsung of duplicating features of the iPhone series in the production of Galaxy S models. A judge in the United States, Apple’s home country, ruled in favour of Steve Job’s empire saying that the first two models of the Galaxy S imitated significant features of iPhone in a manner that warranted a ban in Uncle Sam.

Samsung lawyers and market competitors read business politics meant to boost the profile of the iPhone 5 launch which they claim is expected to boost the US gross domestic product (GDP).

The court awarded Apple a whooping $1.05 billion (Sh82 billion) which led to rumours in the Internet, later proved to be a hoax, claiming that Samsung had decided to pay the fine in 30 truckloads of five cent coins.

But while the two giants engage in a titanic battle of supremacy to control the global smart phone market, users are the biggest beneficiary since the gadgets are becoming better and fancier. This means they can perform more functions and interact with their owners at a more humanly levels.

“Smart phones have brought in productivity in terms of efficient time management,” explains Ryoba. “This cuts across all spheres of life from students, businessmen to the average daily user since they can do many things on one platform without leaving the comforts of their homes”.

He explains how a student can study or research for his term paper while seated in a Matatu while a businessman can handle an internal purchase order and source suppliers for a tender in the middle of a traffic jam.

“But it has also been a source of constant disruption especially when a user becomes too attached to their gadgets,” Ryoba explains. “If a juicy gossip or story is going on in the social networks you can find yourself browsing instead of sleeping while between the sheets or checking your emails while in a meeting or a conference”.

He concurs that smart phone addiction among the middle class youth is bound to be a major issue as most of them become hooked to games, social networks, charting and watching stuff on their smart phones.

But compared to countries like the United Kingdom (UK), Kenya is still in its infancy when it comes to smart phone addictions. A report released by the UK telecommunications regulator Ofcom indicated that a quarter of British population and half its youth owns a smart phone, making the country one of the most smart phone addicted countries in the world.

The riots that rocked London last year were said to have been accelerated by youths communicating through the free and untraceable Blackberry Messenger (BBM) service.

Go-Globe, a Gulf-based internet research company says that the countries with the highest smart phone penetration in percentages are Singapore (54), Canada (39), Hong Kong (35), Sweden (35), Spain (35), USA (35), Australia (33), Norway (33), New Zealand (32) and Denmark (31).

Mr. Ochula says that smart phones are affecting social skills since people are becoming comfortable and confident communicating through virtual platforms like Facebook and Twitter than they do face to face.

“Before these gadgets happened in our society people would call or visit people where they would have face to face conversations,” he says. “Today smart phones and technology are killing this since one can chart, Skype, text, or simply interact on the social platforms without ever meeting the person face”.

He also says that smart phones are also fueling anti- social behavior among Kenyan youths like watching pornography and promiscuity promoted by social network dating.

Throughout history the Chinese merchants are famed for being street smart, calculating, cunning and possessing a good nose for business that have seen them traverse the world through the centuries, making the phrase “Made in China” a global brand.

And although they had to wait for Chinese multinationals to trail blaze the way to Kenya, the legendary Chinese merchant, called Shang in oriental folklore, has finally landed in Nairobi. And Kenyan traders are not amused because these diminutive men from the Far East have “disrupted” the order of doing business around here by playing through their own rules.

To display their displeasure with these unwanted guests local traders staged a street protest last week where they presented a petition to the Prime Minister’s office and Parliament.

“These Chinese traders are very cunning people,” says a Luthuli Avenue based generator and public address system dealer who identified himself as Karis. “They usually come to our shops disguised as customers and ask for the prices, only to go back to their country and bring the same product at a much lower price”.

Karis adds that sometimes the Chinese employ Kenyans as salesmen and then sack them after building a client base and learning the local business dynamics.

“Most of these Chinese don’t have shops which means they don’t pay rent or tax hence they can afford to sell their products cheaply,” the trader lamented to DN2. “The government should step in and either tax them or expel them because I suspect most don’t even have work permits”.

Karis’ sentiment were echoed by many other traders along the busy Luthuli Avenue and other areas in Nairobi who complained of their businesses being undercut by the unfair dealings of the Chinese.

“Since they are in contact with some manufacturers from their homeland sometimes they bring in low quality goods that they sell cheaply,” complains Yunis Abubakar, a mobile phone trader based at the Luthuli Complex business center. “For this reason and the fact that most don’t pay rent or City Council levies they are also eating on their client base”.

Abubakar claims that the Chinese stalks customers in shops and entice them through prices that would be economically unviable to Kenyan traders.

“When I started this business in 2007 we used to have major clients from Ethiopia and Uganda who would buy goods in bulk,” He recalls. “Now the Chinese are not only dealing directly with these foreign clients but they have also have agents in places like Addis Ababa and Kampala to retail their products there”.

Like Karis, Abubakar pleads with the government to step in and ensure the principles of fare competition are put in place.

“The government should ensure the Chinese pays tax as we do and that they have business premises for which they will have to pay rent and City Council levies,” he says. “Otherwise at the moment some of them hawk their goods on a backpacks moving from place to place”.

Riding on the good will cultivated by Chinese corporations and their billions the aggressive these foreign traders have taken the war to their Kenyan counterparts. With a “junk of all trade” the Chinese are doing everything from hawking cheap phones to selling garments, second hand car dealerships and real estate.

But Nairobi is not the only city in Africa swarming with the enterprising merchants from the Far East. Small-scale traders in cities like Dakar, Lusaka, Luanda, Maputo and many are all contending with the threat of the robust Chinese traders.

In a bid to protect local vendors the government Malawi passed a law last month that restricts all foreign traders to the countries four major cities of Lilongwe, Blantyre, Mzuzu and Zomba besides having to deposit $250,000 (Sh20 million) in the country’s central bank as start-up capital.

“The new law clearly outlines what kind of businesses foreign investors will be allowed to get involved in,” Malawi’s Minister of Trade John Bande said. “We will not accept foreigners to come all the way from China and open small businesses and shops in the rural areas of this country and compete with local traders”.

With China establishing a multibillion-dollar development partnership with African nations Chinese citizens have been coming to the continent as experts, supervisors and other types of workers contracted in the various projects.

“But besides the genuine staff brought in by the Chinese companies there are others who are here for unclear reasons. These are the ones who eventually end up being hawkers and small scale traders,” explains William Karang’ae, a player in the textile industry. “While we appreciate the Chinese positives in the country like the Thika Superhighway we are totally opposed to them destroying our businesses through unfair competition”.

After the Kenyan traders demonstrated the Chinese Embassy issued a statement to the effect that all the Chinese people and businesses in Kenya operates within the law.

“The Chinese companies and citizens in Kenya strictly comply with the local laws and regulations in their production and management process,” the statement form the embassy read. “The Chinese Embassy in Kenya has always been committed to educating the Chinese companies and citizens in Kenya to operate businesses within the law, make contributions to the local society and live together in harmony with the local people”.

The embassy also stated that it was concerned about some leaflets that have been purportedly dropped in some areas of downtown Nairobi threatening Chinese businesses and citizens.

“We have noted that a few people were circulating leaflets in Nairobi recently, making a threat to both the Chinese business people in Kenya and the Kenyan people,” the statement from the “Spokesman of the Chinese Embassy in Kenya” read. “Everyone with conscience should condemn such an irresponsible behavior by a few people to bring shame on a specific community and stir up contradictions and hatred in the Kenyan society”.

Early this month protesting mineworkers in Zambia killed a Chinese manager during a protest. Two Chinese managers were charged with attempted murder two years ago in the same mine after they shot and injured miners during a pay dispute. The charges were later dropped.

Apart from trade and business disputes with locals several reports have claimed that the inclusion of China as one of the “approved” ivory importing countries in the world by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES), Word Wild Fund (WWF) and other conservation bodies and a huge presence of country’s nationals in Africa have fuelled the rise of illegal poaching in recent years.

A documentary entitled Chinese Fuel Resurgence in Ivory Poaching shot by A24 Media, a Kenyan company, in 2011claimed that fifty percent of poaching incidences in Kenya today happens within a 20-mile radius from Chinese road building projects. The documentary also alleges that major poaching activity is reported in areas where the Chinese are grading or constructing roads like Tsavo and Amboseli.

“I think there is a link between the number of Chinese who have come into Africa recently and elephant ivory purchasing,” explained Dr. Esmond Bradley-Martin, a conservationist interviewed in the documentary. “For instance in about 2000/2001 there was something like 75,000 Chinese working in Africa, now the figure is well over 500,000 and the Chinese are being caught all over Africa…in Kenya they have been caught with ivory coming in from Congo, Cameroon”.

While 134 Chinese nationals are said to have been arrested in Africa trying to smuggle illegal ivory to China in the last decade, there have been 426 cases of ivory seized on its way to China during the same period.

But just like the silver lining in every dark cloud the benefits of China-Kenya relationship cannot be gainsaid.

“The Indian workers who remained behind after the construction of the railway by the British in the 1900s formed the first crop of entrepreneurs in Kenya,” Mr. Tiberius Barasa, a policy analyst from Kenya Institute for Public Policy Research and Analysis (KIPPRA), “Africans learnt a lot of business skills from these Indians and the same attitude should be adopted towards the Chinese. Kenyan traders should view them not as enemies but competitors whose presence will cultivate a healthy business environment”.

He explains that with every one out of six human beings being Chinese most ordinary citizens from that hugely populated country are forced to seek greener pastures in developing countries like Kenya. This is same situation in the country today where three million Kenyans live and work in the Diaspora.

“I was in Lesotho and saw a huge Chinese population doing business there which means these traders are not in Kenya alone,” Mr. Barasa points out. “Kenyan traders should be glad that the Chinese are here because they stand to learn a lot of business tactics and the art of outdoing competition”.

However, he says the government should ensure the Chinese traders operating in Kenya have the necessary papers and pay taxes and other levies to create a level playing field.

“Another issue is pricing where the government should ensure studies are done to find out why the Chinese are able to sell same goods at a lower price than Kenyan traders,” he advises. “This should also involve discussions between the governments of Kenya and China to ensure the issue of taxation on imports and exports on both sides is ironed out so that nobody is disadvantaged”.

Barasa warns that if the current hostilities between traders from the two countries persists it might precipitate diplomatic friction, with Kenya being the biggest loser.

Besides business and infrastructural development there have been a lot of cultural exchanges in recent years between China, Kenya and Africa in general.

“Each year over 5000 African students receive Chinese government scholarships, over 700,000 Chinese tourists travel to Africa, while over 400,000 African tourists travel to China,” says Chinese Ambassador to Kenya Liu Guangyuan. “Every week there are more than 20 regular flights between China and Africa”.

Trade volumes between Kenya and China hit an all time high of $1.8 billion (Sh144 billion) in 2011.

“Till August 16^th this year, the Embassy has issued 6628 visas to Kenyan citizens, of which 85 percent were commercial visas,” a statement from the embassy said. “In addition, the Embassy provides “one-day express service” for Kenyan citizens who plan to visit China urgently”.

Statistics from the Ministry of Finance indicates that in 2008, Kenya imported sh73.3 billion worth of goods from China against Sh2.3 billion of exports to the Asian country.

The huge trade imbalance seems to have rattled the United States government as reflected by a cable allegedly sent by Washington’s envoy to Nairobi at that time Michael Ranneberger.

“China’s engagement in Kenya continues to grow exponentially,” one of the cables leaked by WikiLeaks quoted the ambassador saying. “China enjoys a large trade surplus with Kenya, exporting more than 30 times its imports”.

After being pressured by parliament the government through the Ministry of Immigration issued a directive that stipulates that foreigners earning less the Sh2 million a year and those below the age of 35 will not be issued with expatriate work permits. The law intends to safeguard jobs for Kenyans and respond to criticism that thousands of semiskilled workers from India and China are working in Kenya today.

“The regulations are needed to prevent foreigners from taking jobs that can be done by Kenyans,” explained Sammy Onyango, the Chief Executive Officer of Deloitte East Africa. “Expatriates are also important but we should engage them largely as investors or professionals coming in to offer rare skills and build local capacity”.

According to the department of immigration between 2007 and April 2011, Indian citizens held the highest number of work permits at 10,581, followed by China at 3,494, Britons 2,700 and Americans at 1,593. However, there are thousands of others who operate in the country without work permits.

Belonging to a man. O, be some other name!

What’s in a name? that which we call a rose

By any other name would smell as sweet

Uttered by Juliet to display his unflinching love for the legendary Romeo in the Shakespearean classical Romeo and Juliet, this phrase seems to hold no waters in matters outside romance where names sometimes pack more weight than their face value.

The list of leading lights in Kenyan politics reads like a script from the sixties, thanks to scions of former power men holding powerful positions with largely their surnames to thank.

However, this is not only in Kenya alone but has also been replicated in countries like the United States where two George Bushes ascended to the presidency. It has been done by the Sukarnoputris in Indonesia, the Gandhis in India, the Bhuttos in Pakistan and the Aquinos and the Macapagals in Philippines.

But even in the traditional African setting the question “whose son are you” was common since people were, more often than not, judged according to their father’s reputation. Solomonic wisdom dictates that “a good name is worth more than gold and silver”, or in modern terms millions of dollars in the bank.

“Names are very important in the African society because they are believed to appease ancestral spirits and further the family tree,” explains George Mathu, a lecturer at the University of Nairobi’s department of Athropology. “Their significance is so integral that parents will avoid naming their children after people with bad perception in society like thieves or murderers”.

To emphasize the importance of names, naming a child was done in elaborate rituals with deep religious significance. Newborns are named after ancestors, past heroes, time and place of birth, animals, physical features and major events. Others are a reflection of the prevailing emotions or conditions at the time of birth. Taabu, Raha, Blessing, Zawadi, Talent, Innocent, Fortunate, Rehema and Baraka are good examples.

Mr. Mathu says that a name is so critical in the belief systems that it is thought it can determine the way people behave and feel about themselves. This, Mr. Mathu says, explains why there are so many Castrols, Mandelas, Kennedys, Julius and so few, if any, Judas, Cains, Hitlers and Lucifers.

A funny name for instance, the university don says, can make an individual a centre of attraction or ridicule in which case it might affect their self esteem and personality.

Orie Rogo-Manduli, the firebrand female politician and activist, says she was baptized Mary Snessor by her parents in honour of a Scottish nun working in Calabar, Nigeria, rescuing twins babies from ritual killings.

“My mother gave birth to me while on a visit to check on my ailing father at Maseno Hospital in the company of Jaramogi Oginga Odinga,” Orie explains. “I popped out unexpectedly and after being washed Jaramogi took me to my father’s bedside where, although he very ill, he whispered ‘Orie’”.

Later on the Trans Nzoia County Senator aspirant found Mary Snessor such a mouthful and requested his parents that she drops the two names.

“Although I admired the Scottish lady and even visited her birthplace later on I believed my identity was with maternal grandmother Orie whose genes I carry,” she says. “Besides, people used to stop at Mary Snessor and Orie was somehow overshadowed, hence we held a big family meeting where I officially became Orie Rogo and later added Manduli which is late husband’s name”.

Known for hers strong feminine ideals, Orie insists that ladies should not drop their maiden surnames even after getting married since that is a sign of respect to their fathers. She also adds that all the Ories in Luo land are related to her since that name is unique to her family tree.

However occupation, religion and personal philosophies are some of the most common reasons for changing names.

Success in some careers like performing arts and politics are sometimes hinged on a unique and larger than life personality, of which a name plays a big role in creating. There are many people who transformed their careers and fortunes in these fields by simply changing their names.

Many people who watched movies like The Firm, Jerry Maguire, Magnolia, The Last Samuraiand War of the Worlds might never know that the main star Tom Cruise once answered to the name Thomas Mapother III. Others are Marilyn Monroe, born Norma Jean Baker, Demi Moore, born Demetria Gene Guynes, Chuck Norris, born Carlos Ray and Bruce Willis, born Walter Willison.

Adolf Hitler’s father was born Alois Schicklgruber and later adopted the name Hiedler after her single mother remarried. When the future Fuhrer was entering Germany as a young job seeker a migration officer found Hiedler a mouthful and simply wrote it as “Hitler”.

The name changes would prove a turning point in his political career in future because it would have been hard to imagine the millions of NAZIs in rallies across Berlin and Frankfurt shouting “Heil Schicklgruber” instead of “Heil Hitler”.

Growing up in Kilembe Copper Mines in Uganda Richard Nguluku Ndile couldn’t tire telling people about that “wonderful’ place in Uganda upon his return to his native Kibwezi, hence everybvody reffered to him as Kalembe.

Years later after he lost a civic election just because his supporters could not recognize his name on the ballot paper, the maverick politician swore an affidavit, dropping the first two names and officially becoming Kalembe Ndile.

Besides politics and showbiz, there are those who abandon their original names as a sign of protest against political, racial, religious or cultural prejudices in the societies they live in.

“The African independence generation was very conscious of their African roost and they were determined cultural subjugation and imperialism,” explains former Subukia Member of Parliament Koigi wa Wamwere. “Therefore most of them went out of their way to demonstrate this quest by dropping, legally or otherwise, all their European names”.

In Kenya founding father Jomo Kenyatta, among those leaders who changed their names to reflect on their pan-African convictions. Others across the continent who did the same were Mobutu Sese Seko wa Zabanga, Kamuzu Banda and Thabo Mbeki.

Born Kamau wa Ngengi, baptized John Peter which he later changed to Johnstone, the late president took Jomo which means “burning spear” in Kikuyu and Kenyatta which referred to the beaded belt which he often wore.

Although born Koigi wa Wamwere, the Chama Cha Mwananchi leader says he was baptized with a Christian name that he is not comfortable mentioning because he never considered it his name in the first place.

“I dropped that name because I considered it a constant reminder of the colonial subjugation and past,” he told DN2. “For those reasons and the fact I would like it to remain buried in the vaults of forgotten history I don’t like mentioning or saying what it was”.

While Africans don’t need to have foreign names in order to be Christians, Koigi says, the fact that we adore European names is an indicator that although we got political independence we are still culturally colonized.

The veteran politician’s sentiments are echoed by Mukurueini Constituency legislature and Assistant Minister of Sports and Youth Affairs Kabando wa Kabando.

Due to what he calls “vexation by the blatant segregation against my cultural heritage by the colonial education system” the parliamentarian dropped his birth names Godfrey Kariuki Mwangi for the double barreled Kabando wa Kabando.

“When I was schooling many high schools were sponsored by the major churches like the Catholic and the Presbyterian,” he explains. “There was a rule that you have to be baptized with an English name for you to be admitted in one of these schools hence I adopted the name Godfrey from the worry that I might pass and miss a chance”.

Kabando chose Godfrey not because it was the name of his father’s best friend.

But even after taking up Godfrey, he referred to himself as GKM Kabando when he joined form one at Ololoserian High School in Kajiado County since he never believed the first three names were his names. For these reasons many of his classmates referred to him as Kabando.

“That was a rebellion against unfair conventions at an early age because these colonial prejudices are compelling Africans to do what our former colonial masters don’t do,” Kabando explains. “The Wazungus don’t change their names when they come to Africa but they want us to change ours”.

While saying that he is passionately opposed to camouflaging identities through foreign names Kabando believes that using local names is an honour to the African philosophy and anthropology which was the guiding principle in naming children for hundreds of years.

“The adoration of foreign names especially among the youth is a perpetration of inferiority complex because it reflects their worship of western values,” he explains. “Martin Luther King Junior talked about people being proud of who they are regardless of their race and religion but here we are punishing our children with strange names or expecting them to speak English with a native accent”.

But getting his names changed completely was never an easy task for he had to contend with legal bottlenecks at the registrar of persons. But after launching more than 32 unsuccessful applications he finally got his way in 2003 after the NARC government came to power.

“After the 2002 elections I literary camped at the registrar of persons for many days until he finally heard my case, albeit halfheartedly,” the politician says. “The only other political figure who was able to completely change their names completely in Kenyan history was Johnston Kamau Ngengi, popularly known as Jomo Kenyatta”.

When he vied for the Chairmanship of Student Organization of Nairobi University (SONU) the Kabando wa Kabando stood him in good stead since many could not easily place his ethnic identity in the heavily polarized student community.

“My name helped me defray tribal card when I campaigned and won SONU chairmanship in 1992 since I couldn’t be associated with any ethnic or political party grouping,” Kabando recalls. “But it also became a setback for me when I vied in 1997 because some Mukurweini voters thought I was an alien”.

In A Grain of Wheat Ngugi wa Thiong’o, formerly known as James Ngugi Thiong’o, explains his surprise upon encountering an African economics lecturer at Makerere University without an English name called Mwai Kibaki.

Although he was baptized as Emilio Stanley by Italian missionaries, President Mwai Kibaki has always been known for all intents and purposes with his two African names.

Born of pan-Africanist fathers who had a penchant for African names the two leading presidential contenders Raila Amollo Odinga and Uhuru Muigai Kenyatta don’t have any English names. Others like Kalonzo Musyoka and Musalia Mudavadi lays a lot of emphasis on their African names while Peter Kenneth is the only referred by two European names.

Known to the world as Malcolm X, the African American civil rights activist dropped his surname and adopted the “X” after joining Nation of Islam (NOI) to signify the unknown tribe name of his ancestor who was transported from Africa in a slave ship. It was a tradition of slave masters to give slaves their surnames as a sign of ownership

X later changed his entire identity to El Hajj Malik El Shabaaz although he still remained Malcolm X to his followers. Muhammad Ali, a Malcom X’s protégé, also dropped his birth name Cassius Clay after joining NOI to protest racial prejudice by white America against black people.

Climbing Mt Everest, the tallest mountain in the world, is the ultimate test of physical, psychological, mental and emotional endurance. What is more, it is one of the most expensive expeditions in the world.

These impediments, however, counted for nothing when Sibusiso Vilane, a simple game ranger, became the first black African to reach the world’s highest mountain in 2003.

Getting to the peak of the world’s tallest mountain only whetted Sibusiso’s hunger for heights. After Everest, he made another first by becoming the first black African to reach the peaks of the seven highest mountains on the seven continents.

They are Kilimanjaro in Africa, Aconcagua in South America, Elbrus in Europe, Carstensz Pyramid in Oceania, Vinson in Antarctica and Denali in North America.

Sibusiso has climbed Mt Kilimanjaro a record 13 times.

“My advice to everybody who wants to embark on such a journey is that one should not underestimate Mt Everest,” Sibusiso said. “Permits are the most expensive; you also need other equipment,” Sibusiso told The EastAfrican in Nairobi, where he had been invited by the Kenya Everest Expedition to help recruit a Kenyan who will join the team in climbing the mountain in 2013 for charity.

“You have to hire guides and porters who work for you for about three months… it is not cheap,” he said.

Expenses aside, the climber risks not making it back alive: One can fall from the steep ridges, freeze from extreme cold or succumb to one of the numerous high attitude illnesses.

According to Himalayan Database, a compilation of all expeditions to the 300 peaks in the Himalayas since the 1920s, more than 250 people have died trying to conquer Mt Everest.

Sibusiso, who encountered the body of a dead climber on his way up in 2005, describes Mt Everest as “the man-eating monster mountain.”

“The sight really brought home the danger of what we were doing,” he recounts in his book To the Top from Nowhere. “I was five metres away when I saw him, clipped to the same rope as myself, face up; he appeared well preserved.”

A burning desire to set a benchmark for fellow Africans and a quest to achieve the Everest dream, Sibusiso said, kept him going.

“To be honest, we black Africans generally don’t have a sudden urge to climb the mountains in our backyards,” he noted. “We don’t see it as something to be done unless it’s an absolute necessity, or as a job. Mountaineering is simply not a black man’s sport.”

He made the second climb in 2005 in the company of fellow South African Alex Harris and world-renowned explorer Sir Ranulph Fiennes.

The news that Sibusiso would be making history as the first black man to reach the top of Mt Everest made him a household name in South Africa, with British Broadcasting Corporation crew filming his departure from Mbabane by bus to Oliver Tambo International Airport in Johannesburg.

“Friends had organised a surprise for me. At the airport, I was called to the VIP lounge,” he remembers. “Waiting for me there was the then South African minister of environmental affairs and tourism, Valli Moosa.”

The minister handed him the national flag, which he requested Sibusiso to put on top of Mt Everest.

Despite his determination and many months of preparation, the more than 29,000-foot climb nearly cost him his very life when he found himself alone and without water at the top of Everest.

“Slowly the mountain became desert-still. And then the wind started howling,” Sibusiso writes in To the Top from Nowhere. “Like a tension spring that suddenly loses power, my energy dropped to zero. The pack felt 10 times heavier.”

The climber was saved by a young Nepali guide who found him clinging to the edges of consciousness. But his troubles were rewarded upon his arrival at the foot of the mountain, where he received a message of congratulations from none other than the then South African president Thabo Mbeki.

“In this, you have shown the heights we can all scale in life if we put our shoulder to the wheel and work without flagging,” President Mbeki said. “Sibusiso, you have done us proud.”

In 2006, Sibusiso was decorated with the Order of Ikhamanga, an award bestowed on distinguished achievers, by the head of state.

He says that Nelson Mandela, whom he met after reaching the peak of Mt Everest in 2003, is one of the most inspiring figures in his life. As a tribute to the elderly statesman, Sibusiso carried Madiba’s Long Walk to Freedom on his second climb to the roof of the world in 2005 and while holding the famous autobiography aloft, he sang the South African national anthem.

“It’s almost impossible to sing when up there, since there is no air to breathe. I had to take off my oxygen mask, and soon I was gasping”.

After the national anthem, Sibusiso paraphrased Mandela’s famous words during his inauguration as the first black South African president in 1994: “Never, never, never again shall Everest stand as an impossible odd to all Africans.”

Since then, two black Africans have reached the peak of Mt Everest, the latest being Tanzania’s Wilfred Moshi, who did it in May this year.

Sibusiso was formally introduced to the Queen of England in 2011 at a reception in Buckingham Palace.

Besides starting a running club called Born to Win and being a patron of many charitable organisations, Sibusiso hosts a radio talk show “My Climb, Your Climb” on 1485 Radio Today, where he interviews black achievers about the challenges they face and overcome in their careers and lives.

He will be in Kyrgyzstan at the end of this month where, in the company of a friend, he will attempt to reach the peak of three mountains in a row.

Forever adorned in flowing white robes, a fez, dark glasses and clutching a Koran and an African walking stick, Gambian President Yahya Jammeh is feared and loathed by his enemies in equal measure.

And indeed those in the strongman’s wrong books have a course to worry now more than never before, especially those languishing in his deplorable jails.

A few weeks ago the self declared“King of Gambia”grabbed the headlines after ordering the execution of nine death row convicts through the firing squad, a first in the country in the last 27 years. The inmates included two Senegalese, which triggered the summoning of the Gambian ambassador to Dakar by President Macky Sall.

Senegal holds a lot of sway in matters Gambia since the latter is literary eclipsed inside the former, save for a small strip of the Atlantic coastline.

“All those guilty of serious crimes and are condemned will face the full force of the law,” Jammeh vowed during a televised address to mark the Islamic holiday of Eid-ul-Fitr in August. “By the middle of next month, all the death sentences would has been carried out to the letter. There is no way my government will allow 99 percent of the population to be held to ransom by criminals”.

But after intense pressure the regional leaders the Gambian leader has retracted the order and suspended the executions. Many believe this is just a ploy to let things cool off before eliminating the remaining 38 prisoners in death row. European Union, the major donor to Gambia at the tune of Eur65.4 million (Sh….), has also threatened to impose sanctions if the executions continue.

“The relationship between Yahya Jammeh and the Gambian people is a marriage that has never worked well, not even for a single day, and the time for it to end came and went with each extraordinary abuse of power that has included the deaths of fellow citizens,” writes Mathew Jallow, a Gambian blogger in the Diaspora. “The execution in Mile Two Prisons of so many innocent Gambians is more than anyone can bear, and if Yahya Jammeh thinks this egregious act of violence will just go away like the massacre of the sixteen students or the execution of forty-four Ghanaians, he is clearly underestimating the resolve of the Gambian people”.

But the Gambian leader, presiding in a country where more than 80 percent of the population is said to live below the poverty line, is no stranger to controversies.

After seizing power in a bloodless coup in 1984 Jammeh’s reign have been dogged by accusations of human rights abuses and silencing critics through unorthodox means like indefinite incarcerations, exile, death, torture, mysterious disappearances besides supporting and arming rebels fighting the Senegalese government in the border region of Casamance.

On a personal level, many observers have said, his antics border those of infamous despots like Iddi Amin Dada and Jean-Bidel Bokassa. From instructing a gathering of traditional elders to ordain him king of Gambia, threatening to behead all gays to purporting that he can cure HIV/Aids using herbal concoctions, His Excellency the President Sheikh Professor Alhaji Doctor Yahya Abdul-Aziz Jemus Junkung Jammeh is a man of many personalities, and names.

Apart from ruling the tiny nation as a fiefdom in the last 17 years and earning the title of the “West African Muammar Gaddafi”, the most controversial facet of his dramatic life is his lofty claims that he has divine powers to cure Aids.

“Whatever you do, there are bound to be skeptics, but I can tell you my method is foolproof,” he told an Associated Press journalist in Banjul in 2007. “Mine is not an argument, mine is a proof. It’s a declaration. I can cure AIDS and I will”.

The infamous presidential treatment begins with Jammeh applying some mysterious paste on the patients’ body before forcing them to swallow some herbal concoction. After ordering them to eat two bananas, the maverick leader then holds up the Koran and points it at each of the patient chanting “in the name of Allah, in three to thirty days you will be cured”.

He conducts the ritualistic ceremony occasionally and free of charge, with only a handful of patients being lucky enough to have him lay his gloved hand on their foreheads. To partake in Jammeh’s bizarre treatment programme patients are required to stop taking their antiretroviral drugs (ARVs) and stay in seclusion for 30 days.

Advising patients to stop taking their medication has put him loggerheads with HIV/Aids experts, most of whom has classified him alongside former South African leader Thabo Mbeki as among African leaders whose policies are hampering the fight against the killer disease.

To prove the veracity of his cure the Gambian president has gone to the extent of sending blood samples of purportedly healed patients to laboratories in Senegal, but doctors have said the samples do not support the claims of healing.

After claiming the position of number one faith healer in Gambia, Jammeh coerced a bunch of mostly illiterate traditional leaders to declare him king last year. They went around the country campaigning for his coronation arguing that it was the best way the nation can reward its “great leader”.

“The president has brought development to the country, and for that he deserves to be crowned King of The Gambia,” Junkung Camara, a chief from the western region of Foni Brefet, was quoted by the Gambian media saying. “This is the only way the Gambian people can express our gratitude to a leader who has done a lot for his country”.

But even though he is yet to be officially declared a monarch Jammeh, who claims to have gotten a vision from Allah to rule Gambia for the next three decades, is a king in all essence but the word. He is currently serving a third term after coming to power in a coup and winning four disputed elections consecutively.

“He goes around in a convoy of armoured cars and whenever he comes across a crowd he throws packets of biscuits as gifts,” a Kenyan based in the Gambian capital Banjul who chose to remain anonymous for security reasons told DN2. “The education levels are pathetic and most teachers are from Ghana and Sierra Leone and there are only two recognized institutions of higher learning”.

Many locals believe the biscuits are laced with juju to ensure the masses remain loyal to him and his regime. The source says the security agents openly campaign for Jammeh going as far as plastering their official vehicles with his campaign posters and donning t-shirts many months after the elections are over.

“But he has managed to create an atmosphere of political tolerance where the majority Muslims lives in harmony with minority religions like Christianity,” the Kenyan explains. “He has managed to suppress religious fanatics who would like to sow seeds of animosity and religious hostilities”.

Unlike in other countries where voters cast ballot papers, Gambians usually drop marbles in bins marked with contestants’ name. The marble strikes a bell inside the bin as a precaution against multiple voting. The bin with the most marbles determines the winner. In last year’s general elections Jammeh was declared the winner in an election termed as a sham by both regional and international observers.

The totalitarian leader has the affairs of this tiny West African clenched in his iron fist. Besides being defense and agriculture minister Jammeh also heads the Cabinet Office, Parliament, Public Service Commission and National Intelligence Agency among others.

Under his government, several prominent journalists have been shot dead and others jailed indefinitely for criticizing his rule. Deyda Hydara, the editor and co-founder of independent newspaper The Point and one-time Gambia correspondent for AFP, was shot dead by unidentified gunmen while driving in the outskirts of the capital Banjul in 2004.

Stressing that “I will also not sacrifice Gambia’s peace and security at the altar of freedom of expression,” Jammeh has strongly denied his government’s involvement in these assassinations and others in the past.

“Being a journalist here is a dangerous affair,” our source in Banjul explains. “If you are not jailed you will definitely get yourself shot dead if you are not working for the state owned media”.

And Jammeh does not hide his venom against anybody who tries to interrupt his absolute rule either from within or without, especially those from the civil society.

“If you think that you can collaborate with the so-called human rights defenders, and get away with it, you must be living in a dream world,” he told the nation during a televised address in 2009. “I will kill you, and nothing will come out of it. If you are affiliated with any human rights group, be assured that your security and personal safety would not be guaranteed by my government”.

Ironically, the African Commission on Human and People’s Rights, whose members are elected and report to the AU Assembly, is headquartered in Gambia’s capital Banjul. The commission is tasked with the duty of interpreting the African Charter on Human and People’s Rights and dealing with complaints about the Charter’s violations.

There has been a consistent campaign by lobby groups to have the commission relocated from the West African country.

But despite his apparent dubious record on human rights and ruthless treatment of opponents and media Yahya Jammeh boasts of several honorary degrees from recognized universities in the west besides having his former Attorney General and Justice Minister Fatou Bensouda appointed Chief Persecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC).

Asked during a television interview why she accepted to serve in the despotic regime back in 1998 Bensouda was categorically defensive, stating that whether her homeland was democratic or not was subject to discussion.

“I can always contribute to my country’s development in whatever capacity,” the 41 year-old Prosecutor said. “I have to say that my work as justice minister has never been in doubt. I was able to contribute to the cases that were going on then and looking back I don’t regret what I did.”

With the Gambian Diaspora calling for Yahya Jammeh to be tried at The Hague-based court for crimes against humanity it would be interesting to see how the prosecutor handles his former boss and political benefactor in such an eventuality.

The West African strongman gave The Gambian citizenry a dose of free presidential soap opera two years ago when he married then 21 year-old model Alimah Sallah against the will of his trophy wife Zeinab Suma Jammeh. The First Lady and mother of two is said to have fled to the United States with her children.

Independent newspapers and bloggers claim that the strongman, who gropes to the First Lady’s whims, had to divorce Sallah and entice the Guinean-born Zeinab with gifts and promises of exotic holidays. The First Lady is known for his shopping trips in exotic destinations in Europe, Asia and America where she is said to spend millions of dollars on clothes, jewelry and shoes.

“All her shopping transactions are done in cash. There is no paper trail (Credit Card, Checks or Master Cards) to account for the source of the funds,” FreedomNewspaper, an online Gambian publication, claims. “She also does not have any business to do with the Gambian Embassies in the places she visits”.

With his son Muhammed Yahya Jammeh being only five years old, the leader’s claim that he had a vision to rule The Gambia for 30 years is a ploy to buy time in order to bestow power on young Mohammed when he comes of age.

The Gambia has been mentioned as one of the key transit routes for drug traffickers from Latin America to Europe. In 2005, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) released a report mentioned the country among those preferred by traffickers in West Africa.During the same year, 15 people were arrested, among them senior government and military officials, and more than two tones of cocaine with a street value of more than a billion dollars (Sh82 billion) seized.

Though it’s the most basic facility in a human house hold the toilet is more often than not ignored or treated with disdain. In many African societies its mere mention borders the taboo associated with sex and in some cases it has no official name.

Even in developed countries it’s considered good manners to refer the toilet by its many pseudonyms developed through the ages. John, London, restrooms, loo, crapper and washrooms are among several terms developed to skirt around saying toilet.

But for the 2.5 billion people in Africa, Asia and other third world countries that the United Nations says they have no access to toilets 230 years after Scottish watchmaker Alexander Cummings invented the flash, this important sanitation facility is a big luxury.

This is why world renown philanthropist and the world’s richest man Bill Gates has challenged a group of young innovators from topnotch American universities to design a lavatory that will operate without running water, electricity or septic system and operate for less than five US cents a day.

To demonstrate his commitment to spearhead the designing of the world’s first state-of-the-art toilet for the world’s poor Mr. Gates has pumped in more than $180,000(Sh14.76) million into the so-called “poop project”. The money was part of the prizes and grants awarded to the winners and runners up of the Reinvent the Toilet Challenge, a competition set up to get the best prototypes for the new toilet design.

“Imagine what’s possible if we continue to collaborate, stimulate new investment in this sector, and apply our ingenuity in the years ahead,” Gates said during the presentation of the wining designs at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation headquarters in Seattle. “Many of these innovations will not only revolutionize sanitation in the developing world, but also help transform our dependence on traditional flush toilets in wealthy nations”.

The project is part of Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation’s Water, Sanitation & Hygiene (WSH) which has committed $370 million (Sh3 billion) in the area of sustainable sanitation for the poor.

Bill Gates’ appetite for toilet matters was whetted by a visit to Durban in 2009 where he came face to face stinking and dilapidated latrines in the South African city’s shanty neighbourhoods. The software magnate was so moved that the quest for a cheap and high-tech toilet now consumes him with same passion that software designs deed when he was setting up Microsoft in the 70s.

South Africa is famous for its open air flush toilets, infamously known as “apartheid toilets”, common in townships and other low income neighbourhoods. These dehumanizing contraptions have been so controversial that they formed the chore theme of the 2011 municipal polls prompting the press to dub them the toilet elections”.

African National Congress (ANC) accused the opposition Democratic Alliance (DA) of building toilets without walls for black residents of Khayelitsa Township outside Cape Town, a city controlled by the latter. However, media investigations revealed that the ANC has also built around 1,600 similar toilets in Rammulotsi Township in Free Town Province.

The ruling party took DA to court over the issue where the judge declared open air toilets a violation of residents’ constitutional right. While the opposition party cited lack of funds to build enclosures for the toilet ANC accused the white-dominated party of racism against Africans.

In a bid to solve the thorny issue of sanitation in crowded areas introduced Ventilated Improved Pit latrines, or simply VIP toilets. The difference between a regular latrine and VIP is a ventilation pipe siphoning the fumes from the pit through the roof, thereby reducing the intensity of the offensive odour.

Like it’s her neighbor down south, Zimbabwe has also been a theatre of toilet politics in years past. An improvised latrine in the economically unstable Southern African nation is popularly known as a Blair toilet owing to the fact that they were designed at the Blair Research Institute in Harare when Zimbabwe was still a colony.

The major feature of a Blair toilet is a ventilation pipe rising from the pit to the roof fitted with a fly trap. In a bid to settle the scores with former British Premier Tony Blair the Robert Mugabe government commissioned the recording of a song called The Only Blair I know is a Toilet done by Last Chiangwe, since referred to as “Toilet Tambaoga”.

With the United Nations report in 2010 saying that fifty percent of Zimbabweans in the rural areas defecate in the bush cholera outbreaks are frequent in that country. In 2009, over 4,000 people died after an outbreak of Cholera in the country.

Back in Kenya matters sanitation are not any better than in nations down south.

The “flying toilets”, which basically refers to defecating in a polythene and then swinging them them on rooftops, common in Kibera and other slums are so famous around the world that they have been a subject of study for several individuals and non-governmental organizations. According to a United Nations Development Programme launched in 2009 “two out three people in Kebera identify the flying toilet as the primary mode of excreta disposal available to them”.

Most slum dwellers prefer flying toilets due to their conveniences especially at night when walking to the outdoor toilet enclosures is a security risk. Besides being a health hazard especially when the polythene bags burst and spill their contents Rift Valley Railways blamed flying toilets thrown on its tracks that cut across Kibera for causing a derailment of one of its cargo trains that killed two people in 2009.

Led by African Medical and Research Foundation (AMREF) several non-governmental organizations launched “Stop Flying Toilets” campaign in 2001 whose objective is to build as many latrines as possible in Kibera and other slums across the country. So far, tens of community-maintained sanitation blocks have been built where residents pay a small fee every time they do their business.

But sanitation is still a big issue in this crowded slum where statistics from non-governmental organizations claim one pit latrine serves about 50 people.

Enterprising Kenyans have turned the sanitation problems that bedevil the city and other urban centers across the country into ainto booming business generating thousands of shillings everyday. From the Nairobi Central Business Association (NCBDA)-controlled city toilets to fully fledged private entities dealing with poop disposal, many Kenyans are now earning a decent living from this rapidly growing industry.

“The NCBDA decided to rehabilitate the facilities because as a body in charge of the city centre welfare we realized Nairobians had a sanitation problem since the public toilets were dilapidated, dirty and acted as hiding places for city urchins,” explains NCBDA Chairman Timothy Muriuki. “We entered an agreement with the city council and designed an operational model that led to the clean and well maintained facilities we have today”.

He says that NCBDA does not make any profits since they are not a commercial entity but they lease them to independent operators who pay them a small fee.

“We are currently working on a formula where toilets in markets like Muthurwa will be accessible to the public for free with the operators being paid through the levies charged on traders by the city authorities,” Mr. Muriuki says. “This is the system that will be adopted by the county government that will be in place after the next elections”.

The sanitation business in Nairobi is so promising that NCBDA and its affiliates is not the only player. There are numerous establishments, some from as far as Europe and the United States that have joined the fray to get a piece of the “poop pie”.

One of the foreign-based poop dealers is Sanergy, a company that was hatched in a classroom by three students studying at the Sloan School of Business in Massachusetts a few years back.

“We work on a concept called sanitation value change where we are involved in the whole process of waste disposal from building toilet structures, collecting the waste and processing it to fertilizer,” explains David Auerbach, one of the co-founders. “At the moment we are based in Mukuru where we have franchised 80 Fresh Life toilets to local traders who pays Sh45, 000 for the first toilet and then Sh25,000 for the second purchase onwards”.

Some of the after sales service includes a daily collection of waste, training on how to run the business any other assistance that the trader might need.

“Charging between five and ten shillings per customers most Fresh Life toilet traders are able to recoup back their profits in six months,” Auerbach says. “Our waste collection point at Mukuru is producing organic fertilizers which we will be available in the market commercially very soon”.

Sanergy, whose business model won a $100,000 (Sh8.2 million) in a business plan competition at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 2011, aims to have 1,000 by 2013 where the directors say the company’s biogas digester will produce enough electricity to feed the national grid.

PeePoople, a Swedish company with outlets in Kibera and other slums in Nairobi, is another sanitation company that entered the Kenyan market recently. It has developed special bags called Peepoos modeled around the concept of “flying toilets”, but in this case the bags don’t fly but ends up in a designated collection point. Peepoos have inbuilt properties to convert human dung into nutrient-rich fertilizer after a few weeks.

“By turning human waste into fertilizer in a very short time, what could be a problem is transformed into a valuable resource,” the company explains through their website. “This is one of the driving forces behind the development of the Peepoople business model for urban slums”.

The project is also meant to provide business opportunities for small scale traders especially women since they are the majority distributors of Peepoos.

With one of these special bags selling at Sh3 and a shilling refund for every Peepoos delivered at the special collection points, the company says its one of the cheapest sanitation solution for slum dwellers.

“In urban slums, Peepoos are normally sold directly, door-to-door to end-consumers by women micro-entrepreneurs or cooperatives,” the company says. “Used Peepoos can be utilized as fertilizer in household gardens. They can also be collected and distributed profitably to local peri-urban farmers based on the inherent value of Peepoo as fertilizer”.

From the drop-off points Peepoos are transferred to a storage facility where they are kept until they are fully sanitized and processed into usable fertilizer without the risk of contamination, which usually takes around four weeks.

One of the most prominent homegrown providers of innovative sanitary solutions is EcoTact. Started by David Kuria, an architect with a Master of Arts in business administration (MBA), in 2006 the company is in charge of the Ikotoilet facilities that are scattered in various urban centers across the country.

Inspired by a zeal to improve the sanitation of thousands town dwellers especially those in informal settlements Mr. Kuria says he is in a mission to demystify the toilet and ensure Kenyans speak freely of this critical facility in human homsteads.

“We need to make sanitation sexy and address it from different perspectives,” he told a microfinance conference of his company’s campaign to demystify toilet matters. “We have engaged beauty pageants to start talking about the relationship between beauty and hygiene”.

Besides recruiting beautiful models, comedians and politicians as ambassadors of his toilet campaigns Mr. Kuria made a first by converting public lavatories into minimarkets.

“When you look at economics, whet we have done is to transform the toilet aspect into a toilet mall where you can get more than the two functions of the toilet,” he says. “You can have your polished, you can buy your airtime, you can blog your companies-corporate blogging and the recent one is you can also buy a coke, if not a banana, in the public toilet”.

Besides being invited to speak in various conferences both locally and abroad Kuria has also won several international awards like Ashoka Fellowship on Public Innovation 2007 and the Schwab Foundation’s Africa Social Entrepreneur of the Year Aw3ard in 2009, both firsts for a company in sub-Saharan Africa, among many others.

Therefore, even as Bill Gates pumps millions of dollars in his quest to design a state-of-the-art toilet affordable and to the world’s 2.5 billion without access to sanitation, he will have to contend with competition from young innovators from Kenya.

Secret societies, as the name suggests, have for years remained a subject shrouded in mystery, heresy, gossip and conspiracy theories. This, perhaps, owes to the fact members are sworn to oath of secrecy in a bid to block information leaks.

But with prominent figures in the local and international entertainment industry rumoured members of these clandestine organizations, there have been a sudden surge in interest among members of the public.

These explain these days it’s common to find teenagers in cyber cafes across Nairobi and other urban centers researching on names like Illuminati and Freemason. However, the sudden popularity of this topic among the youth has triggered unprecedented obsession with the occult, with every move and gesture by public figures being interpreted as a hint to belonging to a secret society.

When President Uhuru Kenyatta said he will not be lifting the bible during his inauguration, the social networks were abuzz with conspiracy theories with many alleging this to be a sign of something sinister.

“The line between fact and fiction in this enigmatic topic is further blurred by Hollywood and sensation authors who, in a bid to whet their audience’s on the issue, weave their storylines through a labyrinth of conspiracy theories,” explains Prof. Ngari Gituku, a lecturer at the University of Nairobi. “For these reasons many cannot filter the truth from myth about these ancient organizations”.

in a bid to shed some light on this enigmatic subject, Sagepage decided to dig beyond the heresy and mystery by poring through historical documents, talking to experts and researchers and the clergy.

Throughout history the mankind has been obsessed by secrets, more so organizations that claims to hold secrets from eras past. This is given even more potency by the prospect of holding meetings in secret places after having undergone through a series of rituals to gain admittance.

But do these groups really exist and if they does, do they wield enough power to trigger global events leading to a new world order as most claims?

“To create a New World Order is a very old goal of theirs,” explains American historian Wes Penre in his pamphlet titled A Brief History of the Moriah and the Shadow Government. “it has been a goal that slowly is to be accomplished over a long period of time. However, they have accomplished more in this direction during the last few decades than they have done in hundreds of years due to industrialization and the information technology era”.

The ultimate goal to control the world, according to both members of these orders and those who have spent years studying the topic, will be achieved by taking control of spheres of modern society like government, economy and charitable organizations.

This, their doctrines claim, will be achieved by recruiting the best minds in these fields hence the numerous allegations linking global leaders and organizations to Illuminati and Freemasons.

While United Nations, Greenspan International, Amnesty International and UNICEF are among a host of international bodies that Penre and other researchers claims are partly sponsored by the secret orders, high profile global political and business leaders are also alleged to be members.

But hard evidence substantiating these sensational claims is hard to come by.

While prominent individuals are said to pledge their loyalty to Illuminati, Freemasonry and other secret societies through suggestive signs made in public, subliminal messages or tattoos etched on their bodies, organizations are linked through their emblem, logo and financiers.

Penre, like many other scholars, alleges that besides penetrating the higher echelons of global institutions and multinationals the clandestine societies are also “taking over the movie industry, the record companies, and by their control of the fine arts, they know how to influence the teenagers to dance to their own tune and accept their kind of reality”.

This seems to collaborate the allegations by religious leaders that key players in the entertainment industry are members of the Illuminati.

Numerous documentaries have been made depicting high profile global artistes as being Illuminati and propagating the groups symbols and messages through music videos. Among those named includes Jay-Z, Beyonce, Rihanna, Eminem, Jammie Fox, The Game among others.

“The music teenagers listen to is often totally without quality and lead them into ‘robotism’, apathy, violence and drugs,” explains Penre. “The same thing goes with Hollywood, which is also controlled and created by the Illuminati…Dooms Day films and catastrophe movies all align with the purpose to influence us in certain directions”.

According to Encyclopedia Britannica Illuminati, apparently the most popular secret society today, was established by a Jesuit priest and lawyer called Adam Weishaupt on May 1, 1776 in Ingolstadt, Bavaria.

Although the secret organization has been in existence many years before the Bavarian priest came into the picture, he is the one who coined the term Illuminati which basically means those who have seen the light or the “enlightened ones”.

Internal wrangles and government crackdown disintegrated the group in the late 1700s, with Weishaupt and other members seeking refuge in Masonic lodges across Europe where they are believed to have survived through the ages to create the modern day Illuminati.

The fact that the group does not believe in a supernatural being make them an instant hit with atheists and humanists, leading many to believe they have a sinister political agenda of overthrowing organized religion and government.

In Kenya several big names in the entertainment industry have been linked to the Illuminati, albeit through newspaper gossip pages, bar talk and the social media. Prominent politicians, academicians and members of the legal fraternity have also been associated with Freemasons.

However, many of these people have neither denied nor confirmed their membership in public.

“Most young people tend to incline to cultism cum secret societies due to the societal disarray of culture and value systems by reason of the fragmentation of the institution of family,” explains Reverend Gobanga Ojukwu, the presiding pastor at Infinite Fellowship Ministries Church in Nairobi. “They are usually in a kind of quest for identity and a sense of belonging”.

Adam Light, a self declared 33^rd degree Freemason and the author The Entire History of Secret Societies,says that since its inception the Illuminati has been controlled by thirteen bloodlines or families. Among them are famous names like Rockefellers, Rothschilds and DuPonts.

Thirty three is the highest order in the Masonic hierarchy.

The Providence-Eye or the All Seeing-Eye, a single eye sign above a thirteen tier pyramid, is said to be the principle sign of the Illuminati. Whenever this symbol appears it has generated a lot of controversy.

The pyramid and the All-Seeing Eye imprinted on the United States’ one dollar bill have been a source of tall tales, with many alleging that it was intentionally put there by state officials with connection to the Illuminati. Just below the dollar sign is the Latin phrase Novus Ordo Seclorum which translates to “New World Order”.

Designed by President Franklin Roosevelt administration in the 1950s, a letter by an official of his government suggests that the wartime American leader approved and endorsed the inclusion of the sign in the national currency.

“In 1934 when I was Sec. of Agriculture I picked up a State Department publication which was on a stand there entitled The History of the Seal of the United States…turning to page 53 I noted the coloured reproduction of the reverse side of the Seal,” wrote Henry Wallace in a letter dated February 6, 1951. “Therefore I took the publication to President Roosevelt and suggested a coin be put out with the obverse and reverse of the Seal… as he looked at the coloured reproduction of the Seal was first struck with the representation of the “All Seeing Eye”, a Masonic representation of TheGreat Architect of the Universe”.

Roosevelt is said to have been so impressed with the idea that he suggested to his Secretary of Treasury Henry Morgenthau that the Seal be imprinted on a dollar bill rather than a coin.

Adam Light also pushes his theory further by claiming that there are numerical figures connected to the United States history that points to a profound connection to the enigmatic world of secret societies.

“The numbers 3,7,9,11,13,39 and any multiple of these numbers have special meaning to the Illuminati,” he explains in The Entire History of Secret Societies. “The United States was born on July 4, 1776. July is the 7^thmonth of the year. Add 7 (for July) and 4 and you have 11; 1+7+7+6=21, which is a multiple of 3 and 7. For those of you who still say it’s accidental, I could write a book just on numerical links, but I won’t”.

In his book The Secret Destiny of America Manly P. Hall, another 33^rd–degree Mason and a renowned authority in the subject of secret societies, seems to empirically back the theory of numbers.

“For more than three thousand years, secret societies have labored to create a background of knowledge necessary to the establishment of an enlightened democracy among the nations of the world,” the American writer claims. “Men bound by a secret oath to labour in the cause of world democracy decided that in the American colonies they would plan the roots of a new way of life…not only were many of the founders of the United States government Masons, but they received aid from a secret body existing in Europe which helped them to establish this country for a particular purpose known only to the initiated few”.

Manly and other historians allege that Freemasonry, a secret society purportedly started in Bavaria in the middle ages, has a direct connection to the Illuminati.

However, this is vehemently denied by many modern day Freemasons, most of whom claims their organization is an innocent entity engaged in a quest to advance the human course.

A quest by Sagepage to track down a Freemason bore no fruit since those that we were led to denied being members while others said they were under oath not to publicly address the order’s issues.

In IllustrationsofFreemasonry, a book written in 1826 by a confessed Freemason, claims that one of “the last mystery at the top of the Masonic pyramid is the worship of Lucifer”. More of this is discussed in the highly acclaimed book called Holy Blood, Holy Grail which traces the lineage of Jesus Christ and the Holy Chalice.

“Their goal is to rule the world. The doctrine of this group is not democracy or communism, but a form of fascism,” Adam Light alleges. “Unlike authors who out of fear have acted as apologists for the Freemasons, I decline to absolve them of responsibility and guilt. Look to the Masons for the guilty party if anything happens to me. I believe that they have murdered in the past and that they will murder in the future”.

His allegations of the group having a global mission was confirmed by a 1953 US Senate Investigating Committee on Education which stated thus “So-called modern Communism is apparently the hypocritical world conspiracy to destroy civilization that was founded by the Illuminati, and that raised its head in our colonies here at the critical period before the adoption of our Constitution”.

One of the most intriguing aspects of secret societies is the initiation rites which for ages have been shrouded by myths, rumours and mystery. From stories of drinking blood, orgies, sleeping in coffins and congregating with the dead in graveyards to human sacrifice, initiation is one of the most secretive aspects of groups like Illuminati and Freemason since most of what transpires in these occasions is mostly a subject of speculation.

But a lot of issues pertaining to these groups remain elusive and shady, with most of the information available from secondary sources and the few members who have come out openly to confess through interviews or writing books.

“Secret societies are a counterfeit of the satanic attempts to subvert God’s divine purpose for family where people would find their true identity from Him through the insight of their loved ones,” Rev. Ojukwu concludes.

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