Introduction

Last week’s bitterly contested election in Kenya has placed the country in the international spotlight.

For many Angolans and observers, yesterday’s general elections offered both a historic new start and sadly, more of the same.

I am a native of Rwanda who lived through the horrors of genocide. I am currently a refugee in the United States. As I watch Charlottesville, I recall with sadness the tragic genocide in Rwanda in 1994 and subsequent years.

Marxist literature makes a distinction between the “base” of a socio-political entity like a nation-state and its “superstructure”.  To put it simply, the "base" comprises the economy and science and technology applied in production, and the "superstructure" comprises the government, laws, r

Just the other day a childhood friend sent me a video recording of Simon and Garfunkel’s famous 1960s chart buster and an all-time great, the ‘Sound of Silence’. Just imagine the joy and nostalgia that I experienced from listening to this masterpiece.

Never in my life, did I imagine that in the name of democracy, a massive fraud would be committed against the Kenyan people with the participation of the international community.

On 4 August 2017 President Paul Kagame had himself “elected” a life-president through the so-called elections in which he scored a perfect vote of 99%, earning himself a permanent place alongside Joseph Stalin, Saddam Hussein, Kim Jong Un and many other dictators, dead or alive.

According to a common saying, a cat has nine lives. Jacob Zuma has at least the same amount. He just survived the eighth vote of no confidence in his illustrious political career.

Why does Kenya’s presidential election keep producing contested results and deaths? How did the opposition’s strongholds in various parts of the country, especially the slums, become the killing fields of those protesting the declaration of the 2017 presidential results?