Globalectics of George Natembeya’s Arrest is a lesson in Geo-Politics of East Africa

Dear dignified reader of this piece, allow me some latitude to borrow a revolutionary word “Globalectics’’ from a collection of essays by Ngugi wa Thiongó under the title “Globalectics: Theory and the Politics of Knowing.” Ngugi used the word Globalectics to describe a social phenomenon that every part of human society is the centre of the earth, and hence every human action is central to human society. No civilization is central, nor peripheral, but all civilizations have Globalectical (universalized) consequences on human existence. It is under this context that I have used the word Globalectics in the title of this article in support of what I will call the quest for social justice by asking world citizens of my time for attention to what is happening in East Africa. I mean a spectre of selfish syndrome among those occupying offices of political power is driving the politically powerful to tirelessly execute suffocation of human rights and democracy, the democracy that humanity cherishes as a universal value. 

They all do these by employing brutal tactics of economic persecution of the regions putting political power on spot over misrule, political persecution of dissident voices , police brutality in form of extra-judicial killing of the youths that come out to exercise the constitutional right of freedom of speech, assassination of the politically incorrect , violence on civilians protesting for food or clean water  or jobs or asking for fairness in relation to extortive taxes , detention of the vocal ones displaying some organic intellectuality in the process of struggle against  political excesses , weaponization of the judiciary to serve as a handmaid to the state in persecution of those political leaders opposing the ones in power , weaponization of war on corruption  by coming up with far-fetched charges to brutalize political opposition down into silence  and as well as peak perpetration of police brutality on those who come out to ask for justice, rule of law, fairness, freedom and recognition of human rights.

It is in the spirit of modern politics and social civilization that any person, woman, or man living by supporting the rule of law must be appreciated and extolled to exaltation as well as exultation. Contrastingly, in the current East Africa, where most of us call our home region, state-hosted terrorism and tyranny are now the dominant fashion of expediting State power. Oopsy! Things are gradually falling apart to give room for dark systems of dictatorships, dynasties, or despotisms. For example, all opposition politicians in Rwanda are either in prison, facing accusations of felonies, or verging on the brink of long jail terms. There is either a gender-based humiliation or a politically instigated assassination. I mean, Paul Kagame wants to rule without being criticized. In Uganda, where Yoweri Museveni has been in power for 39 years, all opposition politicians in the likes of Dr. Kissa Bizeqye are detained, and Dr. Stella Nyanzi is exiled because of her intellectual bravura displayed in the outright art of speaking truth to power. Bobi Wine, a youth politician with a deviant voice to those in power, is always brutalized by the Police, assaulted, and detained day in and day out.

Those lawyers and Media persons coming out to defend the rights of the persecuted are also dehumanized by state power. These have been observed in the recent bad experience by human rights fighters such as Martha Karua, a lawyer, politician, and human rights crusader. She has been persecuted by state-sponsored hostility in Uganda, Tanzania, and Kenya for nothing but coming out to ask the courts of law to observe the rule of law and justice when carrying out trials of opposition political leaders accused of treason and other charges attracting brutal punishment if at all proved guilty. 

Contextually, comrade Dr. Willy Mutunga, the former Chief Justice of Kenya, and a top-notch player in Kenya’s second liberation leadership, has not been spared in the growing state hostilities. Dr Mutunga, who doubles as an indefatigable human rights crusader, a revolutionary thinker, and a very admirable writer for Pambazuka News, was on May 19, 2025, unlawfully detained at Julius Nyerere International Airport in Dar es Salam for no other reason than for sympathizing with Tundu Lissu.

Tundu Lissu is the Presidential candidate as well as a seasoned opposition leader that has survived decades of assassin’s gunshots. He is also an overt Pan-Africanist thinker who was unfairly destined to be charged in a court of law with accusations of treason only a few days to the general elections in Tanzania. If one can ask, why detain and accuse the main Presidential Candidate of treason two weeks to the elections, isn’t that an abnormal kind of political realism? Those currently in power in Tanzania want to persecute Tundu Lissu as the world remains silent. No! it cannot be that way; good conscience cannot allow some of us to keep quiet as we eat and drink wine when our brother or our sister is unfairly accused and only to be put on trial for treason. A big no! We cannot be silent on this. It is the same position to be taken in response to the unfair treatment of Dr. Riek Machar, the opposition political leader in Southern Sudan.  He has been detained without a fair trial; the only crime he committed is to ask for good governance that observes equality and justice in Southern Sudan. 

 In Kenya, those currently in power are so scary. For example, it is on record that one of the high-level law courts in Nairobi recently had the Magistrate make judicial observations that the police in Kenya are trained to kill people, not animals like leopards, hence shooting to kill those executing democratic rights by carrying out democratic exercise to protest against cruel taxation is normal. The magistrate made this statement as a caution to Boniface Mwangi, a human rights activist in Nairobi. Some days later, Boniface Mwangi travelled to Dar es Salam to show sympathy to Lissu Tundu in court. Then Mwangi was abducted from his hotel room along with his fellow human rights crusaders, taken to an unknown place, tortured, and ferried during the night toward the Kenyan border only to be dumped near Lunga-Lunga, some kilometres from the Kenyan-Tanzanian border.

Sorriest is the police brutality, violent arrest, and unfair detention of Peter Salasya, a youthful politician from Western Kenya. The crime Salasya committed is nothing other than asking the government to improve the quality of health care services in Kenya by improving the current medical insurance systems.

In relation to the above social precedents, I am triggered to reflect on some active past in my childhood years where I grew up as a dedicated student of Karl Marx, an intellectual experience binding me to the moral obligation that it is human to defend the justice of the oppressed. This has to be a universal obligation for humanity in the sense that justice and the possibility of good life for the poor, powerless and the vulnerable must be dutifully protected, given the clear lessons from history showing that there is no way a person in power can appreciate justice for the poor. Even a non-Marxist social scholar, Ali A. Mazrui, in his 1989 book, ‘’Cultural Forces Behind World Politics,’’ came out with a very illustrative concept of ‘’sysphian syndrome’’ by pointing out that, always, former liberators will become serious oppressors. Meaning that those who are not in power look for power to oppress those who helped them to get into power.

Back to Globalectics in the overt police brutality that was observed in the raiding and arrest of George Natembeya, the governor of Trans Nzoia. But first, let me explain to the reader, contextual relevance of the concept of Globalectics as a phenomenon where one event in the one part of the earth is related to another event at another part of the earth in a correlative manner or a cause and effect manner making every part of the earth to be socially a centre for those living there without fear of being deemed peripherally placed in an obligation to borrow from the most powerful. The most powerful often wrongly think that the point on earth that currently wields the highest amount of political power is the centre of civilization or the cultural centre of the earth.  Unfortunately, the centre is very globalectical. It is found from each and every point of location of every culture on earth, regardless of the culture being materially powerful or materially powerless. Social Globalectics, as people’s moral duty to resist and fight those in power trying to imprison people’s revolutionary consciousness, is given a lurid picture in Ngugi’s book, “the Globalectics; Theory and Politics of Knowing.”

So, this is how Globalectical the political persecution of George Natembeya was: Again, it was also on May 19, 2025. Over three hundred armed police officers, both uniformed and plain clothes.  They came armed with all Kinds of police weapons, guns, tear-gas gadgets, dogs, bullet proofs, headgears, pistols, truncheons, all sorts of mechanisms to perpetrate agent provocateur, and so forth. The expectation was to arrest the Governor in a piece-meal mode. Unfortunately, it was not like that. Throngs of peasant women and men, boys and girls, came out in their endless numbers, over thousands, to protest and even prevent the arrest of their leader. Some peasants offered to better die rather than allow the police to arrest the Governor. Some police motor vehicles had tires punctured to frustrate the swiftness of the arrest.

The reason why the Governor was to be arrested is that Governor Natembeya had taken the route of speaking on behalf of the powerless in Kenya by speaking out valiantly on blue-level corruption in government. Natembeya is only persecuted for questioning the people in power why they are perpetrating state-sponsored theft of public resources, and the use of divisive ethnicity by the state to retain the masses in powerless positions.  The crime of George Natembeya is nothing else other than coming out boldly, to point out the rampant financial wheel dealing by the political class, unfair disposal of agricultural corporations through Public Private Partnerships (PPP) devoid of public participation at no cost other than putting the tax payer in the a hopeless socio-economic position, and dynastic political formations for selfish preservation in political power, government use of economic persecutions of regions that are not politically correct within the purview of the current government by not sending out the devolved fund to the devolved governments, material opulence among the political class, police brutality, weaponization of the judiciary, ethnic profiling, increasing levels of economic despair, and many other hardships as well as hopelessness that the people of Kenya are currently undergoing.

However, after getting overwhelmed by the masses at the home of Governor Natembeya in Kitale town, the plain clothed police themselves vandalized their vehicles to create cases for the masses. Also, the masses firmly prevented the plain clothes police from stashing the junks of dollars and shillings into the house of the governor to create the case of money laundering or corruption for the governor. All these patriotic actions by the masses were seen by the people present, captured by mobile phones, and circulated on diverse social media. 

We must answer the question: how is Governor Natembeya’s arrest a phenomenon of globalectic station in the broad geopolitics of East Africa?  It is, in the sense that an elected political leader at any level is elected to speak on behalf of the people. A politician is not elected to keep quiet as the people suffer; a politician has to speak out. But the contrast is the case in East Africa. In spite of the presence of very attractive Constitutions promising the rule of law and respect for human rights, each and every state in this region now frustrates political rights of those speaking on behalf of the suffering people. Why is dictatorship spreading across East Africa? Are those in power in this region borrowing behaviour from one another? Or is it a geopolitical reality of common geographies determining dominant political behaviour? In a word, I mean there is no safe space for democracy in the current region of East Africa. This is how globalectic it is - the rampant disrespect for democratic rights has become the geo-political identity of East African States.

Alexander Opicho is a Corporate Trainer at the Regional Centre for Mapping of Resources for Development (RCMRD), Nairobi, Kenya.

 .