Download or read book Key Points in the History of Kenya 1885 1990 written by Shiraz Durrani and published by African Books Collective. This book was released on 2022-07-15 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: History never dies. It is embedded in people's memories when books are burnt and children are taught false histories, imagined by false historians from near and far - says the author in this book. This is the context in which Key Points in the History of Kenya, 1885-1990 is published. This, the 4th in the Kenya Resists Series from Vita Books, brings together presentation points from several conferences and meetings on the history of Kenya. It also includes historical records on Kenya by Saleh Mamon and Ladislav Venys. Key Points highlights many hidden facts about the history of Kenya. References are included for those who wish to explore the history further. While these books and facts are readily available in many history books, they are not easily available to all people in Kenya and in a form that meets their needs. The book therefore aims to familiarise people with the history of Kenya. It seeks to keep people's struggles, sacrifices and history alive. The author hopes that it will be a weapon in the sense that Bertolt Brecht meant when he said: 'Hungry man, reach for the book: it is a weapon'. That is the aim of the series, Kenya Resists too.

Download or read book The Kenya Socialist Vol 3 written by Shiraz Durrani and published by African Books Collective. This book was released on 2021-11-26 with total page 74 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Kenya Socialist exists to: Promote socialist ideas, experiences and world outlook; Increase awareness of classes, class contradictions and class struggles in Kenya, both historical and current; Expose the damage done by capitalism and imperialism in Kenya and Africa; Offer solidarity to working class, peasants and other working people and communities in their struggles for equality and justice; Promote internationalism and work in solidarity with people in Africa and around the world in their resistance to imperialism; Make explicit the politics of information and communication as tools of repression and also of resistance in Kenya. This issue, No. 3, is devoted mainly to an extended article by Shiraz Durrani and Kimani Waweru, under the title, Kenya: Repression and Resistance: from Colony to Neo-colony, 1948-1990.

Download or read book Essays on Pan Africanism written by Shiraz Durrani and published by African Books Collective. This book was released on 2022-02-22 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Essays on Pan-Africanism begins with essays by Shiraz Durrani, Abdilatif Abdulla, Issa Shivji, Firoze Manji, Sabatho Nyamsenda, Willy Mutunga and Noosim Naimasiah on various aspects of Pan-Africanism. This is followed by Remembering the Champions of African Liberation, with articles on Patrice Lumumba by Antoine Lokongo, Abdulrahman Babu by Amrit Wilson, Makhan Singh by Hindpal Singh and Piyo Rattansi, followed by Tajudeen Abdul Raheem's last Pan African Postcard (2009) and Debating and Documenting Africa - A Conversation. The Preface, Pan-African Thought, is by Prof. Issa Shivji. The book incorporates Karim Essack's compilation, The Pan African Path (1993) with historical records and documents on Pan-African history, with a new Preface by Prof. Issa Shivji. The final section has documents on Pan-Africanism, including the Kampala Declaration (1994)

Download or read book The Kenya Socialist Volume 7 written by Shiraz Durrani and published by African Books Collective. This book was released on 2021-01-12 with total page 35 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The year 2023 saw one of the latest genocides in modern times - that of the people of Palestine by Israel. People born in the last or this century find it difficult to understand how such genocides in the past were allowed to take place at all, so barbarous an action this is. Yet the current genocide continues unabated, despite the millions of people around the world demanding an end to it. This exposes the real nature of capitalism and imperialism. It is in this situation that issue no 7 of The Kenya Socialist focuses on the Palestine Question. Articles include The Palestine Question, Claim to be Pan-Africanist? Until Everyone is Free, Zionism and the Myth of Democracy. The title of the Editorial is ‘We are all Palestinians’. Another article examines why ‘the struggle for Palestine is the struggle of working people worldwide’, showing the class and imperialist background to the genocide. The issue ends with solidarity statements from Kenyan organisations and a book review. It carries a number of illustrations on the struggle.

Download or read book Two Paths Ahead written by Shiraz Durrani and published by African Books Collective. This book was released on 2023-05-04 with total page 330 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The struggle between socialism and capitalism in Kenya has been long, bitter and violent. Capitalism won with the active support of USA and UK governments at the time of independence in 1963. Yet the original (1960) Kenya African National Union (KANU) Party was in favour of socialism. It was Presidents Jomo Kenyatta and Daniel Arap Moi who used violence to suppress those advocating socialism. They used their power to massacre, assassinate, exile, imprison and disappear people and created a state of terror to silence their opponents. Capitalism became the unstated state policy. Thus, imperialism won and the aims of Mau Mau were brutally suppressed. However, the desire for socialism never died. Resistance movements and opposition parties made socialism their aim, reflecting peoples desire for justice, equality and empowerment. Many studies on Kenya focus on personalities or tribes' or race as driver of events, ignoring the all-important class and ideological positions of leaders and their Parties. Two Paths Ahead reproduces and comments on the documents from the opposing sides in the battles between capitalism and socialism the original Kenya African National Union (KANU), its successor, KANU-B, and the Kenya Peoples Union (KPU) on economy, land, labour, and social policy. It also touches upon the demands of the organisers of the 1982 Coup and traces the political stand of key leaders as proponents of capitalism or socialism. The final section reproduces some of the documents on this ideological struggle. The book exposes the hidden hand of imperialism in the countrys rush to capitalism. It fills a gap in understanding the real contradictions that divide Kenya to this day.

Download or read book The Kenya Socialist Volume 6 written by Shiraz Durrani and published by African Books Collective. This book was released on 2023-09-17 with total page 60 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Kenya Socialist is published by Vita Books, Nairobi and is edited by Shiraz Durrani and Kimani Waweru. It aims to encourage free flow of information, knowledge and discussion which can lead to a better understanding of socialism. It seeks to promote socialist ideas, experiences, and world outlook and to increase awareness of classes, class contradictions and class struggles in Kenya, both historical and current. The latest issue (No. 6, August 2023) carries articles on class struggle in Kenya, primitive accumulation of capital and an essay on understanding socialism through literature. Other articles are on the history of UMOJA and the role of trade unions as a force for resistance in Kenya. A Kiswahili section is also included, as is a section on ‘Remembering Pio Gama Pinto’. A short Poems section ends this issue.

Download or read book Trade Union Studies in the UK and Kenya written by Nigel Flanagan and published by African Books Collective. This book was released on 2024-07-02 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Nigel Flanagan brings a distinct perspective to the problems of trade union organising. In this account he draws on his own experiences as an activist, shop steward, strike organiser and working for the global union UNI. The book has be very well received and after six impressions this revised and enlarged edition is also being published in a Kenyan version with our partners, Vita Books - Nick Wright. Nigel Flanagan's Our Trade Unions: What Comes Next? was first published in Britain in early 2023 at the height of the country's inflationary crisis, when basic food costs were increasing by up to 20 per cent and energy by far more. Workers were fighting, through their trade unions, to protect their living standards and local services from the biggest attack for a century. This new Kenyan edition of Flanagan's book is, therefore, doubly welcome because it provides real life substance to these links. The chapters from Shiraz Durrani, himself a veteran of these struggles, reveal how far the movements of resistance to colonial rule were rooted in, and largely sprang from, the trade union movement in the 1920s and 30s. The importance of the contribution from Shiraz Durrani is that he places this resistance squarely in the special circumstances required for capitalist exploitation to take place in Kenya... Resistance demands mass-based political trade unions. This is why Kenya's experience and that of other African nations is of relevance not just to workers in Africa but those who wish to rebuild the workers' movement internationally. But this process must be political. It cannot be simply that of 'organising'. As Shiraz Durrani stresses, 'without a vision of achieving equality and justice, unions remain merely to make capitalism more acceptable to workers'- John Foster

Download or read book Struggle for Release Jomo and Colleagues written by Ambu Patel and published by African Books Collective. This book was released on 2024-06-04 with total page 263 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: he book has been out of print since it was published on December 12, 1963 — Kenya’s Independence Day. It is being reprinted by Vita Books in 2024. It was published at the end of one phase of Kenya’s history of liberation as colonialism was forced out of the country after long battles which culminated in an armed struggle under the Kenya Land and Freedom Army — Mau Mau. It was also the beginning of a new phase which was expected to bring land and freedom to people who had suffered massacres, murders, concentration camps, land thefts and all forms of torture under colonialism. The hope naturally was that all this will end with the gaining of independence. It was during this interim, hopeful period in the history of Kenya that Ambu H. Patel edited and published the book. It is no ordinary book. In days before the Internet, it carried the voice of 130 progressive personalities from Kenya and around the world. It was the anti-colonial and anti-imperialist voice of Kenya, as much as that of the progressive world. Their voice reflected the optimism that the colonial rule of injustice had ended and that a new, prosperous Kenya was about to be born. The hope was that there would be justice for people whose land and livelihood had been stolen and taken over by colonial looters. Their hopes were pinned on Jomo Kenyatta and his colleagues, detained and imprisoned by colonialism. Surely their release was the key issue at the time. Surely that group of people would ensure justice for the people. It was at this time that Ambu H. Patel started the Release campaign. Events proved that such hopes for justice were premature. A new world had not yet been born. The struggle had to go on and the children of Mau Mau fighters would have to continue their parents’ struggle. But that was in the future. Now, at the dawn of independence, there was hope.

Download or read book Constimocrazy written by Nsah Mala and published by African Books Collective. This book was released on 2024-01-12 with total page 113 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The lyrical pessimism of Nsah Mala's poetry presents a world characterized by violence, inhumanity and destruction, a world that is sadly too familiar. While many of the poems address contemporary issues in the poet's native Cameroon, much of the human-inflicted damage they describe is not limited to 'Cam-Kingdom'. Although much of the content is negative, many of the poems contain questions. These questions express the cynical voice of this politically committed poet, but behind them lies the distant possibility of a better version of the world in which values of love, peace and unity reign: 'Don't we know,' the poet asks, 'that violence is out of fashion?' - Professor Nicki Hitchcott, University of St Andrews, UK

Download or read book A Struggle of sixty two days written by Shiraz Durrani and published by African Books Collective. This book was released on 2024-02-14 with total page 133 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Annual General Meeting of the Labour Trade Union of Kenya in Sept 1936 fixed Oct 1936 for implementation of the eight-hour day .. In December 1936, the Union gave notices to employers that all wages should be increased by 25% from April 1937. The strike began on 1 April, 1937. It was a complete strike. A strike-committee was formed, picketing was organised, a free kitchen was started .. the decision was popularised through handbills, meetings in residential areas, works-discussions and public announcements (preceded by ringing of a large bell), in the the main thoroughfares of Nairobi, and daily mass meetings. The campaign created a new spirit among workers. The employers were at last compelled to reach a settlement. They agreed to wage-increase of 15-22%, to an eight-hour day and reinstatement of all workers. The workers resumed work on 2 June, 1937. - Makhan Singh (1969) Thus ended the longest, and the most successful, strike in the history of Kenya. But the sacrifices, the actions and the reality of the strike for workers is not captured by history books. Nor are the organisation by the East African Trade Union Congress and the role of its leader, Makhan Singh, fully understood. In going on strike for sixty-two days, the workers showed their industrial and political power, unmatched to this day. Shiraz Durrani's A Struggle of Sixty-Two Days is a welcome addition to a growing backlist of drama texts that draw on the rich and often hidden history of East Africa. A Struggle of Sixty-Two-Days sets itself apart from the tradition of historical plays before it by eschewing the use of a singular heroic figure to centre the drama. Instead, the play deliberately delivers the texture of the lived realities, skills and experiences of the workers who made a success of the longest and most consequential strike in the country's history, but also acknowledges the collaboration and support they drew from the people against the backdrop of the imperialist, racist and colonial era The 1937 strike would not only deliver an eight-hour working day as a right, besides wage increases, but would also be the seeding for mobilising the people of Kenya to challenge injustice and launch the fight for freedom. It is a struggle that pits the might of imperialist capital against the survival instincts of the oppressed and their quest for justice. The scenery and dialogue transport the reader back to 1937, but its echoes still ring true in continuing present-day clashes between labour and exploitative capital. - Kwamchetsi Makokha

Download or read book Stronger than Faith written by Oduor Ong'wen and published by African Books Collective. This book was released on 2022-10-28 with total page 419 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Few events in Kenya's recent history have captured the imagination of the nation as those of the period from the late 1970s. Between the pages of this memoirs is a history of that period which is hardly taught in our schools and is fast receding into the holes of the insignificant as a younger generation takes over. The history of that era, like that of all the eras that have made this country, needs to be preserved by those who witnessed and participated in it. In Stronger Than Faith, Oduor Ong'wen adds clarity to the politics of an important but dark era of our history. It adds clarity to why that era is not entirely gone.

Download or read book Andolo written by Nsah Mala and published by African Books Collective. This book was released on 2020-11-25 with total page 20 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Mbesa village witnesses a peculiar birth; that of a boy with a special skin colour. He becomes a curiosity for everyone. Nevertheless, his difference will not be a handicap for him. On the contrary! Andolo is a very talented man and knows how to prove it. Suitable for primary-aged children.

Download or read book Cabral Pinto written by Willy Mutunga and published by African Books Collective. This book was released on 2022-01-31 with total page 520 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For over 30 years, Willy Mutunga has blazed the trail in starting many important public conversations about remaking Kenya and the wider world into a better society. As a public intellectual, he has consistently challenged convenient stereotypes in an effort to bring down the social barriers erected by fear and ignorance, and led in persuading individuals and communities to re-examine widely held prejudices and to start difficult dialogues. Between 2006 and 2011, Mutunga wrote a weekly column in the Saturday Nation. It is from these contributions, under the pen name Cabral Pinto a combination of the surnames of the two African ideologues he greatly admired that the 146 articles in this volume are selected. The clarity of Willys moral voice is unmistakable on a broad variety of themes, ranging from exhortations for an alternative leadership that would deliver a human rights state, to an unapologetic call for mass action as a peaceful way to bring change. This collection by Cabral Pinto is the story of Kenyas long democracy struggle, told by a pro-democracy activist.

Download or read book African History A Very Short Introduction written by John Parker and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2007-03-22 with total page 185 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Intended for those interested in the African continent and the diversity of human history, this work looks at Africa's past and reflects on the changing ways it has been imagined and represented. It illustrates key themes in modern thinking about Africa's history with a range of historical examples.

Download or read book Decolonization Independence in Kenya 1940 93 written by Bethwell A. Ogot and published by Ohio State University Press. This book was released on 1995 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a sharply observed assessment of the history of the last half century by a distinguished group of historians of Kenya. At the same time the book is a courageous reflection in the dilemmas of African nationhood. Professor B. A. Ogot says: "The main purpose of the book is to show that decolonization does not only mean the transfer of alien power to sovereign nationhood; it must also entail the liberation of the worlds of spirit and culture, as well as economics and politics. "The book also raises a more fundamental question, that is: How much independence is available to any state, national economy or culture in today's world? It asks how far are Africa's miseries linked to the colonial past and to the process of decolonization? "In particular the book raises the basic question of how far Kenya is avoidably neo-colonial? And what does neo-colonial dependence mean? The book answers these questions by discussing the dynamic between the politics of decolonization, the social history of class formation and the economics of dependence. The book ends with a provocative epilogue discussing the transformation of the post-colonial state from a single-party to a multi-party system."

Download or read book Conservation of Natural and Cultural Heritage in Kenya written by Anne-Marie Deisser and published by UCL Press. This book was released on 2016-10-07 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Kenya, cultural and natural heritage has a particular value. Its pre-historic heritage not only tells the story of man's origin and evolution but has also contributed to the understanding of the earth's history: fossils and artefacts spanning over 27 million years have been discovered and conserved by the National Museums of Kenya (NMK). Alongside this, the steady rise in the market value of African art has also affected Kenya. Demand for African tribal art has surpassed that for antiquities of Roman, Byzantine, and Egyptian origin, and in African countries currently experiencing conflicts, this activity invariably attracts looters, traffickers and criminal networks. This book brings together essays by heritage experts from different backgrounds, including conservation, heritage management, museum studies, archaeology, environment and social sciences, architecture and landscape, geography, philosophy and economics to explore three key themes: the underlying ethics, practices and legal issues of heritage conservation; the exploration of architectural and urban heritage of Nairobi; and the natural heritage, landscapes and sacred sites in relation to local Kenyan communities and tourism. It thus provides an overview of conservation practices in Kenya from 2000 to 2015 and highlights the role of natural and cultural heritage as a key factor of social-economic development, and as a potential instrument for conflict resolution

Download or read book The Wicked Walk written by W. E. Mkufya and published by African Books Collective. This book was released on 2012 with total page 120 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Nancy slaps palms with her friends and laughs a lot. She wears bell-bottom pants which swing when she walks through Uhuru Gardens. Nancy will finish secondary school this year, but she doesn't really know what will happen to her after that. Deo reads seriously, but he also spends many evenings in bars. He works in a factory laboratory, where his Form VI education elevates him above the other workers. He knows that there are some "big men" who live off the sweat of the others at the factory; it isn't right, but what does a lone youth do about it? Deo also wants to marry Nancy. Magege, the manager of 'Mountain Goat Rubber Factory', has the means to fulfill all his personal wants-including his taste for young girls. Nancy's mother, Maria, has no private means except selling her own body and her dream of a better life for her daughter. The Wicked Walk swirls around the lives of these four, set on a backdrop of workers' struggles and the rhythm of Dar es Salaam as city dwellers, and especially youths, know it. In this searingly honest, and at times poignant, novel the author raises important questions about the position of women in society, the causes of prostitution, corrupt and inefficient managers, and the groupings of youth who struggle towards ideological clarity as they attempt to understand their society.