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These days, well-behaved African heads of state are rewarded by Barack Obama with the chance to meet with him in groups of four and have their picture taken with him. It’s like meeting Beyonce, but you get to call it a state visit. That’s what happened on Friday when Malawi’s Joyce Banda, Senegal’s Macky Sall, Cape Verde’s José Maria Neves and Sierra Leone’s Ernest Bai Koroma were paraded before the White House press corps, sitting in star-struck silence as Barack reeled off a kind of wikipedia-level roll-call of their accomplishments. They beamed like competition winners. It was all very feudal.

Pastor Tunde Bakare recently granted interview on the current nation issues including the newly formed APC and his future ambition.

Question: The 2015 elections are two years away. Are you contemplating participating in active politics again?

Bakare :I don’t pray we continue like this till 2015. My prayer is that there should be deliverance before that time, because if we continue like this, then there will beself-fulfilling of the prophecy of disintegration.

Question: Are you talking about change of government or revolution ?

Bakare :Whatever it is, this madness mustnot continue.

Question: So, you are not sure if you will participate in the 2015 elections ?

Bakare : With who? The collection of rogues, right, left and central?

Question: Even with the progressives ?

Bakare : Who are the progressives in Nigeria; mention their names? Are you persuaded that they are progressives, progressive where, taking you where?

Question: The progressives…

 We laughed, my god, we did.

First the laughter was out of shock, then of course we were disgusted and laughter came in handy in dousing our collective disappointment. Then we got creative on both web and mobile and more laughter ensued. Then it got ridiculous and painfully banal. Gradually, it turned into a proclamation of self-righteousness and then, we lost it.

Some are still laughing though, they have a right to I must admit but by the time we are done laughing, by the time it is all silent again and our eyes that has leaked tears as we chocked in laughter are now dry, we will come to the realisation that in many ways there is a Commander Shem of various forms in all of us and we have essentially been simply laughing at ourselves.

If what we crucify Mr Obafaiye Shem for is ignorance and incompetence following…

Mothers lay their daughters on mattresses, spread their legs as wide as “Vs,” push their fingers inside their daughters’ vaginas and measure the depth of entry into the soft mounds of flesh.

If the fingers go in too deeply, the girl is not a virgin.

The daughter did not keep her vagina clean and fresh so she will no longer be perceived as clean and fresh. She will be described with adjectives like spoiled and used. Her vagina has been used. Throw it away. Throw her away.

In a society where a woman is worth the condition of her vagina, women and girls start to believe it—that their vagina counts. Boys and men believe it. Public officials and religious leaders believe it. The society begins to promote a sort of consecration of the vagina.

If a father finds out that his daughter’s vagina has been spoiled he could remove her…

Guest Post by Mukoma Wa Ngugi

In 1982, as the air force-led coup attempt in Kenya unfolded, we sat glued to our transistor radio listening to the BBC and Voice of America (VOA). In fact, the more the oppressive the Moi regime censored Kenyan media, the more Western media became the lifeline through which we learned what has happening in our own country. But in 2013, I and many other Kenyans saw the Western media coverage of the Kenya elections as a joke, a caricature. Western journalists have been left behind by an Africa moving forward: not in a straight line, but in fits and starts, elliptically, and still full of contradictions of extreme wealth and extreme poverty, but forward nevertheless. 

This past week saw up-and-coming political pundit and progressive activist Zerlina Maxwell talking about rape, her own status as a rape survivor, and the fact that women shouldn’t have to carry guns in order to not be raped — because boys and men should be taught not to rape in the first place. This is not a new topic for Zerlina (see her excellent “Stop Telling Women How Not to Get Raped”), and she’s not a stranger to backlash.

However, last week the discussion was on television, which gives it much greater kick, and any conversation about guns adds an entire new layer of intensity to the process, and pretty much immediately after she was off the air, Zerlina began to be inundated with rape threats, death threats, racist slurs, and often a combination of all three, across all the various social media platforms. (You can read more about how it’s…

Since Valentine’s Day everyone has been talking about the murder of Reeva Steenkamp, although rarely in those terms. We know that her boyfriend, Oscar Pistorius, shot her four times and killed her while she was behind a locked door in their bathroom in a gated estate. We know that he has a history of domestic violence, a penchant for shooting things. We know absolutely everything about his extensive sporting achievements. The main thing, however, that we know about Steenkamp is that she was a model, and that she was really hot. 

Kenyans vote today (in some places voting have already started). And somehow, as in any election in any African country, the cliches are not far behind. “Will Kenya fall into mayhem after the results of the general elections are announced?” “Will one of (East) Africa’s most politically stable countries see a return of post-election violence that swept through the country five years ago?” “Has tribalism been eradicated in Kenya?” We can’t count how often international reporters have asked these questions in the past days. Like French soldiers in the northern Mali, journalist of every major international broadcaster and some even of tiny national news organizations have parachute landed in Kenya ahead of the general elections. Some of them, even if they won’t admit it, secretly hope to see a bit violence, albeit skirmishes. Some American outlets have taken six month old political violence and presented these as happening…