The political climate is growing increasingly antagonistic in Burundi, where many of today’s political parties were yesterday’s rebel groups.

First, let me apologize for getting back to you less promptly than the urgency of the matter at hand calls for. I do so because just like justice delayed is justice denied, I consider this late response – a response denied.

It’s baby Kenya! That would have been the cry of a midwife heralding the birth of a new nation, well more than 45 years ago. However, the true birth has belatedly, but pleasantly so, eventually come

At a time when anti-establishment sentiments are high in the United States, many Americans are searching for answers in their constitution, in an effort to turn back the clock to the way things once were

Politics is perhaps the only manufacturing plant that never shuts down for annual maintenance, and so are the observers.

As the adage goes, necessity is the mother of invention. In the case of Kenya, dire necessity has become the mother of reinvention and on Aug. 4, Kenyans troop to polling booths to either affirm the current constitution or usher in a new dispensation.

On a humid evening at a downtown Kampala hotel, I began my conversation with Amanda Onapito only to be interrupted when three cockroaches swam onto our table, one sliding into my juice cocktail.

Less than three years after a closely fought presidential election plunged Kenya into widespread violence and displaced thousands, the country is bracing itself for another crucial and equally divisive ballot, this time on a new constitution.

“Children don’t vote,” said Dr Robert Mwadime, of Uganda Action for Nutrition, at a session on the subject before the three-day African Union (AU) meeting opened in Kampala, Uganda.

The January 2011 referendum in Southern Sudan will mark a turning point for the region and could see the formation of Africa’s newest state, but how will the south fare after the vote?

As vigilante groups go, the revered Sungu Sungu is certainly in its own league. Almost single-handedly, they have tamed crime in the entire Gusii region and parts of Luo Nyanza, with success that have the police green with envy.

They have launched an attack on Kenyans as usual. The 222 men and women, the self acclaimed saints of Kenya, the avowed masters of the trodden, name them, they are here again.