AG Mbui

The Kikuyu are not the most populous ethnic group in Kenya. The Luhya are the largest, followed by the Kalenjin, then the Luo, and then the Kikuyu. If accurately counted, the Somali population could also rank ahead of them.

This story and headline is a perfect example of how racist politics and narratives are subtly deployed in media. Blink and you miss it. On Thursday, a man killed four children in an attack inside a nursery school in the Ugandan capital of Kampala on Thursday. It was the most horrific attack on a kindergarten school in Uganda in recent memory. The attacker “brutally stabbed and killed four juveniles,” with a knife police said. Nearly all Uganda media reports said the murderer used a knife. However, in AP’s telling, he became a “machete wielding” attacker. It doesn’t make the tragedy any less, but the the word "machete" often carries cultural baggage in Western (and sometimes global) media framing. It often evokes images of chaotic violence in tropical or African settings –think the "wild savage" trope from colonial-era storytelling –more readily than a "knife" does for similar attacks elsewhere. And thus it conjures up an image of Kampala, or Uganda for that matter, as a place with menacing “natives” walking around with deadly machetes, rather than an individual who might be been mentally ill. Surprising how strong the instinct to fall back on these tropes remains.

Armed men in plain clothes handcuffed 33-year-old businessman Shukri Hassan on March 28, bundled him into a black Prado in Fedha Estate, and drove away—all of it captured on CCTV. A week later, his family still has no answers. Eastleigh residents and traders took to the streets on Thursday, April 2, issuing a 24-hour ultimatum demanding Hassan's immediate release. His disappearance marks the fifth reported abduction in the area within a month. Relatives have combed police stations and mortuaries across Nairobi with no results, and his last phone signal traced to Runda only deepens the mystery. Protesters made one demand clear—if Hassan faces any charges, take him to court. Interior CS Kipchumba Murkomen confirmed the DCI has assembled a special team to investigate the growing abduction cases, though he noted some complaints involve undocumented foreigners who were deported.