LEGENDS OF THE LUO, HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVES

[jakaswanga]

LEGENDS OF THE LUO, PERSPECTIVES

This is about thinking the unthinkable!

No, I will only be doing legendary decisions. The 'No Kenyatta no Uhuru' decision for instance. This decision was made by Jaramogi Odinga when offered the presidency by the British in 1962. But Jaramogi wasn't your Abel Muzorewa.

Few of us modern Kenyans, not to mention grieving Luos with a parasitic and treacherous power instinct, having grown up on a diet of inferior and treacherous leadership, can imagine a Kenyan can be that principled, could possibly be that endowed with moral depth in public office. But then, few of us can imagine the self-sacrifice of many a Mau Mau hero, nor, as evidenced by our ridicule, can we fathom John Githong'o's principled refusal to join the Mwai Kibaki banquet of loot when it was clearly 'his turn to eat!'. –--This poverty of imagination is no big deal, for, this week, as the herd went into a reflective stampede, did you catch anybody publicly imagine rational reasons why a Manchester youth of Libyan origins would blow himself up in a concert of underages?

Yeah, the human condition, O fallible being!

I will only be doing legendary decisions (of the Luo)! The personalities will adequately be covered by other people. –--Such legends as Gor Mahia wuod Ogalo, Lwanda Magere, Bunglu Kagwanga (first Luo head of the praetorian guard of some early Uganda kingdom I can't remember now but will, later), Lala Kabanda, Nyamgondho wuon Ondare (his wife was a water nymph and Lake Victoria Nam Lolue is the gathering of the tears the gods shed over her grave), Ramogi Podho, Nyikal omin Nyikang'o, Opir omin Dipir …..... and all that endless list all the way to Nubia and Shilluki mountains, then back to the contemporary and controversial Amollo Tinga. All that will be done by others as persons.

Otherwise, finding time, I will do them in my style. Easy and tabloid, intermittent and interspaced anecdotal, folklorish and artefactoral! Here is Mboya Tom, here is Raila Tinga. And of course, this being the Luo pivot library, I will use Arguings CMG Kodhek –---saver of many a Mau Mau neck through readings and interpretations of constitutional and criminal law beyond simplistic and constrained colonial courts----- to showcase why I so easily dismiss the legal scholarship of all these learned friends who were charged with institutionalising the integrity clause, aka chapter six of the new constitution.

Imagine Arguenge CMG's mind at work, fixing chapter six in place for posterity! Man Man Man! I get a hard-on at the thought! (and then, looking at what we have to do with, that passion solidifies into a rage beyond Tshaka Tzulu's insanity. And that is for starters!)

Omera Otiende Amollo, Wily Mutunga! Omera Githu Muigai, David CJ Maraga! I dry-run you through the Kodhek yardstick, found you unripe, found you weeds clogging the lungs of a land! But on a Kenyan scope with our national dedication to mediocrity, you guys are great! Exceptional learned friends!

Later then. Let me first do ADULTS ONLY!

[jakaswanga]

Later then. Let me first do ADULTS ONLY!

Thus, as an introduction. To this thread.

Public service in Africa is due for overhaul. Or perhaps it is like an outmoded version of software which no longer can be upgraded. It just reached its logical dead-end. That is the driving idea here. And public service being an ancient business, it is not like modern hyper- and super-technology have forged the Troglodyte's mind any better to deal with the fundamental questions. For all I know, we, human kind, upright apes with oppositional thumbs, are busy industrially exhausting the Earths capabilities as a habitat that sustains mass human life, and as an organism which regenerates from bio-degradation. The planet is creaking with filth, not to mention oceans as toxic dumps. And that is just the wasted environment.

LIMITED, WINNABLE NUCLEAR WAR

I heard men talk of a winable NUCLEAR WAR. I told myself, d-amn, there goes THE BLUE PLANET, my paradise in the galaxy! there it goes in a mutating cloud of radiation!

Modern man is mad enough to collectively suicide us all! –--A winable nuclear war!

“Thinking Through the Unthinkable”

RAND Corporation lays out scenarios for US war with China

5 August 2016

A new study by the RAND Corporation titled “War with China: Thinking Through the Unthinkable” is just the latest think tank paper devoted to assessing a US war against China. The study, commissioned by the US Army, provides further evidence that a war with China is being planned and prepared in the upper echelons of the American military-intelligence apparatus.

That the paper emerges from the RAND Corporation has a particular and sinister significance. Throughout the Cold War, RAND was the premier think tank for “thinking the unthinkable”—a phrase made notorious by RAND’s chief strategist in the 1950s, Herman Kahn. Kahn devoted his macabre book On Thermonuclear War to elaborating a strategy for a “winable” nuclear war against the Soviet Union.

According to the preface of the new study, released last week, “This research was sponsored by the Office of the Undersecretary of the Army and conducted within the RAND Arroyo Centre’s Strategy, Doctrine, and Resources Program. RAND Arroyo Centre, part of the RAND Corporation, is a federally funded research and development centre sponsored by the United States Army.”

So I checked how many kilotons of nuclear bombs exploding in toto constitute such a limited nuclear war. I checked that kiloton mushroom against what scientist simulate The World would be like the morning after! Will there be a pill for it?

Dam-n! China is gone, Russia is gone, All Korean peninsular is gone, Iran and Middle East are gone, half of North America is gone, Western Europe is gone, half of Africa is gone. That is the bad scenario. Worst case is the whole planet gone because things got out of hand. The Big Bangs for real. Best case is only the enemies of the USA gone! –--China Russia North Korea and Iran! Gone before they can retaliate. A Blitzkrieg success!

I thought of the global chess game, the author having died this week.

And so I thought, when, in the past, did the Luo nation face possible extinction and continue on as normal!? But I fell asleep and dreamt of Mkabayi kaJama, counsellor of the Kings. Amazullu Kings.

Her story is long and complex, but can hilariously be told!

[jakaswanga]

Her story is complex, but can hilariously be told.

MKABAYI, PRINCESS OF THE AMAZULU

MKABANE kaJama (1760-1840)

Public service in Africa is due for overhaul.

Oh Mkabayi Kajama, I dreamt of you! Old wizard!
I dreamt of you listening to the GM Luambo Luanzo
Thundering away passionate at Mobutu candidat na Biso!

I dreamt your nose twitched, and the guitarist lost his lines
You consoled every court must have its share of genial fools
For power has an insatiable appetite for sycophants and praise songs!

I dreamt of your malice, sizing up the present crop of infants, the baby-boys and imperial toys Africans miscall their Excellencies. I spied thee, a dead star in the skies, yearning from the grave to be regent over the continent. I spied thee impatient as we, woefully, await the maturity kingdom come, await a matured head like that of your boy Tshaka, the cruel-hearted, nation-forging bloody tyrant.

Old Witch, I dreamt of you pursing your lips dark at the phrase AFRICA RISING, and there was a poetical malevolence lingering in your eye. I dreamt you would never be the type outed by post-colonial African experience as just another sorry …... what was that again the likes of Sembene Ousmane called them? ...….
…..............

Or may be this Alexander O'Neil song



Public service in Africa is due for an overhaul.

I agree, public service in Africa is long overdue for a radical overhaul.

How do I know?

(Joke: Wafula Chebukati and his IEBC rats have belled the wrong cats! The dead cats only)

AFRICA IN THE GLOBAL ECONOMY, NOW THEN AND TOMORROW

To think public service in Africa needs a fix, I just check the official statistics of the world economy. Then do a peer comparative run.



However dumb, one does get the disturbing rate of relative performance. But elementary 'poverty indices' can also do. Nigeria and Congo top the world on the extreme edge. And what does one notice about these two countries?
Yeah
Natural resources-wise, God did love them deepest and widest! Still their peoples are ever broke. Time their broken backs broke even.

How many people live in Africa, segregated or differentiated to age too; what is Africa's landmass and geographical resources endowment; and given all that, how fast has Africa's contribution to, or share of the world economic cake, risen in the past half a century? Gotta measure progress somehow.







THE SOUTH KOREAN GRAPH IN COMPARISON




EXTREME POVERTY, checking Nigeria and DRC Congo out! Down there with Bangladesh, Haiti and other hell holes.




NEXT: MKABAYI KAJAMA 1760-1840, who? Sszenzangakhona's Zigbniew.

[jakaswanga]

MKABAYI KAJAMA 1760-1840, who?

Having been distanced from our history by the priorities of colonial education, I don't expect many fellow Africans to have heard of Mkabayi Kajama. But all of you have doubtless heard of (the recently late) Zigbniew Bzerzinski. He is the reckless hero who went the enemy of my enemy is my friend, a Maoist dictum, wherewith he lead the USA into a marriage of convenience with Militant Sunni Islam in Afghanistan against the evil Soviets. The blowbacks have been harsh, from 9/11 to Manchester on the eve of his death, but I guess that is all acceptable collateral damage in the global chess game, full spectrum dominance.

Chess games of power and dominance. That is how thinking about the obituary of the great Zigbniew brought me to the legendary Mkabayi.

She was a Zulu princess and lead counsellor of the nation for several generations of Kings, also during Tshaka's reign. But her prowess and prominence was such that popular patriarchal fiction often confers upon her, malicious infamy.

In one of the most successful commercial ventures, she appears in various shades of ornamental accompaniment to Tshaka. The cinematographic portrayals of Tshaka by south African Cele have become stuff of legend..



The senses of Zulu folklore and culture, however, shines with both hypnotic infatuation and patriarchal disgust at her indomitable mind, spirit of public service and nunnish disposition. It is her, for instance, who, Tshaka having gone insane after his power fails to protect his mother from King Death, made the decision the tyrant too had to go. Better His Highness go join his Holy Mother in the afterlife foreverafter, than wreak more destruction on the living planet in his insatiable bloodthirst.

But of course there is another version which hints it was the King himself responsible for the Elephant Mother's death! –-where art thee, forensic detectives of the cold cases!



Then too, the men having no balls to speak of, it was the dedicated public servant Mkabayi who arranged the scene of the monster's death, for that is what the legendary King had become. The controversial princess also arranged the manner and the succession. In deed as she famously told her brother Senzangakhona, the father of Tshaka, when they were still young and she his mental custodian as she would always remain, 'I may lack that thing between male knees which gives you sole rights to the throne, but between the ears I double up content on anybody with a dangle between the thighs!'

She never married, unable to bear the stupidities wives are forced to undergo under their lesser husbands. Nor did she care to subject a man to the indignities which are reputed to have driven Margaret Thatcher's husband to the bottoms of the bottle. For aristocratic men, guardians of patriarchy, do not take kindly to women beyond them and their sterile world.

NB: –--On a lighter note, Cheryl Blair, Michelle Obama, Hilary Clinton are a few examples of contemporary, better women forced to bear the indignities and humiliations from lesser husbands! Such roles, much more suited to trophy-babe Melania Trump perhaps, is a domesticated fate the Iron Zulu Princess Mkabayi would never contemplate. –--Nor would Angela Merkel!

And then there is the tabloid press on the life-long single Zulu princess: she may have been nunnish, but was she chaste!? Or was she the secret priestess of an unmentionable erotical cult?

But we will do the tabloids later.

First, matters of state.

continued.

[jakaswanga]

First, matters of state.

THE FORTUNES OF MKABAYI, PRINCESS COUNSELLOR OF THE TZULU

Mkabayi had acted regent as young brother and crown prince Senzangakhona (All is Well-done) grew up.

It is a time of crisis and the Zulu throne is up for grabs. Aging King Jama kaNdaba has no male heir apparent. His able, ruthless and obviously ambitious young daughter, a twin who should have been killed at birth but was spared by parental love over duty, is unsettlingly looking like going for a matriarchal coup of shocking proportions. She is effectively, already in charge as lead counsellor. The other option is Sojiyisa, an illegitimate son the King had sired or not with a deemed lowly cu-nt from the Thonga tribe. These were untouchables yet highly screwables, which of course sets the stage for drama of royal proportions. Of Baganda women too they say 'sero yot to weyo tek!' (No one who beds a Buganda woman ever forgets Buganda women!) So too the legend of the Thonga.

Illigitimte Sojiyisa was laying claim already to the soon-to-be empty Zulu throne, the infant Senzangakhona being an easily dispatchable foe.

He underestimated his half-sister, Mkabayi, then effectively regent. He wouldn't be the first, nor the last royal fool to suffer the delusion being male is all it takes.

Here is the iconic eyes of Gugu Nxumalo, acting young Mkabayi in the hit series Tshaka.



As I said, her role in the death of Tshaka continues to divide opinion eternally. I therefore took a lot of care between the lines in the popular depiction of Tshaka's death at the movies in this serie, and Tshaka's biting last words: 'The swallows have won, Mkabayi!'

Mkabayi kaJama was the daughter of Jama kaNdaba chief of the Zulu clan from 1763 – 1781. Mkabayi had a twin sister and according to Zulu custom one of the twins had to be sacrificed to avoid bad luck that would result in the death of one of the parents. Jama refused and consequently his wife died without bearing him a successor. Mkabayi devoted her life to looking after her father and various successors of the Zulu Kingdom in gratitude to her father for sparing her life.As her father was aging and had no successor she courted Mthaniya Sibiya for her father without his knowledge. Mthaniya bore him a son named Senzangakona (we have done accordingly) who succeeded him after Jamas death in 1781.

Jamas grave is on the farm Heeled that lies within the Emakosini Valley. (The Valley of the Kings)The farm was sold to the Amalfa Historical Society by Mr.,W.H.Els in 1996.
Mkabayi remained a influential figure in the life of her brother King Senzangakona, and his son, King Shaka, King Dingane and King Mpande. In fact she was so influential, the most famous phrase was: Buzani ka Mkabayi, meaning, consult Mkabayi for any solution @sahistorymuseum

But digital had arrived over analogue, gunpowder over the spear. Mkabayi had been the peak of the old order.

Today 2017, Jacob Nzuma of the ANC is the president of South Africa. He is not of royal Zulu lineage. The Zulu royal house is some retarded relic in the cooler, waiting for historical greener pastures after Gatsha Buthelezi's mistakes. A bit like the Abel Muzorewa mistake in Zimbabue.

But I must say Jacob Zuma very much looks like the lazy fun-loving siblings Mkabayi so detested as nothing but the banes of a Kingdom. If Kingdoms can go under because of imbeciles at the top, so can republics! And history is a long time.

Anyway, she had a nose for intrigue; we are already introduced to young Mkabayi as a fixer when, they say out of gratitude to her father, she secretly affords him a wife. This is the Lady Mthaniya, and she bears the aging King a legitimate male heir. Daddy Jama's act of kindness was to have spared Mkabayi's life and her twin, Mmama, whom tradition demanded be killed to fend off bad luck.

This story alone is very much the subject of many twists in Zulu folklore. Some bad-press songs do not put it past her to have secretly poisoned off her male siblings to maintain her position of power beside her beguiled father; that only at the last moment does she allow a late-comer to live, confident she will be indispensable as regent or lord protector. In any case the woman Mthaniya would bear King, Jama kaNdaba, the son and sole legitimate heir Senzangakhona. This man (whose names means Well-Done) would be the father of Tshaka Tzulu. A repeat of the bastard story from the earlier generation!

Tshaka is born out of wedlock.

And of course there is a prophecy in the tale too. Actually a bit like in the birth of Paris the son of Priamos, King of Troy, not to mention Jesus of Nazareth or Moses of Egypt. Both births led to the infanticide of male infants as threatened Kings sought to curtail prophesied outcomes. To no avail. These are universally gripping tales. We will come to Tshaka doing the same. Such are the pathological depths of royal paranoia.

In another decisive act long after she had handed over full reigns to the fun-loving young King Senzangakhona, and now enjoyed power as his seer, she double-crosses tradition by letting Tshaka and his mother, Nandi, escape to avoid the death sentence which would annul the troubling prophecy. Her act leads to a dramatic scene in the narratives, a scene in which the Kings's most trustworthy brigadier, is ritually killed: he is sacrificed, and he sacrifices himself willingly to duty. The sensitive King is horrified as his most trusted lieutenant –---who has just saved his prophetic son escape from death------ reads him his role: ''Tell the people I was insubordinate and treacherous. I helped them escape, against your will and express orders!'
There surely could have been a 'lesser' sacrifice, the grief-striking King thinks.
MKABAYI: 'he was the only one who could be trusted with the prophecy. The rest would betray!'

The King is out of his depth on matters of state. (these days we do plausible deniability).

Meanwhile Mkabayi is not impressed with the array of sons out to jump-start Tshaka in the inheritance of the royal throne. As head of a powerful royal court and district, she's been gathering intelligence on the fortunes of Tshaka who, under the innovative Dingiswayo of the Mthethwa, was now a notably competent and all-ruthless general. This instrument of fate now had to come home, and bastard he be or not, come into full royal inheritance.



But that must take a murder, or two, of course. There can only be one King. The rest are plotters. Shaka's rivals bite the dust.

There is another merry question. Some dynasts do everything to sire a son, or successor. Others kill such, do everything to curtail the possibility of a rival child, son or daughter. But did Nandi and Mkabayi collude to have Tshaka father a male inheritor and ship him away to safety, whereupon, flying into a fit of rage on discovering the treachery of his own mother, the King committed matricide? Having cut the last what held him to material reality, the King now mutated into a raving, nihilist lunatic. Who else but Mkabayi would solve that? By another murder perhaps, like in Old Rome!? Tshaka had outlived his usefulness and Mkabayi was there to see he was dispatched.

Unflinchingly for the good of the nation always!

But the result was a coalition Kingship. There was going to be a civil war soon, and so some coup plotters had to go, to cool things down. Dingane soon killed Mlangana at the advice of Mkabayi and that was that. When General Mpande defeated Dingane much later in another blood-feud over power, he had no time for the Old Witch of an aunt, but he couldn't dare execute her, so he exiled her to a distant cave to spend the rest of her short days alone. She was now a very old woman. Having outlived her usefulness in turn I guess.

The counsellor, Nestor of the Tshakan empire at its peak, lived to a ripe old age in a world of low-life expectations. She was unweighed down to an early grave, neither by the marital stresses of stupid husbands and risky child-births, nor by the blowback of the intrigues of the power struggles she instigated.
Imagine she had penned her memoirs!
But no worries. Zulu poets, writers and artists have been at it for the past century, and will continue to be at it the next Millennium. She spans near a century of turbulence at the heart of power and only Tshaka, the peak, is her equal. And then Afro-feminists are yet to discover her!

Nobody with some historical imagination who hears of this remarkable women is left unbitten. Like the black desert scorpion whose sting carries a poison which, legend has it, cooks the brain, Mkabayi's life story cooks the minds of those who visit her to boiling point. And they get wings, their thoughts fly, and fly!
So sometimes I find myself wondering what a MKABAYI mind, upgraded to our times, pimped up by an Ivy-league scholarship as it were, would author as counsel for some 'bastard' President who really wanted Africa to go places.

Places like the peak!
Honestly I was thinking about an evaluation of Zigbniew Bzerzinksi (1928-2017). A Jukwaa obituary. I read some data and slept on it to let it cook in my sleep.

Earnest and ambitious, Brzezinski helped Carter bridge wide gaps between the rigid Egyptian and Israeli leaders, Anwar Sadat and Menachem Begin, leading to the Camp David accords in September 1978. Three months later, U.S.-China relations were normalized, a top priority for Brzezinski.
Born in Warsaw and educated in Canada and the United States, Brzezinski was an acknowledged expert in Communism when he attracted the attention of U.S. policymakers. In the 1960s he was an adviser to John F. Kennedy and served in the Johnson administration.
In December 1976, Carter offered Brzezinski the position of national security adviser. He had not wanted to be secretary of state because he felt he could be more effective working at Carter's side in the White House.

But what came out was MKABAYI kaJama!

Old Witch hijacked my sleeping mind! And I said, Stockholm syndrome or not –-My Lady, I am game. I will do you better than guitar wizard Luambo Makiadi did Mobutu!

so
What would she do with the Canadian conman Wily Mutunga on chapter six? Or the overpaid parasite Githu Muigai? How would she look at William Ruto who wants to be King of Kenya, but makes a living selling rotten maize to Kenyans at exorbitant rip-off rates? How would she look at Museveni with his cabinet of 80+ ministers, or the new Ghanainian prezzo with his odd 110?

How would she look at the obese youngster Joseph Kabila, lazy like the broken drunkard Mzilikazi in his lte days? the blind Nkurunziza of Burundi?

And yes, you guessed it. How would this ruthless b!tch look at Raila Odinga, with his ODM having delivered their 'win-win' nominations? in the heartland! The nominations were a competitive process in which there are no loosers!

Everybody is a winner baibe, and that's no lie –--Errol Brown, Hot Chocolate!

In my worst nightmares she looks at the Luo King with the studied earnestness which all recognise is contempt and scorn.
'There is no replacement fo you yet, King. Fidel is dead and Rosemary must rest. You are a peak, but in the past, but we bear you along as a treasured memory. A nostalgic heirloom. The bastard candidates, the Independents, are the future. One hopes Rosemary recovers her head and enters the new world, not the past which now must die with you!'

Its a new world awakening.