MURDER, POLITICS, AND THE END OF THE JAZZ AGE
by Michael Wolraich
Well illustrated with past photos and video, by Jina Moore @ NYTimes.com, March 14
NAIROBI, Kenya — With their meeting last week, Kenya’s political archrivals have been hailed for calming ethnic tensions in East Africa’s most vibrant democracy and ending a monthslong stalemate that had brought the region’s biggest economy to a near halt.
But Benna Buluma, 48, just feels that she has been left further behind.
Her son Victor Okoth was killed by the police the day after Kenya’s presidential election in August — a vote whose contested result pushed the country to the brink of a democratic crisis and set off protests and violence that human rights groups said led to roughly 70 deaths at the hands of the police.
“This new marriage between the two men is not in good faith,” said Ms. Buluma, speaking of the rapprochement between President Uhuru Kenyatta and his longtime rival Raila Odinga, who met on Friday for the first time in more than half a year.
“It keeps the wound in my heart alive,” she said [.....]