Muthoni Thangwa

Tag: politics

  • The Evolution of Global Beauty Standards: Privilege, Power, Pageants and clarity of thought.

    The Miss Universe competition! In an era where women have made significant strides across science, politics, business, and culture, it remains surprising that a global pageant continues to frame female achievement through physical display.

    The contestants are asked to articulate their views and demonstrate intellect; however, the underlying structure still relies on spectacle, and women are primarily presented, judged, and ranked through their appearance.

    While global perceptions of beauty have undeniably broadened, moving beyond the narrow, porcelain-doll ideal to embrace deeply melaninated and diverse forms of beauty, long-standing stereotypes continue to exert a powerful gravitational pull. They draw women back into a pageant format still rooted in historical notions of worth, visibility, and external validation.

    In 2025, the controversy deepened when reports emerged of an incident involving the pageant’s organiser and Miss Mexico, during which he allegedly directed verbal abuse at the contestant. According to multiple accounts, the exchange prompted Miss Mexico to withdraw from the competition, a decision that drew widespread public attention and raised serious questions about the culture within the pageant’s leadership.

    The incident also revived long-standing allegations and rumours surrounding the organiser, including claims related to trafficking that have circulated in the media and public discourse over the years. Complicating the narrative further were public interpretations that Miss Mexico’s stance reflected a certain advantage: the mental acuity, access to information, and the courage required to speak the truth.

    While such readings remain interpretive rather than verifiable, they raise an important point: a woman’s capacity to dissent within highly regulated global platforms is shaped less by status and more by clarity of thought, awareness, and moral resolve.

    Seen in context, the incident involving Miss Mexico is not an isolated failure of individual conduct, but a reflection of the deeper architecture of beauty pageants themselves. The Miss Universe competition was founded in 1952, a time when business and media profited by exploiting women as visual entertainment. Femininity was marketed, packaged and sold in advertising and for male approval.

    At its inception, the pageant positioned women as representatives of national pride while subjecting them psychologically to private systems of control, contractual obedience, and hierarchical judgment.

    The system reminds me of the unmistakable imprint of inherited bigotry. Groups that were once subjected to discrimination and forced labour as commoners in Europe carried those same hierarchical logics into other continents, recreating serf-like systems in Africa, Australia, and the Americas. In this context, invoking white privilege as a conscious justification for bigotry reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of the term itself, which was intended to describe unconscious, structural advantage, very similar to the setting up of pageants.

    Though the competition has since incorporated the language of empowerment, advocacy, and intellect, its foundational logic remains largely intact; women are still curated, disciplined, and evaluated within a framework that privileges appearance and compliance. Like colonisation and slavery, a great deal has changed in words, but the fundamental systems remain the same.

    Many contestants enter with clear intentions: visibility, scholarships, career access, or a platform for causes they care deeply about. In a world that continues to reward women’s bodies more readily than their labour, pageants can appear as pragmatic, if imperfect, avenues to opportunity. Yet individual agency operates within structural limits. When advancement is tethered to appearance, obedience, and silence in the face of misconduct, choice becomes constrained.

    Controversy did not end there. During one of the live segments, another contestant; Ms. Jamaica, Dr. Gabrielle Henry, suffered a visible fall while walking on stage. The moment, captured and circulated widely online, raised concerns about stage safety, production standards, and the pressures placed on contestants to perform flawlessly under physically demanding conditions. This served as a stark reminder of the risks embedded in a spectacle that prioritises visual perfection and pace over the well-being of the women participating in it.

    The question, then, is not simply why women still participate in pageants, but under what conditions that participation occurs. Agency and coercion are not opposites; they often coexist. Many contestants enter willingly, fully aware of the compromises involved, because the alternatives offered to women, particularly those from less-resourced backgrounds, are limited. Visibility, mobility, and access remain unevenly distributed, and pageants continue to promise a shortcut through those barriers. When a system rewards compliance, aesthetic conformity, and silence while penalising dissent, participation can no longer be read as pure choice. It is a negotiation shaped by power, scarcity, and the enduring expectation that women must adapt themselves to flawed institutions to be seen.

    The question, then, facing pageants like Miss Universe is no longer how they can be restructured, but whether they remain relevant at all. A world that has learned to value women’s leadership, creativity, labour, and intellect does not need a staged hierarchy of bodies to validate female worth.

    Platforms for visibility now exist, which do not require women to submit to spectacle or silence in exchange for opportunity. When an institution must repeatedly rebrand itself to mask its original logic, perhaps the most honest response is to acknowledge that beauty pageants, as they are currently structured, have reached the end of their cultural usefulness.

  • Beyond coloured paper: African Leaders are Breaking Old Chains

    A new chapter in post-colonial history – Africa is challenging colonial economies

    Africa continues to navigate a contradictory and often very conflicted post-colonial landscape. Decades after independence, the continent still finds itself entangled in structures and systems that echo colonial control.

    There is a need to decolonise most of our inherited systems, from our economies to heritage institutions, our belief systems to our ways of worship. Africa’s economies are shaped by external interests, our heritage institutions curated through borrowed lenses, and even our belief systems and ways of worship reconfigured to mirror worlds not our own.

    The result is a profound disorientation. So many distortions of history exist that many Africans can no longer tell what the true African story is. Our past has been fragmented, rewritten, and often silenced, leaving us with borrowed narratives that fail to capture who we are.

    I was first introduced to the uncomfortable but necessary idea that charities in Africa often perpetuate poverty rhetoric and reinforce dependency on the West through the powerful words of Mallence Bart-Williams. She reminded us that the story of Africa is not simply one of need and lack, but of abundance, resilience, and agency. Yet, for as long as we accept externally imposed definitions of who we are, we risk being trapped in cycles of dependency, distortion and extortion.

    The first time I listened to a TED Talk by Mallence Bart-Williams, I was overwhelmed by conflicting emotions—anger, frustration, even a trace of ridicule. It was difficult to tell which feeling outweighed the others.

    On that podcast, Mallence begins by proudly declaring that she comes from the most beautiful continent in the world, and on this point, I agree with her, fully and without hesitation. She is from Sierra Leone, a country endowed with fertile lands that produce coffee, cocoa, fruits, and vegetables, alongside exquisite timber such as mahogany and teak.

    Sierra Leone, like many other African countries, is also rich in natural resources: gold, diamonds, petroleum reserves, and over 20 other precious minerals. It holds the largest iron ore deposits in Africa, and the third-largest in the world. These resources are not just statistics; they are the very backbone of global industry and modern living. The West depends on Africa’s wealth to power aeroplanes, manufacture cell phones and computers, and adorn itself with the symbols of status and power – gold and diamonds.

    She asks the multi-million-dollar question: Why is it that African currencies are worth only a fraction of Western currencies, when it is Africa that holds the gold reserves?

    The dependency is not what we have been told. Africa does not depend on the West: the West depends on Africa. This imbalance is maintained by destabilizing Africa’s richest nations and masking the truth through massive PR campaigns. These campaigns, often fronted by so-called charitable organisations, push the narrative that Africans are starving and dying, at war with each other and helplessly in need of saving.

    Meanwhile, Africa continues to exchange her vast resources, gold, diamonds, and more, for coloured paper. But what if Africa sold her resources at true world market prices, in a market where the producer sets the rules, as is customary in world markets? What would happen to Western economies that have been built on a post-colonial system that is deeply anchored in ne0-colonialism?

    To reclaim Africa’s story, the continent must be intentional about unlearning what it has been fed and relearning our histories from within. This means amplifying African voices, interrogating the ways our institutions are structured, and critically re-examining the frameworks: economic, cultural, and spiritual, that govern our daily lives.

    A new brand of leadership in West African countries has started re-writing the African narrative. In 2023, Burkina Faso, under President Ibrahim Traoré, terminated its military agreement with France and demanded the withdrawal of French troops, asserting sovereignty in both defense and monetary affairs. Shortly after, Niger’s military government ordered French forces to leave, including those guarding strategic uranium mines that have long fueled France’s nuclear energy industry while contributing little to Niger’s own development. Chad, too, announced in 2024 that it would not renew defense accords that kept French troops stationed on its soil.

    Many other West African nations have begun taking strong stands against lingering colonial economic ties to France. Under the CFA Franc system, 14 countries have been required to deposit a large share of their foreign reserves into French-controlled accounts, in colonial debt repayment systems that defy all logic, effectively subsidising French economic stability.

    There are those who will argue that these events: the withdrawal of French troops, the rejection of colonial debt arrangements, and the pushback against the CFA franc, are not directly related to France’s current economic woes. But the fact remains: time is re-writing the African narrative. A new generation of leaders is emerging, unafraid to confront the old order and determined to reclaim sovereignty over their nations’ resources, economies, and identities. Their interventions mark not just a political shift, but a historical turning point for Africa. This is starting to look like decolonization.

  • Who Owns the City Centre?: Restoring Safety in the Heart of Nairobi

    Reclaiming security for the city

    There was a time when I recall Nairobi’s city centre feeling truly safe. Kenyans went about their business with the usual wariness that comes with any big city. The public operated relatively freely, accepting minor risks as part of the urban vibe and drill of life.

    That uneasy balance has now been dramatically altered by reports of gangs of youth and street families taking over the streets, even in broad daylight. In just the past week, several Kenyans have shared disturbing accounts of robberies in the Nairobi Central Business District, some brazenly carried out in broad daylight, particularly over the weekends. Knife-wielding goons and teenage gangs carrying human waste are now threatening the peace of commuters, shoppers, and visitors alike.

    What was once background noise in the city’s rhythm has become a loud warning alarm. A secure city is measured by how well it protects its people. Nairobi is rapidly losing its standard, and it is doing so quickly. Building security and freedom for city users takes a long time, but that confidence can be eroded in a few incidents.

    One of the biggest disadvantages of insecurity in the city for me is the constant fear it creates every time one has an errand to run. Walking around clutching your bag, often having to empty it to a bare minimum, is a stress-filled experience. A standard woman’s bag has many things that may never be used, but on the day one leaves them behind is the day we need them.

    The consequences are wide-reaching. Residents live with constant anxiety and they restrict their movement. Businesses lose customers as people avoid certain streets or those businesses close early for safety. Tourists and investors, already cautious, will start to see Nairobi as high-risk, damaging both the economy and the city’s reputation and image.

    One of the hallmarks of a great city is its ability to protect people; when that is lost, everything else, commerce, culture, and community, begins to crumble. Sadly, Nairobi is sliding down this path, losing ground on safety faster than many had expected. Fear is once again shaping how people use the city.

    The big question now is, does urban safety always have to be a balance between human protection and public order? In the last few years, Nairobi’s streets have been overflowing with hawkers and their merchandise, leaving pedestrians with little space to navigate their activities including walking. The streets were markets for fruits and vegetables, cloths and even electronics, that often blocked entrances to city building or made their access quite troublesome.

    These street markets made movement difficult and inconvenienced motorists as pedestrians traffic spill into city roads as shoppers tried to negotiate their way on the busy pavements. Thought the subtle danger of pickpockets lingered, the human population formed a protective shield against any real danger.

    City authorities have eventually pushed the hawkers back into designated city back streets, restoring order and flow of human traffic and motorists in the central business district. But now, in the absence of hawkers, criminal gangs are moving in to fill the vacuum. The question is stark: must Nairobi choose between disorderly but relatively harmless hawkers or gangs that openly threaten the safety of everyone who passes through the city center?

    Nairobi cannot afford to gamble with the safety of its people. A city that fails to protect its residents and visitors loses more than its reputation; it risks losing the very things that make it a living, functioning city: its people, its businesses, its culture, and its energy.

    The warning signs are already clear on our streets. Unless decisive action is taken to reclaim the city centre, insecurity will continue to spread, eroding public trust and driving both business and visitors away. The choice is simple: restore security now, or watch Nairobi’s heart collapse under the weight of fear.

    Reclaiming Nairobi’s security will require more than public outcry, it demands action. The city must increase visible policing, dismantle criminal gangs, and invest in better lighting and surveillance. At the same time, authorities need to work with each other, the policy and the county government, businesses and even hawkers to restore order while pushing the criminals into the shadows where crime thrives. Unless Nairobi confronts both the criminals on its streets and the weaknesses within its policing, the city centre will remain a place of fear rather than a hub of commerce and community.

  • She Spoke German without History

    She thought there are Africans who look upon colonisation with nostalgia!

    I thought I had heard it all—until, in 2024! We were in Germany as part of the MuseumLab programme, a curated platform that brings together African and European heritage practitioners for dialogue, collaboration, and critique on museums and the heritage sector in both continents. 

    During one session, a young African woman spoke proudly of her German heritage. That made me physically wince. However, what followed cut even deeper: she stated that some people in Cameroon recall the German colonial period with nostalgia. The room stiffened with various reactions. Some looked at the floor; others started searching in their bags, as if for lost treasure, while a number stood and headed for the coffee table. The discomfort was palpable. Her words bruised my spirit, as if I had lived through that colonial experience myself. I looked at her for the first time – looked at her.

    Many wild thoughts were running through my mind, scrambling around like restless feet on a tin roof. But one kept rising above the noise: I wanted to lock this African somewhere, to isolate her, but to give her light, sunshine, until she could think again. It wasn’t disdain. It was heartbreak. Because what she had just said was not an opinion, it was evidence of brainwashing. Evidence of historical amnesia, of how colonisation not only stole land and bodies but rewrote memory itself.

    It was a painful reminder of how deeply manufactured memoryhas burrowed into our consciousness, convincing some among us that the oppressor brought order, when in fact he brought rupture. Romanticizing colonization is not just a travesty, a betrayal of historyandancestors, it is also forgetting oneself, in the quest to be like ‘those others’. It speaks to the danger of a people who no longer recognise the chains that still shackle Africa culturally, economically and socially. Such people have trained their minds to call the chains bracelets.

    The speaker came to Germany as a child. It was clear that the country doesn’t teach any African history. Fair enough – until recently, the history that was taught in Kenyan schools was often stripped of its messiness and violence. Children were told of explorers who ‘discovered’ mountains and rivers that Kenyan communities had interacted with for millennia.  But here, the silence felt heavier.

    I wondered what takes root in a historical vacuum? How do people, like that speaker, Africans raised in Europe, without the tools to interrogate or process historical facts presented through the lens of someone else?. People who speak with certainty, but from a place of omission. Her nostalgia for German colonization didn’t seem rooted in malice. It sounded almost pitiful, like it came from an emptiness, an absence where something vital should have been.

    As she spoke, I watched the room. No one said a word. Not the Germans, not the Africans. There was no applause, no challenge, only a silence so heavy it felt complicit. This was the saddest part. Because silence, in moments like this, is not neutrality – it is endorsement. The presenter, who had spoken of cassettes as if they were some prehistoric discovery, may have walked away thinking she had delivered a successful talk. She may have believed she had represented the African voice with clarity. But the truth was quieter, and more haunting: the Africans in the room decided not to engage. She had gone too far, too far from truth, too far from self, for any meaningful recourse. And we, out of weariness or protection, chose not to waste precious hours trying to bring her back.

    We were visiting African heritage practitioners; she was going to remain in Germany. We could not save her, and we knew it. Her mind had already been claimed by another story, one we could not rewrite in a single afternoon. So we chose to save ourselves. The irony is that even the Germans remained silent. The organisers had probably anticipated a spirited resistance, at least some reaction. As for the Germans, I’m still not sure what was expected of them. And I’ve always wondered what, if anything, was said among them once the event ended. If silence held any discomfort. Or if it, too, was just routine.

    Colonialism does not simply vanish over time – it mutates, hides in school curricula, reappears in street names, and sometimes, finds voice in those it once oppressed. What happened in that room was not a debate about historical nuance; it was the echo of a violent erasure. And when we fail to teach African children their own histories, whether in Europe or in Africa, we raise generations fluent in the language of their colonisers, but illiterate in the truths of their nations and people.

  • Larry—This Is Not Your Battle Alone: Language, Power, and the African Voice!

    Mocking an African Presidents fluency in English is not a joke

    I came across a clip on social media of Kenyan journalist Larry Madowo, visibly puzzled that Donald Trump seemed surprised by President Joseph Boakai of Liberia speaking fluent English. Larry’s tone was dismissive—as if the real problem was Trump’s ignorance. But no, Trump doesn’t have a problem, in this linguistic instance. We all should be surprised when an African speaks good English—and nothing more. That surprise is not stupidity. It is a symptom of a world still held together by the logic of empire and linguistic imperialism.

    Let’s talk about Liberia for context. A country on the West African coast, often ranked among the poorest in the world by UN metrics. But these rankings—like speaking English, or writing in English, or being praised for fluency in the languages of any of the former colonisers—are scaffolds of neo-colonialism. They uphold a global order that rewards proximity to whiteness while erasing the trauma and knowledge systems of those whose ancestors lie at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean.

    Ironically, Liberia is often described as one of the two African countries that was never colonised. But that’s a half-truth dressed as liberation. Liberia was founded by freed African-American slaves—yes—but their freedom came at the cost of indigenous African land. The settlers, supported by the American Colonization Society, arrived with a mandate that mirrored every colonial project before and after: claim, govern, dominate.

    The result was a deeply fractured society—one where the Americo-Liberians attempted to rule over the indigenous people with the same racialised hierarchies they had escaped in the United States. Years of civil war followed, as if history itself refused to remain buried. The juxtaposition is uncomfortable but necessary: a people returned “home” only to recreate a system of exclusion. It is not unlike the founding of Israel—where memory, displacement, and land ownership collided violently. The cost of this “return” was paid, once again, by those who never left – those who were ‘lucky’ enough not to be captured by the slaver traders.

    The deeper question, perhaps, is this: Was Larry surprised that President Trump was surprised that an African American descendant could still speak English? or that they couldn’t speak anything else? If the enslaved lost their ancestral languages in the hold of slave ships, isn’t it remarkable that their descendants—those who returned to rule Liberia— did not lose their English prowess on the returned ship and instead continue to excel in the language of the captor? That surprises me too! Is English then, the language of eternity?

    And here Liberia’s identity crisis deepens, much like the linguistic and cultural trauma many colonized nations inherited and have refused to address. You cannot build a lasting peace on cultural vessels that are fundamentally in conflict. A nation that speaks the language of its trauma but has forgotten the language of its healing cannot be whole. The wounds are not just political or economic—they are linguistic, spiritual, and ancestral. Liberia’s unrest may not only be about war, poverty, or corruption. It may also be about what happens when a people cannot remember who they were before the world renamed them.

    President Boakai may feel offended and trampled on. But Presidents Trump’s condescension is not new—it’s a signature trait. He has routinely belittled leaders from countries he deems weak or chaotic. His treatment of Liberia’s President is not unlike his earlier treatment of Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky. The difference lies in what he chooses to attack. With Zelensky, it was his clothing—Trump mocked his lack of a suit, reducing a wartime leader to a fashion critique. But with Boakai, the target was far more insidious: language.

    Mocking an African president’s fluency in English is not a joke—it’s cultural assault. It reinforces the idea that African legitimacy must be earned through mimicry of the coloniser’s tongue. It’s a form of violence wrapped in surprise. It says: “You can only be taken seriously if you speak our language.” That is not just ignorance—it is the empire rearing its ugly head.

    So let me take a step back and speak directly to Larry. I understand the impulse—to defend, to correct, to be outraged on behalf of a fellow African leader. But we must be careful where we place our grief. I try, in my work and in my life, to draw an unsentimental line between language, memory, and identity—and the deep dissonance that arises when those threads are severed or replaced. Because weeh! this is a trigger for many Africans, especially those of us who have moved through international cultural spaces and felt the quiet violence of exclusion.

    I am associated with the International Council of Museums (ICOM), an organisation that claims to be global. Yet its official languages are English, French, and Spanish—European, all of them. Every attempt to introduce a language from outside that small colonial circle is met with the same excuse: budgets. The subtext is clearer than they admit—African and Asian linguistic blocs don’t pay enough in membership fees to matter. Never mind that French-speaking countries don’t have the numbers to contribute much either; the organisation is hosted in France, and so the language remains sacred.

    Meanwhile, the United Nations is hosted in Nairobi, yet Swahili is not required—or even respected—as a working language. The irony burns. Japanese, Arabic, Chinese, Russian, and yes, Swahili are among the most widely spoken languages in the world today. But it is only Africans who must show up dressed in borrowed tongues, with accents to match. Other cultures speak boldly in their own languages—what you understand is your business. Africans have made little attempt to use their own languages – with few exceptions – thank you Ngugi  – linguistic interference is frowned upon, often ridiculed, as if our native tongues are a threat to international decorum. Now it turns out even fluency is ridiculed. And with that, the final nail is driven into the coffin of cultural liberty.

    Larry, I feel your frustration. But I wonder if your grief is really about that single awkward moment between two presidents—men you do not know, and who have little bearing on your life. Or is it something deeper, shaped by your own long dance with linguistic performance in elite Western spaces like CNN?

    Maybe what we are witnessing is a mirror! A mirror of the uncomfortable truth many of us carry in global spaces. The weight of exclusion, the nuances of discrimination that do not scream, but which persists. And the impossible decision—to step away entirely, or remain in the room, bruised, limping, but still showing up! It’s tough Larry – but then again so is survival!