01/07/2026
Tumetenga & Other Poems
There are books that inform. There are books that entertain. And then there are books that demand something of you — that sit on your chest long after you have closed the final page, refusing to let you look away. Tumetenga & Other Poems: Poems on Politics and Governance in Africa is that rare third kind.
Published in 2026 by Bleeding Ink Scribes Publishers Ltd and edited by Bonface O. Okinyi, Prof Kivutha Kibwana, Prof Wangari Mwai, and Ruth Koech, this anthology brings together over 50 poets from across the African continent — Kenya, Nigeria, Tanzania, Uganda, Zimbabwe, Cameroon, and Malawi — in a collective act of literary defiance. With a foreword by the inimitable Prof. PLO Lumumba, the collection is framed as a "forest of political satire" that "traverses a wide range of subjects, from the painful and depressing to the motivating and annoying."
This is not poetry for the faint-hearted. This is poetry as witness. Poetry as survival. Poetry as weapon.
The Title: "Tumetenga" is The Grammar of Betrayal
The title poem, Bonface Otieno Okinyi's "Tumetenga" (We Have Set Aside), is the beating heart of this anthology. It exposes the hollow grammar of African political rhetoric — tumetenga (we have set aside), tumepanga (we have planned), tunaleta (we are bringing), tutajenga (we will build). As the poem's speaker observes, these are not promises but incantations: "a liturgy for the hard of hearing."
The owl that perches on the baobab, speaking without moving its beak, is not a real owl. It is "a politician wearing the hollow cloak of a nocturnal predator." The villagers nod — because "nodding is cheaper than water." This is poetry that names what we all know but have been conditioned to accept: that the foundation is a hole filled with speeches, that the plan is a mirror held to our faces, that the thing being built is "a synonym for tomorrow."
Dr. Anne Anjao's "In The Next 180 Days...180-" is a masterpiece of satirical accumulation. The speaker promises ten Olympic stadia, a bridge to rival the eighth wonder, Singaporean prosperity, Arsenal Football Club, unlimited data, gas for fifty shillings, free cars, diapers, a chapati machine, and a university — all within six months. The refrain, "Yes, the [impossible thing]," becomes increasingly absurd, culminating in the revelation that 1092 days have passed, and the speaker insists — with glorious sarcasm — that every promise has been fulfilled. The poem's final line, directed at critics, is devastating: "do not disturb our new-found happiness."
This is not mere fiction. Across Africa, from Kenya's "Bottom-Up" economic promises to Nigeria's "Next Level" slogans, voters have been fed the same script for decades. The poem captures the exhaustion of a people who have heard too many impossible promises to still believe — yet who continue to hope because the alternative is unbearable.
Wanjiku's Question
Joy Achungo's "Wanjiku, I Am Not a Thief" is a dramatic monologue from a corrupt official's assistant that deserves a place alongside the great satirical works of African literature. The speaker denies being a thief while casually cataloging the theft: the governor's fake degree from a non-existent institution, the wife's stadium contract that now grows rice, the daughter's job in Youth Affairs while sipping lattes in a Dubai penthouse, the son as Minister for Ethics, the other son as Director of Integrity.
The poem is grounded in the specifics of Kenyan corruption — the "11 million for breakfast, 1 billion for bursaries we never saw" references real scandals that have become part of the national lexicon. The assistant's protestation — "I only got a share. That doesn't make me a thief, does it?"【9 — is the voice of a system that has normalized predation. And the poem's closing line — "Power doesn't retire. It just rebrands"— is a truth so sharp it draws blood.
Scholastica Moraa's "Mama Nalongolungaba Is Dead" is perhaps the most heartbreaking poem in this section. It tells the story of a woman who dies on the way to the hospital because roads are damaged by floods and she has no car. The speaker lists all the possible culprits: the roads, her poverty, her absent husband, the breech babies, the distant hospital, striking workers, rusty equipment. But the governor had gone abroad to give birth, and the MP was on vacation in Paris. "The blame withered in our hands. We had nowhere to lay it." The final line — "Mama Nalongolungaba was dead anyway" — is devastating in its finality. This is not an abstraction. This is the lived reality of millions of Africans for whom infrastructure is not a political talking point but a matter of life and death.
The Bedbugs of Uganda. Guga MuGuga's "Ode to the Table" is an extended metaphor of breathtaking ingenuity. The bedbugs in his room are not bedbugs; they are "the bedraggled generals that president Kaguta dispatches to go and suck the senses out of Ugandans so they stay dire and groveling under the jackboots of his military dictatorship." The table itself — made from the abandoned planks of a bankrupt shopkeeper, assembled by a drunken carpenter named Bola — becomes a symbol of resistance: "It is now almost eight years I have owned the table. The table symbolizes hope and career and pride. Metaphor of the pains and cares of a poet. It objectifies the hardships of a small land-locked country in the heart of Africa. Allegory of the struggle of the people."
This is poetry as survival. In a country where dissent is criminalized and the military has ruled for decades, the poet writes on a rickety table while the generals — the bedbugs — feed on the wits of the tormented. The poem is a testament to the power of art to resist, even in the most repressive conditions.
The Black Cars. Gervaz Lushaju's "Black Cars" deconstructs the aura around presidential convoys. The tinted-window vehicles with sirens are presented as "alien ships of separation" carrying VIPs — "Very Impractical People" — who demand constant veneration and live separated from ordinary human experiences like eating in public. "Running the country is a never-ending emergency" — a critique of the permanent state of exception that characterizes authoritarian governance across Africa.
The Gen Z Rebellion. Bonface Otieno Okinyi's "What Was Your Reason, Gen Z?" is a direct address to the young protesters who took to the streets of Kenya in 2024 against the Finance Bill. The poem reminds them that their rage was not about taxes but about dignity — about being called "commoners" and "people below" by a leader who insulted vegetable vendors and boda boda riders. "Gen Z this is not poetry," the poet writes, "This is a test of your patience and courage / A test of your resilience / A test of your power to free your country from the devil himself / This is a call to finish what you started nobly."
The reference is to the June 2024 protests in Kenya, where young people poured onto the streets to reject the Finance Bill, a movement that rights groups say resulted in at least 60 deaths. Rex Kanyike Masai, 29, was shot dead along Moi Avenue. His "only mistake," as his family said, was "protesting against the government's increased taxes". The poems in this anthology refuse to let his death — and the deaths of countless others — be forgotten.
Corruption is the The Cancer That Wounds the Host.
The National Cake. Scholastica Moraa's "National Cake" captures the exhaustion of citizens who have watched the same script play out countless times. The president holds a press conference. He promises dire consequences. Top officials resign. A crime has been committed. The national cake has been stolen. "But you see, there are crumbs on the president's lips. The ministers forgot to wipe their mouths. The Members of Parliament smell like they ate the cake too."
The poem then undercuts its own specificity: "It smells like vanilla. No, scratch that. It was a lemon cake. But it doesn't matter." The flavor does not matter because the pattern is what matters. They will bake another cake, it will be stolen, and the president will hold another press conference. Again.
This is not cynicism. This is realism. A 2024 Public Service Commission survey deemed 71 per cent of 21 evaluated Kenyan institutions corrupt. One in three Kenyans pays bribes at Huduma Centres. The Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission forwarded 126 investigation files on corruption to the Director of Public Prosecutions, with a conviction rate of only 26.7 percent. The poetry mirrors the statistics — and makes them bleed.
Alfred Omwenga's "The Cancer That Wounds the Host" is a clinical diagnosis of corruption as a systemic disease. "Corruption a cancer / All over Africa / Greed as gaining / Institutions are dying / Public trust eroding."The poem targets the "ruling class" described as "the shepherd turning wolf" — a transformation so common that "the sheep no longer trust the shepherd, the wolf, or the fence". The Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission (EACC) is dismissed as "the toothless watchdog, a hungry guard dog that eats from the same bowl as the thieves" .
The poem's final line — "Turn the tide public officers" — is addressed to those who have created the very problem they are supposed to solve. The sarcasm lies in the gap between the plea and the reality: the "public officers" who are supposed to "turn the tide" are the ones swimming in the flood of corruption.
The Days of Darkness: Bonface Otieno Okinyi's "Days of Darkness" is a powerful long poem about state violence and the refusal to mourn beautifully. The poet counts the days:
"Day one: They killed a boy with a dream.
Day two: They called him a thug.
Day three: His mother washed his blood from the tarmac with her bare hands.
Day four: They arrested her for obstructing traffic.
Day five: A girl raised a flag.
Day six: They lowered her into a ditch.
Day seven: They rested— not from killing, but from watching us watch."
The poet refuses to arrange grief into something digestible: "My grief is a bone stuck in the throat of this nation. Let them choke."The poem ends with a declaration: "We shall become the darkness they fear— not the darkness of death, but the darkness of a womb before the birth of something they cannot shoot, jail, or silence."
The Abductions. Henry Mose Gikenyi's "Will I Be Safe?" is a first-person account of state abduction. The victim is blindfolded, chained, and taken to a "Central Public Slaughter House" His crime? "Rightfully tweeting about D.I.G's corruption". The haunting refrain — "Will I be safe?" — echoes throughout the poem, unanswered.
Since June 2024, at least 80 people have disappeared in Kenya, with relatives and friends suspecting the police. Victims have been abducted in unmarked vehicles with fake plates, held incommunicado, and coerced into paying bribes for their release. As one commentator put it, "When we shrug at the sight of unmarked vehicles snatching young people from the streets for participating in protests, we betray the Constitution we swore to uphold". The poems in this anthology refuse to shrug.
The Pain of Our Mothers. Zipporah Mutea's "The Pain of Our Mothers" is a raw lament for Kenya's youth massacred by state forces beginning June 25, 2024. The poem centers mothers' grief — nursing bullet-ravaged children, burying first-borns, searching for abducted sons. "They have been massacred by the guns of their country," the poet writes, "They have been killed by their brothers in helmets, boots and guns"
The poem contrasts domestic violence with battlefield death, insisting these children were killed not by enemies but by their own government. "When will this slaughter end? Who will wipe away the tears of a grieving nation?"
Frida Masika Chonga's "I Refuse to Conform" traces the psychological damage of colonial conquest. The speaker recalls a pre-colonial state of innocence: the horizon was the end of her world, love ruled, all people seemed the same. Then the colonizer came and introduced the concept of race: white as angels, black as devils. "You taught us that you were white— angels are white, as white as you are— and that we were black. The devil is black, and so are we."
The poem accuses colonialism of inventing tribalism as a tool of divide and rule — and laments that post-independence leaders have continued using it. The speaker refuses to conform to this imposed hatred, insisting that "we only have two tribes: the rich and poor" This is a call to awakening from tribalistic thinking that allows the rich to manipulate the poor and the world to reap Africa's resources.
Bonface Otieno Okinyi's "The Mouth That Ate the Fig Tree" is a masterful long poem exposing the "hustler" politician who claims to represent the poor while building a church where angels have his face. "They came with oil and a borrowed donkey," the poem begins, "yelling hustler, hustler, the bottom rises."
The poem critiques religious hypocrisy, state abduction ("white van with no numbers"), and the rebranding of power. The boy who stands up from the dump of Kibera asks: "Why does the prayer of the poor smell of tear gas? Why does the bread of the hungry have a serial number? Why is the jail now called affordable housing?"
The poem's final prophecy is a powerful reversal of campaign rhetoric: "The bottom is not rising. The bottom is learning to walk."
Emmanuel Masaka's "The Shadow of Gondwanaland" uses the ancient supercontinent as a metaphor for Africa's potential for economic self-reliance. The "king" (elite) throws bones to the "shadow" (the people). Eventually, the shadow demands tools and skills instead of leftovers — "Give us now the hoe and skills / Then, we produce our own food."The poem offers a rare hopeful resolution: when the shadow produces its own food, king and shadow share the table. "Success is our choice."
Nyagemi Nyamwaro Mabukah's "Chozi la Muuza Sanda!" (Tears of a Coffin Seller!) is a satirical Swahili poem exposing hypocritical mourning. The poet asks: How can a coffin seller's tears be genuine? When a milk seller gets a customer, he laughs — why should a coffin seller weep? "It's a joyful cry—he's found a customer!" The carpenter of caskets toils away — "his main goal is to sell. He deeply desires death for the sake of a buyer to rest."
The poem is a powerful metaphor for those who profit from tragedy while feigning grief — whether they are politicians exploiting national mourning or leaders who benefit from the deaths of citizens they claim to love.
This anthology is published at a moment of profound crisis and possibility across Africa. In Kenya, the Gen Z protests of 2024 and 2025 have fundamentally altered the political landscape. Young people have discovered their power — and the state has responded with bullets, abductions, and digital surveillance.
In Sudan, the Janjaweed militias — now rebranded as the Rapid Support Forces under Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo (Hemeti) — continue their campaign of genocide in Darfur. The International Criminal Court has documented "mass murders, r**e as a weapon of war, systematic destruction of villages". Tony Mochama's "Janja W**d" gives voice to the victims who have been rendered "uncountable hanging chads" — lives left uncounted, hanging in a state of indeterminacy between life and death.
In Zimbabwe, war veterans cry foul as the liberation struggle is betrayed. As Tendai Biti has argued, the ruling party has been "reduced to a commodity" where political influence is bought and sold. Takunda Chinyonga's "We Live Where the Flag Forgot to Listen" captures this betrayal: "Where freedom was a song / sung in 1980— / then swallowed / by silence."
In Nigeria, the ghosts of Ken Saro-Wiwa and the Ogoni Nine still haunt the Niger Delta. Gitonga James's "Rebirth" invokes Saro-Wiwa's name three times from "the damn grave" and declares: "Africa killed her sun, but a son is born".
This anthology matters because it does what statistics cannot. A report on corruption can be ignored. A single line — "11 million for breakfast, 1 billion for bursaries we never saw" — cannot. Statistics tell us how many died. Poetry tells us who they were, what they dreamed, what their mothers whispered at their graves.
This anthology matters because it memorializes. The state wants us to forget. The state wants abductions to remain unmarked, corpses to remain unidentified, crimes to remain unprosecuted. Poetry is a form of remembering. It says: I was there. I saw. I will not let you be erased.
This anthology matters because it mobilizes. As the editors write in the introduction, "The poets in this collection do not pretend to have easy answers. But they offer something perhaps more valuable: the courage to ask the questions, the clarity to see the answers, and the artistry to make us feel them."
This anthology matters because it heals. The poets write not only to expose but to survive. As Gloria Nekesa Sifuna writes: "The dreamer still lives. Buried under heartbreak. Breathing beneath the weight. Whispering, not gone."
This anthology should be read not only by Africans but by everyone who cares about the future of democracy, justice, and human dignity. It speaks to universal questions: How do we hold power accountable when the courts are corrupt? How do we resist when protest is criminalized? How do we hope when hope has been weaponized against us?
These are not African questions. They are human questions. The poets in this collection remind us that the personal is political, and the political is personal. That a tax is not an abstraction but the difference between school fees and no school fees, between medicine and no medicine, between hope and despair.
As Prof. PLO Lumumba writes in the foreword: "If Africa was waiting for an anthology to speak to her politics and governance, this is it."
"And somewhere, in a village with no name, a child draws an owl on a wall. Below it, in crayon, she draws an ugly beast. The owl sees the drawing. It does not laugh. It does not hoot. For the first time in its political eternity, it has nothing to say."
This is the moment the anthology points toward: the moment when the owl — the politician, the slogan, the lie — has nothing to say. The moment when the people, having drawn their own truths, no longer need to listen.
The editors conclude: "The bottom is not rising. The bottom is learning to walk." This is not naive optimism. This is a stubborn, defiant hope that refuses to be extinguished.
Tumetenga & Other Poems is a mirror. It reflects what we already know but have been afraid to say. It is a weapon. It is a prayer. It is a warning. And it is, above all, an act of love — for a continent that has suffered too much and still refuses to give up.
Read it. Share it. Let it disturb your sleep, trouble your conscience, and remind you that you are part of something larger than yourself.
The justice is just beginning.
Beat the drum.
Tumetenga & Other Poems: Poems on Politics and Governance in Africa is published by Bleeding Ink Scribes Publishers Ltd (2026). Edited by Bonface O. Okinyi, Kivutha Kibwana, Wangari Mwai, and Ruth Koech. Foreword by Prof. PLO Lumumba.
