Detour to Justice: The curious case of Trayvon Martin.

On Sunday 26^th November 2012, the biggest stars in American basketball met at the Amway Centre in Orlando, Florida, for the 61^st edition of the NBA All Star game. It was the first time since 2004 that an all star game was being played in the East Coast of the United States and the first time since 1992 that the state of Florida was playing host, so excitement among the local population was high.

Among those looking forward to the game was 17-year-old Trayvon Martin, who was spending time with his father and his father’s fiancée at the Retreat at Twin Lakes residential area of Sanford, twenty miles north of Orlando. A junior high school student in the Miami Dade district of South Florida, Trayvon had been suspended from school a few days earlier, and his father was keeping an eye on him.

Trayvon Martin

Approximately one hour before the game, which was scheduled to tip off at 7:30pm EST, Trayvon left the house, apparently to purchase a can of iced tea and a packet of skittles at a nearby convenience store and get back in time for the tip-off.

Right about the same time, George Zimmerman was driving along the Retreat at Twin Lakes streets on a personal errand. A long time citizen law enforcer and captain of the neighbourhood watch service, the 29-year old insurance underwriter carried a loaded Kel Tec .9mm semi-automatic handgun.

George Zimmerman

At precisely 7:00pm, the black teenager and the white Hispanic-American man crossed paths for the first time.

Thirty minutes later, as Andrew Bynum and Dwight Howard braced to tip off the All-Star game at the Amway Centre, Trayvon Martin lay face down a hundred yards from his father’s fiancée’s condo.

Lodged in his lifeless heart was a bullet from Zimmerman’s gun.

An unnecessary fatality: The ignonimous injustice of a death

When Trayvon did not come home by the early hours of 27^th February, his worried father, Tracy Martin, called police to report him missing.

At around 8am, police officers from the Sanford Police Department arrived at his fiancée’s house with pictures of a young man who had been shot dead in the area the previous evening. The young man had been booked in the local hospital morgue as ‘John Doe’ as he had not been carrying identification at the time he was shot.

The pictures were those of Trayvon, eyes rolled back and mouth wide open in death.

The devastated father then asked about the circumstances of his son’s death, and learnt that the police were not only aware of the circumstances in detail, but also knew and had apprehended the killer, who had confessed to the killing. 

The news was welcome relief, albeit extremely scant relief, to Tracy Martin.

 But this relief lasted only until the police told him that due to some absurd Florida law which governs the use of lethal force in circumstances such as the one which resulted in his son’s death, the killer could not be charged with the killing.

The letter of the law: Stand Your Ground

The law cited by the Sanford Police Department to justify their failure to seek Zimmerman’s prosecution was a 2011 Florida Statute (Chapter 776) on Justifiable Use of Force, modelled on the so-called ‘Stand Your Ground’ doctrine. In interpreting the law with regards to the fatal altercation between Trayvon Martin and George Zimmerman, the police specifically leaned on three sections of the law:

• Section 776.012(1) which states: ‘’...a person is justified in the use of deadly force and does not have a duty to retreat if...he or she reasonably believes that such force is necessary to prevent imminent death or great bodily harm to himself or herself or another or to prevent the imminent commission of a      forcible felony.’’
• Section 776.013(3) which states: ‘’ A person who is not engaged in an unlawful activity and who is attacked in any other place where he or she has a right to be has no duty to retreat and has the right to stand his or her ground and meet force with force, including deadly force if he or she reasonably believes it is necessary to do so to prevent death or great bodily harm to himself or herself or another or to prevent the commission of a forcible felony,’’ and
• Section 776.032(1) which states: ‘’A person who uses force as permitted in s. 776.012, s. 776.013...is justified in using such force and is immune from criminal prosecution and civil action for the use of such force.’’

The police told Tracy Martin that Trayvon had approached Zimmerman twice. First, he walked up to Zimmerman’s vehicle and asked why he was following him, and Zimmerman denied following him. Trayvon then walked away and Zimmerman got out of his vehicle, only for Trayvon to approach him again from behind a building and ask, “What’s your problem, homie?” Zimmerman said he did not have a problem, and Trayvon attacked him. The altercation escalated, and being in reasonable fear of his life, Zimmerman shot and killed Trayvon in self defence.

Tracy Martin was told that this account of events as told by Zimmerman was believable, and that since the police had not received any evidence to contradict Zimmerman’s account that he was acting in self defence, Florida law protected him for being prosecuted for the crime of killing Trayvon.

In simple terms, what the police were telling Tracy Martin was that the man who had killed his son was going to walk free, not only with the full knowledge, but also the full approval of the state justice system.

Profiles of a homicide: A matter of race?

Few things can match the sheer terror a parent goes through when he or she is unable to ascertain the whereabouts of their child. Establishing that a missing child was involved in a fatal altercation with a firearm-wielding vigilante most certainly ranks in the higher echelons among stuff that parental nightmares would be made of.

Tracy Martin and Sybrina Fulton, Trayvon’s mother, took these body blows and endured.

Tracy Martin and Sybrina Fulton

But to be told that their innocent unarmed son’s unprovoked killing by an armed, semi-trained law enforcement volunteer would go unpunished was beyond what Tracy Martin and Seybrinah Fulton’s broken souls were able to take. That George Zimmerman would not even get to stand in front of a judge, and that this failure to account for his heinous action was perfectly legal, was too bitter a pill for the divorced couple to swallow.

Two things were immediately apparent to them. One, George Zimmerman would not have taken the extreme steps he took had Trayvon been white. And two, they were absolutely certain that the Sanford Police Department would have arrested Zimmerman and sought his prosecution in court had (a) Trayvon been white or (b) Zimmerman been black. Tracy Martin and Sybrina Fulton were convinced that their son had been the victim of racial profiling, and that this had led to his death. 

Crudely put, Trayvon had been killed because he was black, and Zimmerman was going to escape prosecution because he was a white man accused of killing a black man.

So with a burning sense of injustice, the couple retained the services of a lawyer to pursue justice for their son.   

Self-Defence of the indefensible: Police on the spotlight

The lawyer Trayvon’s parents engaged was Benjamin Crump, a wrongful death, malpractice and civil rights attorney based in Tallahassee, Florida. Crump is most famous for his role in the 2006 Martin Anderson Case, where his litigation of the death of a 14-year-old black delinquent at a state-run boot camp led to a near-total overhaul of the state’s juvenile delinquency correctional practice.

Benjamin Crump

When Crump was first given the basics of Trayvon’s case, he was certain it was an open-and-shut case with the police. ‘’A civilian law enforcement volunteer with a gun shoots an unarmed teenager?’’ He asked.  ‘’He will be behind bars by the end of today. Just wait and see.’’

Only it didn’t happen that way, and when three days later the police had still done nothing, Crump decided it was time to yank the authorities’ chains until he got them to act.

He immediately set about collecting the facts of Trayvon’s case, and it didn’t take long for a very disturbing picture to emerge from myriad aspects of the police investigation, most of which either flew in the face of logic, or outright did not make sense. The most glaring of these aspects included:

• Trayvon was booked at the morgue as a ‘John Doe’, a term used to refer to unidentified dead bodies placed in a morgue; yet he was killed less than a hundred yards from his home, and officers at the scene of his shooting did not make any efforts to establish his identity by asking neighbors and witnesses if they recognized him.
• The initial police report on Trayvon's death, completed at 3:07 a.m. on Feb. 27, listed his full name, city of birth, address and phone number, yet Tracy Martin was not notified of his son's death until after he reported him missing the next morning.
• According to what Zimmerman told officers at the scene of the crime, Trayvon felled him with a single blow to the face, jumped on him and started banging his head against the ground, forcing him to reach for his gun and shoot him at point-blank range. However, a closed circuit camera picture of Zimmerman entering the Sanford Police Station approximately 37 minutes after the shooting did not show any noticeable marks or bruises on him to indicate that he had suffered sufficient injury to warrant retaliation by lethal force.
• When Zimmerman was taken to the police station, no drug or alcohol screen was carried out on him, despite such tests being standard procedure for all possible homicide investigations.
•  Police also took Zimmerman at his word when he claimed that he had a ‘squeaky clean’ criminal record, and didn’t run a background check on him even after it later emerged that he was once arrested in 2005 on charges of resisting arrest with violence and battery on a law enforcement officer when interfering with the arrest of a friend.
• After he questioned Zimmerman regarding Trayvon’s killing, the lead homicide investigator on the case, Chris Serino, recommended charging him with manslaughter. Serino even filed an affidavit saying he was unconvinced by Zimmerman's account, but the state attorney’s office told him there was not enough evidence to secure a conviction and directed that Zimmerman be released.

All this convinced Crump that the Sanford Police Department and the State Attorney’s Office had already decided that Zimmerman was justified in killing Trayvon Martin, and would not actively pursue any other leads, no matter how credible, that indicated otherwise.

The police however strenuously refuted these accusations, and insisted that they were standing by their actions in the investigation of Trayvon’s killing.

The lull before the storm

Next, Crump got together with a number of activists, including renowned civil rights activist Al Sharpton, and sought audience with the state attorney to urge a review of the case.

Al Sharpton

In the meantime, Velma Williams, a black commissioner with the Sanford City Commission, met and attempted to warn Sanford Police Department Chief Bill Lee of the possible consequences of inaction. ‘’Bill, there is a train coming towards you at 75 miles an hour.’’ She allegedly told the Sanford Police head during their meeting. ‘’Get in and engage the brakes before it hurtles out of control.’’

Bill Lee

Both Wolfinger and Lee promised that the matter would be exhaustively reviewed and necessary action taken, but forty-eight hours later, as Trayvon’s corpse began the seventh day of its eternal repose beneath the cold, hard soil of a Miami cemetery, Zimmerman remained a free man.

It was time, Crump decided, to up the ante.

A ray, a beam, and then came the floodlights.

With literally the biggest NBA stars in town, a black teenager’s killing getting extensive coverage in the local news would have been odd.

 It was therefore not in the least bit surprising that on the night of Trayvon’s shooting, all media outlets dedicated their prime slots to analyses of the All-Star game and the 151-149 Western Conference victory over the Eastern Conference. Trayvon’s shooting only got a few mentions in the local radio stations that night, and a short article in the next day’s Orlando Sentinel, Florida’s leading daily.

But with Benjamin Crump in the picture, this apathy was about to be transformed.

Being practically Florida’s best known black attorney, Crump had over the years developed an extensive network of contacts within both local and national media. He sat down with his team and formulated a media strategy, and then set about calling these contacts.

Initially, the news circulated exclusively within Florida. Then a few outlets in neighbouring Georgia picked up the story and on 9^th March, the local bureau of CBS News, which has nationwide coverage, obtained an exclusive interview of Tracy Martin and Sybrina Fulton arranged by Crump and forwarded the clip to their headquarters in New York.

The next day, the story was covered by ABC World News, and two days later, CNN also aired the story prime time. By then, a number of popular news websites, including The Huffington Post, The Young Turks, and TheGrio.com, which is affiliated with NBC News, had also started to extensively cover the case.

Sybrina Fulton also launched a petition on change.org calling for Zimmerman’s arrest, and with the case gaining national prominence, over 500,000 people signed the petition within a week.

Celebrities soon started to lend their voices to the petition. New York Knicks star forward Carmelo Anthony showed solidarity with the call by tweeting a picture of himself wearing a hoodie, and the entire Miami Heat team did the same. Eminent black personalities like Russell Simmons and Spike Lee called for Zimmerman’s arrest and expressed disappointment with the Sanford Police Department’s handling of the case.

As the momentum gathered, Velma Williams went back to police Chief Bill Lee. ‘’Remember when I told you to jump on the train going at 75 miles an hour and engage the brakes before it got out of hand? ‘’ She asked him.

‘’Yes.’’ Lee replied.

‘’Well, it’s going at 150 miles an hour now.’’ Williams said. ‘’And there are no brakes.’’

Last Calls: Portrait of a Murder

In the course of his inquiry into Trayvon’s case, one of the people Benjamin Crump had talked to was Trayvon’s 16-year-old girlfriend, whose identity currently remains secret to protect her privacy. By an amazing twist of fate, it emerged that the girl had called Trayvon a few minutes before his death, and had stayed on the phone with him until just a few seconds before he was fatally shot.

According to the girl, she had called Trayvon at approximately 7:12pm and he seemed agitated, saying that a strange man was following him. She said she had advised him to run, and after initially refusing to take the suggestion, he eventually elected to run. A couple of minutes later, she heard the beginning of what seemed like an argument between Trayvon and Zimmerman before the connection was terminated.

Records from the girl’s service provider corroborated her account of the conversation.

And then it emerged that at the exact same time Trayvon was on the phone with his girlfriend, Zimmerman had also been on the phone with a non-emergency police dispatcher, describing what appeared to be his deliberate pursuit of Trayvon. Police initially refused to release records of the conversation, but in the wake of unrelenting pressure from Crump, the transcripts were eventually released.

The girl’s account of her conversation with Trayvon had cast doubts on Zimmerman’s allegation that Trayvon was the aggressor, and that he had only shot him in self defence.

The recording of Zimmerman’s call to the non-emergency police dispatcher blew the allegation completely out of the water.

Transcript of Zimmerman’s call to non-emergency police dispatcher

Dispatcher:       Sanford Police Department. ...

Zimmerman:     Hey we've had some break-ins in my neighbourhood, and there's a real suspicious guy, uh, [near] Retreat View Circle, um, the best address I can give you is 111 Retreat View Circle. This guy looks like he's up to no good, or he's on drugs or something. It's raining and he's just walking around, looking about.

Dispatcher:       OK, and this guy is he white, black, or Hispanic?

Zimmerman:     He looks black.

Dispatcher:       Did you see what he was wearing?

Zimmerman:     Yeah. A dark hoodie, like a grey hoodie, and either jeans or sweatpants and white tennis shoes. He's [unintelligible], he was just staring...

Dispatcher:       OK, he's just walking around the area...

Zimmerman:     Looking at all the houses.

Dispatcher:       OK...

Zimmerman:     Now he's just staring at me.

Dispatcher:       OK—you said it's 1111 Retreat View? Or 111?

Zimmerman:     That's the clubhouse...

Dispatcher:       That's the clubhouse, do you know what the—he's near the clubhouse right now?

Zimmerman:     Yah, now he's coming towards me.

Dispatcher:       OK.

Zimmerman:     He's got his hand in his waistband. And he's a black male.

Dispatcher:       How old would you say he looks?

Zimmerman:     He's got button on his shirt, late teens.

Dispatcher:       Late teens ok.

Zimmerman:     Something’s wrong with him. Yup, he's coming to check me out, he's got something in his hands...I don't know what his deal is.

Dispatcher:       Just let me know if he does anything ok

Zimmerman:     How long until you get an officer over here?

Dispatcher:       Yeah we've got someone on the way; just let me know if this guy does anything else.

Zimmerman:     Okay. These assholes they always get away. When you come to the clubhouse you come straight in and make a left. Actually you would go past the clubhouse.

Dispatcher:       So it's on the left hand side from the clubhouse?

Zimmerman:     No you go in straight through the entrance and then you make a left...uh you go straight in, don't turn, and make a left. Shit he's running.

Dispatcher:       He's running? Which way is he running?

Zimmerman:     Down towards the other entrance to the neighbourhood.

Dispatcher:       Which entrance is that that he's heading towards?

Zimmerman:     The back entrance...fucking [disputed/unintelligible]

Dispatcher:       Are you following him?

Zimmerman:     Yeah

Dispatcher:       Ok, we don't need you to do that.

Zimmerman:     Ok

Dispatcher:       Alright sir what is your name?

Zimmerman:     George...He ran.

Dispatcher:       Alright George what's your last name?

Zimmerman:     Zimmerman

Dispatcher:       And George what's the phone number you're calling from?

Zimmerman:     [redacted]

Dispatcher:       Alright George we do have them on the way, do you want to meet with the officer when they get out there?

Zimmerman:     Alright, where you going to meet with them at?

Zimmerman:     If they come in through the gate, tell them to go straight past the club house, and uh, straight past the club house and make a left, and then they go past the mailboxes, that's my truck...[unintelligible]

Dispatcher:       What address are you parked in front of?

Zimmerman:     I don't know, it's a cut through so I don't know the address.

Dispatcher:       Okay do you live in the area?

Zimmerman:     Yeah, I... [Unintelligible]

Dispatcher:       What's your apartment number?

Zimmerman:     It's a home it's 1950, oh crap I don't want to give it all out, I don't know where this kid is.

Dispatcher:       Okay do you want to just meet with them right near the mailboxes then?

Zimmerman:     Yeah that's fine.

Dispatcher:       Alright George, I'll let them know to meet you around there okay?

Zimmerman:     Actually could you have them call me and I'll tell them where I'm at?

Dispatcher:       Okay, yeah that's no problem.

Zimmerman:     Should I give you my number or you got it?

Dispatcher:       Yeah I got it [redacted]

Zimmerman:     Yeah you got it.

Dispatcher:       Okay no problem, I'll let them know to call you when you're in the area.

Zimmerman:     Thanks.

Dispatcher:       You're welcome.

The backlash begins

With the release of Zimmerman’s call record to the police, attention on the Trayvon Martin case surged. Sybrina Fulton’s change.org petition received a million new signatures overnight, and civil rights activists all over the country began organizing ‘Million Hoodie March’ demonstrations to call for Zimmerman’s arrest.

On March 20, the US (Federal) Justice Department announced that they were opening investigations into the incident. The Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) also announced that they were looking into whether Trayvon’s constitutional rights had been violated, and the Florida state governor, Rick Scott, announced that he had written to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement asking them to investigate the shooting.

On March 21, 2012, three out of the five members of the Sanford city commission, including the Mayor, passed a motion of no confidence in regards to the police chief Bill Lee and his handling of the case. The following day, Lee announced that he had temporarily stepped down from his position as chief of police, stating "my involvement in this matter is overshadowing the process."

Later on the same day, Norm Wolfinger also rescued himself from the case. Governor Scott announced that he was appointing Angela Corey, State attorney for the neighbouring Duval, Clay and Nassau counties, to be Special Prosecutor and that she would be investigating the case instead of Wolfinger.

Angela Corey

On April 11, 45 days after Trayvon was killed and 20 days after her appointment as special prosecutor in the case, Angela Corey announced that George Zimmerman would be arraigned in court on charges of second degree murder for the killing of Trayvon Martin.

Detour to justice: The Mishandling of a homicide investigation

On May 29^th 2012, George Zimmerman will stand in front of Judge Jessica Recksiedler in a courtroom in Seminole, Florida, and enter a Not Guilty plea to the second degree murder charge levied against him. Afterwards, there will be a legal process, maybe short but most probably long and drawn out, to determine whether he is criminally responsible for the death of Trayvon Martin.

Presumption of innocence is, without equivocation, the most fundamental pillar of criminal jurisprudence. So long as there exists any doubt on the question of criminal responsibility, an accused person shall not be convicted of a crime until evidence is produced to dispel this doubt. Presumption of innocence, along with the guarantee of a fair trial, are entitlements Zimmerman has a right to claim and receive.

In the court of public opinion, however, Zimmerman has already been judged and his sentence passed. Most black people with an opinion on the case have already convicted him, most notably Mike Tyson who wondered why Zimmerman has not been shot yet and the New Black Panther party which placed a $10,000 bounty on his head; while a majority of white respondents to a survey expressed their belief that Zimmerman really was acting in self defence when he shot Trayvon Martin.

Mike Tyson

To a great extent, perceptions and opinions on the case are based on the portrayal of the story in the media and what some perceive to be ‘excessive’ coverage of the case.

An oft-cited complaint by Supporters of Zimmerman has been that the most widely-used photos in the media, which showed Martin as a "baby-faced boy" and Zimmerman as a beefy-looking figure, were outdated and may have helped shape initial public perceptions of the deadly shooting. NBC also came under severe criticism after it aired an edited version of Zimmerman’s call to the police which improperly painted Zimmerman as a racial profiler, and this has raised the question of whether he will receive a fair trial.

Benjamin Crump obviously disagrees with these sentiments. “This case needed the media” he stresses, pointing out that had it not been for such unrelenting pressure from the fourth estate, the killing of Trayvon Martin would never have been exhaustively investigated.

And this opinion, that the case was not properly investigated, is shared by many prominent African-American personalities.

President Barack Obama

"Obviously this is a tragedy. I can only imagine what (Trayvon’s) parents are going through," President Barack Obama said on 23rd March, after the Justice Department announced it was looking into the case. "If I had a son, he would look like Trayvon...and I think every parent in America should be able to understand why it is absolutely imperative that we investigate every aspect of this."

Every person suspected of a crime is entitled to presumption of innocence until guilt is proven beyond reasonable doubt. However, every victim is also entitled to a thorough investigation of a crime committed against them, and for the likely perpetrator of the crime to be subjected to due process of the law and sanctions if guilt is proven.

Responding to early to criticisms of the investigation, police Chief Bill Lee vehemently defended the department. "In this case Mr. Zimmerman has made the statement of self-defence, and until we can establish probable cause to dispute that, we don't have the grounds to arrest him." Lee initially said, adding that had George Zimmerman the opportunity to relive Sunday, Feb. 26, he'd probably do things differently, and so would Trayvon.

Yet at the time, police were already in possession of witness statements from neighbours who had seen the incident first hand, as well as records of the damning call Zimmerman had made to the police. When these were presented to Judge Mark Herr along with an affidavit from the prosecution, it took him less than a minute to rule that there was probable cause to mount a prosecution.

Only two people can tell exactly what exactly happened that night, and one of them is dead while the other's account is being called to question. Bill Lee was right. Had Trayvon Martin known he was going to die, or had George Zimmerman known he would become the lightning rod for such an outpouring of hate, they both would have done thins differently on the night of February 26th 2012.

But Trayvon and Zimmerman are not the only ones who should have done things differently.

Speaking after Zimmerman's arrest had been announced, Sybrina Fulton voiced in a few words what was the central message of the 'Justice for Trayvon' campaign. "We just want people to know that if you shoot someone that is unarmed, you should be arrested." She said. "The evidence can play out once you get to court, but you should be arrested.”

Amen to that.

Kony 2012: Justice For The Victims.

Warning: Images contained in this blog post may be disturbing.

"In April 2003, two weeks before the Iraq war started, two weeks before I travelled to Sudan to document the holocaust, I sold a movie musical to Steven Spielberg. That was always my plan: to make Hollywood musicals.
I had just finished my film degree at USC and I wanted that post-graduation globe-trotting adventure. I figured instead of backpacking Europe, I'd visit an African genocide. With two friends, my camera (purchased from eBay) and a few hundred bucks in cash, I went to tell a story that mattered. And it changed my life forever. 
We had never seen anything like it. So many bodies sleeping on top of each other. They were called night commuters. These children left their homes and walked to urban areas in search of safety from abductions by a rebel group. We couldn't believe we were witnessing something so horrific, and yet unheard of by most. These children were victims of a war that was older than them.

We returned to the states with a clear objective- tell their story. We couldn't forget the faces and names of these children."
-Jason Russell- The Invisible Children (From Huffington Post)


On 21st February 2004, an army of green-fatigued combatants from Joseph Kony's Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), led by indicted war criminal Okot Odhiambo, descended towards the Barlonyo Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) camp in the outskirts of Lira, Northern Uganda. Numbering about 300, most of the combatants were young boys barely in their teens.

At around 2pm GMT, Odhiambo led his child soldiers into the camp, and then presided over what is arguably the darkest two hours of Uganda's History.

Speaking in 2010 during an event held to mark 6 years since the event, a child who was part of the invading force recounted the chilling episode. “Odhiambo told us, “I have received the order from the high command of the LRA. You are to kill every living thing. Kill the old people, kill the adults, kill the government soldiers, and abduct all the young children and boys."

"We had three long lines of our fighters. Odhiambo blew a whistle and we scattered. We surrounded the camp and the detach and started fighting and lighting things on fire. Out of the 340 people we had, 100 had guns, we had bombs, we had J2s, AK-47s in plenty, and the other 240 fighters left had clubs and sticks. But most of them were ululating and boosting morale, saying, “We have to capture them alive!" 

-From Kill Every Living Thing: The Barlonyo Massacre

Barlonyo camp was home to about 5000 internally displaced persons, and quite a number of them died or were maimed beyond belief on that wretched, cursed day. Some were shot, many were clubbed to death and a great majority were herded into huts, locked inside and incinerated beyond recognition.

The government had put in place security measures consisting of local militia (the 'Amukas') and other Local Defence Units, but these forces had no radio communication with the Ugandan military, and it would be three hours before the Uganda People's Defence Forces responded. By then, Odhiambo and his forces had butchered over 300 people, and the camp was a grisly necropolis.

Eighteen months after the massacre at Barlonyo, the ICC issued indictments against the top leadership quartet of the LRA, Joseph Kony, Vincent Otti, Dominic Ong'wen and Odhiambo. Of the four, Otti has since died, while Kony, Ong'wen and Odhiambo remain at large.

The ICC indictments came during a period when the Ugandan government had applied relentless pressure on the LRA, and indications were that this pressure, coupled with internal disharmony within the LRA, (Otti was actually executed by the LRA on Kony's direct orders following a disagreement), had severely weakened the rebel outfit.

This weakening of the LRA brought about a semblance of peace to Northern Uganda, but Kony never renounced violence. Taking his band of fighters with him, he pushed West into the Democratic Republic of Congo, spreading all the way to the Central African Republic. In the meantime, his blood-lust continued and his rebels kept committing atrocities against populations they crossed, most notably the Christmas Day Massacre in the Haut-Ulele District of the Democratic Republic of Congo on 25th December 2008.

In the meantime, Jason Russell had gone back home to the United States and established Invisible Children, a non-profit organization aimed at giving compassionate individuals an effective way to respond to the situation. His goal was to challenge people's apathy and turn into action, in the hope that this action would help bring about positive change for the children who touched him so.

And in March 2012, an ingenious campaign by Invisible Children, Kony 2012, succeeded in bringing international attention to Joseph Kony and the conflict in Uganda beyond his wildest dreams. The 30-minute movie, which aims to keep international attention on Kony so that the American government can be persuaded to keep American troops on the ground searching for him, went viral a couple of days after it was posted on YouTube, and as of 17th March 2012 has already been watched over 80 million times.

But the success of the campaign has exposed it to stinging criticism, and the criticism has become almost as viral as the campaign itself. According to Wikipedia, among issues the campaign has been criticized for include:

• Oversimplification of events in the region. While the campaign promotes global activism, it has been criticized for providing a black-and-white picture rather than encouraging the viewers to learn about the situation.
• Giving a misleading impression of the whereabouts and magnitude of Kony's remaining LRA forces. Kony's followers are now thought to number only in the hundreds, and Kony himself is believed to be in the Central African Republic rather than Uganda--a fact that receives only a passing mention in the video.
• In addition, the Ugandan army and the South Sudanese army, which have engaged in military campaigns against the LRA, have themselves been accused of human rights violations such as attacks against civilians, use of child soldiers and looting of civilian homes and businesses.

Admittedly, these criticisms are valid, and they do bring to light a myriad of very pertinent issues that should be addressed. However, it is my opinion that they are more harmful than beneficial like all criticisms are supposed to be, and they only serve to muddle the picture and remove focus from the campaign's intended target: The arrest and prosecution of Joseph Kony.

Jason Russell's campaign was not to right all the wrongs of the Ugandan government on the LRA conflict, or to single handedly bring Kony to book. Much as he may have wished to provide a final, comprehensive solution to the Northern conflict and its resultant effects, he does not have the means to do so and any attempt of a campaign on that scale will in all likelihood end in failure.

When Jason Russell left Uganda in 2003, he had one goal in mind: to tell the story of Uganda's invisible children and make them visible to the international community. He found a wildly effective way of doing that, and instead of getting applause, he gets criticized?

He has been accused of mis-representing the conflict the magnitude of the conflict. For Allah's sake, How? The fact that Kony is now weak and his forces number 'in their hundreds' doesn't take away the fact that a huge percentage of those 'hundreds' are child combatants abducted and forced to fight against their will, children whose very stories Jason Russell set out to tell when he established Invisible Children.

Questions about the plausibility of Ugandan army intervention and logistical and operational support by the American military, which the video advocates, have also been raised by critics. This only serves to highlight the hypocrisy of the critics, because the sole reason why Kony is such a weak, almost spent force, is due to the relentless attacks of the Uganda People's Defence Forces, together with the support of Congolese and South Sudanese forces.

Joseph Kony has been a thorn on the flesh of children for the past twenty-six years, and his victims deserve justice. It doesn't matter whether the children are ten or thirty million, in Northern Uganda, the DRC or Central African Republic, these children need to be protected from him. and so long as he remains at large, they will remain under threat. Jason Russell and his army of invisible children have come up with a campaign that just might work. Instead of pulling him down, let us help him achieve it. Let us take Kony, Odhiambo, Ong'wen and their ilk to the Hague.

That is the only way that this person and other victims of the Barlonyo massacre will find justice.

The Origin Of A Species?

According to recent reports, a group of Chinese and Australian researchers have published a controversial study asserting that a number of unusual-looking fossils unearthed in southern China belong to a previously unknown species of humans. The fossils, with their unusually thick brows and angled jaws, exhibit a mixture of primitive and modern features, making them anatomically unique.

Computer-generated projections on how these species of apes, christened the "Red Deer Cave People", possibly looked like, came up with this likeness:

Other scientists not directly involved with the study are not entirely convinced that the Red Deer Cave people are a different species. Some suggest they're related to another species of ancient humans, while others believe that they're actually modern humans who just happen to look different.

To put the debate to a rest, the study's authors are working on extracting and analyzing DNA from the Red Deer People's fossil remains, and using similar programs their counterparts used to come up with projections on how a modern-day descendant of the Red Deer Cave people would look like. Initial projections indicate such a person would look like this:

FKF, lipa Mariga!

Events this week before the Harambee Stars vs Togo match, which culminated in McDonald Mariga walking out on the team because he felt FKF was trying to do the runaround on him, had me drawing analogous comparisons with my former school.

For my secondary education, I had the privilege of attending AGS, one of the more prestigious schools in Western Kenya. Cosmopolitan in nature, AGS attracts the brightest students from all over the country, such as Najib Balala, Dennis Oliech and this guy...

For an institution of its calibre, gaining admission to the AGS's hallowed halls was of course not the stuff of a day's work. To acquire the right to wear the institution's penguin uniform and be taught Physics by Mr. Minishi, one had to do enough in their eight years of primary education to answer at least three quarters of their primary leaving examination questions correctly. In other words academic dwarfism was a sure-fire guarantee of one NOT gaining admission to AGS.

But this is not to say that academic dwarfs never found their way to AGS. Hell, I remember one particular Christian Religious Education class when I was in Form 2 where one Ezekiel Oduori, my then desk mate, said "Mangoes, Passion Fruits and Bananas." without batting an eyelid when Mr. Oluoch, the CRE teacher, asked him to list three fruits of the Holy Spirit. There were academic dwarves at AGS, alright.

But how did such dwarves slip past the cast-iron intellectual gates which stood between the institution and intellectual dwarfism?

Easy. Football.

You see, AGS had arguably the strongest football team in the region, with an impressive record of teaching other pathetic excuses of footballing outfits from other schools very painful lessons in the game and instilling in them the kind of fear usually reserved for events of terrible import, like say a nuclear Iran.

AGS's reputation as a football powerhouse was maintained through having players on the school team who actually knew their way around a football field.However, getting such players was a perennial problem for AGS, because let's face it: intellectuals who make it to schools like AGS on academic merit tend to make very lousy footballers. True geniuses in the game, such as Ezekiel Oduori, more often than not tend to possess intellectual capacities almost equal to that of a stone in the middle of the Sahara.

This of course presented the AGS administration with a complication: They had an academic reputation to maintain, which meant they had to admit only the brightest students; but they also had a footballing reputation to maintain, which forced threw that principle into all sorts of disarray. In the end, the problem was solved by simply overlooking the academic angle and letting a few academic dwarves with footballing talent slip through.

All the tinkering made the AGS fraternity an odd, almost dysfunctional family. On one hand, we had intellectuals, who could critique Einstein's theory of relativity entirely in figures without the aid of a calculator, yet couldn't score a penalty from six yards if their lives depended on it. At the other end of the spectrum, we had the Ezekiel Oduoris, who couldn't tell you where Indian elephants are found because they didn't know whether elephants even got lost to begin with, but could score a spectacular goal at the end of a match and claim they actually meant to thread a pass to a teammate at the other end of the field.

But dysfunctional or not, the AGS fraternity was, for all intents and purposes, a family. The administrative system ensured that everyone followed the school rules and was treated fairly and equitably.  footballers never got nor expected preferential treatment in the school.


 This is not to say footballers didn't receive preferential treatment. They did, but on merit or when it was absolutely necessary. Tests were sometimes specially re-arranged for football players whenever tournaments clashed with the academic schedules, they had their own special meals during the football season, and they were allowed to skip preps after training. And nobody begrudged them this, because in the end, everyone understood that when the team won, the school's image was enhanced.

In many ways, the structure at AGS reminds me a lot of the National team set-up. Just like the AGS fraternity comprises different students of diverse abilities, Harambee Stars is made up of different players of exceptional but diverse talents. In the same way AGS boasts a mix of veritable academic giants whose examination marks are weighed rather than tallied and others whose intellectual credentials are mediocre at best, some players in the national team are international stars while others aren't even known by fans of the local teams they play for.

But when the Harambee Stars face an opponent, these diversities are only significant in as far as they aid the team as a whole, because in the field, all players are one and the same. A goal by Dennis Oliech is a goal for the Stars and by extension Kenya, just as a spilled shot by Boniface Oluoch is a goal against the Stars and, by extension, Kenya.

And just as the balance at AGS during my time there was held in place by recognition and respect for everyone's status, the administrators at FKF need to understand that the balance in Harambee Stars will only hold if individual players are treated with the respect they deserve, and everybody gets what is their just due by merit.

Which is why I'm with Mariga on this present saga. Everybody in Kenya with even the most basic knowledge of Kenyan football understands one thing- McDonald Mariga is a star. That is his status, and he has earned it.

For the good of the team and out of common decency, the least FKF should do is treat him like one.

Take Kindly The Consel Of Years...

Recently, I joined a few younger friends for a night out at a disco. I used to be quite the party animal in my youth, and after a long time off the circuits, I was eager to see whether and/or how partying has changed over the years.

Well, there's no better way to put it- it was a diabolically horrifying experience. We went to a club in Nairobi which specializes in "New School" music, and I couldn't help but marvel at how unbelievably low standards have sunk. They kept playing music by a certain lass called Rihanna -apparently the kid rules the airwaves in the way Sade did when we were young- and her voice reminded me of the brays of a very agitated donkey when its gonads are firmly in the grip of a burdizzo.

And the dancing? Well, I saw none. All I could see all around were pairs and pairs of hormonal teenagers locked in throes of simulated copulation.

Anyway, it seemed the DJ apparently shared some of my apathy for the music he was playing, because at various intervals, he would intersperse the garbage he was scratching out of his contraption with some truly wonderful gems of our time, throwing the army of brats in attendance into paroxysms of missteps which I really enjoyed watching.

Then at some point, my kindred spirit at the turntables threw in a Lingala track by some Congolese maestro which had for a while been the hottest sound in town during my partying years. This particular track has a complicated dancing style which I used to be quite adept at, and I decided that I was going to show these party neophytes what true dancing is.

Ever encountered the expression "a really, really bad idea?"

There is a line in the Desiderata which goes "Take kindly the counsel of the years, gracefully surrendering the things of youth." Pulling acrobatic dance moves is the archetypal manifestation of youth, and since in my days I'd pulled them with the best, I was under the misguided impression that my spirit and my body were in tandem on the matter.

Only it didn't quite go that way.

How did it go? Well, think of a camel. An awkward, two-humped one, preferably. Now, imagine that camel on top of a winding, hundred-step staircase.

Next, picture a very malicious fellow, wearing a smirk on his face resembling one of those expressions common with 1980s cartoon villains. Imagine this up-to-no-good character approaching our poor camel from behind and, with all the grace and fury of a drunk paraplegic, sweeping all its four ungainly feet from underneath it.

Are we still together? Good. Now assuming it takes an awkward, ungainly, two-humped camel fifty seconds to clatter down a winding hundred-step staircase, picture the same camel at the bottom of the stairs exactly fifty-one seconds later.

Basically, that's how it went when I pulled my move, and lying there on the dance floor counseled me that some moves belong to younger bodies, which mine no longer is. I figured it was time to listen to the Desiderata and take this counsel seriously and surrender those moves along with other things of youth.

But looking like a camel that has just fallen down a staircase meant the surrender was anything but graceful.

The Wayne Rooney Saga: A Guide For Dummies

Wayne Rooney has just proved it. Football is a gentleman's game played by hooligans...and watched by Dummies.

For football to be referred to as a game, there has to be footballers. For footballers to make a living out of football, they must be good. And since thousands, even millions, of footballers worldwide make a living out of playing football, then logic demands we assume there are a lot of good footballers out there.

But even among these good footballers, there are some that are better than the rest. From these very good footballers we can further identify some that are better among the better ones, and from this cream of the crop, even more exceptional elements can still be isolated. These are the players who make football magical, the players who keep football purists believing that despite the horrifying influence of Russian gas, American loan and Arab oil money, there is still hope for football.

Wayne Mark Rooney definitely belongs to this last category. At only 25 years of age, the lad has won more trophies than Liverpool football club has won in the past 25 years, and he is just getting started. Commensurate with his unbelievable talent, he earns more money in a week than the entire annual sports budgets of all three East African countries put together, and despite the fact that he looks the way Shrek would look like when he has just thrown up, Coleen McLoughlin, a stunning beauty who looks like she could stop traffic just for the heck of it, actually agreed to marry him and have a child with him. The natural way.

Surely, Wayne has it made. His looks notwithstanding, he has money, talent and the affection of billions of fans worldwide, not to mention a wife that could stop traffic just for the heck of it. Why then, in a stunt that was sure to go through his reputation like an elephant through a glass cage holding his young, did he procure the services of a thousand-pound-a-night hooker when his I-can-stop-traffic-for the-heck-of-it wife, who agreed to have a child by him the natural way, was sitting at home pregnant with his kid?

Some questions don't have answers. Not answers that make any sense, anyway. This is definitely one of those questions, so we will let it slip and focus on a more important question: How does a world-famous footballer that was stupid enough to procure the services of a thousand-pound-a-night hooker and afterwards stupid enough to get caught, come out of the entire saga with his reputation intact and sellability unharmed?

Easy. Create a diversion.

You see, Wayne knows that millions of y'all like to watch him play, and some media mogul somewhere that knows companies would pay good money if millions of y'all got to see their products. The media mogul will then put two an two together and figure that if he put a picture of a product in the same TV screen that shows Wayne Rooney playing, millions of y'all will tune in to watch Wayne Rooney play, and therefore Millions of y'all will also see the company's product. Wayne knows that this media mogul will sell this idea to companies, and then approach him with offers of more money in a week than the entire annual sports budgets of all three East African countries put together if he could agree to appear in the same TV screen that shows that company's products. Easy as ABC.

But Wayne also knows that y'all don't like it when players cheat on their wives, especially when players that look the way Shrek would look like when he has just thrown up cheat on wives that look like they could stop traffic just for the heck of it. He knows that if y'all don't like what he did, y'all won't tune in to watch him play, so y'all won't get to see the company's products. If that happens, the company whose products appear in the same TV screen as Wayne won't be willing to give the media mogul enough money to pay Wayne more money in a week than the entire annual sports budgets of all three East African countries put together.

And this presents a problem, because you see, Wayne loves his money, every single last dime of it. It would rip his stocky Scouser heart to pieces if many of y'all stopped watching him and forced the companies to reduce his check to, say, the entire annual sports budgets of only two East African countries. But he cheated. On a pregnant wife that looks like she could stop traffic just for the heck of it. With a thousand-pounds-a-night hooker. And y'all don't like that.

So how does Wayne keep the money flowing into his pockets? Easy. Create a diversion.

Wayne might be stupid, but an idiot he most definitely is not. He knows that y'all care about reputation and all that bleeding heart morality, but y'all ain't the ones that cut his check. The companies do. And the companies don't give a rat's ass about reputation except when it interferes with their bottom line. All they care about is that their products get advertised because when their products get advertised, their products get sold. Wayne is smart enough to know all this, so he figures the way to keep the companies interested is to keep y'all watching him.

How does he do that? He creates a diversion. He enlists the help of his best friend and father figure, sir Alex Ferguson, and together, they concoct a feud. Accusations about lying are made, counter-accusations about insubordination are fired back. A rejoinder about a lack of commitment is swiftly issued and quickly countered by the one about latent disloyalty. Then comes the big one; I want to leave, and the even bigger one; The door is to your left, baby. Throughout all this, the media mogul's cameras are furiously keeping y'all updated, and y'all are thinking, Gosh! We haven't seen such action since Ali took on Foreman at the banks of the Congo River! So what's next?

And when he is sure he has you where he wants you, i.e eyes firmly trained on him and interested in only him, there is a sudden cooling of tempers and a truce is called. The companies are happy that y'all want to see him, so they resume giving him money in a week than the entire annual sports budgets of all three East African countries put together. In the meantime, y'all have forgotten that he cheated, with a thousand-pound-a-night hooker, on a traffic-stopper of a wife that chose to have a baby with him the natural way despite the fact that he looks like Shrek after he has just thrown up.

Like Redd Foxx would say, you big dummies!

Of Gonads, Communication and Cell Phones.

I wanted to start with the bit about my gonads, but that part doesn't become important until exactly four nanoseconds before I wake up. So I'll begin with the anecdote about the wife and the husband.

Once upon a time, two people, a man and a woman, got married. And as it normally happens with one hundred percent of all matrimonial interactions, there came a point during their relationship when these two people had a slight difference of opinion over something or the other.

Normally, such matters are resolved by the more assertive partner, usually the wife, imposing their opinion on the less assertive one, usually the wife. [It's complicated. I'll explain later.] However, this relationship was one of those very rare ones where both partners were evenly matched in willpower; so naturally, the difference of opinion continued and in due course, the two were not on speaking terms. Literally.

But since they lived under the same roof, ate the same food, used the same bathroom and slept on the same bed, some form of communication was necessary. They therefore worked their way around the issue and finally settled on writing as the most effective medium for their circumstances. Whenever the husband required anything of the wife, he would write it down on a slip of paper and vice versa.

This method worked OK until one day; the husband had a very important meeting to attend and had to catch a very early flight the next morning. Unfortunately, he was the kind of person who attached a great deal of value to a good night's sleep, and was rarely known to awaken before 10am in the morning. The meeting was however really important, so to work his schedule around this flaw, he requested his wife, in writing of course, to wake him up very early the next morning...

How this tale ends should be obvious to anyone with pretensions to anything that even remotely approaches a double-figure IQ, so we'll leave it there and move on towards my gonads. But before we get there, let's first talk about phones.

A friend of mine from the Northern hemisphere was once quite shocked when he read a report on the internet which said that at least 70% of all Ugandan adults each have a mobile phone. The poor fellow couldn't understand how a backward country like Uganda could have such an extensive mobile telephony reach, and he e-mailed me to ascertain the veracity of these claims.

"The report is inaccurate." I mailed him back. "The figure is closer to 90%, and at least 60% of them actually have TWO mobile phones."

I happen to belong to this percentage that possesses two mobile phones. One is a sexy Nokia 6300, which has a lot of really awesome features but goes through its battery with the speed of a Mike Tyson bout in the early nineties, while the other one is a plainer Nokia 1100 whose swankiest feature is that it is able support M-Pesa, but with one bar of battery power can sustain an entire call from Pet without disconnecting it midway. [And that is saying something.]

Quite obviously, this isn't exactly an ideal situation. I love the ravishing 6300, but for purposes of functionality, I find that I utilize the plain Jane 1100 more frequently than I do my beloved 6300. And that has me really terrified of the implications on my social standing the revelation of this little fact would occasion, so whenever I have to use the 1100, I try to be as discreet as possible. Silent mode, excusing myself and running to a secluded area whenever I receive a call in public, etc...

I risk digressing, however. Let us now connect the married couple anecdote to the mobile phones and then quickly move on to my gonads.

Like the husband in our anecdote, I am also the kind of person that attaches a great deal of value to a good night's sleep. Once I get into slumber land, I will always need help to get out of it. But unlike the unfortunate husband, I don't depend on my wife to wake me up when I've got issues that really have to be sorted out at a time when only chicken thieves are supposed to be awake. The reason behind this is quite simple; I'm not yet married,

So whenever I need to wake up early, which like a Liverpool win happens only in the rarest of occasions, I can always rely on the infinitely cheaper yet infinitely more reliable alarm system on my two mobile phones. With them, unless somebody calls me earlier, I can always get up at the precise moment I intend to wake up. And since my Nokia 6300 is permanently on silent mode for purposes of being discreet, the early caller isn't always a problem...

Unless I somehow go to bed with my phone still in my trouser pocket, and there is a hole in that trouser pocket.

In my defense, I was dog tired and didn't strip like I usually do when I went to bed last night. I also didn't take my phone off my pocket which, as is common with people as careless as I am, has a hole somewhere in its person. Therefore as I slept, the phone slipped through the hole and came to rest on my inner thigh, just below the nether regions.

And then very early today morning, my dear Pet, who works similar hours with the shadier elements of society, decided to send me a text message...

Do you have any idea how unbelievably powerful a vibrating 1100 can get, and how tremendously horrifying being woken up by a Nokia 1100 vibrating against your gonads can be?

More than just a Bad Hair Day

Like girls, guys also have bad hair days. I know this for a fact because I used to have bad hair days back when I still had dreadlocks, and, well, I'm a guy.

The difference between a guy bad hair day and a girl bad hair day, however, is that unless you point out to a guy that he is having a bad hair day, most men will never tell when they are having a bad hair day. Just ask Donald Trump, or the people of Sotik constituency and the guy they kept electing to parliament before the NARC wave.

You can also ask me about what transpired one day when I went to Mengo Hospital for a dental procedure, back in the days when I still had dreadlocks.

A dear friend of mine once told me that at the dentist's, everything is twice as painful as it looks and thrice more painful than you think. That is no exeggeration, so for those of you that have never placed their behinds on a dentist's chair for a procedure, allow me this opportunity to issue a profound warning: Start taking much better care of your teeth than you are doing right now. Because trust me, you do NOT want to ever find yourself on that chair.

Anyway, I wasn't lucky enough to have someone give me the kind of warning I am giving you now, so at some point in time, I found myself in unfortunate need of an extremely urgent dental procedure. I'd once procured the services of Mengo Hospital following a late night altercation with a couple of panga-wielding characters intent on relieving me of my phone and other valuables, [but that is a story for another day,] and had liked their services. Thus when the aforementioned need for a dental procedure arose, it was to Mengo that I immediately headed.

Mengo Hospital is quite a large institution. Add to this the fact that I don't quite like hanging around hospitals and therefore do not often hang around hospitals, It was quite obvious that I was going to encounter a bit of trouble locating the dental department where my painfully pressing needs could be addressed. So in short, I soon found myself totally lost in the hospital hallways, clutching my jaw like a driver who has just hit Mike Tyson's car and was stupid enough to get out to apologize.

The most obvious thing one ought to do when faced with such difficulty would be of course to ask somebody familliar with the place for directions, and in a hospital the person most likely to know where places such as dental departments are located would be a nurse.  Thus I stopped a nurse doing her rounds, [I know how a nurse looks like because every heterosexual man has fantasies about nurses in uniform,] and asked her to tell me where I could find the dental department.

The nurse, a petite little thing in a starched uniform who looked like anything straight from one of my aforementioned fantasies, looked at me as if she didn't comprehend my question. Then she sized me up, spending about a minute looking at my hair before she pointed to a flight of stairs. "Just head up those stairs and turn left." She said. "Beyond it you will find a red brick building and someone there will attend to you."

It had been a puzzling experience, but my tooth was at that point threatening to dig a hole right through my jaw, so I gave it very little thought as I gratefully made my way towards where I had been directed.

When I got there, the first thing I noticed was two heavily armed guards. Why would a dental department require armed guard? I thought and then stopped thinking as my toothache stopped working on my jaw and sent a jolt of pain through my gum. Quickly, I went to one of the guards. "Where can I find a doctor? I'm in pain." I asked.

The guard looked at me, mumbled something to his colleague about an apparent shortage of barbers in Kampala and both of them laughed. "Go back to the ward." He told me. "The doctor will be there presently."

Ward?

"Excuse me, but since when has the dental department of any hospital ever required wards?" I asked.

That must have been the stupidest question I have ever asked in my entire life, because the guard now looked at me like you would look at someone who has just asked you the stupidest question you have ever heard in your entire life.

"This is not the dental department." He told me. "It is the mental department." 

Captain of virtue

Celebrity sportsmen have through time found it really hard to keep their pants up away from home and their names off the sleazier sections of the press.

Last year, Tiger Woods' dalliance with more than a dozen women did things to his reputation that even an elephant would hesitate to do to a glass cage holding its young. Dude is now divorced and a hundred mil poorer.

Soon after the Woods' saga hit the tabloids, it was quickly followed by the lurid tales of one Jacob Zuma, who even two decades after the death of Apartheid remains unwilling to put down his machine gun. [OK. Maybe Zuma isn't exactly a sports personality. But he has been quite a player in the romantic field, which sort of qualifies him for that sporty title, doesn't it?]

News of Zuma's 20th-born was still settling in when another sports celebrity waddled into the murky sludge of tabloid press. John Terry, Chelsea and former England captain, was soon afterward reported to have showed more than passing interest to the ex-girlfriend of his England and former Chelsea team-mate, Wayne Bridge, and the reports caused such outrage among the English public that England coach Fabio Capello, fearing the destabilizing effect the incident would have on the England team as they prepared for the World Cup, promptly stripped Terry of the England captaincy.

Now, let us for a minute transfer the JT debacle to Kenya and assume that in the place of Terry, it was the Harambee Stars captain who was implicated in an affair with the ex-girlfriend of a team-mate. Would the public have shown the kind of outrage shown by the English and demanded that he be stripped of his armband?

That, of course, would never happen. In fact, as rhetorical questions go, that question would put the rhetoric in rhetorical.

First of all, unless the lady in question is actually married to the team-mate,a Kenyan would see absolutely nothing wrong with the captain's action.  If there is no ring around the fourth finger of her left hand, then she is, for all intents and purposes, fair game. In the JT saga, the lady, a French lingerie model called Veronica Perroncel, wasn't the wife, or even the current girlfriend, but the EX girlfriend of Wayne Bridge. In Kenyan books, nothing wrong there.

But even if a queer section of the Kenyan public had found the saga even remotely repulsive and opined that Twahir Muhiddin, Ghost Mulee, that clueless German or whoever it is in charge of the Stars should relieve the captain of his leadership duties, then this high-minded percentage of humanity would first of all have to contend with members of the erstwhile captain's ethnic community, who will scream, shout and even uproot a few railway sleepers to protest against the victimization of their community.

But the main reason no furore whatsoever would be raised is quite simple: Over 80% of Kenyans don't watch Kenyan football, and of the 20% that follow it regularly, Two thirds have absolutely no idea who the hell the Harambee Stars captain is.

A Model Trial

I love models. Nothing quite appeals to my amorous fantasies than the combination of a figure that makes you think long nights in exotic locations and an IQ figure equal to the number on a goalkeeper's football jersey. And growing up as I did during a time when 90% of vehicles on Kenyan roads had only six digits, I was at some point totally besotted with one Naomi Campbell.

Of course the distance between fantasy and reality is mostly only covered by dreams, so the stunning Ms. Campbell has since then remained exactly that, i.e. the girl of my dreams. However, when I'm not busy with other more important stuff such as debating Referendum results and waiting for the start of the new English Premier League season, I make time to look her up and see what she has been up to, as well at ogle at those looooooooong legs thrusting from whatever leading fashion house number she happens to be donning.

Slightly under a fortnight ago, I got a chance to indulge this passion of mine. Naomi had reportedly been summoned by the war crimes trial against Charles Taylor at the UN-backed Special Court for Sierra Leone, and she was to appear to give testimony that would help indict the former Liberian warlord. With my beautiful Naomi in the picture, I was very, very interested in these proceedings, and accordingly stacked on the popcorn.

We will come back to Naomi and models in a bit, but first, a little background for those of you who for whatever absurd reason may never have heard about Charles Taylor.

Born in 1946, this dude is something of a cross between Idi Amin Dada and Robert Mugabe, with a dash of pre-historic man. He ruled Liberia for six years from 1997 after helping overthrow the government of Samuel Doe, and all indications are those six years aren't exactly ones that Liberians remember with an incredible amount of fondness.

Taylor had a number of very disagreeable habits, and among these was an apparent overwhelming covetousness. He was reportedly so covetous of the riches possessed by neighboring Sierra Leone that he felt compelled to fund a rebel group there, the Revolutionary United Front [RUF], so that he could also get in on a share of its Diamonds resource. This was to prove his undoing, as the activities the RUF rebels involved themselves in have landed him in major legal problems at the Hague.

Naomi Campbell catwalks into this Charles Taylor saga sometime in 1999, when both she and Taylor attended a fund-raising dinner in cape Town hosted by then South African president Nelson Mandela. 

Like 99% of all heterosexual men who have ever set eyes on Naomi Campbell, Charles Taylor's senses went AWOL upon meeting her, and by the end of the night, he had displayed his amorous attentions towards her with a pocketful of uncut diamonds.

To cut a long story short, those diamonds are now central to the case against Taylor at the Hague, because during that time, he had apparently gone to South Africa with the intention of selling the diamonds and raise money to help fund the RUF's atrocious activities in sierra Leone.

To be perfectly honest, I have so far paid the Charles Taylor trial the kind of attention I normally reserve for traffic signs when I'm late for work, and I’m sure an overwhelming proportion of the earth’s population are exactly like me. But since the lovely Naomi graced the trial with her magnificent presence, interest in the trial has grown tenfold, and I’m sure the UN is very thankful for that.

Closer home, it is hoped that if Ocampo does his job properly, a number our local politicians will be acquainting themselves with the Hague quite soon. The Kenya trial is meant to act as precedent and deterrence against future acts of civil violence in Africa and the world over such trivial issues as elections results, and the UN is hoping that public interest in the case will be massive.

Kenya is taking the case very seriously, and a couple of months ago, a witness protection bill was passed in parliament to help secure potential witnesses who will give testimony at the Hague. Last week, it was reported that some of these potential witnesses are already being flown out of the country in readiness for the trial.

My question is, are there any Kenyan supermodels among those witnesses being flown out?