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“Politricks” is a groundbreaking Kenyan political strategy book by Muoki Kavita. It unveils the hidden tricks, tactics, and power plays used by politicians to win influence, control narratives, and sway the people. Written with a sharp, revealing style, the book serves as a manual for aspiring leaders, political enthusiasts, and citizens seeking to understand the real game behind politics. More than a book, Politricks is a movement — sparking debate, empowering readers, and inspiring the next generation of leaders. Available now across major platforms.
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POLITRICKS
Politricks is the book politicians hope you never read.
It uncovers the hidden tactics used to influence your thoughts, shape elections, and control public perception—often without you realizing it.
If you’re a leader, an aspiring politician, or simply a Kenyan who wants to understand how power really works, this book gives you the psychological tools and insider strategies normally reserved for political insiders.
Once you read Politricks, you will never look at politics the same again.
Get your copy today—before the next political game begins.
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Pio Gama Pinto Untold Life Story of First Unsung Martyr
Pio Gama Pinto: Kenya’s Unsung Martyr 1927– 1965 is edited by Shiraz Durrani and includes letters, recollections from family and comrades and newspaper articles. Shortly after independence, Pinto was shot dead outside his Westlands home (where Sarit Centre is). He was 38. That his two-year-old daughter was in the car with him or that it was broad daylight did not deter the assassins -- they were determined to eliminate him.
One stark reason to finish him, it has been argued over the years, was the fact that he was a hardcore socialist caught in the cross-hairs of neo-imperialists hell-bent on directing Kenya the capitalistic way. The 2013 report by the Truth, Justice and Reconciliation (TJRC) said his death was motivated by "ideological differences at the heart of the global cold war but also mirrored in domestic politics.”
Three men were nabbed in connection with the murder. TJRC said those arrested were "scapegoats” meant to divert attention from the real killers. Fingers were pointed at the government led by Mzee Jomo Kenyatta. One of his closest friends Achieng’ Oneko, on learning about his death, would shout: "No, no, no! Kenyatta must explain! He must explain!” Kenya’s second Vice President Joseph Murumbi, also a dear friend, was the most distraught and in tears after learning of his death (Murumbi is quoted saying that Pintomade him join politics).
Two weeks earlier, Pinto had been tipped that there was a plot to murder him alongside Bildad Kaggia and JD Kali due to their "secret anti-Government” activities. But did Kenyatta have a hand in Pinto’s death? Pinto after all, had fought for Kenyatta’s release from detention. The book suggests that his assassination needs to be seen in its "overall national and international” context.
Durrani quotes authors who have tied his death to that of slain US black rights activist Malcolm X. The two met when Malcolm visited Kenya in 1959.
Pinto was active in the fight against colonialism as well as neo-colonialism in the post-independence struggle and was targeted by colonial Portuguese Goan and British Kenyan administrations. The post-independence ruling elite ultimately silenced him. "The bullets that killed Pinto may have been fired or organized by the former home guards, now the new power brokers, but their foreign backers were the real instigators of his assassination,” writes Durrani.
Pinto gave away almost all his money and not even his wife Emma, knew how much he earned. As secretary of the Pan African press, Pinto used to tell his wife that his salary was half of what he earned and gave out the other half to the poor.
According to Murumbi, he didn’t own a house and was very reluctant when it was suggested. When Pinto died, poor people from all over went to his house. "It was really pathetic to see elderly Kikuyu weeping for a man who had helped them, a man who was their colleague in detention and a man who had never forgotten them,” said Murumbi. After his death, Murumbi arranged for Emma to immigrate to Canada where they became citizens. Now 90, Emma describes Pinto as a "humanist.” The author says the book has been in the works since the 1980s and blames unfavourable political climate for the cancellations and delays on any work on Pinto.
The Wretched Africans: A Study of Rabai and Freretown Slave Settlements by Joe Khamisi
Brief summary
The Wretched Africans: A Study of Rabai and Freretown Slave Settlements.
This book is about the 19th century slave trade in Eastern and Central Africa. No one in the history of humankind has suffered the indignity, abuse and pain of slavery than the African. Over many centuries, millions of Africans were uprooted from their quaint villages in the interior of the "Dark Continent" and taken into slavery.
They were exported to the Americas, Asia, Arabia and a dozen other countries around the globe, to work in plantations, in the pearl industry, and as soldiers and domestic workers. Boys were castrated and made eunuchs and girls were sexually abused and forced into harems. Unfortunately, the African slave narrative - written mostly by Western historians and missionaries - has been contemptibly distorted to portray Europeans as the gallant saviors, the notorious slave traders as swaggering heroes, and the African captives as wretched victims of a horrible but regrettably inevitable human phenomenon of the time.
The truth has been loftily garbled or masked and the role of liberated Africans vastly under-represented. The Wretched Africans peels of what is beneath the Arab slave trade, unravels the racism and abuse meted against Africans by European explorers and missionaries, and lays bare the heroism and resilience of the African captives. It memorializes Africans who died in caravan trails, at sea and those who found freedom in slave settlements around the world. It is a must read for historians, researchers, students and the general public wanting to understand the truth about what happened to an estimated eleven million people taken captive from the east coast of Africa to the new world and beyond.
Seasons of Hope by David Musila
A teacher, a politician, an administrator, above all a gentle human being who focused on the best for his country, Honorable David Musila, a former senator, has been a dedicated Kenyan throughout his life and continues to be so.
The autobiography, Seasons of Hope – Memoirs of David Musila, is a book full of hopes; it has a capacity to restore faith. An amazingly inspirational story of a person who has encountered enormous odds, heartbreaking challenges, pitfalls, intrigues, disappointments, betrayals, never-ending friendships, forever lessons, key decisions, eye-openers. Musila has seen the darkest hours of his country, and polished his leadership skills over the years.
A young administrator of the age when Kenya gained independence, the times when Kenya was seeing a sunrise, he gained experience and stature from the ranks of District Officer to Provincial Commissioner. It was a critical time for the country, with the history being rewritten, colonial settlers were in retreat, in fear, in anger, in disbelief, for indigenous Kenyans were in charge.
The book delves deep into his extraordinary life, from his birth in a colonial Kenya to his studies in the USA to his starting to serve the country and cuts across the reign of four Presidents. While writing his memoir, Musila has shown utmost honesty, and has often talked of things that were talked of only in hush-hush voices or rather never talked of!
Musila's first assignment was to address the thorny issue of land and resettlement in the independent Kenya, which he performed so well that many new challenges were confidently thrown at him, which he gracefully accepted. Alert, observant, keen, good listener, record maintaining, he learnt all that well, but politics is all together a different set of challenge, which becomes disheartening at times.
While he already the best upbringing behind him, he also earned himself the best mentors, combining the two made many people jealous even as several tried to pull him down. Land adjudication and resettlement; peace-making with the then ruling party, KANU; unabashedly serving Kenyans in various capacities, have been few of the highlights of his carrier.
Beyond everything, Musila went on to perform every duty well; as a human, a son, a brother, a husband, a father, a Public Administrator, a leader, peace makers. With David Musila Foundation, he has started working against the grassroot of all issues... lack of education and support to those who really need it to understand their needs towards growth.
Its Our Turn to Eat by Michela Wrong
It's Our Turn to Eat: The Story of a Kenyan Whistle-Blower.
When Michela Wrong's Kenyan friend John Githongo appeared one morning on the doorstep of her London flat, it was clear something had gone very wrong in a country regarded until then as one of Africa's few budding success stories.
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The Big Conservation Lie: The Untold Story of Wildlife Conservation in Kenya by Mordecai Ogada and John Mbaria
The Big Conservation Lie' is a wakeup call focused on a field that has been 'front and center' of many people's hearts and minds in recent years; the conservation of Africa's wildlife. It is a pursuit whose power to inspire is only rivalled by its ability to blind its audience to reality.
This book takes the reader through Kenya's conservation 'industry' and the players therein with all their prejudices, weaknesses and commitment to causes, many of which are indistinguishable from their personalities.
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Mwakenya The Unfinished Revolution by Maina Wa Kinyatti
Mwakenya: The Unfinished Revolution is a 440 page book divided into six parts after the Preface and Introduction. Part One deals with the birth of the Kenyan anti-imperialist underground move- ment in the mid-1970s around the time of the brutal and grisly murder of the populist parliamentarian JM Kariuki by assassins widely believed to be working at the behest of President Jomo Kenyatta.
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Maina informs his readers that DTM in turn was the child of the clandestine Workers' Party of Kenya. The fledgling underground movement took an anti-imperialist, pro-socialist stance--ideology anchored in Marxism-Leninism Maoist thought.
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Kenya: A Prison Notebook by Maina wa Kinyatti
Brief Summary
Maina wa Kinyatti is one of Kenya’s progressive historians. In June 1982, he was arrested by the Kenyan authoritarian regime, charged with possession of seditious literature and imprisoned.
He suffered for six-and-a-half years in the hands of his brutal captors. He was repeatedly held in solitary confinement and was constantly insulted and beaten.
He was tortured by vermin, untreated diseases, hunger and loneliness. But he remained defiant, his courage and spirit unbroken.
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This groundbreaking work tells how the brutal war between the colonial government and the insurrectionist Mau Mau between 1952 and 1960 dominated the final bloody decade of imperialism in East Africa.
Using extraordinary new evidence, David Anderson puts the colonial government on trial with eyewitness testimony from over 800 court cases and previously unseen archives.
His research exonerates the Kikuyu rebels; hardly the terrorists they were thought to be; and reveals the British to be brutal aggressors in a "dirty war" that involved leaders at the highest ranks of the British government.
This astonishing piece of scholarship portrays a teetering colonial empire in its final phase; employing whatever military and propaganda methods it could to preserve an order that could no longer hold.
Kenya Between Hope and Despair 1963-2011 by Daniel Branch
On December 12, 1963, people across Kenya joyfully celebrated independence from British colonial rule, anticipating a bright future of prosperity and social justice. As the nation approaches the fiftieth anniversary of its independence, however, the people's dream remains elusive.
During its first five decades Kenya has experienced assassinations, riots, coup attempts, ethnic violence, and political corruption. The ranks of the disaffected, the unemployed, and the poor have multiplied. In this authoritative and insightful account of Kenya's history from 1963 to the present day, Daniel Branch sheds new light on the nation's struggles and the complicated causes behind them.
Branch describes how Kenya constructed itself as a state and how ethnicity has proved a powerful force in national politics from the start, as have disorder and violence. He explores such divisive political issues as the needs of the landless poor, international relations with Britain and with the Cold War superpowers, and the direction of economic development.
Tracing an escalation of government corruption over time, the author brings his discussion to the present, paying particular attention to the rigged election of 2007, the subsequent compromise government, and Kenya's prospects as a still-evolving independent state.
Mukami Kimathi Mau Mau Women Freedom by Alice Wairimu Nderitu
In 1964, a newly independent Kenya was facing the uphill task of reconstructing herself into an African State. That reconstruction was called "Africanisation”.
As part of the Africanisation policy, my father, Vincent Nderitu, was posted to Sasumua Dam in Kinangop to take over from the British superintendents who were leaving the country.
Not long after he had arrived, he asked the foreman, Harun Musungu, to find out where he could buy milk. That was how he met Mukami Kimathi. My father was thunderstruck. Back home in Tetu, Nyeri, his home and Mukami’s were within a walking distance. My father knew her as a legend. She was a Mau Mau heroine, the wife of Field Marshal Dedan Kimathi.
My father began treating Mukami like an elder sister, fixing her fences and installing a water tank for her among other duties. When I was growing up, Mukami was the auntie through whose home we passed on our way from school; the one who made my brothers and I porridge and gave us red plums. She was not a blood relative, but we always thought she was.
Mukami and her children, Nyambura and Waceke, would often come to our home in the afternoons and I would read the newspaper to her haltingly. She encouraged me saying; "When you grow up, you will write as well as you read. One day, you should write my karugano ( story) because what is not written is forgotten.”
She wanted me to remind Kenyans to take care of the country the Mau Mau fought for.
Her lowest point was the 2007-2008 post-election violence and often said: "Because we fought the colonialists, Kenyans now have arrow roots, sweet potatoes, bananas and yam on the table. But instead of eating, they are fighting! I wish this generation of Kenyans from all ethnic communities would rally as we did and this time emerge with, instead of independence like we did, national unity!
In her story, Mukami shows us who Dedan Kimathi was as a father and husband. Her experiences provide an important complement to existing written records on Kenya’s history.
Mukami Kimathi’s prophesy that I would write her karugan is now a reality. The book, Mukami Kimathi: Mau Mau Freedom Fighter, was launched at the National Museums of Kenya in Nairobi last evening. She was also proved right on another front; my sister Consolata Wakonyo became a pilot.
Imperial Reckoning The Untold Story of Britains Gulag in Kenya by Caroline Elkins
Brief Summary
Britain fought in the Second World War to save the world from fascism. But just a few years after the defeat of Hitler came the Mau Mau uprising in Kenya - a mass armed rebellion by the Kikuyu people, demanding the return of their land and freedom. The draconian response of Britain's colonial government was to detain nearly the entire Kikuyu population of one-and-a half-million - to hold them in camps or confine them in villages ringed with barbed wire - and to portray them as sub-human savages.
From 1952 until the end of the war in 1960 tens of thousands of detainees - and possibly a hundred thousand or more - died from the combined effects of exhaustion, disease, starvation and systemic physical brutality. Until now these events have remained untold, largely because the British government in Kenya destroyed most of its files. For the last eight years Caroline Elkins has conducted exhaustive research to piece together the story, unearthing reams of documents and interviewing several hundred Kikuyu survivors.
Britain's Gulag reveals what happened inside Kenya's detention camps, as well as the efforts to conceal the truth. Now, for the first time, we can understand the full savagery of the Mau Mau war and the ruthless determination with which Britain sought to control its empire.
ISBN:9780805080018
Author: Caroline Elkins
The Politics of Betrayal: Diary of a Kenyan Legislator by Joe Khamisi
Brief Summary
The Politics of Betrayal: Diary of a Kenyan Legislator
In this provocative treatise, author Joe Khamisi catalogues the events that took place during one of Kenya's most important periods in history. This period began in 2002, when Daniel Arap Moi stepped down after twenty-four years as president of Kenya.
Khamisi reviews events up to the time when the country exploded in post-election violence in 2007 and the subsequent formation of the Grand Coalition Government between President Mwai Kibaki and Raila Amolo Odinga the following year.
Khamisi explores the leadership betrayals that he believes are responsible for the political, social, and economic rot that are pervasive in Kenya. He recounts how he helped a presidential poll loser in the 2007 elections, Stephen Kalonzo Musyoka, capture the coveted role of vice president.
He also presents an in-depth analysis of Senator Barack Obama's visit to Kenya in 2006, as well as his own personal experiences with Barack's late father, who he describes as a person who "chain-smoked contentedly, drank copiously, and partied spiritedly." The Politics of Betrayal is critical reading for anyone who is interested in the transformation of Kenya from a one-party dictatorship to a pluralistic nation.
Equality in Kenya’s 2010 Constitution: Understanding the Competing and Interrelated Conceptions by Victoria Miyandazi
Brief Summary
"This book asks whether there is a coherent conception of equality in Kenya's 2010 Constitution and explores how competing and interrelated ideas of equality in it should be conceptualized, interpreted and applied. Making a significant contribution to the ongoing global conversations on the various understandings of equality, the book illuminates the many ways in which diverse equality guarantees clash, or are interrelated.
It also sets out principled approaches on how they can be coherently interpreted to address the myriad inequalities in Kenya. Taking a comparative approach, the book considers how other jurisdictions including the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, South Africa, India and Botswana have approached the conceptualization, interpretation and application of various equality concepts.
The book focuses on important issues such as: - transformative constitutionalism in relation to the interpretation of Kenya's 2010 Constitution; - expanding the list of enumerated grounds for non-discrimination; - affirmative action; - accommodating religious and cultural diversity versus gender equality; - the interrelation between socio-economic rights and status-based equality"--
A Railway to Nowhere The Building of the Lunatic Line 1896 -1901 by Brian Yonge and Stephen Mills
Mervyn Hill made a significant contribution to East African studies in his history of the Kenya and Uganda Railway from its conception to the creation of East African Railways and Harbours in 1948. Commissioned in 1942 as a 'plain story' of 'the development of the railway' and published in 1949, 'Permanent Way' has long proved a boon to those interested in the history of Kenya and Uganda.
Hill was however at a great disadvantage when writing the official history, most notably because the operation of the 50-year rule prevented him from consulting official documents in the Public Record Office and elsewhere, with the result that he was largely dependent on material published in Parliamentary Command papers.
Two other serious drawbacks were that war conditions restricted his sources to published works and other material available in East Africa at the time and that many of the books and articles which authors now have access to had yet to be written. The Railway to Nowhere does not suffer from these disadvantages and provides a well-researched, authoritative account coupled with a pictorial appreciation of the construction of the railway in the early years of its operation.
There is no doubt that the construction of the railway was a triumph of human endeavour and resolution over the most daunting obstacles and setbacks: the vision and tenacity of the British government in the face of parliamentary, press and Treasury opposition and criticism; the steadfast leadership of Sir George Whitehouse in coping with an often querulous Foreign Office Committee, and overcoming a series of administrative engineering and personal problems; the inventiveness and skill of surveyor engineers when tackling exceptional professional challenges and the hardiness shown by the working gangs, of all races, in carrying on under adverse conditions of climate and terrain.
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