Kitu Kidogo Huvunja Kibaba: Confronting Corruption in Twenty-First Century Kenyan Editorial Art

Abstract

One of the most recalcitrant problems facing Africans has been the extent to which they have become embroiled in networks of self-enrichment that are obstructive to the processes essential to people’s lives.
Kenya presents cases of self-aggrandizement and unethical behavior that are some of the most shocking on the globe. Artists spend both energy and talent exposing the nature of and possible solutions to this hydra-headed problem in their midst. Novelists such as Moyez Vassanji, cartoonists like Godfrey Mwampembwa and songwriters such as Eric Wainaina produce works detailing and challenging corrupt practices in present-day Kenya. These represent an important and progressive movement within these art
forms. The fact that the same theme is similarly developed across multiple genres forces us to reevaluate the divisive categories within European and American criticism and to recognize the extent to which artists and audiences in Kenya are able and apt to respond to multiple media for information and entertainment.