Voices of African Women Bulletin
After a brief hiatus, our Voices of African Women bulletin is up and running again. Since the seminars last year, WILPF has been busy getting support for women’s organisations. The declaration is online and keeps gaining more support. On WILPF’s 94th birthday, African women with WILPF activists delivered the declaration and the signatures we had received so far to Downing Street. We have since received a reply and will be engaging in dialogue to increase support to African women’s organisations.
On the same day, the Scottish branch of WILPF hosted an event on women in the Democratic Republic of Congo in Scottish Parliament, which was well attended by MSPs.
In the coming months we will be meeting with African embassies, calling on African governments to support women’s organisations in their country. We will also be starting to work on Security Council Resolution 1325 in African countries to increase women’s participation in decision making.
Come along to our next meeting on the 22 August to find out how you can contribute to this important campaign.

Michael Kirugumi Wa Njoka, 85, a retired hangman, outside his home at Kahigaini in Tetu on August 5, 2009. He says the decision to reduce death sentence to life imprisonment for inmates would set a bad precedent for hardcore criminals. Photo/ JOSEPH KANYI
By MUCHIRI KARANJA

Retired hangman does not understand why President saved 4,000 on death row
A retired hangman is not happy. He does not see why 4,000 death row inmates in Kenya were saved from hanging.
On Monday, President Kibaki of Kenya reduced sentences handed down to the inmates, from death to life.
But the 85-year-old Michael Kirugumi wa Njoka says the presidential decision would set a bad precedent for hardcore criminals, especially murderers.
Forgive prisoners
“It is his prerogative to forgive prisoners, but what about the families of those the convicts killed? How do they feel?” he asked.
For 16 years, the man from Kahigaini village, in Tetu, Nyeri, slipped the hangman’s noose on death row inmates without hesitation.
Then, unlike now, the death sentence was actively executed.
“During (Jomo) Kenyatta’s time, death row inmates were hanged as expected. Now I hear (President) Kibaki has said people should not be hanged; I do not understand,” said the father of one.
For years, he performed his duty with passion and enthusiasm at King’ong’o Maximum Security Prison for four years, and Kamiti Maximum Prison for 11 and a half years, before retiring in 1974.
For a monthly salary of Sh99, wa Njoka would prepare the condemned inmates for that final moment.
“I would go to their cells and tell them the exact time I was going to hang them, so each knew at time he would die,” he recalls. He says hanging death row inmates was not a grisly affair as such.
In their last 24 hours the condemned would be treated like kings. They even had a chance to share these final moments with close members of their families.
Some, he recalled, would order expensive designer suits; others simply ordered lots of chicken.
“We treated them well before hanging them; we would even trim their nails and shave their beards, and when time came to hang them, we hang them.”
Once the 24 hours were up, he would lead the prisoner to the hanging room; slip a black hood over his head before putting a noose around his neck. He would then pull the lever that opened a trap door beneath the convict’s feet.
And once the trap door snapped open, the convict would hang, his weight pulling the noose tighter.
“They were supposed to die slowly. We were not even supposed to bruise their necks,” he says, adding that he had no regrets and if he had his way, he would gladly slip the noose on the 4,000 convicts.
“The hangman does not kill the convicts, it is the evidence produced in court against them,” he said.
Although he confesses that the spirits of those he hanged haunt him to date, no amount of nightmares that plague him every day will make him change his position.
“A man’s life is sacred, you cannot buy it from the market; the convicts were simply paying for the souls they killed.”
He says he lost count of the men that he hanged. But the last one, he recalled, had been sentenced to death for slaughtering his family — three children and the wife.
“I told him, you are going to die for this. The next morning, I hanged him.”
He retired 35 years ago, but says he would gladly go back to his old job. “I loved my job. I would gladly do it again.”
The government has not hanged any death row inmate for 22 years. The last to be hanged was 1982 failed coup leader Hezekiah Ochuka.

Tanzania's future leaders

Waziri wa Maliasili na Utalii nchini Mheshimiwa Shamsha
Mwangunga
---Uchaguzi 2010 jimbo la Ubungo
Kuwaka Moto..Waziri wa Maliasili na Utalii Mheshimiwa Shamsa Mwangunga ametangaza Rasmi kugombania ubunge kupitia jimbo la Ubungo jijini Dar es Salaam 2010 kupitia chama cha mapinduzi na kuvaana na John Mnyika ambaye ni Mkurugenzi wa Vijana wa Chama Cha Demokrasia na Maendeleo(CHADEMA).mheshimiwa John Mnyika alizaliwa tarehe 21 August mwaka 1980 jijini Dar-es-salaam.jimbo hilo la Ubungo kwa sasa linashikiliwa na Aliyewai kuwa Waziri wa Kilimo na chakula na Ushirika Mheshimiwa Charles Keenja ambaye inasemekana ameamua kustaafu