Happy New Year Jenerali Ulimwengu And Thanks For Your Summary Of Last Year’s Main Events
Thought leadership! What is it? It is what Charles Onyango Obbo, Elzie Eyakuze, Austin Bukenya and Jenerali Ulimwengu have been doing for decades at the National Media Group; in the East African and as well as in the Saturday Nation. They have all been doing very good work that is immensely educative, informative, enculturating and spiritually soothing. Personally; Charles Onyango Obbo, Elzie Eyakuze, Austin Bukenya and Jenerali Ulimwengu are the reason why I made my unbreakable duty to buy each and every print copy of the East African and the Saturday Nation for the entire year 2024. But, unlike other people who buy newspapers to read them casually and only to junk them away to the butcher men and women for meat wrapping, I have obligated myself to take my 2024 fifty four copies of the East African and my 2024 fifty four copies of Saturday Nation to the bindery for Case Binding into a well bound reference material for storage in my library.
It does not mean that I only enjoyed the specific thought leadership work of Obbo, Eyakuze, Ulimwengu and Bukenya in the year 2024 .No, for more than a decade, I have been a loyal consumer of their intellectual work. I can say Charles Onyango Obbo, Elzie Eyakuze, Austin Bukenya and Jenerali Ulimwengu have been social pillars that guide quality of thought process when communicating at the editorial level in the mainstream media. Tellingly , lovers of print Media in East Africa and the world at large cannot afford to deny peculiar knack of Austin Bukenya’s power of neologizing English words ranging from Oracy , phallocentricism , dialogic, polyalogic textology, textuality, feminology, ntuology(literary study of Ubuntu) and feministic . In the same way none in our East African community of knowing can fail to salute the command of language, intellectual objectivity and research excellence displayed in the thought leadership culture of Charles Onyango Obbo. Just as we equally give unblemished kowtow to the intellectual bravado in the tireless pen-pushing or key-board punching work of Elzie Eyakuze.
Evident to the precedent, Jenerali Ulimwengu did some excellent work in East African (in the 4th to 10th January 2O25 ) by giving the readers a very brilliant summary of significant events that took place in the year 2024. The events were well presented, to a keen and conscientious reader, Jenerali Ulimwengu’s summary of significant eventualities in the year 2024 was well and definite information professionally presented to be useful in exercise of pragmatic thinking about politics and social life of the people of East Africa come the immediate future. Above all, I appreciate Jenerali Ulimwengu for tickling my fondly memories, and hopefully the memories of other readers in my ilk about our gone and beloved guru of thought leadership, the one Phillip Ochieng.
It is understandable that Editorial economy limits the range of significant events which happened in the course of last year that Jenerali Ulimwengu would have shared with the readers. Otherwise, there were other significant events in 2024 fit enough to aggress our consciousness and future decision making ranging from ecologically significant event in the actions of the local peasant community saving an ancient baobab tree from the Chinese road builders in Dar es Salam; the literary event of Xaba Makhososane translating Fanon’s Wretched of the Earth to IsiZulu for the purpose of wider readership; the human rights violation event in the actions of Paul Kagame overseeing prosecution of those reading Sroja Popovic’s Blue Print for Revolution and or even the democratic process event evinced in public audacity and self-immolating stamina of Shakira Wafula, a Gen Z in Kenya confronting only with her bare hands a cordon of deadly - armed-red-barrette-gun-brandishing anti-riot police in Nairobi during the Gen Z demonstration against oppressive finance bill. Ergo, Happy New Year Jenerali Ulimwengu and thank you for your good work in thought leadership.
Yours
Alexander Opicho writes from, Nairobi, Kenya