ISBN 9789914992199
Pages 426
Dimensions 229 x 152mm
Published 2022
Publisher Vita Books, Kenya
Format Paperback

Cabral Pinto: Willy Mutunga Under Cover

by Willy Mutunga

For over 30 years, Willy Mutunga has blazed the trail in starting many important public conversations about remaking Kenya and the wider world into a better society. As a public intellectual, he has consistently challenged convenient stereotypes in an effort to bring down the social barriers erected by fear and ignorance, and led in persuading individuals and communities to re-examine widely held prejudices and to start difficult dialogues. Between 2006 and 2011, Mutunga wrote a weekly column in the Saturday Nation. It is from these contributions, under the pen name Cabral Pinto – a combination of the surnames of the two African ideologues he greatly admired — that the 146 articles in this volume are selected. The clarity of Willy’s moral voice is unmistakable on a broad variety of themes, ranging from exhortations for an alternative leadership that would deliver a human rights state, to an unapologetic call for mass action as a peaceful way to bring change. This collection by Cabral Pinto is the story of Kenya’s long democracy struggle, told by a pro-democracy activist.
Book Preview
Paperback
£48.51
eBook
£46.20

About the Author

Willy Mutunga

Willy Mutunga was one of the youthful radical lights of the Kenyan pro-democracy movement of the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s. He paid a high price for it. As both the repression by President Daniel arap Moi’s government ramped up, and the opposition to it snowballed, Mutunga was accused of being a member of an underground organisation known as the December Twelve Movement and involvement in the production of its publication, Pambana. He was subsequently detained without trial in June 1982. Released in October 1983, Mutunga set up his own legal firm and went back to giving pro bono legal aid and advice services. In 1989 he went to Canada where he studied for his PhD in Law. He founded the Kenya Human Rights Commission with others. He returned to Kenya in 1991. He was elected the Vice-President of the Law Society of Kenya and then President in 1993-05. He joined other leaders in the pro-democracy movement called National Convention Assembly/National Convention Executive Council. Mutunga served as the Chief Justice of Kenya from 2011 to 2016.