This is why Kenyans steal newspapers

In Kenya, a newspaper, once bought, is not your own. Like a child raised by a village, it becomes everybody’s Photo: Courtesy

Newspapers are glorious things, and in his home country, the expatriate was wont to wax lyrical about their ‘independence, freedom and integrity.’ This, even when he comes from Britain, a country served by rags such as the right-wing ‘Daily Mail’ or the surreal ‘Star.’

In Kenya, of course, newspapers are about as independent as termites in a colony. The naïve expatriate is likely to moan about this almost every day when, in traffic jams, he buys his dailies through a tiny gap in the rolled-down window of his Land Rover. ‘This one,’ he will say to his driver, ‘is clearly Jubilee, and this one is obviously Cord.’ The driver will nod politely, pretending not to have any political leanings whatsoever.