Demanding rights -- Considering power and all its potential brutality

I am thinking of dear friends and hope they are safe.

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I wrote a post a couple weeks ago about an article I had read for class with which I really disagreed, but I only just published it on this blog. When I wrote it I was still feeling a bit frustrated so I left it in my drafts box to read over at a later date.

The current events in Kenya however brought it back to my mind and pushed me to put it up here.

Here are a couple lines from the article, written by Bratton and Logan in 2006 about voters in African democracies:

"They have not yet made a personal transition from mere voters into fully engaged citizens."
"Can Africans be helped to become rights-demanding citizens?"

I had to read these lines twice to be sure I wasn't imagining them.

It's hard to demand rights when you don't have them, whether or not you want to make a "personal transition".

It's hard to hold a peaceful demonstration when the police use live rounds to clear the crowd. It's hard to understand what's going on in your country when the government bans live broadcasts. And it's hard to check on family and friends when there is no more mobile phone credit available.