The Kenyan President's New Role

Our own president, the El-presidentte aka Prezzo managed to hook up himself with position 2 in BBA. Then he bags this price-less role of being One ambassador against malnutrition and the likes in Africa. Big role, serious stuffs there and major recognition for the Makini Herbs honcho.

Thing is, someone got issues with this. Waga Odongo, a weekly columnist 'The Wag' questions the sagacity behind giving the self-acclaimed president the international platform. Have a read about it...

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KENYA HAS a new ambassador. His diplomatic qualifications may be scanty, but he more than makes up for it in his love for all things foreign.

Prezzo, part-time rapper and full-time braggadocio — coming off the heels of being an also-ran in reality TV show Big Brother, the 21st Century’s metric for celebrity worth — is now an ambassador.

The exhibitionist extraordinaire has been made ONE International’s emissary to Africa against poverty.

We have now fallen into that “pit of no return” of celebrity advocacy of social causes. We have no situation too complex to be served up by a celebrity in easy-to-understand bites.

We are too thick, perhaps, to know about poverty unless it is fronted by a rapper who constantly sings about his material wealth.

Prezzo shot to the limelight on the back of his affluent background. His family money partly did what his talent could not and opened up doors for him.

He walks around with enough jewellery to send a Moi Avenue mugger into comfortable retirement.

He claims to have spent half-a-million shillings shooting a video clip which was stuffed with blondes and emphasised opulence.

So, is someone who promotes the nihilistic virtues of rank showiness, feral acquisitive greed, and a magpie’s eye for all things shiny and expensive the best person to be crusading against poverty?

All his songs and videos have the same background of wealth-without-work and offer a peek into his high-definition, opulent lifestyle.

They feature a carefully constructed and expensive artifice that promotes a lifestyle that does not take into account his fans’ social realities.

His rap group Cash Money Brothers proclaims their mouth-watering admiration and glorification of Mammon in their name.

They are interested in showing off wealth and never bother to tell us how it is accumulated.