The radio has long been a symbol of power and control

Forces Broadcasting Station studio 1964. [File, Standard]

Kenya is watching. The cast is being reassembled and the legends will once again rule the airwaves.

There was a time when radio was so powerful that rural folk thought there were some midgets inserted in the sets by the government to speak when commanded. A story is told of a chief, who, on learning that all Mau Mau apologists and their leaders had been rounded and locked up in colonial detention camps, was ecstatic.

This chief from Murang’a County was jubilant that these provocateurs would rot in jail. He was shell-shocked when in 1960 the same radio told him that the detainees, among them Jomo Kenyatta, had been released.