Calamity in Jukistopia. Francis Imbuga is gone.

And somehow, it feels like a betrayal.

I had just finished drafting a speech—one that was to open with Doga’s haunting words:

“People say there were many of them, all marching in the same manner. Suddenly, the shooting broke out… Only four bullets were fired that day. Adika had four bullet wounds.”

Now I pause. Do those words carry more weight today than they did when Imbuga first wrote them?

Francis Imbuga (1947–2012) was not just a writer. He was a mirror. For decades at Kenyatta University—as lecturer, chairman, and dean—he shaped minds. But it is through his works that he unsettled them.

The play

In Betrayal in the City (1976), he gives us Kafira—a fictional state that feels uncomfortably familiar. And perhaps that’s the point: Kafira is simply Afrika rearranged.

In Kafira, betrayal is not an event; it is the system. The state is run by “Boss” and his loyal machinery of opportunists—Mulili, Tumbo, Kabito, Nicodemo—each playing their part in sustaining a regime built on fear, corruption, and self-preservation.

Here, power is abused casually. Justice is selective. Loyalty is transactional.

Doga and Nina mourn their son Adika, killed by the state. Their grief is denied even ritual expression—because even mourning must be approved. Their surviving son, Jusper, is imprisoned. Critics disappear into cells. Truth becomes dangerous.

Meanwhile, those in power feast.

Tumbo manipulates a competition for personal gain. Mulili, semi-literate but dangerously influential, weaponizes proximity to power. Decisions are not made in the interest of the nation, but in anticipation of personal benefit.

And perhaps most chilling of all is this quiet admission from within the system:
“We have no choice. Like caged animals, we move—but only inside the cage… the desire to eliminate others has become infectious.”

That is Kafira.

Or is it?

Because the tragedy of Betrayal in the City is not just that it reflects post-independence Africa—it is that it still resonates. The betrayal Imbuga wrote about did not end with the play. It lingers in systems where power serves itself, where citizens are managed rather than represented, and where hope is rationed.

The human spirit refuses to remain caged forever

And yet, Imbuga does not leave us in despair. Through the “play within the play,” resistance emerges. Quietly. Unexpectedly. Inevitably. Because even in Kafira, the human spirit refuses to remain caged forever.

So yes—calamity in Jukistopia. Imbuga is gone. But his warning remains. And perhaps the real question is this:
Are we still living in Kafira?