When Debunk Media launched its op-ed section, Public Square, in October 2022, Rasna Warah was the first columnist to officially join the team. Alongside the op-eds, Rasna, now battling cancer, did more writing, but in the form of Q&As. This is how Rasna did another first for Debunk, by pioneering Debunk Speaks To, Debunk’s Q&A beat. These reflections from Rasna’s comrades in arms, those with whom she wrote and thought alongside during her stint with Debunk.
1
Rasna Warah never seemed afraid
My father loved to retweet Rasna Warah. I think in her, he believed he’d found a kindred political spirit. Someone who saw all the injustice for what it was and had the courage to scream, “For crying out loud!”
But my father, being the parastatal man that he was, born during colonialism and adulting through the Jomo Kenyatta to Daniel arap Moi eras, was imbued with The Fear. The fear of arbitrary arrest. The fear of abduction. The fear of torture. The fear of death. This same fear which has been resurrected under the William Ruto regime in this, the year of our Lord, 2025. So like most people of the later half of the 20th century, my father was cautious of saying too much too loudly.
Rasna Warah never seemed afraid.
She was one of the first female columnists in Kenya, in an era where the concept of feminism in the country was like a candle fighting for its flame against the strongest winds. On top of rallying for the rights of women, Rasna Warah brazenly criticized and critiqued the government. She did not mince her words and neither did she hide behind a pseudonym.
Her name was Rasna Warah and if she were to die, she would die by the truth of her pen, an ethos my father would spend my entire life inscribing into me. That words can be justice, that one’s words are not only thy shield and defender, but shield and defender for the voiceless and the wordless.
In the end, the most vile regime of them all, cancer, came for them both. My father in December of 2023. Rasna Warah just days into 2025. Both lived and died by their words, clutching the pen of truth and justice until their last breaths were drawn.
– Chia Kayanda
2
Her work says we are possible, we are worthy
Rasna Warah was a bold African writer.
I purposefully don’t use the term fearless as I doubt most people are. She wrote and she shared her work, and her portfolio is something to be proud of. I hope that as she passed, she was proud and content with her work. It is something to be admired especially because of the conditions under which she wrote. Bold. Admirable.
I am happy and relieved that writers like her exist. She affirms hope and possibility which as Africans, where the abuse of colonizers instilled despair and affirmed that we were not worthy or enough, or that we were inferior, her work says something else. It says we are possible. We are worthy. There is better. It is possible.
In a country like ours that doesn’t support independent progressive thought, she was, together with her work, a beacon of hope and possibility. She will be missed but she will never truly be gone.
– Angel Lovely
3
Go well, Rasna Warah
No account in regards to Kenyan letters and writing can be credibly written in which Rasna Warah won’t feature. As one of the central markers of Kenyan Journalism, here was one whose style of commentary on issues was arresting, and will always remain original to me. When I became a journalist, Rasna Warah was not just a source of inspiration, but someone who helped me find my journalistic voice.
Through Debunk Speaks To, the interview series in which she was the trailblazer, I, together with other writers, found a space to hold important conversations. While we never crossed paths, her actions left an imprint for which I am grateful.
Kenya has lost a voice and witness of profound particularity and accuracy, on not only the state of our industry, but the nation as well.
Go well, Rasna Warah.
– Frank Njugi
4
Thank you, Rasna Warah. Aluta Continua!
There is so much to say in this sad moment but I can only profess that Rasna Warah was one of the bravest and most truthful Kenyans I have known. She stood on principle and exposed mischief within the United Nations at the cost of her job. She quit a prominent columnist role at the Nation because she wouldn’t stomach government-directed editorial interference with her writing.
Rasna Warah warned us many times over the years that capitulation to wrongdoing because the wrongdoers have current power was ill-advised, and we would pay the price for taking the soft option, rather than face the facts.
I especially remember an opinion piece she wrote on the apocalyptic implications of lowering the constitutional integrity bar to allow candidates facing charges at the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity to run for the Kenyan presidency in 2013. Rasna struck a nerve.
The ICC suspects column received hundreds of comments within minutes of being posted, a greater number of them being essentially racist and sexist abuse by rabid supporters of the usual political suspects. These horrible comments are no longer accessible at the online archive, but I would hazard that if one were to read those comments today, Rasna would stand vindicated.
We lowered our guard and allowed dregs to pretend to be cream. We can now trace a straight line between the entrenchment of impunity in Kenya and even the state orchestrated abductions we complain of today, and the fateful decisions Kenyans made (or opted to remain silent about) in 2012-2013.
Rasna Warah took on Howard Zinn’s challenge and courageously took on the enormous responsibility to bring to the attention of others information they do not have, offering us all the opportunity to rethink long-held ideas. I heard her loud and clear and know what needs to be done.
Thank you, Rasna Warah. Aluta Continua!
– Mwalimu Mati
5
I’ll never forget her empathy
I didn’t know Rasna Warah personally, but our sole interaction gave me a glimpse into her kind soul. After writing an article on my struggles with anxiety on Debunk Media’s Public Square, Rasna, as a fellow writer on the platform, expressed her compassion and understanding to me on Twitter. She went ahead to suggest I try Ashwagandha. I never got to tell her I did and that I’ll never forget her empathy. As a journalist, I’ve known of Rasna’s work for years. Her activism against corruption in this country is legendary and she’ll go down as one of the greats. Rest in Peace, Rasna Warah.
– Soila Kenya
6
Rasna Warah, we speak your name
Rasna Warah’s voice was always lucid, never quivering, her resolve never wavering as she spoke in the name of justice. The loss of Rasna Warah is immense as she was an amplifier of many important voices speaking up for social justice and anti-imperialism. Rasna Warah’s spirit will live on in the voices she amplified, the words she wove, and the love she sowed. Rasna Warah, we speak your name with honour in the land of the living. We shall continue the fight even as you keep on guiding us from the light.
– Doddy Maru
7
Her legacy emerges through these complexities
Rasna Warah’s contributions to journalism and social discourse cannot be understated. She was fearless and deeply committed to using her voice to expose corruption, inequality, and governance and social failures. I read her work and respected and admired her for it. However, some of her views were not without controversy, as she faced criticism for being racially insensitive. These criticisms serve as a reminder that even those who challenge the status quo are not immune to flawed thinking and deserved scrutiny. Her legacy emerges through these complexities—a woman unafraid to provoke thought, spark debate, and compel us to grapple with uncomfortable truths about society and ourselves. Rest well, Rasna.
– Mwende Ngao
8
Pen on in eternal power!
Although I never got to meet Rasna Warah in person, I feel like I knew her very well. This is because of her open, forthright, and provocative style of writing. I met her through her words, sentences, paragraphs, articles, tweets, and books, through which she effectively weaved and curated her thoughts and emotions. Her oeuvre was sincere, engaging and generous, to the extent that interacting with it over the years left me feeling like I personally knew her.
I was humbled and honoured to share Debunk Media’s Public Square platform as a contributor alongside Rasna Warah and others. I always looked forward to her informative submissions and her persuasive opinions. Her energy and passion for digging deep into and ventilating issues affecting the people around her, whether at her home in Kilifi, Kenya, and the world at large was inspirational. Unknown to her, I recruited her as my ‘virtual mentor’, using her work as a map for navigating through different topics on social justice that I was analysing and writing about.
In the beginning was the word. And the word was with Rasna.
Pen on in eternal power!
– Bobby Mkangi
9
She never left room for ambiguity in her words
In 2017, during my second year studying International Relations at university, my sister gave me a book that would go on to reshape my perspective on my coursework. This book became my companion and reference point during countless evening debates with coursemates in the school cafeteria over masala tea, and a frequent source of citations in my term papers. The book was UNsilenced: Unmasking the United Nations’ Culture of Cover-Ups, Corruption and Impunity. The author was Rasna Warah.
Years later, I had the privilege of working with Rasna when she contributed opinion pieces to Debunk Media, where I served as the digital and publishing production manager. Though we met a couple of times in person at various literary events in Nairobi, our email exchanges revealed more of her character to me: direct, unfiltered, and precise in her communication.
She never left room for ambiguity in her words.
Rasna was fast. A story could break in the afternoon or the evening and by the next morning I would have in my email inbox an insightful and very opinionated piece. To do that, week in week out, while battling a terminal illness was nothing short of superhuman.
Rasna’s deep commitment to Kenya – its politics, history, future, and shortcomings – occasionally sparked controversy, but what meaningful writer and journalist exists without stirring debate? Through it all, she maintained an unwavering sincerity in her writing and in her vision for a more equitable, inclusive, and well-governed Kenya.
As she rests in eternal peace, we would do well to inherit her courage, sincerity, and passionate dedication to building a better Kenya.
– Mohamed Abdishukri
10
I can only say thank you to her
All you really want, when you get into the messy, highly guarded, ruthless world of writing, full of mostly unwarranted ego and an editor who hates you, is for someone to read you. Anyone, really. Of course you want to write for yourself, but you want someone else to agree with you. You want one person to read you and change their mind because of your logic, or your wit, or even by chance, you know? Anyway, it happens.
So you can imagine what it felt like to work next to a giant who really had already conquered every mountain within sight, multiple times, the only woman columnist at Nation for quite a long stretch, a whistleblower extraordinaire, a prolific writer and culture commentator, and that strange and otherworldly combination of someone who didn’t give a fuck, and simultaneously cared so so, in fact, too too, much for this country – with a big glass of red wine in hand.
I was extremely privileged to work around and with Rasna Warah, and even though her unassuming demeanour made you think she wasn’t aware of who she was, I was always aware, and in perpetual awe. To have breathed the air after her? To have the blessing to walk on a path she forged with her searing pen? And now, to commemorate her for eternities to come, in her life to come, in whatever halls of Valhalla writers are allowed to go to, probably arguing all the way? I can only say thank you to her. RIP, Rasna. Inna lillahi wa inna ilayhi raji’un.
