You Are Guilty of Sexual Assault! Binyavanga Lashes out At Smitta Smitten

Sexual assault is no laughing matter. Many celebrities have had the career tank so hard that they have never been able to bounce back. Case in point, Michael Jackson, R.Kelly and locally that guy from of M.O.G.

Earlier this week Tony Mochama a.k.a Smitta Smitten was accused of sexually assaulting a poet and his career is hanging in the balance.

Binyavanga Wainaina has weighed in on the issue:

Drunk, sober, memory or no memory. Wild, Poetic, sarcastic. Even Loving. Even Charming. A mentor to many. One of our biggest talents. Tony Ontita. Poet stands accused of something I take very seriously. Kept my opinion to myself much of yesterday. The script is descending into the lowest common denominator – to attempt to create an online hysteria to demean, slander and name mess the VICTIM here. Shailja Patel. Poet. And others.

Yesterday, through an intermediary, I appealed to Tony Ontita to take the accusation of sexual assault seriously and seek remedy from Shailja, and the community he desecrated, especially if he did not remember the incident (which has been witnessed by several.)

As am given to understand, all of Sunday, Tony had an opportunity to seek redress and the conversation was kept to a closed writers group.Today. This http://www.kahawatungu.com/…/feminists-lynch…/written by a coward anonymous blogger, and forwarded on facebook by Tony Ontita this morning. This makes it clear to me that enough is enough.

All those who have given testimony are all people whose opinions and integrity I deeply respect. I was not present. If it is as I understand it that Tony Mochama went to a fellow writers home, to attend a meeting of poets and sexually assaulted one of them, I want to make clear that such behaviour is to me worse than merely ‘criminal’. As a representative of PEN Kenya you have a responsibility to look out for the well-being of ALL writers. If the accusations are true, which I believe they are, you have violated the trust of many in our community of writers and artists. It is a trust I take very seriously. No woman, no person should ever have to deal with this kind of behaviour in any situation. It is against all I stand for as a writer.