The first Kenyan photojournalist to win the CNN Multichoice Journalist Award has been banned by social networking site Facebook. Boniface Mwangi who won the CNN Africa Photojournalist of the Year 2008 is starting up a new Facebook profile after his was deleted last week due to his radical status updates.
Commenting on the issue he said, “I was removed from Facebook due to controversial updates calling for political change and the youth to stop hero worshiping tribal leaders who have messed up our country.” One of his last comments before his profile was deleted was “Kenyans elect criminals to parliament all you need is money to get elected.” He had over 1,500 friends.
Boniface is known for his crusade against tribal politics. “I see myself as a visual artist using photography as the vehicle for social change in my country, which has experienced a lot of impunity, the latest manifestation being 2007 December’s political convulsions that left over 1,000 dead and half a million displaced.”
Boniface’s post poll chaos photos have been published in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Sunday Times, International Herald Tribune and BBC Focus on Africa Magazine among other publications. Facebook has meanwhile declined to take down several Holocaust denial sites known for their anti- Semitic statements.
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