If corruption was the lubricant that in the past oiled Kenya’s politics, it is now the enfant terrible that gobbles up its progenitors. Three weeks ago, this horrible child of Kenya’s politics strolled into town, scalping no less than three of President Mwai Kibaki’s ministers and his personal assistant.

British former pop star Gary Glitter, charged with committing "obscene acts with children" in Vietnam, has fallen a long way since his 1970s heyday as the leader of the glam-rock gang. Glitter (61) was the dazzling king of the glam era, characterised by performers in sequinned dress and extreme make-up.

Sizwe Mathabula (not his real name) lives in a high-rise building in Hillbrow. He works as a nightwatchman, guarding an inner-city office block three nights a week. He supplements this income by selling vegetables on the city’s pavements. In a typical month, he clears about R800, which he uses to support his wife and their two young children.

Six teenage rugby players rush forward to protect their teammate, who is charging into the opposition with the ball tucked under his right arm. Within seconds, they are all on the sodden ground, laughing. ”No, no no,” hollers their coach in a northern-English accent. ”You’ve got to stay on your feet.”

Fifteen years after communism was officially pronounced dead, its spectre seems once again to be haunting Europe. In January, the Council of Europe’s parliamentary assembly voted to condemn the ”crimes of totalitarian communist regimes”, linking them with Nazism and complaining that communist parties are still ”legal and active in some countries”.

Six of the leading players in the long-running global trade talks are to meet in London next month for what is being billed as a ”collective striptease” to unblock deadlocked negotiations through a series of mutual concessions. Sources close to the meeting — to start on March 10 — said that the aim was a deal in which deeper cuts in support for farmers in the European Union