In urban Kenya, it is only the gregarious, the foolhardy or the criminally-inclined who have any desire to get to know their neighbours, especially among the younger generation. If you have had the ill-fortune of being confined in what is known as an "estate" in Nairobi, or any of the other half-dozen or so urban centres, you will instinctively know that getting to know your neighbours will bring you more grief than you would care to suffer in a hundred lifetimes.
It is for this simple, and simplistic, reason that the Nyumba Kumi thing that the security establishment has been banging on about for the past three months will end up being another white elephant, with the pay-stubs to prove it. If there is one thing it will achieve, it will be the decimation of a small forest to provide the paper for the thousands upon thousands of words that will be written to explain it, to sell it and to justify it when it comes to grief.
This blogger has absolutely no wish to know his neighbours. Ever. He does not want to know their children, their children's ayahs, the local cigarette vendor or the names of the choggis who let him into his court when he staggers home from The Porterhouse in the wee hours of the (mostly) Sunday mornings. This blogger has absolutely no wish to find out why the doctor in house 442 refuses to park his shiny new Ranger Rover inside his compound, or why last night there were suspicious groans coming from the upstairs apartment in this blogger's own compound. All this blogger wants is the sense of safety that comes form knowing that Kenya Power and the County of Nairobi City will not get into another lover's tiff that cuts off all power to the street lights that compel the nefariously-minded to scurry like the cockroaches they are into the shadows. All this blogger wants is a commitment from the City Fathers that drains will get cleaned, sewers will be unblocked, and the thug-infested unplanned migingos and vibandas will be razed to the ground and the pavements restored to the walking working public, including yours truly. And because this blogger knows that City fathers have spent their entire existence lining their pockets without helping him line his, this blogger has absolutely no doubt whatsoever that the half-an-idea that is Nyumba Kumi will not reverse the escalation in violent crimes in Nairobi or anywhere else.
David Mole Kimaiyo is a nice enough man for a policeman. Joseph Ole Lenku is a nice enough man for a quasi-politician. But none of them has a clue what needs to be done to de-escalate the rising violent crime statistics in Kenya. That's a bit harsh; they know what needs to be done, but they threw up their hands at doing it a long, long time ago. They know, and must have known for a while now, that it is the small things that make it possible for the criminal element to flourish with such wildly violent abandon.
Take a typical "estate" in Nairobi's quasi-middle-class neighbourhoods of Buru Buru, Doonholm or Kariobangi South. These are estates where civil services were more or less suspended over two decades ago.Tarmac used to define the roads in these estates; today, it is the ever-widening potholes and the incessant dust that do. Street lighting and garbage removal were facts of civic life; nowadays the extortionate demands of Kenya Power and "sanitation" companies are all that is left. The run and decrepit state of the municipal facilities have encouraged the impression that the City fathers do not give a damn about the residents of these estates and that they are fair game for the jackals and hyenas among us. The tally of residents assaulted and murdered in these estates on a monthly basis are a reminder that in their obsession with their place in the national security firmament, Messrs Kimaiyo and Ole Lenku (and their minions) have their eyes firmly fixed on the wrong problem in the wrong place. It is only an Act of God that will force them to shift focus. And to pull the wool over our eyes that they have everything in hand, they come up with inanities such as Nyumba Kumi.
Public safety is a partnership that brings together the public, the security agencies and the municipal authorities. But it is the role played by the City Fathers to provide and maintain key infrastructure and that of the security agencies to act professionally at all times that will persuade the public to enthusiastically embrace the core elements of the partnership. But when City Fathers treat their residents as vermin, and the security agencies treat them as a threat, there is absolutely no reason why city residents should join a quasi-espionage operation against their neighbours. Find a way of building up the confidence of the people in their county government and in their police and Nyumba Kumi may not seem the hair-brained moneypit that it is already on its way to becoming.
No comments:
Post a Comment