"Usalama wa serikali" is the wrong approach.

We must say it over and over until Vigilance House, Jogoo House, Harambee House and State House get it through their mulish heads: in order for the people to feel safe, the Government, not the State, should concentrate more on public safety and not obsessively over national security.

Those of us who are comfortably ensconced in the swaddling clothes of the middle class don't really care; after all, the walking unwashed masses subsidise our lives to a very great degree so if they are getting blown up by al Shabaab types, we will cluck in despair and retreat to the safety of our armed private security, private transport and bullet-resistant glass. The atrocity of the Westgate was ham-fistedly investigated by Parliament, the National Police Service and every publicity-whore with a camera; to date no answers are forthcoming. Therefore, it can almost be guaranteed that what the National Police and its re-named provincial askaris (apparently they are now established under the National Government Co-ordination Act, No. 1 of 2013), will do will be described by the media hordes as "knee-jerk reactions" when they eventually "swing into action" regarding the bombings in Mombasa and Nairobi.

President Kenyatta talks of national security and the security of the State. Cabinet Secretary Lenku talks about national security. Inspector-General Kimaiyo talks about national security. Even Governor Kidero and Governor Joho talk about "security". National security and the security of the State revolve around policing, intelligence gathering and criminal investigation designed to keep an elite in power, a majority cowed, and "enemies of the people" in jail.

Under a national/state security blanket, all manner of crimes are perpetrated against the people; the people are definitely not safe to travel alone at night, to visit the ATM at "odd hours", to board a taxi without fear of abduction, to get murdered withing spitting distance of patrolling policemen or to get blown up by "terrorists" who seem to enjoy the same broad freedom of movement as the agents of the State seem to enjoy. The middle classes cheer themselves hoarse when, in the name of the security of the State and the "territorial integrity of Kenya." the Commander-in-Chief deploys the army to Somalia to "crush al Shabaab where it stands" though it doesn't seem to have been standing in Somalia for long now.

It ha proven impossible to turn the post-colonial security state into an environment for the safety of all the people. Therefore, in Kibera women face the indignity of "flying" toilets or being raped on the way to "communal" toilets. Successive governments have not bothered to provide the basics for the women of Kibera - piped water, four stone walls, electricity, public drainage or indoor plumbing. It is why the sexual assault figures for women aged 15 to 25 years in Kibera are enough to soften even the hardest bureaucratic heart. But because they have been made deliberately invisible by the national/State security obsession of our elite, the women and girls of Kibera are on their own. Their safety is not a priority. The safety of the "state" is all that must concern us.