Patrick Gathara asked a simple, yet difficult to answer, question the other day: why is it when the billion-shilling swindlers of Kenya are pursued by the forces of law and order, deadly forces is never employed yet the result of their billion-shilling swindles is usually death and destruction on an epic scale? He pointed out that while he deplored the brutal murders of twenty-three police, he did not understand why Kapedo was entitled to a Kenya Defence Forces deployment but not Kileleshwa.
It is not so difficult to observe the manner in which the rich and the poor are treated by the forces of law and order, especially the police and the judiciary. I am lucky enough to have spent my childhood in the City in the 1980s, not because I enjoyed superb civic amenities but because I can remember the general sense of "we are in this together" that united bothy the ruling elite and the hoi polloi. The elite still had their privileges, but they did not rub those privileges in our faces.
That block within the Parliament Road, Harambee Avenue, Taifa Road and City Hall Way square is all government buildings. You'll find iconic ones such as the Kenyatta International Conference Centre, Harambee House, Sheria House, the Attorney-General's Chambers, Jogoo House and Jogoo House "B", the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Trade Building and Commission House, the headquarters of the Public Service Commission. Outside the square but along Parliament Road are Parliament Building and the Jomo Kenyatta Mausoleum, along City Hall Way is City Hall, along Harambee Avenue are Harambe House Annexe, Vgilance House and the National Treasury, but opposite Jogoo House is just Reinsurance Plaza and its sunken car park. Before you roll your eyes over ths long list of buildings, indulge me a little more.
In the '80 and early '90s, the only premises you couldn't enter freely was the Harambee House-Sheria House-Commission House-Attorney-General's Chambers complex because, unlike Uhuru Kenyatta, Daniel Moi actually kept office hours at Harambee House, so his safety was not something we could begrudge him. However, one could walk from Taifa Road to Parliament Road without using either City Hall Way or Harambee Avenue. The processional road between Parliament Buildings and the KICC was open to the public. None of the buildings in the square were ringed with six-feet high steel fences, not even Parliament Building. But it is the benches surrounding the Reinsurance Plaza sunken car park that were a true testament to the acceptance of people from all walks of life the Government Square; those who had come to visit someone in any of the buildings who needed time to rest could sit on the benches as they awaited their appointed hour.
Inspector-General of Police David Kimaiyo, his civilian bosses and his hamfisted minions, and all the securocrats in their orbit of inanity have forgotten that this city will die if it is made any more hostile for those who do not have an ear in the corridors of Government Square. Mr Kimaiyo and his colleagues began by attempting to exile "idlers" from the Taifa Road side of the sunken car park benches by covering them in used motor oil. It never occurred to Mr Kimaiyo and his colleagues that there are inadequate waiting areas in the offices in Government Square and that the sunken car park benches were the only alternative because Uhuru Park and Central Park are so far away. Then Mr Kimaiyo and his colleagues decided to take away walking space for pedestrians.
It has never occurred to these people that the vast majority of visitors to the City are pedestrians, not motorists with private means of transport. Mr Kimaiyo and his colleagues have made a conscious decision to treat all pedestrians as a threat to the occupants of the buildings on Government Square so they are to be kept as far away from the gates to these buildings' premises and their fences. In some cases, walking space has been reduced to a third of what it was serving a walking population that shows no sign of reducing.
Uhuru Kenyatta's government promised to listen to its people. The President demonstrated this when he remonstrated his transport ministry over the incredible, job-destroying stupidity of banning matatu graffiti. It is time he wagged his fingers in the faces of Mr Kimaiyo and his fellow securocrats and ordered them to let the people walk and, when they tire, to rest their feet without being harrassed. The perception that Mr Kenyatta's government is militarised will be reinforced by the siege mentality that the "security" restrictions imposed by Mr Kimaiyo and his colleagues engender.
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