Eulogy for the rule of law

According to google, a "habit" means "a settled or regular tendency or practice, especially one that is hard to give up". We know that habits can be either good or bad. One of the worst habits we have as Kenyans is the casual manner in which we eschew rules, regulations and petty laws, like the Traffic Act and its regulations. Our bad habits on the road are a symptom of our wider disregard for the dozens upon dozens of statutory and non-statutory rules that order our lives, the aim being to cut corners and shorten deadlines in order to get ahead at the expense of everyone else.

On this Monday's commute, the sum total of our bad habits were in stark relief: long, impatient queues of commuters (where commuters tend to queue) awaiting scarce PSVs and, rather ironically given the scarce PSVs, incredible traffic jams into Nairobi's CBD. PSVs, epitomised by matatus (and the latest matatu iteration, nganyas) have for long faced the brunt of public opprobrium for all that is wrong with road behaviour. In the eyes of seemingly right thinking members of society, matatus are loud, noisy, reckless, extortionate, inconsiderate, dangerous and rude. In sum, matatu culture is the entirety of all the bad habits of matatu operators going back to the day matatus were, in effect, given a free hand to operate in Nairobi.

The antidote to our bad habits on the road, so the nascent fascists in our government (and their boosters in the private sector) would have you believe, were the Michuki Rules, named after the ex-colonial-era provincial administration martinet, the late John Michuki, a former minister of transport, who through sheer will and a ruthless streak, imposed a set of rules that, for a time anyway, made commuting less dangerous and less riddled with bad habits. The late Mr Michuki's rules weren't so much the inculcation of good habits among Nairobi's or Kenya's thousands of drivers and motorists, as they were the imposition of one man's vision of "discipline, in which disproportionate punishments would be imposed on anyone who defied any of the petty new rules made by the man.

An example will suffice. When the Kenya Bus Service was the preferred form of transport for Nairobi's commuters in the 1980s, the design of the buses was simple: two does, front and back, simple seats and enough capacity for standing commuters. KBS buses were not speedily driven and, therefore, did not need seatbelts for seated commuters. Because of the buses's timetables, the buses rarely carried commuters to excess outside of rush hour. Matatus, on the other hand, unconstrained by KBS's terms of its contract with the City Council of Nairobi, hell-bent on turning a fast shilling as quickly as possible, were smaller, were almost always overloaded, were almost always driven with a certain degree of reckless derring-do that appealed to rebellious youth, and almost always ended in tragedy. The "square" commuters who preferred KBS to matatus never had to worry about getting to work on time in relative safety. The "hip" users of matatus knew well enough to keep a watchful eye of the crew they were with and the state of the matatu they rode in. In 2018 the entire PSV sector is a matatu sector; KBS's spiritual successors are no more, not even KBS's actual successor, the KBS Management Services Company Limited.

More and more commuters and PSV operators eschewed the rules that kept everything on an even keel with the individualised desire to get ahead at all costs. The late Mr Michuki treated the symptoms of the disease, not its causes, which were legion. For twenty-four years, government officials had eroded the general respect of the law, enervating public institutions, encouraging petty acts of impunity, ignoring the tenets of decency and courtesy, and celebrating short cuts and quick fixes. In 2018, we are witness to a legacy of chicanery from the highest echelons of public life to the most private aspects of individual behaviour. The latest crackdown on traffic impunity will not last so long as we do not admit to ourselves that the  problem is not the written laws of the state but that our individual and institutional commitment to upholding the rule of law at all times is honoured more in the breach. If we are to succeed, the majority must develop good habits while the minority of scofflaws are shunned or, where they are incorrigible, punished. In other words, most of us must obey the common rules of courteous and decent behaviour, and eschew short cuts and quick fixes. The late Mr Michuki was not public transport's saviour. He was the bell tolling at the march of time marking our fall from grace. His rules were dirge at the funeral of what once was. His rules were the eulogy for the rule of law.