Over the years, Nairobi’s glory has been overstated

Nairobi must be the only city in the world whose residents have few kind words about its current state and are forever dreaming of the day it will be restored to its “old glory.”

They speak with nostalgia about a time when the taps were never dry, there were no power outages, the buses ran on time and you could go about your business at any time of day or night unmolested.

In short, when there was order and services were reliable. I have lived long enough in the city to know that this sense of disgruntlement goes back a long way and has afflicted many generations of Nairobians.

At any given time in the almost 40 years I lived and worked in Nairobi, there was always someone rhapsodising about a golden past.

I met colonial types who spoke of a Nairobi that was “hosed down three times a day” without mentioning that those were days of cheap African labour and a town that was thumbnail-sized compared to today’s megacity.

I fear that even more than the challenge of fashioning a modern city out of a slum-like sprawl and an undisciplined populace, it is this “back to the future” mentality that will be the undoing of Evans Kidero’s administration.

Over the years, City Hall has been the graveyard of the dreams of many a post-independence city father. There was, for instance, Nathan Kahara who upon becoming mayor after the 1979 General Election, seemed to believe that if he smiled long and widely enough, Nairobi’s problems would go away and we would be left with a City in the Sun.

It did not take long before he was bundled out of office, the council he headed dissolved and the city’s administration handed over to a string of commissions which so mismanaged its affairs it was a relief when an elected council made a reappearance after the 1992 elections.

The relief did not last long though. If Kahara and company were ineffective and the commissions unaccountable and corrupt, Mayor John King’ori and his band of merry men or kanjuras as he famously called the elected ward reps, were pure theatre.

The mayhem and fisticuffs that characterised the conduct of City Hall business were legendary.

Once or twice I had the privilege of doing business with the good mayor and got a chance to witness first-hand how the city’s business was conducted.

In 1997, I was editing a daily column in The Standard whose main staple were complaints from readers.

One day I published a stinging commentary on City Hole and the mayor.

The elections were around the corner, and I believe it is for this reason that on the day it was published, I received a call from Mayor King’ori inviting me to his parlour (or  para as he put it) so he could set the record straight. I arrived at the Mayor’s Parlour at the appointed hour but he was not there and his secretary was clueless about his whereabouts. After hanging around for a couple of hours, someone directed me to his personal assistant, who also did not know where the boss was.

After giving the matter some thought, the man suggested that I look for the mayor at his hotel in the Tea Room area.

It is at Tea Room where I  learnt that King’ori had travelled to his rural home in Karatina the previous evening. Nobody knew when he was due back.

For a columnist, this kind of experience is grist to the mill and I dutifully wrote about it.

At 11am the following day, I got a call from Mayor King’ori. After a lengthy apology for missing our appointment, he sought to explain the circumstances.

“I am a wicked mayor,” he said. I was mystified. Many Nairobians would no doubt agree with him I thought, but for him to say so himself?

It took me quite a while to decipher from subsequent utterances that what he meant was “a weakened mayor.”

I hope that, as Nairobians weigh the merits and demerits of the current city administration, they will take into account the performance of previous ones.