Selective demolition of houses risks killing State’s good intent

I wrote, last week, of the poet William Wordsworth’s dotage with the illusion that was the French Revolution and his subsequent disillusionment with the bloody fiasco. I return to the revolution on account of ongoing near revolutionary demolitions on riparian land in Nairobi. A good intent, selectively executed kills the good ideal.

Is Nairobi Governor Mbuvi Sonko’s revolution skewed? Does it have eyes that see whose property to bring down and whose should be spared, although both may be sinning? A publicly circulated recording of a phone conversation that I believe took place between Governor Sonko and his Kiambu counterpart, Ferdinand Waititu, knocks you down breathless.

Governor Waititu is pleading with his colleague in the Council of Governors to release his wife, who has been arrested in the ongoing crackdown. The conversation is surreal. The two gentlemen come across in the image of latter-day Buccaneers rather than dignified CEOs of two of Kenya’s foremost county governments. Governor Sonko is at once the prosecutor, judge and executioner in the Mrs Waititu saga. Governor Waititu is a comical figure on his knees. His pleas to Sonko come on the heels of a ludicrous suggestion that rather than bring down buildings, we should change the course of the river.

The great tide of hope that has come to Nairobi in the wake of the demolitions is disturbed by what appears to be vindictive nature of this exercise. We are once again reminded of revolutions that die on our lips. At first, there is the great hope. Then comes disillusionment, as reality begins to sink. The great revolution becomes the death of an ideal. Samuel Taylor Coleridge, whom I allusively talked about last week, perhaps best brings out the disillusionment.

Coleridge, an apostate revolutionary, described the French Revolution as “a complete failure” that “had thrown up all hope for improving the human condition.” He decried the “pure pleasure and selfishness” with which the “revolutionaries” butchered their adversaries. Is the Nairobi rescue project at risk of becoming another huge failure, owing to a seeming hidden agenda? It happens all the time, everywhere, whenever the smell of revolution is in the air. That which seems to bring home our most cherished dreams descends into lowly acts of selfish violence. People take advantage of public grievances to settle private scores.

Hence – to paraphrase another English literary giant – the best of times easily become the worst of times. Writing about the same French Revolution in the great work titled A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens said, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. It was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness ... It was the season of light, it was the season of darkness. It was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair. We had everything before us, we had nothing before us.”

Such is the nature of turning points in history. They come fully loaded with the opposing forces of hope and despair. Poorly managed, hope is miscarried. The great ideal dies. Revolutionaries become common criminals, abusing other people’s rights and freedoms.

The need to redeem the city of Nairobi cannot be gainsaid. Five generations ago, British business prospectors built a railway line from Mombasa to Lake Victoria. As they left the Eastern Plains in the newfound land, they discovered terrain overflowing with cool clean water. The Maasai people whom they came across called this place Irobi. This was to say a place of cool waters. 

The waters flowed under rich pristine canopies of natural traditional trees and other verdant vegetation. Wild game roamed freely about the place. It looked like the morning after creation day. The Europeans decided they would make this place the main depot for their construction material, as the railway line snaked its way down the escarpments of the great Rift Valley, looking for the source of the River Nile.

In the fullness of time, the spring of cool waters became the capital city of East Africa’s foremost economy. With it came blatant abuse of not just the rich water basin, but the entire environment and natural life. Impunity entrenched itself. Building regulations and city bylaws went through the window. Anyone with money and connections could do just about anything with the river that should be a blessing to city residents.

The spring of cool water is today the home of both industrial and domestic waste. It is one of the foremost epitomes of what a greedy and selfish nation can do to its natural assets. Dead dogs and cats, sewage and sundry undesirables have these waters as their gateway to the unknown. And as it skirts through the city, it suffocates further between concrete and makeshift structures alike. Any effort to save this river, therefore, is more than welcome.

Yet, someone must explain why ten structures will stand side by side in the same neighbourhood, equidistant from the river. Two or three will come down violently. The rest remain intact. Visit any of the places where buildings have been demolished. You will leave with more questions than answers. Is this great revolution dying on our lips? Is the great spring of hope tied up in a double knot with the winter of despair? Are we staring at the death of an ideal as the governor tells his colleague about “the boss.” Why is Governor Sonko advising Governor Waititu on how to beat the demolition dragnet?

- The writer is a strategic public communications adviser. [email protected]       

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