Development can gain true meaning if justice is served

The Lamu Port-South Sudan-Ethiopia-Transport Corridor project in Lamu. The Government was fined Sh 1.76b  for Lapsset lapses. [Wilberforce Okwiri, Standard] 

On May 13, a four-Judge bench at Malindi, comprising Justices Pauline Nyamweya, Joel Ngugi, Beatrice Jaden and John Mativo ordered the Government to pay Sh1.76 billion in compensation to 4,600 fishermen in Lamu County affected by the Lamu Port-South Sudan-Ethiopia (Lapsset) project.

While making this award, the judges cited violations of the Constitution and affront on the lives of the residents.

When citing matters Lapsset’s violation of the fishermen’s right to culture and environmental rights, they (the judges) were thinking not just about immediate violations but also the precariousness created by Lapsset on futuristic enjoyment of human rights.

There is some misnomer between this reading by the judges, the complaints raised by locals in Lamu on the one hand and the stated vision of the state on the other.

To the state, the Lapsset is an opportunity to create a new city and opening frontiers for expanding opportunities.

Official rhetoric suggests that Lapsset shall become Kenya’s second transport corridor with the potential of cartelizing development processes similar to those visible through the Mombasa - Uganda transport route.

To residents, Lapsset has been described as a threat to culture, environment, human dignity and livelihood. Indeed, besides the contestation about constitutional processes, the other contestation by residents is that ultimately, the Lapsset project as designed, shall leave them worse off.

This sort of dialectic of what would be the ultimate benefit of Lapsset and as to whether it is a viable development or not, turn us to a long-standing question of- what is development?

Responses to this question exist in as many forms as there are scholarly perspectives and grounded experiences. Overall though, pundits have agreed that development must manifest expansion of people’s opportunities, progress in their standards of living and improvement of self-esteem.

But the Lamu case and most recent contestations around the large infrastructural investment that have become trademark for the state, raise a new question about the meaning of development in Kenya.

There is no doubt that one of the factors that triggered the quest for devolution was the blatant imbalances in the country as well as the largely patronising and homogenising attitude of the central government at the time.  

While devolution and the sparsely utilised equalisation fund is meant to respond to this subject of development as justice, not much has been done to reverse the patronising and homogenising attitude.

In fact, the patronising attitude is no longer the sole preserve of the national Government. When Judge Odunga nullified the Kiambu Budget in 2014, he castigated the County’s executive and assembly for the casual manner in which it was passed and undermining public participation.

In further details of this decision, the judge seems to root for my idea of development as justice when reminds us that:

“…In my view the spirit of the devolved system of governance was meant to bring services to the people and to ensure equitable sharing of the resources by the people of the Republic of Kenya. It was meant to bring to end the hitherto existing centralised system of governance that was geared towards rewarding cronies, supporters and court jesters. However the drafters of the Constitution were well aware of the risk of the country being compartmentalised into semi-states with god fathers or war lords as the chief executives.”

What Judge Odunga means is that assessment of viability of projects such as Lapsset returns us to the questions that political scientist Mutuma Rutere describes as those of; equity, avenues of political participation legitimising state institutions, and socio-economic progress compensating for the historical injustices driving the fight-back waged by non-state actors. These are questions about justice that cannot be wished away.

To most residents, the precedent of development known to them is ‘centralized system of governance which was geared towards rewarding the cronies, supporters and court jesters.’

Thus unless the state goes out of its way to demonstrate that Lapsset is breaking away from this tradition of yester years, citizens will demand immediate compensation because they do not believe that such development initiatives shall deliver justice.

And so I conclude that development in a county of chilling inequalities like Kenya can only gain the true meaning of its process and outcomes when enmeshed in the warmth of justice.

- The writer is the CEO of Pamoja Trust. [email protected]