A well-governed city is invariably a clean metropolis boasting wide avenues lined with leafy trees, rows of neat hedges and parades of blossoming flowers.
In this space, the demarcation between the plain earth of yards, gardens, hedges and the concrete and stone of pavements as well as the tarmac of the key thoroughfares is unfailingly clear and tidy. Subdued sounds of wholesome industry and salubrious airs of cheery birdsong crown the deliberate pursuit of well-being in such addresses. There is neither litter, smog nor irritating odours.
An ill-governed conurbation, on the other hand, is basically a dystopic slum, principally characterised by disorder and decay. The promise of what could be is shrouded in palls of nauseously malodorous pollution, and the glories of what once was buried under festering mounds of toxic putrefaction.
A diabolical spectrum of intense cacophony punishes all ears with impunity and storms the perpetually stressed brains of their owners, who are often struggling to make ends meet in the crucible between the anvil of predatory governance and the hammer of an improvident economy. Thick, dark, pungent streams, made up of the lethal admixture of effluent and liquefied excrement, snake their fetid way with viscous menace everywhere, adhering to vehicle tyres and human soles to enhance its ubiquity.
That the elite who govern our nation and its urban communities inhabit the more salubrious addresses is a supposition of the most elementary order. Our urban microcosms faithfully reflect the devolution of independent Kenya’s post-colonial thinking, from the determined pursuit of self-determination of all to privileging the former White Highlands at the expense of the rest of the country, to devastating effect.
Please recall always what our archives tell us: the ministers of our first republic fought viciously to inherit colonial assets and other interests lock, stock and barrel. In fact, the first Kenyatta had to personally arbitrate stormy disputes between ministers who were hogging colonial estates or allocating them to their fellows sans the crowning glory of bwana’s well-appointed bungalow. Having acquired their share, the hogs decreed that the rest be retained by the state to house future government institutes and other facilities.
If an African government, in the age of majority rule, deep into independent Kenya, could ordain that the only Kenya that matters was the portion formerly settled by colonialists and that the rest of the country was of no concern whatsoever, imagine what they thought of the urban areas formerly inhabited by Africans.
Headlong desperation
We cannot have sought, with such headlong desperation, to inherit colonial institutions and amenities, without first having internalised the notion that Africans do not deserve to live in dignity and freedom, at a fundamental, ideological level, and that therefore, the only means of accessing well-being is to ‘colonialise’ at a time of official ‘Africanisation’.
The contradictions of coloniality and sovereignty abound, overhanging our social, economic, cultural and political landscapes like an inescapable miasma of colossal irony.
Beyond occasioning severe political discomfort, these contradictions, in practice, actually, place the country’s communities in a profound existential predicament.
Development economists have long observed the obscene cheek-by-jowl juxtaposition of obscene affluence with unconscionable deprivation.
It seems that to maintain their lifestyle of prodigious abundance, the wealthy must have cheap labour within reach.
One way of keeping labour cheap and within easy reach is to eliminate such overheads as would raise minimum wages. This is achieved by permitting workers to live in dirt-cheap dwellings, and eliminating the commute by ensuring that these hovels are within walking distance from work.
Every slum, therefore, is located close to a hyper-affluent neighbourhood. It is a fairly notorious fact that Mathare is the catchment area for Muthaiga, just as Kawangware serves Lavington, Kibera, Karen and Langata, and the ancient Mukuru complex sustained Nairobi’s South B and C districts.
What are the implications of this intensely disagreeable mise en scene? First, of course, is the perverse incentive to protect the interests of the powerful through policies that maintain the deplorable status quo. It is in this light that the inauguration of affordable/social housing programmes to improve the living conditions of people whose political and economic status make them vulnerable to neglect, ought to be seen as positively radical.
The second implication is that the policies inspired by the perverse incentives aforesaid normalise official neglect of certain populations, thereby profiling precarity as a necessary feature of progress.
Thirdly, they suffuse large swathes of urban Kenya with pervasive, chronic stench. Many grow up thinking that nauseous malodour is an intrinsic accessory of urbanisation. Our cities and towns stink on a permanent basis.
The final and most dire implication is, of course, that owing to permanent unsanitary conditions, the risk of outbreaks of severe infectious diseases is persistent. Populations are eternally doomed to endure the everlasting threat of cholera, dysentery, typhoid and amoebic infestation.
Yet the slums are but mere epicentres of such deadly pestilences. Given the proximity and intercourse between the ‘two cities’, the affluent, policy-making elites are as much at risk as if they were slum dwellers. Ponder the irony!
Mr Ng’eno is an advocate of the High Court.
