by Aamera Jiwaji

G21 AFRICA Staff Writer

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Aamera
Jiwaji

NAIROBI, KENYA - Dogs barking and growling can be ignored. But when they steadily approach, their teeth bared, snarling, then a reaction is needed. Either you back away whispering nice doggy, or you sprint out of there as fast as you can - or you pick up a stick and fight the dogs back, re-gaining your own ground.

The dogs of war can approach from many fronts. They can be strangers entering your land from across a common border or they can be demons from within. When they are external, the attacked can band together presenting a united front, planning a defence. But when they are from within, from the shadowy recesses of ourselves, neither can they be identified nor can they be fought off systematically.

Kenya is facing a war. The most dangerous kind, one from within.

Two years ago, when the NARC government was voted into power ending around 40 years of KANU leadership, dominance and tyranny, the country was hopeful. And NARC began very hopefully. They targeted certain ills in the country

• Corruption,
• Human Rights Abuses,
• Education,
• Transport,
• Prison Reform,
• Gender issues

and began to address them.

Corruption

The Judiciary created a Committee which looked into the performance of magistrates and judges through to the Court of Appeal, the highest court in the land. The report [this Committee] produced, commonly referred to as the "Ringera Report" after the Chairman of the Committee, Justice Aaron Ringera, was presented to the Chief Justice of Kenya in October 2003.

Subsequently, the Chief Justice informed each of the people mentioned in the report that they were suspended pending a thorough investigation of the charges laid out in the report. Following a leak, the media had a copy of the report and faces that were renowned for being amongst the most powerful and influential in Kenya, faces that previously personified justice in the country, were now being branded in the newspapers as common criminals who had either accepted bribes or in some manner subverted the path of justice.

Many chose to retire; others chose to undergo a tribunal investigating their judicial conduct.

But the List of Shame, as it was referred to in the media, had not left anyone untouched. The Judiciary had been culled, arguably of the best legal minds in the country.

Regardless, the public impression was that of the Kenyan government having taken a firm stance on the issue of corruption, having left no one in the public service unscathed.

The world was impressed; more importantly, foreign investors and donors were impressed.

That was in November 2003.

Human Rights Abuses

The other sensational issue that the NARC government addressed early into its term was that of the Nyayo House torture chambers. Housed in the basement of a building that held the entire Immigration department, the KTN (Kenya Television Network) offices and was situated in the town center right next to the capital city's Post Office, Nyayo House's yellow and brown brick face covered up the screams of Kenyan torture victims and silently carried out the greatest human rights atrocities ever made known to this country.

President Kibaki publicly closed down the chambers and allowed families of its victims to enter the chambers and put to rest old ghosts they had been harbouring. It was the strongest way that NARC could symbolize to the country that the days of KANU and its associated tyranny were over, and that the Kenyan government henceforth under the NARC banner of 'Rainbow' would be synonymous with transparency, democracy and a peaceful existence for all its citizens.

A NARC rainbow emerging over the cloudy skies of Kenya's past.

Education

NARC had pledged in its campaign manifesto to make primary education free. But making the decision that from January 1 2004, primary education would be free was easier than predicting the hurdles they would encounter and preparing a solution for them. Problems in the education sector are still rife.

Initially, when the new system was introduced, the country was ecstatic. Street kids disappeared from the streets having chosen to re-join school now that primary education was free. And for a few weeks, NARC was synonymous with a relieving of the burdens that Kenyans had borne silently for many years.

But a few weeks into the school term, the pitfalls began to rear their ugly heads. Overcrowded classrooms, lack of textbooks, lack of furniture in the classes, children sprawled on the floors or on the grass outside holding up a tattered book or a group of around 20 children huddled around one book.

One grossly underpaid teacher in a room with more than 400 students.

Teachers left public schools and moved to private schools where the pay is better, resulting in a greater imbalance in the teacher-student ratio in government schools.

The situation today is not much better. In many schools, two streams of teaching have been created, similar to shifts except that while the students get rotated the teachers do not. The same teacher goes through the same lesson in the morning with one overcrowded class and then again with another overcrowded class in the afternoon.

Transport

Nairobi's skyline resembles that of a first world country but its public transport cannot hide its inherent third-world flaws. Lack of money, lack of technology, lack of organization -- all of these have compounded to create a transport system that, at its best, disadvantages and, at its worst, exploits commuters on a daily basis.

Early this year the Transport ministry decided to overhaul the public service transport on the roads putting an end forever to the ills of bus and matatu transport in Kenya. It introduced a strict registration method, made the use of seatbelts and speed governors compulsory and put into force a number of rules whereby the number of passengers must equal the number of seats.

For the first few weeks, there was chaos on the roads. So many vehicles had expected an extension -- in true Kenyan fashion where deadlines are lax -- that by the time they realized one was not forthcoming, it was too late to act fast.

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The government insisted that all road licences for public vehicles would not be renewed without an inspection checking that all the new regulations were being respected. Needless to say, the queues outside government offices were long. Meanwhile, there were no vehicles on the roads to carry commuters to the city from their homes and back to their homes in the evenings. Commuter queues were even longer and more heartbreaking than before the overhaul.

Commuters would leave work at 2:00 pm in order to reach home before dark, a trip that before the crackdown would take at the most an hour. Fares were also hiked. Rather than paying 70 shillings to Thika, a town around 40 kilometres from the city centre, for example, the fare was increased to 90 shillings. And months later, it hasn't dropped back to its initial level.

Many tried to avoid these high road fares by taking the train home. But the train service was unprepared for the increase in customers. News headlines would show commuters climbing into compartments from the windows when the doors are jammed full; some would sit on top of the compartment holding onto the side railings; others would hang from the door, one finger tightly wrapped around the door handle. The news was filled with pictures and stories of people falling from their precarious seat on the train, hurting themselves.

Those who did not have the choice of a rain route and could not afford the hiked fares or the long queues, chose to walk. The roads were filled with commuters trekking from sun up to sun down. And, when interviewed in the media, they would bravely talk of how they didn't mind a little sacrifice as long as the future situation stood to improve; how they were prepared to stand by the Transport Minister, John Michuki, in his quest, regardless of the price they were paying.

Those with cars would offer a lift to strangers walking their route to work, trucks and pick-up loads would be filled with men in suits and women in dresses hitching a lift to work.

But once the number of vehicles in the roads increased, the fares dropped -- not to their initial levels but lower than that in the crisis period. And traveling with public transport became a pleasure. One lady wrote to Michuki via a Kenyan newspaper ad and thanked him saying that she was finally able to sit comfortably in a bus and even fall asleep on the way home after a long day at work, something that was impossible before either in the bus where the amount of people jammed in both seats and standing didn't let one move a hand to remove fare from one's pocket let alone fall asleep; or in the matatu where one has to sit aloft, one leg resting on the next passenger's leg, their bag clutched tightly at their chest, squeezing past other passengers when their stop comes and they need to alight from the vehicle.

---

And with all these buzzwords, the NARC manifesto sounded great then -- it was where KANU had fallen through and the assumption was that in correcting these pitfalls, Kenya would move forward into a prosperous future. Despite the difficulties faced on implementation, strength was gained in the fact that the government was trying to help its people; and that the difficulties were being faced together as a country. Kenya, for a brief period, was a united 'One'.

But sadly, it was not the areas that were being addressed but those that were sidelined that begged a solution. These were the ones that were coming back to bite them on the ass: Unemployment and Crime.

And the two fed each other.

During the 2002 elections, the KANU party's motto was 'Uhuru na Kazi' -- Uhuru and employment, Uhuru being the first name of the presidential candidate for the KANU party, Uhuru Kenyatta. It didn't hold that much appeal in a time when Kenyans were eager to free themselves form the yoke of KANU but those three words, sprayed on the walls in red paint, are still visible today -- and daily seem to mock those who chose a party that has turned a blind eye to the needs of the Kenyan labour force.

The media fed on these images like hyenas, and spat them out at their audiences, like gnawed hunks of meat: front page spreads of the faces of hijack, robbery, rape and murder victims. They filmed the casual theft of side mirrors and aerials from cars that are stationery in traffic, in the Ngara area, the owners sitting inside, aware but terrified of the repercussions if they were to emerge from the car and confront the thieves.

They showed group meetings of street kids/ parking boys in the Nairobi City center, boys who act as part-time askaris (security guards) and promise to watch a car and protect it from harm but who casually twist a side mirror off or quickly screw a side ligh t off if the owner has been hesitant or miserly in the past for rewarding them for their vigilant security.

Entering the city center with a window wound down is asking for trouble. And if it isn't a thief, it is a threat. Street kids ask for money and when refused throw a handful of human waste into the car.

The Kenyan public is living in fear of its own.

But the government holds conferences and invites foreign investors to attend, hoping to build confidence in the Kenyan economy and market, while Kenyans themselves flee the country fearing for their lives, the lives of their children and the prospects of their businesses.

A week ago, a judge of the Court of Appeal of Kenya was hijacked while travelling upcountry with his wife.

It wasn't the enormity of the crime but the personality involved that made it front page news both in the media and in people's conversations that week. Sadly only when a well-known personality faces danger does the seriousness of the situation take on importance.

And so the announcement recently that Kibaki had terminated Police Commissioner Edwin Nyaseda's contract and appointed his replacement was met with anxiety from the Kenyan public. Suddenly all the headlines and stories of crime in the country gained added momentum. The fact that the new Police Commissioner is a Muslim, Mohamed Hussein Ali, and an Army Brigadier suggested to many that this may be the start of Kibaki's new campaign to tighten security and reduce the level of crime in Kenya, and that his appointment was an indication of his intolerance for the crimes that were being committed in Kenya every day.

As Rwanda mourns the 10 year anniversary of its genocide, countries in Africa, including Kenya, are asking themselves the Rwandese questions: How did this happen to them? How could we let it happen? And, most importantly, How do we prevent the same thing happening to us?

It is a fear in every African country which has a multitude of tribes and cultures all living together in one land. Of late, it seems that people in Kenya have become less tolerant of each other, more angry, resentful and aggressive. The rape of toddlers, the forceful stripping in public places of women who dare to wear trousers, the gang abuse of a female prostitute in broad daylight in the Nairobi city center. The unemployed resentful of the employed. Adults abusive of children. The poor envious of the rich. The Africans suspicious of the Indians. These are signs of a country in turmoil .

Anything could be the trigger.

Parallel with the anger and the hate is the quiet nostalgia of those who look back wistfully to a Kenya in which they were not afraid to go shopping, to go for a drive, to take their children to school, to go to sleep -- to live.

The country has come a long way since the NARC government came into power in 2002. But the question to be asked is whether the strength and patience of the country will survive long enough to endure more years of tribulation and whether the rainbow that was promised by NARC is in sight.