Why the Faisal demo is a protest gone bad

A phone call from a colleague alerted me to a demonstration that had escalated into chaos… and was happening right outside Nation Centre at the centre of down town Nairobi! Of course you have to rush down and look.

Nothing like a bit of drama on a Friday afternoon! On pushing aside the knocking heads of workmates to get a glimpse of the action, your mind switches into movie mode as the picture comes into focus…

First you seek out the goodies and the baddies. But in this case it seems quite hard to tell which is which – it constantly kept switching.

The goodies are meant to be the ones in uniform with their big guns and shields – upholding civil rights and protecting property. But in this image something doesn’t appear quite right… The protestors seemed to be reacting to the aggressive stance the police are taking towards them rather than looking for violence.

Send message

Dialogue and allowing these protestors to send their message across was not on the menu and instead the pinging sound of tear gas and the haunting noise of gun shots filled the air.

However, I fully acknowledge that I may take this view because I missed the first couple of blows in the opening scenes – there may have been a reason for the police aggression… nevertheless I’m still waiting to hear a confirmation from other people, who also watched the drama unfold, as to who started the violence.

The roles, of antagonist and protagonist, switched again when I noticed that cars were starting to get smashed by the protestors. Rocks were being hurled at the police by the protestors with absolutely no regard for the cars of people who have no involvement with this situation at all! OK – so it’s maybe not the first thing you consider if you are protesting, but did we not all learn that non-violence was always more effective? Another thing was the mysterious appearance of these “rocks”.

A colleague pointed it out – where do you find rocks in the central business district of Nairobi? Ah… of course, the building sites that lined the roads. And if the “rock” is too big or is in fact a wall, the sensible thing to do is to smash it into your size of choice.

So, it appears that the police are once again upholding their moral duties by restraining from shooting at the protestors and doing all they can to try to not get drawn into a street fight. It was quite interesting watching 50 or so grown men in full combat get-up peeking around the corner of a building, the way a little child might do when waiting to shout boo at a parent they wish to scare.

Stone exchange

This stalemate was broken by the occasional rock, hurled by a protestor, when suddenly… again the roles are reversed. The police start hurling rocks back at the protestors. A woman is hit in the stone exchange and then we see an act of humanity. In a moment of lapsing individual consciousness as group think takes over – three of the protestors help the woman up and move her to a sheltered area.

It was fairly clear where ‘non-involved civilians’ (let’s call them NICs) stood in this whole affair. They were either crowding the streets in an effort to get front-row seats to the escalating entertainment or they were helping the police along by throwing the occasional rock before sprinting back behind the boys in blue for protection.

If anything, this shows you that safety was not something onlookers were that concerned about since they knew that neither side was out there to intentionally hurt them.

Watching my first protest “gone-bad” made me realise that through this whole affair and all this mêlée the only thing the protestors really put across was not a message but a few big “rocks”.