Nairobi’s gut-wrenching inequality

You see them a few metres outside TRM, a shopping mall along Thika Road and a symbol of the new Kenya: urban regeneration, inflated property prices and an embrace of all things foreign. But they are there, the old Kenya of poverty, destitution and unemployment. I’m talking about street families.

Every night, less than 50 metres away from the mall, in the warm glow of the streetlights brought about by all the new property, they create a makeshift house of joined-up plastic paper bags against the wall. The paper bag house is usually gone when morning comes, but there is always a flickering light inside at night.

They settle down for the grim nights when it is dry, but I don’t know where they go when it rains and the winds howl. They are mainly young, and all boys. And they have a dog.

They are there every day, but your average politician in a chauffeur-driven car on his way to the mall’s coffee shop will probably miss them. They are always out of sight to those in the SUVs, those who have learned to unsee them.

This is almost a Dickensian juxtaposition of the two Kenyas: the unembarrassed opulence of the mall thumbing its nose against the stingy meanness of all that is around it. The inside of the mall is awfully pretty, with escalators, giant screens and lifts the size of South B bedsitters, while outside it is pretty awful, with the victims of capitalism’s success all over.

POSTER CHILD

Nairobi is a tale of two cities. For the connected few, it is the best of times; for the disconnected many, it is the worst of times. It is the richest county, capital’s capital, but it is also among the most unequal, with grinding levels of poverty. It is where inequality is distilled and concentrated and most visible; where the haves are having more and the have nots are not, and both exist in close quarters.

Nairobi is home to both the richest and some of the poorest locations in the country. In some locations average wages are north of Sh100,000, and in others they are a fortieth of that figure, according to the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics.

The county also leads the way in child-headed households; 23 per cent of all households led by children under 15 years are in Nairobi, according to a recent national housing survey. The report goes ahead to inform us, as though we couldn’t guess, that household heads below the age of 15 are the least likely to be employed and have no house or dwelling place.

Nairobi has the country’s most expensive real estate and the most expensive rents, but it also has the highest number of the homeless.

While Nairobi is the poster boy for inequality, the country is equally bad. Kenya is ranked by both the World Bank and the CIA as among the 50 most unequal countries in the world.

For some reason, the so-called trickle-down economics begun by the Kibaki government did not trickle over from the shiny new mall to its closest neighbours. In this city, people of different means live entirely separate lives. The wealthiest live lives that barely use public services, and their children’s schools and hospitals are always private.

But the rich need to realise that they must consider funding public hospitals even if they do not use them. Germs, coughs and flus do not respect social classes. Even if you go to private hospitals with monogrammed sheets you must care about public health. Even if your children go to private schools outside the country you must remember that the badly educated masses you have around will always imperil you.

Kenya is experiencing some of the highest growth rates of its 50 years, but the distribution of the proceeds of this growth has been very different across the different segments of the population. Nairobi may be growing faster than any other region in the country or the region; we learnt that the capital has more dollar millionaires than Uganda, Tanzania and Ethiopia combined. It is so rich that it can comfortably be weaned off the national teat during county disbursements, according to the Commission for Revenue Allocation. The problem is that the wealth doesn’t spread.

LOOTED CASH

Most of our dollar millionaires make their loot, not from finding innovative solutions and spectacular products, but from speculating on land. Nineteen per cent of our 8,500 dollar millionaires minted their loot from flipping property; the second highest number of millionaires is from finance. We make money from shylocks and land grabbing, basically.

Earlier this year we found out that Kenya’s rich hold at least Sh51 billion in just one Swiss bank, HSBC. Imagine if we went through all banks in Switzerland? This is money that has likely been grabbed and stashed abroad. If it was brought back into the country, the taxes alone could pay off our teachers. If these deposits were in Kenyan banks then loans would cheaper. However, the money is stashed far away from the reach of KRA. Greece collapsed largely in part because the rich shirked paying tax.

The state is helping the rich accumulate more. Policies that favour grand projects and huge kickbacks are drawn up before ones that actually help people. There still is no cost-benefit analysis for the Standard Gauge Railway line, but already it is rising up from the dirt and the bill is being drawn up.

The problem with our rich is that they lack the noblesse oblige. They have no concept or care of the wider society. The question for the government is how to spread the prosperity in Nairobi and Kenya more evenly; how to spread the prosperity of the very rich who are mostly well connected in government.

As that very rich American president John Fitzgerald Kennedy said; if a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich.

******* 

DRUG ABUSE

Why war on drugs must start at the Vets’ door 

President Uhuru Kenyatta went all the way to the Coast to order a crackdown on drug dealers despite the fact that the epicentre of drug use when it comes to raw numbers is actually in his home county of Kiambu, according to police figures. The president also declared victory in the war against alcohol, saying “many youth have been rescued” from the bottle. The problem, of course, is that the coast is developing a taste for “stepped-on” heroin, a bastardised version of the drug that has been mixed with something else to bulk up its weight and maximise the dealer’s revenue. Pure heroin is too expensive for most Kenyans and would be left to tourists only. In fact, a doctor at a private hospital in the region once recounted a story on how a Portuguese tourist who was used to injecting stepped-on heroin had a heart attack and died when he was sold the uncut stuff by a new dealer. The problem with heroin is the lack of standardisation; a different concentration at the same weight is often deadly. I have it on good authority from a friend who has been on the wrong side of the law concerning drug possession that drug dealers at the coast are mixing their wares with animal tranquiliser drugs, which are a lot cheaper, and that means the key to defeating heroin at the coast may lie in first controlling prescription medication for both humans and animals.

********

PAY TEACHERS

If you have money for NYS, you definitely have dosh for teachers

In Triumph of the City, author Edward Glaeser notes that the greatest predictor of a cities’ success is the level of education of their population. Success isn’t guaranteed by hydrocarbons — those can be exhausted; or ports and harbours — those can be superseded; but by education, which is self-sustaining. Teachers, the most integral part of the education system, have won the right to a pay increase, but the government is stalling, claiming it doesn’t have money. Well, the total teachers’ salaries would add up to Sh17 billion, and the government has put aside Sh25 billion for a bunch of youth to march around with shovels pretend-soldering at the National Youth Service (NYS). It is insulting to the teacher’s intelligence to claim that there is no money. Do we need the NYS? No. It is a retrogressive, expensive and unnecessary conduit for corruption. Do we need teachers? Yes. I can’t believe that the government gives more money to NYS than it does the Ministry of Industrialisation. Which is more important? How many ditch diggers do we really need in this country? As long as NYS survives, then we have money for teachers.