Huruma tragedy was basically about the indignity of poverty

A young girl moves her belongings from a block of flats which is going to be demolished in the Huruma neighbourhood of Nairobi on May 6, 2016. There is no dignity in poverty. That is why suspending the demolition of condemned buildings by a week is considered a humanitarian act. That the people who live there have nowhere to go should they be evicted explains why they even lived there in the first place. PHOTO | NATION

What you need to know:

  • The president made a quick trip to Huruma the day after the accident purely for the optics. It wouldn’t have looked good for him to spend the day burning ivory with rich, White people as the bodies of his poor citizens were pulled out of an informal settlement just a few kilometres away.
  • Nairobi Governor Evans Kidero came on NTV the night after the incident to take responsibility, probably on the advice of his handlers. It was good public relations for him
  • Obscure bodies like the National Construction Authority and the National Disaster Operations Centre return to the limelight with such occurrences.

The 49 people who died in the building that collapsed in Huruma did not get a single day of national mourning while Lucy Kibaki got three. Their funerals will not be covered live on national television and their names will take up only a small part of the news coverage about more powerful people. The reporters with posh accents and their live trucks have left the scene, and so has national attention. The rest of their stories are too localised, too small to merit wall-to-wall coverage on the broadcast networks, or more than a cursory glance in the papers.

There was no mobile phone number for ordinary Kenyans to send contributions for them, no blood drive for the survivors, no outpouring of support from all walks of life, no official government mea culpa. The people who died in Huruma were not important enough because they were poor. Their children, wives and husbands are not as newsworthy because they don’t have economic might. Their rent for the 198 single-room houses was about Sh3,500 per month. That’s what the officials who trooped to the site spend on lunch in one sitting. The owner of the building received nearly Sh700,000 from the property every month. Most of his tenants will never see that kind of money in their entire lifetime.

The president made a quick trip to Huruma the day after the accident purely for the optics. It wouldn’t have looked good for him to spend the day burning ivory with rich, White people as the bodies of his poor citizens were pulled out of an informal settlement just a few kilometres away.

Nairobi Governor Evans Kidero came on NTV the night after the incident to take responsibility, probably on the advice of his handlers. It was good public relations for him. The governor and the president have top-notch communications teams that worry about messaging, image and the big picture.

Obscure bodies like the National Construction Authority and the National Disaster Operations Centre return to the limelight with such occurrences.

Millions of shillings are spent on rescue and compensation and new household names are made on the back of destitute, desperate people. Most of the high-ranking government types came from the Huruma site straight to the society event that was the Lucy Kibaki funeral. They jumped into their air-conditioned fuel guzzlers and spoke to their influential friends on their expensive phones about what a sorry state that was. Then they discussed golf plans for that weekend, or if they would have time for a steak when they were  in New York the week after.

EMBARRASSING TRUTH

There is no dignity in poverty. That is why suspending the demolition of condemned buildings by a week is considered a humanitarian act. That the people who live there have nowhere to go should they be evicted explains why they even lived there in the first place. Governor Kidero told me the Huruma building was not approved, to begin with. It is not surprising, but that would be an acceptable explanation if it came up overnight and nobody saw it. The interior ministry even said it was “strange” that the county government had not taken it down when it had already been earmarked for demolition for sitting on a riparian reserve. Regardless of who is playing fast and loose with facts, it is pathetic that those who should protect them are politicking about who was to blame.

The truth is, most of those in positions of authority don’t care. Although the poor form the majority of Nairobi’s population, and the country at large, they’re almost inconsequential. Those in the low-income category are great when you need votes or to push a product to the mass market. Even the marketers who study demographics and know how to target wear their cheap clothes when they need to wade into the crowd then quickly banish thoughts of the slum after their presentations are done.

Politicians will go into those drinking dens and battle the mud and stench to connect with the people when they need something. When they’re wearing their designer colognes and hanging out at their golf clubs, their constituents are just a distant memory.

The poor have no rights in Kenya. Those who should represent them consider them a nuisance and their lives have no value. They don’t have the financial muscle to do a joint lawsuit against the building owner or the government for criminal negligence like the residents of an upmarket neighbourhood would. Their stories are quickly forgotten and we await another tragedy for the relevant bodies to pretend to care. The real tragedy in Huruma was the poverty laid embarrassingly bare in the unequal society that is Kenya.

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TIMELINE OF DEATH 

What Jacob Juma’s death says about Tweeting 

To say that Jacob Juma was a gadfly is to understate his ability to annoy, especially those in power. He appeared on Twitter and gained a following and notoriety almost overnight by dropping bombshell after bombshell about the government.

When he sensationally claimed that there were plans to kill him in January, most of his followers probably assumed that was just Jacob Juma being Jacob Juma. He seemed to have lots of inside information and was not afraid to name names and call out those in power. He posted confidential documents, accused politicians, business people and journalists of impropriety and generally made for a colourful timeline. It’s all fun and games until you turn up dead at night, shot at least 10 times by unknown people.

Most people are blaming  the government. Cord leader Raila Odinga has asked for an investigation so that his killers can be brought to book. He was a self-styled anti-corruption campaigner and the Eurobond scandal was his campaign. Just days before he was killed, he was still playing that tune. Could the businessman have been murdered because of his tweets? And if so, is Twitter ever worth anybody’s life? 

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BATHROOM BREAK

British anchor wins Net with unscripted act 

VICTORIA DERBYSHIRE won the Internet last week when she interrupted her BBC2 show to take a 6-year-old boy to the toilet.

“Are you okay?” she asked the little man, genuinely concerned. He appeared to be uncomfortable but was in the middle of a live TV segment so he couldn’t say it. She immediately put him at ease, so he took her hand and led her off the set.

“Just continue talking among yourselves and I’ll be back in a second,” she told her other guests, to laughter.

The 47-year-old hosts a debate and current affairs programme on the British broadcaster called Victoria Live. She is also a breast cancer survivor but her action made thousands of viewers fall in love with her again.

It was extraordinary perhaps because of the plastic, rehearsed nature of television. It must have been priceless to watch an authentic, unscripted moment of television and the Internet loved it.

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A point of correction:

I am not an atheist but a Christian who believes in the hereafter. Let us not Judge others (Matthew 7:1-6). Atheists do not believe in the existence of a deity. For Harrison Mumia, his indifferent character makes him amoral in the eyes of a society guided by norms. That is why he said his mother has been praying for him but he views her as doing only what good Christians do.

They have no intention of harming anyone. To them all is vanity. Speaking of a deity, I wonder what Kenyans would think about the Flying Spaghetti Church in New Zealand.

Let us all embrace individualism.

Let the atheists be. It is only critical thinkers who can, and will, understand their philosophy of life. On religious matters, let us be wise. And mark you, atheists have no concept of religion.That is why they find it okay to call on people to join them in living without worrying about anything— probably being judged by the Almighty God — for having followed the free will in them.

Finally, existential writers (Samuel Beckett, Albert Camus, etc.) have existed since time immemorial. Can we claim that their “absurd” writings make   them antichrist? They, too, need to be heard. Why won’t we listen to them?    

Linda Nkatha

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Larry, saying that the group should be allowed to exist as long as they do no harm  is inappropriate.

You need to look at the bigger picture of how the existence of this group is against our own laws and the confusion they are going to create in future.

The members will not be willing to sing the first stanza of our national anthem because of the wording, they will demand the scrapping of religious education in schools, and finally, they cannot sit for any religious examinations because of their beliefs.

Note that all these actions will cause division in the country

Bernard Otieno

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The intolerance shown by the Muslims and Christians, religions that are believed to promote love, is regrettable.

When they oppose the registration of the atheists’ society, they are simply denying them a sense of belonging. The message they are sending is that anyone with a different world view is an outcast.

What are the Muslims and Christians trying to do, defend God? The notion they are advancing is more scientific than religious:  that if it’s irrational, it doesn’t exist. They forget that before the advent of monotheistic religions, the supernatural reigned in all sorts of forms. What Christians and Muslims are saying is that they have no god since a partial god is no god.

Antony Kamindo