Matatu owners must do more to be considered legitimate business people

The crime unfolds in broad daylight, right in front of everyone’s eyes. The drunken young man in the front row of this ramshackle matatu, which has stopped to refuel near Athi River in Machakos County, tries to pull off an ill-judged trick by pretending that he has already paid his fare.

The affronted tout — filthy, with a shaggy Afro, and evidently high on something more powerful than booze — pounces on the passenger and demonstrates to him who really rules Kenya’s wild roads.

He pulls the diminutive man from his seat like an old, unwanted doll from a sofa, drops him hard on the pavement, and rains blows and kicks on him as we all watch in horrified silence. Not even the man’s female companion, equally impaired, utters a word.

Then, impulsively, I speak up. “Leave him alone, man,” I manage to say, upon which the enraged maniac drags the limp man behind a gas pump, away from our full view, and proceeds to whack him some more, dumping him there before hurrying back to the matatu as the driver speeds off towards Nairobi.

It is a primitive, gratuitous kind of cruelty, extreme violence perpetrated, apparently without any fear of legal consequences, against a helpless traveller with more than a dozen witnesses, most of whom do nothing to stop the abuse. And it illustrates the vulnerability many of us feel when using matatus and other public service vehicles.

To refuse to be overcharged or to demand what you are owed is to invite the wrath of angry young men full of inexplicable resentments who know they can get away with murder. And do not count on the police or your fellow passengers to come to your aid — that is part of our live-and-let-die ethos.

REPORTED TO POLICE

It is highly unlikely that the assault on the young man was ever reported to the police, or, if it was, it is safe to assume that not much was done to investigate the savage beating. But more extreme cases of violence against commuters do sometimes end up in court.

Recently, there was a rare case of a tout in Nairobi being given an appropriate sentence for killing a passenger back in 2011 after an argument over a Sh100 change turned into a fist fight. The judge in the case imposed the ultimate penalty — death.

Justice served, we may say, but this and other cases from around the country betray the kind of characters the agencies regulating the matatu sector have to deal with and the complexity of the task of trying to clean up the industry.

Clearly, the Ministry of Transport and the Nairobi County government are mistaken when they view all matatu owners as legitimate business people and try to regulate them as such.

If matatu owners were genuine businessmen, they would ensure that their crew members show respect for their customers, whose money feeds them, that they show courtesy for other road users, including pedestrians, and that they obey traffic rules. However, as every commuter will tell you, contempt for pedestrians and road rules defines the typical matatu crew.

Serious business people would also make sure that seat belts in their vehicles are clean and work properly, that the vehicles are cleaned inside and outside and the seats vacuumed to remove dust and other filth at the end of every workday, that the vehicles are periodically fumigated to eliminate bugs, and that crew members wear clean uniforms and shower at least once a day.

The reality of the matatu business, however, is that most owners do not care about any of these things, but only about the loot that the crew brings in at the end of the workday.

This is part of what fuels the perception that the matatu industry is a racket that thrives on lawlessness, tax evasion, and exploiting commuters, whom they take for granted.

Approaching matatu owners and their crews as the scofflaws that they are is more rational than pretending that they want to move over voluntarily to the civilised world, where many of us live.

The cynicism that always greets any new official efforts to clean up the sector springs partly from the public’s view that matatu owners do not want to be taken seriously as business people.

The writer is an editor with Nation Media Group. [email protected]