Greedy grown-ups have failed, so the children now have to save themselves
What you need to know:
- The heavy police presence (complete with attack dogs!) at the site indicates that the land-grabbers have the power and influence to command the country’s security forces
- It was the first time in Kenya’s history that a group of school children was specifically targeted for attack by the police.
- It seems that no public space is safe even under the current administration; if things continue as they are, public school students across the country will have nowhere to play in a few years.
The Ministry of Lands and the National Land Commission could not do it. Nor could the Nairobi County governor, senator, or woman representative.
In the end, it was the children, their parents, and teachers at Lang’ata Road Primary School who reclaimed their grabbed playground even as they were tear-gassed and threatened by armed police.
The heavy police presence (complete with attack dogs!) at the site indicates that the land-grabbers have the power and influence to command the country’s security forces. (I doubt the four Sikhs named as the land grabbers by Cabinet Secretary Charity Ngilu could have got police protection without the blessing of senior politicians.)
It was the first time in Kenya’s history that a group of schoolchildren was specifically targeted for attack by the police. Kenyans hung their heads in shame as media around the world reported the shocking assault on children by the State’s security forces.
GREAT ENVIRONMENTALISTS
Scenes of schoolchildren pulling down the wall reminded me of environmentalists such as Wangari Maathai and Davinder Lamba, who defied the Moi regime and saved parts of Uhuru Park and Karura Forest from being grabbed by developers. If it was not for them, Uhuru Park and Karura Forest would today be built-up areas with office blocks and apartment buildings.
The history of land grabs in Kenya dates back to colonialism, when white settlers occupied vast swathes of the most fertile land in the colony and rendered entire communities homeless. The Mau Mau movement’s struggle to regain land grabbed by the settlers eventually delivered independence to Kenya.
However, independence did not end the practice of land grabbing. Post-colonial governments and politicians displayed a particularly avaricious penchant for grabbing land. During the reign of the founding father, Jomo Kenyatta, individuals acquired huge tracts of land across the republic. During the regime of his successor, Daniel arap Moi, the art of turning public land into private property was perfected. During his regime, even public toilets were not spared.
The Mwai Kibaki administration, while paying lip service to land reform, failed to stem the trend. It seems that no public space is safe even under the current administration; if things continue as they are, public school students across the country will have nowhere to play in a few years.
HOW MUCH LAND?
How much land does a greedy Kenyan need before he is satisfied? Is it worth owning something knowing that it was acquired by displacing poor and powerless communities? Chances are that most of the people who have been behind the major land grabs in this country will be dead within the next 50 years.
Their children may inherit their ill-gotten wealth, but they will have inherited a country where every public space will have been grabbed, where public parks and playgrounds will be things of the past, and where the city of Nairobi, choking on the greed and short-sightedness of land-grabbers, will have become unliveable.
I think it is naive to believe that the fracas at Lang’ata Road Primary School could have been averted if only government technocrats had done their job and ordered the developer to pull down the wall. Or that, having established that the land belonged to the school, the playground would no longer be at risk of being grabbed.
NO JUSTICE
Recent court cases show that people whose land had been illegally grabbed during President Moi’s regime did not get justice while the political class doing the grabbing was still in power.
Many aggrieved parties waited for his regime to end before they took their cases to court.
Given Kenya’s history of land grabs, it is entirely possible that Lang’ata Road Primary School would have had to wait for years before it could reclaim its playground through the justice system. Seeing that the political class had failed to secure their future, the children at the school took it upon themselves to save their playground. They led a mass protest — and won.
The future is not entirely hopeless. Our children may very well be the ones who will finally lead us out of the rot that has been eating away at us for more than five decades.
