Inconvenient truth: Lang’ata school will not win war over its playground
What you need to know:
- School children belong up there with old people, nuns, priests, and Red Cross workers — they are not supposed to be touched.
- Though they cut corners and can be criminally negligent, those developers who are erecting 20-storey flats without lifts and stair railings are actually revolutionaries.
- So, in the goodness of time, Jomo Kenyatta International Airport will have to forfeit most of its land.
It has been a dramatic week in Kenya, with police teargassing the Langa’ta Road Primary School children protesting the grabbing of their playground by a private developer.
School children belong up there with old people, nuns, priests, and Red Cross workers — they are not supposed to be touched.
For that reason, the story played big in international media, but in countries like Nigeria it served another function.
Thus, Nigeria’s PUNCH published a photograph of injured and teary-eyed children big on its cover, the point being to say, “you think Nigeria is bad with Boko Haram’s killings? Look at Kenya, the police are beating down school children.”
Yet as we condemn and agitate, there is a bigger point in the Lang’ata Road Primary School affair that we should not miss. Like many other African cities, Nairobi is broken.
It is big business grabbing public land in the city. However, the fellows who grab the land are not just greedy developers, they are also responding to a legitimate social demand for housing. The means they use are unlawful, but the need they are serving is important.
MORE CONFLICT IN FUTURE
This points to two other problems. First, as activist Okiya Omtatah Okoiti pointed out, the government is the largest landowner in Nairobi, with prime plots taken up by police stations and military barracks — and airports.
One side effect of this, combined with inequality, is that almost 70 per cent of Nairobians live on less than 2 per cent of its land!
The present set-up made sense in the past when Nairobi was still small and the colonial state ringed the city with police stations and barracks to keep dangerous “natives” in check.
But the “natives” took over the city long ago, and many powerful and rich folks live outside the main metropolitan area (e.g. in Karen).
The point is the actions of the grabbers is a signal that land use is not the most efficient and that there will be more, not less, conflict over it in the future.
The way a private owner works is that the value of the land where his house in Kileleshwa sits goes up 100 times, he cashes in, and moves out. In the movies, if he refused, some goons come around at night and burn it down.
However, the police station remains and the big price for its land also remains on the table. What happens next is predictable. The station chief will take the money and sell a portion of its land to a developer.
VERTICAL CITIES
Finally, another facet of this pressure on land is evident in collapsing apartment buildings. Though they cut corners and can be criminally negligent, those developers who are erecting 20-storey flats without lifts and stair railings are actually revolutionaries.
They have seen the future, but are not clear about how to harness it. There is an interview between business writer and consultant Aly-Khan Satchu and Samsung director for IT & Mobile Division Manoj Changarampatt that speaks to this issue.
Manoj speaks about how places have started to develop “vertical cities” — buildings that in future could be up to 100 stories high, with malls, hospitals, offices, schools, playgrounds, all built inside there.
Part of this strategy is to leave some room around for green spaces because at the current rate, there will be no greens left (in East Africa it is already happening in Uganda’s capital Kampala). Only a jungle of brick and mortar.
So, those dodgy developers in Kenya who are building apartments that are only as brittle as a biscuit are pioneers of vertical cities and have correctly sensed that the only way you can meet the demand for housing without stealing or getting into a civil war over land is to go up. We can only hope that they give more wisdom and find courage.
This is because by 2030, several projections have both Nairobi and Mombasa becoming megacities (having more than 10 million residents).
So, in the goodness of time, Jomo Kenyatta International Airport will have to forfeit most of its land. Wilson Airport will have to move altogether or will be driven out and the land on which it sits left to more socially efficient use.
Wish we could say things will get better, but no, they will not.
The author is editor of Mail & Guardian Africa. Twitter:@cobbo3
