The poor do not have rights in Kenya
What you need to know:
- With few exceptions, slum-dwellers rights to shelter, education, health and safety are duly ignored in rulings and thousands face eviction in every urban centre.
- The practice and language of rights and freedoms has taken a nose-dive with the Jubilee Government.
If you want to measure the quality and effectiveness of reform, you must be prepared to spend long hours observing what goes on in public hospitals, police stations and courts of law. I have frequently dealt with the first two areas so let me comment now on our judicial system.
The vetting of Judges and Magistrates may not have weeded out all of the corrupt and incompetent elements in the Judiciary but it has raised the bar in terms of accountability and professionalism.
Court Users Committees (CUCs) now offer the public and stakeholders opportunities to voice complaints and recommend changes to improve services.
However, there is still a shortage of judges, due mainly to the delay by the Executive in approving nominees while the transformation plan for every county to have a High Court is far from being realised.
There are then some improvements in most courts in terms of efficiency and access to justice. But beyond professionalism, have the aggrieved and the poor been able to access justice, or get fairer hearings through jurisprudence based on the Constitution with its robust Bill of Rights?
This is where I have my doubts as most judges make little reference to the Constitution, and perceive it as mere aspirational rather than a concrete, living document.
Recently several activists were charged in court for holding a legal, peaceful picket despite the fact that the Constitution asserts that picketing is a legitimate form of protest.
Of course the legacy of the legal system is heavily weighed to favour the status quo and the propertied class. So with few exceptions, slum-dwellers rights to shelter, education, health and safety are duly ignored in rulings and thousands face eviction in every urban centre.
OBJECTS OF CHARITY
Worse still, the mind-sets and models of justice that the Judiciary operate out of are relics of colonialism, whereby law was an instrument of control and oppression, rather than a means to liberate, empower and grant justice to the masses.
Put another way, the poor are still not viewed as people with rights in Kenya. They may occasionally be beneficiaries of material assistance and objects of charity but are far from becoming free citizens whose participation and consent is honoured.
Martin Luther King cared deeply about the poor but his focus was not on welfare but on equal rights.
He believed in his nation’s founding principle that ‘all men are created equal’ and his goal was for all to be ‘free at last’. His success lay in his focus on equality for he knew that the poor must have the same rights as the rich.
That is not to encourage a culture of handouts but to free up the whole of public life so that access to do business, education, shelter, prosperity and health is available to all.
The practice and language of rights and freedoms has taken a nose-dive with the Jubilee Government.
The launch of the Okoa Kenya Movement on Wednesday must go beyond collecting signatures and referenda and restore dignity, safety, freedoms and rights to the masses.
