As Nairobi collapses, Murang’a moguls dig in

Oftentimes, I will walk around the Nairobi city centre to gauge my reality check concerning that part of the metropolis. It is usually an important walk, because it gives me up to the hour details that I would, ordinarily, not observe closely, or factor in on my take about the city’s barometer readings.

So, I was walking along Kimathi Street a couple of days ago and I knew for sure the city was gradually decaying and the governor had exiled himself in another county, for all the reasons that one might come up with.

First, my walk on Kimathi Street. Other than hosting the largest media house in East and Central Africa – the Nation Media Group (NMG) – it is also home to the most famous statue of the most famous fighter of the Kenya Land Freedom Army, otherwise known as the Mau Mau: Dedan Waciuri Kimathi.

LEGACY

At the confluence of Mama Ngina and Kimathi streets, the magnificent statue stands defiantly erect, echoing what he once said: I would rather die standing, than kneel before the white colonialist. I found the base of the statue vandalised and garbage strewn about its small oblong-ringed precinct – this on Kimathi Street, one of Nairobi’s cleanest and smartest boulevards, Are there any clean avenues in the city centre anymore?

A couple of days ago, when President Uhuru Kenyatta was launching the tree planting day at the Moi Airbase in Mathare, he asked Nairobi Governor Mike Mbuvi Sonko to at least rid the city off its menacing garbage. If he was going to have some legacy, let it be that he swept off all the city’s garbage. Sonko’s reply to that request was to pledge his loyalty to the President and his deputy William Ruto.

Soon after, the governor exiled himself to Machakos County, where he has constructed a palatial rural home and from where he is conducting and reconstructing the business of the city affairs. How is it possible that the governor of the administrative and commercial capital of the country, the seat of the national government, the biggest and most influential city in this part of the world, outside of Johannesburg, be allowed to run the city from his rural bedroom without a whisper from anyone – most of all the people who supposedly elected him?

EAST AFRICANS

Sonko’s management style is becoming legendary: to Nairobians, the national government and the outside world. The national government looks on embarrassed by the antics of a governor it has no control over, or who has decided he will not be controlled by sectional state forces antagonistic and “disrespectful” to his governorship. The electorate is being bamboozled by a person they thought was “one of their own”, whatever that means.

Regionally, my friends from Kampala and Dar es Salaam have been truly wondering what is really going on in Nairobi. Is it really possible that Nairobians elected a man who once spent time in jail, even escaped from it, prides himself as a jailbird and carries the tag as a badge of honour?

When moneyed Ugandans with a disposable income wanted a weekend away, they would drive or fly in to Nairobi. When well-to-do Tanzanians wanted to enjoy some city sophistication, like shopping in a first-class mall or dining in a funky and swanky restaurant, they all came to Nairobi.

But how do you come to a city that is reeking of urine – not in the backstreets, but in the high streets? How do you come to a city where you watch street children openly defecate behind buildings and in the narrow lanes? How do you drive in a city that has long ceased having roads worth their names? How do you visit a city that today has its residents being openly mugged in daylight?

SECURITY

Three Saturdays ago, a University of Nairobi student was robbed of his phone and money, on Koinange Street, as he headed home for the weekend from the Chiromo campus. He is a strong, tall young man who plays basketball. But the hoodlums were a mob. They overwhelmed him and just slithered away….. A college girl was walking with her four friends on the busy Luthuli Avenue the other day at 3pm. The daylight did not stop the street ragamuffins from snatching her handbag and casually walking away. She told me that Nairobi had become “Nairobbery”. I said, “Uh huh”. “Where did you get that term from? I asked. She said when she narrated the incident to her parents, they told her that is what Nairobi had become in the last years of President Daniel arap Moi’s rule in the late 1990s.

My visiting Norwegian researcher friend was modest: “Let’s hope things will get better, but the traffic jams….”

But why should this be a surprise? When Nairobians picked Sonko, who did they think they were electing? A “hustler” who understood their trials and tribulations? A time-tested leader who had engaged in “philanthropic” work and had saved and adopted some baby? A man who had a track record – of what? Spending time in jail and being smug about it? Pooling the largest higgledy-piggledy crowds wherever he went in the city conurbation?

The Murang’a moguls, who control the city’s business avenues and revenues, are now ferociously fighting him, as if they have just discovered he is not suitable for the governor’s seat. Maybe.

During the Jubilee Party nominations, these moguls were so convinced that the party ticket would not end on Sonko’s laps that, when I interviewed some of them and questioned their cockiness, they were miffed and lectured me on being “too much of a journalist.” Did I not know who controls the political and economic levers of this city? They mildly chastised me for pretending not to know who the city belongs to.

I decided to equally interview Sonko’s chief brigade officials. They told me: “Hawa wasapere watajua hawajui.” These Kikuyus will realise they know jack. “Sonko kama hapati hii tiketi ya Jubilee tutavuruga hii tao, mpaka wajuwe siyo ya mama yao.” If Sonko doesn’t get the Jubilee Party ticket, we will cause so much mayhem in this town they (the Kikuyus) will understand the city doesn’t belong to their mother. Sonko won round one, the Murang’a moguls recoiled, but they were just waiting for the appropriate time. No. They did not even wait for anytime.

They set Polycarp Igathe for Sonko. They told Sonko he needed a corporate deputy who would be dealing with the executive corporate matters, as he deals with politics, at which granted they said he was a master. The Murang’a moguls thought they were duping Sonko. They were dead wrong. Sonko was not going to let himself be remote-controlled. He shooed off Igathe: the votes were mine, not the moguls’, tell them I have said they can go fishing on Lake Sagana, he rubbed it on, on his exiting deputy, who could no longer countenance another day with his mercurial boss.

The Murang’a moguls dug in: They swore Sonko would not rule the city – let it sink, it was going to be everybody’s loss – the electorate who thought they were electing a philanthropist, the Jubilee Party mandarins who thought they would tame Sonko once he is elected. (What made them think that if they could not tame him at the nomination level, they would do it once he became the governor?). The national government, which has to look on embarrassingly as the capital city is collapsing, and the Murang’a moguls themselves, who although angry with losing the control levers at City Hall, are ready to stake it out for as long as it will take. All this in less than eight months since Sonko was voted in on August 8, 2017.

And that is where we are for now.

Mr Kahura is a senior writer for 'The Elephant', a Nairobi-based publication. Twitter: @KahuraDauti