The Politics of Betrayal

Giant-sized floats decked in different shades of hue slowly snaked their way into the capital city of Nairobi, turning the grey skyline and the green shrubbery along the usually busy Uhuru highway into a kaleidoscopic pattern of chromatic beauty. There were floats of different sizes and shapes: one displayed a huge multi-toned cell-phone mounted on top of a pompous truck; another paraded eager overall-covered construction workers complete with helmets and shovels in a consummate show of industrial zeal; and yet another showcased the ostentatious pride of the hospitality sector. There were dozens of them, representing almost every major sector of the economy in a carnival-style pageantry seen in the east African nation only every twelve months.

At Uhuru Park—a leafy recreational facility with flowered indigenous trees and manicured bushes, overlooking the Central Business District—thousands of workers had already assembled, and many more were trekking there through paths and roadways linking the city to the densely populated, outlying neighbourhoods. Uhuru Park is not just a choice venue where leaders go to shout themselves hoarse during meetings, or where families retreat for boat rides on an artificial lake, it’s also an open-air pulpit where street preachers clutching worn-out Bibles attend to the lunch-time spiritual needs of people too broke to afford a simple meal. In Kenya, that aimless encounter with the environment, the nourishment of free limitless consumption of cool, highland breeze, is called the “air burger,” and millions of Kenyans feed on it every day. Even on this celebrated Labour Day—an occasion set aside to honour employees—ubiquitous preachers dressed in black suits and snow-white shirts lurked in the periphery, so did dazed and bedraggled urchins, chokora, glue-filled plastic bottles dangling precariously like giant cigars from their pimpled lips. These are the orphans, the petty thieves, and the cursed lot—some as young as five—that society has chosen to ignore.

Usually this day is marked with parades and fervent speeches delivered by leaders at rallies throughout the country. It is also a day when the government announces minimum wage increases for the lowest-paid workers. On this particular Labour Day, hopes were high that Mwai Kibaki—the third President after Jomo Kenyatta and Daniel Arap Moi—would declare new wage guidelines to cushion menial employees from the country’s stiff, high cost of living. There were dances and street performers. Among the thousands of people at the open field was a dark, middle-aged woman in a flowery dress and mismatched headgear, her face dotted in small dark spots. Red, thick mud pasted her now colourless plastic shoes, her palms rough as sandpaper, her slim body a reflection of under-nourishment. She blended well in the mainly proletariat crowd. She had arrived early and had perched herself at the top far end of the uneven grounds. The sun was pounding relentlessly, and the wind, which would normally fan crowds in fall, was awfully still. Suddenly her eyes rolled, her knees buckled, her lifeless hands went up in a morbid display of lifelessness, and down she went! Luckily, hawk-eyed industrial workers caught her just before she hit the ground. There was a moment of panic as wananchi, the ordinary folk, frantically carried her out of the sweltering heat and placed her under a shaded tree. She was delirious but coherent. That morning, the downhearted woman had left her shack in a slum colony on an empty stomach and had trekked five kilometres to the park, hoping for the good news, the kind of news associated with Labour Day, a salary boost, but she was to return home disappointed.

For fifteen minutes, during the 2008 Labour Day celebrations, President Kibaki rumbled through his speech—boasting about the country’s modest achievements and his government’s bland commitment towards a better Kenya—but offered nothing in monetary terms to actualise the workers’ financial expectations. “Shida tuliyo nayo ni kubwa,” he said, offering the nation’s dire economic straits as the reason for not proffering new wage guidelines. The last increase two years earlier had propelled the lowest paid industrial worker from 4,817 shillings to 5,395 shillings per month, even then barely enough to sustain life in one of Africa’s most expensive cities. To rub salt in the wound, only a few months earlier, MPs had refused to pay taxes on their fat emoluments, stifling revenue that would have helped fund the wage increase for workers. They had argued that their allowances were already heavily committed to meeting their electorates’ insatiable quest for handouts and they could sacrifice no more. Unconvinced by Kibaki’s specious reasoning, hundreds of grumbling workers left the grounds in protest, some pelting the podium with pebbles of sand, while others merely walked away in silence. They didn’t wait for the National Anthem.

The case of that woman, whom we will call Wanjiku, the name popularised by Moi to describe the downtrodden, symbolises the dilemma of the Kenyan nation. With all its human and natural resources—sandy beaches and popular national parks, rich cultural traditions and awe-inspiring topography, a fertile agricultural sector, and a vibrant middle class—Kenya remains a third world nation crippled by corruption, bad governance, and an increasingly widening social and economic gap.

As impunity took root, middle-level officials in government jumped into the fray, followed by messengers and cleaners. Official files in government registries would mysteriously disappear only for them magically to re-appear on payment of “something small.” Fake receipt books were printed to replace official documents at entrances to national reserves, while at city parking lots and at heavy vehicle weighbridges, greedy government officials defalcated huge amounts of money by colluding with equally avaricious individuals. The immigration, the police, and customs offices, among others, emerged as the new frontier for sleaze in government.

As corruption flourished, the prodigious elite went further in their evil designs. They began to destroy the country’s most treasured assets: wildlife and forests. Poaching of wild game escalated, endangering not only the future of the country’s eco-system but also tourism, a key foreign exchange earner. Those entrusted to care for the nation’s wildlife heritage became poachers and smugglers.

On the political front, dictatorship thrived. The 1982 attempted coup by the Kenya Air Force gave the irascible Moi a good excuse to torture and detain opponents. Many fled into exile. He corrupted the electoral system and rigged elections with impunity. And, instead of working to better the lives of people, politicians fought over positions and wealth.

In the meantime, Wanjiku was getting weaker each passing day: Her children could no longer go to school because she could not afford it; she was landless because her small plot had been grabbed; hungry because she could not sustain herself on the meagre, unregulated salary; dying young because she lacked health care.

Wanjiku is a victim of the Politics of Betraya