Formerly known as Enkare Nairobi

Despite being the birth place of Wangari Maathai, of being the current host of the UNEP, we treat our natural resources in the country the way public officials treat our hard earned money. With contempt, and as a never ending ATM. Despite being perennially squeezed for water as a water scarce country, we still mismanage the fragile ecosystems and water bodies we currently have with politicians engaging in an infantile populist chicken/ egg argument over whether forests bring rain, or rain brings forests (correct answer: forests bring rain).

The notion that we are but custodians of this land- and that we hold it in trust for future generations is a central tenet of what we say we stand for as a country. It’s enshrined in the Constitution, and with responsible planetary stewardship a corner stone of most religious belief systems.  Unfortunately, this principle didn’t survive first contact with the venal kleptocracy that is Kenya. Our rivers, rhinos, forests, elephants, beaches, sand, coral ecosystems are all under siege.

We have a penchant for constraining things that were always meant to be free. But nature has a habit of cracking down on those who thwart her. She’s resilient- “able to absorb and accommodate future events in whatever unexpected form they may take." But she’s not infinitely forgiving. She scoffs at tenderpreneur’s elastic compromises, and in the past, we’ve seen her fight back at the people who deigned to constrain her.  In a sense, nature has been fighting back as NEMA and the rest twiddled their thumbs. The current clearing of riparian land is a belated move to rectify sins of omission and commission that have been piling up over the years. While NEMA is late to the show, nature has been working on clearing this up herself and on reclaiming what was never ours to build on. We watched as developers erected buildings and homes on riparian land and in typical “shauri yako” fashion, built culverts designed to shepherding the river into other peoples’ property! Pity. 

Beyond the multiple damming and diversion of the river that’s been happening and causing flooding, the encroachment of riparian reserve has been disastrous to the urban ecology of Nairobi. The riparian reserve is more than an aesthetic requirement. Riparian zones carry out soil nitrification amongst other things,  and off balance leads to eutrophication and deoxygenation of the riverine system.  A whiff of the Kirichwa River provides ample proof that all’s not right in the Nairobi river system. Our rivers are full of trash and debris and some- like the Ngong River are nothing more than open sewers. It’s not entirely surprising because where a government connects less than half the resident households with sewer systems, waste has to go somewhere with the resultant rivers being nothing more than fetid and murky cesspools brimming with plastic bags even months after the plastic ban.

The Caveat Emptorness of it all:

Living in Kenya sometimes feels like being in the Thunderdome in Mad Max.  The utter lack of safeguards for citizens shows us that in almost all interactions, the citizen is on her own. While I applaud the demolition of property that was wilfully and deliberately built on riparain land by those who knew it was public land and perverted the system to do so, it's utterly deplorable that *some* innocent Kenyans who bought land in good faith have now been left holding the bag.  The news clip of homeowners in Green Park in Athi River whose houses were being demolished was gut wrenching. They’ve been left holding mortgages that they still need to pay for over land that was never theirs to own and my heart goes out to them. Meanwhile- the developers who bribed and built their way into this mess are still laughing all the way to the bank. It’s a situation that needs urgent rectification- the demolition of houses should be accompanied by an EACC investigation of how those multiple permits came to be issued. It also behoves NEMA to publicly publish a list of what is public land (which all riparian land is), and to show what actions have been taken against employees who participated in the creation of this unholy mess.  

This information asymmetry in a perennially corrupt environment lends itself to a situation where the innocent are hoodwinked, and the corrupt find safe harbour for their pillage and robbery of public land. It’s an untenable state of affairs. Ultimately, for longer lasting and more just solutions, we need more safeguards and constancy from the Government.

#SwitchOffKLPC Hashtags and social movements

KOT is characterised by many things. It’s rambunctious, boisterous and decidedly disorderly. It’s sometimes funny and whimsical.  It’s also on occasion misogynistic and homophobic. And every so often, we have woke KOT.  And while “twitter activism” has been dismissed in many places (think Peter Kenneth’s presidential  “twitter votes”), its mobilising and rallying power has definitely changed how online Kenyans think and interact with the state and authority. Twitter’s ability to democratise information has forged commonalities in Kenyans where through the hyper-connectedness of Twitter, common outrage against inflated power bills has led to Kenyans mobilising around the #SwitchOffKPLC hashtag.

Hashtag  activism isn’t new in Kenya. There have been some successful hashtags e.g. the #MyDressMyChoice which was able to halt the noxious trend by  PSV operators of assaulting women for “dressing indecently” and also translated to offline prosecutions and convictions. Some of these hashtags were short lived and ephemeral e.g.  #SomeoneTellCNN, the #UhuruChallenge or even the #DeportKoffiOlomide that faded off KOT radar after objectives were met (and perhaps also due to an admittedly short KOT attention span!). Some e.g. #WhatIsARoad #OverlapKE have morphed into longer lasting hashtags that are still being used to call attention to two of the biggest aggravations facing Kenyan commuters- the deplorable state of our roads, and overlapping menaces who make commuting a daily nightmare.

Kenya Power and power

By all accounts, KPLC is the piggy-bank of choice for government regimes, officials and connected Kenyans. It’s a feeding trough that is fed by hard earned Kenyan cash- much of this non disposable income for Kenyans that are barely making it.

The #SwitchOffKPLC campaign has also given Kenyans a small peek behind the curtains at the corruption machine that runs and controls most of industry and politics in Kenya. “KOT police” have been instrumental in providing information that answer Eric Wainaina’s question of who is to blame for the rot in our country. What’s clearly obvious through some of the information that is coming through is that this corruption machine neither sleeps nor slumbers. Like a perverse virtue, this looting machine is patient, and unkind. It always protects the benefactors, and unless something changes, will probably always persevere. It’s also proven to be very innovative - see e.g. the third party token vendors who saw an opportunity to make money through alternative paybills and were able to capture 35% of the token market.

What we should however never lose sight of is that these staggering fortunes made through bribery of KPLC officials, creation of fake fuel shortages, and  siphoning of money are crimes that have very real victims behind them. If you trawl the lead campaigners/ founders of the movement @apollomboya  @jerotichSeei and supporters’ twitter timelines, tweets tell stories of predation by an uncaring, indifferent corporation that has used its position as a monopoly to brutalise and bilk Kenyans of their hard earned and scarce coins regardless of the human cost. They have shown zero compunction in over billing widows and grannies, and businesses on the edge. 

Social Movements & Social Media

For Kenyan civil society- especially those working in transparency/ accountability and energy sector, the campaign offers an opportunity to make change in the notoriously corrupt energy sector. And while I don’t think that online campaigning will (or even should) replace traditional civil society, supporting the #SwitchOffKPLC campaign would bolster the efforts of the movement and their own work in energy justice. There are perhaps lessons to be learned from how the #BLM movement has been able to grow from a twitter hashtag to one that has galvanised (and some say rescued) the civil rights movement in the US. From all accounts, it was able to morph into a social movement because of its ability to tap into grassroots organisations, NGOs and other associational life to leverage its online popularity into offline work in the judiciary, churches, schools etc. Mr Mboya’s public interest litigation, online research and activism by Ms Seii   and others has translated to offline gains where consumers have earned a reprieve from inflated bills through the court system.  For civil society activists, the campaign could serve to connect energy justice, anti corruption and transparency and accountability work. 

It’s proving that it can help counter sponsored disinformation and provide alternative narratives that amplify universally recognisable truths- that the kleptocracy that rules Kenya is literally and metaphorically killing us. It also offers an already beleaguered civil society a chance to re-moblise its base, and work to chip away at the age old corruption looting machine we’ve been fighting for a long time. 

xxx