Displacement needn’t be such a devastating disruption for evictees

No matter one’s political affiliations in Kenya’s fragmented political dystopia, few can fail to cringe at the heartbreaking pictures of people displaced from Kibera and Mau Forest. Mothers’ backs hunched over with the burden of household goods rescued from tenements; children clutching books from the remains of their school... This tableau of despair, hopelessness, pain and indignity shocks the core of our humanity.

No state entity casually decides to build a highway across a slum. The chain of decisions that leads to the commencement of an infrastructural project in Kenya is no less than a year out. Nor is a decision to eject thousands of people from a forest one that is executed on the go.

We must therefore make the inevitable assumption that someone knowingly undertook the evictions in Kibra and Mau with the intention of causing maximum disruption to the survival of some of the most vulnerable.

Now, we may all be agreed that building a road across Kibera serves some legitimate public purposes. The need to conserve the Mau water tower and its ecosystem cannot be questioned. But must this happen at such enormous cost to the poor?

Mau removals

Kibera and Mau present at least two disturbing human contradictions that indict our polity. First, in both, issues of equal treatment of citizens is brought to the fore. Whereas evictions in Kibra are premised on the need to build a public road, elsewhere off Mombasa road, one building has stood defiant for years on the path of a road expansion project.

In the case of the Mau removals, it is a well-known fact that well-heeled individuals who benefited from land allocations in the Mau in the 1990s were never touched when the eviction squad torched the little homes of the poor.

The second phenomenon of similitude is the huge impact these displacements have had on school infrastructure. Media reports suggested that 10 schools were demolished in Kibra to pave the way for the new road. Many more schools were affected in the case of the Mau, with more than 4,000 children unable to attend school. The tragedy of this impact is that for the poor, education is the only real equaliser.

Many children born of parents inhabiting the slums, have, through education, been able to discover, nurture and maximise their potential and thereby free themselves from the shackles of poverty.

Disrupting learning, as these evictions have so violently done, curtails the opportunity such children have of ever escaping the clutches of deprivation and creates the likelihood of a life of penury and dependency. 

Evictions are very traumatic events. Anticipating this, the law makes provision for some mitigation measures even where eviction is legally permissible. Resettlement action plans are now part of our legal forte. If applied, the shock and suffering meted against the poor of Kibra and Mau could have been lessened.

Sacrifices necessary

Moreover, our Constitution is emphatic on the imperative of citizen participation in decisions that affect them. Participation appears to be a child of a lesser god and is held as an inconvenient afterthought in the implementation of State projects. The cost of weak participation to the implementation of Government programmes continues to manifest itself in the manner in which a good deal of infrastructure projects are resisted by citizens.

A sustainable path to development, especially Vision 2030, must be anchored in ensuring respect for national values. Indeed, the foundational documents of Vision 2030 attest to this. Non-regard for any of the Article 10 principles weakens the resolve of some Kenyans to make the sacrifices necessary for uplifting our socio-economic status to the next level.

When consigned to second-class status, it is difficult for one to view the State as serving their interests. An alienated citizenry will not be participants in the wealth creation that needs to underpin our economic take-off as a country. Additionally, the Kenyan state can do better at treating all its citizens with dignity as affirmed by the Constitution.

Appreciating that we all have inherent worth and should be treated with care and respect should guide policy making and programme implementation within Government. That way, we can leave no one behind, including those who call Mau and Kibra home.

Dr Sing’Oei is a legal advisor, Office of the Deputy President