Flooding menace exposes Kenya's perpetual cycle of mismanagement

Residents of Mathare try to salvage their belongings after their houses were destroyed by floods. [Robert Tomno, Standard]

On Wednesday, I was privileged to attend a public lecture by the Chinese Ambassador to Kenya, Dr Zhou Pingjian, on the China transformation journey.

The lecture also shared the long history of friendship, spanning over six decades, between the two countries and lessons that Kenya could learn from the Chinese experience.

As I have indicated previously in this column, I am a direct beneficiary of this shared history of friendship, as an alumnus of the Chinese Scholarship Council. At a personal level, I am a witness to this amazing Chinese journey of transformation. Their government systems work without a fault insofar as is humanly possible.

From the lecture, three things stood out: first, the centrality of the people in the Chinese political economy and leadership; second, the underlying transformative philosophy of ‘reforms but with an open mind’, inspired by the country’s father of reforms, Deng Xiaoping; and third, the emphasis on leadership accountability to the people and fidelity to the plans adopted by the Central Committee, the top governing organ in the country.

Interestingly, the ambassador indicated that the Chinese transformation journey was partly inspired by our own developmental achievements as of 1973; particularly the 32-storey Kenyatta International Convention Center. China did not have a single building of that height at the time. So the founding fathers mused that if Kenya could do it, why not China?

This leads us to the interesting twist of fate, that now it is us to learn from the Chinese experience and influence. Their model of success speaks to the essence of patriotism, the necessity of finding local solutions to unique challenges at both the national and subnational level, and the practice of implementing that which works, not what is dictated externally.

This brings me to the heart of the current crisis of flooding that seems to have caught everyone by surprise, yet the Meteorological Department kept warning of impending heavy rains in the months of April to June. About seven months ago, in September and October last year, we spent billions of shillings at both the national and county governments in preparation for the El Niño rains.

The questions in the minds of everyone now are: where is the value for money on the billions spent towards mitigating the risks of heavy rains? How can the city’s drainage systems in the country’s seat of power collapse so easily? Why did it take so long for the government to activate a multi-agency response team, yet they had been warned long before the onset of the rains? How many lives do we have to lose to prick our national conscience from our wickedness in urban planning and leadership mediocrity?

Can’t fool nature

Listening to diverse opinions on both mainstream and social media, it is evident we all understand what is troubling us. For example, it felt like poetic justice watching Governor Johnson Sakaja’s knee-jerk reaction to suspend approvals for all construction plans, at a time when he has been at loggerheads with the Kilimani Residents Associations over development projects in the suburb.

At the heart of the dispute has been the opening of the area for high-rise buildings without rethinking or planning for utilities like water, sewerage, drainage, and the rights to privacy of residents who have invested millions in homeownership. Many planners also acknowledge that, driven by greed, corruption, pedestrian political interests, or plain impunity, rivers were downgraded into streams by city county officials to allow residential and commercial buildings on riverbeds.

Spared from madness

Two weeks ago, I mentioned an ongoing practice by the Sakaja administration where every available space in the city, be it road reserves, utility pathways, or recreation zones, has been converted into a hawker’s paradise. Not even the Central Business District has been spared from this madness. While at it, nobody has thought of the strain placed on utilities and the management of the garbage left behind by unruly hawkers.

Worse still, we are a society that peculiarly lacks a basic sense of decorum. We dump waste carelessly and without consideration of the consequences. As the raging waters come to our magnificent houses, they have brought home and left behind a trail of shame of our wicked habits in handling waste. While the county government officials bear the greatest responsibility for the lethargic enforcement of laws, regulations, and norms of best practice, nature seems to be reminding us that she ‘eats no bribes’.

It is regrettable that lives have been lost and properties worth billions reduced to monuments of shame. The real estate subsector is likely going to suffer from the aftermath of this disaster. The evil spirits that drive most property developers in collusion with corrupt public officials have been laid bare. For a long time, urban flooding had been considered a burden of the poor, especially for those in the slums.

What is emerging from this disaster is that we all bear the costs of abetting or remaining silent when greedy public officials and merchants of greed pervert order for short-term profits. I belong to the school of thought that believes that profits must be a consequence of playing by the rules and dictums of order, human decorum, fair exchange, and sustainable co-existence with nature.

Lessons learnt

There have been attempts by establishment apologists to explain away our internal failures by pointing out that other cities like Dubai have also experienced similar flooding. It is amazing how, as a society and as leaders, we try to rationalize mediocrity and failures in public administration.

Referring to the Chinese experience mentioned earlier, I can attest to the fact that when a city floods in that country, it is truly an act of God, not a consequence of human failure. In October 2013, I had the privilege of visiting the Beijing City planning department. In one large room, they showed us a very detailed city master plan. Trust me, not even a single tree is left unmapped because during the dry seasons, they have to water each tree. For the three years I lived in that city, there was not a day I went without water in my apartment, and only once did I see a burst sewer, which was fixed in hours.

The lesson here is that we are a country that either never learns or is impervious to even the most painful lessons given by nature herself. This is not the first time we are going through this. While political leaders and public officials feign concern and empathy for the victims of the floods, as it has happened before, millions will be plundered from public coffers in the name of the crisis, and after June, everything will be buried in ‘kaburi la sahau’ until the next floods. Remember the Corona billionaires and famine that ushered in the Kenya Kwanza administration into office? This is a script we have perfected and accepted as a standard for the country.

The second emerging lesson is that as a society, we deserve the leaders we elect. In the midst of the crisis, I have seen prominent personalities and influencers confessing they erred in supporting a candidate purely based on party loyalty or simply because they hated the other party. It’s amusing to see video clip memes resurface from the city’s gubernatorial debate in July 2022.

We made our bed, now we must lie on it. The only question is: will we learn from this? Are we even capable of learning anyway? Only time will tell.