Chances are that you have often gotten very upset with vendors on Nairobi streets who tend to block the entire sidewalk meant for human traffic and thus make it very difficult for anybody to walk the streets comfortably.
But let me introduce you to another angle of this problem that few have talked about. A family's sole breadwinner leaves home for work as usual one morning and does not return in the evening. The family searches for them in all police stations within the city and in the mortuary also. They never find them. One month later they appear on the door step of their home with clean shaven heads. It emerges that they were arrested by City Council Askaris and thrown into a cell in one of the two notorious police stations in the CBD, namely Central Police Station and Kamkunji. The spend the night there and appear in court early the next morning where they are charged with hawking and sentenced to one month in jail or a fine. Since no relative is in court and the money they had has been stolen by the Askaris who arrested them, the breadwinner ends up spending a month in the "cooler" with hardened criminals ad if they happened to be women, you can be sure they will be raped. And yet their only crime was trying to but bread on the table.
Do spare a thought for hawkers next time.
The really interesting thing here is that when the Narc government swept into power, one of the first things that was done was to attempt to deal with this hawker menace. However this attitude did not last very long.
It is quite likely that if the next government is formed by ODM Kenya, history will repeat itself. Campaign rhetoric followed a brief period of pretending to be doing something.
There are a few basic facts the government seems to have ignored in their attempts to deal with the so-called hawker menace.
1) No attempt has been made to deal with the ailment so far by either the current Kibaki administration or the Moi administration before it. Instead the government has concentrated all its' efforts on the symptoms.
Why do we have a hawkers' problem in the first place? Why is there such a huge unstoppable migration from rural areas to Nairobi? Answering these questions will lead you directly to the real ailment that produces the symptom called hawker menace. The entrepreneurial spirit in hawkers can be tapped and used in a positive way by investing heavily in small business 'incubators' where the best of these budding entrepreneurs can be given facilities under which their businesses can incubate and grow to create employment and wealth for the country.
The old 1960s idea of throwing them to some field that is too small and too far away from their regular clients to be of much help will not work. We now require lots of creativity and imagination which can easily turn this menace to a major asset.
2) Major industrialists the world over including Kenya's own biscuit baron, Mandatally Manji of House Of Manji started out as hawkers.
Kenyans have been taught to admire people with massive wealth without caring how that wealth was accumulated. The result is that we have little respect for honest entrepreneurs, let alone budding ones who have got no contacts to bribe for big government contracts and who my have not been around during the coffee boom to make huge overnight wealth smuggling coffee.
Kenyan industrialist, Mandatally Manji started out as a part-time hawker in the Karatina market (near Nyeri). The best future Kenyan entrepreneurs are now hawkers. So why do we choose to hit them in the head with heavy clubs and throw them into police cells with dangerous criminals, instead of finding a way to nurture their entrepreneurial zeal?
3) Whatever approach is decided on by both the government and those enforcing it must be consistent.
We have heard stories of hawkers stabbing and even killing City Council Askaris. It is important to try and find out why it sometimes comes to this. City council askaris are known to be very corrupt and it is not unusual for one to demand a bribe just hours before a major raid which they are already aware of. Thus the same officer you bribed with your day's sales a few moments earlier, after being assured that you will be able to operate in peace for the rest of the day ends up arresting you a few hours later. Imagine how you would feel. Personally I don't condone bribery and this principal of mine has been put to the test many times. It is very difficult to live in Kenya without having to remove a bribe, but it is not impossible, as I have proved.
There would be a lot of respect for city council askaris and the government of the day, if both were not corrupt ad were consistent in the way they dealt with hawkers. As it is both have a different approach when they are either soliciting for a bribe or for votes and when they are not. So why would we not expect hawkers to fight back?
Quick Question: Remember the elite Kanga squad that was credited with the infamous Standard newspapers raid? They've now been disarmed (asked to surrender their weapons). This effectively means that the once dreaded police unit is now no more.
But why now, and so many months after they carried out that shocking raid on the Standard offices?
It is the approaching general elections, stupid.
Join in the raging debate over this thorny Luo-Kikuyu relationship issue
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See also the 2 Problem Tribes in Kenyan politics
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The Hawker Issue (I refuse to call it a menance) has been a contentious discussion in my household. I simply call what the Kibaki govt (and other subsequent governments) is doing as an ELITIST SWEEP. I am talking from a personal experience where a close relative of the same class and calibre as the Muthaiga Club openly stated that it is good what the government is doing by removing the "riff-ruff" off our city streets. Granted that the streets are now cleaner, less congested and safer... but at what cost?
ReplyDeleteWhen you hear of riots and demonstrations; stabbings and shootings in the downtown streets of Nairobi; it is a symptom of a greater and more chronic pandemic. My humble question is:
• What do you expect to happen when you push someone against the wall?
• When you lie to them that 500K jobs will be created a year?
• When you tell them "Someni Vijana...mwisho wa kusoma...utapata kazi nzuri sana" I won't be at all surprised that most of the Hawkers hold degrees from our repuable institutions of learning.
• What happens when you confront a young woman, with a child on her back and her living in her hands...what do expect when you tell her to go elsewhere (without saying where) as she is an eyesore to the public...what do you expect but that she will fight back???
I have had the priveledge of seeing one of those riots start. It was on some public holiday when our President was addressing the nation in Nyayo stadium. Meanwhile, the city streets were devoid of people & traffic; so one hawker saw the oppurtunity to come up town and try and get any clientele he could get. The next thing I saw was a Council lorry off-loading a hive of askaris with batons and guns... beating the hawkers. Who were forced to make their way to the lower part of town. They were pushed and pushed till they decided to fight back. I saw all this at 2pm...and on watching the news at 7pm it was a fullscale war being waged...
I could go on and on... but I have to work... will come back with more commentary later (after I have calmed down)...