We Must Do Something

Reposting this from my Facebook account where it originally appeared. 

I had an interesting conversation with my friend about this Westgate issue today. Wise man, interesting perspectives, and I thought to document, but also vent. I have been accused of being too clinical about what’s happening in Westgate, and I am, because I am not shocked. Since December 2010 when I had my run in with Al Shabaab, terror became familiar. Every grenade attack in Nairobi, Mombasa, Garissa etc doesn’t shock me, I guess I stopped thinking I am special when that grenade went off at my feet. It became normal. My reaction to Westgate has been your reaction when you hear of a horrid road accident. It’s horrific, but strangely familiar. 

Anyway, my friend shared that Westgate is not about Al Shabaab, it’s in a way about us, the apathetic middle class. When the state of our security declined from what it was, we invested in security guards, guard dogs and alarm systems, instead of demanding better of our government. People and institutions tend to live up to their expectations, and because we expected nothing of our internal security, they have lived up to that expectation…porous borders, corruption, waste of resources, the works. We complain about the machete wielding gangs in the slums, yet that’s the lower class also trying to fix their problems.

Yes, Al Shabaab is a Somalia problem, but it is also our problem. It is about youth unemployment and disillusionment. We haven’t fixed their problems, someone else offers them Kshs 40,000 to come back and kill us. The guy who almost blew us up at Kampala Coach wasn’t from Somalia, he wasn’t even Somali. According to escapees, some of the youth killing innocent people in Somalia as Al Shabaab are our youths.

When we hear of gory public vehicle road accidents, we thank God we no longer go anywhere by bus any more, instead of demanding more from the law enforcers. When our roads get potholed, we buy cars with higher clearance (4WDs). When we are caught speeding, the best of us go to court, pay the fine, then speed off, the rest of us bribe and speed off. When public schools decline, we spend millions taking our kids to private schools, then take to social media to mock misplaced government initiatives, because after all, they don’t affect us directly.

The loss of life we are seeing at Westgate, is sadly what the ordinary mwananchi goes through on the daily. If it isn’t a road accident in an un-roadworthy bus, it is thugs, or a random grenade. If this happens and they’re injured, all they have is KNH, where there’s a high chance they will succumb to injuries that could easily be treated. But instead of demanding that our NHIF funds are used to fix the health system, we all rush and buy private health insurance, then make noise about NHIF for a day or two on social media.

If PEV had been a middle class thing, if the violence happened in Kilimani or Karen (and other “rich” areas of our country) instead of Kibera and rural Rift Valley for example, would the perpetrators (whoever they are) be in jail today? Chances are, they would be.

This is a rant. I am trying to make sense of what he shared, while at the same time trying to figure out, how do we fix this?

As @Kawira Thambu shared in an earlier post, only the middle class can drive real change in the country.But then how do we fix it? How do we fix a country where an elected leader is busy CHASING BIRDS in Netherlands instead of leading HIS people? How do we fix a country where leaders would rather trade slaps than talk to each other? Where all our leaders think about is their prestige?

How do we fix a country where the majority lower class have lost hope, and a 50 bob election bribe is all it takes to buy their vote?

Where are we supposed to even start? Can we even do anything about this? I don’t know, but something’s got to give.