As was routine those days, I walked to the Kerugoya Post Office on a hot afternoon of February 1999 to check on letters and other correspondences. I know many people today cannot visualize a world without the Internet, Facebook, Twitter, Whats App or even the mobile telephony that only a few years ago was completely out of reach, nay, unimaginable for the majority hoi polloi. But that was our real world just the other day - slightly above a decade ago! In those days, letter-writing was an art and a way of life. Letters were our only medium of communication: to ask for pocket money, bring parents to speed upon arrival at the University, and of course a dating platform. For us, a few poetic, lovely and romantic words on a pink writing pad was the most assured way into the heart of a naïve high school girl. Memories are surely made of stuff like this. Unlike today, one could not block, delete or unlike your advances – at the minimum they had to give you a chance over the holidays to express those purportedly inexpressible ‘feelings’ usually by the roadside on a Sunday after church or in the evenings as they fetched water and firewood in the valleys . On such occasions, one would have to spruce up, concoct and/or borrow a few punch- lines from popular soaps of those days – ‘The rich also cry’ and ‘The bold and the beautiful’ were my favourite. I guess such face-to-face encounters with the girls provided valuable opportunities to acquire and enrich spoken vocabulary, confidence, communication and other life skills that have been summoned time and again in different life circumstances. Those are now but nostalgic memories of my yesteryears. On this day, the only letter in our Post Office booth, in a grey envelope was addressed to my dad. I would have dutifully delivered it to him were it not for the address of the sender that caught my hitherto scattered attention and summoned my now already nervous curiosity. Why on earth would The University of Nairobi write to my dad? At any rate, only I and my immediate elder brother would be eligible recipients of such correspondences since we were both students at the institution at that time, I, a freshman, him doing his third year. I hastily sauntered into the nearest hotel and ordered for coffee and with guilt, fear and trepidation, nervously opened my dad’s letter and to my utter consternation, the University’s senate, through its Chairman Prof Sam Ongeri had summoned me to the disciplinary committee to ‘show cause’ why I should not be dismissed from The University of Nairobi for ‘organizing, leading and taking part’ in student protests that had led to the indefinite closure of the institution. To date, I reserve a copy of the letter that, needless to say never got to my parents as it would have devastated them. And obviously I was not discontinued, thanks to the late Nobel laureate Prof Wangari Maathai who arranged for legal representation through lawyers James Orengo, Rumba Kinuthia, Martha Wangari, Paul Muite and others to defend me and SONU leadership including Christopher Owilo alias Karl Max, Joseph Kioko, Oburu and others from the Nyayo era antics and injustices. I owe these legal minds a great deal of respect and awe for ensuring that an injustice was not served to any one of us. They really intimidated Ongeri and his team before filing an injunction that was to put that matter to a permanent rest. Now if I may, I wish to address myself to the issue of land grabbing following the recent violence meted on Langáta children whose playground was on the verge of being stolen by ‘private developers’ - the politically correct term for thieves and robbers of public property. Land grabbing has its roots in colonial subjugation and lends an essential element into historical injustices. The so called ‘White highlands’ was public / communal land that was alienated by then politically correct thieves of Caucasian extraction. Communities were bunched into villages and settlement schemes to make way for large-scale agricultural enterprise by the colonizers. The displaced indigenous people languished in abject poverty and remained landless, eking a living by engaging in manual labour in the White highlands. Even after we attained independence, little was done to rectify this misnomer. The politically correct black bourgeoisie simply replaced the outgoing British thieves in a hasty arrangement whose justification was the old maxim of ‘willing buyer willing seller’, with little regard for social justice and common people’s purchasing power within the regime of commerce. Land does not grow with the ever increasing appetite of ‘private developers’. Thus Moi era thieves pounced on government land. ADC, KARI, HFCK, civil servant’s housing schemes, show grounds, government corporations and public universities lost huge chunks to Moi era ‘private developers’. By the time Kibaki came in, communal land and government land was gone. The thieves of his era pounced on Statehouses in Mombasa and Western Kenya and the country almost lost this important national resource. Now, the junior Kenyatta is in office and the thieves within his government must satisfy their appetite. But public land is no longer available. Public schools such as Langáta road primary schools and private land such as the 134 Karen land owned by Da Gama Ross are now the new frontiers of grabbers per excellence. The script is the same; the forest has not changed. The monkeys are the same though they are more shrewd and daring, much younger and agile and able to camouflage, jump from tree to tree and hide within the thick shrubbery and branches of clandestine power and mystery. We owe it to the unbowed Prof Wangari Maathai with her Greenbelt Movement whose activities provoked our national conscience and helped bring the issue of land grabbing to the national and global limelight. She successfully resisted the construction of a 60-storey Kenya Times Media Trust Complex at Uhuru Park in 1989 and for her effort, the KANU regime labelled her ‘a mad woman… a divorcee with insects in her head’. Again in 1998, she was to successfully fight very powerful KANU mafia who had excised sections of Karura forest for personal aggrandizement. For her effort she was clobbered and hospitalized with serious head injuries. As a first year student at The University of Nairobi, I had earnestly joined Prof Maathai on the fateful day to plant trees in Karura. I was caught up in the middle of the fiasco at the gate of Karura and actually witnessed the violence that was meted on our team. Were it not for my agility and youthful dexterity, I would be writing a different story. Even as I took off, I terribly feared that they had killed the good Professor. Now I have two fundamental fears that shiver me to my spine. First, I fear for, nay, pity HE the President. For, if he has to restore sanity and respect for the rule of law and that of public and private property, he would have to do so at the risk of severing a critical support system of his political base, thus darkening his second shot at the presidency in 2017. But then again he cannot let ‘private developers’ pounce on school playgrounds for the survival of his regime. The consequences would be worse with regard to his image, constitutionalism and a solid legacy that he is certain to concretize in ten years. Second, I fear for, nay, sympathize with the police officers whose jobs precariously hung in the balance for teargassing protesting children of Langáta road primary school for, they were only reacting to serious intimidation and bullying from higher powers. They were damned if they did not act and damned for their action to please political ‘supremo’. The two are between a very solid lock and a very hard wall. But I think I am content with what happened to the heroic children who bore the blunt of police brutality. For in instances like these, leaders are born. These children are the next generation of leaders. And to paraphrase Prof Wangari in her acceptance speech at Oslo in 2004, “I stand before you and the world humbled by this recognition and uplifted by the honour of being the 2004 Nobel Peace Laureate. As the first African woman to receive this prize, I accept it on behalf of the people of Kenya and Africa, and indeed the world. I am especially mindful of women and the girl child. I hope it will encourage them to raise their voices and take more space for leadership.” I believe it has come to pass.
Posted on: Thu, 22 Jan 2015 03:48:00 +0000
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