Motorists stuck in a traffic jam on the Nairobi-Nakuru-Eldoret highway on December 22, 2024.
Today, I want us to look critically inward at ourselves without fear, or favour. Progress for an individual, or country, doesn’t come from sycophancy or mindless, unthinking concurrence. No – nyet. Forward movement in all advanced and intelligent societies has always come from contradiction. Often it’s divergences in thought that may eventually become convergences. Fundamentally, good things happen from dialectic and oppositional thinking. We must always say the things we don’t want to hear, but that we need, and must, hear.
Today, I focus on our traffic culture. Traffic, as in movement on our roads by vehicles and people. It’s a window that puts into sharp relief the people that we’ve become. And it’s a decrepit and sad story.
I remember with nostalgia the innocence of my youth in the 1970s. There was general etiquette by pedestrians and most drivers, except those possessed by a demonic hubris. Such drivers thought a motor vehicle was God’s licence to torture those they viewed as poor.
This species of idiots would slow down on approach and then suddenly accelerate once parallel to a pedestrian so as to leave the poor pedestrian in a blinding thicket of dust or bathed in muddy water. The point was to establish superiority of the driver over the pedestrian. Slowly, pedestrians developed an oppositional culture to owners of vehicles, especially cars. I have news for you – the cruelty of drivers then was tame compared to what I see today.
Road infrastructure
Let me first say the obvious. Our road infrastructure isn’t good. It’s not first class, or even second class. It’s third class when you compare with other so-called “middle-income” countries. Successive administrations have given contracts for infrastructure to unprofessional builders who bribe officials to get the tenders and then rush through a shoddy job.
Even the vaunted Nairobi Expressway floods when a little rain falls on it. Then I have seen these ancient Roman-like Stalinist/Mussolini pillars carrying our bypasses and expressways. Surely, in this day and age I thought we would have more elegant and not humongous pillars. Engineers, please correct me! To add insult to injury, some of the gigantic pillars sit unfinished. The whole thing is really unsightly and unaesthetic.
I digress. Let me first indict our elites before I come down on the “Little Guy”. Those who wield power and riches have a special moral responsibility to the rest of society. Whether those who are philosophical like it or not, the poor have a dialectical material opposition to the rich and the powerful. But they either envy them, hate them, or want to be like them. As Mae West, the witty American actress, comedian, and writer once pithily opined, “I’ve been rich and I’ve been poor, and rich is better.” This may be crass materialism, but it has loads of truth. No one wants to be poor. That’s why the rich must be very careful, obey the law and the Constitution, and live a life of moral probity.
Instead, our rich folks are some of the most insufferable people on the planet. They flaunt everything. Most of all, they use their fuel-guzzlers as weapons of mass destruction. They drive against the traffic. They speed like maniacs. They drink and drive under heavy intoxication.
Torture and torment
Many have paid the ultimate price for this stupidity. But most of all they are a menace to pedestrians whom they torture and torment with impunity. They are lethal weapons on our roads. I focus on this because such impunity calcifies in the minds of not only the elite but cascades down to the lowest rungs of society. The “Little Guy” asks, why should I obey the law if the minister is breaking it with glee? Impunity always starts from the top, never below.
Now the “Little Guy”. I focus on the god-forsaken boda boda and matatu operators. You heard that right – godforsaken. They are living predators. They do exactly what the elite does – torment and torture pedestrians and motorists. Most violent of all they don’t wear helmets or provide them to passengers. Crashes resulting in severe and mortal injuries to them and their “human cargo” are legion.
Because of their recklessness they often collide with vehicles and then call on their partners to beat up and molest motorists. The boda boda are a law unto themselves. This menace isn’t there in Ethiopia, South Africa, or Morocco. They exist in Rwanda but have dedicated lanes and must wear helmets with their “cargo” and can’t carry more than one passenger.
I think it’s President Mwai Kibaki who allowed this menace. It needs to be banned. Only matatus should be licensed to carry passengers on our roads and they must be strictly regulated with identical vehicles and colours and a requirement to carry only the number designated with seat belts. Bigger cities and towns must introduce city buses. How could we have had a better road culture 40 years ago than today? Our traffic culture is a sign of social decay.
Prof Mutua is SUNY Distinguished Professor and Margaret W. Wong Professor at Buffalo Law School, The State University of New York. He’s President William Ruto’s Senior Advisor on Constitutional Affairs On X: @makaumutua.
