From Dik Dik to Atwoli Road: Our Cotu brother gets into a street fight

I am recounting that story to let Brother Francis Atwoli know that his fight with Nairobians eager to retain the name Dik Dik will be long and nasty. It might, one day, end in tears. At the moment, Brother Atwoli has been set up.

In 1964, City Hall had come up with a policy that no Nairobi street would be renamed after a living person. There was a reason: to protect individuals from such nasty showdowns as what is currently happening. Only Jomo Kenyatta was exempted from that rule.

Historians and students of street toponymy are keenly following the debate that was sparked last week following the Nairobi County government’s decision to rename Kileleshwa’s Dik Dik Road to Francis Atwoli Road. This one is interesting because scholars have always suggested that the idea behind renaming streets is “street cleansing”. But what did we see in Kileleshwa?

Just before the cement cured, some Nairobian’s uprooted the road sign and threw it into the streets. That is when Brother Atwoli, the Central Organisation of Trade Union’s (Cotu) Secretary General, used his Twitter handle to declare war on those opposed to this honour.

He wrote: “The Nairobi County Government has reinstalled the sign. If you think you came from the moon go try remove it again. Also, a CCTV has been installed for the security of the area.”

Naming of public places

Atwoli’s pain, nay struggle, to keep the road sign there was real, but to others, it was not worth the fight.

“Why fight so hard to have it there, if they remove it, let it be and move on,” advised William Kabogo, the former Kiambu governor, albeit with a sinister chortle.

Later, activist Boniface Mwangi claimed that there was no CCTV and that Atwoli’s CCTV were “three goons” employed to guard the “illegal sign… We shall avoid confrontations but the sign will come down,” vowed Mwangi, the young man who once released pigs outside Parliament in a protest.

Put into context, this fight means that Nairobians, as in other cities, need a public discussion on the naming of public places and spaces. We all saw how statues of Christopher Columbus, King Leopold II, Cecil Rhodes, and Robert Miligan were pulled down in the West during the protest wave that followed the George Floyd incident as angry mobs confronted history.

This takes me back to the Galton-Fenzi Memorial, also known as Nairobi Milliary Stone, which is the only monument, perhaps in the world, with a metal fence on it. Built initially in 1939 in memory of Lionel Douglas Galton Fenzi, the man who drove the first car from Nairobi to Mombasa and pioneered most of the major roads in Kenya, this monument is again the only one that has been shifted from its original location.

Initially, it was in the middle of Delamere (now Kenyatta) Avenue before it was dismantled in 1953 and reconstructed. But after independence, vandals struck and stole the commemorative bronze plaque that read: “This Nairobi stone is erected to the eternal memory of Lionel Douglas Fenzi… who having founded the Royal East African Association in 1919 remained its devoted honorary secretary until his death on May 15, 1937.”

It would later be fenced to keep off vandals and the inscription was engraved on the rock. Those in Nairobi can see this fenced monument at the junction of Kenyatta and Koinange Street.

Villains getting honoured

And that is why I was amused with Brother Atwoli’s claim that there was a CCTV along Dik Dik Road to provide security for his beloved road sign. 

In civil jurisdictions, the naming of streets should be open and vetted to deter villains and scoundrels from getting honoured. I am not saying Brother Atwoli is not worth; he has his labour movement followers, but only time will tell whether that road sign will survive a generation.

We have not forgotten that in 2015, Nairobi quietly honoured Prof George Saitoti with a road, in the hope that Kenyans would erase the memory of his tenure as minister for Finance and the billions he made there thanks to Goldenberg and other scandals. And that was before we even honoured Kenneth Matiba – we finally honoured him this year after Accra Road became Kenneth Matiba Road.

In May 1964, the statue of King George V, which used to stand at the High Courts, where Jomo Kenyatta’s statue was later erected, was removed, ostensibly for “storage”. Also at the junction of Parliament Road and City Hall Way is the forgotten King George VI Memorial Fountain – a symbolic reminder that the sun, finally, set on the empire.

The fountain was erected after his death in 1953, when the current Queen Elizabeth was at Treetops Hotel in Nyeri. While Kenyans collected money to build the monument as an honour to the king who gave Nairobi its city status, what we know from archival records is that the suggestion came from London through a telegraph to colonies: “In some territories it may be desired to open a fund for a suitable local memorial.”

After the central government in Nairobi refused to finance the monument, it was Mayor Harold Travis who formed the subcommittee to undertake the task. But it was not clear who would be in charge of the monument. 

Initially, the monument was to be built at the island between Kenyatta Avenue and Uhuru Highway. But the committee was told by the President of the East African Institute of Architectures that it would endanger motorists.

Politically-motivated

The monument generated a lot of controversy. Years later, it became embarrassing after the media reported that it was overgrown with grass. 

In 1971, there was an attempt to rename the fountain to Dedan Kimathi Fountain. This was approved by City Hall, but Margaret Kenyatta, the City Mayor, appears to have chickened out. The pro-King George VI elements in Nairobi argued that it was “not as offensive as a governor on a horse back.”

What am I saying? That when something starts in a controversy, it ends up as a study on how not to do things.

It is not the first time that we have roads named after the politically correct. After independence, and especially in Nairobi, a subcommittee was set up within the General Purpose and Town Planning Committee to help rename the city streets.

The recommendations were not controversial: Princess Elizabeth Way became Uhuru Highway; Connaught Road to Parliament Road; Hardinge Street to Kimathi Street; Sadler Street to Koinange Street; Kings Way to University Way; Stewart Street to Muindi Mbingu Street; Eliot Street to Wabera Street; and General Smuts Avenue to Lt Tumbo Avenue.

Of all these, it was only Lt John Tumbo who was least known, having been a soldier killed during an ambush by the shifta. Another shifta victim was the Isiolo Regional Government agent Daudi Wabera, whose name replaced that of wartime South African Prime Minister Jan Smuts.

There is usually a reason why roads, unless in exceptional cases, are not named after living souls. The idea is to stop politically-motivated name replacements and also guard individuals against unnecessary ridicule and drama. Nairobi’s Acting Governor, Anne Kananu, should not fall into this political trap.

And by the way, what happened to the Evans Kidero Street?

[email protected] @johnkamau1