Had Kikuyu poverty profiteers and slumlords not dragged and derailed Raila Odinga with incessant court cases, Kibera Slums would today have been a massive highrise, low cost affordable housing estate for lower middle income Kenyans.
Housing was one of the NARC pledges but like the many good things that were in the COMBINED NARC manifesto, once GEMA had been propelled to power on a stretcher, they chose to ignore the “LDP parts” of the NARC Manifesto.
The sections they could not entirely ignore like Free Education, they only agreed to implement partially, thus was the case with Free Primary Education.
Housing, especially decent slum housing, was something Raila Odinga had fought for beginning with the KANU/NDP merger and was the early signs that Raila Odinga would be a threat to entrenched GEMA mediocrity in Nairobi that was suffocating the city with shacks and shanties even as the exploitative leeches hiked rents whimsically.
When rent hikes became too much for people who were living in squalor, and this was being done on lands that were largely government land, Raila told slum residents all over Nairobi not to pay rents until the slumlords improved their shacks.
This was the genesis of “Laila anaambia wanjaruo wasiripe lent”.
Raila made housing a going concern for successive governments he’d be part of, and once it became government policy, it became ‘mandatory’ for future regimes to construct houses.
I conclude by repeating that for Kenya to develop, the country must keep GEMA mediocrity at bay for the next 50 years.
Wakikuyu lazima waone how a government is properly run ndio in future wakirudi urais wasiturudishe nchi nyuma.
For some of us, much of the last 20 years are wasted years — the years eaten by locusts, yaani nzige.
Congratulations H.E William Ruto for taking Baba’s vision forward. United, nothing is unattainable in Kenya.
KUMI BILA BREAK.
Dikembe Disembe is a Political Researcher and Writer
