Wicked Leadership

Woe unto them that decree unrighteous decrees, and that write grievousness which they have prescribed; To turn aside the needy from judgment, and to take away the right from the poor of my people, that widows may be their prey, and that they may rob the fatherless! And what will ye do in the day of visitation, and in the desolation which shall come from far? to whom will ye flee for help? and where will ye leave your glory? (Isaiah 10: 1 – 3)

I want to write about recent declarations and laws that have been activated in Kenya in view of the new virus.

Do you realize that it borders on wickedness the manner in which many of them are being carried out?

One problem with our leadership is that it is so completely out of touch with the vulnerable in society, if not with the society outside their fortresses and palaces. No manner most of them dare not dream of leaving politics and positions.

The other day many people were castigating a mother who said that she would rather die from corona than stay home and watch her children starve. Have you ever been in her position?

How do you feel being in a house and your children are crying of hunger? It is only a person who understands that helplessness who should be allowed to make some of these laws. Someone who has never gone helplessly hungry understands hunger academically. Making laws without taking such a mother into consideration is wickedness, however justified you may feel you are. No crisis will justify the cry of a parent who is unable to feed his children.

How do you place a curfew without making adequate preparations for the same? I suspect it is because you do not understand how public transport operates. Then you unleash the police to punish people because there were no vehicles to take them home! You maim your people because you assumed that they were like you and will simply drive home when the time comes.

Nobody leaves home under these circumstances for fun. The vast majority of them have no option. They take the risk or starve. But you only understand the law.

I have used the ferry and wondered how someone in his right mind could make some of the laws as were announced. I knew it was impossible to enforce them. Simply because the ferry is not used for tourism. People use it to look for food and not money to invest.

Then you order over 300 000 to self-distance and be home before 6. If they are always packed full when they run almost 24 hours, how will they be able to have cleared ferrying people by 6, keeping in mind that they are supposed to carry less than a quarter of their normal capacity due to the distancing?

Then you order your policemen to teargas them!

Most of these people must work or they will starve. There is no luxury involved in their labor. They also earn a pittance and so have no capacity to save even a little for a rainy day. It rains and they will simply die, unless their kind will stretch their hand of help like they always do. But it will be within their ability to do so.

I minister to the vulnerable and am speaking as someone who understands their plight from very close proximity. I also have gone through some of that privation and so understand from personal experience.

Provide a solution to the poor before giving them laws as I suspect there could be mothers who had to prostitute themselves to get a place to spend the night when the curfew came and there were no vehicles and even those who came decided to charge them beyond their capacity to pay. And the cry of their children sleeping hungry without knowing where their mother was will be charged on you. You see, you can’t pay 300/- for fare when you earn 200/- in a day. And that must include fare for tomorrow and food. Nobody was luxuriously waiting for the curfew. I am sure you heard on the news of some who were in stages for up to four hours without getting transport.

Again it is important to give you some information I got as I was trying to understand the people I minister to.

Just go to a stage and you will find people that are perennially there. Do you realize (and I have talked with some, even waited with them) that they are there to wait until the fares drop to their lowest as that is what they can afford. They are not scared of going home as many are women, especially mothers. Their budget will not allow them to pay 50/- and so they will wait until it gets to 20/-

When you said matatus lower their capacity you automatically implied they double their fares.

What will such a mother do? If 50 was too high, what about 100? Yet they would still need to go home to their children.

They would wait until the policemen get off the roads because only then would the law be suspended for them to pay what they can afford. This means they will get home after midnight. And they are expected to leave home before 4 to get a vehicle that can charge ‘their’ fare. What do you decide when the choice is between spacing and paying what you can afford?

Then you introduce the curfew! What will they do?

Make a provision for those as you pass those laws. Otherwise you will be on the wrong side of God.

I do not want to compare you with others but it is instructive to mention that when public transport became a pain in the neck of the populace Moi introduced the Nyayo Bus and it was able to bring balance and sanity in the transport sector.

In fact reducing the capacity of PSVs without adding the fleets could very easily be self-defeating, unless you do not want people to work, and of course eat. People who have money do not use public transport and so will not be affected.

Even spacing is troublesome. Have you visited some rental premises?

I had a friend who in his small room had over ten people, at least three families. In fact a couple gave birth in that small room. And that was not by choice.

You will realize that many ‘estates’ have many such tenants. Incidentally these are the same people who work in markets due to the kind of money they earn.

Have you taken them into consideration when you talk about spacing?

Countries are providing places for the homeless to stay to limit the virus. What are we doing about ours, and of course the congested in estates and slums?

You see, if you do not protect the vulnerable, God will protect them. He could even make sure that the virus becomes the preserve of the able.

I will repeat. God will never overlook the cry of the vulnerable. The poor, the orphan, the widow, the refugee, all fall under that category.

You are as safe as you make them before God.

Do not fight against God as you try to make the world a safer place.