TO EVICT OR NOT? ...........THAT'S THE QUESTION.

The coastal people have for many years complained about historical injustices and marginalization. Successive governments have chosen to ignore these outcries and this can partly be blamed for the formation of the Mombasa Republican Council. MRC has been claiming to fight for the rights of the indigenous coastal people through calls for secession and boycott of 2013 elections. For the past few weeks now a row has been brewing in Likoni due to the planned eviction of over 120,000 squatters from a 930 acres farm. The owner of this piece of land is back to reclaim his farm after many years of absence, armed with a court order for eviction of squatters. He claims that he was forcefully evicted from his land at the height of the Likoni clashes in 1997. In the period that he was absent the squatters have put up permanent residential homes and commercial buildings, there are also schools and places of worship on the land. The owner has also moved to court to have the Police Commissioner committed to a civil jail for failing to execute the court order since 2001. In Takaungu another standoff looms as the Mazrui family seeks to enforce a court order for eviction of an estimated 10,000 families from their 9,100 acres land.

HIERARCHY OF NEEDS DOES NOT APPLY IN KENYA

On the road to self-actualization, the first step is fulfillment of biological and physiological needs which include food, clothing, shelter, drink, sex etc. The next most important step is fulfillment of safety needs which include safety, protection, law, order, stability etc. The other two needs that one needs to achieve before attaining self-actualization are Belonging and Esteem needs. To me Vision2030 is a self-actualization need and I find it wrong for us to spend hard-to-come-by resources on higher level needs when we cannot offer security, safety and ensure rule of law in our nation. Provision of basic healthcare for all has been a pipedream in Kenya yet we have a vision of crossing the poverty line for all by 2030. The education standards have long gone to the dogs yet we expect to produce professional to lead and grow this nation to great heights. I have often been told that one cannot scale a tree from the top but I think in Kenya anything and everything is possible. Not that I am against Vision2030, but it beats all logic to spend time and money of functions to commission a project aimed at achievement of a 2030 objective when a every day objective of providing internal security is not addressed.
Kenya is no longer the peaceful Island that it was. When communities are not butchering one another in Tana Delta; grenades are exploding in matatus and churches in Garissa and Eastleigh. In the meantime the Executive are busy opening 400 million residences for their fellow political class and receiving honorary degrees on Everything and Nothing. It surprises me that we can afford a 400 million residence for one family yet we are unable to procure a piece of land and build habitable homes for thousands IDP's. A police officer dies in the line of duty and he/she is quickly buried and forgotten yet when a politician dies while attending to personal matters and we form a commission of inquiry whose proceedings are brought to our television sets every evening just as a reminder of his/her "importance".