Just another day in late-afternoon rush hour hell: On Limuru Road, I had harmless looking saloons carving out a second lane next to me, and more threatening looking big four-wheel drives doing just the same before they opened a third lane on the other side. Both driven by people who looked like normal citizens, who I might meet in a supermarket queue or in a Dormans, but who abandoned all pretence at civility in traffic and helped make everyone’s way home a misery.
And then there were the matatus.
There are few things that make my blood boil quite as fast as encounters with matatus: The use of indicators (if actually working) seems a superfluous luxury to them as they push into traffic right in front of you, their vehicles are hardly ever roadworthy, their driving skills may be technically impressive, but are effectively an all-out assault. In fact, one of my acquaintances suggested they should be looked up on murder charges. Murder, and not homicide, because there is nothing accidental about their behaviour and the state of their vehicles: It is premeditated. Personally, unless someone convinces me otherwise, I firmly believe that matatu drivers, like the Nazgul in the Lord of the Rings, ride home to the Dark Tower on screeching winged creatures at the end of the day.
Now I do appreciate the matatu industry for its dynamism and entrepreneurship (and funky graphic designers): Since the government won’t provide safe, affordable public transport – or any public transport, for that matter , the private sector filled the gap. Nairobi may be clogged up with transiting trucks and an ever rising number of cars, but the vast majority of people still need a public transport system, and so the matatu industry meets this huge demand.
This has implications for business and Kenya’s economy. Not unlike impromptu national prayer days ordered by the president, a matatu strike instantly immobilises business in the capital. It holds ordinary citizens – those who can least afford to lose a day’s income to ransom. The last strike was called not for what you and I would consider legitimate, or even legal, reasons: The alleged ‘protest against police harassment’ was basically a call to be left in peace whilst violating every traffic rule going. A public transport network is a crucial piece of infrastructure to running a city like Nairobi. Is it prudent to leave the responsibility for this vital backbone of our city to such rogues?
It’s not as if the industry is not subject to any regulations: Of course the usual traffic rules and other obligations apply. Except they are hardly ever enforced in the first place, and even less so with matatus. In the past weeks, I was astonished to see a few police people do sensible things (yes, really), but this hasn’t yet stretched to public transport, and with a good reason. Matatus and police co-exist in mutually beneficial murkiness: The police collect a regular, if informal kitu kidogo tax on the matatus and in return, the latter get away with anything up to and including murder. That politicians and policemen own matatus probably have something to do with this, but the understanding of the concept of a conflict of interest is not very pronounced with anyone involved in managing or regulating this sector.
So I was a little gobsmacked when I read that the Matatu Owners Association, through the Public Transport Investment Company, had bought Invesco Assurance, an ailing insurance company. Usually restrictions on ownership in the financial sector are much stricter than in other areas, and for good reasons: Not just to protect consumers and their most critical resource, money, but also to prevent systemic risk. So the same people who have brought Nairobi to a standstill so that they could continue to flout all traffic rules unbothered will now be the owners of a financial institution? The industry that has already damaged several insurance firms with extensive fraud, and is associated with money laundering, can now have their own insurance firm? What exactly is the Insurance Regulatory Authority doing?
Republished with kind permission from the (Nairobi) Star.
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