BURIANI TAJUDEEN ABDUL-RAHEEM

BURIANI TAJUDEEN ABDUL-RAHEEM
>
> May 26, 2009 (MAKALA YAKE YA MWISHO)
>
> Govts discourage enterprise and penalise those fighting
> poverty
> Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem
>
>
> The irony of Africa being a very rich continent but
> Africans being some of the poorest peoples in the world is
> no longer lost to anyone. While we can argue about the
> historical, structural, attitudinal, personal and
> institutional causes of this state of affairs, the fact
> remains that majority of our peoples remain in need amidst
> plenty.
>
> Decades of aid, humanitarian intervention, prayers,
> activism, development plans, action plans, government
> declarations and so many other initiatives have not produced
> fundamental change for the poorest and weakest sections of
> our societies. Yet Africans remain one of the most
> optimistic peoples, perpetually believing that tomorrow will
> be better. It is always a miracle how majority of
> the poor, whether in our urban slums or impoverished rural
> areas, survive.
>
> Our cities' overburdened road infrastructures have
> spurned entrepreneurship in the form of shops on roads and
> legs meandering between armies of pedestrians and impatient
> vehicle drivers frustrated at the gridlock traffic.
> Similarly informal settlements have developed, several times
> the size of our capital cities with little or no
> infrastructures. Some of them like Kibera Slum in Nairobi
> are even becoming 'famous' globally for poverty
> tourism. Unfortunately, it is not the impoverished peoples
> in these settlements who are even the beneficiaries of their
> own poverty.
>
> The majority of Africans continue to survive not because of
> government but in spite of governments. They eke out a
> living to keep body and soul together, provide for their
> families, doing all kinds of dirty work with little pay or
> selling anything that is buyable; hawking all kinds of
> household wares,
> fruits, vegetables and myriad of consumer items.
>
> The concept of informal settlements in Africa is not just
> about where people live but extends to informal markets in
> all kinds of goods and services.
>
> As the son of a hardworking woman who was a 'petty
> trader', I confess to a bias in favour of these
> small entrepreneurs who do not depend on any connections
> with government officials, politicians and big business
> influence. You go to many neighbourhoods rich or poor
> and you will find these largely female entrepreneurs,
> selling food to those working on construction sites, cheap
> vegetables to other poor members of the society from their
> baskets, trays or single tables at the corners of roads and
> streets.
>
> So living in Kenya, a settler, apartheid type state in all
> but name, I find myself in solidarity with 'Mama
> Mboga'. These are women who sell vegetables from their
> trays, or traditional load carriers tied to their heads,
> carried
> on their backs.
>
> From Mama Mboga selling daily perishable vegetables, the
> ambition is to own a kiosk where you can have storage for
> more goods , stock more, put a fridge and freezer that
> can preserve perishable items. When Mama Mboga becomes a
> kiosk owner, it is a personal triumph of hope over
> adversity- a long journey from grinding poverty to
> bearable survival and foundations for permanent exit from
> poverty. The bigger the kiosk and the better stocked it is,
> the further away the owner is from poverty. Government
> policy is threatening the survival of the Mama Mbogas across
> this continent. In the name of ridding cities of illegal
> constructions, returning to the original city plans and
> 'beautifying' our cities, city councils and central
> governments are creating more poverty. Of what use is
> a 'beautiful city' inhabited by people who have lost
> their livelihoods? Would they appreciate the beauty?
>
> The Mama Mbogas are on
> the street and in kiosks because they cannot afford the
> malls and most of their clientele cannot afford the price in
> the malls.
>
> Our elite are embarrassed by the mass poverty that
> surrounds us but they are unwilling to provide leadership
> and appropriate policies to take our peoples to prosperity.
> Instead they engage in avoidance and denial mechanisms to
> pretend to visitors that 'everything is okay'.
>
> That's why they rid our capitals of beggars, hawkers,
> and other undesirables before any major
> 'international' conference, but out of sight is not
> out of mind for the Mama/Baba Mbogas in our midst. You can
> pull down their kiosks and destroy their tables but they
> will come back with new tables, under umbrellas and their
> clientele will know where to find them. By no means are
> there clients all wretched of the earth. I still call my
> favourite Mama Mboga, Mama Sarah, or her husband, Martin, to
> send me top up cards from wherever Nairobi City Council
> have forced them to.
>
>
> Dr Tajudeen, a respected Pan Africanist and Daily Monitor
> columnist, died in a car crash in Nairobi, Kenya on May 25, 2009. This column, written last week, was his last for
> Daily Monitor. May his soul rest in peace.