Kenya’s equatorial climate has, until recently, four distinct seasons; the hot and dry months (January to February), the long rains season (March-May), our version of winter (June-October), and the short rains period (November-December). On February 29, 2024, the Kenya Meteorological Department issued a climate review report forecasting above-average rainfall for the March-May long rains. 

In response to this forecast, the National Disaster Management Unit (NDMU), under the Ministry of Interior and Coordination, stated the likely negative impacts of the increased rainfall. The NDMU predicted the increased likelihood of floods and flash floods in affected regions, leading to the destruction of property, loss of life, rising water levels in lakes, rivers, and dams, and infrastructure damage. 

This all came to pass.

The Kenya Red Cross reports that, since March of this year, the floods have impacted more than 43 counties in Kenya, caused 271 fatalities with 162 people reported missing, affected 81,739 families, and displaced 48,896 households. The floods have destroyed over 2000 water sources and over 11000 livestock have been lost.

Amid this widespread disaster, the Kenyan state’s propensity for violence against the poor has not abated. Using the floods as an excuse, the state continued to inflict violence on the poorest of the poor. A pattern emerges in response to the floods—a display of top-down, dictatorial,  governing by force. President Ruto’s party was elected based on a bottom-up economic model, where economic growth would be realized by “lifting up the Mama Mboga, the bodaboda operator, the farmer and the young people.” Yet, the administration’s policies since coming to power in 2022 only reinforce the extent of its disregard for these same demographics. 

On May 4, Joseph Ombata, age 5, and two others were killed by the state, during forceful and illegal evictions at Mukuru Kwa Ruben, an informal settlement in Nairobi. On May 2, following devastating floods, the government announced the immediate voluntary or forceful eviction of people living on riparian land—defined in Kenyan law as land being a minimum of six meters and a maximum of 30 meters on either side of a riverbank from the highest watermark. Yet, no evictions have been ordered for middle-class and wealthy Nairobi suburbs built on or around similar riparian grounds.

In response to the call for evictions, grassroots organizations in informal settlements put out statements calling out the illegal evictions, highlighting the lack of planning and community participation. One of the issues raised was the concept of an ex-ante resettlement of displaced communities. On  May 5, Interior Permanent Secretary Raymond Omollo promised that “within one week we will have resolved all these things.”  He claimed that people would not be allowed to return, and shared plans to plant trees, once again referring vaguely to “organized” groups of tree planters. Omollo alluded to future developments on this land. Still, a keen listener would be hard-pressed to understand who these developments are for, if not for those displaced from these settlements and barred from returning.

This is Nairobi, where administrations come and go but memories are long. Never in the many recorded dispossessions has the government fulfilled its promise to resettle anyone without a court battle. 

The residents of these informal settlements were given 24 hours to leave. I want to sit with that for a moment, to flesh out exactly what our venerable leaders think is possible. At the time of the eviction notice, it had been raining and flooding for at least two weeks. In informal settlements, many people’s homes had been destroyed, property washed away and kin were still missing. 

Where exactly did the government expect people to go? To their relatives, whose homes were also destroyed or about to be bulldozed? To others maybe further afield whose finances had been inexorably ruined by the taxes the government has been extracting from us? How were people to move their lives, belongings, and kin from their homes in such a short space of time? 

To make matters worse, Nairobi County did not ever allow for the full 24 hours before beginning to evict people by force. An interview by CNN’s Larry Madowo with Isaac Gitoho, the past chairman of the Runda Association and current member of the crises committee on Runda floods, is particularly poignant. In the interview, Gitoho is asked why the Runda homeowners were not forcefully evacuated as happened in the informal settlements. He responds that he doesn’t know, and we see once again Kenya’s middle class perform its magic trick of selective ignorance and a dedicated lack of curiosity to the state’s cushioning of their soft lives.

While people in informal settlements are being forcefully evicted from their homes, the homeowners in Runda are afforded room for negotiation, and the empathetic ear of the relevant authorities. The same empathy was not extended to Joseph Ombata and others who lost their lives on May 4 in Mukuru Kwa Ruben.. Ombata was alone at home when the bulldozer came, and he went back into the house to try and collect his family’s belongings. The five-year-old family member’s life was also taken because the county government did not follow due process. Worse still, when people rightfully took to the streets to protest the illegal evictions, they were violently dispersed with tear gas and live rounds of bullets.

In addition to forceful evictions, the government’s response has been keen to blame the floods as “an act of God,” with the spokesperson Isaac Mwaura, blaming the flooding on abnormal rainfall caused by climate change, and the loss of life and destruction of property on people building on riparian land—notwithstanding that the administration has wilfully permitted the construction of property near waterways for months now. Government leaders continue the farce of absolving the administration of its responsibility to the people. In one corner the First Lady, Kenya’s non-appointed prayer warrior, declares that her prayers have successfully brought us rain and will be so plentiful that farmers will no longer need fertilizers to improve crop yields. In another corner, Nairobi County Governor Johnson Sakaja’s administration has not yet received the county’s allotted Ksh. 200 million emergency fund, under the Financing Locally-Led Climate Action grant, because he and his team haven’t fulfilled the minimum requirements to receive these funds.

The government continues to erode the livelihoods and dignity of its poorest citizens. Fortunately, we see Nairobians of all classes—through grassroots movements and activists such as Jerotich Seii—coming together to hold the Nairobi County government and Sakaja accountable for their disastrous emergency response, and the lack of urban planning that has led to the loss of life. Nairobians are determined to agitate for their rights. What remains is for Sakaja and his administration to be held criminally culpable.