Fourteen police officers have been summoned to record statements after a demolition order at Mukuru in South B, Nairobi, turned tragic and led to the death of a slum dweller.
They were part of a contingent that on December 27 provided security to the demolition team.
The Nairobi Metropolitan Service needed to get a swathe of the slum to effect a long-overdue upgrade. But militant landlords and tenants protested.
Typical of our ill-trained and ill-equipped police officers, they mindlessly used excessive force to enforce the order.
Why should every demonstration or a picket be met with tear-gas, gunshots and death? The police must surely approach a demo with a modicum of intelligence.
The investigators must establish the truth as to whether the demolition team, as claimed by slum folk, exceeded their remit by evicting more families than they were instructed to do in the hope of carving out plots for themselves.
The trigger-happy officers whose recklessness caused the very regrettable death must be dismissed from the force and charged.
Demolition by stealth is a weapon of an administration that has no respect for the law and the dignity of its citizens.
Quote of the Day: “The tragedy is not that things are broken. The tragedy is that things are not mended again.”
Alan Paton
The South African author and anti-apartheid activist was born on January 11, 1903.
