A Cabinet minister's life is worth the lives of 5,600 ordinary citizens
 

By L. MUTHONI WANYEKI

The Society for International Development launched a report last week that seems to have captured the imagination of the Kenyan media. Entitled Pulling Apart: Facts and figures on inequality in Kenya, the report compiles existing government statistics in a manner that dramatically highlights inequalities in three areas - income, region and gender. 

Actually, anybody even moderately conscious of their surroundings is confronted with inequality every day of their life. We know from the evidence of our eyes that the majority of our society live in horrifying squalor and insecurity and have to work extremely hard for absurdly low wages - and they have to walk to work. The lucky middle classes get to pile onto our now relatively subdued matatus or drive second-hand Japanese imports. And a tiny minority drive brand new, preferably European sports utility vehicles. These are observable facts. And we all understand that making the leap from one category of transport to another is a feat so extraordinary that most can only dream of it. 

So the zeal with which the Kenyan media has taken up the report, although gratifying, is somewhat surprising. What is it about the report that has provoked such interest? 

Maybe it is because the report provides a rational explanation for the emotions that underlie almost every single discussion of policy in this country. The figures on income inequality are bad enough. To reiterate: the top 10 per cent of income earners control just under half of Kenya's wealth while the bottom 10 per cent control less than 1 per cent of that wealth. But it is the figures on regional inequalities that are truly shocking.

For example, a person from Central Province can expect to live the proverbial threescore and ten years while a person from Nyanza province can expect to die just before 50. Central also fares best and Nyanza worst with respect to the under-5 mortality rate and the rate of HIV infection. Unemployment stands at 6 per cent in Central as compared with 35 per cent in Northeastern Province. 

The figures show that, in general, Kenyan women are disproportionately affected by HIV and almost half have experienced some form of violence at the hands of men. In addition, almost three times more Kenyan women are "unemployed" in urban areas than Kenyan men (the report captures employment in the informal sector, but not employment in the reproductive sector). But there are no Kenyans more discriminated against in terms of the figures mentioned than women from Northeastern and Nyanza provinces in particular. 

As Duncan Okello, SID's regional director put it, these figures clearly demonstrate that there is a link between inequality and the ethnicised nature of our politics. Strategies implicitly intended to address this concern - such as the push for devolution and decentralisation - may fail unless we, collectively, begin to explicitly name inequality as a national concern. Nor can we continue to moan and groan about crime and insecurity and yet fail to include strategies to even out inequality in crime-prevention and security measures. No justice, no peace. 

Why do these inequalities exist? And what are we going to do about them? As the economist David Ndii points out, the dichotomy often presented between growth and redistribution is a false one given the patronage state that we live in. He graphically illustrates this point by noting that if we consider that the ratio of police(wo)men to citizens is about 1:800, it becomes nothing short of an obscenity that one Cabinet minister could consider it acceptable to use seven armed guards for his personal security. What that minister is, in effect, telling us is that his life is worth the lives of 5,600 of us! 

Until all of us - and not just our Cabinet ministers - begin to think in those terms, inequality can only worsen. It is a matter of being conscientious about living up to human values at all times. 

L. Muthoni Wanyeki is executive director of the African Women's Development and Communication Network (Femnet) 
 

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