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Kenya: We are Doomed If We Don't Respect Our Rules

Sunny Bindira

1 November 2008

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opinion

Nairobi — After spending decades observing myself and my fellow human beings, I am forced to come to a somewhat cynical conclusion: most of us only behave well when we are compelled to do so.

When left to his own devices and untrammeled by the demands of morality and legality, the average person will do all the wrong things.

I was forced to think about this recently when I found myself in Nairobi's perennial traffic behind a KBS bus.

The driver of this vehicle had clearly stopped being a bus driver, and had descended into matatu mania. The idea of a bus stop had been thrown out of the window. This man would stop anywhere and everywhere to pick up passengers, including on roundabouts and on the highway.

My journey

He was not alone in this; drivers of the rival Citi Hoppa firm were doing exactly the same thing all around us. I estimated that my journey took 33 per cent longer as a result of the drivers doing this.

I stopped short of computing the average daily cost to the economy of society allowing this simple rule to be broken. My mental temperature was too high.

Are the drivers of our buses and matatus crazed?

Quite possibly. But they are part of a bigger phenomenon, which might be termed moral entropy.

Simply put, if you don't force people to do the right thing, over time they will descend into doing all the wrong things.

And so, if nobody forces drivers to behave on the roads, soon those roads will resemble jungles where anything goes. If no one compels people to dispose of litter properly, they will toss maize cobs, banana peels, plastic bottles and used condoms out of their cars and onto the street.

If society did not condemn promiscuity, most men would sleep with every available woman and no family structures would be possible. If we did not have auditors, accountants would ransack all company bank accounts. If assault was not a crime, we would be attacking each other the minute we became angry.

If the police force was not kept under strict control, its officers would impose a personal fine of 50 bob per day on every matatu.

If teachers were not able to make their young charges behave, they would burn their schools down. If our leaders were not accountable for their actions, they would turn into hate mongers who would plan the massacre of innocents for their own political gain.

Are we so far away from all that?

We are observing a general disdain for rules and regulations, a breakdown in personal ethics, a lack of respect for the rights of others. Without a system that regulates the behaviour of a society, that society will soon return to the bush from which it sprang.

That is not a reflection on the African condition: it is a worldwide phenomenon. Those suit-clad rule enforcers from western embassies come from societies whose ancestors were attacking each other with clubs not that long ago.

India's supposedly peaceful citizens massacred half a million of their number when the rules broke down during the partition of the country.

But those societies have since learnt the importance of rules.

No coincidence

It is no coincidence that Singapore, which has probably the world's most advanced rules system governing all aspects of behaviour, has transformed itself from a bunch of fishing islands into one of the world's most advanced nation.

Our failure to have a healthy respect for rules is taking us more in the direction of a Somalia than a Singapore.

Am I being too cynical? I don't think so. After all, we burn people alive in churches; we burn down our own schools; and we steal from the poor.

We are not going anywhere until we enforce rules and respect them. How are we going to do it? We need shock therapy.

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