I am in Nairobi, seated in close proximity to the Nairobi Arboretum. I’m in deep thought about recent proposals to impose entry charges to Nairobi’s largest park, Uhuru Park. This move is nothing new, for there has been a concerted effort to zone off and commercialise such parks and other public spaces over the past decade – effectively turning rest into a commodity accessible only to those able to afford it.

The Nairobi arboretum today has an entry fee of 115 shillings. Down Nyerere Road, Central Park and Uhuru Park have been inaccessible to the public since November 2021 when they were closed for ‘renovation’. In 2022, the Nairobi County government announced that members of the public would soon have to pay entry fees to access Uhuru Park, then made an about-turn toward the end of 2023 following a huge public outcry. Despite the back and forth, it remains to-be-seen whether charges will be levied when the Park is finally reopened.

The majority of Nairobi’s population live in areas commonly referred to as slums, or informal(ised) settlements – settlements which arose out of economic relations anchored on ruthless exploitation of this population by monopoly capital and its local agents. Through its grip over economic and political structures in the neo-colonial state, capital has informalised these settlements and by extension, the people and communities that occupy them. Numbering in the millions, these folks are everyday victims of physical, economic, psychological, and ecological violence. 

While the spatial arrangement of these settlements that our people call home does not allow for rest or recreation, they nonetheless find themselves alienated from the few public spaces they previously accessed for recuperation and rejuvenation. In Kenya, like elsewhere, public access to multiple spaces has continuously been inhibited over the years through mechanisms such as imposition of entry fees, prolonged closure of public parks for renovation, or outright grabbing of community parks and public spaces by politically-connected figures. The lack of access to public spaces in Nairobi today compels sections of residents who hitherto frequented our parks to resort to private parks among other recreational facilities that they have to pay to access. For the majority, this has effectively turned the natural act of rest into a commodity that they can barely afford under their shared economic conditions.

Leisure and rest are political acts. The modern working day, as we know it, was secured by workers after long and protracted struggles for an 8-hour workday. During the industrial revolution in 18^th Century England, workers were subjected to 10-16 hours of work a day and 6 days of work a week. This oppression forced workers in England to resurrect demands for shorter work days in the tradition of that inaugural call for an 8-hour workday in 16th Century Spain and over the course of subsequent historical epochs. Successive periods and varied territories have since then also enforced the 8-hour work day to allow for leisure and rest.

The Nairobi Arboretum

Established in 1907, the Nairobi arboretum is a small forest that sprawls across 30 hectares of land near the western edge of Nairobi’s Central Business District. 

After admission into the University of Nairobi fifteen years ago, my Comrades and I spent significant amounts of our social time at ‘Africana’ before we discovered the serene Nairobi Arboretum which soon became our hang-out spot. In that era, entry into the arboretum was free. It would be packed during weekends as people from different corners of Nairobi converged to momentarily shed-off the unbearable weight of fatigue accumulated from the ruthless exploitation they underwent during the work week. Families would explore the small forest, play games, eat, drink, commune, and share the gift of humanity. They were at one with nature at that moment, even if only temporarily.

In 2016, The Kenya Forest Service started charging 65 shillings for admission into the arboretum, effectively excluding the majority of low-income earners who could not afford the entry fee. Their exclusion was soon-after cemented by the construction of a high-end hotel near the main entrance. With residents of this hotel accorded complimentary access to the arboretum.  Entry charges into the arboretum would later increase to 115 shillings in 2023; in a country where around a fifth of the population live on less than 292 Kenyan shillings (approximately $2) a day.

As with Karura Forest before it, the government agency that manages the Nairobi Arboretum claims to have made it safer by fencing it and levying entry charges. But common logic dictates that you create safe spaces by developing and implementing progressive manoeuvres that not only secure the space but also enable increased public access. You do not create safe spaces by alienating a majority of the population from their critical sources of respite.

Uhuru Park

The other week, after an impromptu early-evening event at the Nairobi Serena, that bourgeois hotel that occupies what was historically a portion of Central Park, I decided to stroll into town via Kenyatta Avenue. Having been away from Nairobi for a couple of years, the villager in me was amazed by how bright Uhuru Park looked at night with all the lights that shone from behind a seemingly-endless new green wire fence. The park, however, seemed so distant on that night. Out of reach.

Many memories of how friendly Uhuru Park had been to different people in the not-so-distant past rushed through my mind.

Immediately after completing my university studies, I took a matatu to the bustling streets of Eastleigh and bought a slightly oversized suit because I was sure I would gain some weight once I got a job and left the wretched world of the sufferers. Though purchased primarily to aid my job hunt, this beloved suit came to serve multiple purposes. We attended funerals, weddings, and quite importantly, dates across Nairobi.

Back to the job search. 

Although the suit bore the brunt of my unforgiving Nairobi job-hunt and lost a few shades of colour over time, it never failed me. I am certain that my faded suit and I took a girl on a date at Uhuru Park on at least two (or more) occasions. In those days, I would laugh so hard at my dry jokes until she had no option but to laugh along. I was never too sure whether they were laughing at my jokes, my sheer stupidity, or my laughter – what I am sure of is that they were laughing. That I could see their teeth.

When the job search became protracted and drawn-out, I contemplated joining organised religion – but forgot that idea as soon as one of my newly-employed friends bought me a cheap bottle of whisky at Casino – next to the old Kampala Coach office.

Such are the memories of life.

My long-standing relationship with that particular suit became strained when I joined the ranks of the employed a few years later. I soon after gifted the beloved suit to a bartender after receiving my first wages – a decision I regret to date. Thinking in hindsight, I should have preserved it for posterity, as something I could pull from a wardrobe and show my children every time they ask me for money a decade from now. African-parent style 🙂

For years, Uhuru Park was a space of respite for millions of Kenyans. At that Park, you would find job-seekers with their crispy brown paper envelopes or tattered document folders – repositories of resumes and job applications. People who had come to town to secure meetings or deals that had not borne fruit would retreat to the Park to figure out how to get back to Rongai, or Juja, or Ngong. Here, you would find families that had been turned back from Kenyatta National Hospital for lack of money, fanning their loved ones as they contemplated their long journey back home to Murang’a. Major political rallies were held here. Hundreds of street vendors eked a living from selling snacks, refreshments, and countless other things at this same Park.

Uhuru Park sits across the road from Nyayo House, one of those buildings that is a marker of the darkest chapters of the political history of post-colonial Kenya. In the 1980’s, many patriotic Kenyans were killed, maimed, or disappeared in torture chambers located at the Nyayo House basement. These infamous torture chambers remain closed off to the public to date. Maybe the ghosts of impunity reside there.

Freedom Corner — that sprawling section of Uhuru Park that stands defiantly in close proximity to Nyayo House — has consistently served as a convergence point for progressive forces across generations. As we came of age in the movement for social justice, Uhuru Park was there to provide a starting point for our protest marches – as it had for those who came before us. Three decades ago, during the struggle for multi-party democracy, Freedom Corner was a site of struggle that stood tall in firm defiance of oppression, tyranny, and attempts by the KANU-Moi dictatorship to turn it into a concrete jungle.

In the 1980’s, the concerted efforts of Wangari Maathai, commuity organisers and environmentalists stopped the construction of a 60-storey glass and concrete tower that was in that era envisioned as future headquarters of the ruling party(KANU) and its organs. It is here at Freedom Corner that the mothers of political prisoners stripped naked in 1991 to demand the release of their sons and daughters from prison. It is here at Uhuru Park that the first post-KANU government took its oath of office in 2002 – with over a million Kenyans gathered at the park to witness that historical leap. It is here that, in 2010, the new Kenyan constitution was promulgated. It was at Uhuru Park that Raila Odinga was sworn in as the ‘People’s President’. 

Uhuru Park and the political history of post-colonial Kenya are intertwined.

A decade ago, I was at Uhuru Park to witness Gitu wa Kahengeri and other veterans of the Kenya Land and Freedom Army, popularly known as the MauMau, gather to unveil a statue erected in commemoration of their comrades who paid the ultimate price in the pursuit of the limited freedoms we enjoy in this neo-colonial state. Like the colonial state, the neo-colonial state is extractive in nature, oppressive in structure, and brutal in its quest to maintain its chains over the people. Decolonisation, as Alieu Bah reminds us, is a material struggle. So long as this material struggle isn’t won, then what have the Mau Mau fought for? Will their ghosts continue to haunt us?

Under the political dispensation that prevails today, you might soon have to pay to see one of the very few statues erected in commemoration of the MauMau – they who sacrificed everything to fight a long and protracted struggle for the liberation of Kenya from the yoke of the British colonial empire. The sun will set, as it always sets.

You cannot fence freedom.

Recent announcements by officials of the Nairobi County Government that access to Uhuru Park would be determined by one’s financial capability completed the transformation of Nairobi from a ‘city in the sun’ to a ‘city for the taxed’. If implemented, these new charges will only serve to push the dispossessed and impoverished further into the margins of Kenya’s capital, entrenching the already existent geographical class dichotomy.

Centres of economic power such as Nairobi are not called capital cities by chance – they are called capital cities because they are sites where capital is concentrated and entrenched. The impoverished masses move here in droves every year to secure jobs and survival, but are soon consigned to exploitative relations and low wages by the few people and structures that consume their time, energy, sweat and blood. People and structures that everyday grow fatter at the expense of this urban majority.

In these cities, a few individuals and corporations control key resources, services, and properties that are effectively monopolies in key sectors of the economy – and which allow them to influence prices, limit competition, and shape urban policies. The concentration of their investments in real estate, infrastructure development, and other projects leads to the creation of high-end, exclusive neighbourhoods and business districts that cater to the rich while neglecting the needs of low-income communities. This further perpetuates the concentration and monopoly of capital in urban spaces and results in gentrification, income inequality, and limited access to food, housing and other essential services for marginalised communities. It is today our historical responsibility to reverse this perverted arrangement whose only raison d’etre is to ensure that investment decisions in the urban landscape and elsewhere are driven by profit motives rather than collective needs.

The only thing that should perhaps be fenced and people charged to see is that ugly ‘rungu ya nyayo’ monument at Central Park. I am certain that no one would pay to see that ugly monument which is representative of a tyranny that the whole of Kenya rose against in one voice. A tyranny which belongs to the dustbins of history.

You cannot enclose freedom nor its demographies, so long as the word Uhuru resonates with the people who shelter, rest, love and dine in those parks. So here is a call to free them all, so the last laugh is for the hawker selling for survival.