YESTERDAY in “Politically Incorrect: Why Africa’s Cities Are The Dirtiest In The World, And ‘Village Food’ Is Bad For Towns (How It Began)”, we examined the controversial view expounded by Uganda’s sharp-tongued former Vice President Dr Specioza Kazibwe that the conventional toilet and garbage collecting trucks in African cities cannot cope with the fall-out from the “village” African’s eating habits.
The day Africa takes to cremation big time, then you will know it has truly ‘de-villagised’.
On this, the garbage implications of African foods taking over the city now that we have come to town, Dr Kazibwe was spot on too. A typical garbage pile in an Africa city like Kampala has lots of soil from banana, potato, and cassava peels, and also other heavy objects that are difficult to recycle and clear away.
The chaps in Europe and Asia who make the garbage trucks, assume that the garbage will be light like in their own countries. They are wrong. Our stuff is seriously organic and heavy. Most modern garbage trucks don’t survive the challenge of African waste for long. In that sense the garbage trucks African cities import, an activist pan-Africanist might say, are “neo-colonial”.
Beyond the misery our feeding habits inflict on our cities and environment, there are other major social and historical factors that explain our abusive relationship with our cities.
To appreciate it we need to look at the case of Nairobi. In 2010 Kenya voted in a new quite progressive constitution. Partly to deal with the problems that led to the post-election violence of 2008, the constitution radically devolved powers to 47 new counties – the equivalent of South Africa’s provinces or Nigeria’s states.
Kenyans have immersed themselves with remarkable gusto in their counties. Governors will lead the counties, and right now it looks like the race for governorships might well overshadow that for president in the next elections (not a bad thing). There are several county professional associations and groups that have been set up by the various counties to discuss how to make them a success, and to fix local problems that been neglected by governments in Nairobi for decades.
There is only one county that, as far as is publicly known, has no professional associations to champion its interests. It is the richest, and the most populous. It is Nairobi! As one senior government official put it, Nairobi is in danger of becoming an “orphan” county.
Orphan county because, while it is very cosmopolitan, Nairobi really has no “owners” in the old-fashioned sense of the word. People from the rest of Kenya and the world converge in Nairobi, but they eventually go back “where they came from” – their upcountry towns, districts, villages, and foreign countries.
Nairobi is like most African cities; there are very few indigenous residents in it who are “born city”, as the Ugandans say. There are very few third generation “born city” indigenous Africans, i.e. fellows whose grandparents, and parents, were born in the cities. It is mostly Europeans and Asians whose fore parents came to the continent in the 1800s, who are third and forth generation “born city” Africans. The problem is that they are too few. They either don’t get involved in civic politics, or when they do we knock them out with tribal voting.
The result is that the majority of the populations of most African cities, and the folks who run them, are essentially from the village. When they die, their bodies are taken “back home” up-country where they are buried.
During holidays like Christmas or Easter, millions of Africans – much like the Chinese – scramble for transport to go for holidays in the village, and transport operators inevitably rip them by hiking the fares.
It is a shame if an African individual of public substance dies, and his body is taken back upcountry for burial and he/she doesn’t have a serious home there (never mind that they never lived there a day). Derogatory songs would be composed about them.
When elections come around, cities empty as residents go up-country to vote. Yes, people don’t vote where they live and work most of the year, but prefer to go up-country because that is where their hearts are and ancestors’ bones are buried.
To understand why Kigali is East Africa’s cleanest city, is to understand the life of exile of the elite that runs the country and capital.
That, then, is the problem. For as long as the majority of people in African cities go to vote up-country; have to be buried back in the villages; and holiday in the countryside, we shall never have sensible and clean cities. Our cities will remain secondary.
It is only when our cities become home; the place where our parents and grandparents are buried, that we shall treat them like our front lawns that we need to beautify because we can’t escape to another place. Then the potholes will disappear, the streetlights will work, and we shall grow the trees and grass to make them green; and clean up after ourselves.
Which takes us back to that list of the 10 cleanest African cities:
4. Asmara, Eritrea
5. Victoria, Seychelles
6. Pretoria, South Africa
7. Pietermaritzburg, South Africa
Parts of Asmara might show wear, and the country is run with an iron-fist, but its capital takes itself seriously as a clean and safe city.
What do they have in common? Some of the answers are uncomfortable. Cape Town, Windhoek, Victoria, Pietermaritzburg, Port Louis, have relatively large populations that are of mixed race or European and Asian ancestry. These are groups that don’ have villages. Their dead are buried in the city and town cemeteries, or cremated (in fact the day Africans begin to cremate routinely, then we shall have been truly “de-villagised”).
The cities and towns are home for them.
Kigali and Asmara, on the other hand, are capitals run by an elite that lived in exile or away from home for over 30 years, and returned only after fighting and winning a war of liberation of some sort. Most of them were either born abroad and don’t have parochial roots at home, or fled with their parents when they were toddlers before the village rubbed off on them.
Most of their parents, who had the strong ties to the village, died while they were in exile. This kind of elite comes with a more cosmopolitan mindset, and quite a few of them have no upcountry to return to, because their parents’ land was lost or redistributed decades ago. The only place they have space in, is the cities. These fellows will build modern cities. In East Africa, it explains why Kigali is ahead of the pack. Indeed one theory has it that because its streets and lands were once stained with the blood – and stench of bodies – of nearly one million who were killed during the 1994 Genocide, the near-obsession with cleanliness in Rwanda is partly a sub-conscious drive to clean away the smell and grime.
A good friend once told me when we were talking about a filthy African capital; “It’s a city Charles, it is meant to be dirty.” Yes, but precisely because it is a city, it pays to clean it. Soon many Africans too will smell the money.
© cobbo@ke.nationmedia.com / twitter@cobbo3
While reading through the list of Africa’s cleanest cities in part I of your article, the reason I thought explained their cleanliness is the very reason you offer in part II. Interesting.
I do not think having country homes should be reason enough to have our cities filthy? I thought the cleanest cities in europe have guys who have country homes too
But Charles, let us consider the possibility of advantages of the villagisation of the African. Let us think about the potential good things that can come out of it. Must the African lose his roots and identity in the search for urbanisation? Can the African urbanise and remain villagised at the same time? Why must it be an ‘either/or’ situation? I am not sure I agree with you on this. Can we talk about the implications of the type of ‘whole’ food eaten by the African? Can we talk more concretely about the two sides to this question? Are there advantages of the African situation? How can we minimise the disadvantages while maximizing the advantages? How can we eat our cassava and maintain market for the peasant farmer while cleaning the city of the peels? Can these peels for example be made into tar that can “tarmacadise” our roads? Yes. This means, we put money in the pocket of the cassava farmer, then have the nutritious benefits of the cassava, and then clean up the mess by making tar out of the peels, and in turn work on our roads. Originally African approach, makes our cities clean, we have good health, we maintain our roots and villages and we move forward! I do not see value in trying to build ‘European-model’ cities in Africa. It is not only so expensive, but it is not a model rooted in the African reality that centers on the cultural imprint of community and belonging! Development does not mean Europeanisation. Urbanisation does not mean Europeanisation too. We can urbanise the African condition without wiping the roots of a people’s identity. Or else we will keep pushing for this copy and paste approach and be met with cultural attitudes that won’t allow the solutions to work.
Charles you do raise a very interesting point there. But I ask, what of a city like Mombasa….where the locals have been residents of the town for eons and have been interred in graveyards around the corner……….how is it then that it is so dirty…..so full of rubbish? Food for thought there too………..!!
In this blog post, a second part to an earlier one, Charles Onyango-Obbo argues that African cities are dirty because the African elite maintains very close ties to their villages. He thus argues that the de-villagisation of Africa will lead to more clean cities. He cites examples of clean cities like Kigali and Asmara as being clean because the elite who live there have no ties to any village, they are basically former exilees and refugees.
My problem is that Obbo seems to be of the view that Africa should look forward to having European-style cities, a faulty premise in my view. I do not condone the dirt in African cities, that is one, but I do not think African cities are dirty because of the elite’s attachment to villages and so de-villagisation will not clean up the African cities in my view.
Let us consider the possibility of the advantages of the villagisation of the African. Let us think about the potential good things that can come out of it. Must the African lose his roots and identity in the search for urbanisation? Can the African urbanise and remain villagised at the same time? Why must it be an ‘either/or’ situation? Can we talk about the implications of the type of ‘whole’ food eaten by the African? Can we talk more concretely about the two sides to this question? Are there advantages of the African situation? How can we minimise the disadvantages while maximizing the advantages? How can we eat our cassava and maintain market for the peasant farmer while cleaning the city of the peels? Can these peels for example be made into tar that can “tarmacadise” our roads as one Harambe 2012 Associate has proposed?
Yes. This means, we put money in the pocket of the cassava farmer, then have the nutritious benefits of the cassava, and then clean up the mess by making tar out of the peels, and in turn work on our roads. An originally African approach, makes our cities clean, we have good health, we maintain our roots and villages and we move forward! I do not see value in trying to build ‘European-model’ cities in Africa. It is not only so expensive, but it is not a model rooted in the African reality that centers on the cultural imprint of community and belonging! The approach has failed, for the fifty and more years of independence. Development does not mean Europeanisation. Urbanisation does not mean Europeanisation too. We can urbanise the African condition without wiping the roots of a people’s identity. Or else we will keep pushing for this cut, copy and paste approach and be met with cultural attitudes that won’t allow the solutions to work.
Brian, I have edited out the personalised attacks – entirely unnecessary – and left the gist of your argument untouched. Argue with the idea, not the man.
@COO so what will you say of Accra or Kumasi, Ghana where the dead are buried within gazetted cemeteries , but the cities still reeks of filth and a poor drainage system?
Also in Part 1 of this blog, 8 of the top 10 dirtiest cities on your list are non African, in this instance how does your argument about village food being bad for town hold? Or even the insinuation that African ‘shit’ is to heavy thus clog up the drainage system, since these cities like Baku, Mumbai or Mexico City aren’t African?
I do not think our cities are mainly different, in terms of cleanliness, because of our love for the village.It all comes down to poor governance,period!
I beg to differ. Am of the view that African cities are dirty because of the way our institutions work. Road authorities and Ministries in charge of infrastructural development work for their own interests mirroring the ways of the political regimes they work under. There is no serious initiative to develop the African infrastructure when all the institutions, from the Electoral Commissions to the police force know the main aim is to sustain the Regime they work under. We live in an age of Crony Capitalism and Mock Democracy. This is the Africa of the 21st century-An Illusion.
The foods brought to cites/refuse can be recycled. What happened to city administrators working with so called dirty city dwellers like households, institutions, to recycle banana peels, cassava peels, pineapple peels, tomatoes ect? Most of the refuse can be recycled into manure/compost if city governments can work with city dwellers to share recycling techniques to include market vendors/ whole sale food traders, city offices, restaurants , schools, to recycle all the rotten tomatoes.,cabbage office recyclable trash, left over foods, as compost instead of dumping it as trash and then make use of the compost for their gardens and flower beds. at home and the city as well. Designated community compost centers would curb the rot but beautify gardens at home and offices, increase food yield, and beautify the city and the parks. Recycling is key to city cleanliness.
I hope there will be solutions of the waste problems soon. Of course the food waste should be recycled, there are valuable nutritions there that makes excellent fertilizers. And this vaste don’t burn, and it is bad for deposites. But I guess recycling is not the first that will happen.