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Kenya
Thursday, March 28, 2024

Projects that show the government is clueless –

I don’t know about you but for me, a sure sign that a government has run out of ideas is when they start putting up monuments and chasing so-called prestige projects as though nothing else on the national agenda matters.

Here in South Africa, we have all just witnessed the very embarrassing climbdown by the government on the idea of spending R22 million (Sh165 million) to erect a 120m high monumental South African flag.

The idea seemingly came from out of the blue and caught the public off guard, but once they caught on, it did not take them long to make their feelings felt. And soon, even the President was shooting his own Arts, Sports and Culture minister’s idea down.

The minister was all over the television and the radio and could not stop talking about the flag, which he breathlessly told one TV station: “It will be seen and at night it will also be seen because it is going to be lit because education has to be and continues both during the day and night.”

He spoke of the benefit the flag would bring to the steel industry. Forgetting to mention that at R22 million, it would be an unnoticeable drop in the ocean, seeing as South Africa is one of the largest steel producers on the African continent, with steel-consuming industries contributing R600 billion rand to the country’s GDP. 

He insisted that the value of the flag would outlast the current generation, and that, as well as the fact that it would foster social cohesion, was a measure of the project’s importance.

In the end, the only social cohesion the flag proposal managed to stir up was almost an entire nation standing as one to oppose it.

Ordinary wananchi, political parties, artistes and civil society were all queuing up to question what  value the monumental flag would add to South Africa, and many said the money would be put to better use building playgrounds or improving the sports sector.

South Africa marked 28 years of being a democracy at the end of April, and perhaps the idea should have been tested at that time and maybe tried to ride a wave of national sentiment.

However, emerging as it did nearly a month later, and at a time when citizens are trying to understand what effect an almost R2 price increase in the price of petrol in June will mean for the economy, was probably the worst timing.

Already, people are struggling with the prices of bread, sunflower oil and other household products shooting up in part as a result of Russia’s war with Ukraine.

At the same time, interest rates rose again in May. This is bound to push up the cost of loans and mortgage repayments in a country that at times seems to aspire to be what Margaret Thatcher used to call a “home-owning democracy”. 

Don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against national public monuments. They have their place in the world.

That said, one might argue, as some have in the past, that most such monuments commemorate people or events that reflect the sentiment of the individual or group that commissioned them.

So, for instance, that monstrosity called the Nyayo Monument at the edge of Nairobi’s Central Park was built in 1988 to commemorate 10 years in power of former President Daniel Arap Moi.

While it is entirely possible that President Moi himself came up with the plan, I’ll give him the benefit of a doubt and ascribe the idea for the project to the many sycophants and court jesters who hung around him.

They might have thought the monument would endear the President and his much-touted philosophy to the general public, and perhaps it did to a few people.

However, the trouble with this sort of thinking is that opinions and values change over time. During the next 14 years that Moi was in power, the monument became a much hated reminder of all the things they didn’t like about Nyayo.

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