ART-KENYA: Popular Local Curio Market Destroyed

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Philip Ngunjiri

NAIROBI, Aug 4 1998 (IPS) - Nairobi’s popular art and curio market, a “must” for most tourists to Kenya, is no more. Nairobi City Council workers moved in at midnight one day last month and flattened the stalls that provided the major livelihood of scores of small traders and artists alike.

For 13 years, the ‘Kigali’ market was a one-stop shop for tourists looking for African artefacts and curios at affordable prices.

“They have cut off my life-line,” says Boniface Omboi. “The schools are about to close and I have three children at high school. I don’t know where their fees will come from. I don’t know what to do.”

Omboi had received an order for goods worth about 3,500 U.S. Dollars from German tourists who had visited the country, and who had paid in full. He has no idea how he will recover the lost goods.

Many other art traders are in the same predicament. “I mail goods that are already paid for by tourists every week,” says Angeline Wangare, who lost goods worth 1,700. Dollars which had been wrapped for shipping.

“Why did they have to come in at night? Do we really have any effective laws to protect the common man in this country?” she asks. Wangare says the destruction of the market paints a bad image of Kenya abroad, since the market was a favourite shopping spot for tourists.

Kiura Kinyua who had operated at the market after resigning from a Nairobi-based insurance firm as a senior accountant, says the market was not just a cluster of kiosks with crafts, but an internationally known place for buying East African art.

“The curio market abroad is hot. This will mean a loss of foreign exchange to the government,” says Kinyua, who has travelled abroad with his wife to attend exhibitions and explore new markets. He had just purchased ebony carvings from Tanzania worth thousands of dollars, which were destroyed when the market was razed.

The Nairobi town clerk, Zipporah Wandera, gave a one-week notice to the traders to vacate the three-quarter acre plot by Jul. 21, or face eviction from the premises, following a dispute over the ownership of the plot.

Some three days before the demolition, Justice Erastus Githinji, extended an injunction issued earlier by another judge, restraining the City Council from moving the curio dealers until the case was heard on Sep. 23.

“It’s a gross misuse of power for the City Council to demolish the kiosks without prior warning,” says Philip Wambua, chairman of the Kigali Curios Multi-Purpose Cooperative Society, and a member of parliament. He adds that the Council had granted the traders a license for the year.

But, the Nairobi City Council then decided to sell the plot to the Management Committee of Jamia Mosque for 2,720,000 US dollars. “The Council should have given the traders first priority,” says Wambua.

The traders have threatened to burn down the Jamia Mosque for “grabbing” their plot, and already violent confrontations between them and some Muslims have left one person dead and several others seriously injured.

Tourists interviewed here agreed that the market was a big attraction in the city and have questioned the City Council’s decision to destroy it under the cloak of darkness.

“This is very sad. Kigali Market was a big attraction for people like me, and without it, we might as well go to any other city,” says Frank McKenzie of Scotland, who had come to shop for curios after reading about the market in a tourist brochure.

Another tourist, Sheila Smith, who was with a group of tourists from London, wondered if there was any rule of law in Kenya. “Those behind the shameful action should be prosecuted for disobeying a court order. Such things don’t happen in a country where there is law and order,” she said.

In a statement on the incident, the International Commission of Jurists said it is dismayed that public institutions continue to pose the greatest danger to the rule of law. “Sneaking to the market under cover of darkness to knock down the stalls, smacks of a deviousness that one would expect from criminals, not pubic officials,” ICJ said in its statement.

The traders however, are not giving up without a fight. Through their lawyer, Rumba Kinuthia, they have instituted contempt of court proceedings against the Council. “When people in such high places violate the law, who shall the common man turn to?” he asks. “This demolition greatly undermines the rule of law. It’s a sign of things falling apart at the national level.”