BONYO'S BONE: Matatu vs Boda Boda - Who is blacker?

On Monday this week, players in the public transport sector, popularly known as the matatu industry, downed their tools on most routes within the city.

The decision to paralyse transport in Nairobi was, according to them, meant to send a message to law enforcers, whom they accuse of abetting the burning of their vehicles by boda boda operators.

While this action may pass as one of the constitutionally protected rights and freedoms, it is important to remind the matatu sector of one painful truth: the boda boda operators learnt from the best. They learnt from you, and unfortunately, you have met your match.

For years, the matatu sector has been characterised by recklessness—speeding, blaring loud music, overloading, and horrific, incessant accidents. Anarchy, it can be said, runs in the bloodline of the sector.

It was therefore with some amusement that a press conference by the sector’s leadership, decrying violations of their rights and demanding protection from boda boda operators, was received.

The very rights they are now wailing about are the same rights every Kenyan deserves. The property they seek to protect is the same property private motorists struggle daily to safeguard from reckless matatu driving.

The loss of income they complain about mirrors the losses passengers incur when fares are arbitrarily hiked and commuters harassed during daily travel.

The strict adherence to traffic rules now being demanded of boda boda operators is the very discipline Kenyans have long demanded of the matatu industry. There is little moral authority to lecture others while traffic lights are routinely jumped, lanes are overlapped for convenience, and passengers are packed like sardines.

The matatu sector does not occupy the moral high ground to point fingers at a sector that learnt at its feet and continues to grow under its example.

While their grievances may be heard and even invite sympathy, a difficult question must be asked: are they any better?

One cannot live by the sword and expect to die in comfort, surrounded by angelic choirs singing 'Hosanna' and 'Kumbaya'.

Boda boda operators are not hostile adversaries; they are merely reflecting behaviour long normalised within the matatu industry. Demands for better conduct ring hollow when decency remains a foreign concept.

Kenyans are watching, and they have been watching since the abandonment of the Michuki rules, which once brought order to the sector. Restore discipline, discard the madness, and then public support may follow.

Anything short of that is akin to Chile’s former dictator, Augusto Pinoche,t calling for the prosecution of Cambodia’s rogue leader, Pol Pot. They are cut from the same cloth.