- Destructive collective actions effective as citizens’ needs often neglected until they threaten peace and financing.
- It feeds a reactionary mode of governance in which citizens’ initiatives tend to be neglected until they pose direct threats to public peace and financing.
What a tragic week it has been for mother Kenya. Last Thursday, September 5, in a fire that began at midnight, 21 boys of the Hillside Endarasha Boarding Primary School, were burnt alive as they slept. Thirteen others contracted debilitating and life-altering burns. Since then, mysterious fires have continued engulfing schools and dorms including Isiolo Girls in Isiolo county, Njia Boys in Meru county, Bukhalalire in Busia county and Ortum Boys in West Pokot county.
The jury is still out on the cause of the fire, but arson attacks at Kenyan boarding schools have become an alarming national trend. Actually, more than 100 children have died in the past two decades from fire-related incidents in schools.
School fires are not new; particularly fires in boarding schools. In several cases, authorities have confirmed arson as the cause and have usually found students to be the culprits. In 2016, Kenyan authorities documented 130 cases of school burnings related to student unrest. At least 63 arson cases were reported in 2018, according to parliamentary records.
Many parents choose to send their children to primary boarding schools because they believe these schools provide a better environment for learning, have better discipline and reduce the burden of daily transportation costs.
The Endarasha incident is in stellar company. In 2001 the Kyanguli Secondary School fire in Machakos county resulted in the deaths of 67 boys, the highest death toll of any school fire in Kenya. Nineteen were injured.
In 2017, an arson attack at the Moi Girls High School in Nairobi resulted in the deaths of 10 girls.
Other fires in recent decades in Kenya include: 1997 at Bombolulu Girls Secondary School in southern coastal Kwale county where 26 girls died in a suspected arson attack; in 1999 at Nyeri High School, four male senior prefects were locked in a dormitory by fellow students and set ablaze. All died. In 2010 at Endarasha Boys Secondary School in Nyeri two boys died in a fire. In 2021 at Buruburu Girls School in Nairobi, 63 girls were hospitalised after a fire.
A critical analysis of the recent spate of school fires after a broad investigation of secondary, as well as primary data, reveals that school-based arson is a phenomenon that spans regions in Kenya, and occurs in boys', girls' and mixed schools, private and public schools and across school calendars.
Current and former students explain this trend in terms of arson's effectiveness as a tactic in protest politics. Based on these findings, some scholars choose to make the considered observation that school-based arson is indicative of more than the contested conditions of education in Kenya today. They go further to argue that the use of arson by students reflects what this generation has learned about how protest and politics work.
Students have come to the conclusion that destructive collective actions are efficacious in winning a response from authorities. It highlights and feeds a reactionary mode of governance in which citizens’ initiatives tend to be neglected until they pose direct threats to public peace and financing.
Sociologist Charles Tilly, studying the forms of collective action employed by a group, says it enables appreciation of how that group's repertoire is learned: historically specific, and rooted in existing social structures. Arson is often characterised as a weapon of the weak. I am persuaded to locate students acts of arson in relation to experiences of education and citizenship in Kenya, and specifically in relation to historical and contemporary trends of protest and rebellion among students and other Kenyans.
An increasing number of scholars now take the view that students' use of arson not only marks them as a distinctive social and political group shaped by their current life stage, but also that their use of arson in schools has much to tell us about contemporary socialisation and politicisation dynamics and effects. Students' use of arson, therefore, may have enduring effects on how this generation engages with social and political authorities beyond their schools.
As schools continue to be settings of students’ collective actions, paying attention to the context of this activism is an opportunity to explore what and how political ideas, identities and actions develop and potentially reproduce. True, the school fires that we witnessed last week and even those witnessed over two decades ago are contextually specific. However, when we put on our thinking caps we can begin to fathom potentially common elements of student experiences within the existing constraints and opportunities for collective actions in their societies.
By investigating ‘Why arson?’ or why any form of collective action, for that matter, scholars, policy makers and the public at large can help illuminate what is structuring these current propensities.
The writer teaches Globalisation and International Development at Pwani University