As a transport minister, Kenya’s John Michuki was greatly admired.

He is remembered as the man who finally put the matatu business in its place — as a service to citizens and not some autonomous mafia that held passengers to ransom, infuriated other road users and generally operated as a law unto itself.

The death toll from matatus crashing while racing for business, their drivers often high on miraa, was more than unacceptable. It bordered on murderous.

And John Njoroge Michuki stopped all that.

The Michuki Rules, posted in February 2004, decreed that all matatus should install speed governors, end overloading by ensuring all passengers were seated and wore safety belts, insisted that matatus operated only on defined routes, and that their drivers and conductors should be identified with badges and, more importantly, have clean police records.

The Rules were upheld by the police who had previously regarded matatus as mobile ATMs and Kenya enjoyed relative sanity on the roads.

These simple steps saved lives. But it all came at a cost. For one of the Rules and, alas, the one that seems to have lasted longest, stated that matatus should have a new livery — all white except for a horizontal yellow band around the middle.

The flamboyant decoration and colourful branding that had seen some of the Nissans and Isuzus bought for museum exhibits were all gone.

And that was a shame.

I often wonder how this improved road safety. There was an argument that a sober exterior would be reflected by a new, responsible attitude of owners and drivers.

Right. I suspect it was done primarily to show the matatu owners who was boss. Whatever the reason, something magical went out of our lives.

The matatus had boasted graffiti of a world class standard. Slogans included, “The darker the berry the sweeter the juice,” while popular icons included Beyonce and Bob Marley with religious themes enjoying a vogue too.

Ever alert to changing times, owners and artists often reflected the news of the day with Obama and Kofi Annan both honoured with minibuses named after them. A great tourist attraction, the decoration of the matatus was a constant joy, even as their erratic road manners occasionally had me and no doubt thousands of other drivers praying for an AK-47 mounted on the bonnet.

In moments of rage, I tried to remind myself how these selfsame reckless drivers and bullying makangas had earned their place in the nation’s heart when after the US embassy bombing in 1998, they queued unasked to rush the injured to hospital, making journey after journey to help the stricken.

For that, we were ready to forgive them anything.

The matatus were moving signboards of a vibrant culture and became popular subjects for local artists and photographers.

Through them, their glorious artworks live again. There has even been a film centred on them, Matatu Girl, which tells the story of a young woman who works as a tout to pay her university fees.

One artist who celebrates the exuberance of matatus (and nowadays the artworks are beginning to sneak back, image by image, slogan by slogan) is Dennis Muraguri, currently showing some 21 pictures at Le Rustique restaurant in Nairobi.

Of these, nine are woodcuts and for me these work the best. Either layering on the colours, state after state, or printing simple black on white, the images are underpinned by sound drawing and he appears to relish the bite of the block into paper.

This can be seen clearly in Nganya, in which the image of a tout hanging onto the door of his matatu is printed black on a sheet of newsprint.

It is either a subtle comment by the artist or a happy coincidence that a headline on the page reads, “Democracy has failed.”
Eight painted panels, acrylic on paper, each around 20cm square, are snapshots of life on the street. Several are of matatus, one is of a tout waving his route card, another shows a motorbike cop waiting to pounce.

Acrylics always strike me as less responsive than oils and indeed there is a certain stiffness about the brushwork, but nonetheless these little pictures confirm Muraguri has a good painterly technique and, as with the woodcuts, the structure is sound.

He also has a clear interest in the political culture of the matatu as well as the artistic one.

For example the largest painting in the show, Superimposed, refers to the wave of protests that engulfed the city late last year.
“Every day I woke up to a new protest,” Muraguri told me. “I wanted to record it as a part of our lives.”

Superimposed, an acrylic on canvas, mostly a stark black on white, shows a matatu surrounded by a crowd waving banners, notably “Unga is Life” (Flour is Life — the demonstration against the rising cost of flour) and “Operation Linda Afya” (Operation Defend Health), the strike by doctors for more pay, presented as a pun on the Kenyan incursion into Somalia codenamed “Operation Linda Nchi” (Defend our Country.)

Carrying the point further, two soldiers in battledress stand by the matatu urging people aboard… metaphorically getting them on board the idea of the move to nullify Al Shabaab.

Layers of meaning: The matatu becomes Kenya itself. Clever, subtle and well drawn, too.

Aged 32 and based at the Kuona Trust studios in Nairobi, Muraguri clearly relishes the theatre provided by matatus running from the police while competing to shovel more customers on board.

One could almost wish for a sound track to catch the blaring music of the manyangas, still notorious for reckless driving and overcharging.

Commented Muraguri: “Matatus are exciting to watch, especially the drama that surrounds them, the fact that they feed a lot more people than those directly involved through extortion and bribes.”

Kenya is not alone in suffering from matatu madness. Tanzania has its dala-dalas, while Uganda — and Kampala in particular — is plagued by swarms of boda-boda motorcyclists who would drive over your bonnet to gain an inch on the road.

I don’t know if Mr Michuki enjoys Continental cuisine but if he does and happens to visit Le Rustique before Muraguri’s show ends on February 22, he will see something that might cause him a wry smile as he recalls what he achieved and what, if his Rules were still enforced, could even be again.

Safety and sanity on our roads... but maybe with a little relaxation of that rule about the paint jobs, please.

Frank Whalley runs Lenga Juu, a fine arts and media consultancy based in Nairobi. Email: [email protected]