Human Rights crusader Zarina Patel, 89, one of the key figures who fought for the expansion of democratic space in Kenya for over three decades, died on Thursday, April 26, after battling illness.
Zarina, the granddaughter of Alibhai Mulla Jeevanjee, the businessman and activist who donated the Jeevanjee Gardens to the residents of Nairobi, was a member of the Ufungamano Initiative, a civil society movement that was pushing for electoral and legal reforms to entrench multi-party democracy in Kenya during the autocratic tenure of the then President Daniel arap Moi.
Additionally, she will be remembered for her crusade that stopped plans to allocate the park to a private individual in 1991. At the time, City Hall mandarins hatched a plot to turn the five-acre green space into a parking lot.
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However, Zarina led a campaign to stop them in their tracks, ensuring that city dwellers had a place to rest and eat “air burgers”, a euphemism for those who could not afford lunch but who found respite in the space that also used to host Bunge la Wananchi, the informal political gathering through which citizens could air their views on governance.
Read the full version of this story in the May issue of NLM Magazine.
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