Protect urban poor from greedy capitalists

On December 17, 2010, Mohamed Bouazizi, a second hand wares seller in Sidi Bou Said, a town in Northern Tunisia, set himself ablaze because municipal officials had endlessly harassed and prevented him from selling wares on the streets.

A few months later, this desperate act triggered off mass demonstrations, revolts, and revolutions that came to be known as the Arab Spring. The rare incident captured the inevitable consequence of the global urban tragedy where exclusion of the poor and other marginalised groups has become official policy and practice.

In Nairobi, the poor comprise 60 per cent of the population. Yet, they occupy only 5 per cent of the residential space.

This space, without any formal land tenure, is in congested housing without basic services such as water, electricity and toilets.

Population in most of these areas can be higher than 1,000 people per hectare whereas Muthaiga, one of the most prime residential areas is zoned off to give a family at least half an acre.

A study conducted by Oxfam and published in 2009 “Urban Poverty and Vulnerability in Kenya: The Urgent Need for Co-ordinated action to reduce urban Poverty” identified poor urban governance as the core problem of poverty in urban areas.

To compound the problem of informal settlers, the law regards them as squatters who can be evicted without notice. However, the new constitution and the Eviction Procedure guidelines have seen courts declare forced evictions unconstitutional.

Policy formulation and implementation is still overwhelmingly based on a technocratic concept of development. For example, the right to housing is reduced to shelter and service delivery.

It assumes that progress can be measured by counting the ‘delivery’ of ‘housing units’ and ‘service connections’ to “beneficiaries”.

Meaningful participation of the urban poor is considered a ritual, hence the current problem facing the slum upgrading programme. The Soweto East Upgrading process was subjected to a court case because a section of beneficiaries cited lack of participation in the project by the ministry.

Similarly the Mombasa county government has rolled out a good initiative for urban renewal of the old estates. Hopefully they will be guided by some of the proposed frameworks in the National slum upgrading and the urban development policies, the Urban areas and Cities Act and the Physical Planning Act.

Ideally, urban areas should offer opportunities to all living there. The right of everyone to an urban life means that the social value of land has to be prioritized over its commercial value if this right is to be realized for the poor.

The right of women to be safe in the city, the right of safe, convenient and affordable transport, the right to public space with public toilets, drinking fountains and benches, must be part of a reformed city. City dwellers must be given the right to pursue a livelihood in the city, in an organized manner, so that second hand goods merchants are not continually harassed and penalised by law enforcement agents.

The right to shape the city means that ordinary, and especially the poor, have the right to organise and to challenge power and be engaged in governance and as well as exercise their social accountability power over the developments undertaken in cities.

The Constitution has opened opportunities for the urban poor. Some of the national values embodied in the Constitution include human dignity, equity, and social justice, participation of the people and protection of the marginalised.

Jurisprudence under the new Constitution is beginning to translate some of these principles into tangible benefits for the urban poor.

How far this will go before a backlash is however going to depend on the level of social and political organisation of the urban poor.