By John Oywa and Patrick Mathangani

Like triplets dressed in rusty and battered iron sheets, the three Mukuru villages — Kwa Njenga, Kwa Reuben and Kaiyaba, which accommodate more than 700,000 people — spread and meander along the banks of Ngong River, dominating over 500 hectares of the eastern horizon of Nairobi.

Life plays itself out in a blast of swirling dust, pungent smells of rotting garbage and nauseating sites of raw sewerage on uncovered trenches.

Children at Mukuru kwa Reuben slum queue to use a private toilet for which their parents pay one shilling per day.

Boisterous children, their stomachs bulging from apparent malnutrition, play in an open sewer trench, scooping thick, smelly sludge with their bare hands.

In another corner, the body man who had been electrocuted overnight as he tried to connect power to his house from high voltage cables, lies covered in a sack, attracting little attention from residents who are apparently used to such tragedies.

For a first time visitor, the Mukuru slums seem like hell. Residents appear to wriggle through dire poverty and woes that do not even fit into the over-used NGO phrase, ‘living below the poverty line’.

However, The Standard survey on the ground — during a day and night assignment to document facts of slum life amid rising economic hardships— in one of the biggest slums in Kenya reveals a community held in the grip of cartels, criminal gangs and tycoons who reap handsome profits from the misery of the class of people that Frantz Fanon described in his 1961 book as The Wretched of the Earth.

Slum economies

Unknown to many people, Mukuru — and other slums — are bustling economies with their own millionaires and deadly cartels that profit from the misery of residents.

The cartels control supply of anything from water, electricity and security. They rule the slums with terror and those going against their wishes find themselves in grave danger.

Everyone we interviewed for this story pleaded for anonymity, saying they risked attacks for revealing the secrets of the slum cartels.

"The truth is that we are living at the mercy of tycoons and cartels. They control everything here, even water which the Government has supplied freely," said a butcher who asked not to be named.

A social worker clears a trench next to a water point. [PHOTOS: SAIDI HAMISI/STANDARD]

He added: "When the Government wants to build us decent houses, the cartels sabotage it so that we can continue living in their rental shacks. Recently the Government brought a community water project here but they keep on disrupting the supply leaving us with only their illegal water points to buy from."

He said one has to get permission from the cartels to do business in the sprawling slum, even a small kiosks or a stand from where to roast maize.

The community water points sell it at Sh3 per a 20-litre jerrican while the cartels charge Sh20 for the same. One of the private toilets owned by cartels, a roofless pit latrine, charges Sh3 per visit.

School children pay one shilling per day to use the private toilets.

Project stalled

"Look at those electricity poles. They were erected here more than two years ago when the Kenya Power and Lighting Company (KPLC) promised to give us power. The project has since stalled, it was sabotaged by cartels who don’t want to lose the business of supplying illegal power to residents," said a man who owns a kerosene kiosk.

The power supply cartels pull wires from the main lines of KPLC and connect it to houses from which they charge Sh100 per a light bulb per month. The man who was electrocuted last week was said to be a ‘technician’, referred to at Mukuru kwa Reuben as ‘Engineer wa stima’ (electric engineer).

Although the KPLC launched an ambitions Sh130m slum electrification programme in all the eight constituencies in Nairobi, the project has not kicked off at Mukuru. Energy Minister Kiraitu Murungi commissioned the project at the Mukuru Kaiyaba slums in 2007. But, investigations revealed cartels are still the local power dealers here.

"They own the houses, supply water, electricity, run private schools and toilets. Majority of the tycoons controlling business here live in up market estates," said a shopkeeper.

Residents say Mungiki and other smaller gangs are the main beneficiaries of the illegal business.