Slum menace that refuses to go away, years on

By Frankline Sunday

Nairobi, Kenya: On this day in June 11, 1993, residents of an informal settlement adjacent to Nairobi’s Muthaiga Estate occupied a private plot in the area after their houses had been demolished a fortnight ago.

The invasion by the slum dwellers into the palatial residential area made the high-end residents feel unsecure with some telling The Standard journalists that they feared for their safety.

“I am disgusted by the scenery coming up in Muthaiga. See the cardboards, flattened tin cans and plastic sheets. Does that not pose a security risk?” asked one of the residents protesting the encroachment from the slum dwellers.

The distraught resident further stated how she had reported the matter to the police, to the area Member of Parliament and the City Council of Nairobi, but nothing had been done.

However, it appeared the authorities were at a loss on how to handle the situation, which had come to be a routine occurrence between the slum residents and their affluent Muthaiga neighbours.

The informal settlements had been demolished four times in three weeks but each time the bulldozers flattened down their homes, the residents erected them up almost immediately.

This had come to be a game that slum dwellers and squatters in the country had grown to master for the last 50 years.

Race versus class

However, a couple of years ago, Kenya did not have more than 2 million of its population living in degrading and inhuman conditions. At independence, only one out of every 12 Kenyans were said to be living in urban centres.

Today, one out of every three Kenyans is living in an urban centre with the number of Kenyans living in towns, cities and market centers expected to reach 50 per cent of the population by the year 2015.

The rapid shift in urban patterns in the country over the last 50 years has led to an urban menace that has thrust Kenya into the limelight, albeit for the wrong reason; the rise of informal settlements.

With Nairobi being the largest urban area in the country, the situation is predictably adverse here. Up to 60 per cent of Nairobi city dwellers are said to be living in informal settlements crammed into only 5 per cent of the total landmass of the city.

Data from Amnesty International, UN Habitat and the Government archives trace an origin of slums that had the trappings of race and class distinctions, with the later today becoming the determining factor.

Before independence, Kenya’s residential areas were marked out depending on race where Europeans, Indians and later Africans had pre-designated dwelling areas.

After independence, the authority to administer urban centers shifted from the colonial administration to the National Government.

This time however, the greatest determinant as to where you lived was class rather than race.

 The British colonial remnants are said to have maintained their living quarters within the CBD and the formerly white residential areas for some time. During this time, planning and service standards were said to have been maintained with amenities such as running water, electricity and sewerage disposal being adequate for all.

3 million residents

However, with independence came the desire for many Kenyans to get a share of what had been denied of them since they could remember.

This meant education, decent housing, healthcare, job opportunities and better living standards were the hallmarks of life in the city.

With the lifting of restrictions like the Kipande system, Nairobi became witness to the largest rural-urban migration drive in Kenya’s history.

In 1948, Nairobi’s population is said to have been at 120,000.

By 1999, the city became home to over three million residents.

But with an economy facing a decade long downturn, jobs were hard to come by and those who had moved to the city with their families found themselves disillusioned.

Some families went back to the rural areas but most opted to remain and brave it out.

Thus was the origin of slums and informal settlements where unemployed or underemployed citizens who could not afford the rent for decent housing turned to makeshift houses in areas such as Mathare, Kibra, Mukuru and Korogocho.

Today, the informal settlement population has spurned a slum culture that has become part and parcel of the country’s socio-economic history. Landless residents encroach on road reserves, along railway lines, under electricity and fuel utility lines.

Sadly, Kenyans have lost lives and property from sporadic fires that spread fast and leave nothing in their wake as the cardboard and tin-shack structures provide ample fuel.

Two years ago, close to 150 Kenyans lost their lives and many others maimed and disfigured as a fuel pipeline fire razed informal settlements in Sinai.

It later emerged that Kenya Pipeline Company had issued eviction notices, which had gone unheeded. Despite several interventions by the Government like the slum upgrading project, and other initiatives by local and international NGOs over the past three decades, Kenyan slum dwellers still have no reason to feel at home.