Slum dwellers emerge from the shadows
What you need to know:
- In Mombasa, according to Pamoja Trust, as many as 728,000 residents live in informal settlements or are “tenants at will” paying ground rent to “absentee landlords” who are unknown but have rent collectors or agents on the ground.
- There is a real mood change in Kenya with the arrival of the 2010 Constitution that somehow has empowered the poorest of communities to resist eviction and marginalisation and to step forward as people with rights, who no longer accept to be dismissed as squatters and lawbreakers.
Slums the world over are hidden from the public view, located far from highways, on slopes, dumps, wetlands and in the shadow of the sun.
For decades slum dwellers have been content with remaining anonymous, fearing eviction, landlords and especially the location chief.
The government, too, has viewed slums as illegal entities and so justified marginalisation, neglect and evictions. Slum dwellers only count when the census is taken or votes needed at election time. But what if slum dwellers became vocal, active in shaping their own destiny and planning a future for themselves?
Slum dwellers do not have secure tenure and as a result are denied a series of rights like education, sanitation, health and security. Slum dwellers make up 55 per cent of the urban population in Kenya, which amounts to six million.
In Mombasa, according to Pamoja Trust, as many as 728,000 residents live in informal settlements or are “tenants at will” paying ground rent to “absentee landlords” who are unknown but have rent collectors or agents on the ground.
Pamoja Trust has just completed a slum profile of the coastal city that makes depressing reading. At least 20 people share every toilet, and access to health and education facilities is abysmal.
CENSUS
What is unique, however, about this profile or social census is that it was conducted by the residents themselves in an exercise aimed at making slum dwellers visible, audible and credible.
There is a real mood change in Kenya with the arrival of the 2010 Constitution that somehow has empowered the poorest of communities to resist eviction and marginalisation and to step forward as people with rights, who no longer accept to be dismissed as squatters and lawbreakers.
There are small signs that the Judiciary is acknowledging these rights as Lady Justice Mumbi Ngugi granted 336 residents of Nairobi South ‘C’ Sh84 million as compensation for an illegal and forced eviction to make room for the Moi Educational Centre in 2013.
Justices Mumbi and Isaac Lenaola have been brave in their judgments while the Mombasa land courts have been sluggish and indifferent to the plight of slum dwellers.
STRATEGIC PLANNING
Still the Mombasa County government supported the work of Pamoja Trust and Haki Yetu in this research and have plans to adopt it as an integral part of their strategic planning. Mombasa County acknowledges that the days of forced evictions should be long over, that citizens should no longer pay rent to absentee landlords and that poverty or lack of security of tenure is not a crime.
However, they need to budget for beautifying slums and not just aim to attract tourists. Neither the Okoa Kenya nor Pesa Mashinani efforts appear designed to address poverty and lack of services in the informal settlements.
Devolution was created as a means to address the glaring inequalities, but it has so far failed to do so in a meaningful manner. Not everything that is addressed can be changed but nothing will change until it is addressed.
All over Kenya the inhabitants of informal settlements are claiming their rights to manage in comfort the land they occupy. They are demanding recognition, inclusion and recovering their dignity. Who would dare oppose or ignore this growing movement? Only at the country’s peril!
