In Kenya's capital city, Nairobi, there are over 100 slum communities that are home to 2 million people. The residents of Nairobi's informal settlements constitute 55 per cent of the city's total population, and yet they are crowded onto only 1.5 per cent of the total land area in the city. And even that land is not theirs. These residents live in constant fear that their homes will be demolished or destroyed in a forced eviction.

Photo/Horst Rutsch

The root of this crisis is a government policy that refuses to recognize the urban informal settlements as inhabited areas. The Government views the public land on which the poor reside as vacant land that can be alienated at any time to reward politically loyal elites. The residents are simply thrown off the land, and the result is that a large number of Kenyans are living as refugees in their own country. They have been rendered landless, homeless and denied even their most basic human rights and dignity.

The informal settlements in Nairobi and other Kenyan cities are severely overcrowded, insecure and unsanitary. An average of five to six people stay in a room that averages 3 to 6 square metres. One-room shanties are sandwiched together, with the densities averaging 250 units per hectare. The only walkways are narrow dirt paths that frequently flood and are impassable during the rainy seasons. Urban infrastructure services are virtually non-existent in the informal sector. Residents have no access to electricity. Potable water must be purchased from vendors at prices up to 10 times higher than the rate charged by local authorities. Over 95 per cent of the residents do not have access to proper sanitation; they are forced to pay to use a pit latrine shared by 50 people per toilet, or use open areas. The city has long since stopped collecting refuse, so garbage lies permanently in unsanitary heaps, often blocking the drainage channels. The lack of sanitary facilities to dispose of human waste and garbage has led to serious environmental and health hazards, including a higher incidence of diseases like typhoid, cholera and tuberculosis.

Jennifer Akuru lives with her eight children in the Mitumba slum in Nairobi, Kenya. Photo/Horst Rutsch

Corruption is rampant in the informal sector. The vast majority of residents are tenants who are forced to pay exorbitant rents to local chiefs and wealthy absentee landlords. These chiefs have created a mafia-like system where residents are required to pay a bribe (about US$40) before repairing a leaking roof. In addition, they regularly deny residents the right to meet; consequently, communities are unable to organize themselves to resist this kind of repression and to develop programmes that could improve their lives.

In the last decade, public land has become the primary commodity handed out by the ruling party in exchange for political loyalty. Because most of the squatter villages are located on government land that is close to the city centre, the informal settlements are situated on potentially some of the most valuable land in the city. Such land is often allocated or sold to individuals and organizations that have proved their loyalty to the state apparatus. Residents who have occupied this land, in some cases for generations, are forcefully evicted and their homes demolished.

An example of a village in Nairobi that has suffered multiple demolitions at the hands of state and local authorities is Mitumba Village. Adjacent to Wilson Airport and home to 4,000 residents, it was completely demolished in the middle of the night by heavily armed administrative police and the local chief. While many of the residents have managed to return, they are regularly forced to pay bribes to the local administration for permission to build a polythene and cardboard home.

UNCHS Photo

In Kenya, politics play a much more important role than the rule of law in the area of housing and land disputes. The judicial process, which was intended to provide the necessary safety valve to protect the rights of citizens, has totally collapsed under the massive weight of corruption. Instead of condemning the illegal plundering of public land and the forced evictions that accompany it, the courts have conspired with the State to protect the grabbers by narrowly construing obsolete colonial land laws. Virtually every case filed in court by an informal settlement seeking to prevent an eviction or claim ownership has been decided in favour of the party holding title. As a result of this crisis in informal settlements, in the early 1990s, slum dwellers of Nairobi and Mombasa organized themselves into federations called the Muungano wa Wanavijiji (Federation of Slum Dwellers) and the Ilishe Trust, respectively. Their aim is to organize and unite all slum dwellers so that they can resist forced evictions and land grabbing. These grass-roots movements have raised considerably the awareness levels of the poor about their housing and land rights. In addition, as a result of international exchange visits to other slum dweller federations in India and South Africa, the Muungano and Ilishe have also begun daily savings programmes as a means to not only save for land and housing, but also to more closely unite its members and strengthen its leadership.

Last year, the Muungano launched an Urban Land Rights Campaign, in order to highlight the plight of the slum dwellers who do not have a place to live with dignity in Kenya-a country that boasts one of the highest disparities of wealth in the world. As part of its campaign, the Muungano is demanding a moratorium on evictions and an official recognition of the right to the land on which the urban poor live.

The Muungano movement is particularly important at this time in Kenya's history, because the Government, having been pushed by its citizens, has reluctantly agreed to pursue constitutional review. The Muungano believes it is fundamental that they be given an opportunity to dialogue with the State as it examines, and hopefully revises, land and housing rights so that all Kenyans can enjoy the full benefit of land in this country.

To express support for the Muungano wa Wanavijiji's Urban Land Rights Campaign, please email: landrite@africaonline.co.ke.